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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-51
Last week’s posts at Moon of Alabama:
Prof Francois Balloux @BallouxFrancois – 20:26 UTC · Jun 27, 2020
Newspaper headlines from the the 1918/19 influenza pandemic. A furious debate about masks raged throughout the 1918/19 winter in San Francisco, with arguments essentially indistinguishable from those populating my Twitter feed
(for more info see: influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-sanfrancisco)
> The New York Times publication that Russia allegedly offered secretly bounties to Afghan militants for killing coalition forces was fabricated by the US intelligence agencies, Russia’s Foreign Ministry told TASS on Saturday.
…
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to US intelligence agencies’ involvement in Afghan drug trafficking.
“Should we speak about facts – moreover, well-known [facts], it has not long been a secret in Afghanistan that members of the US intelligence community are involved in drug trafficking, cash payments to militants for letting transport convoys pass through, kickbacks from contracts implementing various projects paid by American taxpayers. The list of their actions can be continued if you want,” the ministry said.
…
“We can understand their feelings as they do not want to be deprived of the above mentioned sources of the off-the-books income,” the ministry stressed. <
Office of the DNI @ODNIgov – 3:19 UTC · 28 Jun 2020
Statement by DNI Ratcliffe: “I have confirmed that neither the President nor the Vice President were ever briefed on any intelligence alleged by the New York Times in its reporting yesterday.” (1/2)
“The White House statement addressing this issue earlier today, which denied such a briefing occurred, was accurate. The New York Times reporting, and all other subsequent news reports about such an alleged briefing are inaccurate.” (2/2)
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Other issues:
Covid-19:
The mortality rate of hospitalized Covid-19 patients is declining in Italy as well as in England. The reasons are unknown. My hunch is that by now doctors have learned much more about the disease’s progression (cytokine storm, blood clotting) and how to manage it. The case load in both countries has also declined leaving more time for individual cases. This is really good news. The chances to find a good vaccine are not great. This makes good disease management and the right mix of medications for all the problems the virus causes even more important. An example is this man who endured more than two months of ventilation and survived!
SARS-CoV-2 timeline:
This well conducted study from Italy on old sewage samples found that SARS-CoV-2 was in Italy as early as December 18. In contrast this not peer reviewed study from Spain claims that SARS-CoV-2 has been found in March 2019 sewage samples from Barcelona. Several media have picked up on that. It contradicts the analysis of sequenced virus genomes which say that the virus jumped onto humans only in November 2019. There is only one sample in the study that shows partial virus debris and it is not even specific for SARS-CoV-2. I therefore agree with this comment:
Alan McNally @alanmcn1 – 22:14 UTC · Jun 26, 2020
They are using a PCR target shown to have Toss of a coin specificity and their amplifications are right on borderline. This is another example of importance of peer review I am afraid. This is not true!
Pandemic consequences:
737 MAX:
Use as open thread …
Posted by: lizard | Jun 28 2020 21:39 utc | 65
In light of your desire for a “solution” (possibly “Final”?) to the psychopath problem, I commend to you the following texts, all of which I have on my hard drive (although not all have been read) and all of which are available on Amazon:
Psychopaths – October 15, 1973, by Alan Harrington – this one you’ll really like, since he recommends a program to allow psychopaths and “normals” to get along. I haven’t read this one, but I read his “The Immortalist” – which I consider the most important book ever written, as it establishes the basic concept of Transhumanism – that death is “the root of all evil” – and all human behavior.
Wisdom of Psychopaths Paperback – September 3, 2013, by Kevin Dutton
The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success: How to use your inner psychopath to get the most out of life – July 12, 2014, by Kevin Dutton and Andy McBab (a former SAS soldier)
Romancing the Shadow: A Guide to Soul Work for a Vital, Authentic Life – February 2, 1999, by Connie Zweig and Steven Wolf (How to get in touch with your inner “Shadow”.)
Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths, by Venkatesh Rao, described as “the author of the widely read ribbonfarm.com blog” – which I haven’t seen.
The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience Paperback – April 21, 2015, by Kent A. Kiehl PhD
And these two in particular:
The Psychopath’s Bible: For the Extreme Individual 2nd Edition, by Christopher S. Hyatt and Nicholas Tharcher
The Psychopath’s Notebook – October 29, 2018, by Christopher S. Hyatt
I especially commend this fiction book:
The Gemini Man Paperback – February 2, 1999, by Richard Steinberg
This book is unrelated to the recent movie. The book is described thus (ignore the publisher hype):
His genesis was inevitable. His intelligence is beyond our comprehension. His agenda is unknown. The Gemini Man is among us. At the end of a century of exponential growth, horrifying destruction, and accelerated evolution, only the fittest will survive his arrival. His time is now. One part Robert Ludlum with two parts Thomas Harris and brilliantly wrapped in a Darwinian high concept,The Gemini Man is a dazzling debut thriller from an extremely gifted and daring young writer. With a power-packed narrative drive and an absolutely engrossing cast of characters, it is destined to become one of the most talked-about books of the year. U.S. Brigadier General Alexander Beck found Brian Newman on the brink of court-martial. Knowing what a weapon this man could be, Beck trained him to live by his instincts and directed his development as a top dual-purpose covert operative. Code-named Gemini, Newman offered up his innocence and Beck dropped him into the most heated political battle in history. But after delivering a debilitating blow to the Soviet Union that sealed a Cold War victory for the grand old flag, Beck left him for dead. But the Gemini Man survived. The most lethal human fallout from the most catastrophic of centuries has been waiting to return home. Six years of contemplation in solitary confinement in a frozen Russian gulag taught him well. And at long last, Beck negotiates to bring his discovery in from the cold. Sent to an isolated psychiatric research facility for “de-briefing,” Newman must play cat and mouse with a brilliant female psychiatrist long enough to enact his hidden agenda. But does the Gemini Man know who he really is? If he does, he must die. And if he doesn’t, he’ll have to die anyway. For if Brian Newman is set free, our days are numbered. And his time is now.
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The book hypothesizes an extreme version of what Alan Harrington and the other books do: that psychopaths are on the increase – and that it is the result of essentially a “mutation” of the human mind under the stresses of “civilization”.
Here’s a long excerpt:
Newman stood there for a moment, then visibly relaxed. He walked over and collapsed into the chair. “The establishment is composed of three
elements, right?”
“If you say so.”
Newman arched his eyebrows at her response, as if it surprised him. “I do.”
He seemed to be thinking as he talked.
“At the lowest level, you have the masses. The losers, the people Nietzsche called ‘the failed and the lost.’ People who live their lives through a constant series of failures. Never attaining even a glimpse of whatever their goals might be.
“At the next level are the users. People who take the failed and the lost and use them for fodder. They own factories, cities, countries sometimes. And, due to their skill at manipulating the lowest level, they rise to this middle point. They have attained some of their goals, realized some of their dreams. But they never quite get it all. Like an Oreo without the filling.”
Patricia made some notes.
“But I thought Nietzsche didn’t believe in a middle class?”
Newman looked at her scornfully. “Nietzsche was talking theory. I’m talking reality.”
“My apologies,” she said with a smile. “And the highest level of the establishment is?”
“What was your theory about me?”
“I wouldn’t want to be accused of distracting you. You don’t seem to handle that well.” She flipped back some pages in her notebook. “We have the failed and the lost on the bottom, the users in the middle, and “The masters,” he said, returning to his professorial voice. “They have it all. Either from birth or through hard work coupled with an admirable lack of ethics. They own or control everything. They don’t strive for a dream; they are the dream. They decided how things are going to be, and they’re never wrong.”
“They’re omnipotent?”
Newman nodded. “If you own everything, control everything, you make the rules. And the one who makes the rules is never wrong.”
” so, ” she said conversationally, “where do you fail in this rather
impressive hierarchy?”
“What was your theory about me?”
“it would only bore you. It seems to me that this establishment you’ve described would be constantly at odds. The bottom level fighting the users. The users chafing at the dictums from the masters.”
Newman nodded. “Take a look around lately? The establishment is more than fraying at the seams.”
“But you still haven’t told me where you fit in this grand scheme of things.”
“And you haven’t told me what your theory about me IS.
Patricia put down her pad and looked him in the eyes. “I’ll show you mine if .
“I show you mine. Deal.” He leaned forward and began gesturing with his hands.
“You have three massively disparate structures. Each with significantly different, often conflicting goals. Each pulling against the other two,
threatening to topple the whole edifice. Right?”
“Okay.”
“So, the only thing that keeps it all together, the one common band, the thread, the glue as it were “As it were,” she parroted back to him.
He gave her an irritated look.
“The thing that holds them all together is their hate. A commonly expressed, mutually held, deep, all-abiding hatred for the same thing.” He paused, taking a sip of water.
“And that one unifying force,” he continued after a moment, “is the deviant. The night rider. The thing that goes bump in the night.”
“Very poetic,” Patricia said with a chuckle. He ignored her.
“All levels of the establishment despise the deviant equally. His independence, his ability to put himself above the rules, because he knows that he is above their stupid rules.”
“So,” she said, “you consider yourself a deviant.”
Newman held up a restraining hand.
“The establishment considers me a deviant.” He paused. “I prefer the night rider analogy, personally.”
“I thought you might.” Patricia smiled. “You were saying they all hate the deviant?”
He nodded. “The lowest level because they don’t have the guts to do what he does. The users because the deviant represents the most direct threat to their piece of the pie.
“And the masters?” Patricia asked.
“They know they can’t control him. Not fully. They can punish, execute, condemn all they want, but they can never completely control him. And control is what the masters are all about.”
He smiled at her triumphantly.
“By having the deviant around, they all have the opportunity to vent their anger against a common foe and not each other.” He laughed. “Hell, without me, the establishment would crumble from its own weight.”
Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Jun 29 2020 1:39 utc | 79
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