A Puzzlement
I get that the " conservative " movement in the U.S. is not part of the Reality Based Community -- as Karl Rove proudly proclaimed -- but I thought that extended to social and scientific facts and public policy, not to the hard facts of the actual, physical world in which they live.I mean, what the actual f. does Jim Jordan think he is doing? The Republican House caucus meets, 20 or more members tell him they are not going to vote for him, and he insists on calling a vote anyway, which he loses. Then he does it again. And again. Why? Does he think that people calling in death threats to the members, their spouses, their ch...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 20, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Job finally shuts up
Yep. He spends the next three chapters saying, endlessly, the following:I used to be riding high, fortunate and admired, benevolent and generous.Now I ' m in the pits.If I ' d done anything wrong I could understand it. And then, thank God, " The words of Job are ended. " It ' s long past time for this guy to STFU.29 And Job again took up his discourse, and said:2 “Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me;3 when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness;4 as I was in my a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 18, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Just say no
I just finished reading Dopesick, by Beth Macy. You don ' t need to take my word that it ' s worth your while, the book was a huge bestseller. However, it does have a fairly narrow focus. It tells the story of the opioid epidemic largely within the confines of a region of rural Virginia, but this is a disaster of national scope that manifests somewhat differently in different places. Here ' s the really sad news: source:U.S. Department of Health and Human Services I know it ' s a little small but you can see it full size if you click the link. The short version of the story is that deaths from opioid ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 17, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Desperate to get this over with
neJob now goes on a three chapter rant saying the same shit over and over again that he already said nineteen times. I ' m really sorry about this, I ' m as anxious to come to the end of it as you are. So I ' m going to post three chapters today, they ' re all Job yammering on so why not? It ' s just more of God and His creation are beyond understanding; and I ' m righteous, I don ' t deserve this, but nevertheless I ' m not going to say anything bad about God. I ' ll just make a couple of notes.First, all of the stuff Job says we can ' t possibly understand -- notably in Chapter 28 -- we do understand, at least a lo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 15, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The proletarianization of the medical profession
I ' ve come to a sticking point in my book project because there is just too much current discourse to absorb about the commodification and corporatization of medicine. The medical industry exists to make profit for owners and enrich executives -- even so-called " non-profit " medical corporations are mostly organized around maximizing revenues, minimizing costs, and racking up the big bucks for their managers.The people who suffer the most from this are, of course, patients. However, it has also produced a huge shift in the status of physicians, who used to constitute what Paul Starr called a " sovereign profession....
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 14, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Armchair diagnosis
I used to think it was a slowly progressive form of frontotemporal dementia, rather than Alzheimer ' s disease, but now I ' m starting to suspect that the frontotemporal dementia and severe personality disorder are indeed complicated by Alzheimer ' s,and that the rate of progression is increasing. I don ' t have anything to add to that personally, the guy has clearly lost his marbles. Not that he ever had a full bag.What is disturbing is that the cultists applaud and cheer uproariously for his incoherent ranting, and even completely incomprehensible, unintelligible passages accompanied by bizarre gestures and sounds....
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 13, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: A little literary history
In Ch. 24, Job laments the wickedness of many humans and the seeming indifference of God to the fate of the good versus the wicked. In the mercifully short Ch. 25, Bildad again tries to blame Job for his own fate. While we continue to wade through this interminable rich purple poetry, I ' ll at least try to entertain you with a bit of speculation about the origin of this story. Job was probably written in its present form in the 6th Century BCE, or perhaps a bit later. A Sumerian work dated around 1,700 BCE, usually called in English the Poem of the Righteous sufferer, tells a similar story, far more briefly, of a man...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 11, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
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I ' m not going to " do " Columbus this year. I think people are coming around to the consensus that he is not a person who should have statues or a day in his honor. I ' ll just outsource to Adam Conover That taken care of, I commend your attention to thisinterview by Scientific American with Peter Hotez, who is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, on the authoritarian roots of science denial. Best you read the whole thing, but here ' s a pull quote.People call [the antiscience movement] “misinformation” or “the
infodemic” as though it’s just random junk out there on t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 9, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Semonette: My eyes glaze over
We keep going around and around and around and around in the same endless, turgid circles. 😞zzzHow this endless spewing of the same vapid argument, repeated like one revolution of a scratched record until the brain turns to mush, ever got a reputation as a significant work of literature is inexplicable. But I said I was going to read the whole thing so we ' re stuck with it.22 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:2 “Can a man be of benefit to God? Can even a wise person benefit him?3 What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous? What would he ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 8, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Bad news
Yep, there ' s bad economic news, according to CNNUS markets fall on shockingly strong US jobs report The terrifying news is that the U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in November, disappointing economists who had been predicting about half as many. Americans have no problem finding work, and that ' s bad for capitalism because it means it ' s harder to make a profit. In order to have a healthy economy, we need to put people out of work. No wonder voters are so disappointed in president Biden -- he hasn ' t created the mass unemployment we desperately need. (Source: Stayin' Alive)
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 6, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Going around in circles
The ridiculous repetition continues, and I ' m not sure what to do about it. This is incredibly boring. They just keep saying the same thing, over and over, at absurd length. I pledged we ' d read the whole damn thing however so in order to keep my word, we just need to plow ahead. Unfortunately, I must warn you, it goes on for quite a while longer in the same circles. This does give us a few popular cliches, e.g. nothing but skin and bones, the skin of my teeth. Whether that makes the whole thing worthwhile I can ' t say. Anyway I ' ll give you two chapters to try to get this over with as soon as possible.19 Then Job...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Federal spending
A commenter asked about historic federal spending. The meaningful comparison is spending as a percentage of GDP, so here it is. As you can see it spiked during WWII, obviously, then came down and tended to ascend slowly until 1982, when it leveled off, then it fell from 1990 to 1998, during the administration of Bill Clinton. It rose sharply during the administration of George W. Bush, and then fell again under Barack Obama after a brief spike due to the financial crisis. It then rose sharply under Donald Trump, and has come back down just as sharply under Joe Biden. Right now it is higher than it has been since the e...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Big gummint
Just so we ' re clear about the facts. And by the way, the U.S. population has doubled since 1955.(HT to Barry Ritholz) X (Source: Stayin' Alive)
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
I feel I must belabor the obvious. Yes, it's a cult.
For most of my life, the Republican party has promoted itself as the true patriots, the people who " support the troops, " will aggressively confront foreign adversaries, and spend trillions of dollars for what they define as a " strong " national defense. They also purport to be the competent party, the " grownups in the room. " Now, quite suddenly it seems, they worship and adore a demented idiot who disparages and disdains the military and wants to bow down to the nation ' s most dangerous adversary.General Kelly, who served as white house chief of staff, has recently granted an interview to CNN. A person tha...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: More endless yammering
Again I ' m going to post two chapters today just to try to get this over with. I sincerely apologize, I ' d forgotten how turgid and repetitive this book is. Yet again, Job takes hundreds of words to say that the comforters aren ' t helping and he ' s despairing; and in the next chapter Bildad once again says Job must have done something to deserve this, in hundreds of words. I ' ll just say that it would be impossible to get this drek published today, even in a college literary magazine. I ' m sorry to have to tell you that it goes on and on after this while nothing happens and nothing new is said. Again, if this is the ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 1, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
