Scribal Terror

Never Forget

Report on Hydroxychloroquine

This is from Didier Raoult's team.

Real Leadership.

It's SUPPOSED to be boring. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWwJgBi9JKk&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR2fmtShg9b17sWXqF52BVp8lX3iGvTH4kaDKfMoGQr5CVAygEZafR-INWM

 

Some Virtues I Value

Camus on Freedom

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

Virtues I Value

peace, justice, faith, tolerance, loyalty, moderation, kindness, reason, and self-discipline

Wisdom from Marcus Aurelius

"The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

"Do not view anything as beneficial which causes you to break a promise, lose your self-respect, or hate anyone."

 

 

Anything It Can't Do?

"Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO)—chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as anti-cancer agents"

Petty and Cacciopo on Low-Level Argument Processing

"When either the motivation or the ability to process issue-relevant arguments is low, attitudes may be changed by associating an issue position with various affective cues, or people may attempt to form a reasonable opinion position by making an inference about the likely correctness or desirability of a particular attitude position based on cues such as message discrepancy, one's own behavior, and the characteristics of the message source." Petty and Cacciopo, "Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion."

The Singing Revolution

"In the late 1980s, music was the mechanism by which Estonia split from the Soviet Union. During the “Singing Revolution,” large groups of people managed to organize for independence under the guise of gathering to sing. In June 1988, 100,000 Estonians gathered for five nights to sing protest songs until daybreak. Singing “Mu Isamaa On Minu Arm” at festivals “is our nation’s most glorious form of self-expression,” wrote the activist Heinz Valk that month. “A nation who makes its revolution by singing and smiling should be a sublime example to all.” The movement culminated in Estonia achieving independence, nonviolently, in 1991." From The Atlantic

Leymah Gbowee: She Stopped a Civil War with NONVIOLENCE

"2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and women’s rights advocate. She is Founder and President of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, based in Monrovia.

 

"Leymah is best known for leading a nonviolent movement that brought together Christian and Muslim women to play a pivotal role in ending Liberia’s devastating, fourteen-year civil war in 2003. This historic achievement paved the way for the election of Africa’s first female head of state, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. It also marked the vanguard of a new wave of women emerging worldwide as essential and uniquely effective participants in brokering lasting peace and security."

 

On the Stupidity of Crowds

“Ideas being only accessible to crowds after having assumed a very simple shape must often undergo the most thoroughgoing transformations to become popular. It is especially when we are dealing with somewhat lofty philosophical or scientific ideas that we see how far-reaching are the modifications they require in order to lower them to the level of the intelligence of crowds. [….] However great or true an idea may have been to begin with, it is deprived of almost all that which constituted its elevation and its greatness by the mere fact that it has come within the intellectual range of crowds and exerts an influence upon them.” --Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931)

 

If you want to learn more about Le Bon's theories of crowd psychology, check out this video.

Revolution and Revulsion

“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

"The designated successor to royal authority, the Sovereign People, was no more capable than Louis XVI of reconciling freedom with power.”

― Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

What DHS Is Authorized to Do

40 USC

§1315. Law enforcement authority of Secretary of Homeland Security for protection of public property

(a) In General.-To the extent provided for by transfers made pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Secretary of Homeland Security (in this section referred to as the "Secretary") shall protect the buildings, grounds, and property that are owned, occupied, or secured by the Federal Government (including any agency, instrumentality, or wholly owned or mixed-ownership corporation thereof) and the persons on the property.

(b) Officers and Agents.-

(1) Designation.-The Secretary may designate employees of the Department of Homeland Security, including employees transferred to the Department from the Office of the Federal Protective Service of the General Services Administration pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as officers and agents for duty in connection with the protection of property owned or occupied by the Federal Government and persons on the property, including duty in areas outside the property to the extent necessary to protect the property and persons on the property.

(2) Powers.-While engaged in the performance of official duties, an officer or agent designated under this subsection may-

(A) enforce Federal laws and regulations for the protection of persons and property;

(B) carry firearms;

(C) make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of the officer or agent or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if the officer or agent has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing a felony;

(D) serve warrants and subpoenas issued under the authority of the United States;

(E) conduct investigations, on and off the property in question, of offenses that may have been committed against property owned or occupied by the Federal Government or persons on the property; and

(F) carry out such other activities for the promotion of homeland security as the Secretary may prescribe.

The Grosse Wedding Party (1910)

The wedding of my paternal grandparents, June 15, 1910. The bride and groom, seated, are Christina Pelzel and Edward Hugo Grosse. The best man and bridesmaid, standing, are William Grosse, the groom's brother, and Kathryn Stoffregen, the bride's sister.

Aunt Ida

Here's my great aunt Ida Myers Seidell in her hot, hot roadster. Ida was my maternal grandmother's sister. She married Jake Seidell and moved to Racine Wisconsin (from Cincinnati) to open a drinking establishment. During Prohibition those drinks were frequently transferred into the trunk of that roadster on a dark lane somewhere near the Canadian border.

On Racial "Essentialism"

“Racial essentialism is very reductive and actually oppressive,” Valdary told me. “Ironically, it reduces us as individuals to our immutable characteristics, which is precisely what we were supposed to be fighting against.”

I'll never be convinced otherwise, and I know all the arguments. The alternative is simple bigotry, carefully obfuscated, but bigotry nonetheless.

Cincinnati, 1916

One of the reasons I love museums is that most of them I've dealt with LOVE to help the public. I sent this picture to the Cincinnati History Museum and got the following reply:

The picture that you have is of the Miami and Erie Canal at what is now Central Parkway in Cincinnati. The building in the lower right corner of the picture is 15 W. Central Parkway and currently houses the main office of AAA. The hill in the background is Mt. Adams, and the bridge over the canal in the center left is where Vine Street crossed the canal. The picture was taken around 1916, and is looking towards the East.

From George Santayana

“There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.” George Santayana

Aphantasia

It's called aphantasia--the inability to picture something in the mind's eye.