Data Talks

List of American membership associations with at least 1% of American adults enrolled as members, 1733-2004

Part I pic.twitter.com/AVuLePLL2U

— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) June 13, 2022

 

In the Garden by Bernard Lamotte (French,1903-1983)

In the Garden by Bernard Lamotte (French,1903-1983)

Click to enlarge.

The Road to Babylon

Manfred Mann's Earth Band, The Road to Babylon.

Double click to enlarge.

The Road to Babylon

Song by Manfred Mann's Earth Band

By the waters of Babylon

We lay down and wept and wept for these I am

We remember, we remember, we remember these I am 

 

A golden helmet blinded minds

Among ten thousand swords along the road to Babylon

A golden thunder silenced songs 

Among ten thousand voices on the road to Babylon

Well, well, well,

Beware that golden helmet

Well, well, well

There's no easy way to go

Well, well, well

No easy road to follow

Well, well, well

A golden ocean turned to fire 

And burned ten thousand ships along the road to Babylon

Golden dreamer touched the sky 

Alone in empty silence on the road to Babylon

Well, well, well

Beware that golden thunder

Well, well, well

That dreamed and sang the song

Well, well, well

The empty sound of sorrow.

A golden helmet blinded minds

Among ten thousand swords along the road to Babylon

A golden thunder silenced songs

Among ten thousand voices on the road to Babylon

Well, well, well

Beware that golden helmet

Well, well, well

There's no easy way to go

Well, well, well

No easy road to follow

Well, well, well 

He learned the art of bowing as British bullets whistled around his head.

From The Battle of New Orleans: Andrew Jackson and America's First Military Victory by Robert V. Remini.  Page 75.

Finally, Jackson gave the order to advance. A company of the 7th Infantry rushed forward as far as the boundary of Lacoste’s plantation and were met by brisk fire from a British outpost consisting of eighty men. In a volley that was “absolutely murderous,” the Americans drove them back to a defense line along a ditch and a fence. Additional British troops rushed to support the outpost, and their heavy fire proved very destructive.

The American artillery also advanced. Covered by the marines, it moved up the high road alongside the river and blazed away at the enemy’s outpost. It was met with such heavy return fire that the marines fell back. In a bold move, a reinforced British contingent made a rush for the artillery guns. At that moment Jackson and his staff rode by amid a shower of bullets, and when he saw what was happening Old Hickory called out, “Save the guns, my boys, at every sacrifice.” The marines rallied, and with the help of a company of the 7th Infantry they hustled the guns to safety.

It was later reported that Jackson was complimented on his ability to bow at social occasions with extraordinary grace. Supposedly he replied that he learned the art on the night of the 23rd when he bowed and ducked as British bullets whistled around his head.

Groaning Oldies

From Friar's Club Encyclopedia of Jokes by Barry Dougherty.

“What did one Hawaiian shark say to the other?

“Oh, no—not airplane food again.”

History

Not only did we look like this, but we ate butter. pic.twitter.com/QMOgbB4yWv

— Mark Changizi (@MarkChangizi) June 17, 2022

 

The Secret People

As the establishment drifts away from the great majority, Chesteron's poem from 1908 is a reminder that that gulf has always existed to a greater or lesser degree.

The Secret People

by G.K. Chesterton

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,

For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.

There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,

There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.

There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.

There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;

You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:

Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.

We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.

The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;

There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.

And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,

And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.

They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,

Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.

The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak,

The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:

He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.

The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,

And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots,

We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,

And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.

We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;

And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke

Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.

They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:

And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again.

Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;

Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.

In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,

We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,

We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not

The strange fierce face of the Frenchman who knew for what he fought,

And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;

And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.

But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain.

He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,

He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.

Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,

Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:

We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,

And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,

Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.

They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;

They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,

Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,

Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.

It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,

Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.

It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest

God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

An Insight

Click to enlarge.

I see wonderful things

Rose-ringed Parakeet 💚🤍🤎 pic.twitter.com/w70O5w1eyS

— 🕊️ Birds Pazy 🐦 (@PazyBirds) June 20, 2022

 

The silence seems to say a lot.

Listening to NPR the other day, on the way to a meeting, I heard for a second time a tag line to the effect that drinking wine and taking oxycodone posed a significant risk of drug overdose death.  

This seemed profoundly improbable.  Unwise, certainly, as is the mixing of any alcohol with any drugs.  And especially unwise when combined with other co-morbidities (heart problems, obesity, diabetes, etc.).  NPR was clearly, for unknown reasons, trying to scare their wine drinking listeners, with a murky association between drug overdose deaths and wine.  Possibly they are running low on listeners and are that desperate that they are trying to ensure survival of donors (a nearly 20% decline in listeners since 2017) 

Since it was the second time I heard them make that improbable claim, I looked into the data.  

Which seems patchy, unstructured, intermittent, ill-defined.  Specifically, I was searching for deaths from drinking wine with oxycodone or any opioid (death from wine with oxycodone).  Certainly there are many appropriate warnings about the combination of alcohol and opioids given that both are depressants.

But any actual data about how many people actually die from wine with oxycodone (or alcohol with opioids)?  I am not seeing anything except warnings under multiple variants of the query.  

Lots of articles talking about how risky the combination is but with none either estimating the degree of risk or measuring the magnitude of the consequences.  

There are a couple of papers or studies which deal with the issue at the margin, ( e.g. here).  There's one study from 2017 that does a lot of speculating based on lab experiments which only support a highly constrained finding Mixing opioids and alcohol may increase likelihood of dangerous respiratory complication.  "May" lead to complications.  But no reported alcohol/opioid deaths.

I am not denying that it is unwise to mix alcohol and opioids and other medications, particularly when combined with other co-morbid conditions.  But that is basically covered by the perennial wisdom "Don't be stupid."

NPR seems to be making the claim that there are a lot of deaths from moderate alcohol intake in combination with prescribed opioid pain medications.

What does come across clearly in the research and data reporting is that we are in the midst of a national crisis of drug overdose deaths driven by mixing fentanyl with other drugs.  100,000 dead per year and rising.  And this is a relatively recent phenomena, starting its meteoric rise in 2014.  

At first it was concentrated among the lower middle class white rural and suburban populations but is now spreading to cities and minorities.  

It is unclear whether drug use per se has increased materially.  

As best I can tell, sometime in 2014, fentanyl started pouring into the US and has been mixed with the panoply of existing controlled drugs to produced a higher effect.  So high, that it causes a lot of deaths.  

Our mainstream media and national health organizations seem insistent that these increase in drug overdose deaths are due to people on prescription pain medications but all the data seems to point towards fentanyl as the driving agent.  Overwhelmingly fentanyl mixed with black market drugs.  In other words, I see no evidence that people with oxycodone prescriptions are dying from having mixed them with fentanyl and certainly not from having gone on a wine bender with oxycodone in their system.

This seems almost like a studied misdirection.  

Why? I am guessing there are many reasons ranging from MSM innumeracy to MSM scientific illiteracy.

But I can't help but wonder at a different scenario.  Were I an ambitious other nation wishing to handicap the leading nation in the world without invoking an economic crisis and without invoking a war, how might I do that?  One way would be to flood that other nation with a cheap chemical substance (fentanyl) which is easily manufactured and easily combined with other drugs to engender a more intense and prolonged high.

Basically it is a strategy to exploit an existing societal weakness.  The US has been only marginally successful at controlling/reducing or eliminating the drug trade despite fifty one years of effort (War on Drugs, 1971).  We also have not been effective at convincing our population about the real risks of drug use.  In part by squandering credibility at the beginning of the war with outlandish over-claiming of the otherwise real dangers.  

Were I that other country, I might calculate that an effective way to sabotage the successful American culture might be by killing 100,000 Americans a year from overdoses with a cheap and easy chemical (fentanyl) that would be easy to dissociate from.  Even if caught red-handed, the claim would be that the deaths are from drug addicted Americans rather than due to the fentanyl additive.

Since most of the fentanyl seems to be sourced from China and imported via Mexico, this seems like a plausible scenario.  And no one in the MSM or in the establishment political parties would want to bring attention to it owing to the exhausting failure of the 51 year old war on drugs and because (so far) almost all the victims have been among the bottom 60% of the socio/economic divide.

Public Health and MSM not discussing China and fentanyl as the drivers in the surge in drug overdose deaths (and distracting with stories about the mortal risks of wine benders and oxycodone) seems similar to another phenomenon that is under-discussed.

Think about all the divisive and destructive progressive movements of the past forty years.  Callout Culture, Cancel Culture, Identity Politics, Intersectionality, Wokeness, Social Justice Theory, Critical Race Theory, Postmodernism, the Frankfurt School, Deconstructionism Theory, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter,  etc.  What do they all have in common?

They are all derivatives of Marxism.  They feel like the ultimate Gramscian destructive artifact from the Soviet Union.  The Soviet act of war on the West which survived the fall of the Soviet Union.   

I can understand nobody wants to sound like some McCarthyite cretin sounding the alarm.  Still, the profound silence on the fact that all these alternate philosophies are mere derivations of Marxism seems striking.

For whatever reason, neither our MSM nor our establishment parties want to talk about a silent attack killing 100,000 Americans a year from fentanyl mixing; nor do they want to talk about the divisive, destructive, and polarizing movements with whom academia, corporations, non-profits, and government agencies are all flirting which are all off-shoots of Marxism and anathema to freedom, individualism, and human rights.

Very striking.