Thursday, October 6. 2005
In the psychological-medical fields, we find IQ to be a useful measure, along with many others. IQ has only very broad predictive power for adjustment to life or for achievement in life, but a person's reasoning ability, curiosity, analytic talents, and their sensitivity of pattern-recognition, all say something important about a person and the tools they have to deal with life, should they chose to use them. But a very high IQ doesn't equate with "success", whatever that is, though it certainly correlates with the richness of the life one is able to live; a lower IQ, on the other hand, cannot interfere with happiness or with achievement in less intellectually rigorous areas of life. In the variety of folks we encounter in medicine, it is common to see folks of high IQ doing relatively menial jobs, but who must find outlets for their abilities in all sorts of surprising interests, intellectual hobbies and obsessions. I recall one truck driver whose hobby of Latin translation was almost obsessive, and wonderful. And a refrigerator repair guy who could have taught the Cornell Lab of Ornithology a thing or two...not everyone spends their spare time stupified, watching sports on TV or the other crap. And neither is it rare to find folks of very limited talents and potential, but of slippery, conniving character, shoving themselves forward in the world, beyond what substance they really bring to the table - especially in sales, finance, and politics - the realms of BS, the schmooze, and the con job, and, in some cases, genuine integrity. IQ shows a bell-curve distribution across a given population, with the peak around 100. Along with social class and background and emotional maturity, IQ tends to be an important part of social affinities and friendships - people of similar IQs are "on the same page." There seem to be optimal IQ ranges for different areas of life. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies tend to be in the 120-130 range - very smart but not so smart that they get tangled up. Attorneys today, unlike the past, inhabit a wide range, from 90 to the max. - there are lots of law schools looking for paying customers. As people enter the high end, over 140, they often seem a bit eccentric or awkward, because they are experiencing the world a little differently and their range of interests can be wide and unusual. Quick IQ tests, and further comments, on continuation page below: The vast numbers of people are in the 90-110 range, which does not provide the horsepower for certain tasks but is fine for most things - it wouldn't have gotten you through college 40 years ago but it will today, somewhere, in the non-rigorous educational environment we live in (it won't carry you through medical school, but it could get you through a third-rate law or business school nowadays, but forget a doctorate in math, computer science, or the sciences). And yes, IQ is inherited, like height and like many personality traits. Go ahead, blame Mom or Dad. At this point in my career, I can judge someone's IQ within 6-10 points after a 5-minute conversation, just as any internist can name your weight without weighing you or your age without asking. The capacity to perceive layers of irony is one part of my assessment, as compared with concreteness of thought. The online IQ tests aren't bad - they probably correlate within +/- 6 points of the extensive tests. Can your vanity handle it? One here: Click here: Blogthings - A Quick and Dirty IQ Test and one here: Click here: Tickle: Tests, Matchmaking and Social Networking Don't cheat - it becomes invalid if you take time. Anyone can complete a Times crossword in a year. And you can't take the same IQ test twice - invalid. In the end, "Character is destiny," as Freud said, not meaning worldly success, but meaning that what shapes one's life is one's personality profile (which includes one's willingness to push the limits of our natural tendencies - it isn't a deterministic view). Indeed, personality traits have more to do with satisfaction in life than does IQ. On the other hand, IQ puts sharp limits on what we might be able to handle or appreciate, especially in the area of abstract thinking and the enjoyment of playing with ideas, the arts, words, and numbers.
It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe,
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe,
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm travellin' on
Don't think twice, it's alright. It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road.
Still I wish there was somethin' you could do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's alright Excerpted from Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, Dylan, on The Freewheelin Bob Dylan
Wednesday, October 5. 2005
Posted July 11, 2005, by The Dylanologist
Album Review: Time out of Mind
By the time 1997 rolled around, Bob Dylan had gone seven full years without releasing any original material, and it  appeared as though he had permanently put aside the creation of new compositions in favor of year-round touring and performing. Though 1989’s Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, its 1990 follow-up, Under The Red Sky, was widely panned, and Dylan sunk further still with a disastrous tour in 1991. Less attentive observers might have written off Dylan completely by 1992, but those dedicated fans that continued to attend live performances may have noticed a startling turnaround in concert quality by 1993, as Dylan found a strong new voice that reflected both a wiser maturity and much-improved tonal command. After the release of two albums of blues and folk covers in 92 and 93, Dylan continued to hone his live performances to an even greater degree, giving hard-rocking shows in 1995 that continued to redefine and renew songs from throughout his vast catalogue. A breathtaking performance of Restless Farewell for Frank Sinatra’s 80th birthday celebration in the waning days of 1995 led some perceptive commentators to suspect that Dylan was only beginning to rediscover his powers. For most critics, however, the arrival of Time Out Of Mind in September 1997 came as a complete surprise. That the album was excellent, rivaling his best work from the past 20 years, was even more of a shock to the public, its high quality further magnified by the reputation of the author and the seemingly permanent break he had taken from songwriting. The album captured a Grammy award and landed Dylan on the cover of Time magazine, but the music itself was anything but typical pop-scene fare. In fact, Time Out Of Mind was perhaps the gloomiest, most pessimistic take on life and the human experience that Dylan had ever put together, backed by exquisite and immensely atmospheric arrangements courtesy of producer Daniel Lanois. The songs themselves are bleak and haunting, always returning to the tried and true blues themes of lost loves, feelings of loneliness and isolation from society, and the inevitability of death and loss. As he had been doing for decades, Dylan often appropriated classic blues phrases in their entirety, perhaps tweaking them here or there, but leaving the most memorable imagery intact. Lines like “Going to walk down that dirt road ‘til my eyes begin to bleed,” and “turn your lamp down low” are taken almost word for word from old blues standards, and their very familiarity, their innate, almost subconscious power, lends the songs a powerful foundation in a century-old musical tradition. It is worth noting that the songs derive as much power from the arrangements and Dylan’s impassioned vocal delivery as from the (relatively simple) lyrics themselves, unlike many previous efforts where lyrical brilliance outshone what were often slapdash studio recordings. Dylan himself admitted as much in 1998 interview, conceding that “many of my records are more or less blueprints for the songs,” while “this time, I wanted the real thing … they’re written in stone when they’re done right.”
Continue reading "Vacation: The Best of Maggie's - Time out of Mind"
A little debate over a dinner led to a little easy research. Can dogs smell when they are on the run? And when they are exhaling? All dog owners know how much dogs rely on scent and hearing over vision. Both their range of color vision, and their acuity, are poor, compared to humans. The link demonstrates examples of dog vision. The sense of smell - the olfactory sense - is a genetically ancient chemoreceptive modality, and the only one which is not modulated by the midbrain - its sensory nerves go direct from the olfactory bulb to the cortex. Smell is a minor function of the nose (see nose physiology), but we couldn't taste much without it - smell is the major component of taste (as you may recall, the mouth, really only the tongue can only detect salt, sour, bitter, sweet - and umami, the last which I do not recall learning about). The dog's nerve "wiring" from the olfactory bulb to the brain is far heavier than that of humans - here: http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/Smell/nasal.html - click on link from dog to human to compare the olfactory nerves. Plus the dog has 25 times more chemoreceptors. Thus the dog can not only smell things that we cannot, his olfactory acuity is far higher than ours - ie, he can detect and discriminate multiple odors, when we tend to only detect a dominant odor, or a blend. It is said that the dog can sense odors one miion times more sensitively than humans (but of course breeds vary, and older dogs seem to lose sensitivity, just as humans do). Thus when a dog goes outdoors and raises his nose and sniffs the air, he is taking in a great deal of information. When a dog sniffs, he is filling his olfactory area with chemical-laden air, for maximum smelling power. But even when he is not deliberately sniffing, his olfactory powers are strong. But, back to the beginning. Yes, he can smell while running, and even when exhaling. The Bernoullie effect - the same pressure gradient that helps provide lift to airplanes - draws air up in the dog's olfactory region (Click here: Entrez PubMed) to wash over his olfactory receptors, so he doesn't have to stop and take a deep sniff. Makes good sense for running hunters. So, with his powers, why does he have to stick his nose into turds and dead animals and other dogs' butts? Who knows. Shouldn't be necessary. It must be a deep sensual pleasure. (FYI, the RCA-Victor dog "Nipper" was a bull terrier-fox terrier mix, from Bristol, England.)
Posted on June 21, 2005 Junior Wells The Godfather of the Modern Blues, Wells (1934-1998) brought his harp and his voice from the South to Chicago in 1948 where he played with The Muddy Waters Band until he went out on his own. Whatever country flavor he might have had rapidly disappeared in a unique funky urban sound, with unmistakable harp and unpolished voice. Close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a smoky 1950s Chicago dance club, if you can. (I am listening to his sensual Take Your Shoes Off as I write, from his final live recording, Live Around the World.) He is considered to be the heir of my favorite old-time bluesman, Sonny Boy Williamson, and of Little Walter Jacobs, who he replaced in the Muddy Waters Band. Since his association with Muddy Waters, he had been especially associated with the great and seemingly ageless Buddy Guy, with whom he did several recordings including the live Drinkin TNT and Smokin Dynamite. (Now I am on his great Messin with the Kid.) HooDoo Man, with Buddy Guy on guitar, was his first widely-known album, in 1960. He was known to produce handguns from his skin-tight suits and shotguns from his cars, whenever appropriate. A couple of reminiscences here and here. From an old review by Kelton: The terrific thing about Junior Wells is that he's an unqualified bluesman, stylistically a direct descendant of the Chicago greats and personally an eccentric whose unpredictable singing and harp playing distinguish him from everyone else alive. "Comin' Right at Ya" was the title of one his breakthrough albums in the 1960's and it still describes the Wells oeuvre. In short, he takes no prisoners. Recording to legend, Wells shoplifted his first blues harp and got caught. The judge who heard his case was so impressed with Wells' story that he just wanted to make music that he paid for the instrument himself and set Wells free on the condition that, if he ever made a record, he send one to him. Wells did, years later. The album was called "Blues Hit Big Town."
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. G.K. Chesterton
Tuesday, October 4. 2005
Love and Theft Dylan's best record, I think. Give it a good chance. It's not as easy as the earlier stuff. Takes 2 or 3 hearings.
Posted by Bird Dog on March 9, 2005 Masked and Anonymous (2003) This is no immortal movie, and was panned by the genius critics, but it is a must for Dylan fans. The casting is notable, probably because everyone wanted to meet Bobbie: John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, etc. Goodman does his usual amazing job, but Dylan cannot or will not really act. He is just there, with his strangely charismatic, ageless, Chaplin-like presence and his cryptic comments. The sound track is worth owning, with the best Grateful Dead version of Baby Blue. Dylan's version of Dixie is haunting and beats any previous version hands-down. In fact, it replaces all prior versions. The picture itself is a dark surrealistic ramble through a mythic nation torn by pointless civil war and egomaniacal politicians. Dylan's musings about the state of affairs are quotable and Dylanesque, whether he wrote them or not.
For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison. Theodore Roosevelt
Monday, October 3. 2005
Hitchins, Brilliant Trotskyite, But Lost? Indeed, nothing shows Hitchens’s continuing fidelity to the Bolshevik ideal more than his hatred for religion. He told the Guardian on May 31, 2005, “I can’t stand anyone who believes in God, who invokes the divinity ... I mean, that to me is a horrible, repulsive thing.” But Hitchens is by no means equal in his contempt for religions. He has written favorably of Judaism and described Islam as having been a “civilizing and creative force in many societies.” Hitchens has no such kind words for Christianity, especially as manifested in the Roman Catholic Church. This is hardly surprising: the Roman Catholic Church was Bolshevism’s most consistent and successful adversary, beginning with the 1920 defense of Warsaw from Trotsky’s Red Army, when the future Pius XI, in Norman Davies’s words, “stood on the ramparts of Radzymin and cursed the advancing hordes of Antichrist in person” and the Polish Army—dismissed by Trotsky as being “steeped in priests’ lies”—prevented the Red Army from watering its horses anywhere near Hendon. Read entire.
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. Albert Einstein
Sunday, October 2. 2005
Your editor, Bird Dog, is away this week. It's duck, goose and bird (Ruffed and Sharp-Tailed Grouse) season up in Canada. The 100 year-old private club/camp we go to is on an inlet on the upper edge of Lake Winnipegosis (not a disease) in Manitoba. Tough to get to and definitely out of touch - no cell, no cable, no phone to speak of unless you count a party-line with one outlet, no electric except for a big Cat gasoline generator on a flat-bed trailer, which enables abundant hot water and a sybaritic sauna if dehydration is your thing - it is my misfortune that I prefer Scotch whiskey as medicine for cold-wet. Nice old place, open only 6 weeks/year, then boarded-up and the furniture covered with sheets til next fall. Hey, ACLU - female guests not permitted. Jimmy Doolittle used to stay and hunt there. Not many people up there, and more Indians than Anglos. Craig is bringing Harley this year - an over-sized tough Lab with a chest like a fortress and a fine nose, who will no doubt do all of our brain work and our dirty work very well. I get invited for my Injun eyes, and Craig for his dog. I post the Google earth image below of our inlet (much of the green is marsh - this is duck heaven. Scale is about 10 miles laterally on image). There will not be much new posting this week unless Dylanologist can hold down the fort (a damn shame he can't come this year, nor can Gwynnie's young pup), but I will pre-post some stuff, and some of Maggie's Farm's Greatest Hits. We'll be back next week...God willing and the creek don't rise . Will post some photos when I get back, if I don't drop the camera in the water. Got to hope for ugly weather. What guns am I bringing?, I hear you asking. My Beretta auto 12 ga, and my old Abercrombie and Fitch side-by-side 20 ga for birds.
Friday, September 30. 2005
Streisand Interview News from Mars at Paxety
Chicken Korma, 1805 Who knew? Samiz.
Sloppy News Live news requires special care, and needs to be done by calm, skeptical people. But does that sell soap? Rick considers the hysterical, unprofessional, and deeply flawed Katrina coverage, which has been taken to task many times. Sad thing is - that dopey and plain wrong coverage went world-wide and made LA, and the US, look like idiots. No-one reads the corrections - the first impressions stick, however wrong they may have been.
Leftists in the CIA It's more about where their loyalties lie, than their politics. Front Page: Click here: FrontPage magazine.com :: CIA Renegades by Steven Plaut And speaking of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, he's running a Restoration Weekend at The Breakers at the end of Oct. Looks good. Wish I could go.
Sociology: An academic discipline or a political movement? An entire academic discipline has been taken over by "the revolution." But we all knew that already, right? It's a joke, but also a damn shame. From Wagner's piece at HNN: At the 1968 ASA convention in Boston the radicals succeeded in preempting an appearance by LBJ’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and allowing radical Martin Nicolaus to tactlessly harangue the secretary (referring to him as the “Secretary of disease, propaganda, and scabbing”) and any mainstream sociologists who may have been left in the ASA on the evils of value-neutral, scientifically rigorous research. This speech, known as the “Fat Cat” speech in sociological circles, called for sociology to serve the interests of radical politics, and spelled the ascendancy of radicalism in sociology. It has been a downhill road every since. While the rest of academe moved back to positions of relative normalcy after the radical days of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, sociology stubbornly remained a very politicized field.
Read entire: Click here: Is Sociology Stuck in the 60s?
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all others.
Winston Churchill
Thursday, September 29. 2005
Anti-War, or Pro-War? Hitchins on the "anti-war movement:" It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.
Please read entire.
The Int'l Freedom Center On our blog, we are sometimes so far ahead of the news cycle that it can look like we're behind it. We wrote the death certificate for the IFC a week ago, when Hillary opposed it. FYI, here is/was their website. What the site will not tell you is what they really wanted to do.
A Rational Canadian Editorial A defense of the USA, and a critique of Canada, From The Ottowa Citizen, via View from 1776, re NO: The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription medicine and government support through many other programs. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to be lost in the flood. Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth... Read entire.
More on the Moonbats
"The media have pushed the idea that the demonstration this weekend at the White House was an 'anti-war' gathering. What they didn't say was who was behind it... For the record, the lead organizer [was] ANSWER, which the media routinely refer to as an 'antiwar group.' It is nothing of the sort. In fact, ANSWER is a front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party. And any group that qualifies for that epithet in front of its name deserves special scrutiny, since Josef Stalin was responsible for the murder of as many as 25 million human beings... So why do communists—particularly those who march under Stalin's flag—get different treatment? And why do thousands of average people feel comfortable marching arm in arm with them? It's a puzzle. After all, according to the 'Black Book of Communism' —a widely cited and respected compendium of communism's crimes in the 20th century—communist regimes murdered as many as 100 million people over the last century. That's quite a record. Indeed, all the century's great mass murders—Mao Zedong (65 million), Stalin (25 million), Hitler (21 million), Pol Pot (2 million)—were communists or socialists. Yet many well-meaning people who marched this weekend perhaps didn't know all this. Or perhaps they don't mind having their cause besmirched by people who aren't really anti-war at all, but anti-America, anti-West, anti-freedom and anti-capitalist... Maybe it proves the old adage: Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas." —Investor's Business Daily
Jeff Harrell enters retail Hell We all sometimes feel like we just want to buy something, do we not? Usually an impulse best resisted, but what the heck. Harrell's piece is funny and familiar. Bush just can't win Now he's too engaged with the storm mess. Just goes to show you can always criticize anyone, anytime, if you want to. Sensible Mom. I agree. Fact is, I think the press just wants to see some emotion, Clinton-style ("my empathy is bigger than your empathy"), rather than manly effectiveness.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax. Albert Einstein
Wednesday, September 28. 2005
We have two species of Scaup in North
America, but they look very similar, and
90% of them are Lesser Scaup. Unlike the Teal, featured last week, Scaup are divers, feeding on crustaceans (especially amphipods), mollusks, insects, minnows, and some plant material. They are long-time favorites of duck hunters (despite their anchovy-like flavor which I enjoy), with historically abundant populations along the Atlantic coast during migration, but their population has been unaccountably declining over the past decade. You can see their flocks resting in fresh or salt water, or wheeling in the sky like schools of fish, between October and February, with most birds wintering in the southern US and Central America. Their main breeding grounds are the northern boreal forests. More on scaup here. Does hunting have a measurable effect on duck populations? No. As with most critters, habitat is everything. We will bag a few bluebills next week, in Canada. And eat them, too, cooked rare. Never cook duck anything more than rare. And never with anything with an orange flavor - overpowers the duck. Cooked pears or figs are far better with duck.
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