McCamy Taylor
McCamy Taylor's JournalThe Bird-Influenza Link (and More About Cicadas)
Still sick with flu so still Googling. Question of the day: why do cicadas emerge either every 13 or every 17 years? Those two number are 4x plus one. About 6-12 months before cicadas emerge bird populations go down, suggesting that cicadas take advantage of some natural phenomenon that will reduce the number of their biggest predatory threat and therefore increase their own chances of survival. But what happens to birds on an every 4 year basis?
I found one thing--avian influenza epidemics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2660440/
Avian influenza virus (AIV) persists in North American wild waterfowl, exhibiting major outbreaks every 2–4 years.
Every 2-4 years. If you are an enterprising species and want to play it safe, you will assume every four years. Then, you will time your emergence for some multiple of four plus one. Can I call this a "bingo"? Cicadas are not responsible for the flu. They just benefit from it. Like Donald Rumsfeld whose company made a gazillion bucks off Tamiflu.
There is more:
Avian influenza viruses (AIVs) in wild waterfowl constitute the historic source of human influenza viruses, having a rich pool of genetic and antigenic diversity that often leads to cross-species transmission. Although the emergence of H5N1 avian influenza virus onto the international scene has captured the most attention, we do not as yet understand the mechanisms that underpin AIV persistence and dynamics in the wild. We developed a novel host–pathogen model intended to describe the epidemiology of low pathogenic AIV in temperate environments. Our model takes into account seasonality in migration and breeding together with multiple modes of transmission. AIVs have been detected in unconcentrated lake water, soil swabs, and mud samples. Laboratory experiments show that AIVs persist and remain infectious in water for extended periods. However, so far, the possibility of environmental transmission of AIV has been largely overlooked. Our work shows that environmental transmission provides a parsimonious explanation for the patterns of persistence and outbreaks of AIV documented in the literature. In addition to their scientific importance, our conclusions impact the design of control policies for avian influenza by emphasizing the dramatic and long-term role that environmental persistence of pathogens may play at the epidemic level.
Jill Stein Redux and the Democratic Primaries
I posted this a few months ago. It is that time of year, time for the opposition to meddle in the Democratic primary. So, I am posting it again. May have to post it a third and maybe even a fourth time before November. Russia and the GOP have only one hope this year and that hope is YOU. They hope that YOU will be divided and conquered. And since I am YOU and YOU are ME and WE are ALTOGETHER, that means I get sliced and diced, too.
Anyway, this is what I wrote before the primaries started:
Whenever you see a Democratic Primary candidate who seems too good to be true, remember Jill Stein. The GOP's only hope of retaining control of Congress is to have Russia fund a lot of "left wing" primary challengers and general election third party "left wing" splitters. I say Russia, because the GOP is not going to be able to raise money in the U.S., not with their track record. It will all have to come straight from Putin's secret bank accounts. And from what I hear, he is the richest man in the world, meaning he can fund a lot of "Democrats", "Greens" and "Independents."
And sorry to all our leftist columnists and pundits out there, but when you bash hard working Democrats and demand that they be replaced with the shiniest, newest, flashiest candidate on the block, I have to ask myself "Who are you really working for?"
We prove our Democratic street creds by our actions not our words. And anyone who seeks to Divide and Conquer the Democratic Party is not a Democrat.
Party on dudes. But please for all our sakes, party like Democrats.
Separated at Birth? Gravelings from Dead Like Me and Ryuk from Death Note
Complicated story. From what I have read, Ryuk, the death god in "Death Note" was originally supposed to be dark and handsome, sort of an anti-Light, but the editors objected. They wanted him to be a monster. So the mangka had to redesign a major character at the last minute. With a major deadline looming, where did he come up with his design for Ryuk?
A few months before "Death Note" the manga's scheduled release, one of Bryan Fuller's many short lived cult classics went on the air on U.S. television. "Dead Like Me" included characters called gravelings, nasty little death imps whose pranks caused all sorts of nasty mayhem and death.
Did the mangka of "Death Note" draw inspiration from the gravelings? Were both Ryuk and the gravelings inspired by some third source?
Graveling:
Ryuk:
Oh yeah of little faith, check out this article from 2006
And in particular, this one line:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1393236/
We all know what (bacterio)phages are. They are bits of DNA and RNA that infect and grow within bacteria. They get things done from an evolutionary standpoint. But how do bits of DNA and RNA get from one bacterial population to another? They don't have legs. They don't have wings. They don't have cars. They don't have phones so they cannot call Uber. If they want to get around they have to hitch a ride. And what better vector (taxi) than the nematode which is everywhere?
Apologies to Cicadas. Now I Think Snails May Carry Influenza
I have influenza B. Not quite as nasty as Flu A but still nasty enough. And unlike A, which loves the birds, influenza B affects only humans and one other mammal---seals. Hmmm. What do seals and birds both like to eat? Molluscs. Especially snails. So I did a google search. Here is a article about how a certain species of fresh water snail secrete a chemical that makes influenza virus survive longer in the water as well as making it more virulent.
Hell, maybe the whole kingdom of small, yummy protein rich noms---worms, snails and other tasty morsels--are engaged in a conspiracy to thin the herd of their biggest predators.
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/potential-role-of-fresh-water-apple-snails-on-hn-influenza-virus-persistence-and-concentration-in-nature-2167-7719.1000119.php?aid=38277
Anyone Else Want to Poke the Russian Bear With a Stick?
Face it, Russia and Putin did not do what they did from a position of power. They did it because they are desperate. Here is my take on Russia in the 21st Century:
Russia's only claim to fame is post WWII western capitalists needed a straw man to justify their colonial ambitions and to scare their own workers into submission, so they gave the USSR half of Europe and illusions of grandeur. Now, relics of the Cold War like Putin are butt hurt because they don't get to strut around in big parades with big missiles that make them feel like well endowed super studs. Well, sorry to rain on your parade, all you ex-KGB officers who decided that Russia had to regain its manhood after the Clintons put an end to genocide committed by Slavs in the Balkans. Yes, I know that you believe that you have a god given right to commit ethic purges in order to make way for more glorious genetically superior people like yourselves. But you were just the lackeys of folks like the Kochs and Rockefellers. And now your once "great" colonial superpower has outlived its purpose. The ghost of the former USSR needs to go crawl in a hole and become Russia, just another member of the European Union with quaint local customs and way too much winter weather and a finite supply of oil and a cache of nuclear weapons that will keep you safe from invasion but will not allow you to take over the world no matter how many elections you hack or U.S. presidents you blackmail.
That does not mean that we should not take ex-KGB Russia seriously. A cornered bear can be dangerous. And humans are the most dangerous animals of all.
William Blake: Saint of Writers and the Prolific/Creative Genius
The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains are in truth the causes of its life and the sources of all activity, but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds, which have power to resist energy, according to the proverb, “The weak in courage is strong in cunning.”
Thus one portion of being is the[29] Prolific, the other the Devouring. To the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence, and fancies that the whole.
But the Prolific would cease to be prolific unless the Devourer as a sea received the excess of his delights.
Some will say, “Is not God alone the Prolific?” I answer: “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.”
These two classes of men are always upon earth and they should be enemies: whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.
Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.
William Blake from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Before you get all hissy, this is not a rant about religion. This is about politics and art. Capitalism and humanism.
Blake was a commercial failure in his own lifetime, but contemporary artists recognized his genius and kept him out of the gutter and working, because artists are funny that way—even if their own talent is minor, they can recognize greatness in someone else.
Since Blake’s death, his relevance to the profession has grown almost exponentially with the passage of time. Why? Because Blake did not write for the reader—not the reader as consumer who picks up a novel to pass the time while waiting for a plane in the airport or a coach at the inn. William Blake was the Saint of the Creative Genius especially the Creative Genius as Writer, the necessary counterpart to the consuming genius of the industrial era, the J.P. Morgans and the Rothschilds, those who make a shit ton of money through trickery and deceit, by selling arms and enslaving the third world, by forcing workers into factories where they perform mind numbing labor—and then getting them addicted to tobacco, drugs, liquor and gambling both to suck up their pitiful earnings and to keep them compliant.
The devouring genius that counts up the goods and services to make sure that there will always be enough and the creative genius that produces the love because it knows that food and a warm bed are not enough—these are the two paths of the Tree of Life, the yin and yang of Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the two active forces without which there can be no life, the two sides which must always be in opposition, the two forces which State Sponsored Religion( not spirituality, big difference) seek to merge into one great big all devouring blood sucking capitalist money producing machine with a King/Pope sitting on top of a pile of gold smiling down at the starving poor declaring “All is right in the world.”
What is the creative genius? It is Charles Dickens, who endured poverty as a child, such poverty that his family was consigned to a paupers prison and he was sent to work in the equivalent of a sweat shop for the literate. His Scrooge has a revelation, not that the solitary, devouring life and death will be meaningless. No, Scrooge realizes before it is too late that the fate of Tiny Tim is his own fate. He rediscovers the connection that he almost lost in childhood, when poverty and hunger and a world which said "If you want to survive you must give up caring for anyone else and take care of yourself" almost turned him from a creative empath to a creative autist---which would have been the end of his literary career, because, trust me, no one wants to read anything written by someone who does not give a damn about anyone else.
There is probably some primitive part of the human language center that is tied to the social harmony center. Bard is probably one of the basic caveman jobs, like Hunter and Gatherer and Mother. Blake, like all the other great Creative Geniuses recognized that he was not doing anything new----no, he was part of a tradition as old as human history. AS long as there have been people living with people, passing down their stories and their strategies for dealing with what nature throws our way---death, disease, drought, ice ages, floods, bugs, beasts and famine---there will always be a need for the lore teller. And, once we develop a way to carve the words in stone—or, Blake’s case, copper plates---the words will inevitably be recorded again and again because when we say the words, tell the story, we are fashioning a world where death, disease, drought, ice ages, floods, bugs, beasts and famine do not just kill the soul by encouraging us to create enormous stockpiles of goods and services for the coming winter—the way the creative devourer, the capitalist, the JP Morgans, the Rothschilds, the Kochs do. When we hear the call of the Saint of Writers, when we listen to our own Creative Genius, the empathic voice that lives within us all, we must sit down at our desk or computer or stone tablet and chisel out words…
“I was in a printing-house in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
In the first chamber was a dragon-man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave’s mouth; within, a number of dragons were hollowing the cave.
In the second chamber was a viper folding round the rock and the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver, and precious stones.
In the third chamber was an eagle with wings and feathers of air; he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite; around were numbers of eagle-like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.
In the fourth chamber were lions[28] of flaming fire raging around and melting the metals into living fluids.
In the fifth chamber were unnamed forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.
There they were received by men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books, and were arranged in libraries."
William Blake from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Now that would be a library worth visiting. Go read "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" again or for the first time, if you haven't read it.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45315/45315-h/45315-h.htm
And Peter Ackryod's bio of Blake (not available online free for so visit a non-infernal library or get it on Amazon) is turning out to be better than I thought it would be, worth a read.
Is "Ultra Comics" from Grant Morrison's "Multiversity" Miracleman? Making DC its Own Villain?
After reading the graphic novel, I was convinced that Ultra Comics is supposed to represent the character Marvelman/Miracleman made famous by Alan Moore though others including Neil Gaiman have penned him, so I Googled the topic, but I can not find any discussion. Am I the only one who sees obvious similarities between the character designs of Ultra Comics and Miracleman? Ultra Comics even has the lightening bolt of Captain Marvel/Shazam of the DC universe, and as all fans of Miracleman know, the original Marvelman had to change its name due to a suit filed by DC, then change again to get Marvel off its back and then went into limbo due to Todd McFarlane---make the Gentry (the villain if you believe in such things as villains) of the DC title, "The Multiversity" the Gentry the world's comic book super giants, including DC, Marvel and Todd McFarland.
Welcome to the Revolution, (Russian/NRA Owned) GOP Mother Fuckers.
What Happens to the Republican Party now that they have mobilized/alienated the Youth Vote?
We all know the answer. In the 1960's, it took the draft and the Vietnam War to do it. Callous lawmakers sent our young men off to die in a senseless war and when the kids asked "Why?" they were told to "Shut up( and die)"
This year, a wave of senseless gun violence has swept our land, killing(among others) our young people. When our young people have tried to speak up for themselves to ask "Why?" Republican lawmakers in the pocket of Russia and the NRA have told them to "Shut up (and die)!"
Young people never take kindly to that message. At least not in the United States. Maybe they listen quietly in Russia. Though I kind of doubt it.
Welcome to the revolution, Russian/NRA-Owned GOP mother fuckers. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.
If Police With Guns Could Not Stop a Shooter How Could Teachers With Guns Stop Him?
The fact that several armed officers were outside and could not enter safely proves that arming teachers will do no good. In order to take down a determined gunman, you must have 1) full body armor 2) a team meaning more than one, because he will run if he sees just one guy in full body armor 3) sophisticated weapons and 4) perfect aim so you do not hit civilians. In other words, you need a S.W.A.T. team in every school.
Arming teachers won't work. Arming school guards will not work. Putting the school guard in Kevlar won't work unless he is an Olympic quality marksman--he'll just end up shooting kids, too.
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