My great and good friend J-Co started off a considerable descent into tomfoolery when he sent a 'text' message consisting of a picture mashing up Colonel Sanders spokesman Colonel Sanders and Iron Maiden 'mascot' Eddie:
This kicked off a series of imaginary products based on the Iron Maiden discography...
The 'Aces High' Bucket: Bucket of Wings, Two Sides (Axis and Allies), Choice of Drink (English Channel, North Sea, or Atlantic Ocean)
'Ancient Mariner' Special: 8-piece extra crispy albatross, unlimited refills of salt water
Here's where I confess that I'm not a huge Iron Maiden fan, but every now and again, an Iron Maiden binge is a welcome change from my normal listening habits. It's certainly provided fodder for some terrible jokes...
Today was too nice a day to be enmeshed in the terrible current events. It was a balmy, breezy day, and I spent much of my afternoon shift alternating between watching ospreys soar above the storied Hudson and watching a turkey hen with three poults foraging in the grass by the pathway from our parking lot to our visitors' center. For a brief, magical moment, I had a finger-long, perhaps a widow skimmer, land on my knee as I sat on a bench, contemplating the beauty of my surroundings. After work, I met up with friends at a place with a deck overlooking the Hudson... a place that serves five dollar gin-and-tonics. It's a particularly beautiful time of year in New York, and I spent the day in a particularly lovely region of the state.
Yes, it was a day too lovely to contemplate contemporary horrors... so how about a lovely rendition of a song about historic horrors? Here is a video of Spanish band Hinds singing a rendition of Spanish Bombs, written by the Clash as a contemplation of the Spanish Civil War:
It's kinda disconcerting hearing such lovely voices singing about 'bullet holes in the cemetery walls' in the Days of '39, kinda like reading about deadly protests on such a lovely day.
UPDATE: Looking at the shirt worn by Ana Perrote, on the righ-hand side, reminds me that the second most vile slur in American Vernacular English originally meant 'rabbit', which in Spanish is the phonetically similar 'conejo'. This is one of the best slur reclamations I've seen in a while.
There's a spurious quote, attributed to Thomas Jefferson and beloved of right-wingers: "When Government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." I cut and pasted it from some Ron Paul website. It usually gets bandied about when a bunch of armed right-wingers gather to protest some perceived government overreach. I find it hypocritical when Rand Paul, Ron Paul's equally disgusting right-wing son, complains about being chased by an angry mob. Shouldn't this scene warm the cockles of every right-winger's heart?
Rand Paul just got chased by a crowd back to his hotel, after leaving the White House from Trump’s Republican Party Nomination #DC#DCProtestspic.twitter.com/h1kPcZG1jh
This is the sort of America they've always claimed to want! Rand Paul should be ecstatic. I am reminded of his hypocrisy regarding the shooting of Steve Scalise... a shooting that perfectly encapsulated the 'Second Amendment Solution' that guys like Rand Paul always drone on about. That Second Amendment is not to shoot deer. Rand Paul and his followers should support the people who made him, a representative of the government, fearful.
I did not watch live coverage of last night's last night of the RNC. Why give a ratings-obsessed asshole a view? I watched a couple of post-mortems, and the best description of Trump's delivery of a seventy minute speech was the doughty Aaron Rupar's quip: 'somnambulant'. The whole thing was 'Must Miss TV'.
The highlight of the evening was the First Lady's dress, which was the perfect hue for greenscreening. The internet's smartest snarkers were quick to react, with this being my particular favorite reimaging, by Media Matters for America's Parker Molloy:
Part of me suspects that Melania wore this dress on purpose in order to sabotage her husband's event... after all, she probably thought he'd have been dead a long time ago, but having him lose in November and end up in federal prison would accomplish the same thing... ridding her of a disgusting ogre. At any rate, somebody involved in the production must have known that greenlighting a greenscreen dress would pose problems, yet nobody did anything about it... and the Trumps have been involved in the television industry for a couple of decades already.
The other great Melania moment was her outré reaction to her stepdaughter:
Sometimes simple mistakes get by without detection...
I still think Melania is awful, but the very notion of her engaging in a sub rosa resistance campaign is amusing, I just hope her horrible husband doesn't catch on if it's true.
I haven't been watching much of the RNC, because I don't want to boost the ratings with which the Occupant of the White House is obsessed, but I've been watching and reading recaps, and the thing that strikes me is that the Republicans are running as if the last six months have never happened. They cite economic figures from February, COVID-19 simply isn't mentioned, and the civil unrest that has been unfolding over the past three months is portrayed as something that happens in 'Joe Biden's America'.
One of the best RNC postmortem series consists of long-form deconstructions by Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch and Matt Binder of the DOOMED podcast. During last night's breakdown, they perfectly described the Trump campaign's strategy: Trump is running as if he were the challenger and Biden were the incumbent. Furthermore, Jared Holt noted that the Trump campaign is running an imaginary Trump (a competent, compassionate man) against an imaginary Biden (a socialist firebrand).
Now, for the next two months, I expect to hear about Joe Biden's inadequate COVID-19 response, and his failed economic recovery program. It will be a final, ramped-up gaslighting campaign, the perfect coda (I hope) to a four-year campaign of mendacity and distortion.
Dr Eagleman indicated that the brain cannot be typified as either hardware or software, and coined the term 'liveware' to describe the brain, which is malleable enough to create new connections if it is damaged. A dramatic example of the ability of the brain to reconfigure its connections can be found in hemispherectomy patients, who have an entire hemisphere of the brain removed, typically to treat individuals who suffer from extreme seizure disorders. Even with half of the brain removed, many patients receiving the surgery in childhood can rewire the brain to the extent where they exhibit no symptoms more noticeable than a slight limp. Dr Eagleman coined the term 'livewired' to describe the brain's plasticity, the ability to mold into a new shape which can be held, because 'plasticity', coined by William James in the 19th Century, implies that the brain molding reaches a fixed state, while in reality the brain continually reconfigures connections, though plasticity diminishes over age.
Certain parts of the brain are more malleable than others, the visual cortex is less malleable than the somatosensory cortex- visual data is relatively stable, while data from our changing bodies is unstable. Brains match their input... the cortex is relatively uniform (Dr Eagleman joked that it was a 'one trick pony'), but the different sensory organs input different data. The brain wraps itself around new data streams. Dr Eagleman founded a company which developed a vest which can allow deaf people to use vibrations on the skin to simulate hearing.
Unlike, for example, zebras which can run shortly after birth, humans are helpless at birth. Dr Eagleman described humans as having 'half baked' brains at birth, and the malleability of human brains have allowed us to overrun the planet. The goal of the brain is to model the world.
The brain figures out how to control the body it finds itself in. Dr Eagleman presented us with the example of an armless archer, who holds the world's record for the longest accurate bowshot. A robotics team has developed a starfish robot which uses machine learning to figure out how to locomotor.
Brain circuitry comes to reflect what an individual does. New neural pathways develop in the cortex to accommodate juggling or playing a musical instrument. The modeling, regulated largely by acetylcholine, is based on relevance... for instance, a piano player who uses two hands equally, should show different pathways than a guitar player, who uses two hands in different manners.
In the case of brain damage resulting from a stroke, constraint induced therapies which bind the non-impaired limb can force patients to recover functionality more rapidly.
The takeover of territory in the cortex occurs rapidly, subjects who are blindfolded exhibit activity in the visual cortex triggered by touch within an hour. It is probable that dreaming provides stimulation to the visual areas of the occipital cortex to prevent takeover from other senses during sleep.
Dr Eagleman noted that memory involves changing the structure of neural connections while keeping function.
To get an idea of how this lecture went, here is an interview of Dr Eagleman conducted by MIT researcher Lex Fridman in which the good doctor defines the concept of livewiring:
If you want in on the actual Zoom lectures, drop a line to my great and good friends at the Secret Science Club. You don't have to be in Brooklyn to let Margaret and Dorian introduce you to fantastic lectures by brilliant intellects such as Dr Eagleman.
The breakout star of last night's boring Republican National Convention was Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Fox talking head and current girlfriend of Don Jr and highly paid 'campaign consultant'. She was in full cultist mode last night:
I guess that's appropriate when your boyfriend has the Assmouth Look.
Poking around the t00bz, I discovered I wasn't the only person to note that Guilfoyle looked like something out of a cheesy fantasy movie:
I also got a snake handler vibe from her, maybe because she positioned her hands like a Minoan Snake Goddess for much of the speech. I'm not good with the photoshop skills, but I imagine some wag will notice the likeness.
Tonight is a combination bar trivia/Secret Science Club Zoom lecture night, so I sha'n't be watching the atrocity... better to build my brain up rather than rot it with GOP lunacy.
The Big Bad Bald Bastard is a character played by Monsieur _______ of the City of Y______. The role of the Bastard is a handy one to play on subways, walking the streets, and in dive-bars, when being a nerdy, bookish sort is not to one's advantage.
