It's over. After almost exactly twenty years, the Afghan War is over, ending with the withdrawal of over 120,000 human beings. The seemingly endless grind, which claimed the lives of 2488 American military personnel, wounded 20,722 American military personnel, and claimed the lives of about 75,000 Afghan military and police personnel and 71,000 Afghan civilians, is over. Done. Finita. The war was pretty much doomed from the start, initiated by an Iraq-intoxicated madman his pack of Project for a New American Century ghouls. The initial objective, hunting down Al Qaeda members, especially Osama Bin Laden, was quite literally forgotten, or rather, discarded. The full-scale invasion was foolish, an attempt to swat mosquitoes with a sledgehammer.
Biden, caught in a Catch-46 situation by Trump's disastrous peace deal with the Taliban, the release of over 5000 imprisoned Talibani, and the draw-down of US forces to 2,500 personnel, played the crappy hand he was dealt. The right-wing propaganda industrial complex has already gone into overdrive to paint the remarkable mass evacuation as a disaster. We will hear endless panegyrics to the thirteen American troops killed in last week's attack, while the names of their 2475 comrades will go unsaid. We will hear endless bloviation about Biden gifting weapons to the Taliban, never mind that the finicky weapons preferred by American forces are too difficult to maintain and too resource-dependent to use for an irregular force which relies on uncomplicated AK-47s and Toyota pickup trucks. The role of Trump and Pompeo in negotiating a 'bad deal' with the Taliban will be elided. Any criticism from Trumpers for leaving Afghan women and children at the mercy of the Taliban is disingenuous, because the GOP is implementing Taliban-style policies wherever they can.
It's over. Biden had the intestinal fortitude to see this thing through. He will be criticized, mainly by shitty people, for the withdrawal, but it had to happen. This war had to end. It's a tragedy that thirteen young Americans (approximately the age of this war) lost their lives, but the death and maiming has ended. The humanitarian crisis will be terrible, but it is the same humanitarian crisis that was extant twenty years ago, the same humanitarian crisis that we didn't solve at the muzzle of a gun. It's over. It's over. It's over. The decades of war that characterized this nation have finally ended.
I don't know anyone who doesn't instantly fall in love with barn swallows (Hirundo rustica). They are attractive birds which eat flying insects and have a particularly aerobatic flying ability. I enjoy watching them flitting about the property, admiring their athleticism and thinking of all the mosquitoes they must be eating. As the evening draws near, there's a shift change, and the equally aerobatic bats take over the flying insectivore niche.
We have one particular building with an overhang, and the swallows love to build their nests underneath this structure, plastering their mud nurseries under the beams. Whenever we check on this building in the course of our job duties, we are greeted by the enchanting young birds:
Soon, these little beauties will be joining their parents on the wing, zipping about in zig-zag fashion, gobbling up mosquitoes in a particularly balletic fashion. They are sure to enchant me for a few more weeks, before flying south to Central or South America, and for that (and the pest control work), I am grateful.
Today was a banner day, I got to hang out with Dr Jen W, who is a regular Wonkette commenter. While on a Zoom hangout session, she mentioned that she would be flying in from Portland, OR, and asked, "When are we going to hang out?" My reply was, "With my work schedule, I can take you to my workplace for an afternoon visit, or we could meet at Wo Hop in Chinatown at 2AM for some chow fun." I guess the prospect of hanging out with a bunch of drunks and cops in the wee hours of the morning wasn't so appealing.
We consulted the MTA Metro North schedule, and arranged to meet at the Tarrytown railroad station around 1:15PM, and I drove to one of my worksites, which is open to the public on a limited basis. We were extraordinarily lucky, there being two bald eagles onsite as well as the usual coterie of wild turkeys and osprey. I'm hoping that this is a mated pair looking to establish a nest... that would make me ecstatic. The manager on duty, being even more bird-obsessed than I, brought a pair of binoculars to work, so we were in for quite a treat. The weather was good for outdoor activity, slightly overcast and seasonally cool.
Our visit was a lovely one, of about two hours, then we went back to Tarrytown for a quick meal of mezédhes at the venerable Lefteris Gyro, before I had to go back to my workplace and clock in by 3:30PM.
The one boneheaded maneuver I pulled today was leaving my phone/camera in the car during our visit, so I didn't take any pictures. Everything else went perfectly, the timing, the visit itself, the panoply of flora and fauna... I just don't have photographic evidence of it all. I'd be willing to sign an affidavit to prove that it was a superfun day, though.
One of our sites is home to a sizable flock of wild turkeys (I have counted as many as twenty-one of the birds at one time), to the delight of staff and visitors both. Yesterday, a large tom Meleagris gallopavo was in full Thanksgiving card mode, with his tail feathers spread out in a fan:
The effect is somewhat diminished because this is the turkeys' moulting season, so he is missing several tailfeathers. It's great fun for the kids visiting the grounds, because the quills make wonderful, and free souvenirs. I might grab one myself, there are online tutorials for making quill pens.
The craziest thing about the 1/6 insurrection is how much of the action was driven by social media, from Trump's tweeted invitation ("Be there, will be wild!") to the continuous livestreams by rioters in the Capitol. While the riot occurred in 'meatspace', it was perpetrated by the chronically online, such as this dimbulb who might be sent back to jail because he has a synergistic addiction to both MAGA and being online.
The House committee investigating the insurrection is demanding records from a wide array of social media companies, ranging from fever swamps such as 4Chan and 8Kun, MAGA messaging apps Gab and Parler, and mainstream social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook. This particular investigation seems to concentrate on the spread of misinformation about the 2020 election, the 'Big Lie', but I personally feel that much of their efforts should be aimed at the government agencies which ignored the clear indications that there would be some violent actions undertaken on 1/6. The social media moderators messed up (or were complicit) by not stopping communications between extremists, but the sins (whether of omission or commission) by the DoJ and FBI are more egregious, and the rot goes all the way to the top of the Trump Maladministration. Thankfully, the House committee is also looking into communications from government sources to the right-wing apparatchiks who implemented the Capitol attack.
I'm happy that the Hous committee on 1/6 is taking their responsibility seriously, but that's what happens when a committee is formed from people whose very lives were at risks due to MAGA malfeasance.
Via Wonkette's Robyn Pennachia, we have STOP READING THIS POST NOW IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH, OR SQUAMOUS the tale of a Facebook ivermectin discussion page which is, frankly, both disgusting and disquieting. If you've never heard of 'rope worms', you are in for an unpleasant surprise:
Put succinctly, these people are experiencing the sloughing off of damaged intestinal epithelial cells, and interpreting the grisly results as 'worms' expelled from the fundament. As the thread continues, some old friends pop up, writers of prescriptions filled by a sketchy online pharmacy.
I had actually heard of the whole 'rope worms' thing years ago, in the context of THIS WILL MAKE YOU FEEL STABBY asshole parents who gave their children bleach enemas in order to kill 'autism-causing parasites' that breed during the full and new moon. The resultant intestinal damage was interpreted as expelled parasites, the 'rope worms'. Snake oil salespersons are obsessed with the idea that diseases are caused by parasites, even though some research suggests that a lack of parasites might be implicated in autoimmune syndromes. It's safe to say, though, that parasitic worms cause neither autism nor COVID.
Ingesting horse dewormer does, however, cause unpleasant effects (MAKE AMERICA SHIT AGAIN). Every time I feel sorry for these idiots, though, one of them shakes me out of any feeling of empathy:
Seriously, these people are getting what they deserve, and if they are harming their children with veterinary medicines, I hope they face the full wrath of the justice system, with especially harsh sentences given out to the grifters who are making bank off of the gullible.
The post title is based off of a particular mental tic of mine... as a kid, I played enough Dungeons and Dragons that I can claim High Gygaxian as a second language, so every time I see the word 'dewormer' in print, for a second I read it as 'dweomer'. Horse paste is magical, it makes your guts disappear.
Dr Sulzer told us he would be asking two broad questions: Do other species hear music like we do? Can other species play musical instruments? First, though, we would have to get some math and physics out of the way.
Sound is a wave in the air. The wavelength is the length of a wave from corresponding parts, amplitude is the height of the wave. Molecules are pushed together and pulled apart (water can't be compressed, when squeezed, it's amplitude rises air can be squeezed. The speed of a recurring wave is the frequency. Humans can hear sounds of a frquencye of about 20 Hertz (waves per second) an elephant can hear sounds at 1 Hz. Human teenagers can hear up to about 20000 Hz, while adults lose some hearing ability and hear up to 15,000 Hz).
Dr Sulzer illustrated waves in the air by describing the workings of a siren, originally a rotating, perforated wheel on which compressed air is blown. He used the Audacity program to illustrate frequency, and the harmonics which 'spice' a sound. He also used a piano to play notes corresponding with frequencies. He also gave us an experiment to perform, setting up a speaker in a hallway, then walking toward it to hear the amplitude change of the waves as a change in volume.
Musical notes and harmonics are whole note multiples of frequency. Pythagoras (Dr Sulzer joked that he is Christ-like because he wrote no books but his followers did) opined that the universe should make sense. The universe should be explainable in recurring series of multiples. From the quantum level to the cosmic level, these recurrences exist. An octave is twice the frequency of the lower octave.
Dr Sulzer displayed a photo of a replica of a swan-wingbone flute (35,000 years old) that employs a pentatonic scale. He then returned to Audacity, to demonstrate that adding harmonics always produces a periodic wave. He assured us that this was all leading to something. He then played a dissonant note, which messes with the period wave. Notes that aren't harmonic can make beats, using interference to alter amplitude, cancelling out sounds.
Dr Sulzer then moved on to the neuroscience of music, where we recognize consonance and dissonance. Dr Wilder Penfield, a pioneer in the surgical treatment of epilepsy, also studied the cortical regions which determine muscle movements and sensory inputs. Nima Mesgarani studies the role of the cortex in analyzing sound, mapping where plosives, fricatives, and nasals are analyzed. Even ferrets can distinguish these sounds in human speech.
Do other animals hear like we do? The frequency ranges can be very different (bats can hear up to 200K Hz, elephants hear about an octave lower that humans), but noise and consonance are built on physics.
Can other species play musical instruments? Caged zebra finches can trigger musical sounds, even with no training or reward. Would wild birds play musical instruments? Mockingbirds have a wide musical vocabulary, and might be more likely to do so than, say, pigeons. Susan Savage-Rumbaugh has studied bonobos interacting with musical instruments. He then featured the Thai Elephant Orchestra, noting that the instruments provided to the elephants were chosen due to their popularity among the locals, such as the marimba-like ranat ek. He also noted that elephants love harmonicas.
Dr Sulzer ended his lecture with a note about Asian elephant conservation. In 1900, there were 100,000 domesticated elephants in Thailand. They were working animals. Now, the population is about 3,700, since the elephants are not needed for work. Logging was banned in 1989, so tourism is the only work.
What other species play musical instruments? Some songbirds, bonobos, elephants, but we are only scratching the surface. Instruments must be ergonomic for other species, and must produce attractive sounds for those species. Bad instruments are not appealing.
The lecture was followed with a Q&A session. Dorian started the process by asking if animals began by playing sounds in their own voices- zebra finches did, but developed musical tastes, playing other songbirds songs, and human music (but they avoided canary sounds because canaries are big and scary). Regarding the Thai elephants' taste, they prefer 'hillbilly' music, the pentatonic music of the Northern Thai musicians who use fiddles- this is the music of their mahouts and caretakers, and the elephants are used to it. Elephants are social animals, and this is the music of social gatherings of both humans and elephants. African elephants are no longer domesticated, but they once were, such as Hannibal's famous elephants, so their musical tastes are unknown. Why is some music scary? How does the Devil's Interval work? In consonant music, the notes reinforce each other. While some dissonance is acceptable, it can be resolved. If the frequencies are divided exactly in half, an irrational number results- according to legend, the Pythagorians drowned the person who discover.
Some bastard in the audience asked about the neurology of audition among different animal lineages- the auditory cortex is pretty well known, but the areas of the brain that interpret sound need to be studied better. Other animals with a cortex have similar auditory areas, even though their ears may be radically different (such as insects which have ears on their knees). Even among insects and crustaceans. the mechanisms are similar Marta Novotny, Lisa Olson of Columbia study bush crickets and katydids.
Another question involved animals which hear low-frequency sounds, such as whales. It is possible that fin whales, before the noise of mechanized shipping, could have heard each other from hundreds of miles away. Certain animals, such as frogs, have limited frequency ranges at which they hear. Hearing is really the detection of vibrations, so even moths can 'hear' each other moving.
Another question involved people who love dissonant music- people love to add noise to their music, overblowing saxophones, using guitar feedback, adding additional noisemakers to instruments. Synth pioneers such as Wendy Carlos immediately set about finding ways to 'dirty up' synthesized sounds.
Another questioner asked if animals sounds also followed pentatonic scales, Dr Sulzer recommended the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's sound analyzing Raven app, and said that some bird songs have the octaves built in, he urged her to study this topic herself.
Can elephants maintain a steady beat? They tend to be better than humans at it, but we have to be careful about anthropomorphizing their behavior. Also, is this spontaneously play or training? It's a combination of both. The zebra finches weren't trained at all, but learn their songs from their fathers, and the elephants were trained for about five minutes.
As an added bonus, SSC alum Dr Diana Reiss chimed in during the Q&A to note that a lot of dolphin 'hearing' takes place through the jawbone after lauding Dr Sulzer's lecture. It was a fun instance of Secret Science Synergy in action.
Once again, the Secret Science Club delivered a fantastic lecture, and Dr Sulzer managed to sneak in math and physics along with the fun stuff about musical elephants, kinda like making us eat our vegetables before dessert. He added musical flourishes to illustrate his
For a taste of the SSC experience, here's a video of Dr Sulzer talking about the subject of his book:
Pour yourself a nice beverage and soak in that SCIENCE!!!!
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.
