tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post5864165346974877118..comments2024-03-28T14:53:38.827-04:00Comments on BLCKDGRD: Did You Know Jellyfish Have Bigger Brains Than Humans?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-91473415652409538712019-01-09T11:59:35.008-05:002019-01-09T11:59:35.008-05:00Yes, Davidly. But it's the work of the writer ...Yes, Davidly. But it's the work of the writer (who's trying to persuade us of some point or other) to clarify meanings, to explain. Making the reader work may be an accepted strategy of poetry, but the loosey-goosey use of sloppy terms in serious writing—polemic included—is a major flaw. Disqualifying, IMHO, even though the sentiment seems on point at first blush.Jim H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02088100982761595050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-74433574855414416362019-01-09T08:17:52.580-05:002019-01-09T08:17:52.580-05:00Wow. I thought exactly the same thing you say here...Wow. I thought exactly the same thing you say here, but only first as my reaction went from finding the choice words brilliant, feeling I understood them as choices of precision of meaning. But then asked myself if I had more than a feeling of what had been written. My conclusion however is that one'd at least have to work a bit to explain it.davidlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04754707934311038544noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-23353794902208881032019-01-08T13:53:40.539-05:002019-01-08T13:53:40.539-05:00Interesting stuff. As a trained philosopher, thoug...Interesting stuff. As a trained philosopher, though, I instinctively recoil when I read phrases like: "world-sustaining processes that protect the privileged," "disturb the intelligibility of the world," "the machinery that animates the intensified frictions of the crisis." Same them out loud to yourself. What do they even mean? Too general to be relevant. Too vague to be meaningful. Although, truly, they sound urgent and important and, more importantly, smart. The problem is that people fall for that sort of flummery by flattering themselves about how smart they are, too, and then delude themselves that they actually understand what the writer is saying. While sympathetic, I have no idea what this person is talking about and, I suspect, you would be hard-pressed as well to explicate these and such like verbiages intelligibly.Jim H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/02088100982761595050noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-24497211667187909182019-01-07T13:43:04.423-05:002019-01-07T13:43:04.423-05:00(Check President Erwin Rexall of the "Give Me...(Check <i>President Erwin Rexall</i> of the "Give Me Liberty" graphic novel series [Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons]. Rexall, part Reagan and part America's Current Leader, pursues economic policies that enrich the few and impoverish most everyone else. He also has the 22nd Amendment repealed so that he can run for Leader, forever. The part where America also pursues wars against corporate armies in 2nd- and 3rd-world countries, is a Hoot.)Mongo, At The Momenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973606827337262084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-59243424280854344102019-01-07T11:21:26.466-05:002019-01-07T11:21:26.466-05:001.) " 'The savvy ones know she’s the most...1.) " 'The savvy ones know she’s the most valuable endorser in the party not named Obama,' that source added." <i>She, The Inevitable One</i> just will not go away. And to Herr von D.'s point: the Patent Obviousness of Onkel Joe as the Benign 'Daddy Candidate', the Healing Papa, just takes your breath away, doesn't it?<br /><br />2.) "To break the back of the reproduction of the violence we repudiate... we have to disturb the intelligibility of the world". I take that to mean <i>Gonna be worse before it's something else. Not necessarily better, just Other</i>.<br /><br />3.) Neoliberalism is like going on a date with someone who speaks about an incredible idealism and a shining world for all peoples, and suggests that there may be Actual Sex™ for you later, if you'll just buy some things, and buy into other things. Suddenly, you realize they've gotten you to pay for dinner (overpriced), the movie (bad), their cab ride home; and a "loan" -- and, none of the idealistic crap they were spouting ever came to pass, and there was no Sex. Oh, and if you bring any of this up while the date is in progress, someone puts a black bag over your head, and when you wake up you're in Guantanamo.<br /><br />4.) Thankee linkee.<br /><br />5.) I Prophesy in Twenty-Nine Teen that The Leader will provide some of the best surrealistic theater this Nation, born of P.T. Barnum and Frederick Winslow Taylor as it is, has ever seen. It will cover everything from <i>You ain't seen nothin' yet</i> to "Buh-dip, Buh-dip, Buh-dip; That's All, Folks!"<br /><br />6.) An Old Carlin joke: At the Peachtree Complex in Atlanta, he was served breakfast. "What's this white stuff, man?" he asked. The Serving Person replied, "Hell; them's <i>grits</i>!". "They're <i>moving</i>, man," he said.<br /><br />7.) We write to know we're not alone. Ay-yuh; well, we do just about everything on that basis, come to think.Mongo, At The Momenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00973606827337262084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-19581183730018327512019-01-07T08:14:14.978-05:002019-01-07T08:14:14.978-05:000)i read about atlanta and its environs - the book...0)i read about atlanta and its environs - the bookstore at the mentioned mall is BAM! - books a million <br /><br />1)with regard to the 2020 donkey rodeo and hrc's role as ringmaster - spouse and self were watching tv talk shows this am and missus charley thinks elizabeth warren and julian castro are not viable candidates - she, a non-anglo xx person, thinks non-anglo and/or xx are disqualifying in terms of appeal to a sufficient number of voters - is she too pessimistic? sometimes, i think, but maybe not about these persons<br /><br />2)fact-checking the tate poem, one finds that the assertions about equal numbers of bones can't be right - <b>The number of bones varies from one species of whale to another and is dependent, in part, on the length of the whale's spine. Sperm whales contain 164 bones, while the blue whale, the largest animal on earth, has 356 bones. </b><br /><br />https://www.reference.com/pets-animals/many-bones-whale-338c4d410c207d0d<br /><br />2a)there WAS a noted scientist named john d. baxter, though he was not associated with bone-counting - there is no wikipedia article about him, but his career is memorialized at<br />www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/baxter-john.pdf - <br /><br /><br /><b>The consistent theme of John’s work was finding a connection between academic science and medicine. It should be obvious that therapeutic development was the driving force behind all of the research achievements listed above, even though many of them required difficult and intellectually challenging advances in basic science. John applied this principle to the structure of the Metabolic Research Unit, a department at UCSF that he led from the 1980s onward. It was common for the mix of basic scientists, clinical researchers, and pure clinicians that were members of the department to share laboratory space, attend the same seminars, and meet as a group to exchange ideas.</b><br /><br />3)jellyfish do not have a brain at all<br /><br />3a)and yet they feature prominently in an oft-repeated tv ad for a "memory booster" supplement - did tate see these ads? quite possibly<br /><br />3b)<i>“The Federal Trade Commission and New York State Attorney General have charged the marketers of the dietary supplement Prevagen with making false and unsubstantiated claims that the product improves memory, provides cognitive benefits, and is clinically shown to work,” the FTC said in a statement.</i><br /><br />https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/jellyfish-memory-supplement-prevagen-hoax-ftc-says-n704886<br /><br />3c)i have wondered why i should regard something from jellyfish as likely to improve my brain function - now i know that the supposedly therapeutic effect is based on its effect on calcium<br /><br /><b>Memory reconsolidation and maintenance depend on calcium channels and on calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinases regulating protein turnover in the hippocampus. </b><br /><br />https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394017300976<br /><br /><br /><br />mistah charley, ph.d.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06303695341246058680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3020960402708303830.post-65708272107970502242019-01-06T11:34:04.927-05:002019-01-06T11:34:04.927-05:00How comforting. The end of the world in super slo-...How comforting. The end of the world in super slo-mo with Uncle Joe. He strikes me as potentially the first president to match the fictional castings one knows from movies & television, that is if one is able to look past the current star, framed as foil to the Dignity of the Office, scored with Yackety Sax yet somehow express delivering promises of the doom of every imaginable disaster. Yes. Max Headroom will be an improvement. Retro futuristic dystopia at its finest.davidlyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04754707934311038544noreply@blogger.com