Good morning on Monday, October 3, 2020, and National Soft Taco Day. I am leaving for Boston for a week on Wednesday, so posting will be light for about ten days. My insomnia persists, as I had only four hours of sleep last night. That means that the light posts will also be ones written in a brain fog.
More important, it’s the birthday of Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938; note that this is NOT the recently deceased writer Tom Wolfe), one of my favorite authors and someone uniformly denigrated by my literary friends as juvenile and guilty of overwriting. So be it. Yes, he did overwrite sometimes, but his prose is magnificent, as you can see from his “Hymn to October” I posted on October 1. If you want one of the best specimens of his writing, read his short story “The Child by Tiger“, free at the link. You won’t regret it. It’s about the effects of segregation on one man in the South, and is based on a real incident that occurred in 1906 in Asheville, North Carolina—Wolfe’s boyhood home.
Wolfe died of tuberculosis at only 37. When he was in the hospital with a “hunch” that the end was near, Wolfe wrote the following letter to his erstwhile Scribner’s editor, Max Perkins (who also discovered Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald). Wolfe and Perkins had had a falling out, and this was Wolfe’s attempt to make final amends. It was the last letter he ever wrote. He had a brain operation, the doctors discovered inoperable miliary tuberculosis of the brain, and Wolfe never woke up.
August 12, 1938
Dear Max:
I’m sneaking this against orders—but “I’ve got a hunch”—and I wanted to write these words to you.
I’ve made a long voyage and been to a strange country, and I’ve seen the dark man very close; and I don’t think I was too much afraid of him, but so much of mortality still clings to me—I wanted most desperately to live and still do, and I thought about you all 1000 times, and wanted to see you all again, and there was the impossible anguish and regret of all the work I had not done, of all the work I had to do—and I know now I’m just a grain of dust, and I feel as if a great window has been opened on life I did not know about before—and if I come through this, I hope to God I am a better man, and in some strange way I can’t explain I know I am a deeper and a wiser one—If I get on my feet and get out of here, it will be months before I head back, but if I get on my feet, I’ll come back.
—Whatever happens—I had this “hunch” and wanted to write you and tell you, no matter what happens or has happened, I shall always think of you and feel about you the way it was that 4th of July day 3 yrs. ago when you met me at the boat, and we went out on the café on the river and had a drink and later went on top of the tall building and all the strangeness and the glory and the power of life and of the city was below—
Yours always,
Tom
It’s also National Caramel Custard Day, Global Smoothie Day, National Butterfly and Hummingbird Day, National Boyfriend Day, National Virus Appreciation Day (I got my third booster on Saturday), World Architecture Day, Mean Girls Day, and, in Germany, German Unity Day , celebrating the day in 1990 when East and West Germany were united.
Stuff that happened on October 3 includes:
- 42 BC – Liberators’ civil war: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight a decisive battle with Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius
- 1789 – George Washington proclaims a Thanksgiving Day for that year.
The first Thanksgiving, which lasted for three days, was celebrated in Virginia in 1619, but more famously in Plymouth, Massachusetts by the Pilgrims in 1621. Here’s a painting of that scene, “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe. Note that Native Americans attended, as they did:
- 1863 – The last Thursday in November is declared as Thanksgiving Day by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
- 1932 – The Kingdom of Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom.
- 1942 – A German V-2 rocket reaches a record 85 km (46 nm) in altitude.
- 1952 – The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon in the Montebello Islands, Western Australia, to become the world’s third nuclear power.
Here’s the explosion, which took place inside a boat (below the water line), anchored at Trimouille Island:
- 1962 – Project Mercury: US astronaut Wally Schirra, in a Sigma 7, is launched from Cape Canaveral for a six-orbit flight.
This flight was notable for Shirra’s use of manual controls of the capsule, including a manual reentry, splashing down five miles from the recovery ship. Here’s a precis of the mission. Once aboard the ship, Schirra blows the hatch open at 25:27.
- 1981 – The hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after seven months and ten deaths.
The most famous of the dead strikers is, of course, Bobby Sands, who died at 27 after 66 days of fasting. He’s a hero to many Republicans in Northern Ireland, as witnessed by this mural in Belfast:
- 1995 – O. J. Simpson murder case: O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Here’s the verdict. The jury made a mistake:
Da Nooz:
*Did you forget about the Supreme Court? Well, it’s about to start its session again, and this is nothing to look forward to. WaPo editorial page editor Ruth Marcus’s op-ed tells the tale: “You think the Supreme Court’s last term was bad? Brace yourself.”
Already, with its calendar only partly filled, the justices have once again piled onto their agenda cases that embroil the court in some of the most inflammatory issues confronting the nation — and more are on the way.
. . . for now, the court is marching on toward fresh territory, taking on race, gay rights and the fundamental structures of democracy — this even as the shock waves of the abortion ruling reverberate through our politics and lower courts grapple with a transformed legal regime. And there’s every indication that the court intends to adopt changes nearly as substantial — and as long sought by conservatives — as those of last term.
. . . In assembling its cases for the term, the conservative wing has at times displayed an unseemly haste — prodded by conservative activists who have seized on the opportunities presented by a court open to their efforts to reshape the law. The court reached out to decide a dispute about when the Clean Water Act applies to wetlands, even as the Environmental Protection Agency rewrites its rules on that very issue. It agreed to hear a wedding website designer’s complaint that Colorado’s law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates her free speech rights to oppose same-sex marriage, even though Colorado authorities have not filed any complaint against her. It took the marquee case of the term — the constitutionality of affirmative action programs at colleges and universities — although the law in this area has been settled and there is no division among the lower courts.
Affirmative action is a lost cause, and I wonder what colleges will do if they’re no longer allowed to make decision on the basis of race, even if they try to disguise it as Harvard did:
The affirmative action case, to be argued Oct. 31, involves the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina; the court, with considerable discomfort, has narrowly allowed the practice. In a 2003 case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the court voted, 5-4, to uphold a University of Michigan law school admissions program.
There go election laws, the separation of church and state, limits on redistriting to sway votes, and a number of other issues in this very long, informative, and dark piece Marcus ends this way:
Which brings me back to Baude’s description of this majority: fearless. I would choose a different word: heedless. Heedless of any constraints on its power or the effects on the judiciary. Heedless of the real-world consequences of its actions — on women, on minorities, on public safety and, most worrisome, on democracy itself.
As October Term 2022 gets underway, I search in vain for signs of this heedlessness abating. Seeing few, I worry, for the court and for the country whose future it will shape.
*The Associated Press reports the extent and horrors of Russian torture in the captured Ukrainian town of Izium; both prisoners of war and civilians underwent this torture:
Based on accounts of survivors and police, AP journalists located 10 torture sites in the town and gained access to five of them. They included a deep sunless pit in a residential compound with dates carved in the brick wall, a clammy underground jail that reeked of urine and rotting food, a medical clinic, a police station and a kindergarten.
. . .The AP spoke to 15 survivors of Russian torture in the Kharkiv region, as well as two families whose loved ones disappeared into Russian hands. Two of the men were taken repeatedly and abused. One battered, unconscious Ukrainian soldier was displayed to his wife to force her to provide information she simply didn’t have.
The AP also confirmed eight men were killed under torture in Russian custody, according to survivors and families. All but one were civilians.
One example of what was done to a Ukrainian POW:
The first time the Russian soldiers caught him, they tossed him bound and blindfolded into a trench covered with wooden boards for days on end.
Then they beat him, over and over: Legs, arms, a hammer to the knees, all accompanied by furious diatribes against Ukraine. Before they let him go, they took away his passport and Ukrainian military ID — all he had to prove his existence — and made sure he knew exactly how worthless his life was.
“No one needs you,” the commander taunted. “We can shoot you any time, bury you a half-meter underground and that’s it.”
The brutal encounter at the end of March was just the start. Andriy Kotsar would be captured and tortured twice more by Russian forces in Izium, and the pain would be even worse.
These are of course, war crimes.
*CNN says that a recession is on us (remember, I predicted one); it’s only a matter of time:
Around the world, markets are flashing warning signs that the global economy is teetering on a cliff’s edge.
The question of a recession is no longer if, but when.
Around the world, markets are flashing warning signs that the global economy is teetering on a cliff’s edge.
The question of a recession is no longer if, but when.
And here are the five signs of the impending recession:
1.) The dollar is at its strongest in 20 years. This reduces the overseas buying power of other countries, forcing them to raise their own interests rates to buttress their own currencies. It also hurts US markets, as companies lose value when they lose sales.
2.) Americans aren’t shopping. Rising prices have forced people to cut back on spending, and that also contributes to a recession.
3.) Earnings are beginning to drop in some bellwether companies like Apple and FedEx. That’s because people aren’t buying stuff. CNN says that Apple’s iPhone 14 had its production cut back because of unexpectedly low demand.
4.) Both the stock and bond markets are tanking. Usually investors can turn to bonds for less volatility in times like these. But this is one of those time where there’s no safe place to invest; the rise in interest rates has driven down bond prices, and we’re in a bear market for stocks.
5.) The war has hurt everything in Europe, and Liz Truss’s misguided tax cut plan won’t help. In England, inflation is at 10%—1.5% higher than in the U.S.—and interest rates are also rising.
The upshot? The big R.:
“We are in uncharted waters in the months ahead,” wrote economists at the World Economic Forum in a report this week.
“The immediate outlook for the global economy and for much of the world’s population is dark,” they continued, adding that the challenges “will test the resilience of economies and societies and exact a punishing human toll.”
But there are some silver linings, they said. Crises force transformations that can ultimately improve standards of living and make economies stronger.
Yeah, right. Ten to one economists would prefer to avoid a recession and the supposedly attendant salubrious transformations.
*From reader Ken:
Did you see how Jordan Peterson got all weepy and self-pitying during an interview with Piers Morgan on Fox News when questioned about how the weirdo fictional cult leader portrayed by Chris Pine in the recently released film Don’t Worry Darling is based on him?
Before you watch Peterson blubber, you can read about Olivia Wilde’s 2022 movie here. Rotten Tomatoes judges it lame, finding a 39% critics’ rating and a 75% audience rating.
Watch and weep (along with Peterson):
*There’s a cool article that has just solved a long-standing problem in physical chemistry. Reader Leslie reports, citing a Phys Org article.
I just think this really cool. When an acid dissociates into an anion and a proton, how does the tiny naked proton, with no space-occupying electron orbital to give it bulk, move through the aqueous medium? Among many other phenomena, this is important in understanding the proton motive force that conserves metabolic energy as ATP.
From the article:
The question at hand is: How does a proton move through water?
. . .Prof. Ehud Pines suggested, based on his experimental studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, together with his Ph.D. student Eve Kozari, and theoretical studies by Prof. Benjamin Fingerhut on the structure of Prof. Pines’ protonated water clusters, that the proton moves through water in trains of three water molecules.
The proton trains “build the tracks” underneath them for their movement and then disassemble the tracks and rebuild them in front of them to keep going. It’s a loop of disappearing and reappearing tracks which continues endlessly. Similar ideas were put forward by a number of scientists in the past, however, according to Prof. Pines, they were not assigned to the correct molecular structure of the hydrated proton which by its unique trimeric structural properties leads to promoting the Grotthuss mechanism.
Don’t ask me how this works; the paper is here and i’ll give you the abstract:
Seemingly simple yet surprisingly difficult to probe, excess protons in water constitute complex quantum objects with strong interactions with the extended and dynamically changing hydrogen-bonding network of the liquid. Proton hydration plays pivotal roles in energy transport in hydrogen fuel cells and signal transduction in transmembrane proteins. While geometries and stoichiometry have been widely addressed in both experiment and theory, the electronic structure of these specific hydrated proton complexes has remained elusive. Here we show, layer by layer, how utilizing novel flatjet technology for accurate x-ray spectroscopic measurements and combining infrared spectral analysis and calculations, we find orbital-specific markers that distinguish two main electronic-structure effects: Local orbital interactions determine covalent bonding between the proton and neigbouring water molecules, while orbital-energy shifts measure the strength of the extended electric field of the proton.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, we have a superb picture of Hili, who is philosophical and contemplative:
A: What are you doing?Hili: I’m looking at the world stoically
Ja: Co robisz?Hili: Patrzę na świat ze stoickim spokojem.
And here’s Baby Kulka on the doorstep:
**************
From Nicole:
From Jesus of the Day. I had this picture, printed on black velvet (as it should be) hanging in my lab for years. “Dogs Playing Poker” is a classic, and look at that cheating bulldog!
From Doc Bill:
God is really angry at the theocratic Iranian government:
Islamic republic regime has opened fire at students inside the campus!Students in Sharif Uni requesting help to be rescued from brutal regime!
Several have been shot; anyone trying to exit is arrested.@TheTweetOfGod#IranTruth#مهسا_امینی#IranRevolutionpic.twitter.com/3ctw1Sptul— ☼𓃬 𝓢𝓸𝓸𝓭𝓮𝓱 ﮼سوده🤞🏼 ☼𓃬 (@DearSoodi) October 2, 2022
It's time for these mullahfuckers to go.#MahsaAmini #mahsa_amini#مهساامینی
#مهسا_امینی#Iran#OpIran#internetshutdown #IranRevlution— God (Thee/Thy) (@TheTweetOfGod) October 2, 2022
Retweeted by Masih:
Once in Iran I found myself interviewing people on "Death to America Street." Now Iranians topple street signs about the Islamic Republic, and chant "Death to Khamenei," the supreme leader.
The wheel turns, because brave Iranians are turning it. #MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی https://t.co/F8w0EQYQ11— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) October 2, 2022
From Luana, who says that this tweet is a great poster for me. Indeed!
— why you should have a duck 🦆 (@shouldhaveaduck) October 1, 2022
From Simon. Even Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, doesn’t like Liz Truss. Don’t trust people whom cats avoid! (There’s sound.)
Larry speaks for the nation! pic.twitter.com/CfG4QguBJ2
— Brexitshambles (@brexit_sham) October 2, 2022
From Barry. Apparently this chameleon moves its hands like a famous conductor. Can you guess who? (I have no idea!). The answer is in the thread.
Name the conductor.
pic.twitter.com/BzMovlOyzc— Opera magazine (@operamagazine) October 1, 2022
From the Auschwitz Memorial: an SS doctor gets “specimens”. Kremer was sentenced to death in the postwar trials, but the sentence was commuted and he was released in 1958.
It was probably typhus that killed Anne Frank and her sister Margot, though at Bergen-Belsen, not Auschwitz.
3 October 1942 | SS doctor Johann Paul Kremer wrote in his diary: "Today fresh living material from the human liver and spleen as well as pancreas fixed, along with lice from typhus patients fixed in pure alcohol. In Auschwitz (city), whole streets are struck down with typhus." pic.twitter.com/KEUzptinyf
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) October 3, 2022
Tweets from Matthew. Look at this room–those are geckos! Leave the music off:
rate my room 🙂 pic.twitter.com/5pYijHAmeV
— Lizards Every Hour 2.0 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈 (@HourlyLizards) October 1, 2022
Surprised Cat looks surprised!
Them: “your cat looks terrified!”
Me: “don’t worry that’s his normal face”My cat’s normal face: pic.twitter.com/jpZbICndtN
— corinne 🐕🐈🐈🐆 (@rikkelmania) September 30, 2022
The jury’s verdict followed a series of mistakes by the LA county District Attorney’s office. Among the most egregious were having The Juice try on the bloody gloves for the fist time in the courtroom in front of the jury and omitting the copious evidence of “consciousness of guilt” from the trial, including the slow-motion chase in the white Bronco and, during it, Simpson’s threats to commit suicide. I think the DA’s office declined to adduce the consciousness-of-guilt evidence because it would have been an embarrassment to itself that it agreed to allow OJ to voluntarily surrender in such a horrific crime under such ill-considered conditions.
Sub for protons
And FYI… can’t help but say:
Check the Nobel Prize…
Neanderthal genome.
Have a great trip. Perhaps a change of climate and scenery will aid sleep.
Our younger cat we named Ebenezer, because he has wide eyes all the time (genetics the vet says), and looks like Alistair Sim in Scrooge.
Yes indeed. Have a great trip. Perhaps having some nice meals with old friends in Boston will break the funk. Hey to Tim and Betsy.
I saw Don’t Worry Darling at the theater yesterday. Although it has its problems with the story hanging together completely, I find the above judgment overly harsh, since the film certainly has its merits — gorgeous cinematography (shot in a 1950s style technicolor) and set and costume designs, and wonderful performances from the leads, including Ms. Wilde, but especially the lovely and talented Ms. Florence Pugh who establishes, if there were any doubt about it before, that she can carry a film start to finish. It also has a really cool 1950s R&B/doo-wop/pop soundtrack.
And, as a pure cinematic experience, it’s unlike anything else you’re likely to see this (or any other) year, though its influences aren’t hard to discern — one part Inception, one part The Truman Show, one part Pleasantville, one part Stepford Wives, with a dash of Rosemary’s Baby, A Clockwork Orange, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things thrown in for good measure.
Also, Chris Pine is great in the Jordan Peterson role — every bit as handsome and well-dressed as Peterson (shallow bastard that he is) had hoped in the interview Jerry posted above.
No waaaaay is Jordan Peterson anywhere near handsome. Creepy pretty much sums him up😵💫
I agree, but whether the actor playing the role inspired by him has matinée-idol looks seemed to be a major concern for Peterson.
Chrissake, dude, it’s a freakin’ movie; get over yourself.
I’m sure you noticed how grudging was his concession that women should have some choice as to whether they wish to mate with incels (something Peterson’s incel fans themselves seem to consider women’s inherent obligation).
Peterson seems to have giant mountains to clear in order to get over himself😫
What would you have Peterson do about it – pick different parents?
Perhaps we should join hands and gaze into the Infinite and beseech and supplicate and praaaaay to Divine Providence, The Author of the Universe, for a miracle so that we might be delivered from Peterson’s assault on our exquisitely delicate, aesthetic senses? (Plus a “trigger warning” and “safe space” and coloring books to boot?)
I would only comment on his looks because he is so incredibly vain. And no matter what his parents are/were like, he himself chooses to be an arrogant creep.
“I saw Don’t Worry Darling at the theater yesterday.”
What’s a theater?
It’s where those of us go who don’t want to wait until a picture comes out on Betamax. 🙂
How did you like Harry Styles in it? I thought he was surprisingly excellent in My Policeman, given that he’s known as a pretty-boy boy-band member.
He was really good. I wondered while watching it how hard it was for Flo Pugh, who’s a Brit but played a Yank in it, to maintain her Yank accent while doing so many scenes with Styles, who’s a Brit playing her Brit husband with a Brit accent.
Seems to me that could get a bit tricky.
I’m always impressed by how many Brits (Hugh Laurie and Damien Lewis, par exemple) can maintain such excellent American accents. And then there are those who can’t get Los Angeles right (Los Angelese🙀).
Dominic West as McNulty. (I think there were a couple of times during the series when his character put on a bad Brit accent, too, once when he went undercover to a cathouse.) 🙂
The Aussies are great at it, too. Think of Russell Crowe and Guy Pierce in LA Confidential, or Margot Robbie with her thick outer-borough accent in Wolf of Wall Street.
How could I have forgotten McNulty🙀 We still call West McNulty in whatever show he’s in. (Same with Boyd Crowder in Justified and Ruth in MI-5).
My sons & I call him McNulty (or sometimes “McNutty,” the way Kima’s snitch Bubbles would say his name) in everything he’s in. I remember watching West in The Affair with them and, after a scene, one of us would say to the tv, “Oh, McNulty, you’re in trouble now!” 🙂
Same here. I had forgotten the McNutty bit 🤣 (and Kima was great) A friend has a grandkitty named Bubbles😻 So sorry to have lost Omar (Omar comin…) And loved Brother Muzone (sp?), with his bow tie and subscription to Harper’s. McNulty’s inamorata in The Affair we rather unkindly refer to as Duck Lips.
I look forward to trying to understand some of the proton paper. Formally educated in physics (i think it was Feynman who said if someone tells you he understands quantum mechanics, he doesn’t understand quantum mechanics) and aerospace engineering, my last biology course was in high school in 1963. Then a few years ago, in retirement, I learned that an amazing thing had happened in life sciences since the 1960’s: the biology of classification of plants and animals that I learned had became biochemistry. I have been fascinated to read of the cellular processes involving real molecular machines and recommend two books written for the general reader: “Life’s Ratchet – How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos” by Peter Hoffmann; and “The Machinery of Life” by David Goodsell.
A hasty comment (besides repeating the importance of the proton motive force) :
1. Enzyme chemistry frequently uses a active site base – e.g. glutamate – to “pull a proton” from the substrate. A proximal acid e.g. histidine “donates” a proton to the deprotonated intermediate. The acid and base are activated by neighboring residues, so their pKa might be counter to expectations in solution. The triose phosphate isomerase mechanism is a classic example :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triosephosphate_isomerase
… a LEGIBLE picture of the mechanism is… here :
https://proteopedia.org/wiki/images/thumb/f/f7/Classical2.png/500px-Classical2.png
You can see the catalytic cycle : the same proton gets pulled from the substrate and then returned back to the intermediate to form the product.
2. Consider searching the literature for “weak” hydrogen bonds – a substantial literature exists for the weak hydrogen bond in biochemistry (not that I know much about it).
… I know “proton” _sounds_ like it is out of the subatomic nuclear physics world, which it is, but in the context of biochemistry it is .. indeed subatomic, but more … I guess … down to earth…? So it might help searching through it all.
… but of course there are other enzymes that use solvent protons and would be more relevant but maybe more complex – I just picked triose phosphate isomerase as a classic simple example of the acid-base chemistry with protons.
[ proof reading ]
In the diagram, the histidine stabilizes the intermediate, but that proton does not go back to the intermediate. The glutamate pulls the proton, holds onto it, then gives it back.
If you look closely at dogs playing poker, you’ll see that one dog’s face has been altered. This is part of a running joke on Jesus of the Day. Apparently, someone found a badly sculpted eagle figurine at a thrift store; they nicknamed it the Balled Oogle. Now Jesus keeps running photos with the Balled Oogle photoshopped in.
Life’s Ratchet is a wonderful book: a fascinating blend of biology and physics. I am surprised that it is not more widely mentioned, Perhaps the physics discourages people.
My cat looks like that a lot of the time too: https://www.instagram.com/p/Ciz7gOcLCjk/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
She’s completely deaf (probably born that way) so it could be compensation for her missing sense … or I could have ghosts.
Love her un-reeled-in tongue😻I’ve had cats like that in the past, but my current two seem to have their tongues under control. Carmen Dingle not so much with her pre-dinner yowling🙀
Liz Truss’s misguided tax plan has already been partially walked back. The plan to drop the 45% rate for people earning over £150k is toast. Unfortunately, it won’t make much difference because high rate tax payers are relatively rare. They also need to rescind the tax cut for the basic rate payers.
And it still won’t do much to un-spook the markets, because the Government haven’t said how they’re going to pay for the tax cuts that are going ahead. More borrowing? Or steep cuts in public expenditure? We don’t know, and we won’t find out for weeks.
The Thomas Wolfe tale is gripping. The man could write!
I agree with you about Thomas Wolfe. I’m on the library’s wait list for Of Time and the River.
I hate Thanksgiving. I’m equally thankful and ungrateful year-round, don’t need a special day for either.
“…Jordan Peterson got all weepy and self-pitying…”
No, he was tearing up out of empathy for “incels.” It was pretty clear.
That isn’t the original “Dogs Playing Poker” painting. Something odd has been done to the dog in the middle.
This :
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/xifo67/american_balled_oogle/
(As suggested just now above).
I’m delighted that the Phys Org story about the Pines hypothesis for proton solvation, which Jerry kindly posted, attracted interest. The original article by Ekimova et al. (including Pines) was surprisingly (to me) accessible although I am of course not qualified to critique it.
Thanks to Jim Batterson and Richard Bond for alerting me to Life’s Ratchet. I have ordered it. Also Thyroid’s highlighting its importance in enzyme catalysis is much appreciated. The proton as that conceptual gateway between the subatomic world (because it is much smaller than any atom or any other ion) and classical chemistry is part of its charm to non-specialists like me.
You know, it bears mentioning :
pH
The negative logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration
Protons!
I can’t come up with a blanket statement how fundamental and critical pH is – like fine-tuning – the plants, blood, oceans…
“…Jordan Peterson got all weepy and self-pitying…”
That’s not accurate. If you watch the interview, it’s clear that he’s tearing up out of empathy for ‘incels.’
Also that’s not the original “Dogs Playing Poker” painting. Something weird has been done to the dog in the middle.
(I’m repeating two comments I made earlier. For some reason they didn’t go thru. Hopefully, I’m not double posting.)
I’m not so sure. I think he’s also upset at the way he’s been treated, and that’s part of his emotions.
Well, he only tears up when incels are mentioned, laments how they’re unfairly vilified, and says that personal insults against himself don’t bother him. He’s shown indifference to insults in other contexts.
Oops! Eujay = Jamie B. Not sure why my handle has changed…
Does Peterson start blubbering every time incels get mentioned in his presence (or only when they’re mentioned in connection with some criticism of him)?
As for empathy, I’ll reserve mine for the women who have been the victims of mass murders and other acts of violence perpetrated by incels.
“Does Peterson start blubbering every time incels get mentioned in his presence (or only when they’re mentioned in connection with some criticism of him)?”
Have we ever seen him react this way to any other personal insults? I’m not a Peterson fan, but I think that this interpretation by Peterson haters is weird.
“As for empathy, I’ll reserve mine for…”
So you feel that that’s representative of ‘incels’ in general, and that lonely men are therefore rightfully being vilified and deserve no empathy?
Not all lonely men ascribe to the misogynistic incel philosophy.
Accordingly, your closing query incorporates the logical fallacy of composition.
‘Incel’ is simply short for ‘involuntary celibate.’ It has come to be both the name of an online misogynistic community, as well as an insult hurled at any unsuccessful young (usually white) male. Which meaning do you suppose Peterson had in mind?
I think Peterson had in mind the group that’s made him wealthy by lapping up his claims that feminists have “an unconscious wish for brutal male domination” and that the cure for the mass shootings of women is “enforced [female] monogamy.”
Which definition do you think Olivia Wilde had in mind when she called Peterson “a pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community,” since that’s the comment that got Peterson’s tear ducts flowing?
“I think Peterson had in mind the group that’s made him wealthy…”
Just watched the clip again. He refers to ‘disaffected young men,’ ‘the marginalized,’ ‘demoralized men,’ ‘alienated men.’ He dismisses the word ‘incel’ as a casual insult.
And is there evidence that he’s modified his opinions to cater to an audience?
“…feminists have ‘an unconscious wish for brutal male domination…'”
And not women in general. I looked up that comment, and it was in the context of their relative silence WRT truly oppressive cultures like Saudi Arabia. No, I don’t agree with that assessment, but he’s clearly *not* saying that women want to be abused.
“…the cure for the mass shootings of women is ‘enforced [female] monogamy.'”
Monogamy would obviously apply to both men and women. And again, looking it up, it appears that the context was in considering what conditions favor misogyny. It does look like he favors social policies that would encourage monogamy, but he’s clearly not saying that women should be required by law to be monogamous.
Finally, I think that you’re getting cause and effect switched around. He’s clearly trying to understand the origins of misogyny after the fact. He is clearly not calling on ‘incels’ to commit acts of violence. I would have thought that it’s a pretty incontestable fact that large numbers of mateless men have always been a source of violence and instability.
“Which definition do you think Olivia Wilde had in mind…”
Well, since she’s called Matt Walsh (married with children) an ‘incel,’ the word for her seemingly means any conservative (white) male.
“…that’s the comment that got Peterson’s tear ducts flowing…”
Again, I’m no fan of PJ. But this claim that he was crying because OW insulted him is just bizarre. I suppose that PJ is something of a Rorschach test, just like Trump.
When Pierce Morgan brings up her comment, PJ merely smirks. It’s only when PM refers to ‘incel weirdos’ that PJ has an emotional reaction. He expresses sympathy for the ‘incels.’ He says that he himself is generally immune to the insults (this claim is supported by plenty of videos on YouTube showing him in hostile environments with insults being thrown at him.)
Those are the simple facts about the interview. All else is mind-reading.