Interesting books, and news items about books and periodicals, particularly with respect to political and social issues. Since May, 2016, many of my larger book reviews have been put on a hosted Wordpress site; so now this blog emphasizes previews, interviews with authors, booklets, large periodical articles, and literary business issues. Note: no one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!
There are sporadic reports online about shrinking male
fertility and even “primary organ” size, as a result of chemical pollution. TRTWorld proffers thearticle “What’s behind
the epidemic of shrinking genitals and low male fertility?” It warns that boys are poisoned in the womb,
and are growing up with low drive, obesity, diabetes, and lack of
masculinity.
But the article leads to a discussion of a book in GQ,
review by Andrew Zalewski, book by Shanna Swan, “Count Down: How Our Modern
World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive
Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race”, from Scribner, Feb.
2021, 304 pages hardcover. Zalewski
interviews Swan, who warns we face a dystopian world like “The Handmaid’s Tale” (or maybe the 2006 film "Children of Men").
Some of her
findings are based on an Oxford Update ("Human Reproduction Update" from 2017), to which she contributed.
It’s ironic that, with all the talk of non-binary status,
gay men desire masculinity and potency from partners strictly out of upward
affiliation rather than procreation. Swan may be hinting at what George Gilder
had called “Sexual Suicide’ in a 1973 Quadrangle book.
DarkHorse Podcast Clips with Bret Weinstein offers
what amounts to a book review of Ibram X. Kendi’s“Be Antiracist: A Journal for Awareness,
Reflection and Action”, from One World, Oct. 2020.
The philosophy of the book forces everyone into a
binary state.There is no in between
(not racist and not actively and publicly anti-racist as a public ally).The video explores the logical contradictions
that come from such a position, resulting that eliminating the possibilities
that are inconvenient happen only out of seizing power, not out of moral
rightness in itself. Weinstein points out some internal logical contradictions in the idea of equity as compared to equality. Jordan Peterson has done the same in the past.
I don’t see that this was covered in John Fish’s
survey reviewed here June 6, 2020 (even in the comments).
Kendi has many other related books, including children’s,
at this Amazon link.
Kendi’s work seems to have taken over the controversial
“diversity training” lesson plans from Robin DiAngelo.
Morgan Ome, assistant editor of The Atlantic,
interviews author Cathy Park Hong, “Minor Feelings: As Asian American Reckoning”,
in this article saying “this time it feels different’. The paperback reprint is from One World (March
2, 2021, 224 pages).
Yes, after four years of Trump, and the international
politics of COVID.
But before, Hong writes, there was often competition
among different minorities, especially in Los Angeles, as they settled
different neighborhoods and developed enclaves of business.Today the idea of expected “allyship” seems to
have spread.
Corcoran Hall, GWU, where I attempted organic chemistry in 1963
Let’s cover two very strong and detailed New York Magazine
articles about Covid19, in the Intelligencer series.
The first is Nicholson Baker, Jan 4, 2021, “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis”, with the byline “For decades, scientists have been hot-wiring viruses
in hopes of preventing a pandemic, not starting one. But what if…”?
Let me make the biggest observation from this piece of
all.Somehow, he says that Wuhan is the
only foreign lab the US has supported for significant time, cut off by Obama, apparently
resumed briefly under Trump.
The booklet article comprises fourteen (roman numeral)
sections.The last starts with “Here’s
what I think happened”. It starts with
the Mojiang Mines incident in 2012, with a sample winding up in Wuhan Virology
Lab (and other places), attracting the attention of Peter Daszek and Shi
Zhengli. A SARS-like coronavirus sample called BtCoV/4991 (also called RatG13,
as in videos by Peak Prosperity’s Chris Martenson, May 4, 2020) was studied
extensively, resulting in papers. However, the Mojiang virus does not seem to
have been as transmissible, particularly before or without symptoms, person to
person. A change called furin cleavage accomplished that (when the spike protein
opens up the receptor).
Now other sources have told me that furin cleavage
does occur in nature, even in influenza, particularly in persons or animals
with more than one simultaneous viral infection. And there is other evidence
that humans, in China, maybe Europe and even the US, had mild cases in late 2019.It ‘s possible that the virus was transmissible
among humans by the early fall of 2019 if accidentally introduced, and that
increased contagion happened with a mutation in a human, maybe
immunocompromised.We’re seeing that
pattern with variants, which have become more troublesome since this article was
published.
Still, workplaces have accidents.In my own career in IT, there were two
mishaps that were particularly troubling, one in 1976 and another in 1991, and
either one might have become career ending.Lab accidents will inevitably happen.
And there is a lot of other reliable reporting of
coincidental news from China in late 2019, including the October 2019
communications blackout at the virology lab.
Personally, I was a klutz in the lab myself, dropping
chemistry (at GWU) as a major in late 1963 (just before the assassination)
after an accident where I cut my hand severely, while working in my first job in
rheology at NBS at the old Van Ness Street location. I wound up in math. The
computers.Then my own brand of journalism.
But I remember the trips with a dolly to
the oil shed.
The other big article is more recent, March 15, 2021, “How the West Lost COVID19”, by David Wallace-Wells. The byline is “How did so many rich countries
get it so wrong? How did others get it so right?”
One important point:the real lighter for the epidemic in the west was northern Italy.It spread out much more quickly than from
China.In Italy, the virus had a minor
mutation (from a “D” to “G”) which seemed to make it more amendable to
superspreader transmission events, although it didn’t change the clinical
course.That says that the virus is
capable of engineering itself a lot to escape defenses, just in nature.
The countries that suppressed the virus quickly were
either (1) isolated (New Zealand) or relatively low population density
countries (Australia), or (2) willing to subject citizens to automated contact
tracing and mandatory strict quarantines and isolation (South Korea, Taiwan),
or frankly authoritarian (Vietnam, besides China itself).
Just how remarkable is SARS_CoV2 for a respiratory virus for causing long term damage to many organs in protracted cases? Measles can do that, but our vaccine for it is nearly 100% (I got measles in 1950 before my 7th birthday; maybe it did affect my coordination and strength later). But most viruses that cause long-term damage and auto-immune disease are enteroviruses (sometimes arboviruses).
The regard that governments should have for disruption
of individuals, suddenly, is something we haven’t covered systematically
enough.It goes beyond surveillance, as
Electronic Frontier Foundation would see it.It certainly causes job losses.In China and maybe other countries, it has led to personal property destruction,
too. The argument for becoming so strict on individuals, rather than hoping for herd immunity and vaccines, is what if the virus really is much more deadly, down the road. What if it caused an airborne-transmitted variety of "AIDS"? Or maybe sterility in most people? ["Children of Men", 2006 film.] Or inevitable intellectual decline in most of the infected? We don't know that this couldn't happen. (But arguments like that were hurled by the religious right at gay men in the 1980s. You can't prove a negative, and "there is always a first time".) We were shocked by how quickly we were thrown into personal crises by unimagined circumstances, and that we could individually be held responsible for the possibility that our contaminated bodies had become deadly weapons (the mask issue). Perhaps that could force us into top-down localization, which China already has.
The far Left, Umair Haque of Eudaimonia, has scolded
Americans for their hyperindividualism and unwillingness to identify with the
common good of the larger group, and blamed capitalism.Indeed, it’s quite disturbing, that in
retrospect, the whole pandemic, with its Goldilocks property of being a mild
disease for maybe a majority of people but deadly for some, and catastrophic
life long for others (the long haulers), could have been imagined as designed
to conquer the West with communism with a plausibly deniable biological
attack.That is what drives some of the
fury on the right, having lives they did not earn taken away from them. There is also the implication that letting people make up their own minds as to how to behave (like on masks) could have resulted in a "survival of the fittest" scenario which can be viewed as a preview to eventual fascism.
The enclosed video comes from New York Magazine on April 30, 2020, when students volunteered to be infected with SARS_CoV2. The magazine is definitely defined as part of mainstream media commentary, and is not advancing extremism in broaching a very sensitive topic for some people.
The narrative begins with the work of a physician
Zijian Chen, at Mt Sinai in NYC, after he was appointed to be in charge of
post-COVID care in the spring of 2020. He saw many more patients than he had
expected, including other physicians and professionals (one was a dietician).
Many of them were relatively young (even under 40) and
many were women, who were not supposed to be as vulnerable to severe COVID as
men.They reported having “mild” cases. But they seemed to have trouble with breathing
and heart rate, “brain fog” and muscle pains, sometimes digestion.
The underlying problem is dysautonomia, abnormal
function of the autonomous nervous system. The virus seems to damage the peripheral
nervous system even in mild cases, maybe through autoimmunity. The article also
discusses a condition called POTS, “postural orthostatic tachycardic syndrome”. Of some help in therapy is retraining patients to breathe more deeply, which may be difficult because of some lung scarring.
It is unusual for a respiratory virus to cause so much
systemic damage (enteroviruses are more likely to do this) but that is partly
because the virus can lock onto receptors that many tissues have, especially
ACE2, a capability that evolved with
bats, with their high metabolisms.
We could have a public health problem for years, where
10-30% of those with noticeable disease fight off the disability caused by “long
hauler COVID”.Who pays for this.
You have to wonder, when people belligerently say they
won’t wear masks, if, outside of possibly believing in the hoax theory, simply believe
in “survival of the fittest”, literally, that the disease is a purge of the unworthy
whom the virus has tested, and that belief certainly comports with fascism.It certainly can drive the angry indignation
of the “left”.
Perpetual student in the UK Jack Edwards entertains us
with “A day in the life of a book research assistant: Work in publishing”.
I didn’t know large trade publishers assign research
assistants (who are contractors) to assist authors in getting together all the research
material, to target potential audiences and bookstore marketing.
During London’s second big lockdown over the new
variant, he works at home in an immaculate flat (you have to have a clutterless
space, and I am too old school), and he gives us a desk tour.
He also pitches a book he is reading, a self-help
book, “Think Like a Monk”, by Jack Shetty (Sept 2020, Simon $ Schuster),Google books link for preview.
Wikipedia embed picture: British recruits during WW1,
p.d., Wikipedia embed, click for attribution.
ABC News and the Associated Press report that six Dr.
Seuss children’s books will be removed from publication by Dr. Seuss
Enterprises, the trust that preserves his legacy, story by Mark Pratt. The books were felt, however unintentionally,
to preserve racial and gender-related stereotypes by the cultural standards of
today. The book series publisher is Random
House Children’s Books.
I see also in the story that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little
House on the Prairie” novels have fallen into cultural disfavor over portrayal
of native Americans.I remember the
series for Michael Landon, who had a premature death from pancreatic cancer in
the summer of 1991 at age 54, and there are new stories that he may have been
exposed to carcinogens at a filming site in California.He became ill on a ski trip in early
1991.
I remember the Little Golden Book “Little Black Sambo”
(author Helen Bannerman, illustrator Gustav Tenggren) as a boy, and today the
title sounds racist. There is also a “ Story of Little Black Sambo”, the only “authorized”
hardcover.The original book stems from
1922, and the Little Golden Book came out in 1948.
Wikipedia explains the long historyof the controversy
over this book, which went through some changes, and it is more nuanced than
you would think.
Here also is the Wikipedia article on book censorship
in the US.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
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