Ummagumma

  The worldwide daily number of COVID-19 cases recently set an new high as we clearly are in a second wave of the pandemic globally.  This is a graph from the excellent Johns Hopkins interactive site . The number of confirmed new daily cases in the US are down sharply from the winter months.  Nevertheless, it has plateaued for the moment between 80,000 and 60,000 new cases per day. I got my second Moderna jab last week.  By May 1, I should be as protected as medically possible against the virus.  I am looking forward to going out to lunch and dinner in restaurants again.  To seeing my friends from Atlanta.  I am a hermit and an introverted person by nature but even I'm ready to get some social interaction. The truth is that this is all an experiment.  Statistically, I have about 4 chances out of 10,000 of still contracting COVID-19.  Several thousand people who were inoculated have already gotten it anyway, according to the CDC .  But, apparently none of them died from it, so the v

I just read “ The Fight Over Identity ” by Ben Shapiro , a column posted just a few hours ago.  I respect Shapiro, not to the extent I do conservatives like George Will and Jordan Peterson , but Shapiro definitely has a bright mind.  In this case, he is attacking the freedom of humans to choose their identity. Shapiro's critique is biting and spot-on.  The only problem with it is that everything he criticizes is inevitable.  He is arguing against a future that has already happened.  He complains that gender fluidity “flattens” everything into an "aesthetic."  In truth, identity was already an aesthetic decades ago.  There was (and is) a feminist aesthetic, for example.  Abortion was (and is) part of that aesthetic.  An aesthetic has hard consequences and does not “flatten” anything in the way Shapiro suggests.  He wants to make identity politics one-dimensional, failing to see that, in reality, it is multi-dimensional.   What we call “identity politics" today is not

Pre-hair cut.  About two years of hair growth. Yesterday, after about 22 months, I cut my hair.  It is my first "haircut" since I retired.  I had fun dealing with the various aggravations of long hair as it kept increasing its length.  I don't wear my hair down much.  Mostly, I put it up with a hair band.   It is like having short hair to begin with.  Everything is pulled back nicely and out of the way of your face and ears.  Then there's the first time while you are wearing it down that it gets in your mouth as you take a bite of something.  So I keep it pulled back unless I'm sleeping.   Showering with really long hair is a new experience for me.  I had to move it out of the way to bathe my neck and upper back.  Shampooing it required a helluva lot more work. But, at some point after 18 months or so, at least in my case, pulling it back doesn't always work anymore.  It starts flopping over my shoulder, not so bothersome at first.   Last week, I was cleaning

Proof of purchase.  The CD comes with a nicely styled lyrics booklet. Long-time readers know I'm a late-arriving Kings of Leon fan.  By coincidence, the popular southern garage band dropped their latest album, When You See Yourself , on March 5 , the same day as Neil let loose of the second volume of his Archives to the rest of us (see previous post).  Being absorbed with Neil, I have only lately had a chance to listen to the new KOL release, their eighth studio recording.  (As a side note, KOL became the first band in history to issue its album as an NFT . Pretty cool!) The album is not exceptional KOL but that does not matter.  It is solid KOL.  The band is not trying to experiment or redefine themselves.  It sounds like classic KOL, which a good thing.  When I listen to KOL, I feel a happy, youthful energy that I used to associate with Coldplay