The making of Sympathy for the Devil

If you are of my generation, you would very likely have heard this song by the Rolling Stones. Apart from simply being a terrific song in its own right, it made a sensation when it was released in 1968 because it featured Mick Jagger singing in the first person as the devil. This was at a time when people were pretty uptight about religious themes being used in pop culture and the band was accused of being satanists. If you have never heard the song, below is a live performance from that year with the master showman Mick Jagger doing his thing. It is amazing that he could keep this up for more than fifty years. As a bonus, you get to see John Lennon and Yoko One among the dancers.


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The story of John Scott and the NHL All-Star game

I am not a fan of ice hockey and have only watched a few tiny snippets of games. But I found utterly fascinating this Radiolab episode that recounted an epic struggle between a journeyman hockey player named John Scott and the National Hockey League establishment.

It happened when two hockey journalists, annoyed with the way that the NHL ran things without any seeming concern for what fans liked and wanted, decided as a joke to start a campaign to get Scott, widely viewed as merely a ‘goon’ or ‘enforcer’ whose role was to physically intimidate opposing players and even fight with them, voted to play in the All-Star game, over the elite, skilled players who usually get this honor. (I find it astonishing that there is a sport in which a player’s designated role is to intimidate opponents, even to the extent of physically attacking them.)
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What makes hummingbirds hum?

I am fortunate in that there are a couple of hummingbirds that live near my home and I frequently get to see them hovering just outside my window, giving me a close-up view. This article looks at what we have learned about how the hummingbirds get their name.

The results reveal that aerodynamic forces produced as the wings move, together with the speed and direction of the wing movements, are largely enough to explain the hummingbirds’ hum.

The team note a crucial factor is the motion of a hummingbird’s wings. While most birds only create lift on the downstroke – found by the team to be the primary sound source – hummingbirds do so on the down and upstroke as a result of their unusual wing motion, which follows a path akin to a U-shaped smile. What’s more, these strokes occur much faster for hummingbirds – about 40 times a second. As a result, the team say, the hummingbird wing movement generates sounds at both 40Hz and 80Hz – sounds that are well within our hearing range and which were found to be the dominant components of the birds’ hum.

But variations of the forces within the strokes, together with further influence of the U-shaped wing motion, generate higher frequency overtones of these sounds.

“The lovely thing about the hummingbirds’ complex wingstroke is that those two primary pulses also cause even higher harmonics,” said Lentink, adding that such tones added to the timbre of the overall sound.

“It truly is the specific way that the forces fluctuate that creates the sound that we hear,” he said.

The team applied a simplified version of their theory to data for flying creatures from mosquitoes to birds like pigeons to reveal why their motion produces different sounds.

“It’s the way they generate forces that is different,” said Lentink. “And that causes why they whoosh versus hum, versus buzz, versus whine.”

The Trumps’ shameful lack of leadership in fighting vaccine hesitancy

An NPR poll found little differences in vaccine hesitancy between white, Black, and Latino groups.

Among those who responded to the survey, 73% of Black people and 70% of White people said that they either planned to get a coronavirus vaccine or had done so already; 25% of Black respondents and 28% of white respondents said they did not plan to get a shot. Latino respondents were slightly more likely to say they would not get vaccinated at 37%, compared with 63% who either had or intended to get a vaccine.

However, there were big differences between politically aligned groups.

Among Republican men, 49% said they did not plan to get the shot, compared with just 6% of Democratic men who said the same. Among those who said they supported President Trump in the 2020 election, 47% said they did not plan to get a coronavirus vaccine compared with just 10% of Biden supporters.

Similarly, compared with “big city” respondents, rural residents were more likely to say that they did not plan to take a coronavirus vaccine.

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The madness of US gun policies

We have yet another mass shooting in which a young man killed eight people, six of them young Asian women at three different massage parlors in Georgia. He was apprehended that same day because his parents identified him from surveillance footage after the first shooting and told police that his vehicle had a tracking device and how they could track him down. He seemed to be on his way to Florida to commit more murders.
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Monarch butterfly migration is truly amazing

In the February 15/22, 2021 issue of The New Yorker there is a photo essay by Brendan George Ko of the annual migration of monarch butterflies, with accompanying text by Carolyn Kormann.

The butterflies have never seen the forest before, but they know—perhaps through an inner compass—that this is where they belong. an inner compass—that this is where they belong. They leave Canada and the northeastern United States in late summer and fly for two months, as far as three thousand miles south and west across the continent. The migration is accomplished in a single generation that lives eight months, whereas the return journey north will occur over some four generations, each living four to five weeks. This is the most evolutionarily advanced migration of any known butterfly, perhaps of any known insect.

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More adventures of QAnon shaman and friends

The ridiculous figure known as QAnon shaman whose real name is Jacob Chansley and is now in jail for his role in the January 6th insurrection, has lost his latest attempt to be released from jail, this time on (wait for it) religious grounds.

According to court documents, a lawyer representing the 33-year-old Chansley — who also led others in prayer as they occupied the U.S. Senate chamber during the insurrection — asked in February that his client be released from prison while he awaits trial in part because of complications derived from his refusal accept a vaccine for COVID-19.

The request involved Chansley’s religious beliefs, which borrow from conspiracy theories and several religious traditions: The attorney claimed his client’s “longstanding status as a practicing Shaman precludes him from feeding into his body any vaccination.” The request noted that Chansley was removed from the U.S. Navy in 2007 for refusing to take a vaccine for anthrax.

Chansley’s refusal to be vaccinated, combined with various COVID-19 protocols in place at prisons where he is being held, have made “meaningful un-monitored communication” with his attorney impossible, the lawyer claimed.

But U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth flatly rejected Chansley’s request on Monday (March 8), dismissing several of his lawyer’s arguments — including religious ones.

“To put it plainly, defendant’s religious objection to the COVID-19 vaccine is not a relevant reason, let alone a ‘compelling reason,’ to grant his temporary release,” Lamberth wrote in the 32-page opinion.

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Yo-Yo Ma gives impromptu concert for those waiting for the vaccine

After I got my vaccine, like everyone else I had to wait for 15 minutes to make sure I did not have an allergic reaction. I just sat in the CVS drugstore. Too bad I did not get it at the Berkshire Community college in Massachusetts. After cellist Yo Yo Ma got his second shot, he spent his 15 minutes giving an impromptu concert to the other people in the venue.

The 15-minute turn included renditions of pieces by Bach and Schubert, and at its close prompted an enthusiastic round of applause and cheers from the lucky crowd of socially distanced patients.

Ma, 65, had “wanted to give something back”, Richard Hall of the Berkshire Covid-19 Vaccine Collaborative told local paper the Berkshire Eagle. “What a way to end the clinic,” he added.

When Ma had first visited the clinic for his first shot, he did so quietly, taking in the surroundings, staff said. But brought his cello when he returned for the second shot.

Staff described how a hush fell across the clinic as Ma began to play. “It was so weird how peaceful the whole building became, just having a little bit of music in the background,” said Leslie Drager, the lead clinical manager for the vaccination site, according to the Washington Post.

Ma is someone who clearly loves what he does, likes to use his incredible talents for the general good, and also wears his celebrity status lightly.