This year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners have been announced. “Ig Nobel” I hear you ask? Criteria for the prize and a list of all winners since 1991 is here. My favorite? The 2024 Demography prize goes to… Saul Newman, for finding that supercentenarians and extreme age records tend to come from areas with no birth certificates, rampant clerical errors, pension fraud, and short life spans.
The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, England, and France, which have more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by poverty, low per capita incomes, shorter life expectancy, higher crime rates, worse health, higher deprivation, fewer 90+ year olds, and residence in remote, overseas, and colonial territories. In England and France, higher old-age poverty rates alone predict more than half of the regional variation in attaining a remarkable age. Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.
What picture comes to mind when you hear the words “nutcase survivalist wannabe?” Christopher McCandless of “Into The Wild” fame? Theodore Kaczinsky, AKA “The Unabomber?” Or how about the guy crouching with an AK for 12 hours in the woods outside a West Palm Beach golf course waiting for POTUS 45 to play through?
For my money, it’s none of the above. Rather, it’s Henry David Thoreau. Remember him? The guy who wrote “Walden” while living in a cabin on property owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. A cabin that was situated less than two miles away from Thoreau’s boyhood home in Concord, MA. That’s where his mother still did his laundry while he was writing his manifesto of living the simple life. Yeah, you heard me: A mama’s boy, through and through.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.
At least Chris McCandless died pursuing his survivalist’s dream in an abandoned school bus in remotest Alaska. Ted Kaczinsky, who spent 25 years in a southern Colorado Supermax after his 17-year bombing spree conducted from a remote Montana cabin, finally died in prison last year. The guy with the AK near the sixth hole in West Palm Beach? We’ll see. But my guess? He probably does his own laundry.
The true measure of a nutcase survivalist wannabe is not how remote or how rustic the digs. It’s how divorced from everyday circumstance the rhetoric. In that contest, Henry David Thoreau wins by a country mile. And you can quote me on that too, Pardner. Brave minks and muskrats? HA!
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Henry David Thoreau’s cabin: How do we know it? There’s no laundry drying on the line.Kaczinsky’s digs: Even more spartan than a Supermax prison.
Chris McCandless’ Magic Bus. The full story is here.
Alaska officials removed Chris McCandless’s school bus in 2020 because it had become become a lure for dangerous and sometimes deadly pilgrimages into treacherous backcountry.
The same cannot be said for Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. Don’t be fooled by flowery words. There’s “quiet desperation,” and then there’s… well, you know: Like I said, “Mama’s boy.” But don’t listen to me. You can read the full story, here.
Today’s PSAs are brought to you by whoever made them up.
Me, I don’t create ’em, I just report ’em.
Yer welcome.
Winter is coming soon.Heinz is so tired of restaurants refilling their bottles with non-Heinz ketchup that they developed a label sticker where the outer border matches the exact colour of genuine Heinz ketchup. If it matches, it’s the real deal. If it doesn’t, it’s condiment fraud.
Wait, WHAT? 3XL SLIM FIT?You know it’s time for a screening when….
I always assume somebody’s waiting over the crest of that hill.
Yesterday’s hike was a straight shot down to the end of Douglas County Rte. 5 (a dirt road) where it dead ends south of Roxborough Park before giving way to horse farms pretty much all the way to Palmer Lake. I hadn’t gone this way for the better part of a year. Yesterday I only saw a couple of mule deer, no other life forms human or otherwise. But I always look forward to seeing this sign put up by local ranchers at my turn-around point – God love ’em. Though the lettering has faded somewhat thru the years, the sentiment remains crystal clear.
Today’s WOTD is “perseveration.” No, not perseverance, which is sticking with something through thick and thin regardless of all obstacles. Perseveration, by contrast, is a neurobehavioral term refering to speech patterns of the psychiatrically impaired. Often seen in the early stages of dementia, it is characterized by repetitive reference to pet themes or phrases as a way to compensate for cognitive decline.
You can see how the two terms are related: Both can look to an outside observer like a stubborn refusal to veer off a preferred topic. The key difference is that in the first case, the perseverator gets stuck and can’t help himself. In the second case, he’s consciously soldiering on in service of a higher goal or ideal.
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Prof. Richard A. Friedman, director of the psycho-pharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College is worried about Donald Trump. You can read the article, here. And the counter-point to his argument is here. The long and short of it comes down to whether you see perseveration or perseverance in Trump’s debate performance. Partisans on each side draw differening conclusions based on the exact same behavioral data. Far be it from me to try settling this dispute: Ain’t. Gonna. Happen.
I will offer the following observation, however. When moderator David Muir brought up a Trump quote that sounded somewhat conciliatory about his election denialism from 2020 – “It was close, we missed by a whisker” – Trump responded to Muir that he had just been “being sarcastic.” Muir replied that he didn’t sense that sarcasm in listening to the quote the first time, but hey, let’s give the guy the benefit of the doubt, right?
Trump previously used the same tactic in the 2016 election when it seemed he was legitimizing those who might attempt to assasinate Hillary Clinton. “I was just being sarcastic.” Hillary was rightfully appalled, but somehow her objections got buried in the avalanche of partisan back-and-forth. Nobody even remembers it now. Well, nobody but Hillary and me, I guess.
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What all this has to do with perseverance v. perseveration is this: The guy knows exactly what he’s doing, is not afraid to either repetitively and brazenly lie, or sequentially change his story to suit his perferred narrative of the moment. Add to that he is supremely adept at hammering away at his opponents’ rhetorical weak spots. So how can we possibly know if cognitive decline or some other psychiatric factor has come into play? We won’t. And what’s more, we can’t.
That’s what makes candidate Trump’s tactics and behavior doubly scary. To cite his support of dictators and strong men – as Kamala Harris rightfully did during the debate – can either be a sign of Trump’s innate fascism, or just a sign that he does not give a bloody rip about how he appears in front of an audience. And if worse ever comes to worst? He can always claim the “sarcasm” defense, whether or not it leads to WWIII.
Same goes for cognitive decline and the use of word salad rhetorical techniques. A wink and a nod are all that’s necessary for the MAGA faithful to say, “There… see? He was in command of his faculties all along. And those weak-kneed Kamala/Marxist-wannabes were just overreacting – as usual.”
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About the best we can do in response is exemplified by this David Sedaris quote that comes via Anne Lamott. You’re welcome to order whatever you like off the electoral menu. As for me? I know what I’ll be having, and also what I’m not willing to swallow.
“Can I please have extra ground glass?”
Bonus Cartoons & Such
All that being said, please understand that DJT is still leading this race. How so, I hear you ask? In every race for POTUS in which he’s run previously, his actual performance on election day exceeded pre-election polling by 2-3%. But how can that be? I call it “The Trump Effect.” Most people retain some modicum of personal decency and civic propriety regardless of who they ultimately intend to vote for on Election Day, whether or not that candidate is a raving lunatic. But many are loathe to admit such a thing to pollsters – or indeed, to anyone other than their priest or therapist. So, 2-3% of likely Trump voters either don’t answer, or answer flat out untruthfully. After all, who will ever find out?
Now, the other thing to understand is that 43/50 states are not in play in this election, but are solidly either red or blue already. It’s only the seven “swing” states which will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential race: PA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, GA and NC. There is only one of these 7 swing states in which Harris is up +3 or more at the moment, and that is in WI. In all the rest, the current margin is 1% or less. Deets are here.
Given the “Trump Effect,” it doesn’t take a math wizard to see who has the clearest path to victory. I wish it weren’t so. But facts – as they say – are facts. Not to say things can’t or won’t change before Nov. 5th. But the forecast is mostly cloudy at best. Sad but true.
Last word to H.L. Mencken
<Trump> is not the first president to have his rhetorical style criticized. President Warren G. Harding’s way of speaking was lampooned in 1921 by the newspaper columnist H.L. Mencken, who called it “Gamalielese,” after the 29th president’s middle name, Gamaliel. “It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it,” Mr. Mencken wrote. “It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”
Mr. Trump, who was the 45th president and is running to be the 47th, elaborated on his own oratorical technique on Friday. “What you do,” he said, “is you get off a subject, to mention another little tidbit. Then you get back onto the subject, and you go through this, and you do it for two hours, and you don’t even mis-pronounce one word.”
Like them or don’t, Chick-fil-A has a great billboard ad campaign called “Eat Mor Chikin.” After last night’s debate performance, I’d like to suggest a political one called “Eat Mor Cats.” Either side is welcome to use it, I won’t discriminate. But also, there’s no charge for free advice – so there’s that.
WHAT’S THIS I HEAR ABOUT EATING CATS?! (Thanks, Mitzi.)
I’m not going to weigh in on who won or lost. You probably have your own take on that. But I will weigh in on a couple of memes I saw that I especially liked. Hope you enjoy them too.
Last but not least, at least one undecided voter came out with an endorsement after the debate – so there’s that.
Go Chiefs! Also: “Eat Mor Cats.”
A more serious treatment of the topic can be found here, with paywall removed for your reading convenience.
A few nights ago when the NFL hadn’t started up again full blast and the woeful Rockies had a much needed night off, we were flipping through the TV channels. It was then we noticed that AMC was showing all five Die Hard movies back to back to back. It promised to be a marathon of schlock dialogue and big explosions. Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard is one of my all-time favorite villains, at least among those in Christmas movies. My kids may know him best as the actor who played Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, but I’ve gotta say that Die Hard, Rickman’s first feature film, is some of his best work. He died in 2016 at the age of 69.
Then comes the news that one of moviedom’s all-time greatest villains, James Earl Jones, who played Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, passed away yesterday at age 93. That bass voice is unforgettable whether he was portraying the bad guy or the good guy. Good guy, I hear you ask? Yes, as Terence Mann in Field of Dreams. Either way, he will be missed.
Not always a villain, but always a great bass voice.
Favorite Die Hard movie quotes:
“We’re Gonna Need Some More FBI Guys, I Guess.” This after the FBI guys’ helicopter crashes into the top of a skyscraper setting off one of the movie’s biggest explosions.
“I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane. And since I’m moving up to kidnapping, you should be more polite.” Hans Gruber to Bruce Willis’ wife.
“Who said we were terrorists?”
“If This Is Their Idea Of Christmas, I Gotta Be Here For New Year’s.” It’s the movie’s last line, for those of you into such trivia.
Today’s WOTD is incorrigible. That’s what I am, and proud of it. Never one to “stay in my lane,” I’m going to keep on crossing arbitrarily drawn boundaries until I am blocked, banned and banished by all #BossyCows from here to Timbuktu. Yup, you better believe it, buster.
OK, this one I’ll abide by. But ONLY this one.
For my Columbus cousin: Yeah, you heard me.Don’t know anyone in SD, but if I did…
