The Arrow #142

Hello friends.

Greetings from Dallas.

I made it back from Scotland and Ireland in one piece, but not without a lot of hassle. In order to get the tickets we wanted at the time we wanted them (and without forking over a zillion dollars for them), we ended up getting flights on two sets of tickets with two different airlines. We flew from Dallas to Boston on American and from Boston to Dublin on Aer Lingus. Same coming back. The two ticket deal got us business class tickets without spending a fortune, but not without a fair bit more than a dollop of angst.

The worst of it was that we had to collect our bags in Boston both going and coming and shlep them to a different terminal for our connecting flight. Then recheck and go through security yet again. I was hoping fate would shine down on us and ensure that all our flights were going into and coming out of the same terminal, because I didn’t know what the terminal to terminal transportation was in Boston. Of course, they weren’t. Domestic American goes into terminal B while Aer Lingus goes into and out of terminal C.

The transfer requires a bus trip from one terminal to the next. On our way to Europe, it was fairly easy. The buses run from Terminal A to B to C to D to E then to the car rental. We came into B, so we could hop on a bus doing the circuit and get off at C. Going the other way wasn’t as easy. We were warned not to get on any bus going to the car rental, because it took forever. There is one bus, the #11 bus, that simply goes round the circuit hitting all the terminals. You would think there would be a lot of #11 buses, but you would be wrong. Apparently, there is only one, and it moves at the pace of cold molasses.

We stood out in the wind forever waiting for it. When it finally came, it stopped and waited at each terminal for what seemed like an eternity. We finally got to B, which meant we made the entire circuit from C, where we had come in. We had almost three hours between flights, and we got our checked bags fairly quickly, so we figured we would have some lounge time once we got to Terminal B. Such was not the case thanks to the inter-terminal bus situation. By the time we got to B, checked in, and made it through security, we had no time for the lounge.

I realize these are all first world problems. But they don’t feel like it when you’re tired and jet-lagged. And had too much Irish whisky on the transatlantic leg of the flight.

As I’ve always said, the only fast thing about flying is the flying itself. Everything before takeoff and after landing is a time-gobbling slog.

I can’t believe how much stuff is going on in the world right now. I’m giving you advance warning that this issue of The Arrow will be video heavy. I finally succumbed and bought a premium subscription to YouTube because a) I could avoid all the annoying ads at the start of and during every video I wanted to watch, and b) it allows me to download the videos to watch offline. It’s almost impossible for me to sit still long enough to watch a long video without letting it run in the background while I check emails or flip through tabs on my browser. For some reason, I’m able to on a plane, so I watched a lot on the trip over and back. (Another thing that has helped me is to crank up the speed to 1.5 times normal, or even 2 times normal for some speakers.)

The only way I can really discuss the issues I want to discuss is to have you, the reader, watch the video. I suppose I could transcribe them all, but that isn’t really practical. You may not want to watch them all all the way through, so I’ll provide some context. If it sounds like something you’re not interested in, just bag it.

Before we get into the important stuff, I’ve got to regale you with an episode from my early employment history.

I May Have Set Up the First ATM in America

I read an article a couple of days ago about how the early ATM machines were pretty much ignored by banking customers until a big blizzard hit the Northeast in 1978. Everything was closed including the banks, but customers of Citibank could get cash from the formerly ignored ATMs. After that, their use spread rapidly until now they are everywhere.

When I was in engineering school in Southern California in 1969, I tried my hand at a number of jobs including life insurance salesman. For reasons long forgotten, I got involved with group of guys who had started an insurance agency. The head of the agency was a real entrepreneurial type, who was always on the lookout for ways to make money in addition to what he made through the insurance business. Not only was he an entrepreneur, he was an incredible salesman. And like most good salesmen, he was a mark for other good salespeople.

He was approached by someone who sold him on the idea of an early version of what ultimately became an ATM. The machines were totally primitive as compared to the units all over the world today. The bank using the unit sold cards worth $40 to its clients. Then, when the client needed cash, he/she could go to the bank anytime day or night, put the card in the slot in the machine, and an envelope with $40 would be expressed. As I said, totally primitive. But there was nothing like it available at that point.

My boss—the entrepreneur—bought the first franchise and started trying to sell it. It was a tough go and he couldn’t get any bank in Southern California to bite on the deal.

Somehow—and I don’t know how (family connections, maybe?)—my boss sold one machine to a bank in St. Louis, Missouri, of all places. This is where I come into the story.

Most kids leave home for the first time when they go to college. In my case, it was the other way around. My dad got transferred from Southern California to Michigan when I was starting engineering school, so my home moved away from me. I was planning on heading to Michigan for Christmas break at about the same time all this ATM installation in St. Louis was to take place. My boss asked me if I would be willing to fly to St. Louis and help get the machine working, then fly on to Detroit. I agreed, though I was clueless about the installation of these machines. He said, you’re training to be an engineer, so you know more about it than anyone here. We’re all insurance salesmen.

I get to St. Louis and get off the plane out on the tarmac and almost freeze going down the stairs. I take a cab to the bank where the unit has already been installed in the wall of the bank, but no one knows how to make it work. I take a look at the instructions for the first time and start to feel my way though. I’m working under a short time fuse as I’m supposed to be flying out later that afternoon so the company doesn’t have to spend the money on a hotel room for me. Somehow I get the thing working, but no one at the bank really seems all that happy about it.

I end up making my flight to Detroit. And, as I recall, the whole thing was a fiasco. The machine did not work all the time. Customers didn’t take to it. The bank wanted its money back. I think lawsuits probably flew all over the place. But I was gone as I discovered I really didn’t like being an insurance salesman.

Every time I hear the great John Prine song Illegal Smile, I think about those days when I hear the verse:

I can’t remember now if I sold any policies to any friends or not, but, whatever the case, I hope they don’t think of me whenever they hear this song.

In any case, looking at the dates in the ATM article linked above, I may well have, if not physically installed, at least made the very first one in America work. For awhile.

More On Steel vs Wood In Construction

Last week I wrote a section on an amazing fact I learned on my first day of engineering school, namely that wood will maintain its structural stability in a fire much longer than will steel. Until burned completely through, wood will carry a weight, whereas steel will bend.

Richard Nikoley sent me a short video by a blacksmith demonstrating what happens to steel when it’s heated.

Okay, on to less fun stuff.

Dangerous Times In Which We’re Living

I once read a piece by (or heard an interview with) a very smart person—I think it was Kevin Kelly, but can’t remember for sure—that the mark of a critical or independent thinker is that no one should be able to guess his/her opinions on many issues by just asking a couple of questions.

For example, if I ask someone his/her opinion on gun control and climate change and get a honest answer, I can pretty much tell what that person’s opinion is on abortion, school choice, immigration, the minimum wage, gender-affirming care, and a host of other things. But most people never think these things through. People who are staunch members of one political party—doesn’t matter which one—will have pretty much the same views on all these issues, despite coming from diverse backgrounds. Had there been no political tribe to influence their thinking, these people would have come to different opinions on all these subjects based on their own life experiences and independent thinking.

My opinions on these subjects are all over the place, but I have one lodestone that I kind of set my sights by. And that, hokey as it may sound, is the US Constitution. I have an almost religious fervor for it. I don’t think that particularly makes me a right winger, or a left winger, for that matter. Both sides of the political aisle wave the Constitution when they think its contents favor them. And try to completely ignore it when what it says doesn’t break their way.

I have this feeling about it because by following its edicts the people of the United States have created the greatest amount of prosperity, freedom, and happiness in the shortest period of time in world history. That is the Constitution’s legacy.

I’ll be the first to admit that the Constitution’s benefits have not been bestowed equally on all. Black people certainly did not have the same rights and privileges white people did until relatively recently. Over the early years of the country, most immigrant groups suffered prejudice and hostility, but, still, the US under the Constitution was better than wherever they came from.

Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to worship however one wants to worship, no unreasonable search and seizure, property rights, innocent until proven guilty, and numerous other rights and privileges were granted to citizens by the Constitution. And since the granting of such, groups here and there have been pecking away at it and nibbling around the edges in an effort to gain power and destroy those who oppose them.

In the last few years, this process has gone into overdrive.

Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Government—all pretty much controlled by what I call the connected class—have basically joined forces and have become outright dangerous. Unless you are a nameless, faceless person in the crowd. Then you can have your freedom of speech. But if you have a platform, beware. They are coming to get you. And they will stop at nothing until you are destroyed.

Let’s look at three cases. None of which is Donald Trump, who is definitely in the sights of the connected class.

Russell Brand

As everyone by now knows, Russell Brand has been accused of rape and sexual assault. And these accusations are serious and were brought to light by an impeccable source, The Times, also referred to as The Times of London, an old-line paper of record in the UK. The New York Times took its name from The Times. It is a serious paper. And the charges against Brand are serious. The laws of the United States make it extremely difficult for a media outlet to lose a libel suit against a public figure they have libeled. That’s not the case in the UK. Various media there have lost libel cases and, as is the law in the UK, have had to pay not only damages, but legal fees for both sides.

So, media outlets there are vastly more cautious when contemplating a hit piece on a celebrity. Which makes The Times article considerably more damning. The authors of the article had to run it past countless editors and staff, showing documentation, before anything went to print.

What you’ve got to ask yourself after reading this piece is, why now? All these events allegedly took place decades ago. Why did no one pursue it then? If anything Brand was more famous then than he is now. And the alleged assaults upon the victims were more recent. Why wait for decades?

I think everyone knows the answer.

Russell Brand has been red pilled. And now he’s asking all kinds of inconvenient questions about the vaccines, the lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, Big Tech, and all kinds of issues the connected class doesn’t like to have aired. And they’re out to get him.

I, myself, am not a big fan of Russell Brand’s. His is just the kind of mouthy, overbearing persona I can’t stand. He is quite glib, and his schtick is to dominate every conversation he takes part in. If I ran into him at a party, I would head to the other side of the room as soon as I politely could. I can’t stand the kind of person his public persona comes across as. I have no idea how he acts in private.

But he has been red pilled. And he’s not afraid to talk about it. In fact, he has built up a huge YouTube following that I’m sure makes (made) him a ton of money.

For those of you who don’t know, here is how YouTube works. I’ve been on both ends of it. The watching end and the advertising end. Whenever you start up almost any YouTube you get an ad fed to you. It ultimately runs out and you can then watch the video. If it’s a long video, you’ll be hit with another ad or maybe even a few more, depending upon length. If you do nothing, these ads end, but if one seizes your interest—and YouTube, owned by Google, is very good at knowing your interests—and you click on it to watch more, the entity placing the ad gets charged. A portion of these charges ends up going to the person or entity that produced the video.

(Just as an aside, I don’t get a penny on any of the videos of me out there circulating around. These are all of talks I’ve given, and the organizers of the talks are who produced the videos. They reap whatever the gain is. Not I. Unfortunately.)

So, if you’re Russell Brand and you’ve got 4 million people who watch your YouTube videos—which are long enough to contain multiple ads—then you reap a pretty penny in advertising revenue.

Now Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and abuse, but he hasn’t yet—at least as far as I know—been arrested and charged. These are simply allegations made by various women from his past. He has not been found guilty—he hasn’t even been charged (unless things have changed since the last time I looked). This isn’t a Harvey Weinstein deal where he has gone to court and been found guilty.

But YouTube has demonetized his YouTube videos. YouTube is continuing to run the videos and continuing to run ads on the videos, but they are keeping all the money from these ads and not giving Brand his rightful share.

He is learning the hard way that if you have a major platform, you’d better have a squeaky clean personal history, because they are going to go after you.

Had Brand not been red pilled and continued with his progressive comedy routines of old, I seriously doubt any of this would have happened to him. Of course, he may not have had the huge YouTube audience he does, but he also wouldn’t be in serious legal jeopardy.

Bret Weinstein

Bret Weinstein’s case is much more subtle, but in the world of science, it’s a big deal. Not in science in general, but if you’re a scientist and this happens to you, it’s a big deal.

We’re coming to our first long video. I’ve been in an email exchange with Peter Dobromylskyj of Hyperlipid fame about a particular study in which proteomics was used to generate data. He sent me the Weinstein video for the discussion about data-driven research versus hypothesis-driven research. But once I watched the video, I realized how Bret had gotten screwed. No doubt as a consequence of his stance on the Covid vaccines.

But there is much more in this video than just what happened to Bret, which makes it well worth watching.

Wow! I just tried to insert this YouTube video like I did the one about the iron bending above. It didn’t work. Usually all I have to do to get a YouTube video to be inserted into Substack is to simply paste the link. That did not work here. All that came up was the link. I’ve made the graphic above live, so you can click it and go to the video queued to the spot where the info of interest to our discussion starts. Or you can click the link below and get to the same place.

https://www.youtube.com/live/CcgzrMrnBUE?si=5T0u9rwBJ5LZ65q6&t=1455

After this happened, I tried a handful of other random YouTube videos, all of which embedded themselves normally. Then I tried another Bret and Heather video, and the same thing happened: it wouldn’t embed. So, they, too, have probably been demonetized. And YouTube has instructed its API not to make these videos available. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this.

Goes to show what happens if you don’t follow the rules when it comes to the vaccines and other things Big Pharma and Big Tech don’t like to hear. Or perhaps it is Uncle Sam leaning on them to do this.

This particular YouTube video that I linked above has nothing to do with vaccines or Big Pharma, so it appears that Bret and Heather have gotten crossways with Big Tech, so they’re being punished by having ALL their videos made difficult to view on other platforms.

Getting back to the video…

Bret and Heather returned from a trip on which they had been out of touch only to find an article in the New York Times discussing some new research on telomeres.

(Telomeres are the little bits of replicating genetic material attached to the ends of our chromosomes that depletes each time the cell divides. The more telomeres, the more replications the cell can go through. The telomeres are what bring about senescence, because once our cells run out, there is no more replication and, ultimately, no more us. In general, the longer the telomere chain is on a given species (there is variation within the species) the longer lived that species is.)

The Times article reported on a recent New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) study in which something Bret and a colleague had predicted over 20 years before had been validated in the laboratory. The only problem was, the work Brett and his colleague had done wasn’t mentioned in the NEJM article, which, at the very least should have referenced it in the citations. They discuss what the paper means and how it builds on Brett and his colleague’s earlier work.

They had just discovered the Times article when they returned from their trip. A few months later, they reported on this paper again (on a different platform) and told how they wrote a letter to the editor of the NEJM about the paper, which the NEJM refused to publish.

They then go into the history of the whole idea beginning with a description of a brilliant talk given by Peter Medawar in 1952, which I found to be incredibly interesting. Then they go on to the work of George Williams and his 1957 paper that fills in the gaps on senescence Medawar missed, which is that some genes might be helpful for survival during early life, yet harmful later in life. While studying all this Bret attended a talk by a grad student studying cancer, who said they had found telomerase, an enzyme that basically sticks more telomeres onto the chain, in cancer cells. The student then said that if they could figure out how to get rid of telomerase, they could cure cancer.

Bret, who had been working on senescence knew his group was thinking just the opposite: if we could lengthen telomeres, we could live much longer. He then realized this was what Williams had been talking about. What makes you live longer, can end up killing you later.

Now if we go back to the first video—most of the preceding info I’ve laid out comes from the video linked right above the picture of the NEJM rejection letter—Bret and Heather get into what this all really means.

One of the things Bret’s paper described is that mice kept for experimental purposes would end up with vastly longer telomeres than mice in the wild. Which is what the NEJM paper reported. As the article in the Times about the NEJM paper stated:

Here from the abstract of Bret’s paper 20 years before:

So lab mice have long telomeres. Who cares? What difference does it make?

Well, if you go back to the original YouTube video above and go to the section on broken mice you’ll find out.

What it means is that these mice, due to elongated telomeres, are not good animals to use to study the toxicity of drugs. Since they have such long telomeres, they can survive toxic insults from experimental drugs much better than, say, wild mice that have much shorter telomeres.

A toxic drug kills cells. If a test animal has short telomeres, it doesn’t take much cell death to show up as an injury to the animal. If the animal has exceptionally long telomeres, as lab mice do, then a given dose of a drug will still kill cells, but the cells will retain the capacity to reproduce, so the damage isn’t apparent.

Then, when the drug is given to humans, it turns out to be toxic, despite its not harming the mice. Which is what Bret describes happened in the disastrous Vioxx trial.

The scientific information in these two videos is superb, and I encourage you to watch the parts I’ve tee’d up for you.

But the point I want to make is that Bret probably got canceled because of his stance on the vaccines. Which is probably why the NEJM turned down his letter to the editor. Bret and Heather talk around this issue in the first video above by saying that science is science, and it shouldn’t matter if the person who comes up with a scientific finding is odious in other matters. It’s the science that matters. They don’t go so far as to say Bret was scientifically canceled because of his stand on vaccines, but it’s pretty obvious to any thinking person that that’s what happened.

So, it’s not just Russell Brand and his alleged sexual misadventures. Serious scientists get written out of the history books if they go up against Big Pharma.

The next example is political, and it’s the worst of all.

Ken Paxton

Who is Ken Paxton? Well, he’s the attorney general for the state of Texas. The highest law enforcement official in the state. And the establishment, i.e., the connected class, tried—unsuccessfully, thank God—to destroy him. That is no hyperbole. They truly tried to destroy him.

He’s a Republican in a red state, so why would other Republicans try to destroy him?

Well, a couple of reasons. First, there is this May 1, 2023 announcement from his office about a new investigation into Big Pharma. Take a look at the part I underlined.

If you don’t think that got the attention of Pfizer and Moderna, you would be wrong.

On top of this, Paxton is filing and winning lawsuits right and left over election fraud. Here he is talking about the 12 cases he filed and won.

Click on graphic or on this link: https://rumble.com/v39eoby-ken-paxton-on-the-2022-election-if-we-dont-make-this-an-issue-we-will-lose-.html

In this video, he goes into detail about how he filed suit in all these counties in Texas that were planning on using mail-in ballots. He won in all cases. Which did not set well with the connected class, who have this goal of turning Texas blue.

Paxton makes an interesting point. He says that in the 2016 election Trump had almost the same margin of victory in Georgia as he had in Texas. Which makes sense, if you think about. Both Texas and Georgia are red states with similar demographics. But in 2020—after Paxton killed the 12 attempts at indiscriminate mail-in voting—Trump won Texas by about the same margin as 2016 whereas he barely lost in Georgia, which had mail-in voting.

Mail-in voting is rife with the potential for cheating. And as long as it is allowed, we will never have safe and secure elections.

Ken Paxton ended up getting articles of impeachment filed against him by the Texas House out of the blue. He won his last election over the grandson of GHW Bush and nephew of GW Bush by a huge margin. 62-38% if I remember correctly. He wins these 12 lawsuits and goes after Big Pharma, and suddenly has articles of impeachment filed against him.

He ends up showing there was no there there to any of the charges, which were heinous, and beats the charges by a huge margin in the senate. I watched part of the hearings while I was overseas. At least what I could get online. Paxton’s lawyer absolutely excoriated all the folks who brought charges. Made them look like total fools as they had just “suspected” he might be guilty of something. When asked directly what evidence they had, they all admitted they had none. It was all supposition.

As I was writing about this last night, I took a break to check Twitter, and discovered that Tucker had done a long interview with Paxton. I watched it and deleted a lot of what I had written, because Paxton lived it, so his recollection is bound to be better than mine. It is a total horror story that I didn’t know the half of. It does confirm one of the things I’ve always thought: Karl Rove is a swine. As are a lot of other people involved in this.

Click the graphic or click this link: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1704665052031172641?s=20

Absolutely mind boggling. But not when you realize who the forces are that are arrayed against Paxton for going after Big Pharma and election fraud. A whole lot of people like things just as they are. And don’t want the boat rocked.

Here is just one such person. Jacinda Ardern, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who resigned before she got thrown out for mishandling the so-called pandemic.

She’s making a heartfelt plea at the United Nations a couple of days ago for more censorship. Free speech, so she says, is a weapon of war and must be censored. [Jesus wept!] Virtually everything she called misinformation or disinformation on Covid during her truncated term ended up being the truth. So can we count on her to be the arbiter of what’s true and what isn’t? I’m sure Harvard must think so. After she cut and ran from her leadership role in New Zealand, Harvard provided her with not one, but two, fellowships.

One of the things the lovely Jacinda wanted was to completely shut the country down, because, you know, close contact with anyone coming in with Covid could allow it to swarm throughout the islands. That was her truth. Anything else was mis- or disinformation. She actually said in one clip I put up in a previous Arrow that if you want the truth we’ll give it to you. Believe no one but us.

Now comes Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals with an article titled Mass gatherings for political expression had no discernible association with the local course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA in 2020 and 2021. According to the abstract the researchers

They then looked to see if there was any difference in Covid cases in the 40 days after these events and concluded that

In other words, people standing cheek by jowl screaming and chanting at the tops of their lungs didn’t spread the virus. Remember, singing was verboten, because, allegedly, projecting one’s voice disseminates an enormous number of deadly Covid viral particles. So church choirs needed to shut down. Just like New Zealand.

How can any of these people be believed again?

Dreadful Vaccine News…Probably

I caught a Naomi Wolf interview last night with Ed Dowd. The subject was the massive increase in deaths from cardiovascular disease in the UK in people in the 15-44 year old demographic. The statistics tell a dreadful story as death trends are accelerating in a group in which death rates shouldn’t be all that high.

Dowd gets his data from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS). I wish the CDC provided these kinds of statistics in a timely fashion. It’s difficult to believe that the wealthiest nation on earth can’t get its act together enough to provide death statistics within a reasonable time period, but we can’t. Everyone who dies ends up with a death certificate. I’ve pronounced my share of people as dead during my ER and hospital days. I always assumed the hospitals took the certificates I signed and sent them to some government agency. I would think that would be either the county or the state. Why can’t these tabulated stats for these certificates be sent to the CDC, where national figures could be determined? It’s a mystery to me.

The UK system isn’t flawless, but at least it exists for the near term.

When Dowd’s group looked at cardiovascular deaths in the 15-44 age group, what they found was stunning.

You can see that the excess deaths per 100,000 on the left side shows a marked increase. But the right side really tells the tale. Those are Z-scores, which is a statistical measure of how much the result varies from the average. Z-scores in the 5s, 6s and above are extremely rare. 10 is almost unheard of. You can see the cardiovascular deaths are over the top. This chart doesn’t tell us the cause of these excess cardiovascular deaths. Is it the vaccines? Is it some lingering effect from the lockdowns? It’s difficult to say. But with more and more papers coming out showing myocarditis and other cardiac issues with the vaccines, it’s difficult not to attribute these deaths to them.

SOURCE

From the explanation accompanying these charts:

You’ve got to realize that cardiovascular deaths are pretty damn rare in people between the ages of 15 and 44, so these really jump off the page.

If you look at the disability figures in the age group 16-44, you find the same thing. Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are the disability payments made to people having varying disorders preventing them from working. Here is the chart.

As you can see, there was a slight uptick in payments in 2020 and then an acceleration in 2021 and 2022.

From the report:

In my view, this is really a grim situation. Especially if the stats turn out to be similar in the US. All of these young deaths could completely destabilize the insurance industry.

As Dowd mentioned in his interview, when the insurance C-suite folks get together and start talking about what is happening to their company financially and what to do about it, the general counsel is sitting in the room, too. And tells them, Look, you guys mandated the vaccine for our employees. Don’t be too eager to blame it on the jabs, or we’ll get sued by our own staff.

Who knows how this will all turn out? All I can say is after seeing these UK statistics, I’m less surprised to read about all these young people pitching over dead on the ball field. It’s really tragic. I hope that if the Covid vaccines are found to be at fault, which I suspect will be the case, that there is a true reckoning.

Speaking of someone else who got canceled… There is Naomi Wolf, former darling of the far left. Who became vaccine hesitant and was booted from the team.

And let’s not forget Elon Musk. Here’s the headline in the Wall Street Journal just yesterday.

The article goes on to discuss how the Department of Justice is looking to see if Tesla provided Elon Musk with perks over the past several years. If Elon Musk hadn’t released the Twitter files showing how the feds, including the DOJ, leaned hard on Twitter to cancel people whose views the administration didn’t like, do you think he would be being scrutinized? How about if he were a rabid vaccine promoter? Think he would be under the microscope right now?

Hey Heather Heying, Roads Are For Cars

I should have made the headline say something about a public service announcement, but I since I was on a Heather and Bret roll today, I figured I would go with that.

But what I’m going to tell you may well save your life. And I’m going to have fellow ER doctor Doug McGuff amplify the message.

Several weeks ago Heather wrote the following in her weekly Substack in a post she titled Rules of the Road.

She goes on to describe all the experience she has had biking and how careful she is to obey all the biking laws.

She then describes how she went back to the same spot later in the day and came at it from the driver’s direction. She discovered the visibility from that direction wasn’t as good as she thought it was.

The moral of this story for me is that bikes should stay off the roads. For their own sake. Your mantra should be Roads Are For Cars.

A biker doesn’t have a chance if he/she gets slammed by a car. I would stay off the roads simply for self preservation. Same with walking along roads. I once had to deal with a guy in the ER whose head had been pulped by a West Coast mirror on a pickup. Just like the West Coast mirror I had put on my own pickup back when I drove a pickup.

The guy was jogging and the truck got a little too close, and wham. It was not pretty.

When I was in the airport in Boston waiting for the #11 bus that just wouldn’t come, I saw at least a dozen people just walk out into the crosswalk without even looking. They just assumed they were in the right, so they wouldn’t be dead if they got run over by one of the cars or busses passing one another trying to get through. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is if you’re dead … or mangled.

And that’s why they call them accidents. They are unintentional. But if you are on the wrong side of them, you could well be a goner.

Dr. Doug McGuff gave a terrific talk a few years ago about how screwed up the medical system is in the US. It was about the hospital system in particular. And his advice is to stay out of it if you can at all do so.

Near the end of the talk, after he addresses diet and exercise, he gives what he calls his dirty dozen ways you can end up in the belly of the beast. All should be—and can be—avoided. I’ve queued the video to this important part of the talk. In my ER experience, I’ve seen every one of the issues he lists, except the ladder ones. Somehow I missed having any of those come into my ER. But, after listening to him, I’ve been reluctant to get on a ladder. And when I do, I am exceedingly careful.

Here you go.

Roads are for cars. It’s a law of nature even though it isn’t a law of the land. And the powers that be all want to encourage biking to reduce carbon emissions, but they won’t save you if you are completely in the right and you get mowed down.

This may be the best advice you’ll get all week.

Okay, I barely scratched the surface of the list of things I wanted to write about this week. But I guess I’ll have a lot for next week.

Video of the Week

The day before yesterday was the anniversary of Jim Croce’s death in a plane crash. He and his guitarist and the pilot all died when the chartered plane hit a tree on take off. His biggest hit wasTime In a Bottle, which was released posthumously. Give it a listen in his honor.

I learned that he wrote this song when he found out his wife was pregnant with their first child. Which makes it even more poignant.

But, I also discovered his son grew up to be a musician like his dad. Here is a video of him singing and playing piano.

H/T to Ted Gioia for reminding me of the anniversary of Croce’s death. I was a huge fan.

I’m sorry for getting this out a little late today, but I encountered Substack technical difficulties. I kept getting the message below. It was not only irritating, it slows a man down mightily. But there is a bright side (more about which in a sec).

I was finally able to come up with a work around, so I could get this thing finished, and when I did and MD was vetting it, I got this late post from Maryanne Demasi. So in case you need another excuse to avoid the Covid vaccines, here is her piece in full.

Well, that’s about it for this week. Next week will focus on nutrition. I had to get all this out of my system today. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

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