This week's Arrow previews the new cover for PP 2.0, more tales from the connected class, Covid vaccines and death, heart disease deaths on the decline, weight loss in the elderly, longevity and natural selection, and the video of the week.
I saw Gordon Lightfoot in concert back in the early 1980s at a South Lake Tahoe casino. I was working at Harrah's at the time. I'm not sure in which club he was playing but it was a fairly small venue and the concert was absolutely delightful.
I saw him in concert less than a year ago. He played before a packed house that seats some 2300 people. The crowd LOVED him and willed him on as we sang to our favorites. This man is loved/respected and while we can say that it would have been better to have seen him 20 years ago, I can say that the price of the ticket was a small price to pay to say thank you to this legend and had the opportunity to show my appreciation for a great career. I was sorry and sad to learn of his passing.
We saw him in 2018 or 2019 in Portland, Maine. I felt exactly the same as you. He touched my life and my heart with his music, and I was just so appreciative that I could be present and thank him for his gift of music to us all.
In April last year, I attended a 70th birthday celebration lunch in a basement restaurant in London. The guests had travelled there from America, Sweden and other parts of the UK. We were there for four hours, everyone mingling and talking at the tops of their voices after the long-time-no-see hugs. I was one of the few who wasn’t a doctor, and likely the only unvaccinated one: all the others would have had every booster going.
Perfect conditions for catching Covid19...Of the twenty-three of us, twenty got the lurgy, including me (but for *me* it was the first time). Birthday boy, an eminent neurosurgeon, had told me a few months earlier at another lunch that he was going to keep getting the boosters, because “You can’t be too safe”.
May 5, 2023·edited May 5, 2023Liked by Michael Eades
Thanks for the tribute to GL. I’ve been a huge fan since childhood when my father turned me on to him. While all my friends were listening to Aerosmith and Kiss, I was the weird one with the Gordon Lightfoot albums. Never got a chance to see him live. His hits were “his hits” but a deep dive into his music really shows what an incredible wordsmith and musician he really was. RIP Gordo! Thanks for the memories!
Luxury Beliefs - I like it! That idea is probably very similar to the "Armchair Quarterback". Those people who daydream with flawed logic having rarely, if ever, participated in the real world (like cleaning a latrine of toilets or a restaurant grease trap). Myopic scope, at best.
Along with Connected Class, I sometimes use "NarcisSect" (because they're a sect of narcissists) or "Lotus League" (a reference to the Lotus Eaters in The Odyssey).
I also love Gordon and his song, A Song For a Winter's Night, but I love this version better. I think it was done back in the late '60s. Notice how subdued and well behaved his audience is compared to today's audience.
Yes, a great rendition, but I thought the audience was less into the music - more concerned with behaving appropriately - which I didn't find particularly appealing. One chap was moving with the music - what I don't understand (and I've seen this at symphony concerts all the time) is how people can sit absolutely still listening to any music that moves one. Not necessary to jump around but no movement whatsoever? Hmmm - anyone got an explanation?
Song for a Winter's night - I listen to this one all the time. I prefer the voice of this older Lightfoot much like James Taylor's voice in his later years.
Although my favorite Lightfoot song is If Y Could Read My Mind. Here is a wonderful musical analysis of that song. Skip the first 4 and half minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X33YyowZZxQ
Okay, thanks for introducing me to something that will now suck away a bunch of time I can ill afford to spend. Fascinating analysis. Who knew those songs were that complex?
IYI was me in my 20s. "he never worked at a real company that makes stuff. His sanctions were destined to fail from the start."
Then I worked on real projects where failure was obvious. I enjoyed those next decades a lot. I was even head hunted. The best thing ever said to me by the CEO of a company was, roughly, many people come and tell us what we need, you are the first person to listen to us about what we need and then deliver it.
Thanks for the book tip, I ordered The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. Never too old to learn new pitfalls. It took me a long time to realise that many ‘deciders’ knew little about what they were deciding.
Given your work history, I think you'll enjoy The Basic Laws. I saw it on a table in a bookstore in Paris years ago and picked it up on a whim. I thought it was a kind of joke book. Then I read it. It is profound. Changed my definition of stupidity and made me realize just how many stupid people--as defined in the book--there are in our midst.
Alas, while sales of Bud Lite have dropped, AB/Inbev reported that it beat its quarterly earnings projections. So these events may fall into the "no publicity is bad publicity" category.
Thanks for the article. I'm not sure this falls into the 'no publicity is bad publicity' category, however. According to the article "But Bud Light sales took a major hit in April following an ad boycott." And "Bud Light volume sales, including sales at grocery, convenience and liquor stores, tumbled 26.1% year-over-year for the week ending April 22, trade publication Beer Business Daily reported Sunday. For the week ending April 15, volumes were down 21.1%. Bud Light sales volumes are down 8% so far this year."
I doubt any company would like to see that news about one of its flagship products. Plus, if it had been a PR triumph, I don't think they would have ditched the person who kicked it off and even the person who hired her.
Agree, but this might be related to the fact that the company owns so many brands now. People can stop buying the brand only to switch to another brand owned by the same company. So while the brand suffers in the short terms, the company continues to do well. Your points of course are entirely valid, and it is nice to see the culture reject this kind of brand ESG. However, the point of my comment is that what looks like a minor victory in the Culture Wars may well be a Pyrrhic one, or an illusory one.
The AI image generators are pretty good now if you wanted to play around with different cover images. I tried the the Bing version and got some nice results, although not ideal. Other AIs like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion should be better.
Hi Mike - One question about the new cover - what are the brownish, spikey things tucked in behind the chicken drumstick? The look like crickets (surely not?). Wheat stalks? (Hope not.) Shrimp?
The AB bit is hilarious - although my British husband claims that any beer AB makes is like sex in a canoe. We're great fans of a British beer called Old Peculiar - even though I stay away from anything with wheat in it, it's the one glass of beer I will have when we're in the UK.
The lion and the stupid decisions cartoon still has me laughing. Seems to me that 90% of DC belongs in that category - and I've already ordered the book - on audible - where it was only $3.49.
I did watch the entire Joe Rogan episode with Aseem Malhotra - and also subscribe to Zoe's newsletter - so I feel as if I'm in really good company subscribing to the Arrow.
Thanks for the Gordon Lightfoot video too. Such a pleasure.
Only a couple of typos - although I was so interested in every section I might have missed some . . .
Before people starting smoking in huge numbers circa WWI,
Re the final design for the cover Protein Power 2 - does this mean the book will be published fairly soon ?
I can testify to the effects of losing weight in hospital when you are thin. I was born with a heart defect and needed open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve when I was 60. Due to eating low carb Paleo for several years and weight lifting, I was very lean and very fit, good muscles, when I went into hospital. The week in hospital following surgery I found it difficult to eat due to pain and side effects of pain meds and I lost so much weight - I could see my body "eating” away my muscles, it was dreadful. Now, ten years later, I’ve still not regained all the weight I lost. So the question is how does someone gain weight on low carb Paleo so their body has a little padding and resources (for surgery and hospital) ? I eat a lot of protein with added fat.
The easy answer to the 'How do I gain weight' question is: Eat carbs. But it's not the healthful answer. I would recommend the protein and fat diet combined with resistance exercise, which will increase muscle mass as quickly as it can be done. Make sure to get a couple of meals with 40 g of protein a day. These need to come from foods of animal origin to get the 2-3 grams of leucine to kick off mTOR.
As to the book...probably early next year. It's a process.
I saw Gordon Lightfoot in concert back in the early 1980s at a South Lake Tahoe casino. I was working at Harrah's at the time. I'm not sure in which club he was playing but it was a fairly small venue and the concert was absolutely delightful.
I saw him in concert less than a year ago. He played before a packed house that seats some 2300 people. The crowd LOVED him and willed him on as we sang to our favorites. This man is loved/respected and while we can say that it would have been better to have seen him 20 years ago, I can say that the price of the ticket was a small price to pay to say thank you to this legend and had the opportunity to show my appreciation for a great career. I was sorry and sad to learn of his passing.
We saw him in 2018 or 2019 in Portland, Maine. I felt exactly the same as you. He touched my life and my heart with his music, and I was just so appreciative that I could be present and thank him for his gift of music to us all.
In April last year, I attended a 70th birthday celebration lunch in a basement restaurant in London. The guests had travelled there from America, Sweden and other parts of the UK. We were there for four hours, everyone mingling and talking at the tops of their voices after the long-time-no-see hugs. I was one of the few who wasn’t a doctor, and likely the only unvaccinated one: all the others would have had every booster going.
Perfect conditions for catching Covid19...Of the twenty-three of us, twenty got the lurgy, including me (but for *me* it was the first time). Birthday boy, an eminent neurosurgeon, had told me a few months earlier at another lunch that he was going to keep getting the boosters, because “You can’t be too safe”.
Thanks for the tribute to GL. I’ve been a huge fan since childhood when my father turned me on to him. While all my friends were listening to Aerosmith and Kiss, I was the weird one with the Gordon Lightfoot albums. Never got a chance to see him live. His hits were “his hits” but a deep dive into his music really shows what an incredible wordsmith and musician he really was. RIP Gordo! Thanks for the memories!
I think you're nailing it with the Connected Class. There's a similar concept that I think is related -- Luxury Beliefs.
"Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class."
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-struggle-for
https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/thorstein-veblens-theory-of-the-leisure
Luxury Beliefs - I like it! That idea is probably very similar to the "Armchair Quarterback". Those people who daydream with flawed logic having rarely, if ever, participated in the real world (like cleaning a latrine of toilets or a restaurant grease trap). Myopic scope, at best.
Along with Connected Class, I sometimes use "NarcisSect" (because they're a sect of narcissists) or "Lotus League" (a reference to the Lotus Eaters in The Odyssey).
I also love Gordon and his song, A Song For a Winter's Night, but I love this version better. I think it was done back in the late '60s. Notice how subdued and well behaved his audience is compared to today's audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfyDs6uXww0&pp=ygUZc29uZyBmb3IgYSB3aW50ZXIncyBuaWdodA%3D%3D
Yes, a great rendition.
Also, notice how thin the people in the audience were back in those days.
After watching your selection, I saw he also sang one of my old favorites - Early Morning Rain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B34qwRrkSvQ
Yes, a great rendition, but I thought the audience was less into the music - more concerned with behaving appropriately - which I didn't find particularly appealing. One chap was moving with the music - what I don't understand (and I've seen this at symphony concerts all the time) is how people can sit absolutely still listening to any music that moves one. Not necessary to jump around but no movement whatsoever? Hmmm - anyone got an explanation?
As MD can confirm, it's impossible for me to sit still during a concert I enjoy.
Song for a Winter's night - I listen to this one all the time. I prefer the voice of this older Lightfoot much like James Taylor's voice in his later years.
Although my favorite Lightfoot song is If Y Could Read My Mind. Here is a wonderful musical analysis of that song. Skip the first 4 and half minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X33YyowZZxQ
If you like that kind of analysis, check out this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnRxTW8GxT8
Phil
Okay, thanks for introducing me to something that will now suck away a bunch of time I can ill afford to spend. Fascinating analysis. Who knew those songs were that complex?
IYI was me in my 20s. "he never worked at a real company that makes stuff. His sanctions were destined to fail from the start."
Then I worked on real projects where failure was obvious. I enjoyed those next decades a lot. I was even head hunted. The best thing ever said to me by the CEO of a company was, roughly, many people come and tell us what we need, you are the first person to listen to us about what we need and then deliver it.
Thanks for the book tip, I ordered The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. Never too old to learn new pitfalls. It took me a long time to realise that many ‘deciders’ knew little about what they were deciding.
Given your work history, I think you'll enjoy The Basic Laws. I saw it on a table in a bookstore in Paris years ago and picked it up on a whim. I thought it was a kind of joke book. Then I read it. It is profound. Changed my definition of stupidity and made me realize just how many stupid people--as defined in the book--there are in our midst.
From Nassim Taleb’s book, Skin in the Game,
“You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. “Educated philistines” have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets.”
I haven’t read it, but thought you’d find the last “wrong” thing listed interesting.
Alas, while sales of Bud Lite have dropped, AB/Inbev reported that it beat its quarterly earnings projections. So these events may fall into the "no publicity is bad publicity" category.
https://www.investors.com/news/bud-stock-rises-on-anheuser-busch-earnings-beat-bud-light-boycott-could-cause-hangover/
Thanks for the article. I'm not sure this falls into the 'no publicity is bad publicity' category, however. According to the article "But Bud Light sales took a major hit in April following an ad boycott." And "Bud Light volume sales, including sales at grocery, convenience and liquor stores, tumbled 26.1% year-over-year for the week ending April 22, trade publication Beer Business Daily reported Sunday. For the week ending April 15, volumes were down 21.1%. Bud Light sales volumes are down 8% so far this year."
I doubt any company would like to see that news about one of its flagship products. Plus, if it had been a PR triumph, I don't think they would have ditched the person who kicked it off and even the person who hired her.
Agree, but this might be related to the fact that the company owns so many brands now. People can stop buying the brand only to switch to another brand owned by the same company. So while the brand suffers in the short terms, the company continues to do well. Your points of course are entirely valid, and it is nice to see the culture reject this kind of brand ESG. However, the point of my comment is that what looks like a minor victory in the Culture Wars may well be a Pyrrhic one, or an illusory one.
The AI image generators are pretty good now if you wanted to play around with different cover images. I tried the the Bing version and got some nice results, although not ideal. Other AIs like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion should be better.
https://www.bing.com/images/create/a-photograph-of-food-in-the-shape-of-a-heart2c-incl/6455de52001f455ea59e19ced3a969c6?id=yWQXd1pS0PWYqXdKKtkECw%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&edgehub=1&lightschemeovr=1&FORM=GCRIDP
Wow! That image is pretty impressive. Maybe I will play around with it a bit.
Subscriber here: I thought you were going to post a list of links?
I will. Life has been hectic this past couple of weeks.
Hi Mike - One question about the new cover - what are the brownish, spikey things tucked in behind the chicken drumstick? The look like crickets (surely not?). Wheat stalks? (Hope not.) Shrimp?
The AB bit is hilarious - although my British husband claims that any beer AB makes is like sex in a canoe. We're great fans of a British beer called Old Peculiar - even though I stay away from anything with wheat in it, it's the one glass of beer I will have when we're in the UK.
The lion and the stupid decisions cartoon still has me laughing. Seems to me that 90% of DC belongs in that category - and I've already ordered the book - on audible - where it was only $3.49.
I did watch the entire Joe Rogan episode with Aseem Malhotra - and also subscribe to Zoe's newsletter - so I feel as if I'm in really good company subscribing to the Arrow.
Thanks for the Gordon Lightfoot video too. Such a pleasure.
Only a couple of typos - although I was so interested in every section I might have missed some . . .
Before people starting smoking in huge numbers circa WWI,
Before people started smoking . . .
I thought is was a profound statement.
I thought it was a profound
Stay well!
I think they're prawns. But I'm not 100 percent sure. I asked MD, and she concurred. But who knows for sure? We may need to do a little more work.
Thanks for the typo alerts. I'm surprised there weren't more.
I loved the lion cartoon so much I had to work it in somehow. Glad you enjoyed it.
Re: Book cover
My guess is they're prawns.
https://media-cdn2.greatbritishchefs.com/media/onpfvhxo/img45640.jpg
Phew!!
Re the final design for the cover Protein Power 2 - does this mean the book will be published fairly soon ?
I can testify to the effects of losing weight in hospital when you are thin. I was born with a heart defect and needed open heart surgery to replace my aortic valve when I was 60. Due to eating low carb Paleo for several years and weight lifting, I was very lean and very fit, good muscles, when I went into hospital. The week in hospital following surgery I found it difficult to eat due to pain and side effects of pain meds and I lost so much weight - I could see my body "eating” away my muscles, it was dreadful. Now, ten years later, I’ve still not regained all the weight I lost. So the question is how does someone gain weight on low carb Paleo so their body has a little padding and resources (for surgery and hospital) ? I eat a lot of protein with added fat.
The easy answer to the 'How do I gain weight' question is: Eat carbs. But it's not the healthful answer. I would recommend the protein and fat diet combined with resistance exercise, which will increase muscle mass as quickly as it can be done. Make sure to get a couple of meals with 40 g of protein a day. These need to come from foods of animal origin to get the 2-3 grams of leucine to kick off mTOR.
As to the book...probably early next year. It's a process.