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What do canned meats and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment have in common? Are there any ...

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What do canned meats and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment have in common? Are there any real rebels in American culture? Why shouldn’t gerbils be allowed to eat beets? Join Jonah in the passenger seat of his car to have all of these pressing questions and more answered on this weekend’s Ruminant.

Show Notes:

–The latest G-File

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  1. Matt Sinclair

    Your "liberal students aren't rebels" speech feels out of date in an interesting way. You and others have recently commented on a growing cultural clash between - for want of better words - "liberal" editors at the NYT, many university professors, and the rest versus "successor" (woke, Marxist, whatever you want to call it) students or young labour market entrants. Doesn't that mean students have, in essence, found a way to be rebels again? Not saying that makes their ideas good, of course... Statues of rebels are being torn down right now...

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    Marian Cates

    I love this show and never miss it.

    I like it when you get "deep into the woods (dtw)," talking about philosophies and their effects on the Western world, as well as how events have shaped philosophies. It seems as if, when I'm getting really interested, you say you've gone too long dtw, and you change the subject. No!!!

    Here are 2 suggestions for ruminants: 1. Go through 'Suicide" and focus on a chapter, or part of one, continue as a series (could do w/ other books), and 2. History of the western world, Greeks to England to U.S.

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    Rev Snow

    Too late.

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    Dawn

    Thanks for the great reply!

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  5. Joe O

    Oh shucks, I was looking forward to 4 years of misery after the Dems win the House, Senate, and Presidency. Jonah, excellent points. Life goes on. I hadn't thought about the reactionary groups that form after the election of a new administration. It'll be interesting to see the next reactionary group that emerges in 2021. Keep up the go work.

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    Tracie

    Enjoyed this, and learned that I've been pronouncing Hegel wrong. I had a friend who had it on his bucket list to read all of Hegel's major works, and we corresponded about it mostly via instant message, so he could not correct my pronunciation. (He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his mid 50s, so I don't recommend reading all of Hegel.)

    Pleased to learn that the dialectic actually comes from Kant, one of the great sentence-stringers of the Enlightenment, and one of the few philosphers I've read in the original. An ethics prof really sold me on the categorical comparative.

    ***

    This does not address the main gist of the pod, but I have one criticism of a very small part of the opening d/t my professional experience. "Parkinson's," should you ever be diagnosed with it, is not a "form of senility." Cognitive impairment tends to correspond to the late stages of PD, but it doesn't present the same way as - say - Alzheimer's, or Lewy Body dementia, or traumatic brain injury.

    In my field and setting - nursing home "SNF" sub-acute rehab - about 20% of my caseload will have some form of Parkinsonism - which is really just a collection of symptoms, and can only be definitively diagnosed post-mortem by examining the substantia nigra above the brainstem (rarely regarded as necessary.) They're usually in for rehab after a fall, because the worst symptoms are deficits of motor control which affect walking.

    I've had patients w/ Parkinson's dx who were quite interesting to talk to, even as their other symptoms had progressed to the point where they were nearly wheelchair bound. Sadly, it often affects motor control of eyesight in the late stages, so people lose the ability to read. I remember one patient who'd lived with progressive PD for 20 years who started to have hallucinations. She'd say: "I know these people aren't real, but maybe the NP should adjust my meds."

    Also, PD symptoms progresse at very different rates in different people. Some are able to live pretty normal lives with the treatments currently available.

    Otherwise enjoyed the rant.

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      Tracie

      Categorical *imperative.* I'll blame autocorrect.

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    Michael Garrett

    Jonah makes an excellent point about how tiresome, how conventional, expected and conformist it has grown, this posturing of liberals at awards shows as if they are rebelling.

    Want to see what it might really look like? Take in Johnny Ramone's speech upon being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Proof that the greatest punk band of all time were true punk comes around one minute in.

    https://youtu.be/ekyI5ZsjTPk

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      Tracie

      My understanding is that the New York punks always hated the hippies. The Ramones were guys from the burroughs who liked cheeseburgers. (I'm about 15 years too young and was geographically disadvantaged to be a punk rocker, but I remember Rock n Roll High School on cable.)

      Actually, it's Tommy Ramones' subsequent speech that's kinda great. Reminds you how many people it takes to launch a band.

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    BrettH

    Enjoyed the riff as usual. The last part about not expecting to have everyone live your way reminded me of the decade I called Hawaii home and, now that I think about it, my new home along the rural southern Oregon coast. You’d hear that D.C. passed some relatively minor legislation and locals would just kinda shrug it off and think, “That’s nice, we don’t care.” Local government is what matters. As for Portland, the federales certainly have the authority to protect federal property. The reports of them straying beyond that objective is a bit concerning though.

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      Tracie

      "...my new home along the rural southern Oregon coast."

      You must like wind. The Oregon Coast is something everyone should visit once. So much variation over ~300 miles of 101. When I've visited coastal towns in Oregon I have gotten the sense that people very much go there to be left alone.

      "Local government is what matters."

      Yip.

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  9. Michael Kliegman

    Great as usual. (OK, as always). On the discussion about dialectic - Hegelian and Newtonian - isn't a corollary to Jonah's thesis (sorry for the term) that a less strong action should provoke a less strong reaction? I've long thought, for example, aggressive pursuit in the courts of anti-Establishment of Religion (e.g., school prayer) issues scares the shit out of the other side and its becomes impossible (other than through some deft work by the Supreme Court) to get back to any sort of normal coexistence.

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    Dawn

    Does anyone know why the President too the MOCA to begin with? Did a doctor give it to him because he was showing symptoms of dementia or Parkensons? Seems like why it was taken in the first place is would be important.

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      Tracie

      I have been surprised to learn in the last week that some doctors administer it annually. I work in a SNF, and I only administer it when I note a sustained mental status change. (People are frequently confused a week or so after d/c from the hospital, but come out of it once the brain fog clears.)

      Apparently some people give it regularly to patients over a certain age. The problem I see with that is that a mentally competent person could easily game it if it's administered regularly. For instance, if you know you're going to be asked to remember five words you'll be asked again at the end of the test, you can come up with some kind of mnemonic or other association strategy like you used for rote memory tasks on school exams.

      One of the benefits of the MoCA is it's fast, and doesn’t strain the limited attention spans of people who have cognitive impairment.

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