Thanksgiving

A day late, this is the first paragraph of President Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863; a sentiment I particularly like:

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and even soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. 

You can find the full text here. 

 

40,000 Headmen

40,000 headmen couldn't make me change my mind  . . . 

Traffic. 1968.  Music - Steve Winwood (and vocals).  Lyrics - Jim Capaldi (and drums).  Woodwinds - Chris Wood.  Maybe - Dave Mason (guitar).  

Harvest Moon

 Tonight is the Harvest Moon so it's time to listen to Leon Redbone performing Shine On Harvest Moon.

 

Man Down

On September 13, 1968, Major General Keith Ware, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, was killed at Loc Ninh, Vietnam when his helicopter was shot down. Along with Ware, his three command staff and the four-man crew also died. Ware, 52, was the highest ranking American officer to die during the Vietnam War.

Ware was the first WW2 draftee to become an Army general and received the Medal of Honor in recognition of his actions in 1944. 

The 25-year old Ware was drafted in July 1941.  Sent to Officer Candidate School he initially served as a squad leader, seeing action in the 1942-3 Tunisian campaign, the July 1943 invasion of Sicily, the January 1944 assault at Anzio, and in the August 1944 landings in southern France.

His leadership qualities were quickly recognized and he was promoted several times, eventually commanding the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division.  He received the Medal of Honor for his actions on December 26, 1944 at Sigolsheim, a small town, near Colmar in the Alsace region of France.  The most decorated American soldier in the war, Audie Murphy, served under Ware, receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions in January 1945.

Ware decided to stay in the military after the war, eventually rising to be assistant commander of the 2nd Armored Division and then becoming, in the mid-60s, the army's Chief of Information.  He volunteered for service in Vietnam, arriving in early 1968, just in time to face the Tet Offensive. 

According to an article in HistoryNet, at the Battle of Loc Ninh, though Ware knew the North Vietnamese Army "had anti-aircraft weapons on the ground but ordered his helicopter to fly at low altitude despite the risk to allow him to pinpoint enemy positions and more effectively coordinate the battle".

Medal of Honor citation:

Commanding the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry, attacking a strongly held enemy position on a hill near Sigolsheim, France, on 26 December 1944, found that 1 of his assault companies had been stopped and forced to dig in by a concentration of enemy artillery, mortar, and machinegun fire. The company had suffered casualties in attempting to take the hill. Realizing that his men must be inspired to new courage, Lt. Col. Ware went forward 150 yards beyond the most forward elements of his command, and for 2 hours reconnoitered the enemy positions, deliberately drawing fire upon himself which caused the enemy to disclose his dispositions. Returning to his company, he armed himself with an automatic rifle and boldly advanced upon the enemy, followed by 2 officers, 9 enlisted men, and a tank. Approaching an enemy machinegun, Lt. Col. Ware shot 2 German riflemen and fired tracers into the emplacement, indicating its position to his tank, which promptly knocked the gun out of action. Lt. Col. Ware turned his attention to a second machinegun, killing 2 of its supporting riflemen and forcing the others to surrender. The tank destroyed the gun. Having expended the ammunition for the automatic rifle, Lt. Col. Ware took up an M-1 rifle, killed a German rifleman, and fired upon a third machinegun 50 yards away. His tank silenced the gun. Upon his approach to a fourth machinegun, its supporting riflemen surrendered and his tank disposed of the gun. During this action Lt. Col. Ware's small assault group was fully engaged in attacking enemy positions that were not receiving his direct and personal attention. Five of his party of 11 were casualties and Lt. Col. Ware was wounded but refused medical attention until this important hill position was cleared of the enemy and securely occupied by his command.

 

Monument

 From 1935 by artist Kwase Hasui.  Via Alexander's Cartographer. 

 

Kwase Hasui (1883-1957) was considered Japan's leading printmaker and became very popular in the United States during the 1930s.  Some other examples of his work, from Wikipedia.

 

Not All Disrupters Are The Same

It's said at the end of this post from Assistant Village Idiot, one of the few long time bloggers who has not gone off the rails over the past decade. AVP also makes an astute observation about what might explain the findings he refers to.

RFKJr, among many other myths that he believes*, thinks psychiatric meds are contributing to the high-profile shootings we've been seeing, and thinks we should "look into it." Well, this is only one study in Sweden, but it does have an N=247,420 with robust results. Prescribing ADHD medication resulted in lower adverse "real world outcomes" such as self harm, traffic crashes, and crime. Interestingly, the effect seems to be weakening over time as the number of prescriptions increases. 

In this longitudinal population-based study of 247 420 individuals using ADHD medication between 2006 and 2020, we consistently found ADHD medication to be associated with lower rates of self-harm, unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime across all analyzed time periods, age groups, and sexes. However, magnitude of associations between ADHD medication use and lower risk of unintentional injury, traffic crashes, and crime appear to have attenuated over time, coinciding with an increase in prescription prevalence during the same period. The weakening trends for unintentional injury and traffic crashes were not fully explained by changes in age and sex distribution of the medication users, whereas the trend for crime was no longer statistically significant. These findings suggest that the declining strength of the associations of ADHD medication and real-world outcomes could be attributed to the expansion of prescriptions to a broader group of individuals having fewer symptoms or impairments.

My guess on this reveals one of my biases, but it may turn out to be true in this case. A broad range of interventions pick off the low hanging fruit at first, whether this be in medicine, education, economics, or crime. As this success is experienced by the doctors, politicians, or teachers, they try the solution on a wider group that less-obviously fits the the category and surprise! It doesn't work as well on every Tom, Dick, and Harry. The Law of Diminishing Returns. I used to see this in mental health, where an intervention like ECT's would work spectacularly well on some people with depression, but treatment-refractory patients of many diagnoses would eventually end up at the "shock treatment" door, because patient, family, and prescribers were all frustrated and willing to try less-likely interventions.

*The current fallback argument by his supporters are that the CDC and the medical establishment badly needs disruption and he is supplying disruption, so shut up, you liberal weenie. I find this unconvincing. Just because an institution needs to be disrupted does not mean that any particular disruptor is on the right track. Not all disruptions are equally valuable. Saruman wanted to disrupt Mordor, after all.  

RFK Jr is very glib, a plaintiffs personal injury lawyer, and a believer that conspiracies underlay every aspect of society.  There are no honest disagreements.  You are either good or evil.  Observing his technique in interviews over the decades you see him deploying the same approach against interviewers who don't know the details about which he is speaking.  He overwhelms the interviewer by spewing out a long list of studies and findings.  The problem is he starts by fairly accurately referring to two studies, then cites 3 more where he misstates the conclusions, and wraps it up with 4 studies summarized accurately but where there are a dozen other studies with better methodology that reach opposite conclusions none of which he cites.  He does this over and over again. 

The agency he oversees needs disruption and reform but he is the wrong person to do it.  He is not about open scientific inquiry.  When appointing committee members or authorizing studies they are designed to reach the conclusion he wants.

UPDATE:  In a September 5 piece in the Wall St Journal, former CDC Director Susan Monarez (hand-picked for the role by RFK Jr, who fired her after 29 days), writes that at a August 25 meeting with the HHS Secretary:

 I was told to pre-approve the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled
with people who have publicly ex-pressed antivaccine rhetoric. That panel’s next meeting is

scheduled for Sept. 18-19. It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t
rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted

or rejected.

A Congressional committee should ask Monarez to testify under oath in more detail about her assertion.