No. 173: No Gun, No Vote
⁂ Nashville's Alt-Daily ⁂ Tales from the ER · Superstitions · Media Disinfo · Dumb Bureaucrat · Much More!
Good morning, everyone.
We've got a new Tale from the ER from the Doc who regales two stories for you from his time working in a Veteran's Affairs hospital. Today, we'll talk about the Titans choice to wear all Navy uniforms and how that might affect their performance, look at another case of "misinformation" in the media, peak at some COVID numbers, and talk about a town in Georgia where not owning a gun is a crime.
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Thanks for reading.
The latest installation in the “Tales from the ER” series by Doc Paracelsus. These tales are based on real cases. Identifying information and certain medical details have been altered to protect privacy.
Doc Paracelsus
FROM THE ARCHIVE
- Tales from the ER # 1: Los Paquetes (Read)
- Tales from the ER #2: We Got a Runner! (Read)
- Tales from the ER #3: A Nursery Story(Read)
- Tales From the ER #4: Freshly Baked Cookies (Read)
- Tales from the ER #5: Poisonous Poinsettias & Toxic Show & Tell (Read)
𖠽 Superstitions, Streaks, & Curses
After claiming the AFC South title for the second year in a row and the number one seed in the AFC for the first time since 2008, the Tennessee Titans gear up for their first-round division playoff game against the Cincinnati Bengals this weekend. The two teams will face off at Nissan Stadium at 3:30 p.m. CST on Saturday. Even though they’re sitting pretty with their strong defense, home field advantage, and the return of his highness — running back Derrick Henry — the Titans aren’t taking any chances.
The team will be in their all navy uniform - navy jersey, navy pants, navy socks. Apparently, the team ran a total of six different uniform combinations this season, but saw the most success in all navy. Superstitious?
The Titans also aren’t taking their chances with the audience. "We want Nissan Stadium to be two-tone blue," Ellenberger, the team's VP of ticketing, said. "And so by limiting this [ticket] transfer window, it also limits the number of visiting team fans that we'll have in the stadium." Limiting the ability for an opposing team’s fans to attend the game is a form of psychological warfare. So, let’s play.
Superstitious rituals are fairly common in every sport. Players wearing the same, unwashed socks every game, fans who don’t clip their fingernails on game day — did you know Tiger Woods always wears red if he’s golfing on a Sunday? Whether you look at it as a whacky superstition or a calculated strategy, there’s way more to this than meets the eye.
The Titans are specifically wearing all navy blue, head to toe, because they had the best results in that uniform. It is worth noting that color does have an impact on your opponent. It’s not a stretch to say that associating success with wearing, say, a certain color can become a self fulfilling prophecy and intimidate an opponent.
Rituals help keep athletes grounded in the arena. Distractions impact the psychology of the players, the team, the coach, and even the fans. Does the energy from the stands have an impact? The answer is a resounding yes. Studies repeatedly show that home field advantage is real and, in addition to a team playing in a familiar environment, it’s partially due to the psychological impact of the energy coming from fans in the stadium.
Colors, sounds, smells, really all sensory input, as well as intel collected on an opponent, are all external forces that contribute to how ready a team feels when entering battle. These external forces battle with the internal forces (rituals and patterns that create comfort, familiarity, and predictability) that help players, coaches, and fans get their heads in the game. So, maybe the smelly sock thing isn’t as crazy as it sounds.
The synergy of all these factors makes the art of contest in sport dynamic and interconnected, but ultimately it all comes down to the “man in the arena.” Titan up!
HEADLINES
- Metro Health Report Shows 2021 in Drug Deaths (Scene) The department reports 712 suspected drug deaths in Nashville last year, a 15 percent increase compared to the previously record-setting 2020. The overwhelming majority of those deaths involved the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl.
- Nashville lawmakers file bill to start school no earlier than 8 a.m. (Main Street) Dem. Rep. John Ray Clemmons’ bill would prohibit public high schools statewide from beginning classroom instruction earlier than 8:30 a.m. Public middle schools would begin no earlier than 8 a.m.
- Glen Casada files to unseat Williamson County clerk (Homepage) State Rep. Glen Casada, who represents Williamson County as part of Tennessee's 63rd district, filed on Monday to run for Williamson County clerk, a position currently held by Jeff Whidby.
- Tennessee lawmakers advance school voucher bill targeting remote education (Chalkbeat) A key Senate panel approved legislation Wednesday that would provide public money for private school tuition for Tennessee students whose school systems do not offer in-person learning all year.
DEVELOPMENT
- Church Street Park revitalization contract not renewed for 2022 (Post)
- Gulch property listed for sale for $3.9M (Post)
- East Bank site near brewery slated for Marriott hotel (Post)
- Music Row property offered for $1.8M (Post)
☢︎ IN THE MEDIA ON THE MEDIA
Two items over the past week highlight the media's ongoing crisis of credibility. Neither incident is simply a mistake, but the use of rumor or speculation solely for political ends. It's natural to expect publications and media outlets to get things wrong now and again. What is unforgivable is the utilization of stories with no founding in reality to create new political realities. It is these offenses that completely undermine people's trust. We have yet to see media broadly accept responsibility for these sins. We highlighted the Kamloops fiasco in Canada yesterday and today, we'll highlight another.
MASK ON, MASK OFF
In case you missed it, the Supreme Court was mired in scandal and drama following rumors that Justice Sotomayor had elected to video call into hearings after Justice Neil Gorsuch refused a request by Chief Justice John Roberts to wear a mask. The report came from NPR's Nina Totenberg, but soon after the story broke and rippled through the media ecosphere, Roberts issued a statement declaring that he had not, in fact, asked Gorsuch to wear a mask. Soon after, Sotomayor and Gorsuch issued a joint statement to the same effect. In short, there was no masking controversy in the chamber according to the members of that chamber.
As NPR later clarified, the story's misguided character lies in Totenberg's choice of wording. Roberts had not asked Gorsuch specifically to wear a mask — prior to Christmas, all Justices were unmasked except for Sotomayor — but suggested that all Justices wear a mask after returning from Christmas stating that Justice Sotomayor did not feel comfortable being around unmasked people. Based on Sotomayor's comments during the vaccine mandate hearing, this shouldn't come as a surprise. She displayed a shocking amount of ignorance about the virus, stating at one point, "We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators."
After clarifying, NPR qualified the entire correction with an esoteric spiritual truth which essentially posits that if the story isn't true, it should be, saying, "No one has challenged the broader focus of Totenberg's original story, which asserts that the justices in general are not getting along well. The controversy over the anecdotal lead, which was intended to be illustrative, has overwhelmed the uncontested premise of the story."
After all the dust settled and the talking heads across the political landscape who stand in the face of misinformation repeated the misinformation, Joy Reid, everyone's favorite televisual idiot whose Twitter feed will give you a heart attack, accused the justice's response to the story of being the real misinformation (see how complicated this gets), tweeting, "Very weird. Did Roberts also urge Sotomayor to issue a joint statement with the man who’s essentially forcing her to do her job by phone? Typical. The woman of color is expected to serve as a human shield for the selfish, arrogant man who’s literally threatening her health." Probably explains why no one watches CNN anymore. Maybe the real misinformation is the friends we made along the way.
☠︎ INCOMPETENT BUREAUCRAT OF THE WEEK
In an interview on CNBC, FTC Chair Lina Khan opined that inflation was the result of monopolistic businesses colluding to increase prices which is a bit like looking at the dirt at high noon hoping to catch a reflection of the moon. Don't suppose that the couple trillion dollars worth of quantitative easing, high energy prices exacerbated by government policy, and the bevy of supply chain dislocations have anything to do with it.
FTC Chair Lina Khan answers question on antitrust regulation and data privacy
CNBC, January 19th, 2022, Watch
⇢ FROM THE ARCHIVE
In Kennesaw, Georgia, an old law dating back to the town's founding requires that residents own and maintain a firearm. Though only officially written into law in 1982 and not enforced by local police, the reputation of the place has kept crime pretty well suppressed. In 2018, Kennesaw, a town of about 33,000 people, had seen only one murder in the prior six years and a violent crime rate of below 2%.
Every household is required by law to own a gun in this Georgia town
Fox59, March 7th, 2018, Read Online
⌀ LATEST ON THE COVID
HEADLINES
- Surviving a previous infection provided better protection than vaccination against Covid-19 during the Delta wave, federal health authorities said, citing research showing that both the shots and recovery from the virus provided significant defense.
- Starbucks Corp. said it will no longer require U.S. workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or undergo weekly testing by next month, after the Supreme Court recently blocked the Biden administration’s mandate for large private employers.
- Jessica Rose didn’t ask for any of this. She started to analyze data on adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccines simply as an exercise to master a new piece of software. But she couldn’t ignore what she saw and decided to publish the results of her analysis. A paper she co-authored based on her analysis was withdrawn by Elsevier.
⚔︎ MISSIVES ⚔︎
- 🏛 The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused a request from former President Donald J. Trump to block the release of White House records concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting Mr. Trump’s claim of executive privilege and clearing the way for the House committee investigating the riot to start receiving the documents hours later.
- 🏫 Glenn Youngkin has asked all of the state's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) employees to resign and tapped anti-critical race theory leader Angela Sailor to lead the department. In her first move, Sailor eliminated the word "equity" and replaced it with "opportunity."
- 📊 Jobless claims rose by 55,000 to 286,000 for the week ending January 15, reaching the highest level since October, the Labor Department announced on Thursday. Meanwhile, the four-week average of jobless claims stood at 231,000, the highest since November. About 1.6 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits as of January 8.
Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique will be playing at the Schermerhorn this weekend, hooray! Burns Night at The Lost Paddy is the traditional celebration of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns held annually in Scotland. Yes, of course we’ll be there.
THINGS TO DO
View the full calendar here.
TONIGHT
🐖 Nashville Farmers’ Market @ Nashville Farmers’ Market, 8a, Info
🐖 Farmers’ Market @ Green Door Gourmet, 9a, Info
🏺 Flea Market @ The Fairgrounds, 8a, Free, Info
🎻 The Cowpokes @ Acme Feed & Seed, 12p, Free, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
+ Best honky tonk in Nashville
🎼 Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique @ The Schermerhorn, 7p, $25+, Info
+ This one’s a wild ride, my friends
🎺 Big Band of Brothers @ The CMA Theater, 8p, $52+, Info
TOMORROW
🏺 Flea Market @ The Fairgrounds, 7a, Free, Info
🐖 Nashville Farmers’ Market @ Nashville Farmers’ Market, 8a, Info
🐖 Farmers’ Market @ Green Door Gourmet, 9a, Info
🐖 Franklin Farmers’ Market @ Franklin TN, 9a, Info
🐖 Charlotte Farmers’ Market @ Richland Park, 9a, Info
🎸 James Carothers @ Music City Bar & Grill, 5:30p, Free, Info
🍀 Live Irish Music @ McNamara’s Irish Pub, 6p, Free, Info
🍻 Burns Night @ The Lost Paddy, 6:30p, Free, Info
+ Commemorating the life of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, born 1759 - celebrated annually in Scotland
🎸 Kelly’s Heroes @ Robert’s Western World, 6:30p, Free, Info
+ Best honky tonk in Nashville
🐅 Predators vs. Red Wings @ Bridgestone Arena, 7p, $81, Info
🎼 Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique @ The Schermerhorn, 7p, $25+, Info
+ This one’s a wild ride, my friends
SUNDAY
🏺 Flea Market @ The Fairgrounds, 7a, Free, Info
🐖 Nashville Farmers’ Market @ Nashville Farmers’ Market, 8a, Info
🐖 Farmers’ Market @ Green Door Gourmet, 9a, Info
🐖 Franklin Farmers’ Market @ Franklin TN, 9a, Info
➤ Flintknapping Demonstration @ Old Stone Fort, 11a, Free, Info
⏎ GET 'EM WHILE YOU CAN
🎸 Tedeschi Trucks Band (Feb 22, 23, 25, 26) @ The Ryman, 7p, $40+, Info for the 22nd, 23rd, 25th, and 26th
🔆 Jordan Peterson (3/22) @ The Ryman, 7:30p, $40+, Info
🎸 Buddy Guy (3/26) @ The Ryman, 7:30p, $80, Info
🐷 Primus a Farewell to Kings tour (5/9) @ The Ryman, 7:30p, $55+, Info
FROM THIS WEEK
William Harwood
Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield
Virgil Davis
Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield
Jerod Ra’Del Hollyfield
Around the Web
✪ Putin, Ukraine, and the Failure of Western Elites Our foreign policy elites are mystified and unsure how to respond as Vladimir Putin is about to do what he has talked about doing for years
𖠪 Bring in the clones: Instagrammers are genetically replicating their pets Cloning cats and dogs is expensive and controversial. But the humans behind petfluencer accounts say it’s worth it.
◉ Why The Media’s Attempt To Split DeSantis And Trump Isn’t Working A con doesn’t work when the marks are on to it.
⇟ The Cult of Masked Schoolchildren History will not look kindly on our evidence-free decision to make kids suffer most
Political Theater Highlight
- UPenn Wharton students were asked what they thought the average American worker makes per year and 25% of them thought it was over six figures. One of them thought it was $800k. The real number is $45k.
- IRS to require facial recognition to view tax returns
- NYPD arrest multiple people including a young child, for trying to enter a museum without proof of vaccination
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Words of Wisdom
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Winston Churchill