So my prediction was pretty on the nose

On August 18, 2021, I posted this (no need to click the link; it's quoted in full below):

Prediction: Peck deaths will overtake birdemic deaths in Taiwan by Double Tenth Day 

To date, the pecks have killed 78% as many people as the birdemic in Taiwan, and that figure has been increasing steadily at a rate of about three percentage points a week. If present trends continue, it should hit 100% right around October 10 -- a.k.a. Double Tenth Day, the National Day of the Republic of China.

This actually happened on October 6 -- four days early, but do note that my post said "by Double Tenth Day."

The media and the Ministry of Health have nothing to say about this, because of course they don't.

Another prediction of mine (from July 23) has, happily, failed.

Approximately 24% of the population has received at least one peck, and 478 of them have died of it. That's about 84 per million.

If we assume the pecks will continue to kill 84 out of every million pecked, then pecking 50% of the population should result in about 1,000 deaths, well over the current death toll from the birdemic itself. The actual number of peck deaths will likely be much higher than that, though. The oldest people were pecked first, and many of the young have yet to be pecked -- and we know that "adverse events" including death are much more common in the young than in the old. 

To date, 58% of the population has received at least one peck and 18% have been double-pecked. The death toll so far is 850 -- considerably short of my projection of "about 1,000" and "likely much higher than that." The current kill rate is 70 per million pecked.

Myra Pow and Myra Powers

A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English (1949), by John Samuel Kenyon of Hiram College and Thomas Albert Knott of the University of Michigan, is dedicated as follows.

One assumes these are the authors' wives. Doesn't this remind you of one of those "identical twins reared apart" stories? Not only did they both grow up to become lexicographers, they also married women with almost exactly the same name!

The magic word that CRIPPLES Google

Before deployment of magic word:

And after:

Sorry, sir, we're fresh out of stock -- but perhaps I could interest you in this nice Wikipedia article on Tim Burton? Did you know that he directed Walken in both Batman Returns and Sleepy Hollow?

Since Google offered the weird tip that "cake recipes" might help me find what I was looking for, I thought I might as well try that. Obviously, anyone who Googles "cake recipes" is likely to be a novice in search of a very basic recipe, and so Google serves up this:

Note that this magic word only seems to work on Google. Duckduckgo, Bing, and Yandex all yield a Christopher Walken article as the first hit -- the same one, in fact, on some site called Info-something-or-other.

Starting to lose patience with Brave

I'm starting to get these "privacy errors" (with no option to go ahead and load the page even though it's supposedly not private) for lots of sites I visit frequently -- and also for the page on the Brave website about how to disable the "your connection is not private" feature!

Loading that page in Firefox, I find that its only suggestion is this:

You can try going to brave://flags/, searching for allow-insecure-localhost, and set it to enabled. That might give you your desired results.

I tried that. It doesn't work. Do any fellow Brave users have any suggestions? Failing that, does anyone have another browser to recommend?

More green-ey'd animals

In my recent post "Horsing around," I mention the Jimmy Driftwood song "Tennessee Stud":

This particular hoss was, you will recall, "the color of the sun and his eyes were green." The sun reference ties him to the Day Horse and to the horse of the Sun card, and the green eyes made me think of Othello: "the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."

Today, one of my adult student showed me this magazine article:

Here the same Othello line is referenced, and again in connection with an animal -- a dog this time rather than a horse.

The idea of a "jealous dog" reminds me of the whole dog = God thing. And since we're reading things backwards, the author of "The Green-Eyed Rover" is James Lloyd, and Lloyd is (phonemically) Doyle backwards. Gene Hackman won an Oscar for playing a character named James Doyle.

Gene Hackman

I dreamt that I was watching one after another of a series of very short video clips, each of which featured the actor Gene Hackman sitting at a table with a young boy. They were playing a father and son. In each clip, it was understood that the boy had just said or done something, and that the father was reacting to it. All that was actually shown was the reaction, though, and the viewer was left to guess what exactly it was a reaction to.

In the first several clips, the son was healthy-looking and full of life, with golden curls and all that, and was called “Danny” or something like that. The Hackman character was reacting with anger, but in a lovably grumpy sort of way, saying such things as, “Gosh darn it, Danny!” The kid was unfazed.

In the next several clips, the son was called “Marvin” and was played by a different actor. (I didn't think the man was supposed to have two sons, but rather that the son's name and appearance had been changed halfway through the series.) Marvin had a sickly grayish complexion and small mouse-like features, and he was just sitting there as if catatonic. Hackman was gently reassuring him, saying things like, “There, there, Marvin. It’ll be all right, son.”

Someone saw what I was watching and asked why I wanted to waste time on such pointless videos.

“Because it’s Gene Hackman," I said. "He's a good actor."

⁂

Upon waking, I dismissed it as just another random dream -- until it occurred to me to ask, Why Gene Hackman? As so often in dream interpretation, once the question has been posed, the answer is obvious.

Although in the dream I sound like some big Gene Hackman fan, in fact I barely know his work at all and have (I think) only seen him in one movie: the 2001 Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums. Hackman plays the title character, a man who tries to trick his ex-wife and children into letting him back into their lives by pretending to be terminally ill. In short, it is a movie about a fake illness being used to manipulate people.

And then there's the name: gene hack man -- genetic manipulation, hacking the human genome, or using genes to "hack into" a man. This in the context of a fake illness being used to manipulate people.

I certainly hope this means nothing more than that I've got the birdemic on my subconscious mind, and that the transformation of "Danny" into "Marvin" will not prove to be in any way prophetic.

⁂

Note added: By a weird coincidence, just after posting this, I checked Anonymous Conservative and found a Gene Hackman reference.

Swedish artist who survived two murder attempts after drawing the Prophet Mohammed is killed in a mystery car crash as the Police car he was traveling in swerved at high speed into the oncoming lane of traffick and hit a truck head on, killing him along with his two police protection officers. I hate to say it but vehicle hacking and hijacking may be getting democratized, to the point any group with a grudge will be able to hire someone to do it. At this point, I wouldn’t drive a new car if it was free. The funny thing was, in the movie Enemy of the State, Gene Hackman’s ultra-educated super-spook only drove old, beat-up 1970’s cars and trucks. Michael Westin in Burn Notice too. Good writing.

CJCLDS is down with the sickness

Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

-- They Might Be Giants

Some of my Mormon friends, those who are generally based but who still feel it their duty to trust the organization and its leaders, have tried to argue that the church's complicity in the ongoing crime against humanity is purely passive and pragmatic in nature -- that in its compliance with the masks, the pecks, and all the rest, the church is just trying to keep its head down, avoid political controversy, and focus on its spiritual mission. Even if that were true, it would be bad enough, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that it is not true, that the Latter-day Church of Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of Mormon in Vain is actively fighting on Satan's side in the spiritual war.

This is a transcript of the beginning of their October 2021 World Report (edited in the usual manner).

This is the World Report of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, October 2021.

Coming up: recreating the ancient while restoring the modern. Film and newly dedicated historic sites connect people to the past while inspiring in the present. Housing, job training, and life skills. The Church's Transitional Services Initiative gives people a second chance.

But first, from refrigeration to mobile pharmacies, the Church's continuing partnerships provide relief and equitable access to pecks around the world.

Since the start of the birdemic, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has joined with dozens of organizations to help quell the spread of the birdemic. In March, Latter-day Saint Charities, the humanitarian arm of the Church, donated $20 million to UNICEF USA toward UNICEF's role in the Access to Birdemic Tools Accelerator and the pecks arm called the COPECK facility, which aims to provide an equitable distribution of pecks to communities around the world. Pecks are rolled out in phases, prioritizing the most vulnerable: health care workers and persons 60 years and older, among others.

Over 100,000 doses of the birdemic peck have been delivered to Belize, but procuring the pecks is only part of the challenge. One of the key areas of concern for us as UNICEF in Belize has been in the health sector, especially the cold chain system. The cold chain includes refrigeration units and thermal boxes that keep the pecks at their needed temperature until they're ready to distribute. Doses are put into syringes and then into the arms of people, some of whom have been waiting for months.

I do appreciate it. I didn't expect it this soon.

From Belize to Sudan, from Kenya to Nepal, increasing the trust in peck effectiveness while dispelling misinformation has been critical to the global effort. After being informed of the process, Melissa Sanchez received her first peck.

If you are not pecked, it will limit what you can do.

This effort has been monumental. Its goal is to make nearly 1.5 billion doses of the birdemic peck available to at-risk populations in more than 180 countries and territories.

It's unprecedented in the history of the world where partners have come together to make this happen and to bring a peck which is going to be lifesaving to countries all over the world.

This is going to be a stain on the church's escutcheon, and an anti-Mormon talking point, for decades to come. Where, when the whole world was seduced by an evil lie, when cowardice and idiocy spread like a plague and veiled the whole earth in darkness, where then was the discernment of your so-called prophets? Where then the courage of your so-called saints?

Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered.

Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose glorious beauty is a fading flower. Lord have mercy on thy people. Moroni son of Mormon pray for us. Joseph Smith pray for us.