Stephen Roney's Blog, page 252

Nothing to Sneeze At

Nobody is saying it, so I will.

The death rate from Spanish flu was 2-3%. The death rate from COVID-19 is now estimated at 3.4%.

We are more interconnected now that we were then; it should also spread to a higher proportion of the world’s population.

Unless it mutates into something less deadly, or unless our current information is wrong, this is going to be worse than the Spanish flu.

The Spanish flu killed more people than HIV/AIDS.

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Kind of a Good Idea to Promote the Culture

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Joe Who?

Some are discounting this little bit of Joe Biden’s victory speech on Super Tuesday, saying that anyone might have made the mistake of confusing on which side his wife or sister were, since they were standing behind him.

But no, that cannot account for it. He also says, “And I’m Joe’s husband.”

That is, he seems at the same time to confuse himself with his wife.

Not normal, surely. The truth is that Biden, at 77, is senile. This is surely going to become apparent, and may get worse, during the campaign.

And if he becomes president, who is in charge?


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Female Privilege

Travelling with my young daughter, more than once, some shopkeeper or museum guide has made a fuss over her, spontaneously given her some special treat.
This has never happened to my son.
Our culture is based on female privilege. Girls are always treated far better than boys. Women are always treated far better than men.
This is not some new thing, with feminism. It has always been true. Feminism has only made it more extreme.
So why is it women who have been complaining of being oppressed?
That’s the result of spoiling anyone. They come to expect the treatment. Reread Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea.”
The truly abused generally do not dare complain.


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Biden's Super Tuesday

Biden.
The Democratic Party establishment seems to have fallen smartly into line to keep Bernie Sanders from winning their nomination. Only secondarily, I suspect, they have thrown the prize to Joe Biden.

They have done this, it is thought, in the cause of electability. That’s pretty much Biden’s only pitch within the party.

I suspect they have the wrong man. I suspect Biden would run worse against Trump than either of the main remaining alternatives, Sanders or Bloomberg.

The political pros usually get one vital thing wrong. They look at the last significant electoral success, and try to imitate it. This means, if they are the party out of power, that they look for a clone of the guy in power, whom they will run against.

The Liberals won with a youthful Trudeau promising “sunny ways.” So the Tories nominated a youthful smiling Scheer.

Always a bad idea, and they always do it. If you like the guy in power, you are going to vote for him, rather than someone who only resembles him. If you dislike him, and are not offered something different, you might just stay at home.

You can trace this through the procession of presidents or prime ministers of the past. Obama was laid-back and restrained in his manner—“No Drama Obama.” Trump is a loud showman. Harper was grey and full of gravitas—so the Canadian electorate went to Justin Trudeau, who promised glamour and excitement. And not to the favoured Tom Mulcair, who was trying to look grey and full of gravitas. Harper, in turn, looked decisive after “Mr. Dithers,” Paul Martin. Obama looked smooth, poised, and articulate after the inarticulate and slightly boorish George W. Bush.

Note that it is more an issue of manner than anything else.

Trump is a clown. Biden is a clown. Trump is a funnier clown than Biden. Biden loses. I think he loses by a fairly large margin.

That doesn’t mean either Sanders or Bloomberg would win, but they would have more upside potential.

If the economy stays good, Trump probably gets the credit, and people will not be inclined to rock the boat regardless.

But what if the economy goes south? It looks as though we may be heading into a world-wide recession. If so, there could well have been an opening for a button-down technocrat type like Bloomberg. There might have been an opening for someone declaring the system flawed and calling for structural change like Sanders.

But do you want to put another clown in charge of an economy gone wrong?

And then, if you have a choice of two clowns, do you pick the prankster type, the one who plays tricks on others and always seems to end up on top? Or do you pick the bumbling clown, who does not seem to understand what is happening around him?

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MyTube on YouTube--The View from the Summit

More at

www.gerebernus.wordpress.com


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The View from the Summit-- Latest Podcast episode

The View from the Summit



For more, visit www.gerebernus.wordpress.com




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What Dogs Dream

As if on cue, this meme just came over the transom into my inbox.

It illustrates the reality that psychologists are generally just making stuff up. All they seem to do is express their personal opinions based on their personal experience, and because they have the “Psychologist” label, people take it seriously.

There is no reason to believe that they have any special insight.

It should be obvious that they can have no idea of the content of a dog’s dream.

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Social Science Professions

Don't buy it.I remember reading somewhere the calculation that, up until about 1924, physicians did more harm than good. They killed George Washington by letting blood. President McKinley died not from being shot, but from the surgeons expanding the wound and fishing for the bullet with dirty fingers. Patent medicines relied heavily on things like cocaine and heroin.
Even today, estimates are that only 27% of what physicians do is justified by any science. The rest is mostly tricks of the trade to reassure the rubes—er, “placebo effect.”

On this slim foundation rests all the immense prestige now enjoyed by the medical profession; and extended, on their example, to so many other professions that claim to be “scientific.”

Most of the rest probably still do more harm than good. I submit that most of them—those based on “social science”—always will. Psychology and psychiatry, modern education, human resources, sociology, social work, modern journalism.

First, scientific methods do not work on human subjects, who are too unpredictable and too conscious of being studied. Studying people as objects is nonsensical, as well as intrinsically dehumanizing.

Second, any profession exists on the basis of a claim of special knowledge not available to the general public. It is therefore essential for such professions to gin up some body of knowledge that would come as a surprise to the uninitiated.

This means that they must from the start reject all conventional knowledge and common sense about their subject—all that we legitimately do know about it.

This makes them systematically harmful. We would be vastly better off if they were prohibited by law. They are actively doing harm, and demanding huge sums of money to do so.
We are seeing proof of this all the time, if we care to look. The Internet is daily demonstrating that the mainstream media, the professional journalists, are less accurate and less reliable than the amateurs, the "citizen journalists." All the studies show that homeschooled children do better than those professionally educated.

My hope for mankind is that these social science professions will soon become casualties of the Internet.



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The Viral Future?

It has in recent decades become a commonplace among academics that diseases influence history.

As of course they do.

How might COVID-19 change the world?

I think there’s a good chance it leads to regime change in China and Iran. These governments were already in difficult relations with their people. The virus hits them in the middle of ongoing protests.

It’s not necessarily about how well or poorly they handle the virus, but the sense that God is passing judgement. I have posted on the possibility before. The Epoch Times, which thinks like the Chinese, has posted a video of strange animal behavior near Wuhan—notably large circling flocks of crows. Crows in China are birds of ill omen. They are so feared that they are killed on sight; so that they are rarely seen. It is hard to account for large flocks of crows appearing in the middle of China.

But what about in the USA? The two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination are advanced in age: Joe Biden is 77, Bernie Sanders is 78 with serious recent heart problems. Michael Bloomberg is 78. They are in the highest risk group for coronavirus. As politicians fighting a political campaign, they are going to be constantly in large crowds shaking hands. What are the odds that the Democratic nominee dies before election day?

Many suspect the Pope already has the virus. He is 83 and with half a lung gone. What happens if he dies? How does electing a new pope work in the middle of a viral epidemic? A few hundred old men locked together in a room for days or weeks until they choose someone? If one goes in with the virus, all come out with it, no doubt some on gurneys. And once the conclave ends, they all head to their home dioceses to spread the sickness worldwide?

And, more generally, trust in “experts” and governments is visibly taking a hit. Official sources like the WHO, the Chinese government, the CDC, have been rather consistently shown to be spreading false and dangerous information, while citizen journalists on social media have been more trustworthy.

Governments may always have been unreliable in this way, putting politics before the public health, but now with the Internet they get caught. People are liable to remember.

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