G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 10

Beware Activist Investor Groups

Many will not know that there are now groups of activist investors using your pension money as leverage to force companies to do things they think should be done. Things like ending meat consumption, ending fossil fuels, ending your ability to take plane flights for vacations and much more. These ‘well meaning’ billionaires who feel guilty about their environmentally unsound life styles hogging resources are using their wealth to force the rest of us to overcompensate whether we like it or not. Here there is no discussion of science or facts, just their opinions and wealth. To me, it is unconscionable behavior and ought to be outlawed. It won’t be though as the mega rich always get richer.

So I believe they are doing this not from guilt and not from wanting the best but to make themselves more money. Leopards don’t change their spots and the super rich never have enough. Every multi-millionaire I have ever met (and I have met a lot), spent money only on protecting their loot from taxes and losses and scheming how to make more of it. Don’t be fooled by these supposed environmental activists. To them it is about making money……by forcing the rest of us to do what they want and buy the things they are now invested in.

 

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Coronavirus and Me by Peter C. Whitaker

Reblogged from Peter C. Whitaker’s blog.

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Peter C. Whitaker

On February 14 I posted that I would not be posting for awhile due to going travelling again. I had only intended to be absent for 2 weeks, but life got in the way as it usually does; I was exposed to the Coronavirus. A 14-day self-isolation followed. During this time, I did not feel creative in any sense at all. I was aware of the growing hysteria in the world, mostly stoked by irresponsible sections of the media. I had daily contact with NHS England by telephone, SMS messaging, and email. It was very clear to begin with that no one really knew what to do. The advice changed daily, but that is not a criticism. I much prefer for people to learn from experience than to stick in an intransigent fashion to preconceived and uninformed dogma.

I tested negative for Covid-19. During my quarantine period I developed no symptoms whatsoever. During my 14 days of isolation I avoided the media like the plague, pun intended. Now that I am on the other side, I view the panic that now seems endemic the world over with dismay, but not with disbelief. I included a quote in my novel, Eugneica, that seems entirely appropriate to the situation, and here it is:

‘The collective stupidity even of the most intelligent and civilised societies is stupendous’. F. C. S Schiller.

Coronavirus is not a killer on the scale of either the Black Death or Spanish Flu. The majority of people who contract the virus will experience either mild or no symptoms at all. Some people will experience flu-like symptoms and for anyone with an underlying health condition this could prove dangerous. These are the world-wide figures for the Coronavirus at the time of publication:

This is the link to the page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The current world population is some 7,772,102,800 people. My maths is not very good but even I can see that 10,049 deaths world wide is, in comparison to the population, significant only to those immediately affected by the passing of a loved one. To put it into perspective the daily death rate in the world population is over 52,000 people. Seasonal flu has killed over 105,000, HIV/AIDS 365,316, cancer 1,784,775, smoking 1,086,359, and alcohol 543,524.

The main characteristic of Coronavirus appears to be how contagious it is. Compared to other diseases it spreads very quickly, and this seems to be what everyone is focussing on. This is the reason why cities and countries are going into lock-down, not because Coronavirus is such a great killer, just that it spreads very quickly. The economic damage this panic reaction will cause is going to be in the billions of whichever currency you prefer. Already, here in Britain, people are expressing concern over losing their businesses, their livelihoods, and then everything else that is attached to their ability to earn a wage, like their homes. It is more fuel to the fire of panic.

While I was quarantined, I questioned if this was the best way of dealing with this disease? It occurred to me that a much more effective method would be to target resources at those in the vulnerable groups. Given that 80% of people who do contract Coronavirus will experience only mild or no symptoms at all why not let them get on with their daily lives? Businesses do not have to close, loans do not have to be defaulted, homes do not have to be repossessed, super-rich people like Richard Branson do not have to ask their employees to help them out by taking a few months off work without pay. The economy, so loved by politicians, does not have to be damaged. Instead, institutions like the NHS can dedicate their time and resources to helping those most at risk, with the help of the family and friends of those individuals who find themselves in that particular group. During my quarantine I discovered that there were plenty of people willing to get me anything that I needed, and I would happily do the same in return. I know that the argument for the lock-down approach is to contain the virus, but I do not believe that this is possible. It is known that many people have been infected with Coronavirus but because they did not develop any symptoms they were never tested. These people did pass the virus onto others, however.

Here is a link to a science paper that discusses this very subject:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221.full

So how do you contain a virus that can pass unnoticed not only amongst a human population but an also an animal one too? I do not believe that you can. Billions of British pounds have already been committed to this end, but it seems like a lost cause. Schools, theatres, sports venues, large gatherings, businesses, travel, public services, all are being closed down or stopped. The negative impact on a country like Britain, that is supposedly still in austerity, will be disproportionate to the actual threat perceived in Coronavirus. The bill for social security benefits will soar as people made jobless and homeless turn to the government for the promised support. The rich, as usual, will not suffer any negative impact. Already, celebrities are appearing urging working people to stay at home. The fact is that the celebrities can afford to take a month or two off work, a working person does not have that luxury, especially if they are employed by someone like Virgin Atlantic!

Peter C. Whitaker is an author and fellow Hull-born writer. Please visit his site and his books are very good.

He is on Amazon too.

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Are We Being Duped?

I spent the first couple of hours today reading research out of China and about the Diamond Princess and the village in Italy where they stopped Coronavirus via aggressive testing. These all make for interesting reading.

What I took away from it all is this….

Based on everything I read today, it seems that the vast majority of people infected show NO symptoms – could be 80-90% in total. Of those infected that do show symptoms, 85% or so get a mild form. Just 15% of the those with symptoms have severe issues and about 2-4% of those die.

What does that mean? It means all of this stuff we are doing is a total waste of time.

Take those numbers and do some math. It infers a real death rate of significantly less than 1% – probably around 0.4% or even less – about the same as a normal flu in fact.

Unless you test EVERYONE and isolate all infected you cannot stop the progression until everyone has been infected – which is probably what happened in Wuhan according to the chinese.

So, if we take the deaths in China and apply this death rate, it suggests 650,000 were infected and yet only 81,000 tested and infected.

Look at Italy. It suggests almost 700,000 are infected currently based on the death rate and only 41,000 detected.

Think about it.

I’m sorry to say but either everyone needs to be tested or we do nothing at all and get it over with.

The middle ground we are pursuing right now has another result altogether – the total collapse of our economic system, those who would die from the virus will anyway (even if that includes me) but everyone else is in for a very rough ride.

Am I wrong?

I realize the data is still not definitive and the margin of error could be quite large but I think the thinking is sound.

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Science

Back in the last century when people still searched diligently for the objective truth, I was taught scientific method. The man that taught me was one of those geniuses who theorized for fun and found ways to investigate his theory to prove it right or wrong. I recall one session he did with the new research students – myself included. It was set up like a whodunnit. We were presented with a murder scene and then told we should ask questions to research the truth, develop theories and test them. The way it was done truly impressed me. It was me who solved the problem as well strangely enough in a flash of inspiration. It taught me how to theorize, investigate and re-theorize objectively.

Roll forward 40 years or more and objective science still exists somewhere I am sure but it has been superceded by post modernist science. That works quite differently. It uses selective scientific observations to support a political theory. Put differently, it says create a theory based on the idea of group identity conflict then twist the facts to suit. I call it pseudoscience. And it is.

Here is an example. The ‘scientist’ believes that man made CO2 is causing climate change. So, he creates a model to demonstrate his theory. He then alters the facts to support the model. This is then called consensus science.

Compare that with true objective science.

We take the observable facts. Create a hypothesis that CO2 is responsible for the climate change. We use that hypothesis to make predictions – about how fast temperatures will change perhaps. We test those predictions. We discover our model or hypothesis isn’t supported by the evidence. We adjust our model and start again.

Today, we have a whole bunch of climate models, all of which massively overestimate the warming trend. Yet, rather than alter the model, these pseudoscientists fudge the data.

Post modernist science…. it is what is taught in schools now and its why the future is going to be pretty damned dim.

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We Are All Idiots

Last week, I was defending humanity against those who seem to feel guilty about living and want everyone else to feel the same. This week, I’m wavering.

You see, I always want to believe that humanity is a reflection of the above. That everyone here is here to learn and that they, being human, have the right to make mistakes. When it comes to Mother Earth, I do not see Her as a small furry kitten the neighbors abused needing my care but rather as a duality of good and (from our perspective anyway) bad. Like the two sides of the Moon, Mother Earth can give on one hand of Her bounty and yet strike you down the next with some affliction. As I said in a previous article, She is after all the creator of flesh eating bacteria, Pirrana and spiders, amongst other things.

But this week, as the world goes crazy over Coronovirus, I find defense of my fellow men and women harder. The term sheeple come to mind. I’m not even going to bother to go into detail – I think we have all seen it. But ‘toilet roll’ might be one lasting impression of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

For me, the biggest thing is how people these days think they know it all. They have a belief and they will defend that belief with fury even when the facts clearly show them to be wrong. It simply doesn’t matter. It is all about feeling and belief now. Facts and expertise – rubbished.

Today, I saw how life sometimes gives you examples. I had been telling people here that face masks are ineffective. Or rather, I had been telling people that WHO, CDC, the US Surgeon General and even the Daily Mirror would you believe, have said that face masks are ineffective. There are many reasons for that – the virus is 2-3 nanometers large and by comparison to the gaps between fibers in your facemask, it is like walking down the Champs Elysee for the virus straight into your gullet, secondarily, once wet, the face mask is a health disaster and needs to be replaced, it needs to fit properly and well and anyway, the virus gets in through the eyes so unless you have a hazmet suit, you are wasting your time. Now, if you are sneezing or coughing then it is worth wearing as it will stop you throwing droplets 4 meters around you. But that is it. Well, for trying to help people I have been told to go back to my own country by one nice man and then later, I helped break up an attack on a man and his children by an angry mask-wearing mob. Yes – I get the message dear Fates….. shut up and leave the sheep alone. There is no point trying to reason with idiocy and stupidity – yes, I know that sounds bad and that is where I started…..

I sometimes find it impossible to defend these people. Yet, they have the right to be ‘idiots’ and karma will eventually set them right.

I’m not claiming to be perfectly enlightened myself. In some ways I am as blind and as idiotic as any of those that make me despair. I smoked for 40-years – a sure sign of an idiot if there ever was one, for example (apologies to all smokers….but you all know it isn’t a good thing to do).

Then, I realized something. If you ‘love’ one another. If you love humanity and humans. You have to love the idiots too. You have to defend everyone’s right to be an idiot because that is our right – and only way to learn the lessons that we must all learn.

Another thing I learned is that fear is a much larger emotion that I had ever understood. And people do a lot from fear. Fear drove much of my life and I suspect it drives the herd mentality as well. Indeed, I think those that control use it to control. We are all afraid of something….. and so we are no different. We are humanity – we are all flawed and we are all carrying burdens that no else understands.

Maybe in the end, I’m the idiot for not realising that sooner? And maybe that is why, in the end, forgiveness and letting go is the only way…

 

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Time by Degrees

This morning, the mail lady passed me a large and stiff envelope. I knew immediately what it was and this was confirmed by the University of Strathclyde lettering. It was a replacement certificate for one I lost when I moved to Europe. I opened it with a slight thrill to be honest because that small oblong piece of paper was three years of my life. A different era. A different Universe. A different persona.

 

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The year was 1984 and I had spent virtually 6-months painstakingly creating a book. Hundreds of pages long, the book was hand typed and the top copy still has the white tippex blotches marking mistakes. Each diagram was hand drawn in ink and lettering stenciled on. Each photo was hand developed and printed by me in the dark room. The only bit I didn’t do was the gold embossed lettering on the black vellum cover. It was the culmination of 18-weeks of fieldwork (three summers of 6-weeks) in Nova Scotia, a year at the British Geological Survey at Ring Road Halton, Leeds examining fossils in their collection and the British and Canadian Museums as well as trying to recognize what I had collected and two years in Glasgow working on synthesizing a vast number of fossils, rocks, ideas and thoughts. In the process, I had successfully published 8 peer reviewed papers including 3 delivered personally at the Compte Rendu meeting in Madrid, Spain. I had traveled there and back by train from Glasgow….a story in its own right.

Back then I was much shyer. Tall, thin and gangly – like a pencil. Geology was my obsession and I was damned good at it. During the course of my research, my University supervisor left to become Chief Geologist at BP Coal and my BGS supervisor took an unexpected retirement. So, I was unsupervised. Instead, I found my own supervision from people like Dr. Erwin Zodrow in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Dr RMC Eagar of the Manchester Museum and Dr John Pollard of Manchester University. These men took me under their wings and guided me. Another man had great influence and still does today. Dr. MJ Russell. He took over as head of department at Strathclyde and although in a very different field, he encouraged me, removed barriers and taught me the art of science. Objective science. Not this politicized post modern pseudoscience you read about so much today. No, he wanted facts, evidence, theory and proofs. If the proofs didn’t pan out, back to the drawing board. Last I heard, he was a senior scientist at NASA. A brilliant man and I don’t think he will ever know how much he influenced me.

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Dr. Michael J Russell. NASA – Emergence of life astrobiology.

My oral exam – a whole day of thesis defense – was tough but I knew it was in the bag as the examiner told me up front, he was recommending the PhD degree. By the time I came out, I was exhausted. But it was also fun. A discussion of material I knew better than anyone on the planet with a someone who was genuinely interested.

I realised at that time that I was the world’s leading authority on a topic so small and obscure that no one else would give a damn. I thought it humorous. I published another couple of papers and had material in the thesis for probably 20 more. I had tapped a rich and multi-faceted vein of paleontology, paleoecology, stratigraphy and regional geology. There was so much new and original content there. Eventually, as my career moved into IT, I lost the aptitude to keep publishing it.

Most of all though, I recall how proud my Mum and Dad were. Their smiles! It was an achievement and a first in our family. I was happy for my Father as well because he had never had the chance to go to college. Life circumstances and a disruptive war saw to that. Yet, it had been he, walking up and down beaches collecting rocks, fossils and minerals, tapping away at cliffs and quarries with hammers, and his avid interest in the natural world that had got me started in the first place.

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Dad, as I remember him in our kitchen on his last visit…

Happy memories.

That single sheet of paper is the key to so many treasured memories.

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Guest Post – A SILVER CORD by Sue Vincent

Reblogged from The Silent eye

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As soon as I was considered old enough to wander alone… a ridiculously young age by today’s standards… I would knock on the doors of the various elderly relatives that lived within a stone’s throw of home or school. Their doors opened onto another era that to my young eyes qualified as the ‘olden days’. There would inevitably be a cup of tea; none of your new-fangled tea bags or ‘gnats water’, but the rich mahogany brew that seethed in perpetuity beside the flames of the range. If I was lucky and timed it right, there would be a slab of fruit cake topped with a slice of tangy cheese or perhaps a curd tart, or we might toast a teacake in front of the fire on the toasting fork and I would sit and listen, fascinated as the old ones spoke of their lives.

Between my great-grandparents and their siblings, I was lucky to have a window on a bygone world, yet it was a window with a heart and a voice… and it told stories. I heard tales of the long hours in Victorian mills where they had worked as ‘bairns nobbut as big as thee, lass.’ Of how their schooling had to fit around their working day and of the dreadful accidents and conditions in which children had worked within living memory… this memory, the one that paused to take a sip of their tea before leaning back to continue. I heard too of first dances and maypoles and Christmas stockings that were rich if they held an orange. Of traditions and forgotten legends… and of wars and national rejoicing and mourning. I learned history in a way no book or museum could teach.

Sometimes we went over to Castleford to see my maternal grandmother’s family. Not so many mills there… but I would seek out Great Uncle John on his allotment filled with dahlias and he would tell me some of the lore of the coal mines and of the pit ponies who lived their lives in the darkness of the mines, even then. The last working colliery horse was brought out in 1999. I heard him tell how dangerous the job still was, for man and beast and saw with my own eyes the coal dust embedded in his pores that was never to leave him… it had filled his lungs too.

And when, as was inevitable, their ranks gradually thinned, I attended their funerals, paid my respects to them, one by one, laid out on the parlour table in their coffins. The families gathered. I was a child, but there was no thought back then of protecting children from the reality of birth and death. I was ten when I helped deliver my little brother. The women gathered…these were women’s mysteries, a domestic magic of sisterhood that took no thought for age or youth.

Contrary to the opinion of many today, I don’t think for a minute that it did me any harm to be part of that. Far from it. I not only learned history, I learned to value people and their individual stories. I learned that I was incredibly lucky to have been born into a time and place where I was allowed to go to school and learn for a few hours a day and then be free to play, to be well fed and warm and sleep in a bed on my own instead of with half a dozen others. So I learned gratitude too.

It was only many years later that I realised I had learned something else; the old ones had enjoyed sharing their stories. They had enjoyed the company. Most of them were old, infirm and seldom left the house any more… in short, I realised that many of them were probably lonely and glad of a visit from the blonde urchin who usually had to remind them whose daughter or granddaughter she was. It didn’t matter… I drank in their words with the dark tea.

I was reminded of all this when I read an article on loneliness and its negative effects on both personal health and well-being and its greater impact on society, employability and even survival. Further research highlighted some of the links between loneliness and poverty. It makes interesting reading and raises a lot of questions.

Our society is so much richer than the world that our grandparents and great grandparents knew. To our children, even the era of our parents fits the term ‘olden days’… a far off memory of an almost unrecognisable civilisation. While technology and the sciences have advanced by leaps and bounds and our daily lives are full of gadgetry even the science fiction writers might have dismissed as far-fetched, some things have not changed for the better.

We are a mobile society and in search or upward mobility we have moved away from the towns and villages where our families have lived for generations. Families are spread across the globe in a more fragmented way than ever before in history… individual family units break down and separate with tragic regularity and relationships seem to bear the heading ‘disposable’ all too often.

I remember years ago a TV ad campaign encouraging people to check on elderly neighbours, offer to run errands, bring food or get the house ready for winter. It highlighted the isolation that can come with age and marked me enough to stay with me all these years. Back then I lived at the heart of a large and close-knit extended family… it was never something I thought could happen to me. But the world has changed and it could happen to any of us.

The support network that would once have honoured our old ones and cared for them has foundered in very many cases and, between that, the reduction in relative income and the very gadgetry we may fall back upon in solitude to fill the silence, we become an increasingly isolated society on a human level, while ironically being able to stay in instant touch with the virtual world and family members in the furthest reaches of the globe.

And we are losing the stories… the human thread that is woven through our lives from past to future. Our TVs and computers flicker in colour and capture our attention… We might even be watching programmes on history. But once our attention is captured, we don’t sit and listen to each other very often, even to those we might live with, let alone the elderly who ‘take so long and repeat themselves so much…’ Yet theirs are the only eye-witness accounts of our history that we will ever hear first-hand; theirs the silver thread in the tapestry.

There is the well-known concept of the silver cord that connects body to soul in life, remaining in place until death, just as the severing of the umbilical cord signals our entry into life. I have to wonder how much of the richness of life we are losing in our isolation from each other… how much our children… and we could learn… and how much nourishment the heart could draw from the silver thread of story woven by our ancestors… even those who still walk amongst us.

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The Times Wants me to Die of Coronavirus

Yes, it’s true. It wants us older people to die off with the virus because we are more likely to not accept the climate change crisis. Damn right I don’t accept it and have argued ceaselessly for over 30-years that CO2 is not the driver of climate – the sun is. The geological record shows that, science shows that and common sense dictates that. Just because the young are more inclined to believe otherwise doesn’t make them right. Even the political IPCC doesn’t say there is a crisis and it has cherry picked the most extreme scientific theories to support its views. We now live in a world that is backwards. Older, more experienced and yes wise people are wished dead by the young. There was a time when Grandparents were seen as wise and provided experienced leadership but it is long gone. The Times, which as I recall, was read by older more conservative people back when I lived in the UK, wants us to just go away or better yet – just die. Don’t believe me – read this.

 

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Živa

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Packets of water

Jostle moving downstream

A rushing whine

Grabs my soul

As I tumble and roll away

Her hair envelopes

Like a curtain waterfall

The living waters

Suck me down

Cleansing, refreshing

She giggles and bubbles

And all of my struggles

Are washed away

Her caress

I must profess

Waters that coalesce

Exciting the senses

Emerging whole and cleansed

The Man

The Goddess

Blessed

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Obsessed with Street Lamps

I dunno what this may mean in terms of psychological analysis – if you know, please tell – but I find street lights to be excellent photograph topics. They are beautiful objects.

 

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Another example…

 

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See all my images of street lights here.

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