It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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04APR2020 – Quote of the Day
Loading ...Month: April 2020
Loading ...Guest Contributor – War Pig – Service Stories – Part 1
I got trapped into a tour as an Army Recruiter. It was after my sister was killed in a car wreck (she was a passenger). I thought I was okay and could go back to work but I blew my cover and had to be pulled. Instead of putting me in planning, the general decided that I needed to be taken down a peg so he sent me to recruiting. I went to the school at Ft Ben Harrison in Indianapolis. Then I was sent to Pennsylvania.
Recruiting command is the most anal retentive, micromanaging, pack of nervous people you’ve ever seen. They make the pointy haired boss look good. This was before 9/11 so half the time when we went on campus at a high school or college, we were given the Nazi salute. The good thing was I got to meet Joe Paterno. But the command had a formula they insisted everyone follow. You had to make so many phone calls in order to get so many appointments to talk to a kid face-to-face. Then of those you’d get so many enlistments to fill your quota. You were to emphasize the educational and training and slack off on patriotism and adventure. They actually counted your phone calls and how long you were on the phone with each potential recruit. You had to account for every minute of your day.
As a professional NCO it was insulting. I did it my own way. I talked about patriotism, I talked about hard work. I told them their drill sergeants would not be nice to them and why drill sergeants had to act as they did to find out who could handle stress. To those who said there would be no more wars I said there will always be another war. I took them out to where the Guard and Reserve were training and had them rappel down walls and shoot M-16s and ride in tanks. And they had to help maintain and clean equipment, too. I was always the high scoring recruiter of the battalion. Professional Development (recruiting command’s tattletales) would come down, look over my numbers and tell me I was doing it all wrong. So, I brought out the score sheet for the battalion, laughed and went to go get a coffee while they fumed. I found out as long as I was bringing in quality numbers, I could get away with murder, pretty much, so I did. I’d fill my quota early then take my family to Hershey Park or somewhere. When my year was up, they wanted me to stay, badly, I said not just no, but hell no. So, I was able to go back to counterintelligence and special ops command. The general said I was too stubborn to teach a lesson as I got an Army Commendation medal for getting a gold recruiting badge in only one year. I told him I had indeed learned a lesson, that if they ever tried to put me back in recruiting command, I’d go AWOL first.
Being in recruiting command is worse than being at the Pentagon, which I thought was impossible until I was in recruiting command.
Loading ...Profiles in Courage from the Instagram Era – Chris Cuomo – The Ernie Pyle of World War Z
Someday historians will look back and identify the exact moment when American manhood hit its lowest point and it will be identified by the time stamp on the video of Chris Cuomo whining about having the flu. Don’t get me wrong having pneumonia and being unable to breath is my idea of Hell on Earth. The elderly and the frail victims of COVID-19 are struggling with every breathe they take to stave off a horrible death.
But by his own description Fredo is describing fever and muscle aches. Those are exactly flu symptoms. He doesn’t have pneumonia. He wasn’t in respiratory distress. He wasn’t coughing up blood. He wasn’t suffering from cardiac arrhythmia. He has the flu. And even as he painted his word picture of his harrowing ordeal he managed to take as many pot shots at President Trump as he could. Cuomo is a pathetic man who in a better world would be consigned to cleaning trash off the sides of less important roads. Listening to him I wonder if we’ll ever see a time when the major media outlets will be ashamed to let someone as dishonest, as petty, as annoying as Chris Cuomo represent their brand to the American public.
I should link up to the video but frankly I wouldn’t want to help his ratings. Shame on him. Shame on CNN. And shame on all of us for allowing our country to deteriorate to the point where Chris Cuomo isn’t ashamed to show his face in public.
But I wonder what Chris will do in a couple of days when he has no symptoms left to tout? He will be quarantined for a couple of weeks at least so he has to come up with a new act. Perhaps he can chronicle his battle against toe nail fungus or a really bad case of ear wax. So brave, so brave.
03APR2020 – Quote of the Day
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
03APR2020 – Photo of the Day
A Little More Information Comes In
Some information I’ve gotten in the last day or so:
- A Chinese clinical study that included a control group found that patients taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) had a shorter time to clinical recovery, as well as improved pneumonia. Even the NY Times reported on this although they downplayed the President’s role in touting HCQ.
- One of our family relations in New York City was in critical condition on a ventilator with the COVID-19 virus. His wife had to sign a release to allow the doctors to use a treatment. A couple of days after the start of treatment he is off the ventilator much improved and talking to relatives on the phone.
- I had a chance to do some back of the envelope calculations to see how the death statistics look for this thing with respect to patient’s age. Here it is:
So over 88% of people who die are over 60. 82% are over 70. That tells me that dosing all the old age homes with an anti-viral (which HCQ is) would go along way to knocking these death rates down by almost a factor of 10.
There are plenty of smart people who want his thing to end sooner and without hundreds of thousands of deaths. I’m hoping they start looking at the numbers and figure out that targeting the elderly is the key to dropping the mortality from this thing way down.
Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 27 – The Alternative Factor
I want to start by stating, unequivocally, that this episode is easily the worst episode so far in the series. It’s as if they forgot to order a story and then just had one of the stage hands write it at the last minute. It’s really that bad.
The Enterprise is near an uninhabited planet when suddenly a huge surge of energy followed by a “winking out of mass from the nearby planet tells Spock that some sort of rift in time-space has occurred. And after it occurs the sensors pick up a life form on the planet and Spock and Kirk beam down to find out what it is.
They find a man running around on some desert mountains screaming about a monster that has killed off his world. He falls off the cliff and is brought back to the Enterprise to receive medical attention and to be questioned on the strange phenomena associated with his presence.
When he comes to the man whose name is Lazarus tells Kirk that he is chasing after a monster in the likeness of a man that destroyed his world. He goes on and on about it and acts pretty crazy. Kirk agrees to go down to the planet with Lazarus and search for the monster. While on the planet Lazarus claims to see the monster and goes running into the hills looking for him. While this is going on some really cheesy special effects occur that are supposed to reflect the meeting up of two universes; one matter and one anti-matter. Basically, an image of the trifid nebula is shown superimposed over a negative image of Lazarus fighting with someone. It’s remarkably bad. Eventually Lazarus shows up again and warns Kirk of a large rock falling down the mountain and then Lazarus falls down the mountain again. Remarkably he survives again and once again is dragged back to the Enterprise to be patched up and interrogated.
When Lazarus hears that the Enterprise has dilithium crystals he demands to be given some of them to allow him to recharge his ship and find his enemy. After being refused we see Lazarus stealing the crystals in the engineering department. When Kirk locates Lazarus, he denies that he stole the crystals and claims the monster stole them. In the next scene Lazarus starts a fire in engineering as a diversion and steals more crystals then beams down to the planet.
Now Kirk is really ticked off so he beams down to the planet and finds Lazarus installing the crystals in his ship but just as Kirk reached the open ship he is transported into the other universe. There he meets the monster. It’s an identical version of Lazarus except he isn’t a raving lunatic. This anti-matter version of Lazarus explains that he stole the first dilithium crystals and he plans to trap Lazarus in an interdimensional chamber that connects the universes but once they are there together, he intends to seal off both exits and remain trapped with his insane twin for “all time.” By doing this he will save both universes from being destroyed by the matter/anti-matter annihilation that would occur if the two Lazari met in one universe.
Kirk agrees to the plan and goes back to the crazy Lazarus and after a truly pathetic excuse for a wrestling match throws Lazarus through the portal. They go back to the Enterprise and Spock declares that everything is back to normal and both universes are safe. Kirk ends off by saying, “yes for you and me, but what of Lazarus, what of Lazarus? Imagine being trapped for all eternity with a madman at your throat.”
What can I say? The plot stinks, the dialog stinks and it looks like they shot the whole thing in a couple of hours. The best part of the episode is when Kirk speaks to the sane Lazarus and he explains in two minutes what the whole mish mash of a show is supposed to mean. If only he could have met up with him at the beginning of the show, we could have skipped the whole thing and saved forty minutes that could have been better spent cleaning the dust off my computer monitor. As for the Shatner mockery let’s say the “what of Lazarus” thing and the wrestling match were pretty mockable the best I can do for this whole thing is 2 // 6. It should be avoided by all except Star Trek aficionados.
Loading ...02APR2020 – Quote of the Day
I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands on it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend uon it – there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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02APR2020 – Photo of the Day
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