Category: Current Events

Best Title of the Month – Approximately Zero

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That’s the title of this article in City Journal.  It’s about a report that came out on a study done by the Cochrane Collaboration which is described thus:

“The gold standard for medical evidence is the randomized clinical trial, and the gold standard for analyzing this evidence is Cochrane (formerly the Cochrane Collaboration), the world’s largest and most respected organization for evaluating health interventions. Funded by the National Institutes of Health and other nations’ health agencies, it’s an international network of reviewers, based in London, that has partnerships with the WHO and Wikipedia. Medical journals have hailed it for being “the best single resource for methodologic research” and for being “recognized worldwide as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare.””

And here comes the result:

“We now have the most authoritative estimate of the value provided by wearing masks during the pandemic: approximately zero. The most rigorous and extensive review of the scientific literature concludes that neither surgical masks nor N95 masks have been shown to make a difference in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses.”

But now the bad news:

“This verdict ought to be the death knell for mask mandates, but that would require the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the rest of the public-health establishment to forsake “the science”—and unfortunately, these leaders and their acolytes in the media seem as determined as ever to ignore actual science. Before the pandemic, clinical trials repeatedly showed little or no benefit from wearing masks in preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses like flu and colds. That was why, in their pre-2020 plans for dealing with a viral pandemic, the World Health Organization, the CDC, and other national public-health agencies did not recommend masking the public. But once Covid-19 arrived, magical thinking prevailed. Officials ignored the previous findings and plans, instead touting crude and easily debunked studies purporting to show that masks worked.”

So there you go.  None of this is news.  But now we see that “science” is just a magical incantation the Left uses to get their followers to raise their banner and start marching.  Maybe it’ll be good for starting fights with crazy relatives at holidays.

As a Life-Long Science Fiction Geek This is So Damn Cool

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It looks like the modern special effects representation of the landing from Destination: Moon or some other Heinlein story.  Forget about battery cars Elon.  Do more of this.

 

 

 

A Local Focal Friday

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I was listening to the Z-Man’s Friday podcast while exercising this morning.  Camera Girl informs me that he sounds exactly like our family doctor.  Since I only go for a check-up once a decade, I cannot verify that this is true but she is a very observant and intelligent (if annoying) woman.

Today his topic was about how the dysgenic aspects of our culture were leading to a low IQ population, sort of the Idiocracy theorem.  There was a good bit of discussion about how as society devolves local power centers like local politicians (or call them warlords) and institutions that have control over specific functions or technologies (e.g., Silicon Valley) would begin usurping the place of the federal government as it imploded due to rank incompetence.

It was a very interesting discussion and it pointed to a mechanism for transitioning from the current stalemated political situation to a future where local politics and power structures could evolve to benefit a local concentration of competent and cooperative people.  Of course, it still depends on the crumbling of our society as the moving force to allow this untethering and we’re certainly not there yet.  Even though the beginnings of collapse can be seen in the increase in the frequency of airplane crashes, train derailments (not to mention naval vessels colliding) and the breakdown in law and order in the cities, still, we’re probably decades away from the official fall of the empire.

As I’ve many times stated we won’t have hit bottom until the incidences of cannibalism become too prevalent to make the newspapers (or whatever they call the news purveyors at that point in time).  So, this scenario that the Z-Man is postulating is still in the somewhat distant future.  But it most definitely makes me think that the idea of a Red State pushing for more autonomy is the correct model for the Right to embrace.  And I think that the idea of a Council of Red States is more and more the most effective way for people on the right to affect change.

I was reading an article by Salena Zito about what Ron DeSantis is up to down in Florida.  She talks about the fact that both Biden and Trump are bashing DeSantis because he’s the likely contender that both of them would face.  But then she spends most of the article going over the things he’s doing in Florida.  And even though it’s apparent that she’s supportive of his run for president, what strikes me is that the things he’s doing for his state would be impossible for a president to do without both a veto-proof senate and the house  under his control.

So once again, it makes me think that local control of people’s lives becomes more useful than battling for control of the dysfunctional federal government.  If DeSantis is actually able to enact Florida Digital Bill of Rights

he will be so far ahead of the rest of the country that the rest of us who toil under the yoke of internet tyranny will curse the fate that left us outside his benevolent rule.  Let’s face it, Florida is marching forward, throwing off the culture war shackles of the Left while the rest of us are being dragged backward in our Antifa and BLM controlled hellholes.

I think DeSantis should consider carefully whether he will have more power and more influence as the leader of a group of Red State governors rather than as an embattled Republican president.  And that’s not taking anything away from him as a presidential candidate.  If somehow he ends up as the candidate, I’ll vote for him certainly.  But how he gets there without antagonizing the millions of Trump-only voters is not clear to me.  Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis should be sitting down and talking about this election.  Even if they hate each other, even if both of them want to win above all else, they should look at all the options and decide what they can do to maximize the good outcomes from their campaigns.  In fact, what they should do is agree that whichever wins the other will throw full support to him.  And also offer the vice-presidential spot to his opponent first.  That would be putting country in front of ego.  Although I don’t think DeSantis should leave Florida to be a vice president.  He is so much more effective now; it would be a waste.  And I doubt Trump would accept the largely ceremonial duties of a Veep.  He craves a larger role.

So, these are the things I’ve been thinking about today.  I try to stitch together the various bits of information and find commonalities and synergies.  And maybe it’s all just part of my echo chamber.  But today I heard things that give me a little hope for the future.  And for a Friday that’s pretty good.

Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 17FEB2023 – Civil War Battlefield Musings

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We took a family vacation in the early 90s and drove from East Texas all the way to Nashville. At the time, it felt like we stopped at every Civil War battlefield (twice) along the way. Seeing the meadows and rolling hills with cannons and other historical relics was a powerful sight. Imagining the sounds and smells of gunfire, the bravery and fear of the battles is a humbling moment. I recall a story about a Union guard talking to a Confederate soldier from a Tennessee unit who had been captured and noticing the young man’s ill-fitted clothes and general state of shoddy equipment. He (paraphrasing) asked, “Why are you fighting? You don’t appear to have a major stake in this war.” The young man replied, “Because you’re here.” A few years ago I took an interest in researching my family ancestry and found cousins from Tennessee who served in the CSA. They were mountain folk who didn’t have slaves, a plantation, or much of anything else to their name, but I can imagine them giving the Union soldier the same reasoning for taking up arms.

While the current age we live in likes to take American history and ‘Disneyfy’ it into simplistic caricatures of a good/evil binary, the complexities and nuance remains, especially for the War of Northern Aggression. The current charge that history is not being fully taught is correct, but for different reasons than the detractors point out. All they want is history taught in a manner to ensure those who have been deemed the personification of evil stay that way. This isn’t relegated to only American history, but Western Civilization overall. This is how society has arrived to the asinine conclusions that only Europeans conquered and enslaved other peoples throughout world history. It doesn’t acknowledge the reality that human nature hasn’t aged – that all of humanity contains the ability for committing depravities against their fellow man, while also being able to show empathy and compassion at other times.

Biden Gets A Clean Bill of Health by Coroner

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My favorite line, “With a fresh injection of formaldehyde and some makeup, he looks like he’s still with us! Just look at him — so peaceful. It looks like he’s just sleeping!”

Less believable is this report.

Yeah, I don’t buy it.

Aristophanes and the LGBTQ

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All this historical comparison to 5th century Athens has made me jealous.  But instead of looking at the military and political similarities, I think I’ll compare the cultural revolutions that occurred in Athens and the United States.  And the primary evidence for the nature of the Athenian cultural change will come from Aristophanes comedy, “The Clouds.”

Rather than going back to the Greek original (for which my extremely rusty knowledge of the Attic comic dialect would be insufficient) I will use the text of Arrowsmith’s mid-twentieth century American English.  And this is fitting because I am also mid-twentieth century American in my origin.

The Clouds is the story of a wealthy but culturally traditional Athenian farmer, Strepsiades, who marries an aristocratic wife and subsequently ends up with a son whose patrician tastes are bankrupting Strepsiades.  In desperation to escape from his debts, he goes to Socrates’ School of Sophistry to learn how to flim-flam his creditors.  But it turns out Strepsiades is too old and adle-pated to learn the sophistic methods.  In desperation he forces his son, Pheidippides, to become a pupil at the school and learn the art of sophistic logic.  Or as it is described, “the art of making the worse argument appear the better.”  But once the boy is trained in the sophistic art, he turns his skill against Strepsiades and beats him when he dares to question the “genius” of some of Pheidippides’ literary favorites like the progressive poet Euripides.  And when Strepsiades complains of the impiety of dishonoring his own father Pheidippides uses his “logic” to prove to Strepsiades that beating his father is logical.  After Strepsiades admits the logic of his argument Pheidippides offers to prove that horsewhipping his own mother is also a reasonable practice.  But that is a bridge too far.  Strepsiades realizes that using the sophistic methods is a deal with the devil and he rushes to Socrates’ school and sets fire to it, to put an end to all the corruption.

During Pheidippides education we are witness to a debate between sophistic logic and normal logic personified as two fighting cocks.  During their exchange we learn that sophistry is completely immune to shame.  When accused of buggery, pederasty and perversion Sophistry laughs saying he’s being pelted with roses.  All such things are complements to the new way of thinking.  Sophistry finally defeats Normal Logic by proving to him that all the successful lawyers, politicians and poets are all perverted buggers.  Therefore, buggery is the successful lifestyle, QED.

Arrowsmith succeeds in putting the Greek into modern idiom but the ideas are all there in the original.  The traditional culture of the Athenians, which included filial and religious piety and a warrior tradition had been replaced among the young with an atheistic, materialistic philosophy wherein respect for tradition, the desire to compete for honor among fellow citizens or even the desire to just raise a family had all been replaced with a hedonistic imperative to eat drink and be merry with whatever money their parents may have accumulated.

The parallels between Aristophanes’ description and what we have in modern America are too striking to miss.  Besides the disrespect for all traditional virtues and heroes we also have the very pointed championing of sexual deviancy.  If this play was being written today, we could name the sophistry character LGBTQ and it would fit right in with Aristophanes’ dialog.  Look at this exchange:

Philosophy

And suppose your pupil, by taking your advice, is promptly convicted of adultery and sentenced to be publicly reamed up the rectum with a radish?  How, Sir, would you save him from that?

 

Sophistry

Why, what’s the disgrace in being reamed with a radish?

 

Philosophy

Sir, I can conceive of nothing fouler than being buggered by a radish.

I could just hear this kind of argument being put forth in National Review under the title, “The Conservative Case for Buggery.”

What all this tells me is that the path taken whenever traditional culture is subverted by an effete, materialistic, hedonistic and sexually deviant culture is essentially the same regardless of whether it is 21st century A.D. America, 1st century A.D. Rome, 5th century B.C. Athens or antediluvian Ur.  They go after the children and teach them that their parents are stupid and that the traditional rules are outdated.  And they tell them that raising a family is unnecessary and expensive so the better course is to feed their vices and live as a parasite on society leaving nothing after they die.  We seem to be in the midst of western culture succumbing to this impulse.  Like the Greeks and Romans before us we’ve lost the aspects of our culture that preserved and strengthened it.  I don’t know whether we’ll end up like Rome but at the rate we’re going it shouldn’t take too much longer to find out.  We’re rapidly reaching a crisis point.

And as for escaping this trap, Aristophanes had the right solution too.  Go to the school and burn it down.  Hopefully one day Harvard and Yale will join Socrates’ “Thinkery” in the actual ash heap of history.

The ZMan Riffs on Thucydides

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This Thursday’s ZMan post is a comparison of the Sicilian Expedition to the Ukraine War.  Comparisons of Thucydides’ Athens to America is a perennial favorite on the Right.  As the ZMan very carefully adds this is not a perfect analogy.  The Sicilian Expedition was a military debacle of horrific proportions.  Athens had doubled and tripled down on manning and arming this expedition so that when the defeat occurred there was practically nothing and no one left to continue the war with Sparta.  We may have emptied our armory to outfit the Ukrainians but in order to mirror the damage done to the Spartans, it would be necessary for the Americans to lose several million soldiers in the field.

Despite the inevitable differences it is amazing how apt the comparison of ancient Athens is to present day America.  Even the current woke culture has its analog in the influence of the Sophists and their undermining of conservative norms.

It’s always interesting to look at the classics.  But who would Biden represent?  Certainly not Pericles.  Even the despised Cleon proved a much more capable war time leader than balloon boy Biden.  Maybe some obscure pederast in one of Aristophanes’ plays would do.

Anyway, a fun read.

Will the Internal Combustion Engine be Outlawed by 2035 and What Would be the Results?

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Mandating battery driven automobiles would be an enormous change to the world we live in.  It would, in one fell swoop, destroy enormous corporations like Exxon and British Petroleum.  It would require the extraction of tremendous quantities of minerals such as lithium and nickel from the ground with devastating impact on the environment that is allegedly the reason for the change.  It would require us to sacrifice the almost limitless mobility we currently enjoy for a greatly diminished horizon.  And it would require an enormous upgrade in the electrical generation and transmission infrastructure.  And hidden in the switch is a higher level of control on your access to energy.

I posed this as a question.  But what it boils down to is a simpler question.  Are the Millennials and Generation Z so docile and bought into the Climate Change argument that they’ll just go along with this change.  My personal experience with these people says the answer is yes.  They are a completely different animal from their parents and grandparents.  They are easily led into actions that are painted as socially virtuous.  They do not possess any instincts to question authority.  And they like to move with the herd they identify with.  Put simply they’re domesticated animals, let’s say sheep.  And this is a generalization that of course has millions of exceptions but as a reflection of the majority of this cohort it is accurate.

This being the case I’ve been thinking about whether there is some combination of actions or events that could change this result.  The only thing I could think of is if some states band together and resist this mandate and because of this make owning battery driven cars unattractive.  For instance, suppose that the west coast states mandate battery cars but the rest of the west refuses.  That would mean that people in the gas vehicle areas would continue to have enormous freedom to travel where they wish but the coastal state people wouldn’t have that advantage.  I guess they could rent gas vehicles at the borders of their state and use these cars to travel for business or vacation.  And even this would reinforce for these people just how pathetic battery cars are in comparison.  In the east, with the smaller size of the states, gas vehicles could quite often pass right through a battery only state without running out of gas.  For instance, let’s say that Illinois was a battery state.  Someone in Indiana could drive right through Illinois and reach Iowa or Missouri without running out of gas.

So, the west coast, the Great Lakes and the northeast would become dead zones for gas cars and enclaves for battery cars.  And the enclaves would put up restrictive laws.  They would restrict or forbid gas cars from entering their territory, much in the way they restrict gun transport.  Maybe the gas car states would retaliate to punish the battery car states with similar bans.  That might be an interesting way to start driving wedges between the red and blue states.

But the funny part of all this is that freight hauling trucks would probably still be running on fuel.  Specifically, diesel fuel but probably there won’t be any battery-powered 18-wheelers.  Will these battery car states dispense with trucks?  Will they start building railway spurs everywhere and use only electrified tracks?  I guess it’s possible.  But what’s more likely is that they’ll leave diesel trucks as an anomaly, since private citizens won’t be able to have diesel powered cars.  After all inconsistency isn’t a problem for them.  It’s a feature of a quasi-religious approach to life.

Now, this is all spit-balling.  But you can see that this push to eliminate gas powered cars could have unexpected results.  And even if the whole country goes along with it, there could be strong reactions to the problems of mandating an inferior technology over an existing superior one.  Eliminating gas cars might have the outcome of making hydrogen fueled cars suddenly attractive.  These aren’t as convenient as gas cars but they eliminate the refueling time problem inherent in the battery cars.  Trade-offs will be weighed and people will gravitate to what makes their lives easier.  Even the sheep will choose between the bad options they’ve accepted to minimize the pain they have to endure.

I love the freedom that modern automobiles give us.  Being able to pack my bags and drive five hundred miles and go camping or attend an event has become a feature of American life.  The fact that the young would let this go to “save Gaia” is extremely depressing in my mind.  But I think it’s accurate.  Once again, we will witness soon whether the American dream will be sacrificed by our descendants or whether the will to resist still exists.

Dead Pile and the Angry Polar Bear

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Today was a busy day.  Princess Sack of Potatoes wanted to play Dead Pile, and later on, The Angry Polar Bear.  The latter is a very taxing business where I chase her around the house growling and trying to carry her away to the “Ice Flow of Death.”  All that growling takes its toll on my larynx and the dogs go nuts trying to defend her from this seemingly homicidal activity of mine.  But one does what must be done.

As you can tell by the descriptions, death has become a part of her imagination.  Of course, all those who end up in the dead pile are the bad animals, never the good ones.  And the Ice Flow of Death has only ever been fatal for the polar bear and even then, he always seems to be brought back for an encore.  It’s funny how little kids imagine things for which they have very little experience.  Other than a hermit crab, her little world has been untouched by death.  At least as far as she is aware.  She’ll be spared knowledge of actual deaths that have occurred while she was too young to even understand the concept.

Of late Camera Girl has introduced the concept of dog heaven to cover the eventuality of what to tell her when our older dog does die.  And she is very curious about it, “Will Kaylee have anyone to play with?  Will she get her favorite treats?”  All these were manageable reactions.  But then she asked about herself going to heaven.  That was a bridge too far.  We assured her that she wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long, long, long time and she should stop thinking such things.

And that passed.  Now we’re back to the cheerful mayhem of dead pile where bad velociraptor and evil giraffe get their comeuppance but never is heard a discouraging word.  She has introduced some innovations that may be a form of humane treatment or possibly just safety precautions.  Now before any of the bad animals are hurled onto the dead pile, they are first “put to sleep.”  This sounds suspiciously like pet euthanasia.  I hesitate to ask where she got this idea.  Maybe one of her friends had a dog or cat that had to be “put to sleep.”  But we’ll let it slide for now.  Dead pile has been wildly popular but I think the first waning has begun.

And just in time.  It’s rather repetitive.  And it’s time for the princess to begin to read.  We’ll start with the ats (at, bat, cat, fat, skip gat, hat, mat, gnat, pat, sat, forget tat and finish with vat).  And then we’ll do a few more families and it’ll be on to Dr. Seuss.  We’ve got to hurry because before you know it it’ll be September and she’ll be off to kindergarten.  And then she’ll be too old for The Angry Polar Bear and too sophisticated for her old pastimes.

Well, that’s the way it should be.  Her world is opening up.  School and friends and all the joys and sorrows of childhood.  And I have to wonder if she’ll remember all our games and play.  She is a very intelligent child.  Maybe her memories will last.  I hope so.  I feel that my existence is bound up in the memories of those who are close to me.  My children and grandchildren will be the extension of my impact on this world, just as I passed on the existence of my parents and grandparents to them.

It’s a great privilege to get to interact with your descendants.  You can see their traits and sometimes recognize yours and your spouse’s.  You can tell them stories and things about themselves and about their parents and you can share things that you enjoyed when you were young.  Yes, it’s a rare treat.  It’s the payoff for all the hard work you did raising your own kids.

Well, it was a good day.  Busy but good.