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CO2 levels above 280 ppm are
not natural (but are industrial)
Current Items of Interest
Auto-eugenics’ is taking hold. Eugenics was a 20th-century pseudo-science that purported to improve the
human breed by weeding out the ‘least fit’, often by measures like compulsory sterilisation or, in the case of the Nazis,
death camps. But this is the 21st century, and now people can do it for themselves. ‘Auto-eugenics’ is the just-named
phenomenon (you’re welcome) in which the excessively gullible and the intellectually challenged are weeding themselves out.
It’s most prominent in the United States, where 28 per cent of Americans say they do not plan to get vaccinated against
coronavirus or are unsure whether they will do so. The only country in the developed world where vaccine refuseniks are more
numerous is Russia, where they at least have the excuse that the state lies to them about everything all the time. Typically,
however, American vaccine refusal is twice as high as in other OECD countries – and so, of course, is the COVID-19 death rate.
In fact, it’s considerably more than twice as high, because a bigger proportion of unvaccinated people means much more virus
circulating in the population. COVID deaths in the United States last week were running around two thousand a day, whereas in
Canada, right next-door, they were around thirty. If Canada had the same vaccination and death rates as the US, it would be
losing almost two hundred people a day. President Joe Biden was on national television last Thursday urging unvaccinated
Americans to get the jabs, and declaring ‘vaccine mandates’ that oblige federal employees and companies that employ more than
one hundred people to do so. He even allowed himself a little anger towards the more than 80 million Americans who are still
refusing vaccination. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us. So, please,
do the right thing. But just don’t take it from me; listen to the voices of unvaccinated Americans who are lying in hospital
beds, taking their final breaths, saying, ‘If only I had gotten vaccinated’.” But there’s a puzzle here. Deep down, Biden must
realise that the unvaccinated are doing him a favour by dying in large numbers. More than 97 per cent of those two thousand
dead a day are not vaccinated, and it’s a safe bet that at least 90 per cent of them are Republicans. The vast majority of
anti-vaxxers who are still alive by next year’s mid-term elections will vote Republican, and if they all make it that far then
the present ultra-thin Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress could easily evaporate. In the circumstances,
therefore, Biden’s attempt to keep Republican voters alive borders on the quixotic. Or does it? A more cynical analysis
suggests that he may be making a two-way bet. He is getting credit for doing his duty as president and trying to protect all
Americans’ lives, but at the same time the added pressure that his new measures put on anti-vaxxers is likely to drive them
even deeper into their rejection of science and logic. Joe Biden would need to be a great deal more naive than his career
suggests to truly believe his appeals to the unvaccinated will have the right effect. Luckily for the Democratic Party, he is
almost bound to fail. Republican governors from Georgia to Arizona are already planning to make legal challenges to his new
vaccine mandates, and at the least they will probably manage to tie them up in the courts long enough to ensure that lots more
Republican voters die. So in the end it comes down a kind of race. On the one hand, almost all Republican-controlled states
are passing new voter-suppression measures to make voting harder for Democratic supporters, and especially for those who are
poor and/or non-white. It’s bound to have some success, because these are often people who don’t have cars (make the polling
stations few and far between), can’t get time off work (no Sunday voting), are suffering from ill-health (no mail-in ballots),
etc. On the other hand, a significant proportion of Republican voters are striving to remove themselves from the gene pool by
refusing to be vaccinated, and they can’t vote Republican if they are dead. Losing an extra 50,000 guaranteed Republican
voters to COVID-19 each month is bound to have an impact in at least some marginal elections next year. Which trend will shift
the needle more strongly remains to be seen, but it is bound to be a topic of furious in-house debate among Republican
electoral strategists. You can safely assume that they have the relevant numbers at their fingertips, but that they are
finding it almost impossible to shift the ideology. It’s generally seen as insensitive to talk about this sort of thing in
public, but admit it: wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall when they debate this matter among themselves?
Two Tribes are really Four? While western society appears to be locked in an endless
'two tribe' battle between 'the political left' vs. 'the political right', a new study from researchers at King's College
London (working with IPSOS) indicates there are really 'four tribes'. They are: Political-Right (1/4), Political-Left
(1/4), the Moderates (1/3), followed by the Disengaged (1/6). But here's the kicker: one third has never heard the term
'woke'; and those that have are split as to whether it is an insult or a compliment. comment: so perhaps this "woke" stuff is just another distraction created by social media
Six
Tribes? Watch this very informative interview between Jimmy Kimmel (host of an American late-night TV show) and Dr
Katherine Hayhoe (climate scientist at Texas Tech University). In this interview Dr Hayhoe mentions that there are six tribes
when it comes to environmental issues like climate change:
Disengaged (no opinion)
Dismissive (7%) these people scream that everything is a hoax
Doubtful
Cautious
Concerned
Alarmed
She goes on to mentioned that the sum of Concerned plus Alarmed constitute 50%
Electoral Reform: There was once a time when the two largest Dominions of the British Empire were Canada and Australia so I wonder why Canada stayed with first
past the post (FPTP) elections while Australia, and most others, transitioned to proportional representation
(PR)
FPTP: MINIMAL DECISION MAKERS - ALL FROM ONE PARTY: like a sports team, one party (or leader) receives all the glory (or
blame). History shows that costly bad decisions are usually associated with "majority wins" because fewer people are
involved in decision making.
PR: MORE DECISION MAKERS - MANY PARTIES: numerous parties share the glory/blame because they are all "at the table" for
every decision. I suspect that under this scheme, a more inclusive set of discussions will lead to fewer political errors
(well it has got to be better than what we currently have). Perhaps this is the only solution to the current political
divide among citizens.
The first chart in the article under link-3 uses Canada as an example of what went wrong in 2015
where Liberal votes (39%) were "over represented" in parliament while all others (61%) where "under represented".
It appears that Canada and India might be the only ex-Dominion countries still using FPTP. Perhaps we Canadian are just
too stupid to change; or too influenced by American-sourced news.
Food-for-thought: British politicians of all parties agreed to work together quietly under Churchill until the
conclusion of WW2; everything went well (politically speaking) until the war end when party bickering resumed. If
Britain had adopted proportional representation then I suspect:
Britain would have joined the EU in 1952 rather than 1962
there would have been no Suez Canal crisis which means the British pound might still be used as the world reserve
currency.
BTW, Anthony Eden won a majority government in 1955.
there would have been no Falklands War
BTW. Margaret Thatcher won a majority
government in 1979
there would have been no BREXIT
BTW, exiting the EU began with a Conservative Majority
Don't tell me about 'your' lost rights. One: I haven't heard whining like this ever since tobacco smokers were banned from smoking in public
places (smokers lost the rights to infect others; non-smokers regained the right to breath smoke-free air). For me, COVID-19
is a lot like second hand smoke. You are free to do whatever you wish with your body and your health but if you do not want to
get the jab then I prefer you keep your (potentially) disease ridden body away from me and my family and friends. Two: There have always been complainers. Seat belts had been installed in new autos since the mid-1960s
but when the province of Ontario made
seat-belt use mandatory in 1976, I recall hearing a lot of complainers bellyache about government interfering with their
personal freedom. People were luckier back then because that "complainer megaphone" that we call the internet was not yet
available to the common public. Three: If we were living in a Star Trek future then I'm certain that Doctor McCoy would simply
recommend the jab as an obvious prophylactic while Spock would say "the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few, or
the one" Four: Many people who don't know a damned thing claim that "any vaccine mandate is unconstitutional" so
think the issue should be taken to court. Well, I'm not sure how far we (society) are at this point, but a pandemic could be
declared a national emergency in which case everyone's rights will be legally curtailed (e.i. your rights are conditional -
not absolute). This has happened many times before (usually during times of war) although I do recall it happening in Canada,
during the FLQ crisis (1970). So for you conspiracy theorists out there who are worried about a government control, taking the
jab now will remove any justification for invoke something like a War
Measures Act or Emergencies Act Five: Speaking of conspiracy theories, I am still shocked about how many idiots claim that a chip is
begin injected with the jab (er, vaccine) to track you. First off, you are just not that important to be tracked. Secondly,
how would a small chip be powered? (if tiny battery then the transmitter would have only a tiny amount of power). Thirdly, if
the government wanted to track you then they are already doing so though your smart phone (so be sure to disable both the GPS
and Bluetooth interfaces).
Nuclear Energy: One Environmentalist’s Perspective (2021-07-09). Richard Wolfson
discusses his book "Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen's Guide", an authoritative and unbiased guide to
nuclear technology and the controversies that surround it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lFQ4QEog3U
POLIDIOT (political idiot) is a label applicable to both citizens and politicians who
insist their "political option" is superior to "empirical fact". Have you noticed that political pundits are already reciting
their favorite economic sound-bites while pretending the COVID-19 crisis (and associated economic recession) is over? To those
people I present this quote from 1936:
"The
ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is
commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from
any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the
air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. There are not many who are influenced by
new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil
servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest." --- John Maynard
Keyes
comment: no one "likes" the idea of printing up money but you would not like the alternative. Recall
that very little was done after the crash of 1929; this resulted in a decade of hobos (homeless men looking for work), soup kitchens, and people wearing signs saying "will work for
food"
A new particle accelerator is being completed in Dubna, Russia, and is scheduled to be operational in 2022. This one is named NICA (Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAсility) and is being built as a
project of JINR (Joint
Institute for Nuclear Research).
video (24-min): https://rtd.rt.com/films/russias-nica-big-bang-questions/
Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (published 2021). Author, Mariana Mazzucato PhD, argues that the Apollo Manned Space program (a public-private partnership
proposed by President John F Kennedy) did more to stimulate the American economy than all other activities, both public and
private, including defense spending.
comment: recall that it was NASA's manned space programs that created: the integrated chip business,
the mini-computer business, the micro-computer business (the Apollo Guidance Computer might have been the first practical micro), and the software business. These
were all instrumental in creating ARPANET which later
became the internet. Excerpt from page 80: [because of government investment] computers went from "30 tons and 160 kilowatts in ENIAC" to
"70 pounds and 70 watts in the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer)"
Back to the book: The author explains how the South Korean government invested the tiny sum of 100 Million dollars into the
Korean electronics industry with the intent of making Korea the leading manufacturer of digital displays like large screen
televisions, computer monitors and cameras. That investment paid off in unexpected ways including the development of
technology that created the smart phone business which they also own.
Global CO2 levels hit a new peak of 419.05 ppm in
April-2021 then increased to 419.13 ppm in May-2021
COVID-19 and two decades of misinformation Misinformation 1: The Republican-dominated Congress of 1987 eliminated the FCC Fairness Doctrine citing a violation of the right to free-speech by corporations. This enabled
politically biased outlets like Fox News (Cable TV) and Rush Limbaugh (Syndicated Radio). Americans seem unaware that
one-sided political propaganda in Germany resulted in world-war-2 Misinformation 2: The internet
(1969) enabled the world-wide-web (1991) then mobile social media (2007). These
technologies have enabled an ever increasing amount of medical and scientific nonsense (vaccine hesitancy is one example) from non-experts on both sides of the political spectrum. They also
bankrupted many respectable newspapers as advertisers moved their money online. Recall that "newspapers could be sued under
libel laws" so they employed editors and journalists to provide "best effort reporting" of fact-checked information.
Alternative media sites hide behind Section 230 of
the Communications Decency Act so check nothing:
2019: Buzzfeed laid off 43 journalists in their own news division TO SAVE MONEY
The information Age: Evolution
by natural selection is a scientifically proven fact. Five years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of
Species, Herbert Spencer published Principles of Biology containing the phrase Survival of the Fittest. A full year of COVID-19 deaths, combined with people still questioning science,
caused me to wonder: what will human society look like when this is over? We live in the age of Survival of the Smartest because everyone needs to be able to separate fact from fiction or political
opinion. Because many prefer information from politically-biased ALTERNATIVE STREAM MEDIA rather than neutral MAIN STREAM
MEDIA, a lot of stupid people are going to die (they will think they are "politically right" but will also be "dead
wrong"). These deaths might not change human biological evolution since many who will die have moved past their reproductive
years. Meanwhile this WHO chart
shows COVID-19 evolving through the Greek Alphabet
variants of concern-1: alpha, beta, gamma, delta
not sure why they jumped past letters 5 + 6 (epsilon and zeta)
variants of concern-2: eta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu (lambda and mu may prove to be as deadly as delta)
Ontario COVID-19 "ICU" Patient Numbers are too high. ICU ("intensive care unit") is
a hospital bed associated with a full-time nurse and a ventilator (people who lived through the Polio
crisis would be more familiar with the phrase "iron lung"). Premier Doug Ford announced a province-wide shutdown starting
April-03 because the ICU patient count was 421 but projected to hit 800 by the end of the month (there are
only 800 ICU beds in the whole province).
Months earlier, Sunnybrook Hospital (Toronto) began the construction of temporary overflow facilities that
resemble scenes from the TV show M*A*S*H. Photos:
Sea-level rise is rising faster: One proof of climate-change is the increasing rate of
sea-level rise. Most climate-change skeptics stand down after they see the graphs
showing average annual sea-level rate of risedoubling from 1.7 mm per year (averaged:
1870-1990) to 3.4 mm per year as measured by modern weather satellites. Multiplying by 100 yields 340 mm or 13.4
inches per century. But the contents of this recent scientific paper from Denmark ( https://os.copernicus.org/articles/17/181/2021/
) are even more troubling. The first line of the abstract reads "Recent assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) imply that global mean sea level is unlikely to rise more than about 1.1 meters within this century but
will increase further beyond 2100". This statement infers that one meter (39 inches) is within the scope of possibility.
Commenting on Huawei: It appears to me
that western society only supports capitalism "when the west wins". When a Chinese company, like Huawei, becomes the next
Nortel, then ridiculous conspiracy theories are invoked. IIRC, Huawei was one of many companies that bid on the sale of
Nortel's intellectual property, as did Apple, Google, Blackberry and others. Huawei was not one of the winners which forced it
to increase its own R&D operations (estimates put Huawei R&D in 2019 at a massive 40% of net income). Experts agree
that Huawei is 18-24 months ahead of their competition on 5G. If Huawei was stealing they could not be that far ahead.
I think it was Deng Xiaoping who once said "The Middle East has
its oil, China has rare earth". Since modern electronics is dependent upon rare-earth materials then it should be no
surprise that Chinese-made electronics is much less expensive. Speaking of Deng for a moment, in 1985 I was attending school
in Boston where it appeared to me that Chinese students were everywhere. Apparently, Deng had sent 1.3 million Chinese
students to the world to receive a top-quality western education paid for by China (one of my more-gifted Chinese classmates
was accompanied by "two minders" who were there to ensure that he returned to China). Unlike Mao, Deng saw great value in
education and realized that this was the best way forward for China. Thirty five years later, China has moved more than 350
million Chinese citizens from poverty into the middle class. This number is greater than the current population of the USA so
is it any surprise that China is doing well? Meanwhile, there is a tendency amongst westerners to label "an educated person"
as "an elite". It seems to me that the world has flipped.
Our culture is awash in lies, dominated by streams of never ending electronic
hallucinations that merge fact and fiction until they are indistinguishable. We have become the most illusioned society
on earth. Politics is a species of endless and meaningless political theater. Politicians have morphed into
celebrities. Our two ruling parties are, in reality, one party - the corporate party. And those who attempt to
puncture this vast, breathless universe of fake news, designed to push through the cruelty and exploitation of the neoliberal
order, are pushed so far to the margins of society, including by a public broadcasting system that has sold its soul for
corporate money, that we might as well be mice squeaking against an avalanche, but squeak we MUST
A conservative friend of mine was fond of asking me political questions (I am a centrist) then
would cut me off mid-sentence before I finished answering. Apparently he was the only conservative amongst his family of
brothers, sisters and parents but had no problem thinking he was right (er, correct) while they were wrong. How could
this be? This thought rattled around in my mind until I stumbled across a book titled The
Republican Brain which was positively reviewed by liberals and conservatives alike. The book contains several points
which I will pass along here:
Size differences in two brain structures, the amygdala
(larger in conservatives) and the anterior
cingulate (larger in liberals), bias human perspective of the world.
Conservatives see most issues as "black-and-white" (or good-and-evil) and are more pessimistic while liberals see
"shades of gray" and are generally more optimistic
Conservatives are more fearful of others so are more easily encouraged to vote for POPULIST issues like "building the
wall" or BREXIT (funny point: Britain had the lowest number of per-capita immigrants but had the highest political
reaction against them)
Conservatives play politics as a team sport so will almost always "vote their party" while Liberals will split their
vote choosing alternate parties (not very smart in first-past-the -post)
Philosophical razors
Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
When I was young, everything I knew about politics and economics came from secondary school
so found myself reading books recommended by others which included The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich
Hayek. Then when I heard Marget Thatcher quote the book, I wondered if she was reading a different translation since her
quotes bore little resemblance to the book I read (was Thatcher paraphrasing?). I recently stumbled onto this gem which was
also written by Hayek which I only pass along as food-for-thought. It is titled Why I am Not a Conservative (whoa! this article is an
excerpt from a 1960 book titled The
Constitution of Liberty - I wonder if Thatcher knew about this)
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
A mysterious monolith awakens the imagination of humanity's distant ancestors.
A second monolith awaits humanity's giant leap to the moon. And in orbit around Jupiter,
a third monolith beckons humanity to transcend beyond the limits of of body and machine.
"All forces in the universe are mediated by particle exchange"
This "Feynman Diagram" (of electron repulsion) depicts the movement of two electrons (1 to 3 and 2 to 4) in space and time. A
virtual photon transfers energy between them (5 to 6) causing them to repel each other.
To learn more:
1) brief explanation
2) detailed explanation Legend: Y-Axis (up-down) is time while X-Axis (left-right) is space
Thomas
Paine (1737-1809) wrote about many modern topics including "racial equality" (he proposed "abolishing slavery" 100
years before Lincoln). The following three titles are a "must read" for all modern citizens:
Adam Smith (1723-1790) professor of "moral
philosophy" (economist) developed economic theories with the intent of redistributing wealth to workers who were about to be
displaced by the industrial revolution.
Anyone reading Smith's books will come to the conclusion that American capitalism is based upon a synthesis of Adam Smith
and Charles Darwin (survival of the greediest). Many things Americans attribute to Adam Smith are not found in his books
(the 'invisible hand' is mentioned only once in a revised edition of WoN). What would he think about hedge
funds and activist investors?
"The
ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is
commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from
any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the
air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. There are not many who are influenced by
new theories 
Eagle Lander
Apple-2
Forever
Thomas
Paine
