Weekly covid update. Nationally, new active cases/day has risen slightly from last week at about -20k/day, to this week at -18k/day. Serious cases continue to decline at a slow but steady rate. Last week the percentage of serious cases of active cases was 0.08%, this week is 0.074%.
Bigger picture: the states such as Florida and Georgia are no longer contributing to a large decline in cases as the delta is essentially gone in those states and they are in the flat portion of the exponential decrease. They continue to go down but when it’s already low there isn’t much of a percentage decline. States such as NH and Colorado now take on a larger role as the cases in those states continue to rise with no indication of a turnaround.
Interesting contrast between two states: Georgia and Connecticut. Georgia has a population of about 10.7 million; CT has a population of about 3.3 million. Georgia now has a 14 day rolling average of about 300 new cases/day with a testing rate of 25k/day. Connecticut also is averaging about 300 cases/day with a testing rate of 12k/day. Quite amazing to me. CT with the same number of cases/day with a third of the population and half the testing rate of GA. I’ll let someone else figure out what it means.
I encourage you to be an “armchair activist” by submitting your input to OSHA. Consider telling them why a vaxx mandate is a bad idea … or the converse if you favor us living under government diktat LOL.
Quite amazing to me. CT with the same number of cases/day with a third of the population and half the testing rate of GA. I’ll let someone else figure out what it means.
My guess is that it’s probably mostly just a function of colder weather in northern states. As the temperature drops more people tend to congregate in closed, low humidity, poorly ventaliated spaces; conditions that are ideal for Covid transmission. In fact if you look at the CDC map, in general it certainly seems like the northern states have a much higher case rate per 100k than the southern states at this time.
Although this clearly doesn’t explain everthing. Like why the heck does New Mexico have such a high case rate compared to Texas?
Now, all “Biden” has to do is to send “concerned” State Department officials (or maybe even Jimmy Carter?) around the globe to ensure “free”, “fair” and “lawful” elections wherever they may be held….
E.g., this from Venezuela:
“A State Department spokesperson said to CNN that the US “considers free and fair local, National Assembly, and presidential elections essential for Venezuelans to reach a peaceful and democratic solution to the crises their country faces.”
In: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/13/europe/eu-us-tensions-venezuela-election-intl-cmd/index.html
What’s Spanish for “disgusting”…?
Do we test for common respiratory viruses?
Is it really a “case” if there are no symptoms?
At this point in time all COVID related statistics are irretrievably tainted.
Drilling down a bit more into the New Mexico versus Texas situation, it’s interesting when you look at the vaccination rates of those two states. In New Mexico, about 73% of the population has recieved at least 1 dose, but in Texas it’s at 61.8%. So maybe natural immunity would explain it?
Texas has had slightly more reported cases per 100k overall since the start of the pandemic. Texas has had 14.6k/100k versus New Mexico 13.4k/100k. Now of course those are only reported cases. It’s a virtual certainty that the true numbers of cases in both states are quite a bit higher, and maybe people in Texas didn’t get tested as much as the New Mexico.
NEO, thanks for putting up the Open Thread early in the morning. Well early for me being 2 hr behind you.
Nice photo.
Might one wonder if there’s a commercial hint/puzzle/rebus/element here? (Say, an ad for Ocean Spray cranberries?…)
Well, never too early to get ready for the big day, especially when it seems like turkeys are currently rare enough to be designated a protected species. (Or is it “merely” the turkey supply chain?…)
(No doubt another coded “Biden” policy statement…flipping the American people the bird…as Jen Psaki no doubt rehearses for a convincing, from the heart “Hey, what’s wrong with Spam?” pronouncement.
In any event, happy lead-up to T-Day…and good luck with the bird…along with the trimmings…
For the first time in history, people with zero symptoms are classified as “ill” because a test method says so.
Would be interesting to see how many “positive” test results there would be if thousands of people in the general population were tested for, say, Ebola or polio or whooping cough or diphtheria, or ……
Is it possible that test methods have become so sensitive they can detect quantities of virus or bacteria in parts per billion or parts per trillion? Quantities so low, that , say, 20 or 30 years ago, they would have been undetectable.
There is a saying that “the poison is in the dosage;” meaning that the amount of poison that is either deadly, will get you sick, will barely get you sick, will not get you sick at all, depends upon the dosage supplied.
X amount will kill you, but a very very very small fraction of that will be harmless.
I wonder if “illness is in the quantity of the viral / bacterial load” is also true.
Wasn’t that long ago that story would have been 77 year old shot and killed in armed robbery, suspect unknown. h/t Kim du Toit
geoffb: Heart warming!
I have a confession to make. Please don’t tell neo.
On the “All that Jazz” thread the song, “Mr. Tambourine Man” came up and I said I don’t like it because it’s maudlin. It is not. I had confused it with the song, “Mr. Bojangles.” Neo has written about “Mr. Bojangles” before, and so, for some reason, that’s what my brain saw when my eyes read the words, “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
I can’t listen to, “Mr. Bojangles.” Too depressing.
I can listen to, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but pretty much would only listen to The Byrds version, and that’s primarily because Roger McGuinn’s 12 string guitar part reminds me of The Records song, “Starry Eyes,” which is one of my favorite pop songs. (In which, ironically, lead guitarist Brian Alterman plays 12 string guitar as an homage to Roger McGuinn.)
Barry Meislin says, Well, never too early to get ready for the big day, especially when it seems like turkeys are currently rare enough to be designated a protected species. (Or is it “merely” the turkey supply chain?…)
This should be the year that Meleagris gallopavo domesticus offers a pardon in the Rose Garden to the turkey in the White House.
The only turkey problem I’ve encountered was that the 33 cent per pound ones had sold out the 12-14 pounders and so I had to get a 20+ pounder for the whopping price of $6.85. Not a real problem since there are only us two and I now part them up to vacuum freeze in reasonable 2 pound portions.
Cheapest I saw was 87 cents. And only large Turkeys. There is just my Wife and I so we look for a smaller one. Seems each yr they just get bigger. Got a 17 lb one, and yes we will freeze a lot of it, but still a lot gets wasted.
My theory-
The vaccines were very successful against the “original” WuFlu- decreased cases, and less severe symptoms for “breakthrough” patients.
BUT, the breakthrough cases were mutations, at least some of them, and this included the infamous delta, which the vaccines were much less effective against since the delta has a modified spike. The delta then was able to rampage through highly vaccinated groups, e.g., Israel, while unvaccinated groups, e.g. Ethiopia, developed more effective natural immunity from the alpha version, had a lower mortality rate due to minimal obesity and more sun exposure/VitA.
In the long run, we would have been better off without the vaccines, at least on a population basis.
Prove me wrong.
Disclosure: late 60s, healthy. Mild case of WuFlu before vaccines, then got the 2 doses based on info available early 2021. Holding off on booster.
Once by the Pacific
by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.
Physicsguy, this might be of use. (I myself don’t really understand it, but from what I can ascertain, and I could be way off-base here, it deals with how information that should be able to shed light on something can be hidden—by those who wish to hide that information but don’t want to be seen as hiding it—in very sophisticated ways, i.e., “Informative Censoring”)
“A Breakthrough in Modeling: Informative Censoring.
The Chloroquine Wars Part XCV”: https://zenodo.org/record/5243901#.YYrqUE5ByMr
The above was linked to by Matthew Crawford, who writes:
“Nobody could possibly realize how smart Donald Knuth is until they’ve tackled a problem whose answer is not simply statistical, but actively hidden by other other human beings with the aid of automated computation.
“Working on a challenging modeling problem with the help of a friend.
“Thanks to Mark Reeder, I think I have the final piece of a tremendous puzzle. I believe I can explain essentially all aspects of the conflicting data over vaccine efficacy, and in a way that will be convincing to good, honest, and open data minds….” https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/a-breakthrough-in-modeling-informative
physicsguy, nonapod, I think the virus is seasonal. Weather is nicer now in the Southeast, people are turning off the AC and getting outside more. In northern climes, people are heading indoors where the virus lurks. As I recall, most of New Mexico’s population is at higher elevations where it’s colder. Next to Texas, but not really much like it.
I paid $2 a pound for a turkey at Wegmans a couple of weeks ago, and put it in the freezer. But then, I require a turkey which is not injected with any basting fluid because of a celiac member of the family. Butterball turkeys appear to be in good supply, if you don’t mind paying the price per pound for something which has an 8% by weight injected solution.
Rufus T. Firefly —
I actually wrote a comment wondering if there was confusion between “Tambourine” and “Bojangles”, but couldn’t put it in such a way that it seemed to add to the conversation, and I couldn’t remember anything but the chorus to “Tambourine”, so I deleted it.
Yeah, “Mr. Bojangles” is depressing as hell. I’m most familiar with the version by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Dylan’s version. He tends to put a different spin on his songs than other artists who cover him, so I don’t know if it would be as maudlin. I kinda can’t stand the song, though, so I’m not willing to go listen to it.
West TX Intermediate Crude —
e.g., Israel, while unvaccinated groups, e.g. Ethiopia
Gosh, if only we had some kind of organization that could be trusted to do this sort of international comparison and scientific analysis. Some kind of world wide organization that studies health. A trustworthy non-political world health organization, perhaps.
Too bad we don’t have one of those.
I wasn’t sure if my comment was read, in another section, so I thought I’d put it here, also:
…Please tell me if my data is wrong, but-
is it true that [this bill, is not a LAW, YET?]
As of Nov. 9, today, I think this infrastructure bill, is still just, a bill. It is not a law.
It won’t become a law unless the president signs it.
In my radio news, they keep talking about the Inf. bill, like it is a law, now.
( Also, since, I believe), Pres. Biden got all of the votes he needs for this bill to pass, + have him sign it into law, about 4-5 days ago.
Since he wants this item to become a law, why hasn’t he signed it to make it a law?
Please tell me what you have heard about about this.
TRA, no link now because I’m in a hurry, but I think the formal signing of the bill is delayed until some people (I don’t know which) can be present for the ceremony. But it’s a done deal.
TRA
Naively still believing that Truth will out, I take the position that the “infrastructure bill” is not, and will never become, law, inasmuch as it will never be signed by a legitimate-elected President.
Interesting comment re Victor Davis Hanson, our Hesiod Amidst the Josés. This from the Z Man’s latest article’s comments section.
There was some discussion at Neo’s recently about whether or not VDH pulls his punches in order to hang onto his lunch pail or is genuinely clueless. I was of course on the side of the former. But… one begins to wonder:
In tearing haste to finish ablutions and drop laundry and repair to hipster coffee shop to continue pontificating, so will try to hunt out VDH link later when more caffeinated.
Provided without further comment 🙂
“This might not seem like a reply, but I swear it is:
Out of kindness I sometimes willfully forget what idiot monsters conservatives are, but I got brutally boomer-slapped by VDH today.
Did you know that the reason Youngkin won VA was because Trump couldn’t tweet his support for him, and that the only way post-2020 Republicans can ever win any election anywhere ever again is if Trump(ism) remains banned from all media forever?
Turns out, the conspiracy of our whole ruling class against all non-Democratic American voters accidentally created the conditions for Republican victory! How ironic.
(If any artists out there feel like making an NFT.gif of somebody punching VDH in the throat until he looks probably dead, I’ll place a losing bid in the auction for it.)”
@Kate,
Cool. Thanks.
I kind of figured that this bill was, and/or is, destined to be a law, but I wanted to be sure about it.
It’s just my view, but:
I try to be careful about the (statements) given out by some reporters, + by some govt. people…not ALL of the statements given by reporters, + some in the US Federal government, or in any govt. in the US, are totally true- such as:
a lot of reporters, + govt. people, called a 1980s event, the “Iran-Contra scandal”.
The event is misnamed, by some, as “the Iran-Contra scandal”, because some people think that- [in the 1980s, the Reagan White House, did an arms deal with Iran, while an arms embargo was on Iran. The word, Contra, is in “Iran-Contra” name, because some reporters + other people believed that some money from the Iranian weapons deal, was given to Contra-rebels, in Nicaragua.
From what I have discovered, in reputable documents, is that no one proved that money from the Iranian weapons deal ever went to the Contras. I understand that no money from the Iranian deal went to the Contras.
(I believe that some people in the govt. wanted to send that money to the Contras, but it was never sent to the Contras).
Anyhow, thank you for the reply. Sometimes the news stories given to me, aren’t given to me with all of the facts in them.
Cheers.
“One final lesson, then, of last night: it is always wiser to speak softly and carry a sledgehammer, than to loudly pack a gavel.”
Funny… I never figured VDH for a Putinista. Maybe he’s redeemable yet.
GvdL:
Good one. Goes well with Arnold’s.
But wait!… There’s Mao!
Ascent of Lushan
Perching as after flight, the mountain towers over the Yangtze;
I have overleapt four hundred twists to its green crest.
Cold-eyed I survey the world beyond the seas;
A hot wind spatters raindrops on the sky-brooded waters.
Clouds cluster over the nine streams, the yellow crane floating,
And billows roll on to the eastern coast, white foam flying.
Who knows whither Prefect Tao Yuan-ming is gone
Now that he can till fields in the Land of Peach Blossoms?
Cashed in an audible credit for Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem.” It’s apparently his most famous.
My bet is you’re familiar. Any thoughts on starting here or perhaps some book less famous?
@Huxley:
It’s been lingering unread in my Kindle for about the last three years. I really must get back to it.
I’ve been reliving my early teens with an Alan Dean Foster Binge of light bedtime reading of late.
The Audible credit you speak of: Is this from having made a bunch of purchases, or the free credit they toss out every month?
You’re probably familiar with The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) by Abelson and Sussman (MIT Press). Sussman and a collaborator wrote another book called The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics which amongst other things takes a crack at the TBP — a bit above my pay grade but have heard great things about their approach from those who might know.
@Huxley:
Apparently there was an abortive effort to make a film:
Can only be a matter of time before Apple TV, Netflix, or Amazon Prime have a go at it.
Which brings me to Apple TV’s adaptation of Asimov’s Foundation. Color me unimpressed. Wokeified up the wazoo with far too many gratuitous plot-bastardizing Black Bodies (not being the sorts that radiate in thermodynamic equilibrium in physics exams) and Wimminz of various Mystery Meat Hues Speaking Truth to White Male Power.
Zaphod:
So that’s the Liu to read or put off reading?
I missed Alan Dean Foster. I was transitioning out of SF in the mid-80s as his career got going.
The last “new guy” I read was David Brin. I was astonished in the 2000s to discover what a vicious Democrat he’s become. Unhinged and spitting. Sadly a Caltech degree doesn’t protect one.
Audible tosses you a free credit every month until you’ve banked 12 credits. Then no more new ones until you use some of them old ones.
I got about five lectures into the MIT online course on SICP. I mean to get back to it someday. (I can’t quite believe they’ve shifted to a Python version.) However, I didn’t know Sussman took a crack at Mechanics.
I had heard of TV versions of 3BP. I was talking to a younger out-of-work English prof on any new stuff to read and he recommended Liu.
@Huxley:
I’ve no opinion either way on TBD as have not read it. Merely have picked up on the grapevine that it’s a Good Thing and that I should read it. Your jogging my memory has upped the odds that I’ll get to it this year. I have this bad habit of buying stuff I see recommended which then ends up buried in the depths of my Kindle and I forget that I’ve got it (very notionally) queued. One advantage of physical books is that their presence is harder to ignore.
I discovered Foster’s Flinx series in 8th or 9th grade and was amused that he made one of his capitals of the Humanx Confederation Brisbane, Australia. Being a regular visitor to said place at the time, I found this rather fanciful to say the least. Back then, the International Terminal at the airport was a giant Quonset Hut left over from the last great unpleasantness.
Well, just threw one of my princely three credits at TBD, so will see if I can listen to it if I keep procrastinating about reading it!
Damn… no I didn’t. Go back to my phone and it says This Title not available based on geographic restrictions. Goddamn Techno-Oligarchs!
Zaphod:
I’m in the US and 3BD is good. What geographic restriction or oligarch applies in your case?
@Huxley:
How to Design Programs (HTDP) is the alternative to SICP and is Scheme-based. It starts out deceptively simply, but in a perfect world would be a great book to get students of all abilities of average IQ and up well-grounded and able to reason about computation and program design. The learning environment that goes with it is called DrRacket. Book and software free online.
@Huxley:
I may have borked myself by subscribing to Audible through the Australian Apple store (In-app subscription purchase) rather than via my US Amazon Store account. That’s probably it.
Oh well… Just have to read the thing. Or mess around with shifting my subscription over if I get more into Audible later.
@Huxley:
Just started reading so as to get a bit lodged in my head and have something to come back to. I’m surprised John Derbyshire hasn’t reviewed this as he has a mathematical background and is famously a (qualified) Sinophile.
If they want to have any chance of selling it into the Chinese market they’d be well-advised to go easy on the POCs and gratuitous inter-racial-in-yer-face-whiteboy sex scenes. What the Tiddly Winks had to say about some of the recent Star Wars casting efforts and love-interests is not fit for a family publication.
Just slung John Derbyshire an email instructing him to read it and review it if he hasn’t already. We’ll have to see how that goes.
“Instead, through the unfathomable mystery of literary creation, Scott gave us one of the best — truest, most unsparing — descriptions ever written of what happens when two ancient populations collide. Good sense, good intentions, civilized administration, liberal inclinations, and generosity of spirit — all those things “so dear to historians” — are present on both sides; yet at last they count for less than we think, or wish. The real decision-maker is too often the unrecorded man: the Ronald Merrick, or the man who kills him, or the sepoy who betrays Sarah’s brother-in-law to the Japanese, or the anonymous (and chillingly polite) Hindu who murders Sarah’s Muslim friend Kasim in the sectarian violence that attended independence, or those “dark young men of random destiny and private passions” that so vex Count Bronowsky, the wily, worldly vizier of a local prince.
Those dark young men are with us still. One of them dispatched Benazir Bhutto while I was writing this. Others are there a-plenty, in the friction zone where tribes, faiths, and races meet, where modernity encounters historical resentment, where humanitarianism collides with identity. They defy the glib nostrums of the world-improvers, they spit on sweet reason and good intentions, they laugh to scorn the bourgeois verities of cool, shy northern peoples.
Statesmen, generals, intellectuals, and merchant princes will pronounce and propose, posture and plead. Still the unrecorded man may have the last word. The events surrounding Indian independence exposed some dark human terrain. In fiction, I have encountered no better guide to that terrain than Paul Scott.”
I had the good fortune to read Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet whilst enduring a bout of giardiasis in the Le Meridien Bangalore. Needed the diversion and could just about navigate the trip downstairs to the hotel bookshop and back without mishap. Cometh the hour, Cometh the man. Highly recommended.
I like the lighting in the photo.
And I think Frost’s poem fits very well.
That’s about it for tonight.
Drug policy needs a total rethink. The way we respond to addiction guarantees the worst possible outcomes. Prohibition is funding cartels which are taking over more and more territory. The costs of enforcement and prisons are incredible.
The only way out is to take the profit out of it. The focus must change from criminalization to harm reduction.
The two major parties react to drug addiction in totally predictable ways.
The GOP says jack up penalties.
The Democrats see the problem as an opportunity to do what they live for, expanding government. More counselors, more prosecutors, more public defenders, more police, more judges, more programs, more huge government funded studies, and who can oppose the tax increases needed to address such a terrible problem.
There is only one approach that will work, end prohibition and take the profit out of it.
Let’s let an addict go to any physician and get a prescription for his drug. The drugs cost next to nothing to produce, and addicts could afford to maintain some semblance of a normal life at no cost to society. This will also create specialized practices which focus on successful withdrawals.
Current policy creates armies of pushers, makes the worst people in our society filthy rich, explodes the cost of government, and destroys those caught up in addiction.
I have personal experience with addicted employees. In the last few years two employees, both high performers, an engineer and a technician, became addicted. In both cases their work didn’t suffer, but their lives went down rapidly.
?The engineer left his wife and started living in his car and cheap motels. His unpaid bills became a problem that he was unable to hide. Nobody knew what was going on until he made local headlines when he died from a bad batch.
The technician began stealing equipment to feed his habit. The theft was hard to detect at first since equipment that had not been secured and was used infrequently went missing. As security measures were taken, a company truck full of equipment went missing with the employee. Withdrawal was so intolerable that he destroyed his job and damaged his friend and employer for a fix.
The major argument against harm reduction instead of criminalization and government programs seems to be that drugs are so terrible that no public policy should tolerate them. This overlooks the fact that they are already everywhere, and criminalization is actually promoting addiction by creating armies of pushers.
?Where is the fairness in taxing people who stay off them to pay for chasing and locking up those who don’t?
How is it better to destroy those caught in addiction rather than letting them handle their situation as cheaply and safely as possible?
Let’s make it easy and cheap to legally maintain an unfortunate habit. Take the profit out of it, and let addicts live as normal a life as possible until they become so sick of it that they do what it takes to get clean. Harm reduction is the only effective solution. Taking the profit out of it is the only way it will end.
Zaphod: excellent review of The Raj Quartet by Derbyshire. I saw the miniseries first on PBS in the 1980s, then read the books. Both were brilliant.
I have long argued to anyone who will listen that the admittedly repulsive colonial policeman Ronald Merrick–a sadist, racist, and closeted homosexual–is the real hero of the Quartet, in the sense that he perceived things as they really were. Also that there is more real-world truth in the bad-colonial-conscience prison debriefing of Hari Kumar by Nigel Rowan (Indian Civil Service) and Indian lawyer V. R. Gopal than there is in all of the “political science” treatises ever written. If one wants to understand how the world largely works, read the chapter entitled “The Situation” in The Day of the Scorpion, the second volume of the Quartet. Derbyshire quotes the essential passage from that chapter, which occurs as Kumar is describing his interrogation and torture at the hands of Merrick:
“In India he [Merrick] automatically became a Sahib. He hobnobbed on equal terms with people who would snub him at home … What they all had in common was the contempt they all felt for the native race of the country they ruled. … He said you couldn’t buck this issue, that relationships between people were based on contempt, not love, and that contempt was the prime human emotion because no human being was ever going to believe all human beings were born equal. If there was an emotion almost as strong as contempt it was envy. He said a man’s personality existed at the point of equilibrium between the degree of his envy and the degree of his contempt.”
Ugly stuff, but my sixty-plus years on earth tell me that Merrick was closer to the truth than his bien-pensant fellow countrymen. Merrick’s views are also in accord with your comments on this forum–comments which we, as good foundational Americans, reject as repugnant (but not necessarily, or in all cases, inaccurate). Human differences are indeed obdurate. You favor one approach to them. We favor another. Who is right? Ah, that’s the question.
@Hubert:
Derbyshire is a quietly brilliant man. A fatalist, but if one reads the story of how he met and courted his wife, also far more than that.
I’m as saddened as the next person that the World is a messy place and that we mostly learn our lessons badly and too late, if at all.
My favourite character only appears in Volume 3 (IIRC — read the series in 2002 stuck in a hotel in the Bangalore Cantonment) and also a homosexual: the urbane, humane, seen-it-all fatalist, Count Bronowsky.
Having observed in country the way Indians of different social classes and castes interact with each other, I’m not convinced that any other relation between Rulers and Ruled than contempt (and I think the novels over-egg the pudding a bit here) could have worked. The Mutiny cast a long shadow, too.
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‘Morning.
Weekly covid update. Nationally, new active cases/day has risen slightly from last week at about -20k/day, to this week at -18k/day. Serious cases continue to decline at a slow but steady rate. Last week the percentage of serious cases of active cases was 0.08%, this week is 0.074%.
Bigger picture: the states such as Florida and Georgia are no longer contributing to a large decline in cases as the delta is essentially gone in those states and they are in the flat portion of the exponential decrease. They continue to go down but when it’s already low there isn’t much of a percentage decline. States such as NH and Colorado now take on a larger role as the cases in those states continue to rise with no indication of a turnaround.
Interesting contrast between two states: Georgia and Connecticut. Georgia has a population of about 10.7 million; CT has a population of about 3.3 million. Georgia now has a 14 day rolling average of about 300 new cases/day with a testing rate of 25k/day. Connecticut also is averaging about 300 cases/day with a testing rate of 12k/day. Quite amazing to me. CT with the same number of cases/day with a third of the population and half the testing rate of GA. I’ll let someone else figure out what it means.
“Biden”‘s America:
“[Marjorie Taylor Greene] explains what she seen at the Gulag where January 6 protesters are being held in DC.”
https://twitter.com/AKA_RealDirty/status/1457894384775667714
H/T Lee Smith twitter roll.
Can this be the only person in Congress—or in the country—who cares about this atrocity?
Just a taste of things to come from “Biden”….
+ Bonus
“Patriot Purge”:
https://twitter.com/AmandaMilius/status/1457923653669167104
The Navy—and the country—looks like it has another bullet to dodge….though the article seems like an almost complete whitewash of the affair.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/metallurgist-pleads-guilty-fraud-falsifying-steel-test-results-navy-submarines
I encourage you to be an “armchair activist” by submitting your input to OSHA. Consider telling them why a vaxx mandate is a bad idea … or the converse if you favor us living under government diktat LOL.
Instructions here if you’re willing to help gum up the works:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/you_can_and_should_protest_the_osha_mandate_about_workplace_vaccines.html
Quite amazing to me. CT with the same number of cases/day with a third of the population and half the testing rate of GA. I’ll let someone else figure out what it means.
My guess is that it’s probably mostly just a function of colder weather in northern states. As the temperature drops more people tend to congregate in closed, low humidity, poorly ventaliated spaces; conditions that are ideal for Covid transmission. In fact if you look at the CDC map, in general it certainly seems like the northern states have a much higher case rate per 100k than the southern states at this time.
Although this clearly doesn’t explain everthing. Like why the heck does New Mexico have such a high case rate compared to Texas?
It’s official: The US government is completely full of bat guano…
https://www.theepochtimes.com/washington-deeply-concerned-about-health-of-jailed-chinese-citizen-journalist-calls-for-immediate-release_4093761.html
Now, all “Biden” has to do is to send “concerned” State Department officials (or maybe even Jimmy Carter?) around the globe to ensure “free”, “fair” and “lawful” elections wherever they may be held….
E.g., this from Venezuela:
“A State Department spokesperson said to CNN that the US “considers free and fair local, National Assembly, and presidential elections essential for Venezuelans to reach a peaceful and democratic solution to the crises their country faces.”
In:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/13/europe/eu-us-tensions-venezuela-election-intl-cmd/index.html
What’s Spanish for “disgusting”…?
Do we test for common respiratory viruses?
Is it really a “case” if there are no symptoms?
At this point in time all COVID related statistics are irretrievably tainted.
Drilling down a bit more into the New Mexico versus Texas situation, it’s interesting when you look at the vaccination rates of those two states. In New Mexico, about 73% of the population has recieved at least 1 dose, but in Texas it’s at 61.8%. So maybe natural immunity would explain it?
Texas has had slightly more reported cases per 100k overall since the start of the pandemic. Texas has had 14.6k/100k versus New Mexico 13.4k/100k. Now of course those are only reported cases. It’s a virtual certainty that the true numbers of cases in both states are quite a bit higher, and maybe people in Texas didn’t get tested as much as the New Mexico.
NEO, thanks for putting up the Open Thread early in the morning. Well early for me being 2 hr behind you.
Nice photo.
Might one wonder if there’s a commercial hint/puzzle/rebus/element here? (Say, an ad for Ocean Spray cranberries?…)
Well, never too early to get ready for the big day, especially when it seems like turkeys are currently rare enough to be designated a protected species. (Or is it “merely” the turkey supply chain?…)
(No doubt another coded “Biden” policy statement…flipping the American people the bird…as Jen Psaki no doubt rehearses for a convincing, from the heart “Hey, what’s wrong with Spam?” pronouncement.
In any event, happy lead-up to T-Day…and good luck with the bird…along with the trimmings…
For the first time in history, people with zero symptoms are classified as “ill” because a test method says so.
Would be interesting to see how many “positive” test results there would be if thousands of people in the general population were tested for, say, Ebola or polio or whooping cough or diphtheria, or ……
Is it possible that test methods have become so sensitive they can detect quantities of virus or bacteria in parts per billion or parts per trillion? Quantities so low, that , say, 20 or 30 years ago, they would have been undetectable.
There is a saying that “the poison is in the dosage;” meaning that the amount of poison that is either deadly, will get you sick, will barely get you sick, will not get you sick at all, depends upon the dosage supplied.
X amount will kill you, but a very very very small fraction of that will be harmless.
I wonder if “illness is in the quantity of the viral / bacterial load” is also true.
Looks like Push has come to shove.
Some government workers with natural immunity are fighting back.
They’re suing Fauci.
It begins….
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/naturally-immune-federal-workers-file-class-action-suit-against-fauci
Toddling town toddles on.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/06/77-year-old-concealed-carrier-shoots-kills-alleged-robber-in-chicago/
Wasn’t that long ago that story would have been 77 year old shot and killed in armed robbery, suspect unknown. h/t Kim du Toit
geoffb: Heart warming!
I have a confession to make. Please don’t tell neo.
On the “All that Jazz” thread the song, “Mr. Tambourine Man” came up and I said I don’t like it because it’s maudlin. It is not. I had confused it with the song, “Mr. Bojangles.” Neo has written about “Mr. Bojangles” before, and so, for some reason, that’s what my brain saw when my eyes read the words, “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
I can’t listen to, “Mr. Bojangles.” Too depressing.
I can listen to, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but pretty much would only listen to The Byrds version, and that’s primarily because Roger McGuinn’s 12 string guitar part reminds me of The Records song, “Starry Eyes,” which is one of my favorite pop songs. (In which, ironically, lead guitarist Brian Alterman plays 12 string guitar as an homage to Roger McGuinn.)
Barry Meislin says, Well, never too early to get ready for the big day, especially when it seems like turkeys are currently rare enough to be designated a protected species. (Or is it “merely” the turkey supply chain?…)
This should be the year that Meleagris gallopavo domesticus offers a pardon in the Rose Garden to the turkey in the White House.
The only turkey problem I’ve encountered was that the 33 cent per pound ones had sold out the 12-14 pounders and so I had to get a 20+ pounder for the whopping price of $6.85. Not a real problem since there are only us two and I now part them up to vacuum freeze in reasonable 2 pound portions.
Cheapest I saw was 87 cents. And only large Turkeys. There is just my Wife and I so we look for a smaller one. Seems each yr they just get bigger. Got a 17 lb one, and yes we will freeze a lot of it, but still a lot gets wasted.
My theory-
The vaccines were very successful against the “original” WuFlu- decreased cases, and less severe symptoms for “breakthrough” patients.
BUT, the breakthrough cases were mutations, at least some of them, and this included the infamous delta, which the vaccines were much less effective against since the delta has a modified spike. The delta then was able to rampage through highly vaccinated groups, e.g., Israel, while unvaccinated groups, e.g. Ethiopia, developed more effective natural immunity from the alpha version, had a lower mortality rate due to minimal obesity and more sun exposure/VitA.
In the long run, we would have been better off without the vaccines, at least on a population basis.
Prove me wrong.
Disclosure: late 60s, healthy. Mild case of WuFlu before vaccines, then got the 2 doses based on info available early 2021. Holding off on booster.
Once by the Pacific
by Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the light was spoken.
Indeed a truly remarkable bird.
There are days when I think that Franklin was right….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlPzzvfTUgA
And if yer interested in talking turkey (say yer lonely or hungry or somethin’…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqII8UPwR-E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fO8Jd27fVc
(They’re pretty voluble, though, and might not let you get a word in edge-wise…)
And of course, there’s Turkey-palooza…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WorEQAsNdVs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAKpo0V4JvE
The Covid natural immunity debacle;
https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/09/why-politicians-and-bureaucrats-are-so-threatened-by-the-people-covid-couldnt-kill/#.YYp1a__Cgw0.twitter
H/T Ron Coleman twitter roll.
Physicsguy, this might be of use. (I myself don’t really understand it, but from what I can ascertain, and I could be way off-base here, it deals with how information that should be able to shed light on something can be hidden—by those who wish to hide that information but don’t want to be seen as hiding it—in very sophisticated ways, i.e., “Informative Censoring”)
“A Breakthrough in Modeling: Informative Censoring.
The Chloroquine Wars Part XCV”:
https://zenodo.org/record/5243901#.YYrqUE5ByMr
The above was linked to by Matthew Crawford, who writes:
“Nobody could possibly realize how smart Donald Knuth is until they’ve tackled a problem whose answer is not simply statistical, but actively hidden by other other human beings with the aid of automated computation.
“Working on a challenging modeling problem with the help of a friend.
“Thanks to Mark Reeder, I think I have the final piece of a tremendous puzzle. I believe I can explain essentially all aspects of the conflicting data over vaccine efficacy, and in a way that will be convincing to good, honest, and open data minds….”
https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/a-breakthrough-in-modeling-informative
physicsguy, nonapod, I think the virus is seasonal. Weather is nicer now in the Southeast, people are turning off the AC and getting outside more. In northern climes, people are heading indoors where the virus lurks. As I recall, most of New Mexico’s population is at higher elevations where it’s colder. Next to Texas, but not really much like it.
I paid $2 a pound for a turkey at Wegmans a couple of weeks ago, and put it in the freezer. But then, I require a turkey which is not injected with any basting fluid because of a celiac member of the family. Butterball turkeys appear to be in good supply, if you don’t mind paying the price per pound for something which has an 8% by weight injected solution.
Rufus T. Firefly —
I actually wrote a comment wondering if there was confusion between “Tambourine” and “Bojangles”, but couldn’t put it in such a way that it seemed to add to the conversation, and I couldn’t remember anything but the chorus to “Tambourine”, so I deleted it.
Yeah, “Mr. Bojangles” is depressing as hell. I’m most familiar with the version by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Dylan’s version. He tends to put a different spin on his songs than other artists who cover him, so I don’t know if it would be as maudlin. I kinda can’t stand the song, though, so I’m not willing to go listen to it.
West TX Intermediate Crude —
e.g., Israel, while unvaccinated groups, e.g. Ethiopia
Gosh, if only we had some kind of organization that could be trusted to do this sort of international comparison and scientific analysis. Some kind of world wide organization that studies health. A trustworthy non-political world health organization, perhaps.
Too bad we don’t have one of those.
I wasn’t sure if my comment was read, in another section, so I thought I’d put it here, also:
…Please tell me if my data is wrong, but-
is it true that [this bill, is not a LAW, YET?]
As of Nov. 9, today, I think this infrastructure bill, is still just, a bill. It is not a law.
It won’t become a law unless the president signs it.
In my radio news, they keep talking about the Inf. bill, like it is a law, now.
( Also, since, I believe), Pres. Biden got all of the votes he needs for this bill to pass, + have him sign it into law, about 4-5 days ago.
Since he wants this item to become a law, why hasn’t he signed it to make it a law?
Please tell me what you have heard about about this.
TRA, no link now because I’m in a hurry, but I think the formal signing of the bill is delayed until some people (I don’t know which) can be present for the ceremony. But it’s a done deal.
TRA
Naively still believing that Truth will out, I take the position that the “infrastructure bill” is not, and will never become, law, inasmuch as it will never be signed by a legitimate-elected President.
Interesting comment re Victor Davis Hanson, our Hesiod Amidst the Josés. This from the Z Man’s latest article’s comments section.
There was some discussion at Neo’s recently about whether or not VDH pulls his punches in order to hang onto his lunch pail or is genuinely clueless. I was of course on the side of the former. But… one begins to wonder:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=25632
In tearing haste to finish ablutions and drop laundry and repair to hipster coffee shop to continue pontificating, so will try to hunt out VDH link later when more caffeinated.
Provided without further comment 🙂
“This might not seem like a reply, but I swear it is:
Out of kindness I sometimes willfully forget what idiot monsters conservatives are, but I got brutally boomer-slapped by VDH today.
Did you know that the reason Youngkin won VA was because Trump couldn’t tweet his support for him, and that the only way post-2020 Republicans can ever win any election anywhere ever again is if Trump(ism) remains banned from all media forever?
Turns out, the conspiracy of our whole ruling class against all non-Democratic American voters accidentally created the conditions for Republican victory! How ironic.
(If any artists out there feel like making an NFT.gif of somebody punching VDH in the throat until he looks probably dead, I’ll place a losing bid in the auction for it.)”
@Kate,
Cool. Thanks.
I kind of figured that this bill was, and/or is, destined to be a law, but I wanted to be sure about it.
It’s just my view, but:
I try to be careful about the (statements) given out by some reporters, + by some govt. people…not ALL of the statements given by reporters, + some in the US Federal government, or in any govt. in the US, are totally true- such as:
a lot of reporters, + govt. people, called a 1980s event, the “Iran-Contra scandal”.
The event is misnamed, by some, as “the Iran-Contra scandal”, because some people think that- [in the 1980s, the Reagan White House, did an arms deal with Iran, while an arms embargo was on Iran. The word, Contra, is in “Iran-Contra” name, because some reporters + other people believed that some money from the Iranian weapons deal, was given to Contra-rebels, in Nicaragua.
From what I have discovered, in reputable documents, is that no one proved that money from the Iranian weapons deal ever went to the Contras. I understand that no money from the Iranian deal went to the Contras.
(I believe that some people in the govt. wanted to send that money to the Contras, but it was never sent to the Contras).
Anyhow, thank you for the reply. Sometimes the news stories given to me, aren’t given to me with all of the facts in them.
Cheers.
https://victorhanson.com/last-nights-election-why-glenn-youngkin-won/
“One final lesson, then, of last night: it is always wiser to speak softly and carry a sledgehammer, than to loudly pack a gavel.”
Funny… I never figured VDH for a Putinista. Maybe he’s redeemable yet.
GvdL:
Good one. Goes well with Arnold’s.
But wait!… There’s Mao!
Ascent of Lushan
Perching as after flight, the mountain towers over the Yangtze;
I have overleapt four hundred twists to its green crest.
Cold-eyed I survey the world beyond the seas;
A hot wind spatters raindrops on the sky-brooded waters.
Clouds cluster over the nine streams, the yellow crane floating,
And billows roll on to the eastern coast, white foam flying.
Who knows whither Prefect Tao Yuan-ming is gone
Now that he can till fields in the Land of Peach Blossoms?
Back story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lushan_Conference
Thanks, CapnRusty.
I’m hoping that it won’t be passed. 😀
Cheers.
Zaphod:
Cashed in an audible credit for Cixin Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem.” It’s apparently his most famous.
My bet is you’re familiar. Any thoughts on starting here or perhaps some book less famous?
@Huxley:
It’s been lingering unread in my Kindle for about the last three years. I really must get back to it.
I’ve been reliving my early teens with an Alan Dean Foster Binge of light bedtime reading of late.
The Audible credit you speak of: Is this from having made a bunch of purchases, or the free credit they toss out every month?
You’re probably familiar with The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) by Abelson and Sussman (MIT Press). Sussman and a collaborator wrote another book called The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics which amongst other things takes a crack at the TBP — a bit above my pay grade but have heard great things about their approach from those who might know.
@Huxley:
Apparently there was an abortive effort to make a film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(film)
Can only be a matter of time before Apple TV, Netflix, or Amazon Prime have a go at it.
Which brings me to Apple TV’s adaptation of Asimov’s Foundation. Color me unimpressed. Wokeified up the wazoo with far too many gratuitous plot-bastardizing Black Bodies (not being the sorts that radiate in thermodynamic equilibrium in physics exams) and Wimminz of various Mystery Meat Hues Speaking Truth to White Male Power.
Zaphod:
So that’s the Liu to read or put off reading?
I missed Alan Dean Foster. I was transitioning out of SF in the mid-80s as his career got going.
The last “new guy” I read was David Brin. I was astonished in the 2000s to discover what a vicious Democrat he’s become. Unhinged and spitting. Sadly a Caltech degree doesn’t protect one.
Audible tosses you a free credit every month until you’ve banked 12 credits. Then no more new ones until you use some of them old ones.
I got about five lectures into the MIT online course on SICP. I mean to get back to it someday. (I can’t quite believe they’ve shifted to a Python version.) However, I didn’t know Sussman took a crack at Mechanics.
I had heard of TV versions of 3BP. I was talking to a younger out-of-work English prof on any new stuff to read and he recommended Liu.
@Huxley:
I’ve no opinion either way on TBD as have not read it. Merely have picked up on the grapevine that it’s a Good Thing and that I should read it. Your jogging my memory has upped the odds that I’ll get to it this year. I have this bad habit of buying stuff I see recommended which then ends up buried in the depths of my Kindle and I forget that I’ve got it (very notionally) queued. One advantage of physical books is that their presence is harder to ignore.
I discovered Foster’s Flinx series in 8th or 9th grade and was amused that he made one of his capitals of the Humanx Confederation Brisbane, Australia. Being a regular visitor to said place at the time, I found this rather fanciful to say the least. Back then, the International Terminal at the airport was a giant Quonset Hut left over from the last great unpleasantness.
Well, just threw one of my princely three credits at TBD, so will see if I can listen to it if I keep procrastinating about reading it!
Damn… no I didn’t. Go back to my phone and it says This Title not available based on geographic restrictions. Goddamn Techno-Oligarchs!
Zaphod:
I’m in the US and 3BD is good. What geographic restriction or oligarch applies in your case?
@Huxley:
How to Design Programs (HTDP) is the alternative to SICP and is Scheme-based. It starts out deceptively simply, but in a perfect world would be a great book to get students of all abilities of average IQ and up well-grounded and able to reason about computation and program design. The learning environment that goes with it is called DrRacket. Book and software free online.
@Huxley:
I may have borked myself by subscribing to Audible through the Australian Apple store (In-app subscription purchase) rather than via my US Amazon Store account. That’s probably it.
Oh well… Just have to read the thing. Or mess around with shifting my subscription over if I get more into Audible later.
@Huxley:
Just started reading so as to get a bit lodged in my head and have something to come back to. I’m surprised John Derbyshire hasn’t reviewed this as he has a mathematical background and is famously a (qualified) Sinophile.
So.. Looks like Netflix are going to do it. Let’s hope they don’t over-egg the Poz Pudding.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/fitness/everything-we-know-about-netflixs-three-body-problem-adaptation/ar-AAQhWun
If they want to have any chance of selling it into the Chinese market they’d be well-advised to go easy on the POCs and gratuitous inter-racial-in-yer-face-whiteboy sex scenes. What the Tiddly Winks had to say about some of the recent Star Wars casting efforts and love-interests is not fit for a family publication.
Just slung John Derbyshire an email instructing him to read it and review it if he hasn’t already. We’ll have to see how that goes.
Here is one of John Derbyshire’s Book(s) Reviews:
https://johnderbyshire.com/Reviews/Fiction/rajquartet.html
“Instead, through the unfathomable mystery of literary creation, Scott gave us one of the best — truest, most unsparing — descriptions ever written of what happens when two ancient populations collide. Good sense, good intentions, civilized administration, liberal inclinations, and generosity of spirit — all those things “so dear to historians” — are present on both sides; yet at last they count for less than we think, or wish. The real decision-maker is too often the unrecorded man: the Ronald Merrick, or the man who kills him, or the sepoy who betrays Sarah’s brother-in-law to the Japanese, or the anonymous (and chillingly polite) Hindu who murders Sarah’s Muslim friend Kasim in the sectarian violence that attended independence, or those “dark young men of random destiny and private passions” that so vex Count Bronowsky, the wily, worldly vizier of a local prince.
Those dark young men are with us still. One of them dispatched Benazir Bhutto while I was writing this. Others are there a-plenty, in the friction zone where tribes, faiths, and races meet, where modernity encounters historical resentment, where humanitarianism collides with identity. They defy the glib nostrums of the world-improvers, they spit on sweet reason and good intentions, they laugh to scorn the bourgeois verities of cool, shy northern peoples.
Statesmen, generals, intellectuals, and merchant princes will pronounce and propose, posture and plead. Still the unrecorded man may have the last word. The events surrounding Indian independence exposed some dark human terrain. In fiction, I have encountered no better guide to that terrain than Paul Scott.”
I had the good fortune to read Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet whilst enduring a bout of giardiasis in the Le Meridien Bangalore. Needed the diversion and could just about navigate the trip downstairs to the hotel bookshop and back without mishap. Cometh the hour, Cometh the man. Highly recommended.
I like the lighting in the photo.
And I think Frost’s poem fits very well.
That’s about it for tonight.
Drug policy needs a total rethink. The way we respond to addiction guarantees the worst possible outcomes. Prohibition is funding cartels which are taking over more and more territory. The costs of enforcement and prisons are incredible.
The only way out is to take the profit out of it. The focus must change from criminalization to harm reduction.
The two major parties react to drug addiction in totally predictable ways.
The GOP says jack up penalties.
The Democrats see the problem as an opportunity to do what they live for, expanding government. More counselors, more prosecutors, more public defenders, more police, more judges, more programs, more huge government funded studies, and who can oppose the tax increases needed to address such a terrible problem.
There is only one approach that will work, end prohibition and take the profit out of it.
Let’s let an addict go to any physician and get a prescription for his drug. The drugs cost next to nothing to produce, and addicts could afford to maintain some semblance of a normal life at no cost to society. This will also create specialized practices which focus on successful withdrawals.
Current policy creates armies of pushers, makes the worst people in our society filthy rich, explodes the cost of government, and destroys those caught up in addiction.
I have personal experience with addicted employees. In the last few years two employees, both high performers, an engineer and a technician, became addicted. In both cases their work didn’t suffer, but their lives went down rapidly.
?The engineer left his wife and started living in his car and cheap motels. His unpaid bills became a problem that he was unable to hide. Nobody knew what was going on until he made local headlines when he died from a bad batch.
The technician began stealing equipment to feed his habit. The theft was hard to detect at first since equipment that had not been secured and was used infrequently went missing. As security measures were taken, a company truck full of equipment went missing with the employee. Withdrawal was so intolerable that he destroyed his job and damaged his friend and employer for a fix.
The major argument against harm reduction instead of criminalization and government programs seems to be that drugs are so terrible that no public policy should tolerate them. This overlooks the fact that they are already everywhere, and criminalization is actually promoting addiction by creating armies of pushers.
?Where is the fairness in taxing people who stay off them to pay for chasing and locking up those who don’t?
How is it better to destroy those caught in addiction rather than letting them handle their situation as cheaply and safely as possible?
Let’s make it easy and cheap to legally maintain an unfortunate habit. Take the profit out of it, and let addicts live as normal a life as possible until they become so sick of it that they do what it takes to get clean. Harm reduction is the only effective solution. Taking the profit out of it is the only way it will end.
Zaphod: excellent review of The Raj Quartet by Derbyshire. I saw the miniseries first on PBS in the 1980s, then read the books. Both were brilliant.
I have long argued to anyone who will listen that the admittedly repulsive colonial policeman Ronald Merrick–a sadist, racist, and closeted homosexual–is the real hero of the Quartet, in the sense that he perceived things as they really were. Also that there is more real-world truth in the bad-colonial-conscience prison debriefing of Hari Kumar by Nigel Rowan (Indian Civil Service) and Indian lawyer V. R. Gopal than there is in all of the “political science” treatises ever written. If one wants to understand how the world largely works, read the chapter entitled “The Situation” in The Day of the Scorpion, the second volume of the Quartet. Derbyshire quotes the essential passage from that chapter, which occurs as Kumar is describing his interrogation and torture at the hands of Merrick:
“In India he [Merrick] automatically became a Sahib. He hobnobbed on equal terms with people who would snub him at home … What they all had in common was the contempt they all felt for the native race of the country they ruled. … He said you couldn’t buck this issue, that relationships between people were based on contempt, not love, and that contempt was the prime human emotion because no human being was ever going to believe all human beings were born equal. If there was an emotion almost as strong as contempt it was envy. He said a man’s personality existed at the point of equilibrium between the degree of his envy and the degree of his contempt.”
Ugly stuff, but my sixty-plus years on earth tell me that Merrick was closer to the truth than his bien-pensant fellow countrymen. Merrick’s views are also in accord with your comments on this forum–comments which we, as good foundational Americans, reject as repugnant (but not necessarily, or in all cases, inaccurate). Human differences are indeed obdurate. You favor one approach to them. We favor another. Who is right? Ah, that’s the question.
@Hubert:
Derbyshire is a quietly brilliant man. A fatalist, but if one reads the story of how he met and courted his wife, also far more than that.
I’m as saddened as the next person that the World is a messy place and that we mostly learn our lessons badly and too late, if at all.
My favourite character only appears in Volume 3 (IIRC — read the series in 2002 stuck in a hotel in the Bangalore Cantonment) and also a homosexual: the urbane, humane, seen-it-all fatalist, Count Bronowsky.
Having observed in country the way Indians of different social classes and castes interact with each other, I’m not convinced that any other relation between Rulers and Ruled than contempt (and I think the novels over-egg the pudding a bit here) could have worked. The Mutiny cast a long shadow, too.