What do you want to know? I’ll do an AMA.

To save time, I’ll tell you right now–they are reading and listening to exactly what you are. When the developer of the platform is telling you there are huge risks to this experimental genetic therapy–which it what it is, not a vaccine–and you see these side effects come in to the ER, and you know it neither offers protection from infection nor keeps you from transmitting the virus, and may set you up to be a mutation factory, or kill you, or give you myocarditits, or some bizarre neuropathy–you may well “decline” the offer of getting it. Even at the expense of your job. These nurses aren’t going to need to be injected to work in a dermatologist’s office, will likely have better hours, a less demanding job, and maybe even comparable pay.

I suspect it’s path dependency.

At age 29, he was broke. He landed a position at National Review as the editor of their spanking new website (to be distinguished from their digital edition, which came later). He discovered a flair for producing newspaper columns. If you recall the early days of Townhall, what it revealed was that the number of people who can produce occasional topical commentary is far larger than the number who can produce a regular column that you are pleased to read. He was actually well-adapted to the form. His father was a top executive of a newspaper syndicate. I imagine he used his influence, but Goldberg was getting views from non-traditional channels.

He also had an interest, if not a flair, in intellectual history. I never bothered to read his books, just his occasional glosses on them, and I think he got carried away with what amounts to a clever retort.

The thing is, National Review went all in six years ago on implacable opposition to Trump. In Goldberg’s case, defending what he’d said six months ago trumped any interest in what the administration was doing and what the opposition’s response was. They revealed themselves to have no rapport with ordinary Republican voters. Instead of heading for the off-ramp and devoting his attention to other matters (and instead of casting about for a career change, admitted difficult when you’re 47 years old), he elects to re-invent himself as a professional NeverTrumper. Casinos pay their shills and so does Pierre Omidyar. He does, after all, have a college age daughter, and his wife doesn’t appear to have worked in some time. (Her Linkedin profile is completely blank and she hasn’t written for publication in a decade).

My guess is that a lot of them (although not all) are thinking something like this: “I’ve already had COVID so I’m immune and don’t need a shot.” The rate of COVID in health care workers was high, for obvious reasons.

Those wacky, lovable Canucks…..

Which seems to be the size of it.

(On the other hand, IF it IS true that Conservatism HAS “failed” as a “movement”, what does that make Marxism…? Eminently successfully destructive? Again and again and again….?)
– – – – – – –
As for Jonah Goldberg, it seems that he’s become so enamored of his theory of “Liberal Fascism” that he’s decided to try out some of that “stuff” for himself…from the belly of the beast, no less.
(As well as making some big bucks? Maybe put his kids through university?—though I don’t know anything about his personal life—assuming that universities, as we know it, will continue to exist in a few years….)

If Sheldrake had made a career out of positing imaginary genders, he’d be sitting pretty today. Instead he’s increasingly likely to be burned at the stake by the I %^&*ing Love Science crowd. Ironic.

Apparently I was undisenrolled today. I got a notice my vaxx certificate is now on record. My logins have mostly started working properly.

Good thing I rented my textbook. Most students just read the text online as part of a service which includes the online math labs (also required). Since I have a physical textbook I wasn’t locked out of this week’s homework assignment.

Not that it matters, from what I can tell. I get the sense that everyone — teachers, administrators, students — just have their heads down and are trying to get to the next day as best they can and no more than that.

So you follow your nose. Works for me. One thing leads to another.

The disreputable Rupert Sheldrake wrote a great little book: “Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science.” Chapter 6 is “The Variability of the ‘Fundamental Constants'” which covers much the same ground in more detail than the Feynman wiki tidbit.

Something insectoid and pathological has taken over science, I fear.

Pitch Drop got me thinking about Millikan’s Oil Drop Experiment and turns out that there’s a tenuous Feynman angle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment#Millikan's_experiment_as_an_example_of_psychological_effects_in_scientific_methodology

Which got me thinking about them not making them like they used to do… So I googled and found this:

https://www.explainthatstuff.com/great-physics-experiments.html

Perhaps our resident physicists could chime in on any more recent ones that have been missed.