Home » Open thread 3/27/24

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Open thread 3/27/24 — 33 Comments

  1. Just another open-thread comment about something I read.

    Here’s a recent headline from “The Daily Mail” (https://tinyurl.com/yvtc4e62):

    “Saudi Arabia unveils female humanoid robot that has been programmed not to talk about sex or politics because it is illegal under Sharia law – weeks after nation’s male robot groped a woman.”

    Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I’m a male robot, so I can’t cry, and I like to laugh, but is it okay if I laugh at Islam? It can’t be done by CIA agents, but what about civilians? I’ll have to check with my betters, the dysfunctional overclass.

  2. While yer at it, can you also investigate whether the “vaccine” (however it may wish to be defined) has any connection with a great number of people turning into hysterical, suggestible half-wits?

    (Sample question: “Do you think that the Covid-19 Vax has turned you, your family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances or loved ones into hysterical half wits?” or some variation thereof…though, hmm, that does rather seem like a leading question, doesn’t it…? I suppose one could always scale it—e.g., on a scale of 1-10. One MUST ALWAYS remember the “Prime Directive” throughout, of course…)

  3. Not commenting on physics for once.

    Interesting article in this month’s Flying magazine by Ben Younger who writes a regular article. He’s Jewish and recently visited Israel and gained some access to air operations. Unfortunately without a subscription, you can’t get to it, but I thought I’d pull some slightly edited quotes for brevity:

    “I witnessed no glorification of combat there. What I did see were circumspect military personnel who are interested in ending the conflict as soon as possible. This translates into the way they fight. They are forceful, but careful. collateral damage is something they are keenly aware of.

    I was allowed into a Fire Direction Center…which had 14 men and women watching live feed from surveillance UAVs on 30 different displays. A call came in about a Hamas soldier with an RPG in the 6th floor window of an abandoned building. After confirmation by the UAV and assessing possible collateral damage to the building, civilians, and IDF troops, the director called in an Apache and sent a Hellfire missile in through the window. There were no cheers. Next the UAV spotted a man on a horse-drawn two wheeled cart was rushing down an abandoned street. The director decided the target did not meet their threshold for engagement as he was not obviously armed and moving away from IDF troops. Later the cart was stopped by ground forces and the cart was loaded with antitank warheads.

    Had the IDF truly exploited its air superiority, there would have been far fewer losses of Israeli soldiers, and this war would likely already be over, in my view.”

    He does mention in his article about the intense moral scrutiny the country is under and how that does affect the conduct of air operations. His final conclusion is obvious…they could have flattened Gaza from the air, but the international fallout, even from the feckless US would have been severe.

  4. physicsguy…yes, I saw that article, surprised to see it as a publication which is generally non-political except for aviation-specific issues. The writer should try to place a version of the story in a general publication for broader readership.

  5. One could always comment on the fatuity of claiming that country (“A”) is “waging genocide” on a people (“B”) even though it is providing those people (“B”) with food and medicine…and trying to get those people (“B”) out of the line of fire…but where does one one begin when the level of ignorance matched with malevolence is off the charts…?

  6. Interesting that the power lines crossing by the Key bridge seem to be well protected against a wayward ship.

  7. Thank you Marisa. Anecdotally we have personally seen a great change in overall health among family and friends. As people who did not vax–us or any of our adult children or grandchildren (ages 1-13), we thankfully do not suffer from any post-Covid issues, so personally not willing to say it is the virus that is responsible. It was when the banks went after our IRAs, lying all the way to the time we were signing checks to go into a fund that supports insurance, I began to question what is going on with insurance? By the grace of God, we were spared that bait and switch. Why the sudden huge rise in premiums for homes and cars– insurers leaving the state of California? What massive change in these arenas would result in this? Ahhh–maybe there is a tremendous surge in payoffs for excessive deaths in ages not actuarially projected. We have seen across the board, perfidy in the government and corporations. Truth is hard to come by.

  8. physicsguy: Exactly right about Israeli air superiority. Any other country would have bombed Gaza back to the Stone Age on 10/8 and no one would have objected. Israel not only tries to spare the lives of Palestinian noncombatants but puts its own forces at much greater risk in doing so.

  9. U.N. Chief Demands Slavery Reparations After ‘Generations of Discrimination’

    Why do we still allow the UN on our American soil? I could see this announce coming – little hints from MSM media.

    U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has declared reparations are due now to compensate for the trans-Atlantic slave trade…

    Am not the best of readers, so maybe I missed him mentioning the Arab-Islam Slave Trade – which started long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and in fact, slavery still exists in many Muslim countries.

    (NOTE: that’s an old blog – started before Google bought Blogger and then moved it to WP when Google started threatening to close anti-Democratic party blogs, so some links don’t work, and I don’t delete it because it was my first blog)

    I don’t know how racist black Americans have allowed these videos to stay – both by DR. JOHN HENRICK CLARKE. : ISLAM TRICKS AFRICA INTO SLAVERY. And ARABs TRADED 30 – 40 MILLION AFRICAN SLAVES.

    Never a peep from the Democratic party and their black American overseers like Al Sharpton on the Arab-Islam slave trade.

    In History of the Arab-Islam Slave Trade I quote or mention that Arab-Islam male slaves were almost immediately castrated – babies, boys, and men of all ages – then shipped across the desert into slavery.

    The first record — that I can find — of slavery in Colonial America, occurred in 1619. A Dutch ship had fought with a Spanish ship, and won. The Spanish ship was headed to Mexico, with twenty slaves onboard, and the slaves became the property of the Dutch ship. The Dutch ship had been damaged in the battle, damaged again later by storms, and eventually ended up in Virginia. The slaves were traded to the few colonists there, in return for food and repairs. Since Colonial America was attached to the Americas or the American Continent, which consisted of “North America and South America with their associated islands and regions”, why don’t the proponents of Reparations here in America also demand that the descendants of slaves from those countries be included? Brazil has more than twice the descendants of slaves than America has. There were already white indentured servants in Colonial America at that time.

    My internet is slow today, so I have stopped searching for how many African Slaves were lucky enough to make it to Colonial American shores – seems like the number was less than 200,000 (???).

    The UN needs to be thrown out of America!!!

  10. Interesting essay on Tablet Magazine about the current state of higher education called Twilight of the Wonks.

    Merit, for the 20th century, was increasingly dissociated from the older ideals. It was more and more conflated with the kind of personality and talent set that define what we call a “wonk.” Wonks do well on standardized tests. They pass bar examinations with relative ease, master the knowledge demanded of medical students, and ace tests like the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). Wonks are not rebels or original thinkers. Wonks follow rules. What makes someone a successful wonk is the possession of at least moderate intelligence plus copious quantities of what the Germans call Sitzfleisch (literally, sit-flesh, the ability to sit patiently at a desk and study for long periods of time).

    Wonk privilege is a rarely examined form of social advantage, but progressively over the last century we’ve witnessed a steady increase in the power, prestige, and wealth that flow to people endowed with a sufficiency of Sitzfleisch. The wonkiest among us are deemed the “best” and the goal of meritocracy has been to streamline the promotion of wonks to places of power and prestige while sidelining the fakers: those who use good looks, family descent, wealth, or charisma to get ahead.

  11. Marisa:

    I am very tired of repetitively playing whack-a-mole with articles such as the one you linked in your comment above. I have dealt with this issue – and related ones – several times before, including in this recent post of mine.

    Simply put, the article you link ignores a number of extremely important statistics that undercut the point it is supposedly making. Any article that ignores the similar trends prior to COVID and COVID vaccines is either demonstrating ignorance or is purposely misleading the public.

  12. But do wonks really rise to the top without connections or without adopting a certain style or manner? The true wonk is buried somewhere in the bureaucracy. The wonk who brings something else becomes Pete Buttigieg, or Samantha Power, or Victoria Nuland, or Tony Blinken or Barack Obama. You need some drive, or arrogance, or feeling of entitlement to rise to the heights. Sitzfleisch alone isn’t enough.

    Wonks seem to be quite different from nerds. Early on, meritocracy coincided with the Sixties revolution, so the bright kids who made it into top colleges might be somewhat non-conformist. The nerd might be close to a social outcast, and wasn’t adept at climbing the career ladder. It appears that today’s wonks are quite conformist and quite reconciled to working within the system.

    But Mead’s view has a lot to do with his personal experience. His doctor grandfather may have been a great people person, and it’s true that old GP’s could have excellent people skills, but doctors of that generation who were embedded in institutions and bureaucracies (and even some who weren’t) could be as lacking in people skills or sociability as today’s professionals.

  13. I don’t know about the vax, the results seemed to come earlier, or even personal experience with the virus.
    I know a number of people who turned into hysterical half wits when the thing first hit the papers.

    Going back a number of wars, there are a number of us KIA dead and crippled due to restricted fire rules and ROE. As careful as the IDF is on both sides of the question, they’re taking dead, crippled and wounded on account of being careful with munitions. It is impossible that not be the case.

  14. Based on Nonapod’s recommendation, I read through the Wonk essay in Tablet.
    It’s true that the 20th century was the age of the Wonk, but a particular type of Wonk, as is described (roughly the kind of person who does well on SATs and GREs).
    Where I disagree is that every age has had its Wonks, just different kinds of Wonks, that correspond to the needs of the age. The 17th-19th centuries needed wonks like Isaac Newton, da Vinci, and all the self-taught and primitively trained geniuses that we learned about in History of Science classes. The article, by Walter Russell Mead, shows how these men would be irrelevant and useless in modern society.
    The same has happened today. Doing well on the SAT is no longer sufficient to get into Harvard, and not even necessary if one possesses certain other attributes; that is how we got Claudine Gay and the other 2 mediocrities as Ivy league presidents. Their credentials, which are very impressive, are as useless in today’s society as Thomas Edison’s self taught genius would be in an industrial science lab today.
    We just need a better Wonk.

  15. There appear to be known, unknown, and willfully ignored components to the Covid vax debate.

    Simple logic points to the fact that although correlation does not prove causation, it implies a possibility that merits further examination.

    If you separate the rise in cancer rates from the vax causality discussion, you are left with a phenomenon that we hope is being studied without ruling out any possibilities.

  16. Correlation does not prove causation,
    But it does suggest investigation.

    Scansion has a ways to go.

  17. Banned Lizard:

    There is always a possibility.

    But if a trend is just in line with a trend that was already established prior to something, that is an indication it’s not being caused by that something. This appears to be the case for cancer in young people and the COVID shots.

    And if it’s the vaccine causing the rise in cancer it should be happening in the elderly, as well. But the rise is seen only in young people – and as I already said, it follows trends that have been occurring for decades.

  18. Banned Lizard:

    Not just the elderly, shouldn’t cancer rates be spiking in all cohorts that were vaccinated?

    It could be worse, Marisa could be whining about dead links in the blog roster. Did the jab kill them too?

  19. Re: Twilight of the Wonks

    Nonapod, Abraxas, West+TX+Intermediate+Crude:

    The article is written by Walter Russell Mead, a serious wonk in his own right. Check his wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Russell_Mead

    I’ve been following Mead off and on since 2008. He was one of the intellectuals singing high the praises of Obama against all comers, with little regard for the thinness of Obama’s resume and Obama’s connections to the radical left. Mead seemed to be another victim of Obama’s Ivy League background and sharply creased trousers.

    Mead of late, like Ruy Texiera, has been concerned that Obama’s transformation has not been the return to competent liberal pragmatism Mead hoped for. To Mead’s credit, he is not a Jew but is a strong supporter of Israel, so it’s not surprising Tablet Magazine carried the article.

    Mead is a complicated guy. I still don’t trust him, but give him credit for trying.

  20. If any of you find yourself bored I highly recommend going to youtube and searching out videos of Pierre Poilievre debating and answering interview questions.

    He is the main opposition to Justin Trudeau in this October’s election for Canada’s Prime Minister. You may have seen him in this video that went viral, when he calmly took bites of an apple as a reporter tried to trick him into a damaging pull quote: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V7K286YZabs

    There are some great clips of him debating Trudeau during the Canadian Parliament’s question period. Why are politicians with his skill in communication so rare?

  21. We just need a better Wonk.

    West+TX+Intermediate+Crude:

    We’ve got a better Musk. 🙂

    I’d take another dozen, if possible, which I doubt. Musk is a real throwback to the Edison/Tesla/Hughes days.

    I find Musk quite a surprise. I didn’t think they made ’em like that no more.

    I’m not a fanboy, but I do like a smart guy who can make things happen. Musk’s Neuralink company just did its first big demo:

    –“Elon Musk’s Neuralink shows first brain-chip patient playing chess”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sjUPR2u2C0

    This is a quadriplegic who has had a chip implanted in his brain which interacts with neurons such that he can move a computer mouse on the screen just by thinking.

    Just by thinking.

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