I originally became engaged with the APA in a futile effort to “fix from within.” Much of this focused on the APA’s deeply misleading policy statements in my own area of research: violence in video games. The APA maintains a policy statement linking such games to aggression, despite over 200 scholars asking them to avoid making such statements, a reanalysis of the meta-study on which the policy was based finding it to be deeply flawed, and the APA’s own Society for Media and Technology asking them to retract it. Other policy statements related to research areas I’m familiar with such as spankingappear to be similarly flawed, overstating certainty of harmful effects.
Friday, December 31, 2021
Expect to see more like this …
… My APA Resignation.
RIP …
… BREAKING: Betty White Dies at Age 99.
My memory of her goes back to the Jack Paar show, the best late show ever.
Just so you know …
… Our Favorite Essays of 2021 - Common Sense.
Many of which were published by outlets that didn’t exist a year ago.
Something to think on …
The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.
— George C. Marshall, born on this date in 1880
If X, then Y …
… Researchers Who Built Model To Say Vex Saved A Million Lives Announce Vex Saved A Million Lives. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The vex was rushed into use, then pushed with a fervor greater than Amway. Careful, long term testing, that would allow us to give decent answers to these questions, was never done. It’s been nothing but panic lathered with gross over-certainty since the beginning.
Thursday, December 30, 2021
The Guardian ought to be ashamed …
… The Guardian deactivates 'person of the year' poll after JK Rowling takes top spot | The Post Millennial.
Hey, that poll’s not going the way we expected.
Yes …
… We must make public-health authorities accountable for COVID lies.
… lies and political manipulation … are a betrayal of trust, and they’re especially serious because trust is the public-health community’s greatest asset. The record here has been terrible, and we need investigation and accountability.
The adventure of growing old …
… The Old Imperium, by John Crowley. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There’s no point to feeling frustrated or defeated. The Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book How to Sit, says that “even when you think you are sitting alone, your ancestors are sitting with you. . . . There is no separate self. We are a current. We are a stream. We are a continuation.”I am not sure he should continue driving.
Sounds fascinating …
… Truth in Duluth - The Spectator World. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In Girl from the North Country (open run at the Belasco Theatre), the season is the Great Depression in 1933, and the dining hall is a flophouse in Duluth, Minnesota, where down-and-outers blow through like so many birds on the wind.
Good idea …
… Let’s reconsider using a great children’s book.
I studied the Catholic catechism from first grade on.
A master’s reminiscences …
… A Viking Cruise for Old English Majors | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hall’s book is subtitled Reminiscences & Opinions for good reason—it is rich in anecdotes. Hall says that Frost ridiculed verse without meter: “I’d just as soon play tennis without a net.” Dylan Thomas liked a huge breakfast. “He was an eater when he was not drunk.” In a 1948 letter, Eliot wrote, “Mr. Hall, I wish that you would date your letters.” Hall took the advice. “I dated every letter, note, and postcard I have written since.”
Something to think on …
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
— Rudyard Kipling, born in this date in 1865
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Why I canceled my Twitter account …
… Permanently suspended on Twitter...
If you’re going to set up something where people can gab, what gives you the right to suspend free speech? Apparently the guy running Twitter now is as much of a dickhead as founder Jack Dorsey
Indeed …
… It’s no use — it’s turtles all the way down.
Many years ago, I edited The Running Press Book of Turtles by Richard Nicholls. That’s when I first encountered the William James story.
Son helps Dad …
… “Memoir is a Strange Word When you Don’t Remember a Whole Lot” – Tim O’Brien on How Memory, History, and Literature Inform his Joyous New Book » Public Libraries Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I had been writing these little love letters to the kids for ten years or so. I had pretty much given up writing, except for that. They were all very short—maybe ten of these things in the desk drawer. Tad, my younger boy, saw them and asked if I was writing a book. I said, “Maybe.” He said, “Well, you ought to call it what it is, call it your maybe book.” So it began with those words out of a kid’s mouth. Hi
Sound advice …
… We Cannot Stop the Spread of COVID, but We Can End the Pandemic.
We can protect the vulnerable without harming the rest of the population
Writer, reader, and adaptor …
… Ultramarine | The End Of The Pier Show. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… authors draw material out of their influences; things they have read; ideas that have in turn been influenced and shaped by myriad other influences, or just out of the air. Nothing is ever created that’s entirely original or new. When asked about the influences for his remarkable Ents – those strange humanoid mobile trees – Tolkien admitted that he didn’t know whence they had sprung, except, perhaps, from an array of influences that might have composted and mixed together in his mind.
Taking on the bullies …
… Walter Kirn Is Middle America’s Defiant Defender. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Apologizing for sounding “corny,” he insists that small-town America has always been “a reservoir of idealism”—an idealism that led him to abhor bullies. “I see the American establishment playing the part of the bully towards its own people,” he says. He recently tweeted that the U.S. government “acts increasingly like a haughty, impatient, insecure, and rather paranoid colonial administration.”
Hanging with the heavies …
… In ‘Old Poets,’ Donald Hall dished on Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot and more. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hall makes quick work of the eternal seesaw of literary reputations: “Writers with enormous followings in their own lifetimes go unread and unmentioned a generation later . . . [their] stock market prices declined” for “trivial reasons.” In fact, “popularity always rises from sources partly silly, even when the poet is magnificent. . . . It is sensible to assume that the taste of our own moment will come to seem fatuous, including your taste and mine.”
Something to think on …
Time just seems to fly away for a boy. That, I s’pose, is why one day you wake up suddenly and you ain’t a boy any longer.
— Robert Ruark, born on this date in 1915
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
Good riddance …
… whatever the price: Fauci's Retirement Pay Largest in Federal Government History | Newsmax.com.
Very interesting
… Miscellaneous Musings : Exposing the liars in nonfiction and fiction.
Having edited a few books myself, it is true that basic facts need to be checks (at the very least).
Oh, good …
… Federal Charges Filed After ‘Karen’ Punches Another Passenger on Delta Flight.
She's lucky she didn't try that with me. This old guy shares the view of Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger: "Go ahead. Hit me. But don't think I harbor any chivalric notions. You hit me, I'll knock you across the room."
Who might he be?
… The Underground Man at Age 50 - by Ted Gioia. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Macdonald was obsessed with Freudian psychology. Around the same time The Underground Man was published, Macdonald told Newsweek magazine: “Freud was one of the two or three greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again in my own small way.” Given this predisposition, I can’t help seeing the ‘underground man’ as a canny reference to those unconscious and troubling aspects of the human psyche that are deeply buried, not in soil but in the recesses of our minds, and come back to the surface under prodding or in a crisis.
Something to think on …
Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?
— Mortimer Adler, born on this date in 1902
Monday, December 27, 2021
Something to think on …
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
— Oscar Levant, born on this date in 1906
Sunday, December 26, 2021
Hear, hear …
… It's time to abolish 'emergency' COVID-19 powers.
… most people by now have had COVID or know many people who have. It’s not smallpox, it’s not Ebola; in many people it’s not as bad as the flu. In 40 percent of cases, a study recently published in JAMA Network Open found, it’s entirely asymptomatic.
.
Something to think on …
To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.
— Henry Miller, born on this date in 1891
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Friday, December 24, 2021
For all seasons …
The Hands of God
By D. H. Lawrence
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.But it is a much more fearful thing to fall out of them.Did Lucifer fall through knowledge?oh, then, pity him, pity him that plunge!Save me, O God, from falling into the ungodly knowledgeof myself as I am without God.Let me never know, O Godlet me never know what I am or should bewhen I have fallen out of your hands, the hands of the living God.That awful and sickening endless sinking, sinkingthrough the slow, corruptive levels of disintegrative knowledgewhen the self has fallen from the hands of God,and sinks, seething and sinking, corruptand sinking still, in depth after depth of disintegrative consciousnesssinking in the endless undoing, the awful katabolism into the abyss!even of the soul, fallen from the hands of God!Save me from that, O God!Let me never know myself apart from the living God!
For the season …
… Christmas Eve by Christina Rossetti | Malcolm Guite. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
She is a wonderful poet.
Christmas and salvation …
… Sonnets in Advent with Dunstan Thompson - Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dear Lord, and only ever faithful friend, For love of us rejected, tortured, torn— And we were there; who on the third day rose Again, and still looks after us; descend Into each wrecked unstable house; be born In us, a Child among Your former foes.
In case you wondered …
… Does ‘A Christmas Carol’ have an antisemitic message or a Jewish humanist one? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This question had never crossed my mind. I don’t think it has either.
Something to think on …
Life is not having and getting, but being and becoming.
— Matthew Arnold, born on this date in 1822
Thursday, December 23, 2021
What can I say?
… Lisa Hughes, Come Out From Hiding! | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
I'm talking about the "pillow-talk" scandal, outlined in a recent lawsuit, that allegedly had the news director at Penn conspiring with the editor of the Inquirer, who also happens to be her husband, to destroy the reputation of a Penn grad student, and strip her of a Rhodes scholarship.
I remember when The Inquirer was a great newspaper. I was on the staff for something like 28 years — and I freelanced for them before that.
Our ruling class screws up yet again …
… This Scientist Created a Rapid Test Just Weeks Into the Pandemic. Here’s Why You Still Can’t Get It.
A green light from the FDA could have made a big difference for the many Americans who were then frantically trying to find doctors to swab their noses, with results, if they were lucky, coming back only days later.
Guess the FDA was waiting to hear back from Big Pharma.
The last and the first …
… Words about the Word: Esolen’s “In the Beginning. . .” (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A strong case is being made here that the Prologue is nothing less than a miracle: the most important 310 words ever written. Surely John’s mind and hand were guided by the Holy Spirit. And Esolen’s case is bolstered by inclusion of wisdom from Venerable Bede, Dante Alighieri, George Herbert, John Milton, John Wesley, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien among others, especially in each chapter’s epigram.
Hmm …
… The Executive’s Death — By Robrt Bly. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Bly, who died last month, would have turned 95 today.
Something to think on …
The world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them.
— Robert Bly, born on this date in 1926
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Scumbags …
… How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate - WSJ.
I used to admire Collins. Not anymore.“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?”
These researchers weren’t fringe and neither was their opposition to quarantining society. But in the panic over the virus, these two voices of science used their authority to stigmatize dissenters and crush debate.
More on the current Pope’s tyranny …
… The Cruel and Incoherent Further Restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Responsa ad dubia reveal the profound crisis of faith that the Church is undergoing. The good of the faithful is cast aside based on the specious claim that the immemorial form of worship of the Latin Church is being misused by unnamed people to promote unnamed ideologies, i.e., “creating division.” The truth is exactly the opposite: it’s the Holy See that is sowing the seeds of division by stigmatizing and penalizing faithful Catholics who find that their closeness to God is fostered by availing themselves of the form of worship that produced innumerable saints in the history of the Church.
Somebody should remind Dope Francis of the Agatha Christie Indult.
Think money has anything to do with it?
… Horowitz: The indefensible approval of Pfizer and Merck drugs compared to the snubbing of ivermectin - TheBlaze.
… Even the FDA advisory committee admitted that the drug poses a risk of birth defects, is mutagenic, has a dangerous mechanism of action, and was never studied for carcinogenicity, and its second-phase trial showed greater “efficacy” in the placebo group than the trial group. Even the mainstream media has warned that the drug really is not up to snuff, yet shockingly, the FDA is set to give it approval, as if basic safety and efficacy facts no longer matter. This move in itself, in conjunction with what we know about the approved inpatient drugs, should tell you everything you need to know about the juxtaposition of the vaccine approval to the war on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and the refusal to approve or encourage the use of numerous other safe and effective drugs.
Will no one rid us of this turbulent priest?
… Pope Francis Campaign against Latin Mass Vindictive | National Review.
Pope Francis has always treated this enthusiasm as if it were toxic sludge, making fun of the “rigid” young priests who want to celebrate this Mass. Francis was formed by the revolutionary spirit of the Second Vatican Council that went deep into his Jesuit formation. This revolution held as a dogma that the traditional Mass of the Church was a dead end, a moribund rite that would repel the young. Only the new reformed rites, after the Council, would have the vital spirit that the Church needed. He has given homily after homily and sermon after sermon denouncing the spirit of rigidity that is, as he sees it, obsessed with upholding tradition, the spirit that says, in Pope Francis’s words, “it’s this or nothing.”
The very language of the Novus Ordo Mass is banal. The Preface now has it:
- Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.
- People: It is right and just.
- It used to be "It is truly meet and just, right and availing unto salvation …"
- Which sounds better? I hope Pope Paul VI is enjoying his stay in Purgatory.
- Oh, and the English has really increased attendance at Mass, right?
Go to hell, dickhead…
… Fauci tells Americans to DISINVITE unvaccinated family from Christmas | Daily Mail Online.
Where did this asshole get his medical degree, out of a Cracker Jacks box? Apparently he hasn't heard that plenty of us hate his guts. Of course, there are those who take his word as if it were Holy Writ. I pity them.
For the season …
… Some Come to See the Lord (official music video) - YouTube. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The lyrics are by Joseph Bottum.
Christmas and death …
… John Updike: Suspicious of Santa, but fond of Christ | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Unlike Edmund Campion, S.J., who had given his life for his Catholic faith, Updike noted, most Americans didn’t have to face such stark realities. “It is all too easy a thing to be a Christian in America, where God’s name is on our coinage, pious pronouncements are routinely expected from elected officials, and churchgoing, though far from unanimous, enjoys a popularity astounding to Europeans,” he commented. “As good Americans we are taught to tolerate our neighbors’ convictions, however bizarre they secretly strike us, and we extend, it may be, something of this easy toleration to ourselves and our own views.”
Not so true anymore.
Hmm …
… zmkc: Home Thoughts from Abroad.
When I say “abroad” in the heading to this post, I mean Ireland in this instance. I suppose I’m always abroad, as a person born with two passports - (for the literal-minded reader, I should point out that I wasn't actually clutching the documents, one in each hand, as I emerged into this strange place called reality; at that stage I merely possessed the right to them) - especially lately, while the country I normally call home - Australia - has been rather hurtfully unwilling to allow the return to their own shores of members of its citizenry who were unpatriotic enough to be caught abroad when a virus turned up.
Something to think on …
The meaning of life can be revealed but never explained.
— Kenneth Rexroth, born on this date in 1995
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Very much in what he says …
… The left’s contempt for bodily autonomy during the pandemic is a gift to the right. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.]
The swelling political consensus on vaccine mandates intentionally ignores the enormous spread of the virus after two years of pandemic and the consequent natural immunity of large sections of the population, irrespective of vaccination status. This same consensus obfuscates the fact that natural immunity is most likely to prove longer-lasting and more effective against any variants of Covid that continue to emerge. And the consensus distracts from the inconvenient fact that the short-lived efficacy of the current vaccines means everyone is potentially “unclean” and a plague carrier, as the new variant Omicron is underscoring only too clearly.
Traduttore, traditore …
… Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here we go again …
… Inside the Omicron fear factory - The Spectator World. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The official response to the Omicron variant provides a case study in the deliberate manufacture of fear.
For the season…
… The most enjoyable version of “A Christmas Carol.”
My own favorite remains the Alastair Sim version.
Something to think on …
For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.
— Anthony Powell, born on this date in 1905
How things have changed …
… In Praise of Younger Sons - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics. (Hat tip, Dave. Lull.)
There used to be more of them, and that made all the difference.
Monday, December 20, 2021
A writer overlooked …
… Master of the Esoteric. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In Literary Alchemist, the first full-scale biography of Connell, Steve Paul, a former editor and columnist of the Kansas City Star, traces the parallels between the Bridge novels and the writer’s childhood, revealing.
In case you wondered …
… What ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Teaches Us About American History.
It’s Debbie’s favorite Christmas movie. Mine is the Alaistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. My friend and former colleague, Inquirer movie critic Carrie Rickey, when she was writing a piece about peoples’ favorite Christmas films and their favorite scene once begged me to let her quote what I told her, that I frequently broke down when Scrooge abandons his free market principles. I told her to go right ahead.
Also very interesting …
… and I think correct: Bruce Charlton's Notions: Archbishop Vigano - correct diagnosis, flawed prescription. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I value Vigano, because I know of nobody in public life who has done a better job of diagnosing the heart of that corruption which has so rapidly accelerated to cover the world; with the compliance of large masses of the populace.
Mark thy calendar …
… Join Us for the Premiere of Isaac Babel’s “Red Cavalry.” (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A lesson in Spanish …
… ‘Latinx’ Isn’t Popular With Latinos. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It’s not surprising that many Hispanics view the word “Latinx” as a colonialist effort by ignorant gringos to impose their own ideological fixations on the rest of the world.
Hmm …
… Message For American People Vigano Dec 19 | PDF | Pandemic | God. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Be worthy heirs of the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and do not follow those of your Pastors who have betrayed the mandate they have received from Our Lord, who impose iniquitous orders on you or who remain silent before the evidence of an unheard of crime against God and humanity
Something to think on …
Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.
— Sydney Hook, born on this date in 1903
Sunday, December 19, 2021
I’m not surprised …
… Why College Degrees Are Losing Their Value - Foundation for Economic Education.
Earning a college degree is more of a validation process than a skill-building process. Employers desire workers that are not only intelligent but also compliant and punctual. The premise of the signaling model seems to be validated by the fact that many graduates are not using their degrees. In fact, in 2013; only 27 percent of graduates had a job related to their major.
I’ve had other jobs from time to time, but most of what I’ve done since leaving college has been related to my major. Also, today’s credentialed somtimes don’t strike me as especially well educated
Coping with suffering …
Ross Douthat's Faith in Pain - The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The facts of his story seem to mirror that of many similar sufferers. He moves with his family to a farmhouse in Connecticut, the historical center of Lyme disease. This move is financially and psychologically stressful. He becomes progressively ill, with a constellation of symptoms that are visible mostly to him. Initially doctors can’t find much wrong with him on tests and send him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist listens to his story and suggests he has a tick-borne illness. This prompts referrals to more doctors, including specialists in chronic Lyme.
Poetry and faith …
… Sonnets in Advent with Dunstan Thompson - Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dear Lord, and only ever faithful friend, For love of us rejected, tortured, torn— And we were there; who on the third day rose Again, and still looks after us; descend Into each wrecked unstable house; be born In us, a Child among Your former foes.
He’s had me laughing for decades …
… Mel Brooks: The Funniest Man in Showbiz - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What set Brooks on his life path was seeing Ethel Merman on Broadway in Anything Goes when he was 9 years old. “Way up there at the top of the second balcony,” he writes, “I figured that I was as close to heaven as I would ever get.” On the way home, he announced, “I am not going to go to work in the Garment Center like everyone else in our neighborhood…. I am going into show business and nothing will stop me!”
Something to think on …
I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after.
— Emily Brontë, who died on this date in 1848
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Good …
… Campus Reform | University ordered to pay almost $2 million after students win religious freedom lawsuit.
The court also slammed UI officials, including the university’s president and vice-president at the time, for turning “a blind eye to decades of First Amendment jurisprudence or they proceeded full speed ahead knowing they were violating the law.”
Well worth considering …
… Five christmas book recommendations - Sebastian Rushworth M.D.
I’m reading Rushworth’s book on my Kindle, and I just got the hunter-gatherer guide.
Methinks so …
… Opinion | Yes, the Great Books Make Us Better People - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In “Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation,” Montás explains why he fears, as many have, that universities have come to put more value on, and resources into teaching, the sciences and more readily marketable skills, as opposed to emphasizing the mind-expanding and personal development that students gain from a rigorous colloquy around certain hallowed texts. Specifically, he stipulates, “The animating argument of this book is for liberal education as the common education for all — not instead of a more practical education but as its prerequisite” and adds, “I want nurses, computer scientists, accountants, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and professionals of every kind, to be liberally educated.”
Appreciation …
… The Critic’s Critic — George Steiner and the art of hopeful failure. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Steiner contended that exactly those philosophical, theological, political, and biographical issues that New Critics tended to bracket were of the highest priority when books like War and Peace, Notes from Underground, and Demonscame under consideration. … In Steiner’s reading, such a studied posture would have been impossible before Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. These Russian masters were not simply trying to give pleasure or to inform the reader’s understanding. They had designs on the reader’s soul.
Something to think on …
Never be a pioneer. It's the early Christian that gets the fattest lion.
— Hector Hugh Monroe, born in this date in 1870
Friday, December 17, 2021
I’m with the masses …
… Why Does Kenny G Drive Critics Crazy? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Director Penny Lane explores why critics hate Kenny G and the masses love him, creating a funny, poignant, and entrancing film about mass commercial appeal, elite tastes, the ever-changing music world, and, incredibly, epistemological humility.
I love Kenny G.
Color me skeptical …
… Reality check: could our universe be a simulation? | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don’t hear in any of this anything that sounds like philosophy as I know it (I did study it). I’ll stick with Werner Heisenberg (whose Physics and Philosophy everyone should read): “I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
Philosophy, as I was instructed in it, meant understanding the present in terms of eternity. Its usual wrong turn is understanding eternity in terms of the transient present.
Sounds right to me …
… It's time to abolish 'emergency' COVID-19 powers.
… science, and rationality in general, is about changing your opinions when you learn new facts. And what we’ve learned is that COVID is somewhat worse than the flu but not nearly bad enough to justify the enormous, expensive and disruptive changes we’ve endured.
Something to think on …
If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.
— Penelope Fitzgerald, born on this date in 1916
Thursday, December 16, 2021
Sweet …
… Janet Shawcross Trio, Red Sails in the Sunset. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The lady at the piano is Rus's Mon. She just turned 90.