Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
Fiftieth anniversary of the October, 1973 war.
Also, the possibility of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel.
Edit:
The real WTF is what were Israeli intelligence and the CIA doing the past year?
This question is unrelated to who has the high moral ground.
We are at one of those junctures in history which should elicit memories of the Dawn of Man scene from the 2001 movie.
China is taunting Taiwan, Canada and India are screeching at each other, Arminia and Azerbaijan are having a quasi war, with everyone in the region taking both sides.
Five former French African colonies are having coups and civil wars. Russia is doing to Ukraine more of what it’s been doing for three hundred years.
And Hamas is celebrating a fiftieth anniversary.
I enjoyed this:
Just experimenting with the upload button.
Flint,
As I felt like arranging some deckchairs while my world sinks, I checked the plugins and found that several are unsupported. The no-longer-supported “upload media” plugin was one for which there was an apparently popular and regularly-updated replacement. Glad you like it.
On the other hand, “Live comment preview” which works fine, was taken down by WordPress in 2018. So let’s hope it doesn’t break as there doesn’t appear to be any alternative.
PS, the bit about what can be uploaded is a bit wordy. Maybe needs editing down.
I’ve reached 50 items(!) on my list of the flaws I’ve seen in the MDRs (“measurement-derived reals”) and the associated reasoning. That ought to be plenty. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my case.
The MDRs are a dumpster fire. They’re riddled with flaws from front to back, as my list demonstrates, and no mathematically competent person would ever adopt them. They were created to address a nonexistent problem. The existing system works fine, and if the MDRs were actually needed, someone would have invented them long before now. Sticking with the real numbers causes no problems, while switching to the MDRs creates a whole raft of them. Flint and Jock haven’t identified a single valid benefit of switching to the MDRs. The one purported benefit they’ve floated isn’t actually a benefit at all. The MDRs are incoherent and “an invitation to error”, to borrow Jock’s phrase.
Their creation was based on a misconception. Both Flint and Jock thought that since measurements are inexact, they can only be expressed using inexact numbers. It was an understandable mistake, at least initially; you can see its intuitiveness. What’s bizarre is that F&J clung to that error (“with grim determination”, as Flint would say) for more than half a year, despite being faced with arguments that proved they were wrong — simple arguments that they could not refute. Those arguments were made in January, and F&J refused to even address them, despite being asked repeatedly, until this past week. That’s a sure sign that they were fully aware of their force. They would have pounced immediately had they spotted any errors.
This eight-month fiasco appears to be due to their prioritizing intuition over reason, or refusing to admit mistakes, or more likely a combination of both. Both F&J finally seem to acknowledge that exact numbers can be used to express inexact measurements, though neither of them has admitted that the MDRs are fatally flawed and useless.
They’ve been uncharacteristically quiet in response to my list of problems, which I began posting on October 4th. It will be interesting to see if they finally come forward to defend the MDRs, or instead acknowledge by their silence that the MDRs are indefensible.
Excess deaths, not related covid-19 continue worldwide, including the most “vaccinated” countries, like US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand…
The Australian parliament recently voted not to investigate the possible cause (s) of excess deaths – I wonder why they do not want to find out why their loved ones are dropping dead?
The UK parliament will have an open debate about it on Oct 20th 2023 with both the ruling party and the opposition expected to boycott it by skipping it all together.
I wonder what they may be afraid of?
“Investigate UK excess deaths not related to Covid.
On the week ending the 28th of October the ONS reported excess deaths were 12.5% above the 5 year average. With only 717 deaths out of 12,861 involving Covid. This alarming excess death percentage needs investigating by the Government and the root causes laid out in a public report.”
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/628188?reveal_response=yes
One thing is apparently certain: the gene therapies that are now called vaccines, which do not prevent infection or spread of the dead virus called SARS CoV2, are not responsible for the excess deaths, especially among the young and healthy people dropping dead or not waking up from their sleep…
So, what could be the cause of the excess deaths?
You seem to have found an explanation that satisfies you, but others may wish to think a little harder.
For starters, what makes a death “excess”? Turns out this is based on death rates for various causes last year compared to sometime in the past, generally about 3-5 years ago.
So what has changed over the last 5 years leading to higher death rates for some causes (but lower rates for other causes)? Very clearly, covid bears the lion’s share of responsibility, and it’s not easy to factor it out because a lot of the time, covid is not the proximate cause of death but is a key contributor. Estimates of the percent of the American population who have experienced at least one covid infection vary from a low of 60% to a high of 95%. So at the very least, most Americans have been infected at least once. While a covid infection is active, it does a lot of organ damage. Such damage can accelerate death due to stroke, heart failure, diabetes and other ailments long after the covid infection itself is gone. And these deaths are not attributed to covid.
From what I have found, obesity is considered increasingly responsible for excess deaths. The population is growing increasingly overweight.
(And as a footnote, such vaccinations as MMR are being resisted by the anti-vax dumbasses and there have been increasing deaths due to childhood measles, and to polio. But these remain statistically insignificant.)
Flint,
You can even download an app from the World Health Organisation and perform your own calculations.
I’m sure J-Mac would find it useful.
Anyone else seeing no banner image for the home page?
petrushka,
Do you mean the penguins? They are showing up for me on my phone.
I got a blank space last night. It’s okay today.
And now for something completely different.
Science seems predicated on consistencies in nature, streams of events that look like cause and effect.
And yet, physics doesn’t really seem to support this interpretation at any fundamental level.
So on a whim, I googled “why does the world seem to make sense”
The first responses were on the lines of, why does the world make no sense.
There’s plenty of variation on that theme, I see. Confirms my oft-expressed view that asking questions is easy. It’s the answers that are hard.
Except an answer to “why?”. “Why” questions are impossible to answer.
Just occurs to me that “why” questions are often loaded. They can be framed as a statement which is then assumed to be correct in asking “why?”.
1. Make some statement.
2. Ask “why is that?”
An art perfected by Fox News and especially by Tucker Carlson.
How does the world make sense?
Comment on. This site routinely debates the attributes of skydaddy. Important questions, like whether non-human animals receive justice in heaven.
Free will.
So how deep is the rabbit hole of determinism, cause and effect?
With Ukraine, Gaza, and Tommy Tuberville, the world is making no sense. Even the glorious sunny morning with a dash of Autumn mist is worrying me.
And why in Heaven’s name do we persist in changing clock times when it has no effect on the available daylight hours?
I assume this translates to: the world is not a nice place for most people. But the things that make it not nice are predictable.
Alan:
Not this again: link, link
keiths,
You failed to convince. No worries, it happens.
Well, yes. But it’s more that I feel guilty that, for me, life is grand, whereas, for the majority of the World’s population, especially the young, life varies from not so grand to pretty terrible. My generation did little to prevent that. I hold myself responsible and others of my generation more so.
Maybe. Human nature has evolutionary roots and it’s hard to predict what the selective pressures are that might bring about change. Maybe some close-to-cataclysmic event would be a long-term solution.
I dunno.
Alan:
You failed to comprehend. No worries, it happens.
I rather think I failed to care but please have the last word. Maybe someone else will engage with you
It’s possible you are simply too stupid or stubborn to understand.
It’s unlikely that the position wasn’t presented clearly.
It’s impossible that the position presented was flawed.
Then again, it’s possible you have better things to do.
Steve: Why are you so happy today?
Evelyn: My boss gave me a raise!
Steve: You just answered a ‘why’ question. That’s impossible!
I just have to agree with Pinker and Hans Rosling that things are better than they were, and will continue to get better. I think people are mesmerized by corporate news, which substitutes dire anecdotes for thought.
petrushka,
I think climate change is happening now and it’s already too late to mitigate it.
That’s quite prescient.
At least the earth is getting greener…somehow…
I love comedians who tell it as it is…
You must have had your booster number # ??? by now because previous “vaccines” against dead viruses didn’t work, right?
Can you tell us all how you feel about that?
Maybe it was in 2016. What it the current trend, I wonder.
Greening in 2021
I have an invitation to take a fifth Covid jab along with the annual ‘flu jab. I don’t bother with the ‘flu jab as the ‘flu (which I’ve avoided catching in the last five years or so) is not much worse than the effect of the jab. The Covid jabs don’t affect me, and having had Covid once, I’d rather avoid getting it again, so I’ll be taking advantage of the offer. It’s free on demand at any pharmacy or medical practice.
Alan Fox,
From the conclusion of the 2021 paper:
This finding questions the study by Zhu et al. (2016) that identified CO2 fertilization as the globally prevailing driver of Earth’s greening trend. We find that many clusters of greening and browning bear the signature of climatic changes.
So, this means you have taken 4 jabs, right?
Such a great change within just 5 years? How do you figure it?
Such a conclusion tends to be true… depending on who is paying or benefiting from it….no?
BTW: What difference in the symptoms between the flu and covid-19 did you notice? Did you lose your sense of smell or taste perhaps? How about hair loss?
Alan,
I find a lot of Brits settle in Spain, like the Canary Islands. They have their own communities and sport pubs there. What made you settle in France, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s not the climate, is it?
Would you trust a food company with a criminal record for selling contaminated food and continue to buy and consume their products even if the government said it is okay to eat their food?
Pfizer to pay $2.3 billion, agrees to criminal plea.
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc agreed on Wednesday to plead guilty to a U.S. criminal charge relating to promotion of its now-withdrawn Bextra pain medicine and will pay a record $2.3 billion to settle allegations it improperly marketed 13 medicines.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2009 8:34 AMUPDATED 14 YEARS AGO
I wouldn’t think twice but trust this company with my life, just as Alan and others have… Good for them because the last “booster was tested on 20 mice vs 8 with the previous one and the theory of evolution says it is just fine because?
This should give me the confidence that those shots should be administered directly into the brains of the wise who agreed…
How much leaf cover varies is one fact about climate change. One factor contributing to the amount of leaf cover in any particular region is water availability. It is a mistake to assume (I’ve made it in the past) that climate change just brings warmer and drier conditions. The essential change is increased energy in weather systems: more extreme weather events, less reliable seasonal changes.
The total amount of water on planet Earth is effectively a constant. Perhaps the most significant issue is what proportion is liquid and what is solid.
ETA not forgetting water vapour.
Flu symptoms (fever, aches, tiredness) disappear in a few days. Covid
took longer and fatigue persisted for several weeks.
Smell and taste unaffected. No noticeable hairloss. Overall, symptoms mild. Prickly dry throat was annoying but general fatigue was the main problem.
Too soon to say we are settled; it’s only been twenty-one years. Why we moved from UK and why France are two separate questions*.
My daughter lives with her German partner in Portugal and has suggested we might like to consider moving there as the Atlantic coast (where she is) is cooled to some extent by prevailing westerlies. I do love grilled sardines but Portuguese food is generally quite bland so we will see. 😉
Eta This isn’t bland but I’m not sure it can be claimed as Portuguese.
*I’ve been wondering how to answer but I can’t really. Though, as strict determinism is untenable, it may have been a free choice, just not mine.
We manage to limit our consumption of processed food on the whole. My wife makes ketchups, jams, chutneys, sauce bases from local ingredients when in season. I make aiöli from scratch. I still retain a taste for Marmite but nobody’s perfect.
So your question is hypothetical. I certainly think food regulations, what producers can get up to when messing with food, need to be strict and enforceable.
J-Mac,
The commerciality of the health system in US is one reason I’ve never been there nor plan to.
@ J-Mac
Your choice on how much personal information you share, but I’m curious about your life experience. You grew up in Europe? English not your native language?
From the 2021 paper:
Financial support
Julia Pongratz was supported by the German Research Foundation’s Emmy Noether Programme. Ranga B. Myneni was supported by the NASA Earth Science Division and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The article processing charges for this open-access publication were covered by the Max Planck Society.
If there is anyone out there reading this…
The Skeptical Zone is available for you to share and promote your burning issue of interest. Subject to caveats (see house rules), you are invited to present an opening post and TSZ will publish it.
Alerting admins with a comment will speed the process. Unregistered lurkers need to open an account and will then be able to contribute an opening post via their user panel.
ETA
*Boring old fart goes outside now to shout at clouds. He will be some time.*
I have no opinion as to how New Zealand governs itself, but they appear to be in a snit over the pandemic lockdowns.
Is anyone really surprised that countries that have free elections tend to have pendulum swings?