Codswallop Quote of the Day

A liberal friend just posted on Facebook that he just sent his first donation to the Biden campaign. There is much back-and-forthing in the comment thread bemoaning how young people don't like Biden and won't vote for him, how the Democratic party is letting all Dems down by supporting and promoting bad candidates, etc., etc. But the eye-popper was this:

You know that line about how our system is the second worst in the world - but the worst system in the world is every other system in the world? Letting the people vote for their leaders is just a terrible idea. But I can't for the life of me think of a system that would be less terrible. And we had a primary and our fellow democrats voted In the fall everybody else will vote. it almost never goes my way. I hate it. 

Same with jury trials. Holy hell that's an awful idea! Let our fellow citizens decide? OMG. But again I can't think of anything better. The people voted. 

Our people voted. Our fellow Democrats voted and their will just could not have been any clearer.

Cocktail Stirrer

If you're looking for a little light reading during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator is a real gut check.

In my opinion this should be required reading for everyone, but especially high school and college-aged students, to help develop critical thinking skills.

No matter which side of the political divide you fall into, the implications for all of us are chilling.

Speaking of Swallowing Anything...

... I won't swallow this. Not figuratively. Not literally.

The novel coronavirus has been discovered in the semen of infected male individuals, according to Chinese researchers, raising the prospect that the virus could potentially be sexually transmitted.

Just... ICK!

Epic Codswallop

Neil Ferguson, the director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA), head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Vice-Dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine, all at Imperial College, London, who made a blunder of such epic proportions that economies worldwide are crashing, has resigned in disgrace.

The question is, who, in power anywhere worldwide, actually listened to and based policy on the man who has gotten wrong so many times in the past?

 How wrong?

In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 150,000 people could die from exposure to BSE (mad cow disease) in beef. In the U.K., there were only 177 deaths from BSE. 

In 2005, Ferguson predicted that up to 150 million people could be killed from bird flu. In the end, only 282 people died worldwide from the disease between 2003 and 2009. 

In 2009, a government estimate, based on Ferguson’s advice, said a “reasonable worst-case scenario” was that the swine flu would lead to 65,000 British deaths. In the end, swine flu killed 457 people in the U.K.

Who is responsible for not doing their due diligence before actually turning his model loose on the COVID-19 model?

Last March, Ferguson admitted that his Imperial College model of the COVID-19 disease was based on undocumented, 13-year-old computer code that was intended to be used for a feared influenza pandemic, rather than a coronavirus. Ferguson declined to release his original code so other scientists could check his results. He only released a heavily revised set of code last week, after a six-week delay.

A 13 year old computer code not intended for the purpose it was used for, no scientific result-checking.

How much of our leadership is still basing policy on the false information produced from this model?  Is there a model out there that actually gives a more reasonable, scientifically based platform under which leadership can start walking back the lockdown?

This, my friends, is why you should never drink the Codswallop Cocktail the media and/or big government serves you before checking the ingredients.
Update: There's more info here about Ferguson's fully disclosed conflicts of interest due to funding by big pharma.

The Pandemic of Virtue

One particular cocktail of codswallop that I find impossible to swallow is the tendency these days of people to place a much higher moral value on their personal opinions and feelings than on science or facts. 

Yesterday, old friend and colleague Bruce Abramson sent me a piece he'd published in The Epoch Times titled The Pandemic of Virtue.

He could have written it to perfectly describe this guy (a church pastor, no less), who delivers up a bar tray loaded with codswallop shots:

I don’t suppose you can see it.

I guess that’s how hypocrisy works. 

I suppose that’s what cults do to people. 

Honestly, it must be hard keeping up with his mental instability.

I imagine you’re so confused by your allegiance to a serial liar, that this disconnect is invisible to you.

This wasn't written to change minds; it was written to make the reader feel guilty for not falling in line with his narrative.  And I'll bet it did just the opposite of what he wanted; I'll bet he pissed you off.

Virtue signaling is nothing new to the worldwide web, but the COVID-19 pandemic seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people.

I'm with Bruce, who says:

The new morality, it turns out, is as old as human history. Our leaders have determined what is necessary to serve the public good. Our job is to comply. Failure to comply—or even willingness to question—marks you as an enemy of the public. 

We are hurtling headfirst into very dangerous territory. The scariest thing about it is neither the virus nor the economic shutdown. The true source of terror is the ease with which a majority of Americans seem willing to embrace the reasoning that every one of history’s dictators has forwarded to justify the death of freedom.

P.S. -- Excuse the crazy font changes.  I forgot what a pain in the ha-ha html code is.  I'll do better.  I promise.

How Did I Get Here?

I have been a blogger since 2004, but my two other blogs (they're still there) had fallen by the wayside in favor of Facebook, which was quick and easy to use and linked me up with old friends and family, as well as new friends. 

The beauty of Facebook is that it gives you a friend list, so you know who's likely to see what you post.  It's conversational, so it gives you a warm cozy feeling when you send something out into the world and get sometimes immediate responses.

The drawbacks of Facebook (and Twitter, Instagram, etc.) are myriad.  Here are the primary ones, from my perspective (in no particular order): 

• There's no "save" button, so you can't draft something and come back later to review, rethink, or revise prior to publishing.
• Ads, ads, and more ads.
• Facebook employs thousands of people to read every tiny bit of your content and decide if it fits their narrative or not, whether you want them to or not.
• Artificial Intelligence "bots" that can and do take down content if it doesn't meet "community standards."  I recently had a cake recipe, of all things, taken down by a bot, and had to dispute it with their admins to get it reinstated.  
• Facebook Jail.

My ambivalent relationship with Facebook tipped me into the "do not like" column yesterday when I private group I was a member of disappeared without notice.  

*Blink*  

Gone.  

It seemed like another Facebook take down, and I did not take it well.*

BUT... I didn't jump back onto Facebook to rant, rave, stomp my foot, or shake my fist at the world.

I waited.  And I thought.  A lot.  

I decided I wanted a place where I could freely express my thoughts without a built-in unit of the thought police to decide whether my content fits the parameters of their "community standards."  A community of my own, where I set my own standards.  A place where I didn't have to accept a cocktail full of somebody else's codswallop.

And here I am, starting a new blog like I did with my first one -- not knowing who'll find me, not installing a site meter to obsessively follow to make sure people like me, no blog roll (for now), just sending myself out into the universe.

I'll still go on Facebook to post happy thoughts, funny memes, photographs, and participate in the groups I really enjoy -- Eatapeta, Hotdogchicagosociety, Fox Valley Whiskey Society, I Love Photography, and the like.  

But you'll find my more thoughtful side right here.

And so it begins.

*To be fair, it turns out that one of the group's myriad moderators had taken down about 2,000 members of the group on his own initiative.  The admins have taken back control, and has no more moderators, but the damage to the integrity of the group has certainly shaken them to their cores.