Just don’t do this. OK?
Swine Flu Prevention Methods Ignored
Year: 2009 (Page 23 of 46)
From Dr Bruce Charlton at Science Direct:
… that so many vague, dumb or incoherent scientific theories are apparently believed by so many scientists for so many years is suggestive that this ideal does not necessarily reflect real world practice. In the real world it looks more like most scientists are quite willing to pursue wrong ideas for so long as they are rewarded with a better chance of achieving more grants, publications and status.
The classic account has it that bogus theories should readily be demolished by sceptical (or jealous) competitor scientists. However, in practice even the most conclusive ‘hatchet jobs’ may fail to kill, or even weaken, phoney hypotheses when they are backed-up with sufficient economic muscle in the form of lavish and sustained funding. And when a branch of science based on phoney theories serves a useful but non-scientific purpose, it may be kept-going indefinitely by continuous transfusions of cash from those whose interests it serves. If this happens, real science expires and a ‘zombie science’ evolves.
Zombie science is science that is dead but will not lie down. It keeps twitching and lumbering around so that (from a distance, and with your eyes half-closed) zombie science looks much like the real thing. But in fact the zombie has no life of its own; it is animated and moved only by the incessant pumping of funds. If zombie science is not scientifically-useable – what is its function? In a nutshell, zombie science is supported because it is useful propaganda …
I’m not sure that Dr Charlton himself makes the connection between zombie science, the IPCC, and global warming. But Dr Muriel Newman of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, does:
The facts disproving the manmade global warming hypothesis are indisputable: over the last decade man-made greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, but global temperatures have fallen. That is not what is supposed to happen, according to the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. It means that the climate change policies being considered by our government are a waste of time and money…
The current President of the European Union, the Hon Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, has lamented the fact that no other leaders will stand up against what is effectively socialism in drag. He has always regarded the attempts of the environmental movement to use climate alarmism to restrict economic progress as a direct attack on the freedom and prosperity of free societies.
I’m not sure Dr Newman is right that the increase in CO2 over the last ten years with no corresponding increase in global temperature proves that anthropogenic global warming theory is wrong. There could be other factors at work which covered the effect of greenhouase gas emissions over such a short period.
The proof is that there has never been any correlation between human activity and changes in climate. The connection between the two was never more than conjecture – conjecture which has now been shown to be false.
Incidentally, Dr Newman lives in my old home town of Whangarei, in Northland, New Zealand. A great place to live!
Fiji is the new Burma, a ‘virtual dictatorship’ (whatever that means) according to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
But if Rudd is so concerned about dictatorship, freedom of the press and the rule of law, why is he is so jolly chummy with China?
Frank Bainimarama asked today for a three way meeting with Kevin Rudd and NZ PM John Key. Rudd flatly refused to consider a meeting, saying ‘The people of Fiji deserve better.’
So do the people of Australia, but that is hardly the point. What counts is doing whatever can be done to help one the smallest nations in the world maintain a society which is open and free and fair to all its citizens.
Fair to all its citizens is the point at issue. The constitution of Fiji entrenches a racist system in which nearly half of the population are and forever will be second class citizens in their own country. It is a system designed to ensure that indigenous Fijians always have control of executive and legislative power.
The votes of non-indigenous Fijians do not have the same value. No non-indigenous Fijian, regardless of where he or she was born, or how long his or family has resided in Fiji, can ever be president.
It is all very well to talk about the importance of the rule of law. But what do you do when the law is bad?
South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1961 in part because of protests about a system that reduced the rights of a substantial part of its population on the basis of race. Why has a similar system been considered acceptable in Fiji?
The answer is that Frank Bainimarama, and surprisingly, a number of the old ruling elite, including the Mara and Ganilau families, do not consider it acceptable. They believe that the long term stability and prosperity of Fiji, not to mention natural justice for all its people, demands a consitution in which rights of citizens are not determined by race.
Changes to remove the racism from Fiji’s constitution were impossible under former PM Laisenia Qarase. But if a vote was taken now, with the existing constitution still in place, with its different valuing of votes depending on race, Laisenia Qarase would almost certainly be returned to power.
Frank Bainimarama has committed to elections in 2014, saying it will take that long to make the changes needed, both on paper and people’s hearts, for truly fair elections to be possible.
Bainimarama may be mistaken. He may even be mis-stating his motives. But it is too early to make those judgements, and he is right at least about this: the existing system in Fiji is wrong and will take time to change.
In the meantime, he and the people of Fiji deserve do deserve better. They deserve a fair hearing. They deserve a chance to have their say. They deserve support and guidance as they try to undo a racist sytem and replace it with something just and open.
They certainly deserve better than shallow judgments and threats from popularist leaders like Kevin Rudd, who while condemning Bainimarama are happy to cuddle up to China.
He he.
I noted a couple of days ago that Fox was sticking to its usual programming instead of screening President Obama’s 100th day press conference.
I’ve been waiting for the ratings results, and here they are, courtesy of JammieWearing Fool:
FOX Lie to Me 2.4/7 2.1/7 7.88
CW Top Model 1.8/6 2.1/7 4.00
ABC Obama 1.6/5 1.4/5 6.12
CBS Obama 1.5/5 0.9/3 6.01
NBC Obama 1.6/5 1.1/4 6.68
UNI Obama 1.3/4 1.3/4 3.224
Beaten by ‘Lie To Me’ and ‘Top Model.’
I think there’s a message in that for all of us.
Three brief notes.
Lord Monckton was invited by Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the US Energy & Commerce Committee, to speak alongside Al Gore at a global warming policy meeting in Washington.
Democrat members decided this was not such a good idea, and Monckton’s invitation was rescinded. Cowards.
Also from Climate Depot:
Al Gore has claimed that climate sceptics are akin to people who believe the moon landings were faked.
Inconvenient truth alert: Moonwalker and Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist Jack Schmitt is a global warming skeptic.
“The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the (Geological) Society’s activities,” Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, said in 2008.
“As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a “consensus” that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. ‘Consensus,’ as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science,” Schmitt explained.
And finally: I think my ‘Profits of Doom’ is the best simple introduction to global warming science.
But Joanne Nova’s Skeptics’ Handbook is entertaining reading, and a very useful guide to debate with Chicken Littles.
The key question to keep asking is, ‘What is the evidence of any correlation between human activity and changes in global climate?’
There isn’t any. Computer games (sorry, climate models) do not count as evidence.
Catherine Zeta-Jones has asked to play Susan Boyle in a film version of Susan’s life.
I thought this was bizarre at first. But when you see photos of the two women side by side, it might just be possible.
Catherine is an intelligent and competent actor, so she might be a good choice.
Footage of Susan Boyle singing I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables has become the most viewed YouTube clip of all time with more than 100 million hits.
Quite co-incidentally (unless Susan Boyle is a secret capitalist weapon), 100 million is approximately the number of mentally ill people in China.
The World Health Organisation has warned that “all of humanity is under threat” from a potential swine flu pandemic and called for “global solidarity” to combat the virus. The plea came as the WHO raised the swine flu threat awareness level to 5 out of 6, indicating that the world is on the brink of a pandemic.
Ten people have died. Only one outside of Mexico – and he or she was a small child just over the Mexican border. That’s sad for them and their families. But ‘All humanity under threat?’ There’s no evidence so far that this strain of Swine Flu is any more infectious or any more deadly than ordinary flu.
I’m more inclined to think it was WHO funding that was under threat.
There are two major problems with these constant dire warnings about minimal or non-existent threats.
Firstly, funds are diverted from real problems that are genuinely causing harm now, into dealing with imaginary problems that just might maybe cause harm at some time in the future.
Secondly, when the WHO and the IPCC cry wolf in an effort to get more funding and more influence, they discredit themselves and the UN. OK, who cares? But they also discredit science, and that does matter.
Sooner or later there will be a real crisis – one which demands real, rapid action. A strain of Ebola which is capable of airborne transmission, for example. The risk is that when the real crisis does arrive, people will be so jaded by the constant shouts of alarm that they will disregard the calls to take action that really will be needed.
The sky is not falling. Let’s just get on with making a difference in ways that matter now.
Clean water for everyone, and stopping TB and Malaria would be a good place to start. These three things could be done now with less money than is being wasting on the fairy tale of ‘combatting climate change.’
PS
Perhaps ‘Swine Flew’ could be the WHO’s new theme song:
Up on my feet and moving
Got a strange new runner´s high
See me sprouting eagle´s wings
This pig is gonna fly…
(Look, up in the sky!!! It´s a bird?! It´s a plane?! It´s Superman!
No man, it´s not Superman. It´s ONE BAD PIG!)
Swine flew
A couple have been arrested for having sex on the lawn at Windsor Castle. They have been cautioned for ‘outraging public decency.’
The pair, in their early thirties, stripped on a private grass bank at the castle, where Her Majesty was in residence. And went at it as if they were in their own bedroom.
Most of public present at the time seem to have been amused and entertained rather than outraged. Tourists filmed the couple for twenty minutes, and Royal Protection Squad officers also managed to get a reasonable view from the palace windows.
Apparently there was a bit of encouragement from both tourists and guards.
The really outrageous thing, of course, is that the couple ‘even ignored the Please Keep Off The Grass signs.’
“This is a modest number,” said Huang Yueqin, the director of the National Centre for Mental Health.
Mental illness has now overtaken heart disease and cancer as the biggest burden on the Chinese health system, according to the World Health Organisation.
Does this mean that one in every thirty people in the world is a mentally ill Chinese?
And why do socialist dictatorships have such high rates of mental ilness?
I like the Dixie Chicks, even though their politics are entirely unrelated to reality.
This song, though, could be a message from the free world to terrorists everywhere.
I love this clip.
Just a couple of interesting gadgets.
The Sharkstopper is an accoustic shark repellent. It produces sound at a pitch sharks find uncomfortable, so they just swim away. That’s the idea, anyway.
If testing shows this is effective I can see the Sharkstopper being a big hit in Australia. There are about 12 shark attacks every year in Australia, and one fatal attack every five years, so it’s really not something to panic about. But that never stopped anyone.
Of course, even with one fatality every five years, Australians are still more likely to die from a shark attack than Swine Flu. But not if you are wearing the Sharkstopper. Presumably.
The Jupiter Jack is a little device you plug into your mobile (cell) phone. It produces a short range FM radio signal which plays your caller’s voice through your car stereo. It is easier and cheaper than a bluetooth connection or traditional hands free kit. Another one of those simple (and cheap) ideas you see and wonder why no one thought of before.
The Jupiter Jack claims to work with any phone in any car. Not yet available in Australia. Bother.
And I love Susan Boyle.
What to do?
Just watch it.
Crowds love ugly people – Britains Got Talent Parody.
It’s a parody of the judges, not Susan Boyle, by the way. ‘There’s something so surprising about someone really ugly being able to do anything..’ Wonderful.
World Wide Words defines a snollygoster as ‘a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.’
Snollygoster has not been heard much for the last sixty years.
President Truman used it in 1952, and defined it, either in ignorance or impishness, as “a man born out of wedlock”.
Many people put him right, some quoting this definition from the Columbus Dispatch of October 1895, with its splendid last phrase in the spirit of the original: “A Georgia editor kindly explains that ‘a snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnacy’.
Remind you of anyone? It’s been used of Arlen Specter (well, by me, anyway), but I was thinking of someone else.
It’s no surprise that snollygoster is making a come-back.
A few people, including Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, have picked up these comments from Sir Michael Caine, originally published in the UK Telegraph:
“The Government has taken tax up to 50 per cent, and if it goes to 51 I will be back in America,” he said at the weekend. “We’ve got 3.5 million layabouts on benefits, and I’m 76, getting up at 6am to go to work to keep them. Let’s get everybody back to work so we can save a couple of billion and cut tax, not keep sticking it up.”
Sir Michael is a perfect example of someone who came from nowhere and got somewhere, by thinking, planning and working.
Lots of people don’t like to think or work, and would rather imagine that the poverty and dullness of their lives is caused by people with money keeping them down, or by bad luck, or indeed by anything except the likely real causes, stupidity and laziness.
The best hope for people who are in that situation is not to have some bleating social worker pat them on the hand and say ‘There, there, it’s not your fault, the system is keeping you down, you never had a chance.’
Sir Michael and thousands of migrants to Australia prove that no matter what your background, you can succeed if you are willing to think and work hard.
People who are unhappy, poor, lonely, need to hear that in many cases their unpleasant situation is a result of choices they have made. And (and this is something that really is empowering) that they can change their situation by changing those choices. That is, if they want things to be different, they have to act differently.
Gordon Brown’s (UK) and Kevin Rudd’s (Australia) government do not see things in that way. Both seem to be driven by resentment of people who have worked hard and done well.
Both Brown and Rudd are determined to introduce tax regimes which will undermine future economic development. Those regimes will undermine development by taking so much of the income of those who risk money they have saved for years, mortgage their homes, etc, to develop new ideas and new businesses, that no sensible person would bother.
Or if you were going to bother, you would go to some other country to do it.
Such policies are economic suicide. Taxes come from successful, profitable businesses, and the people they employ. Without profitable businesses, there is no tax income. If there is no tax income there is no legislature, no infrastructure, no social services.
It takes two to make a loan.
Borrowers are losing beds, TVs and washing machines after taking out short-term, high-interest “payday loans” they cannot afford to repay, say consumer advocates.
So, don’t take out the loan. Stop drinking. Give up smoking. Eat something other than takeaways. Stop buying Lotto tickets. Get a job. Take some responsibility for your life. Everything that happens to you isn’t someone else’s fault. It is not someone else’s job to keep paying for your mistakes, or laziness, or both.
John Brady, national compliance manager of City Finance, which lends money to people who need to fix cars or buy a new fridge… says his typical customer borrows $1500 and pays it off over a year, paying a 43 per cent interest rate and application fee of up to $380.
Yes, they are scoundrels. They take advantage of the poor.
But the answer is pretty simple. If you can’t afford to repay a loan, don’t get it.
Qohel Author Peter Wales
