Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
There has lately been a sharp uptick, on social media, of messages to the effect of “Take the vaccine you idiot.” I was wondering if it was just my imagination, then someone found this.
I haven’t bothered to hunt all these down to see if they’re genuine. It doesn’t matter much, does it? People have their hackneyed lectures to give because they came up with them themselves, or they’re spewing what someone else gave them…whatever. A wave is a wave. I do wonder if my tax dollars are paying for this one, though. They probably are, and there isn’t likely to be much I can do about it.
People are frustrated. They feel like they’re doing all the right things, and here come our busybody “leaders” to clamp down again. They’re not allowed to get mad at the busybodies and this causes some strange things to happen in human psychology.
Really, all of the last year-and-a-half has been like this. People consciously realize they should have opposed the “peaceful protests” that were actually violent riots, last summer, and expressed frustration at them, even anger. But socially, they feel like they’re not allowed to do so. So they redirect onto the “insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January sixth.”
They consciously realize COVID-19 was not a natural event like a hurricane, and the “bat soup” theory doesn’t gel. But socially, they feel like any acknowledgment of this would end with an indictment or besmirching against China, which is full of people who aren’t white, and that must be racist. So they redirect onto that jerk who wouldn’t wear his mask. He must have done it to us.
They’ve built up an association in their minds between following the instructions from the NIH, the WHO, the CDC and Dr. Fauci, and “beating this thing.” They’ve built up an association in their minds between failing to follow these instructions, and ending up on a ventilator. Consciously, they understand that what we’ve seen happen is the opposite — people follow the instructions, get vaccinated to BeatThisThing, and end up getting told No whoopsie, sorry! You’ve got to keep wearing your mask! If a woman’s husband did as good a job relocating the freeway again after tootling through the backroads as Dr. Fauci has done guiding toward beating-this-thing, she’d insist on pulling over to ask for directions, and maybe grab the steering wheel or kill the ignition. But it’s not socially permissible to doubt the great Dr. F. And so this myth arises that “If everyone got vaccinated we’d have beat-this-thing by now.” We’re supposed to pretend science backs up that notion, when actually science says we’re infected and we’re never getting rid of it.
We can develop herd immunity, sure. There are ways to get there, and there is advice from our experts. We hope there will be a lot of overlap between the advice we receive, and what actually works. To date there’s been very little of this overlap. The experts have taken to inventing boogeymen to explain this, rather than admitting “I was wrong, hopefully I get it right next time”; and we let them. Getting mad at and placing blame on that guy over there, is quick, easy, costs nothing, and it’s socially uplifting and fun.
This is what too much emotion does to your thinking process. It keeps pushing you to focus anger and blame in the wrong place, to fabricate delicate fantasies about why things are the way they are. It lulls you into looking for the lost watch in the ditch with the best light, rather than the one on the other side of the road, where you dropped it.
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The covid-19 pandemic is over, and the variants causing it are dissipating. The new variant, delta, while claimed to be highly contagious, seems to cause a mild disease, more like the common cold. Details are at William Briggs, Statistician to the the Stars.
Having gotten both shots (Pfizer), I intend to ignore any new instructions regarding mask and/or lockdowns, unless guys with guns get in my face. Karens don’t scare me.
- Bob Sykes | 07/28/2021 @ 05:00