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(Photo taken at 5:52 this morning.)
May 2, 2020
At the Sunrise Café...
You can talk all night.
(And do any shopping you might have through the Althouse Portal to Amazon.)
(Photo taken at 5:52 this morning.)
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1 – 200 of 227 Newer› Newest»A long but interesting article on the strange rise of upper-crust socialism in the US.
did the CDC revise the numbers down?
...did that 'World-whatever' site have the numbers jacked up?
I know y'all like to talk books and culture, sophisticated-like--this is a "cafe," after all, no mere bar or joint or pub--but here's Andrew McCarthy in NR, connecting the dots, refuting commentators who saw no link between Flynn and the Russia collusion hoax:
"The FBI Set Flynn Up to Preserve the Trump–Russia Probe . . . Perjury trap was not score-settling. To investigate the president, it was a practical necessity to sideline his chosen national-security adviser. Michael Flynn was not the objective. He was the obstacle."
Steele was the trainer at ft. Monckton the mi 6 training site for five years, thats according to the deposition he made re the libel lawsuit by buzzfeed.
Waiting for the left/media to figure out that reopening is racist:
1) reopening is good for people who want to go back to work, but “black and brown” people suffer disproportionately from the virus, so they will be less likely to return to work,
2) in some states people who have jobs waiting for them, but refuse to work can’t collect unemployment,
3) reopening is happening first in red states, which are racist by definition.
The answer is yes, lucien.
US Women's soccer lose their lawsuit on wage discrimination. Rapinoe (a leading figure in the law suit) told reporters, "This is like totally unfair, you know, because the judge used, like, math, which is, like sexist, you know?"
Corona Blues 5
I was born in central Texas
With cousins up in Arkansas
I’ve arrived at that rare nexus
Where I should tell you what I saw
A lofty sky lives way out there
I haven’t seen it for awhile
I don’t know just how I’d fare
If I strolled for only a mile
Haven’t bought home a salary
And it defeats the pundits’ minds
There’s bird shit on my balcony
I can see it through the blinds
Near to an anonymous source
No traffic except for sirens
Menaced by a synthetic force
Native to sneaky environs
I have to take a trip downstairs
As quick as a sinner’s prayers
I’ll dangle in Hell for a spell
(My mail’s fate I cannot foretell)
Of free will I know this fable
Without it life will fall apart
We hijack what we are able
And are chased right back to the start
Tara Reade's story has collapsed. She says she never mentioned the alleged incident in her complaint.
@YH: Thank for that link. It's long and not well focused. Lots of good ideas though. Boojie Bolshis is an old idea though.
@YoungHegelian:
A long but interesting article on the strange rise of upper-crust socialism in the US.
I agree with a lot of what Pinkoski says here. Interestingly, the Bernie Sanders' New Deal leftism plays much better to working class and minority Americans. Elizabeth Warren went the most in on identity politics, and she went nowhere. So insulated are the "upper-crust socialists," they don't realize their brand is pretty much only appealing to upper-middle-class white liberals (and a few mixed race activists and black lesbians). Having an old white guy for a candidate basically only bothers white liberals. Their target audience likes the economic message but hates the social bohemianism.
Wordometer still hasnt adjusted, but its tied to who.
Best actors all time?
Kirsten Dunst, Fredo, Judge Smails.
Blogger Lucien said...
Waiting for the left/media to figure out that reopening is racist:
“Immediate actions the city government needs to take ........is a city task force on racial inclusion and equity, focusing on the disparities we are seeing already, making sure that we are addressing structural racism that is obviously present in the realities that we are facing with this disease.”
Bill Deblasio 4/29
So they dispense with social democracy, to abolition of capitalism a bit more honesty, the end is a bit more underpants gnome logic.
I've been reading "Everybody Poops" and you?
@Chicklit,
The author admits that Bookie Bolshies has along pedigree, going back to at least Leninism & it Vanguard of the Proletariat (a Marxist addition rightfully denounced by Plekhanov among others as Blanquist). What I like about the article is that it details the "Sad Theology" that lies behind the new Wokeism. One can be aware of one's failing as a privileged white person but still despair that the play of social forces that creates "Privilege" admits of remedy by individual moral action.
Modern Identity Politics reminds reminds me of 17th C. French Jansenism. Jansenism had the heavy emphasis of predestination of Calvinism, but unlike Calvinism, which believed in the consciousness of Election in this life, Jansenism stuck to traditional Catholic teaching that one cannot have consciousness of Election in this life. Thus, the Jansenist was stuck not knowing if a life of piety would ever bear the fruit of salvation. Lezlek Kolakowski, in his kick-ass book God Owes Us Nothing calls it "Pascal's Sad Religion".
I haven’t read “Everybody Poops”. I’m waiting for the movie.
I dont see the distinction between blanquisn and leninist vanguard, is it because i said so?
No its much jacobin as i realized from reading the great upheaval, the whole lot were all about womens suffrage anticlericalism antislavery they were a tas more sincere.
A long but interesting article on the strange rise of upper-crust socialism in the US.
It has always been so. Not just in America.
Now the anarchist took hold after the collapse of the canal company and other manifestations of the panic of 1893 in spain the uk russia and the us as well as france, (tuchmans the proud tower informs my analysis)
On the Biden comment thread
Blogger Birkel said...
Things nobody could think just yesterday:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
The CDC dropped the number of Winnie Xi Flu deaths down to 37,000.
[emph added-JRH]
And the death rate is below normal by 3% so far.
So tell me more about how the country's economy had to be destroyed.
They are just fucking with us now. I don't know why, but I do know that they are. Some of have been saying since March that the numbers are being manipulated upward. Again, I don't know why. I can speculate that it is because a kung flu patient earns the hospital 3-4 times what the same patient earns them without it. Hospitals would never juke the diagnosis for money, would they?
Or I can speculate that petty fascists want to keep the country shut down for political reasons.
Or I can speculate that politicians are grifting off of this somehow.
Lots of things I could speculate about the "why". Not much doubt that they are doing it.
John Henry
Zenceys panama, which features henry adamd is a local example.
All of the above john henry, just like waving the bloody shirt worked in louisiana and was reprised in puerto rico , btw another quake?
YoungHegelian: "Bookie Bolshies has along pedigree, going back to at least Leninism & it Vanguard of the Proletariat (a Marxist addition rightfully denounced by Plekhanov among others as Blanquist) . . . the Jansenist was stuck not knowing if a life of piety would ever bear the fruit of salvation. Leszek Kolakowski, in his kick-ass book God Owes Us Nothing"
At the risk of finding out that you really are my alter ego, you haven't by any chance read that other kick-ass book (well, books) by Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, have you?
@YoungHegelian:
One can be aware of one's failing as a privileged white person but still despair that the play of social forces that creates "Privilege" admits of remedy by individual moral action.
I partially agree with this, but this is a view I consider a blind-spot for conservatism. Individual moral action has to be part of the equation, but it can't be the whole answer. A slave cannot overcome his condition through "individual moral action." The Jordan Peterson answer seems to be that the slave be the best slave he can be before turning his attention to social action. Individual moral action does not obviate the need to address a system that structurally disadvantages people.
@Temujin,
It has always been so. Not just in America.
But, revisionist Marxist socialism, while it always had its share of upper-crusty types who strung along (e.g. satirized by George Orwell among others) always at least pretended that it was the working man's interests that they were trying to advance. They understood that the proletariat had some baleful beliefs (e.g. racist & anti-Semitic) but that those were to be worked around until the class conflicts could be overcome, at which point those regressive views would go away.
The modern Boojie-Bolshies seem to dislike the white working class in toto.
@Sebastian,
At the risk of finding out that you really are my alter ego, you haven't by any chance read that other kick-ass book (well, books) by Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, have you?
Oh, yes. Volume Three is right now in the book pile by the bed for bed time reading.
I bought them right after they came out years ago. A wonderful set for anyone who wishes to get into the history of Marxism.
And, one great recommendation is that real Marxists hate it.
Lopez Island traffic jam this morning: three cars waiting for turkeys to cross, including a glorious Tom with tail feathers of peacockian splendor.
Too honest about their real intentions albert krug aka jan valtin eudocio ravines all pointed out to the cookbook.
@320Busdriver: Yeah, but NY is not reopening yet.
Dejavu
https://babalublog.com/2020/05/02/trudeau-pulling-an-allende-on-canada/
"The CDC dropped the number of Winnie Xi Flu deaths down to 37,000."
What was the CDC number before they dropped it?
The modern Boojie-Bolshies seem to dislike the white working class in toto.
They are the deplorables. They are the ones to blame for all the systemic sexism, racism, xenophobia, etc. That is why mainstream publications can print articles cheering on their demographic demise. Unsurprisingly, their cause has been co-opted by the neoliberal wing of the DNC. They love regulatory capture, foreign interventionism, and abortions. There's been a theory peddled that the Great Awokening was partly in response to the Occupy movement. That is, it had the effect of the corporate world going all in on identity issues and downplaying the old-fashioned, left-wing economics of Bernie Sanders.
67,000 the who number.
On the No Agenda Show of a couple weeks ago they had Dr Laura Birx saying that all "influenza like" deaths, including Kung Flu would be counted together.
It also didn't matter whether the patient actually died of the "influenza like" illness. If it contributed in any way, or if the patient died with it, they would be counted as a kung flu death.
No testing was needed, suspicion was enough.
As I understood her, if I had a cough and sniffles and got run down my a truck, I would (could?) be counted as a kung flu death.
I posted the audio clip in another Althouse comment thread maybe Thursday but can't find it now.
So even with juicing the stats with fake over reporting, they STILL had to cut the numbers almost in half? (65m to 37m)
Is there anyone who doesn't think they are fucking with us on this Plannedemic?
John Henry
Sin duda john henry (without a doubt)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/04/30/child-abuse-reports-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR1J-k01ZguVaY4SFvdeAwhS3C5ngO3IkNxjIb4HSafgT6kR03ukfzvxAkE
Sorry, on mobile and making a link is too fiddly. WaPo article about increases in ER visits for child abuse.
Waiting for my apology, Meade!
Just kidding. It’s cool. I am sorry to have been proven right, though.
@Farmer,
@9:07
Having an old white guy for a candidate basically only bothers white liberals. Their target audience likes the economic message but hates the social bohemianism.
Agree. I was surprised at how much support Bernie 2020 got among minorities. Not enough to make the cut, for sure, but much more than I expected coming out of the gate.
@9:31
Individual moral action has to be part of the equation, but it can't be the whole answer
Politically, that's true. But for most Conservatives, morality is not just about effective or moral political action. It is about salvation of one's soul, and that can only be the most personal & individual of matters.
And that, Farmer, is one of your blind spots. Since you do not think in theological terms at all, you often are not sympathetic to its foundational currents in Conservative thought but also how, in sometimes strangely extruded forms, it underlies modern Leftism as well, as the article points out.
This is rank revisionism! No!
The moment demands concentration of the supreme executive power, to be wielded mercilessly, brutally, and without mercy against theorists, coffee-shop radicals, bourgeois liberal chatterers, and all the vile riffraff of class traitors, nationalist lickspittles, and pious predators, until the inevitable triumph of our righteous cause!
Narr
Then brunch?
The camps from butyrka to kolyma were full of those lot.
Blogger narciso said...
67,000 the who number.
Is that an answer to my CDC-deaths question?
Nice discussion & thanks for reading that loooooong article, my fellow commenteriat!
But, remember, we need to get in some insult threads here, especially an insult or two on poor Chuck's now mangled form.
We've got some (low) standards that we've got to maintain here, guys!
indeed
Marxists are rarely originalist, lenin put a varnish on blanquism and made it his own. The social revolutionaries didnt notice till it was too late.
So worldometer # = WHO # ?
You betcha.
No CDC link from those claiming a drop. I wonder why that is ...
Actually, no, I don’t wonder why that is.
Here is the CDC link. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
WHO. WHAT, WHERE?
I supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 and it worked out like I expected. I thought we needed someone so horrible that a person like Trump would come along. I never thought it would actually be Donald Trump and had no idea who it might be. But I agreed with Lenin, we needed a revolution and to get there "Worse is better"
I've expressed this here and elsewhere many times over the past dozen years.
Now if I were a paranoid, tinfoil hat wearing loon, I might come up with some crazy conspiracy about the kung flu.
I might come up with the idea that there really is a kung flu, that it did come from China. So it's existence is no hoax, IMHO.
But it is not very serious and is being blown out of all proportion. We've had more serious epidemics in the US without shutting the country down like we are doing now.
So, worse is better, is DOnal Trump using this phony flu, this plannedemic, and the national media hysteria? Is he using it to get people really riled up? Is he using it to show how our political class is fucking us over?
Perhaps for no more reason than a dog licking his balls, because they can.
Perhaps for more nefarious reasons.
Perhaps he is giving Gates, Fauci, Birx, Pelosi and all these state officials plenty of rope to hang themselves with. Perhaps, at the proper time, he will yank them back and say "The so-called experts were predicting 2mm deaths even with mitigation, cowering in place. They kept cutting back and cutting back until now we are at about the same number of deaths from ALL "influenza like" illness including kung flu. Folks you've been played. NEVER, NEVER, trust the government. Including me. You are individuals, make them act on your behalf."
"Now let's open 'er up and get back to the business of America which is business."
That's just crazy talk, though. I'm fresh out of tinfoil and I'm just riffing. I don't even know where to buy tinfoil. I've got plenty of aluminum foil. No tinfoil.
John Henry
"No CDC link from those claiming a drop. "
The link is up at 9:27pm.
What's the difference between the two?
'Mickey' adhanom, inflated stats, ny california virginia (according to schachtel)
I think hes sincerely convinced he saved 2.2 million, when that was never in the offing.
I see 37k at cdc site as well...wtf
Ah, my error. There is a CDC link. It doesn’t substantiate the claim the CDC dropped its numbers though.
Brittany Murphy died from the flu, everyone thought she was just not feeling well.
Saint Therese, when very ill with pneumonia, said that she was not going to die but was going to enter eternal life.
For the last few years, I have read, almost every day, the "recent deaths" page on wikipedia, while it is not accurate at a scholarly level, reading the ages of people with a wikipedia page, and their cause of death, gives you a feel for what people die of.
Pneumonia is a big killer every year.
And .... outside NYC and outside nursing homes and badly run Veteran's Administration hospitals for the elderly, this has been a normal flu year in the USA.
Unless I missed something, not a single retired MLB player or NHL player has died from coronavirus, one famous minor league player (famous because his fastball was the fastest of his day) has died from coronavirus.
Not a single current or retired congress critter had died from coronavirus.
Almost all the minor celebrities who died from coronavirus in the USA lived in NYC. Not all, but almost all.
If we had cared enough to keep the nursing homes safe, and had not flooded the hospitals in panic, exposing the panicked people to excessive amounts of aerosolized and other localized coronavirus threats, this would have been a normal flu year in the USA, as far as I can tell. I am tired of being lied to by people who do not know these facts.
Ken B,
viewing that charted massive spike from 4/4 9,338 to 4/5 63,455..wha' happen'?
Numbers come with descriptions that should be read.
maybe it's deep-state dialysis
... maybe letting things play out
is more effective than calling them out
And statistical breakdown by cause of death should be spelled out,,but they are thrown together like bouillabaisem
Since you do not think in theological terms at all, you often are not sympathetic to its foundational currents in Conservative thought but also how, in sometimes strangely extruded forms, it underlies modern Leftism as well, as the article points out.
I'll take your charge a step farther. I don't even understand what it means to "think in theological terms." I certainly agree that religion as a basis of a civil society has deep roots in conservative thinking. But that doesn't get you any closer to answering questions, such as is slavery a moral system? Is feudalism a moral system? Is the status quo system what we want? If not, in what direction do we want to move it? It's the people that agree with my position that I'm interested in. Whether they got there "in theological terms" or not does not much matter to me.
www.covidbullcrap.com will take you to a page with a graph of "Percentage of visits for Influenza like Illness" That includes Kung Flu.
It covers the current 19-20 season as well as the previous 7. The current season, including kung flu, is running a bit ahead of the 18-19 season but somewhat below the 17-18 season.
The graph comes from CDC
CDC has been running something called the "Influenza surveillance Report" for some years now. It can be found here:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#ILIActivityMap
Here's another graph showing cumulative hospital visits per 100m. It looks like 18-19 season for this week was about 100/100m
19-20 looks to be about 65.
Remember, that is kung flu PLUS regular flu. All "influenza like" illnesses.
John Henry
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/images/EIPRates17_small.gif
Yet slavery couldnt be remedied except through extraordinary means and was reimposed (after a fashion) by govt, jim crow was a private arrangememt secured by the force of state power.
John Hopkins site shows 64,900 us deaths as well.
Blogger Char Char Binks said...
I haven’t read “Everybody Poops”. I’m waiting for the movie.
you're late. It came out a couple years ago. They changed the name, though.
Search "Two girls, one cup"
John Henry
walter said...
Ken B,
viewing that charted massive spike from 4/4 9,338 to 4/5 63,455..wha' happen'?
5/2/20, 10:03 PM Delete
Blogger Ken B said...
Numbers come with descriptions that should be read.
--
You mean descriptions like "New Cases by Day".
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
Ok enough about the argument clinic, anyone seen extraction, some compare it to john wick but there are certain parallels to taken?
John Henry wrote: Is there anyone who doesn't think they are fucking with us on this Plannedemic?
"Plannedemic" is catchy -- I'm stealing it.
It's habbening.
Ken,
Your CDC likn says 64m.
But the one Birkel originally posted in the Biden thread and that I reposed here says 37,308 as of May 1.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
I have no idea why the difference.
I will not be the least surprised if, when all is said and done and sanity prevails we find that total kung flue deaths are under 10m.
John Henry
Tara Reade's story has collapsed. She says she never mentioned the alleged incident in her complaint.
This has already been established, but for the benefit of the record and that so others here won't be fooled at this attempt at disinformation (the Canadian can think whatever the hell he wants to, as if U.S. matters are any of his business) -- Reade said from the beginning that the exact details of what happened were not included in her complaint.
It takes place in dhaka which is rougher territory than rome or oaris or istanbul, tyler rake is a burnout merc, with little to live for (like reeves romani hitman) hes fighting ex indian special forces.
Blogger chickelit said...
"Plannedemic" is catchy -- I'm stealing it.
Fine with me! Only don't credit me, credit the No Agenda boys, John C Dvorak and Adam Curry.
noagendashow.com The best podcast in the universe, according to the Mueller Report.
John Henry
That's Sir John of the Zika to commoners.
Was anyone else here out doing some sort of protest today?
Do tell.
Blogger narciso said...
It takes place in dhaka which is rougher territory than rome or oaris or istanbul,
WhAT, takes place? Sounds like a book recommendation and you've never steered me wrong yet.
I MUST HAVE THE TITLE!!!
John Henry
What Mark said.
Assuming she did not fabricate the whole thing, she minimized the action for obvious reasons. That is not uncommon at all in sexual assault complaints.
Its a netflix film extraction, it does resemble a certain work by robert wilson who travels between mumbai and london.
I don't think Nietzsche was merely being arch when he said "Madness is something rare in individuals--but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."
People are quite willing to argue and even kill over anything--the "true meaning" of this scripture, this philosophy, this law--when in most cases there's no meaning there at all: just dreams, desires, longings, hallucinations, impossible ideals, the workings of our clever monkey minds.
It's self-interested ideologies all the way down.
Narr
See you tomorrow
Tara Reade's story has collapsed. She says she never mentioned the alleged incident in her complaint.
I give this story 50/50 chance of derailing Biden's candidacy. Stranger things have happened. Like Donald Trump winning the presidency. But who would be considered next in line? It obviously won't be Cuomo. Donald Trump pulled off an amazing feat. Thanks to his surreal press conferences, he managed to make Cuomo look like the sober adult in the room. Never mind that Cuomo's incompetent bungling was a huge contributor to New York's problems. It certainly wouldn't go to Sanders, since Biden's primary qualification was "not Bernie Sanders." A governor? A senator (Klobuchar)?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008LQ24IQ/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_b008lq24iq
Oh my . . . get an effing knife sharpener, would you? Because there is no way in this commenting format to draw a picture in crayon.
Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) from CDC's National Vital Statistics System at:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
are indeed reported to be 37,308 as of May 1, 2020. That is a drop of 30,000 deaths reported as of a few days ago.
A reaction of "WHAT??" should not be surprising.
BUT, in the meantime, the CDC is also reporting at:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
that the number of covid deaths is still in the neighborhood of 64,283.
So, again, what the hell happened or is going on?
Its called capital punishment hes written mostly about portugal and west africa.
Meanwhile, this cute squeeky woman did the old "toe stuck in a bowling ball" trick. Who? That Girl, of course.
Prediction markets seem to lean towards the eventual Democratic candidate, if it is not Biden, being the VP selected by the Biden camp prior to Biden bowing out.
That is Scott Adam's take, he is a funny smart guy who seems to spend hours every day thinking about these things.
He says Kamala Harris, and I think he is right.
It was good to keep the R naught low until we had a good idea about how fast this thing mutates.
YH: "And, one great recommendation is that real Marxists hate it."
Yes. Kolakowski was one tough-minded SOB. And he knew whereof he wrote, from the inside. But can you imagine the long slog through the actual writings of people like Stalin?
Marx himself, and the most dangerous fantasy of the twentieth century he inspired, was worth taking seriously. Is American "socialism" in Pinkoski's sense worth taking seriously in the same way? And why call it socialism anyway?
Tupac as virtual VP
Re: Tara Reide.
A liberal family member posted on FB that she - regretfully - has come to the conclusion that Tara Reide's story is falling apart. This family member - of course - believed every lyin' word of Christy BF.
I commented: Judge Kavanaugh requested an FBI investigation; Biden should do the same. And. . . .family member agreed with me.
Is there a sober political calculus for a dementia riddled and/or prospective strategy at this point?
It loosely based on a graphic novel, but that one is set in ciudad del este, in the triple frontier. The offering about that previous offering left out all the interesting details of that border region.
it was a dirty trick to tell people to stay home to keep the ICUs from filling up and then when the ICUs stayed mostly empty to tell them to stay home to wait for a vaccine.
one of the dirtiest tricks ever.
I am a kind-hearted person and I get the fear people in charge had, but I want to see prosecutions. You do not get to take away so so much from so many people based on lies and not have to take responsibility for all those days and all that suffering you imposed.
J. Farmer said...
"It certainly wouldn't go to Sanders"
Yeah, why give it to the guy who got the second-most delegates? The Bernie Bros and gals will weep and gnash their teeth, but in the end they don't amount to much. Most Bernie voters will fall in line for the Democrat, whoever it is. Bernie's not a Democrat, but most of his voters are.
and I am disgusted by politicians who say Walmarts is essential but people with small businesses can go pound sand.
A liberal family member posted on FB that she - regretfully - has come to the conclusion that Tara Reide's story is falling apart. This family member - of course - believed every lyin' word of Christy BF.
In the not too distant future, the Democrats will be using Tara Reade as the excuse to replace Biden.
Blogger Narr said...
. . .
People are quite willing to argue and even kill over anything--the "true meaning" of this scripture, this philosophy, this law--when in most cases there's no meaning there at all: just dreams, desires, longings, hallucinations, impossible ideals, the workings of our clever monkey minds.
In other words, things that exist, not in the physical world, but only within the human imagination. Most people think that they live 99% in the real world, and 1% in an imaginary world. I think it is the other way around.
Keynes something along those lines, no his scribblings are the dead wait.
narciso,
I liked Extraction. The ending was sad.
I had no idea about the drug trade in Bangladesh and India.
And I didn't recognize Chris Hemsworth--but then I am not really a current movie maven.
It was a nice distraction.
Blogger stephen cooper said...
it was a dirty trick to tell people to stay home to keep the ICUs from filling up and then when the ICUs stayed mostly empty to tell them to stay home to wait for a vaccine. one of the dirtiest tricks ever.
--
THAT!
But who would be considered next in line?
I kept telling you guys to drive a stake through her heart.
At this point they're continuing to torture Biden so she will look good in comparison.
Lewis Wetzel,
We live in both a real and imaginary world. Imaginary in the sense that everything our senses take in is recorded in our brains in a transformed way. Our occipital cortex does not store a digital image of what we see, the way a camera does. Our brain disassebles the image and stores it in chemical form, in different places around the occipital cortex. When we "remember" an image, our brain pulls all the different pieces together and reassembles them. Thus our memories are vulnerable to distortion and contamination.
The same is true of sounds. And memories. Memories are stored in little pieces all over the brain. When we remember an event, we pull together all those pieces. If we amend the "memory" in the process of recalling it, then when we store it again, we store it in amended form. Our brain plays a game of telephone with itself, in a way.
We aren't digital. We are analog.
Biden won’t ask for the FBI to investigate, because they would find other, non-rapey, problems.
11 questions we should all be asking the experts about the virus and "what next." The best thing I've read in weeks.
https://medium.com/@dneeleman/11-questions-every-american-should-be-asking-dr-891386a55d71
5/2/20, 10:03 PM Delete
Blogger Ken B said...
Numbers come with descriptions that should be read.
--
You mean descriptions like "New Cases by Day".
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
--
No comment?
its a whole other world
narciso,
It certainly is.
The justification here in PR was that Walmart sells groceries and they were not supposed to sell anything else. But then they decided that they could sell everything but clothes and soft goods.
Ditto Costco. In early April, the only thing I could buy in Costco was food and stuff like paper towels, detergent and so on. The rest of the store was roped off.
I was in Costco last week and I can't buy unpackaged clothes but can buy everything else including packaged clothing like underwear in sealed bags.
Hardware stores are allowed to open 2 days a week and then only for 8 hours. And you can't go inside, you have to order and they bring it out to you. Good for HoDe which is set up on line. really hard on every other hardware store that is not.
Ditto Pep Boys and local auto parts stores. 2 days, 8 hours, curbside pickup only.
Pep Boys, Auto Zone et al will survive. Alvarado auto parts won't.
No, the 2 days doesn't make any sense to me. It would seem like a good idea to have custom spread out over 6 days. But our governor says no.
John Henry
I remembered where I posted the Birx clip explaining how all "influenza like" illness were being counted together.
http://adam.curry.com/enc/1587326192.919_birxinfluenzalikeilnessnetworkexplainer.mp3
John Henry
It doesnt make a lot of sense, heck any unless they want to kill off small business.
"Drug Trafficking in West Bengal, Higher than Afghanistan"
OMG!!!!
They focus on yesterdays news. And then imcompletely.
Ken B: "Biden won’t ask for the FBI to investigate, because they would find other, non-rapey, problems."
LOL
Christopher Wray's FBI would find problems for Biden?
The same Christopher Wray who promoted Andrew Weissman and has made Dana Boente is right hand man?
Not likely.
I especially enjoy "one way" signage in grocery ailes with 2 shoppers.
Klaatu is an Invader!
Drago,
Listen to Trump's interview with Bongino.
FWIW,he was led to scrutiny of Wray but deflected.
Wray wasnt the worst candidate, there were no good ones
Blogger Anne-I-Am said...
. . .
We live in both a real and imaginary world. Imaginary in the sense that everything our senses take in is recorded in our brains in a transformed way.
. . .
I look at it differently (maybe). Anything that is not immediate input from our five senses exists only in the human imagination, and not in the "real world." Everything that is in the past, and everything that is in the future is imagination. Past & present are amazing illusions, we cannot see, touch, hear, smell, or taste them, but we act as though they are real as the things that we can sense.
Even the most hard-headeded of us spends almost all of his time interfacing with his imagination, not reality.
That's reassuring ;)
"The FBI Set Flynn Up to Preserve the Trump–Russia Probe . . . Perjury trap was not score-settling. To investigate the president, it was a practical necessity to sideline his chosen national-security adviser. Michael Flynn was not the objective. He was the obstacle."
@Sebastian, I think McCarthy is right, however I doubt that McCabe was sorry to see the general who set to testify against him getting railroaded into jail.
narciso: "Wray wasnt the worst candidate, there were no good ones"
Correct.
After reelection, as with Grenell, Trump is now unleashed and appears willing to go with temporary allies in key roles for 1 year periods of time instead of deferring to those republicans who are in critical gatekeeper jobs but only want pro-dems in those intel/law enforcement roles, like Burr and McConnell.
Extraction is terrific. It had a "1917" sequence, a long tracking shot with no cuts. Scorsese pioneered the technique in Goodfellas and it was hilariously lampooned in Swingers. I'd like to see a superhero with these characters: Hemsworth's character from Extraction, John Wick, Affleck's "Accountant," and Atomic Blond. I'm open to suggestions for more.
Lewis,
I think we are on the same wavelength. imwould just add that even what we take in immediately is not an exact replica or copy of what exists--it is immediately translated into electrical and chemical signals in our brains. our phones are more reliable "copiers" than our brains.
???
Hitchcock -- Rope.
Blogger Jessica said...
11 questions we should all be asking the experts about the virus and "what next." The best thing I've read in weeks.
Dave Neelman was trying to launch new US airline Breeze, formerly code named Moxy, this year. He might pull it off, but I will tell you the airline industry as a whole just got smacked back about 10 years. Even Buffet detailed today how he sold ALL of his huge stakes in the top 4.
Lots and lots of destruction and jobs will be lost in huge numbers come October.
Yes i usually cant stand affleck but the accountant was good.rake and wixk are more kinetic action atars the firmer is ex australian sas the latter one cant gage where he got his training
Anything that is not immediate input from our five senses exists only in the human imagination, and not in the "real world."
Huh. Can you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell thought? Numbers?
Tara Reade's story has collapsed. She says she never mentioned the alleged incident in her complaint.
She never said she mentioned it in her complaint. She said she complained of unwanted attention.
Un wanted attention in 1993 is sexual harassment in 2020.
Just like Biden telling the 14 year old she has nice big tits.Considered by Joe to be a compliment back in the CornPop day. Today, sexual harassment.
"the airline industry as a whole just got smacked back about 10 years. … Lots and lots of destruction and jobs will be lost in huge numbers come October."
Well that will please someone we know…
The idea that what isn't accessible to use through our five senses is not in the real world -- yikes. Crazy talk. The ultimate in solipsism.
There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy ... or accessed by the five senses.
Anyway that's my story. And I'm stickin' to it.
A triggered mom calling into a national show..meh, right?
some grist for the mill
:They had to intercept @GenFlynn quickly, b/c *the NSC
was ground central for the anti-Trump op.*
https://t.co/FfbY7znMRh?amp=1
narciso:
I always sort of wondered where Neil McCauley and his crew in Heat got their superb fire-and-movement tactical training.
So we are analog but also a higher level above digital, microchips cant sense emotional response they are limited by logic
John Wick was trained by Baba Yaga.
The first CDC link isn't fully up to date- all that "May 1st" at the top means is that it was the last time the spreadsheet was updated. Total mortality, or in this case a subsection of total mortality that deals with respiratory illness-linked death, don't get completed for a given week of the year until about 2 weeks after that week in question has ended. In that first link, you can see that week of April 25th is not fully tabulated yet- it only ended last Saturday- a week ago. That is why it shows expected mortality at only 49%. If the week of April 18th is really fully tabulated, then COVID-19 deaths have definitely peaked and are in a decline, but I think it likely that April 18th is not yet fully tabulated, but probably is 95% done. If I am right about the incompletes on the last two weeks, then you can estimate that about 9,000 COVID-19 deaths will be added to that 1st column to bring the 37,000 up to 46,000.
Additionally, there is a column there for COVID-19 plus pneumonia. That is 16,000 presently accounted, and so it is reasonable to add the entire 16K to the first column for 62,000- rounding might bring it to 63,000.
That column of pneumonia + covid probably means that the victims presented with bacterial pneumonia, something easy to test for. If you are really serious about separating out the actual numbers that were killed by the coronavirus, the best you can do is use excess pneumonia deaths, which I eye ball as about that 16,000 number already.
The second link is probably just a preliminary number of covid deaths reported daily by the states and territories- the actual data for the first link comes in from the actual paper work that is submitted on a weekly basis to the CDC.
In short, there really isn't a discrepancy- these are number that come from two different kinds of sources, but they do seem to line up, it is just that the first one isn't completely up to date with the paperwork requirements.
One character description say mccauley served in the marine corps before he did time.)
The US airlines will all go through bankruptcy, probably even Southwest. Buffet sold all his airline stock 2 weeks ago, but the news only hit tonight. It will be an ugly opening on the stock market Monday morning.
They won't disappear, but there will likely be huge reductions in flights and passengers over the next 5 years. Eventually, the traffic will return as this fades into memory.
Yes, Reade didn't change her story, but that is the new narrative as of tonight that is being put out by the Biden camp and certain fish swallowed on cue.
I haven't seen the subsequent John Wick movies, but I liked the first one quite a bit.
I like the second better, perhaps the change of scenery and brighter pallet.
Heat is one my favorite crime films. A nearly flawless action film with an incredible cast who were performing at the peak of their talents.
@roughcoat:
The idea that what isn't accessible to use through our five senses is not in the real world -- yikes. Crazy talk. The ultimate in solipsism.
But on a certain level, is it not undoubtedly true? It seems to me that humans have innate structures for thinking and on top of that we construct a world based on sensory data. I tend to side with the so called language of thought hypothesis, to a degree. Language is not so much a mode of communication but a mode of thinking. How a child acquires a language is analogs to how a child is socialized. It is a complex interaction of neurological processes and environmental stimuli, and we have hardly a clue in how it actually works.
Yancey,
Comment on this?:
walter said...
Ken B,
viewing that charted massive spike from 4/4 9,338 to 4/5 63,455..wha' happen'?
5/2/20, 10:03 PM Delete
Blogger Ken B said...
Numbers come with descriptions that should be read.
--
You mean descriptions like "New Cases by Day".
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html
I also liked the The Accountant. Ben Affleck is hit and miss for me. I loved Gone Girl his work in it, and I liked him in Argo, Paycheck, The Sum of All Fears and Changing Lanes. Other than that, the movies he was in were so bad, it didn't matter that he was too.
Yes, Heat is exceptional just as you describe. I've been wanting to watch it again for years, but just never got around to it. It's also one of the best gun movies of all time for those into guns, but that should not scare you off if you're not. Everything about the movie is really well done.
Sydney Powell and Jar Jar Binks: separated at birth!
https://tinyurl.com/ya4w6w48
https://tinyurl.com/ycl8z4na
But on a certain level, is it not undoubtedly true?
Whoah! Now there's a Stalineque formulation: eto khorosho izvestno, "it is well known, comrade, that ...
Eto khorosho izvestno, eh?
In a word: no.
But then, I believe in God the Father Almight, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is seen and unseen.
YMMV.
Blogger walter said...
That's reassuring ;)
It is terrifying. Ghosts live in the imagination.
Walter, that is probably a reporting artifact- the two days were in the period where the US was racking up 30,000+ new cases a day, and on the day with just 9,000- the missed cases were added to the next day's total. It happens.
@Yancey Ward:
Heat is one my favorite crime films. A nearly flawless action film with an incredible cast who were performing at the peak of their talents.
I agree. I think if you look at all the movies that are considered among the best action films, they all feature very artfully rendered gunplay. Even when highly stylized, the guns had presence. Cameron is a master of this. Carpenter exemplified it in Assault on Precinct 13. The same is true of Michael Mann. From Mahunter, the first Hannibal Lecter movie, to Collateral.
I doubt this is worse than 9/11 for airlines. They were front & center for that one; here they are just other colateral damage. If industries are going down, I would pick movie theaters before airlines as the one is kind of essential if you want travel while the other is always purely optional.
I also liked the The Accountant. Ben Affleck is hit and miss for me. I loved Gone Girl his work in it, and I liked him in Argo, Paycheck, The Sum of All Fears and Changing Lanes. Other than that, the movies he was in were so bad, it didn't matter that he was too.
I thought he was quite good in The Town, which is another example of my artful gunplay point.
I sampled On The Waterfront for about an hour this afternoon. She didn't do it backwards and in heels, but Eva Marie Saint was the perfect partner to Brando....She had a good career, but she only appeared in two great movies: Waterfront and North by Northwest. She's still alive and in good health.....The background thugs in Waterfront, like those in The Godfather, gave the movie an authentic look....Elia Kazan made any number of great movies. They were reluctant to honor him at the Oscars, but they gave Polanski a standing ovation....Waterfront is all about ratting out the bad guys. Movies celebrate ratting out such bad guys as corrupt union leaders, Mafia bosses, tobacco and oil executives, and any high ranking Republican. The one group that you can never rat out are your fellow members of a Communist cell.
I thought Michael Mann couldn't top himself after Last of the Mohicans, but he managed the feat with Heat.
stephen cooper said...
Saint Therese, when very ill with pneumonia, said that she was not going to die but was going to enter eternal life.
***********************************
Reminds me of that scene on the olds Simpsons where the ultra-religious Ned Sanders' wife had a close call. Ned hugged her and said "Whew! For a second there I thought you had left us for a life of eternal heavenly bliss!"
(ironic, given that she was later killed off)
Gavin Newsome had some some people arrested today in CA for protesting. He said they are days, and not weeks, away from loosening up, and people should just wait a little longer. I can't imagine what is going to happen in a few days that could make a big difference. This is the problem now. There is no coherent exit from this bullshit, becuase the lies can't be turned off now. There is no way to lie yourself back to normal when you made normal a crisis.
There's something unlikable and untrustworthy about Ben Affleck. The movie Gone Girl played to his strengths--if being unlikable and untrustworthy can properly be called strengths.
Love her or hate her politics, there is no questioning that Ashley Judd was never so beautiful as she was in that film, and the same applies to Amy Brennaman. Michael Mann definitely had an eye for picking beautiful women for his films- see Johdi May and Madelaine Stowe in "Mohicans"- yowza- just what you want to see in a guy film.
This comment of mine got kinda buried in the earlier thread, but I think it's important to think about, so I'm reposting it here:
"It was a beautiful cloudless day in the 90's today, just perfect for a motorcycle ride, so in shorts I took a ride down the Vegas Strip at about 5pm. Saturday evening at 5pm would normally be an open street party all over this town on a day like today. Now it's a ghost town. The contrast is really sad. The signs are all flashing advertising multiple ways to be having fun and exchanging money and contagions with abandon, and I was taken back to us doing just that so many times in the past. For instance just the year before last we took a big group of friends and family to a show, then Ubered all over town from place to place, having a great time and rubbing shoulders with thousands of people. By this date that year we had already had flu deaths alone that were double what we have had from Covid so far. Nobody knew about it, nobody cared about it, and nothing outside those close to those people was affected at all by it. How is that possible? How can it ever be possible again? It should be possible. It should be normal, because it is, and always has been. We have royally screwed the pooch on this. Mass stupidity facilitated by government, the media, and the gullible. It's really a shame."
bagoh20:
Agree with you totally about Heat. I read somewhere that the bank robbery firefight sequence is used by the military for training fire-and-movement tactics. I don't know if that's true, but it surely is plausible.
Also I learned that it's based on a true story. There really was a Neil McCauley and he really did have a talk over coffee with Chuck Adamson, the real-life detective Pacino's character was based on. According to Adamson, who advised on the film, the dialogue in that scene is a nearly word-for-word rendition of the actual conversation.
The Wikipedia article on Heat has some good information on this and other aspects of the making of the film.
@Roughcoat:
But then, I believe in God the Father Almight, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is seen and unseen.
Yes, I understand that that is where the difference lies. I just happen to think you come to that belief through sensory experience. Depending on where you happen to be born, that sensory experience results in a different set of beliefs about those matters. The proposed alternative to sensory experience is revealed knowledge. Knowledge that was imparted through supernatural means by an intelligence greater than our own.
While I reject revealed knowledge, I readily accept that an organized religious belief is probably necessary for a well functioning society. I think the New Atheists or activist atheists who identity with folks like Harris and Hitchens and Dawkins are deluded if they imagine a society is going to be built on human reason and rationality. I think it is pretty absurd to imagine that people come to their worldview in that manner.
bagoh20,
I would find the compulsion toward totalitarianism fascinating if it weren't happening here. I think we are seeing the reflexive, angry reaction that every mother is familiar with..."if you defy me, I will tighten the screws..." But most mothers learn that this is a self-defeating strategy, when what you want is for your children to learn to operate in the adult world. And really insightful mothers know that their knee-jerk reaction of "I'll show YOU who's boss" is childish pique. Evidently, Gavin doesn't recognize his own childishness. These people would be pathetically laughable if they weren't so dangerous.
Most people overlook "Manhunter"- a much better version than the remake with Edward Norton that took the title of the book, "Red Dragon". A reminder that William Peterson had a career before CSI (see To Live and Die in L.A., another great crime movie directed by William Friedkin).
Yancey,
so cases reported on a date come from any date..
Anne-I-Am said...
Lewis,
I think we are on the same wavelength. imwould just add that even what we take in immediately is not an exact replica or copy of what exists--it is immediately translated into electrical and chemical signals in our brains. our phones are more reliable "copiers" than our brains.
5/2/20, 11:41 PM
I like to use the example of the neural activity of a person receiving Holy Communion, or maybe having some other feeling of emotional intimacy with the numinous.
The person experiencing it has a deep emotional response. He or she experiences a fundamental change in reality. But a device that measures neural activity only measures that a certain region of the brain is more active. No change in reality has occurred. To the scientist, direct experience of of reality is over ruled by the imagininary world of quivering needles of instruments and the interpretation of numbers.
J Farmer,
True faith does not come through sensory experience, although St Paul noted that the pagans had God's nature revealed to them. Kierkegaard wrote eloquently of this phenomenon. The transition to faith is not a continuity from physical experience. It is a leap FROM experience.
For some of us, and I would include myself in that number, faith is not an option. I have felt dogged by God since my earliest memories. You would perhaps magic it away by referencing brain chemistry. I am familiar with brain chemistry, having studied it extensively. To explain it away thus begs the question. From where did this chemistry derive?
Ultimately, there can be no reasonable explanation. That is the dilemma of faith. When Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac, he could find no way to logic himself out of it or into it. God asks the impossible. And...He enables the impossible.
I understand that there are people for whom this is gobbledygook. I feel sorry for you.
William said...
There's something unlikable and untrustworthy about Ben Affleck.
. . .
Also, Affleck has really tiny teeth. Like a doll, or maybe an android that is not quite right. It creeps me out.
On the Waterfront was Kazan giving the finger to the Hollywood left. Kazan was explicit on this point in his memoir. The Hollywood left supported unions, so Kazan portrayed a powerful union as a corrupt organization. The stevedore's union run by Johnny Friendly in the movie was an allegory for Soviet communism. The movie was based on the novel of the same name by Budd Schulberg, a former CPUSA member who turned against the Party and "named names" in his HUAC testimony. Good on him, I say; and good on Kazan for standing up to the Hollywood Left by taking them down with a great, great movie.
Walter, there are different data collection points with different time cutoffs. Worldometers resets the day at a certain time, while the CDC has a different time cutoff, so, in the case of Worldometers, they caught all the cases in their 24 hr day, but the CDC did not, but the CDC caught up the next day. It was probably a glitch some that day, or the day ended early for reason. April 4th was a Saturday, so maybe that had something to do with it.
And now ... I bid you all adieu. Time for bed. To sleep; perchance to dream.
@Anne:
I understand that there are people for whom this is gobbledygook. I feel sorry for you.
I was briefly spiritual in my teens but soon abandoned it. Between the multiplicity of religions and the problem of evil, I have never been able to accept theistic explanations for the world. I'm more comfortable with notions of god as some kind of cosmic consciousness or universal mind meld. The god of Spinoza perhaps.
As for your latter statement, one thing I detest in nonbelievers is a sense of superiority towards believers. The condescending notion of the poor delude fool. This impulse is no more attractive coming from the other direction.
Yancey: 16+38 doesn’t equal 64.
Heat is one my favorite crime films
It has a great shoot-out, but that Waingro character -- from the stupid annoying name to his looks to what he does -- really distracts from it all.
There are good villains that you love to hate, and then there are characters that you just don't like and get no entertainment in watching them and want nothing to do with them. Kind of like commenters.
So, I made the mistake of talking with a close family member about the pandemic. This person, who I love a great deal, is a severe sufferer of TDS. The conversation started out ok- talking about the lockdown where she lives, how it is making her stir crazy and such- but then I mentioned that we reopened here in Tennessee this week, and that started setting her off.
First, she asserted that this will lead to a surge in COVID cases. I pointed that it might not happen to any great degree since not every state actually did shut down, and that the data doesn't support the idea that the shutdowns made any difference that wasn't already present before the shutdowns happened. That seem to get under her skin, and the left media talking points started to be launched at me with every breath she took- not enough PPE, not enough taking it seriously in January, not shutting things down in February, not enough test available, all the island nation examples that halted the spread early on, etc. I had hard time getting in a word. Even when I agreed with her on how testing should have been focused on medical staff and residents of hospitals and nursing homes, she wanted to blame that failure on the lack of tests. I pointed out that we had enough testing capacity to do that in late March and early April, but we insisted on wasting it on the general population, and that was a state level decision, and a bad one that I freely granted. Then came the charge that the federal government was trying to take Massachusett's PPE equipment- I tried to question that assertion- I have seen no support for this allegation anywhere, but feel free to correct me- but she just got more and more animated, and I finally told her that I was done talking to her with her making little or no sense. She hung up. I heard from my mother this evening that I hurt her feelings. Big surprise there.
the problem of evil, I have never been able to accept theistic explanations for the world
Let's say that there is no God (or gods).
If so, what is evil and how does it exist?
(not a trick question, just a dialogue)
Lucien, reread my entire comment. I wrote that the weeks in that link aren't fully accounted at the end, but there is also the other column where pneumonia and covid are listed for 16,000 deaths- that 16,000 added gets you to 62-63 thousand. Just wait until the weeks of April are full done at that website- they will likely agree with the other death data at that point.
Or, if there is not God -- is there really any thing such as "evil"?
Just don't shuffle off the mortal coil.
@Anne:
I should add, one thing I appreciate about Christianity, that makes it unique among the monotheisms, is its emphasis not on this life but a future possible life, the importance of forgiveness, and the power of grace and redemption. Judaism and Islam are much more concerned with how to organize a society in the material world. They are much more legalistic in this regards. Christianity is much more about an interpersonal relationship with the divine rather than a strict adherence to ritualism.
Oh, and you are probably missing 9,000 in the first column due to the weeks not being fully acounted for yet, Lucien. 37,000+9,000+16,000=62,000
Yancey,
Looks a bit extreme for an artifact.
Was top of the peaks, if looked at.
From the perspective of the virus itself, and not from its effect on humans -- is COVID evil for infecting and attacking the body and killing?
Or, if there is not God -- is there really any thing such as "evil"?
I think that depends on what level you consider the world. I am a pretty hard materialist and believe at a rational, logical level that the universe is physical matter and energy interacting, is meaningless, and completely indifferent to human life. But at the level of day-to-day life, no human really behaves that way. So at a certain level, yes, "evil" is a meaningless concept constructed by the human mind. But in any human society, "evil" is a real force regardless of the source of its definition. It's like "moral relativism" in that regard. You can discuss it abstractly, you can profess it, but there really are no moral relativists.
Mark, like Farmer, I don't really believe in God in the biblical sense, so I would answer that there is no such thing as evil in the biblical sense either, and that if you can escape justice in this realm of existence, then you have escaped it altogether for evil acts.
Now, I think this is problematic for civilized behavior in the long run. I don't think "moral" behavior- not killing, not raping, not thieving, etc.- can long persist without the idea of consequences that follow you beyond the grave. I think our rising up from barbarism probably did depend on a belief in such consequences, and I do fear that we are likely to return to that barbarism without it.
JF,
The problem of evil. I find this a curious obstacle. We live in a fallen world. What is evil? Is evil disease and decay? That is unavoidable, given that we live in a world governed by physical laws. Humans fell, and the world became subject to the laws of a nature that incorporated death. Hence, all the physical ills that beset us.
What about evil that seems more...intentional? The human psyche turned toward sadistic abuse of fellow humans? This, too, could be explained by the fall. Free will is not ipso facto going to be benevolent. God created us in His image--with all of the creative power that entails. Once released into complete freedom--and sin--how should we wonder that we are capable of immense evil?
And I do believe that the evil one releases demons to torment us. And God allows that. Read the book of Job.
Whatever happens on this plane is nothing compared to the perfection that is to come. This is not pie-in-the-sky hocus-pocus. It is humble recognition of the fact that what happens to us as we perceive it is a blink in the measure of eternity. We are used to thinking of ourselves as gods, manipulating our physical world as we do. We are deluded. As frustrating as I find the book of Job to be, I cannot argue with the one who asks, "Where were you when I created Leviathan?"
But all the other data plots, Walter, show those three days (and there were three there, not just the two) that had the same total new cases for those three days, just different numbers for those three days- the two before the big peak were much lower than the actual trend that was in place before, and that trend returned after the big spike. It pretty much has to be an artifact in reporting the numbers- a lag of some kind.
But in any human society, "evil" is a real force regardless of the source of its definition.
In avoiding the question of a precise definition of evil, it's a rather incomplete analysis to use the problem of evil in regards to the question of the existence of God. (Hard to answer that latter question without a definition of "God" as well.)
In any event, certainly in Christian society "evil" is NOT a real force. Rather, it is the absence of a real force, namely "good," just as dark is the absence of light and cold is the absence of heat.
And what is "good"? Well, "good" in its essence is conformance to truth.
Hence, anything that is consistent with truth cannot be evil, inasmuch as evil is a distortion or perversion or privation or absence of good.
So, no, COVID is not itself evil. A hurricane that destroys a city is not evil. A lion attacking and eating a human is not evil. A scorpion biting a frog that is giving it a ride across the river is not evil. Each of them are only doing what they are by their objective nature and truth.
As for the cause of "evil" --
If God does not exist, there can be only one answer: man is the cause of evil.
WE create evil. And that is so however you define evil.
@Anne:
The problem of evil. I find this a curious obstacle. We live in a fallen world. What is evil?
I understand the fallen world response; I just reject it. What I see in the world is not so much intentional evil (though there is certainly plenty of that) but rather the arbitrary consequence of indifferent forces. The shifting of geological forces killing over 200,000 people in the course of an afternoon. I think when you look at the world you clearly see a world where the good are punished, and the wicked prevail with no rhyme or reason. I see religion as an attempt to reconcile ourselves to this fact. Whether it's a divine judgement or the power of karma, we can accept inequity in the material world with the promise that it will be balanced in a future world.
In the CDC graph, April 3rd=19,000.......April 4th=9,000.......April 5th=63,000
In the Worldometers graph April 3rd=33,000......April 4th=35,000.......April 5th=26,000
The three day totals for both plots is 91,000 and 95,000. Like I wrote, this was in the 30,000/day range that was widely reported. It is likely that the CDC has a different filter for when to accept a number, but the total cases eventually agree in the long run.
JF,
Christianity is not really about an interpersonal relationship with the divine. The pabulum of "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior" has spread that nonsense.
Christianity is about the Divine intersection with human history. It is about human existence being an act of Divine Will--and further, of God entering history in order to redeem humanity from the death and destruction that humans had chosen.
Where Christianity most thoroughly diverges from all other religions is in the idea that humanity cannot save itself by its own actions--by works. No number of charitable acts, of moral activities, can make humans worthy of divine acceptance. That God accepts us is an act of Divine charity, of grace, not of any effort on our part. This is a radical departure from every other faith tradition. And for Christians it is only possible because God inhabited our humanity, literally redeeming every cell of our being.
Like roughcoat, it time to dream. Goodnight all.
@Mark:
If God does not exist, there can be only one answer: man is the cause of evil.
WE create evil. And that is so however you define evil.
I concede that I can give no precise definition of "evil." It is a folk concept. Like intelligence or athleticism or happiness. To paraphrase a famous colloquialism, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Or as the old joke goes, "Sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"
Now, if God DOES exist, then what is the cause of evil?
Again, there can be only one answer: man is the cause of evil.
WE create evil. We create it by our own free choice of the will to exist in a manner that is inconsistent with good, that is, with the truth, particularly the greatest Good and Truth, i.e. God. In Christian terms, we call this latter choice "sin," a word that is derived from the German for sunder, meaning to separate, which in this case means choosing to separate yourself from God.
I concede that I can give no precise definition of "evil."
The ancient Augustine from the area that is now Algeria took many many years contemplating that question, spending a lot of time being dissatisfied with the answers. That is, until he finally hit upon the answer.
He had issues with believing in God too.
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