Tag: Things that make you say hmmm?

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It’s the language…

That’s primarily what keeps bringing me back to American Thinker.

Most of the articles are written at an English proficiency level beyond those of Slate, Mother Jones, or often The Atlantic.

This was underscored for me this morning as I read the following piece in American Thinker, “The Top 10 COVID Villains of 2021“

I know, the title alone is enough to put most of my liberal friends and acquaintances off. I ask them, “Where’s your egalitarianism? some of you correctly demanded that I broaden my reading scope. Surely, reading one article will not cause your “Progressive card” to be revoked.” Unless of course you’ve submitted to constant monitoring of your data stream by “The Party”

By no means, do I think the article was written as anything more than a “Fun Piece,” with a bit of a sting… In being a “Fun Piece” the article excels. When was the last time in any main stream press article that you saw words like, consigliere, execrable, harpy, fatuously, cudgel, avuncular,  and brucellosis (Had to look that one up) in one place used correctly?

When was the last time one of those articles mentioned, Jimmy Hoffa, Michael Corleone, Grendel’s mother, Donna Reed, Margaret Hamilton, Oompa Loompas, Machiavelli, Mister Rogers, Dr. Evil, Dr. Strangelove, and Marcus Welby MD, in the same piece?

For the linguistic legerdemain and funny callbacks to cultural icons, the article is worth the 5 minutes to read.

Something else that caught my attention. As I read aloud some of the bits that made me chuckle to the other half, I noticed that the vocabulary was unapologetic. If your vocabulary wasn’t sufficient you wouldn’t be amused by the article. Same goes for your knowledge of cultural references. This piece was written for Americans who spoke American English and have shared American experiences.

Then while pondering this. It occurred to me that many of the other articles in mainstream publications are written very simply. They often have typos which are artifacts of either someone who speaks English as a second language, or the author is using some kind of transcription software, rather than actually physically typing their article manually.

I have used similar transcription software but find that it is often more trouble than it is worth. I spend far more time editing the results than I would’ve done just typing what I had to say in the first place. It’s also far easier to miss errors if you’re editing a large block of transcribed text.

This lead me to ponder when the next major evolution of the English language would happen. For the moment people seem to have contented themselves with rendering all pronouns utterly useless. I will not be surprised to discover that, “To, Two, Too, Their, There, They’re, & Your, You’re,” are next on the agenda to be eliminated. I’m sure those offensive words will be followed shortly by homonyms.

The obvious justification for these words elimination from our lexicon will be that they are racist. Clearly these words are a plot by white supremacy to confuse the language, making it harder for BIPOC folks to score well on English Exams. That will be the selling point.

The reality is much more mundane. The transcription software can’t differentiate which of the words is meant. Rather than tell “Journalists” or journalism majors, that they have to type instead of dictate, it’s more in line with equity to remove the words entirely.

Et Voilà, suddenly, there will be another tell tale by which White Supremacy can be detected. If a writer or speaker, has a broad vocabulary they must by definition be part of the patriarchal white supremacist group.

The above argument is stupid on its face. However I’ll not be surprised by some variation of this stupidity being touted as truth and justice, or CRT.

I keep coming back to American Thinker because the articles are more often than not well thought out, and they use English. I love reading English that isn’t dumbed down, homogenized, and written on par with a Dick and Jane book. I enjoy reading something where the words used, have the meaning intended.

Any article will quickly lose my interest if there are multiple examples of the incorrect word being used in the piece.

I’m reading the article because it had something in the title that caught my attention, if I’m having to guess at the intended meaning of paragraphs or sentences then I conclude that the author doesn’t know what they’re talking about and is quite probably wrong. Therefore there is no need to waste further time on a piece.

There was a recent article (within the past year) in a mainstream publication where the author asserted that our planet orbited our star in the center of our galaxy, which in turn orbited an almost infinite solar system that contained at its center, a massive black hole. This was repeated several times in the article and clearly demonstrated a very flawed understanding of at best, the terms Galaxy and Solar System. At worst, astronomy in general. I’ll leave it to the reader to pick apart how horribly wrong the author’s statements were.

Where are the fact checkers for that kind of misinformation? It’s pretty easy stuff to look up!

I’m also bored very quickly if an article in a publication requires me to have the Urban Dictionary open in the background so that I may decode the bastardization of common words.

I remember when Urban Dictionary was a satire site, you went there during lunch to amuse yourself while eating at your desk. Now it’s almost an indispensable reference, especially if I happen to read a Rolling Stone article.

I’d prefer to think this is not a function of me getting older. However there is only so far my powers of denial will go.

If you’d like to read opinion pieces more complex than Dick and Jane, but not as heavy as War and Peace give American Thinker a go. As I discover additional media that doesn’t require a lobotomy or drug induced haze to read, I’ll pass them along.

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Hmm, But… I thought Fauci was The Science.

I noticed a couple of things this week that were interesting to me.

One was the publication of Dr. Scott Atlas M.D. book A Plague Upon Our House. In the portion that I’ve read Dr. Atlas appears to be detailing the beginnings of the Covid response in the waning days of the Trump Administration.

Dr. Atlas was there, and is not complementary of Drs. Fauci, Collins, or Brix. It might be easy to dismiss the book as sour grapes. I’d almost done just that…

Then I saw this article from The Citizens Journal in Ventura, CA. I’m not going to discuss the pedigree of The Citizens Journal. What caught my attention was the emails received under The freedom of Information act.

There was an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal this morning about these same emails.

In the referenced emails, Collins makes reference to Atlas and something called The Great Barrington Declaration. I’d never heard of this declaration and had to go look it up. It’s linked below.

The Great Barrington Declaration looks like a well thought out alternative to shutting the entire country down. Some in the media have referred to this as a “Let ‘er rip” approach but that is not entirely accurate.

The Barrington Declaration says focus on the vulnerable, target our resources towards those most at risk and when a vaccine is developed then we’ll address the larger population who are less likely to develop severe symptoms.

This is sort of the way basic triage works and triage methods have been in use for at least 100 years.

So we have two differing medical opinions.

Usually, in science that would cause a debate between the scientists. The ensuing discussion is supposed to lead to a plan that while not perfect (because perfect is an illusion), skews toward the best outcome. Implicit in this discussion is the ability to detect what is not working as well as hoped and seek a better answer.

Why is it then, that Collins, and Fauci, appear to be trying to shut down the discussion and moreover why are they seeking to discredit the Doctors who have differing opinions?

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, would appear to have the kinds of expertise and reputations that would be exactly what you’d want during a viral pandemic. Yet Drs. Fauci and Collins attempt to smear these people as “fringe” scientists.

The list of Barrington cosigners is impressive and appear to be composed of other working scientists in the fields of genetics, immunology, infection disease, and all the rest of biomedical science, are they too “Fringe” scientists?

Or are they the kind of people that would have demanded access to the research going on in the Wuhan lab to determine what they were dealing with? I personally think these folks would have been the people that could say with authority that COVID originated naturally or artificially, and then with that knowledge, been able to come up with solutions.

It would seem to me that since the pandemic is by definition, a world wide event. You’d have welcomed every single medical professional with relevant knowledge into the battle against the disease. What strikes me is that Collins and Fauci not only didn’t do that, but they appear to have tried to smear these people and discredit their research and opinions.

The other oddity is that most all of these so called “Fringe” scientists are actually working Doctors, with labs and resources. Whereas Collins and Fauci are bureaucrats that haven’t seen a patient or darkened a laboratory door in 20 years.

Then you add to it that Gov. Ron DeSantis of FL appears to have followed the Great Barrington Declaration in his state, and FL appears to have had a better outcome. Gov. DeSantis’s video roundtable discussing Barrington was removed in April of 2021 by YouTube as misinformation, in another blatant example of censorship.

Even if Collins and Fauci were simply caught up in their dogma, they had at least one example demonstrating that Barrington was viable. Yet they persisted in their approach refusing to incorporate what was being learned from Florida’s example.

I’m sorry Dr. Fauci, that’s not how science works and by extension you are not The Science.

Thinking along these lines with the recent disclosures that Fauci’s organization may in fact have funded gain of function research in Wuhan it begs the question:

Were Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci trying to hide their gain of function grants at the cost of millions of lives around the world?

The last thing you’d want if you were trying to hide your involvement in such a thing, is every single researcher on the planet looking through documentation that could point the finger at you.

In that light, the denials and absolute declaration that COVID-19 originated naturally therefore discrediting the lab leak theory (at least temporarily) makes perfect sense. Especially since those declarations were made within a month or two of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic.

In research, a month or two is blindingly fast. At the time, even as Fauci was telling the world a lab leak was an impossibility I was asking, “How can you know that, this soon?”

Much as I am loath to spend more time and money in congressional hearings. Here again I find myself thinking that there are certainly enough questions that should be answered by Fauci and Collins to justify hearings.

If those hearings were to uncover a preponderance of evidence that Collins and Fauci were at or near the heart of this worldwide event, I’m for both of them to be remanded to an international court to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

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Tis the Season…

Here we are in December.

Decorations are starting to go up around the neighborhood.

One neighbor’s decoration is a for sale sign. I’m not surprised about that, it’s gotta be tough for a single guy living up here. The local dating pool is really thin and most of the people he’s likely to date aren’t willing to to make the trek up here with any regularity. It can be lonely.

Given what he paid for the house, and the current market, he’s likely to make a profit on the sale. I’ll be sorry to see him go because he’s a decent guy. On the other hand he’ll drive the value up on all the houses on the street, so that’s welcome.

I’ve been trying not to look at the news with any regularity. At this point even the “normal” news is like doom scrolling. I thought I’d gotten away from that when I stopped using social media. Alas, I was wrong.

I’m just not very Christmasy. I haven’t been for several years. It’s just not the same kind of fun it used to be.

Some might say it’s the commercialism, others might say it’s the fact that some shopping areas put their Christmas displays up along with their Halloween displays. So that by the time you get around to Christmas, there’s nothing special about it anymore.

When I was a kid, there were three distinct holidays and the shops changed their displays each month. My first job at Toys R Us we changed the store during those three months. We worked overtime November 1, and November 20th to make the transition. November was a good paycheck month! It was a lot of work, and we were just transitioning from Halloween to Christmas.

The change was still magical. We knew that the kids coming into the store would light up seeing Christmas trees decorated in the aisles and empty boxes in bright wrapping paper stuffed under the fake tree branches.

These days, it’s like all the magic has gone. Sure, there’s holiday music blaring in all the shopping centers. The decorations are still out, although the last time I was in a shopping center at Christmas, a lot of the decorations looked shop worn. Oddly, decorations in the several shopping centers I visited, looked alike.

I remember years ago, part of the season’s fun was going from shopping center to shopping center because each one was unique in their decorating style.

If you stopped for a moment in a mall you’d see “character” and know that someone had put real effort into creating Christmas displays that were a delight to the eye. The yearly displays also changed making each Christmas special.

I suppose all that changed when people started dwelling on being offended by the season (or for that matter anything else). It really started changing when those people began winning court cases.

Of course all of this is California specific. It’s been very rare for me to be in other states during the holidays over the past 30 years or so.

These days, the majority of the holiday shopping experience is homogeneous. One mall or shopping center is very like another.

This may be due to a several factors. One is that the malls don’t want to offend anyone. The second factor is that so many of the malls are owned by the same conglomerate so they’re buying all their decorations in bulk. Lastly, the conglomerates may think that a consistent shopping experience across their properties is better for business.

I suppose you could argue all of these factors are beneficial. But I would argue that the “sameness” diminishes the joy of the season.

There was a time when we’d say, “Lets go to XYZ mall today,” now it’s, “let go to the mall.”

I’m trying to get in the mood. I really am. I’m looking forward to the annual shopping trip with one of my best friends. It’s not so much about the shopping as it is about the comradery. I think to some extent it hearkens back to our shared heritage of ancient hunting parties.

Only this annual trip has lots of eating and drinking as part of it unlike those hunting parties where cold and wet were often the norm. Halfway through the day we’re both fairly full of good cheer! That good cheer, might offset any shortages of goods due to the supply problems this year.

A couple of friends and I would laugh ourselves stupid if we came around the corner into this shopping area.

I hope the place had a PG rating.

Hmm. Maybe I’ve found a reason to be Christmasy, I can wander the local malls for examples of holiday decorations that tried really hard, but didn’t quite work out as planned.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

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Happy Thanksgiving Eve.

The President is out of the office… again.

Gas prices are soaring. While The President tried to blame it on gouging on the part of the stations, that’s not really playing well because the price of crude is up by quite a bit. This is what happens when you have supply chain disruptions.

Let’s face it, even if you take the politics out of the situation. It is, at its core a supply chain disruption. When the government decides that pipelines can’t be completed and targets other pipelines for closure higher prices are the result.

Add to that problems induced at the ports, where foreign oil comes into our supply chain and well, the prices have no choice but to go up. It’s a basic supply / demand situation. Then if you add the apparent lack of truck drivers into the mix creating more of a supply constraint it’s pretty damn obvious that prices at the pump are going to go up.

In California we see this every single year. As California switches from the “Summer Blend” to the “Winter Blend” at California refineries there’s always a supply burp. Prices go up and rarely come down. Since California regulations prevent importing non-California gasoline, the good people of California are always under the heavy thumb of Sacramento.

The image below from Despicable Me says it eloquently. If you have any question, we’re the person being crushed.

“Welcome to my world,” to the rest of the country. Get used to it for at least the next 6-8 years. I specify that time frame because with a screw up of this epic proportion even if Biden is voted out, it will take 2 to 4 years to undo the damage.

Biden says he’s running again in 2024. I’m wondering if his next presidential run will be from a hospital bed instead of his basement.

Enough of that, here we are at the beginning of the Holiday Season. It’s supposed to be a time of family, friends, and football.

But then in my warped little brain, I see the following conversation happening in the near future.

No dear I’m not watching football. It isn’t any fun anymore because it’s not just about the football. Now it’s all about “Educating” us on the error of our ways. So this year I just want to enjoy family, friends and a nice meal.

Oh right. Family and friends must now be looked at with suspicion.

Has Grannie had her COVID booster? She hasn’t? Oh well, send her back to the old folks home. Your friend Sharon hasn’t had the vaccine? Well she’s not welcome here! It doesn’t matter if she’s already had COVID, she’s unclean!

So what, if she’s the godmother of our children and you’ve been friends since kindergarten. She’s officially unclean we can’t take the risk to our children! Tell her she can’t come. What? No-one in the family has gotten their booster shots? Well then, I guess we’ll just eat alone.

What do you mean we’re not having a turkey this year? It’s not in the budget? How can it not be in the budget? We’re having tofu? What about the pies, what about the green beans? We’re not having those either, why not? There weren’t any at the store?

What is happening?

Oh right. We all have to keep tightening our belts until the New Administration is able to “Fix” all the messes the horrible Orange Man’s old administration left behind.

Say, it’s cold in the house let’s turn up the heat, it’s 55°F in here. I’m worried that the kids are too cold. What do you mean that we can’t turn up the heat? We can’t afford that either? Can we afford to turn on the oven? What? You’re going to cook Thanksgiving dinner over an open fire, that makes no sense.

We can’t afford to turn on the oven either? Uh yes dear, I’ll go dig a fire pit in the front yard. Yep, I’ll cut down the tree in the back yard. Good thing I’ve got a chain saw. Oh I need to go get some gas for it…

What? We can’t afford gas for the chain saw? Oh, You got me an ax for Christmas? Okay I’ll get to work. Can’t we just break up the furniture? Oh, that’s for later when we’ve used up the trees in the yard.

Why are you assigning me the gender specific role of chopping down trees and digging fire pits? Doesn’t that send a bad message to the children?

Yes dear… No I wasn’t implying that you should do all the work. I was just asking… fine! I’m going out to the garage, my phone should be finished charging in the Tesla by now.

What do you mean the Tesla is dead? Oh right, I forgot about the wind related blackouts this month.

Hey honey? What’s this Carvana paperwork about you buying a 1965 Volkswagen and there’s something else about immigrating to Mexico?

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

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My Momma used to say…

“We can’t do that anymore, because too many people abused the privilege.”

It’s with this in mind, that I’ve been wondering about making services like Twitter and Facebook simply illegal.

I know this flies in the face of freedom, it says that these businesses would be shut down and their employees would be unemployed. That is antithetical to most core American values.

Bear with me here.

Twitter has become a cesspool of hate speech, most everyone agrees that is a true statement. After all, Twitter itself has seen fit to invest in all manner of protections against hate speech, from algorithms to manual reviewers.

Twitter has been forced to endure lawsuits and congressional hearings regarding censorship. Twitter now employs a cadre of high powered attorneys and law firms at great expense just to protect itself from legal action from people who are offended by what they read on Twitter, and those who sue because their opinions are deemed to be hate speech or misinformation.

Facebook is in the same boat.

The simplest solution is to shut down these corporations.

Too many people misuse these services, in some cases these services are being misused to the point that illegal activities are being coordinated through them. Congressional investigations have stated this was true in the Jan 6th event.

This means that both corporations have become inadvertent accomplices to criminality. Not just locally, but on a worldwide level.

Twitter and Facebook were good ideas. Their founders were naive about the nature of humanity. It’s not their fault that people say things that other people do not like. I’d suggest that both corporations accept that as experiments in connecting and unifying people, they’ve essentially failed.

This failed experiment is also not their fault. They’ve proved that too much information exchange between people tends to amplify the worst aspects of social interaction.

Shutting down these kinds of services would tend to limit the negative and deleterious effects of all kinds of misinformation.

Think about it. There wouldn’t be anymore vaccine misinformation.

Local problems would remain local.

Politicians would have to focus on getting votes by traveling to communities and interacting with the residents of the community.

Unqualified or poorly educated journalists wouldn’t be unable to spread unvetted information.

Opinions would no longer be taken as facts without any proof.

Juries in court cases would be easier to impanel because there would be less likelihood of bias or prejudiced information tainting the jury pool.

I think the benefits of shutting down these kinds of services would greatly outweigh the negative consequences.

There would be a period of adjustment of course.

People would have to learn how to live with privacy again. A lot of people would have to deal with addiction issues related to endless scrolling. Neighborhood and Community events could help to address these addiction issues, and at the same time could more effectively address local problems.

Local print media would possibly see a resurgence thereby creating more jobs.

Our government would find it much easier to make sure that their messaging was clear and understood. They could focus on the mainstream news outlets and make sure their statements were read precisely.

Surely, the elimination of all this free exchange of hate speech would be in the best interests of public safety and security.

Just a thought…