Tag: science

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education and schooling media and media people

Erroneous About the Eclipse

Whoopie Goldberg, The View, science

The View is not something to audit on a regular basis. It may decrease IQ. Nevertheless, we may have to defend Sunny Hostin for her silly ramblings on eclipses, cicadas, earthquakes, TDS and The Rapture. 

I’m not sure. She sure seemed to be saying that the recent eclipse and climate change were integrally related.

But the banter of the women was so light-hearted that maybe we shouldn’t hold her to high standards.

Besides, Whoopi was there to provide rational pedantry — no matter how inaccurate she was. (Contra Ms. Goldberg, there are thousands of cicada species, and you may respectably pronounce the word in a variety of ways). It could be that Sunny was merely trying to be funny about the Sun.

As the man said at the end of Chinatown, “Forget it, it’s The View.”

But how hopeless was Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s little lecture to the students at Booker T. Washington High School? She was instructing the students and taking credit for their “opportunity” to go outside and see the eclipse.

“A Full Moon is that complete, rounded circle which is made up mostly of gases,” she mis-explained, “and that’s why the question is why or how could we as humans live on the Moon? Are the gases such that we could do that?”

Well, no, the Moon is not mostly composed of gases. It possesses the scantest of atmospheres, but does have water — or so I last read.

Even eclipsing The View, sending embarrassing, ultra-ignorant politicians to teach astronomy in the inner cities is — Lunacy!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment too much government

Stop Causing the Next Pandemic

Covid, virus, research

A lab in Wuhan, China was fiddling with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 when that virus was accidentally or intentionally released into the world.

I would like such a thing not to happen again. I adhere to the radical political doctrine that the world should not be repeatedly ravaged by avoidable pandemics. I especially don’t want to see a pandemic considerably worse than the COVID-19 pandemic.

But politicians and scientists continue to make pandemics more likely by permitting, paying for (with our money), and even defending the gain-of-function research that weaponizes viruses. 

Why, oh why? I hear you ask. The reason, they say, is so they can learn how to better combat these more virulent forms.

And if somebody happens to unleash a lab-enhanced virus capable of killing a third of the human race, will words like “sorry” and “oops” and “now we know how to stop it better the next time” undo the damage?

This danger is one theme of a talk given by U.S. Senator Rand Paul last November. As Paul, author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, puts it, “To think that we can prevent future pandemics even as we continue to seek, catalog, and manipulate dangerous viruses is the height of hubris. . . . We must reform government and rein in out-of-control scientists and their enablers.”

Senator Paul echoes MIT biochemist Kevin Esvelt, who says “Please stop.” 

Let us have no more experiments “likely to disseminate blueprints for plagues.”

Policymakers and investigators have no inalienable right to threaten the well-being of us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom individual achievement voluntary cooperation

Paralyzed Man Moves

brain, paralysis, medicine, science, magic

After falling on ice, a 46-year-old Swiss man became paralyzed, losing all mobility.

Now he is beginning to move again thanks to a brain implant that enables what the Dutch firm Onward, its inventor, calls “thought-driven movement.”

The implant interprets neural impulses that are triggered when the patient intends to move. A second implant in his abdomen then stimulates parts of the body so that he can move them as he wishes.

Onward says that although its results are preliminary, “the technology works as expected and appears to successfully reanimate his paralyzed arms, hands, and fingers.”

This astonishing work is not without precedent. Over a decade ago, French neuroscientist Gregoire Courtine conceived of the possibility of a digital bridge between brain and body to help such patients.

It took a while to realize his dream. But this year, Courtine and Swiss neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch installed implants in a Dutch man, Gert-Jan Oskam, to restore his ability to walk after he lost the use of his legs in a biking accident.

One unexpected benefit of their procedure is neural regeneration.

“What we discover,” says Courtine, “is that when using this system for a long period of time, through training, nerve fibers start growing again. . . . That was like the dream, regenerative medicine!”

Onward CEO Dave Marver says that the next step for its own implant technology is small trials, then a larger one, then “hopefully get FDA approval and make it available.”

What a wonderful world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly media and media people public opinion

Volcano Denialism

science, global warming, climate change, volcano, weather

Some weather we’ve been having, eh? Record-setting heat in many locales. 

It must be global warming!

Well, it is hotter than usual. 

But this is summer.

And a volcano did blow in the ocean near Tonga, a year and a half ago, and scientists at the time did say that the water vapor it placed into the stratosphere could linger for years, affecting the climate.

Still, you won’t see recognition of this factor for warming on the major news sources. They keep pushing the AGW line: anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming: “climate change.”

Matt Walsh, on his podcast, ran through the vulcanism story last week. Water vapor is a more effective, broad-spectrum greenhouse gas than CO2, which all the journos cannot help but push (because it fits a statist agenda, and that’s their real business: propaganda).

Walsh calls mainstream AGW crusaders “volcano denialists.”

Our planet’s ecosystem is ultra-complicated. Cloud cover (which has something to do with water vapor, you might say) can also cool the planet by increasing high-altitude albedo, a point touched upon in The Epoch Times, “Nobel Winner on Climate Agenda: ‘We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience,” which focuses on physicist John Clausner and his contrarian views on climate.

“Contra the IPCC and other major institutions,” Clausner contends “that climate is primarily set by . . . the ‘cloud cover thermostat,’ a self-regulating process whereby more clouds start to enshroud the Earth when the temperature is too high and vice-versa.”

He was slated to give a talk to the International Monetary Fund on July 25, but that was cancelled. These elites have directed trillions of global dollars to “research” global climate, and Clausner’s caution that they’ve made “a trillion-dollar mistake” is not exactly welcome.

It’s not just vulcanism they deny. They deny water.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Infected by Politics

covid, science, scientist, politics, politicians

In 2020, circumstantial evidence suggested that the COVID-19 virus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Let’s say that the available data, limited by Chinese uncooperativeness, couldn’t exclude the possibility of a natural origin. Nevertheless, the evidence certainly sufficed to prevent the escape-from-lab explanation from being reasonably deemed an implausible “conspiracy theory.”

Years later, U.S. officials who probably also knew better three years ago have acknowledged that, yes, escape from the lab is likely how the pandemic began.

We’re also learning from communications that have come to light that the authors of an influential 2020 paper published in Nature “proving” that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct” fudged their reasoning for fear of China.

Co-author Andrew Rambaut, to co-authors: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural process.”

Co-author Kristian Andersen: “Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science — but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”

The paper itself asserted that the authors’ analyses “clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct . . .” (emphases added). And: no “laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

This paper was then used to rationalize censorship of persons proposing the Wuhan lab as the site of origin. It was completely political; the scientists were acting as politicians and not scientists when they authored it. Better to blame bats than the dreaded Chinazis.

Funded by the U.S. Government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Imprudent Skeptics?

Covid origins

“For nearly three years, anyone asking whether COVID-19 originated as a lab leak outbreak was silenced and branded as a conspiracy theorist,” stated Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo), on Monday. “Now these prudent skeptics stand vindicated.”

While I enthusiastically support the bill he and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) introduced, the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, may I be excused if I get caught up on that term “prudent skeptic”?

Apparently Hawley means “skeptics” such as himself. But who are the imprudent skeptics? 

What would Hawley say should they be vindicated?

The bill, unanimously passed the Senate, would require the Biden administration to “immediately declassify all intelligence reports pertaining to the origins of COVID-19 and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Hawley insists that we, the people, “deserve to know the truth.”

But is it a mere curiosity that neither he, in his above-quoted statement, nor The Epoch Times, in its article on the bill, finger any likely entity other than the Wuhan Institute for Virology and the Chinese government?

For, as noted here many times, the evidence of culpability for conducting dangerous gain-of-function bat coronavirus research in China does not point merely to the Chinese. 

It points to the U.S. Government, the offices of Dr. Anthony Fauci, specifically.

Hawley doesn’t mention that evidence, nor does The Epoch Times.

This is not to let China off the hook for the pandemic, a Debacle At Best. (I’m not known for being “soft on China.”) I bring this up because of the implication: we skeptics of the Zoonotic Origin Theory have not been pointing only to the Chinazis, but also to our own governmental conspirators.

Surely it’s not imprudent to be skeptical of our own government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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