October 23, 2020: U.S. Healthcare
The gullibility of the minority of American citizens who oppose Universal Healthcare.
Esoterica
October 20, 2020
There’s no such thing as an average person: remember that in business or the classroom. Also, Herbert von Karajan and Richard Strauss’s ‘Einleitung’; plus the world’s cleanest airlines.
Half of Humanity within a 4,100 Mile-Wide Circle
Half of humanity lives within a 20,050-mile (3,300-kilometer) radius of the Mynamar (Burma) village of Mong Khet.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
After thirty years of thumb-sucking, nose picking, and other inactivity by the GOP about human-caused Climate Change. After more than 30 years of conservative politicians sucking their thumbs when asked about human-caused Climate Change, it is finally real. Scientific American magazines explains how to tell the difference between a real or a false conspiracy. You know what a skyscraper is. Yet what about a groundscaper? I know the Frankfurt one (pictured) due to its excellent and soundproof Hilton Hotel. Every see a CAT scanner with its cover off? You’ll realize why it’s covered. Did dinosaurs walk up walls 68 million years ago? It might appear so in this 300-foot high wall in Bolivia, long before tectonic pressure turned a muddy plain into a vertical wall. Bali won’t be accepting tourists until 2021. Think you know how to sit while driving? Guess again. Jaguar Land Rover Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steve Iley shows you how in a two-minute video. This graphic, showing the relative scale of small things just at the limit or slightly beyond human site, shows the remarkable size of a human white blood cell. Here is a video of a new Amtrak Avelia train (disguised with Acela markings) test-running empty between Providence and New York City. Amtrak has order 36 of these ($2.4 billion) to run between Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D,C, starting in 2021. These new trains, like the Acelas, are manufactured by the French company Alstrom, with final assembly in upstate New York. Each Avelia carries 25% more passengers than current Amtrak Acela trains, has high safety and crash standards (as well as WiFi, USB and power plugs at each seat, etc.), and is 30% lighter (more miles to the kilowatt) than the Acelas. Although capable of cruising at 185 mph (300 kph), they are currently being test run at up to 165 mph (265 kph), a speed which they can reach only on the long straight section of track between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. Unfortunately, the winding, century-old rail lines between Boston and Washington, D.C. would have to be completely rebuilt to permit true highspeed train service. The original Acela trains, which began carrying passengers on these routes back in the year 2000, will be retired. #
Saturday, October 17, 2020
The world’s largest trompe-l’oeil display; the final Airbus 380 built; hottest temperature sicne 1913; ‘cabin fever’; and winter like a Norwegian.
The Greatest Change of All
Unless there is a nuclear world war or a pandemic deadlier than COVID-19 sometime this century, advances in technology will allow humanity this century to achieve the greatest change in history: the end of scarcity. Scarcity has existed since since before humans existed. Scarce food. Scarce fresh water. Scarce shelter. Scarce money once currency replaced barter. Although 900 million humans have risen out of poverty during the past 30 years, 700 million, a tenth of humanity, still find food, fresh water, shelter, and income of even the equivalent of a dollar per day, scarce. And even though most of the other 6 billion humans might still consider many of those things to be relatively scarce, the concept of a world soon without hunger, homelessness, or a want for basic necessities isn’t a dream, fantasy, or science fiction anymore. Scarcity has existed since since before humans existed. Scarce food. Scarce fresh water. Scarce shelter. Scarce money once currency replaced barter. Although 900 million humans have risen out of poverty during the past 30 years, 700 million, a tenth of humanity, still find food, fresh water, shelter, and income of even the equivalent of a dollar per day, scarce. And even though most of the other 6 billion humans might still consider many of those things to be relatively scarce, the concept of a world soon without hunger, homelessness, or a want for basic necessities isn’t a dream, fantasy, or science fiction anymore. James Burke, tells you why. In a 28-minute radio broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation during New Year’s Day 2018, the British author, television producer, and historian of science historian describes what will soon become the biggest change to humanity in 10,000 years. And how the economics of abundance will disrupt civilization. If you don’t have time to listen to Burke explain it all by voice, you can read what he says here.
Why It Seems Like Half of All Diseases Originate Within this Circle
Half of everything that occurs to people occurs inside this simple circle, because half of humanity lives within this simple 4,000-kilometre circle.
Dear Believers in Conspiracy Theories about the Press
Finally unveiled: the ‘Deep State’ plot by the press, who are against Trump!
Social Media Distancing
The Dunning-Kruger Effect has changed Social Media: those who know not opine and those who know know better.
Comment of Real Expertise
For nearly 15 years, a loose confederation of New Media pundits who I’ll call ‘techno-utopians’ claimed that because average people can now express themselves online, free of moderation by media companies, the quality of public discussions would improve and the best ideas rise to acclaim. Yet the reality has been quite different than that. he reason why it’s different is the results of what psychologists term the Dunning-Kruger Effect in which too many average people believe their cognitive ability and wisdom is as great, and often greater, than experts about the topic being discussed. A truly intelligent average person will defer to established expertise because it is almost always arduously gained from first-hand knowledge and deep experience. By contrast, the less intelligent a person, the more dumb and unaware he is of what actual expertise entails. He will too often believe that his own opinions about the topic discussed are equal, or even superior, to those of experts’. (The very worst cases of this moreover can be motivated or reinforced by resentment he might feel against experts or other classes of people who’ve achieved more in their careers than he has his.) The overall result is that the participation of so many of the dumber and unaware average people in online public discussions has not just lowered the levels of discourse but too often spewed smogs of miasmic discord and disinformation into those discussions. Unwitting Techno-utopians be damned! As the American biochemist and author Isaac Asimov remarked during 1980, “The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ ” His remark was about his own nation, but is no less true throughout the online world 40 years later. In social media, I am becoming apocalyptically weary of American plumbers who can expertly unclog a drain but who also purport to have expertise about the macro-economic impact on the EU of BREXIT; of used beer wholesalers who profess Constitutional law expertise; of used car salesmen, who though themselves untraveled, offer insights into the comparative structures of national healthcare systems here and abroad. Et. al. I’ll willingly accept their respective expertise about pipe water flow capacities, about alcohol-by-volume levels of brews, or about the suspension systems of 2003 Toyotas, but not about topics about which they don’t have any actual expertise. What […]
Rooftops on a Cloudy Day in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Aerial drone panorama of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on a cloudy day.