Monthly Archives: February 2021

Genesis, a poem by David Solway

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The Sun, Edvard Munch, 1909  

Genesis

                 I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge.
                           —Charles Townes, inventor of the laser

The earth was without form, and void
and darkness was on the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of Nothing.
Then God said:
Let there be a zero-point field;
and there was a zero-point field.
And God saw the zero-point field,
that it was good.
And God said:
Let there be a quantum vacuum.
Let it fluctuate in ceaseless waves
in a rippling sea of quantum radiation.
And it was so.
Then God said:
Let matter be sustained
by the underlying sea of quantum radiation
for it is a force that opposes acceleration
and gives a body to things.
Let stochastic electrodynamics be the order of the day.
Let there be inertia.
Let matter be solid.
And it was so.
Thus God created an electromagnetic spectrum
and called it light
which was not the light of the sun, moon and stars
but the light of Creation.
And indeed it was very good. 

From The New English Review. Should also mention:

David Solway’s latest book is Notes from a Derelict Culture, Black House Publishing, 2019, London. A CD of his original songs, Partial to Cain, appeared in 2019.

What if Daniel Andrews is literally insane

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Are these the actions of someone with all his wits about him:

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has hit back at lockdown critics’ claims he has been motivated by political popularity, as the state recorded one new case of locally acquired COVID overnight. It comes as he deferred all questions about a man’s controversial use of a nebuliser in hotel quarantine for his asthma to Victoria’s quarantine boss Emma Cassar. The man has been blamed for Victoria’s Holiday Inn outbreak and has claimed he has been made to “feel like a criminal”…. Victoria entered its first of a five-day lockdown ordered by Mr Andrews in a bid to curb the spread of the virus, linked to an outbreak at the Holiday Inn.

We are locking down the state economy because of one new case! And he thinks Victoria is “the gold standard”!

Trump impeachment trial ends as it was always going to

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TRUMP 2, IMPEACHMENT 0. The Democrats have converted impeachment from a measure of “high crimes and misdemeanors” to simply an indicator that the House of Representatives is controlled by the opposition party. Once again, people claiming to stand up in favor of institutions and traditions against Donald Trump have actually wrecked those institutions and traditions out of pique. This has done lasting damage to the Republic, and they don’t care. They never care.

As I told my twentysomething Con Law students, they have now lived through 75% of America’s presidential impeachments. Of course, if they were one year old, they would still have lived through 50%.

That’s not normal, and the source of the abnormality isn’t Trump.

That’s from Instapundit where the best of the comments thread leads with this:

Since he wasn’t removed, Trump should show up for work tomorrow

I will say this again. I have lived through three almost Identikit presidents: JFK, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. They were free market, anti-racist and anti-communist, as well as funny and personally humane in all their dealings. What has changed is the nature of the left which has become totalitarian in its aims and ambitions.

We are living in an idiocracy

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Abstract
 
Dysgenic fertility means that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and number of children. Its presence during the last century has been demonstrated in several countries. We show here that there is dysgenic fertility in the world population quantified by a correlation of −0.73 between IQ and fertility across nations. It is estimated that the effect of this has been a decline in the world’s genotypic IQ of 0.86 IQ points for the years 1950–2000. A further decline of 1.28 IQ points in the world’s genotypic IQ is projected for the years 2000–2050. In the period 1950–2000 this decline has been compensated for by a rise in phenotypic intelligence known as the Flynn Effect, but recent studies in four economically developed countries have found that this has now ceased or gone into reverse. It seems probable that this “negative Flynn Effect”will spread to economically developing countries and the whole world will move into a period of declining genotypic and phenotypic intelligence. It is possible that “the new eugenics”of biotechnology may evolve to counteract dysgenic fertility.
 
That’s the abstract from a paper on The decline of the world’s IQ of which there are quite a few at the moment. Here’s another that brings the fall of our collective IQ together with its political consequences: The Decline of Intelligence in the West. It’s by David Solway which is one more reason to pay attention. Here’s the opening para with a message for us here down under.
 
Recent studies have reported a worrisome decline in IQ scores in Western nations over the last decades, a reversal of the once-hopeful Flynn Effect (named after the late philosopher and psychologist James R. Flynn) which posited a growth in cognitive abilities for much of the 20th Century. Now the Flynn Effect seems to have reversed, leading to predictions of a general dumbing down of selective populations. Other studies report that IQ erosion is not confined to this century but that IQ has dropped by an average of 14.1 percent over the last century. As Evan Horowitz writes for NBC News, “A range of studies using a variety of well-established IQ tests and metrics have found declining scores across Scandinavia, Britain, Germany, France and Australia.”
 
Let’s get to the nub of the issue.
 
One recalls MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, who referred to “the stupidity of the American voter” as helping him to pass the controversial law. One wonders if Gruber ever heard of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s test results purporting to show that “the rot starts at the top.” This would implicate Gruber and his cohort in the experience of what Piaget calls horizontal décalage, which stymies the application of cognitive functions and logical operations to extended tasks. In other words, Gruber et al. are also stupid, gradually destroying the very society that enabled them to flourish. But the rot can also start at the bottom, as a combination of generalized mental vacancy and low-to-no-information voters furthers cultural and social degeneration. As Morris Berman remarks in The Twilight of American Culture, “A society cannot function if nearly everyone in it is stupid.”…
 
The travesty of intelligence, prudence, and wisdom is beyond calculation, and it is only getting worse as IQ continues to slip down the great chain of thinking. This is the world that the classic film Idiocracy extravagantly punctures.
 
 
What to do?
 
It’s a daunting task. The number of people incapable of lucid argument and civil debate, whether Internet trolls, social media vulgarians, angry progressivists, media ignoramuses and intellectually challenged political leaders, is legion. It is therefore by no means astonishing that the greatest civilization the world has ever known, the Judeo-Christian West, is subsiding into a state of cognitive expiry, prone to fantasies and delusions, unable to confront and parse the reality of the world, oblivious to the symbiosis of man, history and nature, distracted by pseudo-scientific baubles, bereft of spiritual substance, and foreign to the very idea of truth.

From the fall of Greek civilisation to the rise of Europe in the sixteenth century was around 2000 years. In between, not much although a few crumbs of knowledge and genius. Measure the time between the birth of Archimedes (287 BC) and the birth of Sir Isaac Newton (1643 AD) and you might have some idea when the next advance might come along.

Daniel Andrews feeling loss of relevance or perhaps just a lunatic

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From The Oz: Victorian lockdown slammed as ‘sheer lunacy’. I don’t know who said it but anyone who didn’t has a very bad case of the Melbourne Syndrome. Also this:

As millions of Victorians enter a snap- five-day lockdown in a bid to curb the growing Holiday Inn cluster, Premier Daniel Andrews is facing criticism from business leaders and scientists who have accused him of overreacting. Meanwhile, a WHO team investigating the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan say China refused to provide data on the first victims.

We are in the hands of crazies.

Flattening the curve is now one year old

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For context see Nation Prepares To Celebrate 1st Anniversary Of Two Weeks To Flatten The Curve. This is the first article of my own I can find on the Chinese flu, dated February 28, 2020: Coronavirus, the economy and the American election, the story thus far …. This is the text:

Whoever does the plot lines for our world is astonishingly creative but does tend to be highly melodramatic. So this is where we are. Our economies are coming good, the virtuous if eccentric Donald Trump is getting on top of things with some of the best economic outcomes in generations. Meanwhile, the Democrats go into self-destructive mode, creating a set of rules accompanied by a large crew of incompetents who allow not just anyone, but an out-and-out communist to take first place in the race for the nomination. In almost every conceivable circumstance, the communist must lose, unless there is a major recession. But then, just in time, along comes the coronavirus, knocking supply chains out of kilter across the world, with this coronavirus business looking like it might really create an international recession just in time for the election. 

There is no doubt now looking back that the agenda that has unfolded since then was what was planned from the start. There is then this from March 18, 2020: Is the Corona Virus pandemic just another scam? This is the text:

On economics, I don’t trust anyone else’s judgement but my own. The Global Financial Crisis was mismanaged to such an extent that only with the arrival of Donald Trump, who knows something about how an economy works, even if only instinctively, that the US and the rest of us subsequently have moved forward.

On politics, again I don’t trust anyone else’s judgement. Our political class are such stupidoes and so bizarrely left leaning, that the kinds of things they do in almost every circumstance is plain out wrong. The public trust looks like a scam almost in everything that is touched. And with the public service entirely university-educated, I never expect political decisions to be sensible, which they seldom are.

On climate change (formerly known as global warming) I kept a watchful eye on it all until I finally decided, now quite a while ago, that it, too, is a scam. There is absolutely nothing in any of it that should be a worry.

As for Y2K, I was a sceptic way back, well before New Year’s Eve 2000. And since, I have never seen so much madness before the day, and never an apologetic word since. Utterly nothing whatsoever in it despite the five-alarm fire.

And now we are dealing with perhaps the biggest scam of them all. I know nothing about viruses and pandemics, but was a long-time student of the Black Death and Bubonic Plague. Maybe it’s early days, but so far there is nothing going on that reminds me of the days of “Bring Out Your Dead”. I keep hearing that such pandemics grow at exponential rates, and while there is hardly anything now, just wait. Except during the Black Death, from the moment it began, there was no doubting the extent of the catastrophe.

We shall therefore see. But! All below from Instapundit. May the skepticism flourish until we are certain one way or the other. Caution is important. Blind panic is madness.

THE NUMBERS JUST DON’T ADD UP TO THE CRAZY STUFF WE’RE DOING TO “BEND A CURVE” THAT WAS NEVER THAT DANGEROUS. LOOK, EVERY DEATH IS REGRETTABLE, BUT IF THE CHINESE FLU JUSTIFIES THIS, THE YEARLY FLU SHOULD HAVE US IN QUARANTINE YEAR AROUND PRETTY MUCH:  Diamond Princess Mysteries.

AND HOW:  In crisis there is opportunity, and the left wants to seize it. 

THE PANIC IS WHAT WILL KILL US:  Apocalypse No.

I KNOW THIS IS GOING TO SOUND CRAZY, BUT PERHAPS THE RESULTS TO THE ECONOMY, TO THE ABILITY OF PEOPLE TO MOVE AROUND AND ORGANIZE IS WHAT WAS INTENDED ALL ALONG?  Mayor of NYC Bill DiBlasio: Get Ready for a “Shelter in Place” Order For NYC Within the Next 48 Hours. I mean, as with global warming and other things, you have to ask yourself “What are these measures actually accomplishing?” And why are leftist governors scaling up/ramping up the shut downs and restrictions in the absence of anything justifying it?

THIS TO ME, TO ALLUDE TO SHERLOCK HOLMES, IS THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK IN THE NIGHT. I’M SORRY, IF YOU THINK THAT — IF NOTHING ELSE WITH DRUG DEALS AND HANDOUTS AND SUCH — THE PROFESSIONAL CLASS HAS NO CONTACT WITH THE HOMELESS, YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR MIND. ALSO THE HOMELESS ARE IN AND OUT OF HOSPITALS A LOT. THEY’RE “FREQUENT FLIERS”.  SO, HOW COME THEY’RE NOT DROPPING LIKE FLIES?  Another Vulnerable Population.

BUT… BUT… BUT… I THOUGHT THE REASON THIS WASN’T SPREADING IN AFRICA (MOST OF WHICH, BTW, IS NOT IN SUMMER TEMPERATURES (IN FACT ALL OF WHICH IS IN A MID-SEASON RIGHT NOW)) AND MOST BRAZILIANS AREN’T DEAD AFTER CARNIVAL WAS THAT IT DOESN’T SPREAD EVEN IN RELATIVELY WARM WEATHER. SO HOW COME CALIFORNIA NEEDS THIS?  Bay Area Issues ‘Shelter in Place’ to Stop Coronavirus From Spreading. I don’t know about you guys, but I smell several large, authoritarian rats.

ITALY IS NOT THE US. REPEAT: ITALY IS NOT THE US:  Distinguishing factors. But note even in Italy, a country that hugs, smokes, and uses public transportation, the average age of the victims of the Chinese Flu is 80 or so. My question is: What are we doing to protect those populations?  Well, not much. Sure, we closed care centers to visitors, but we still allow the nurses to go in and out, and a lot of those people have small kids who are in daycare.  As for the elders being cared for by family? Well, a lot of them still have essential doctors’ appointments as do their families. What is the quarantine doing?  It is destroying the economy. It is doing that with amazing efficiency. At which point do we ask ourselves what the INTENDED effect is?

HOW MANY OF THEM ARE IN CHINESE PAY?  Liberal Media Melts Down After Trump Tweets ‘Chinese Virus’.

YOU ARE BEING STAMPEDED:  COVID-19: the unwarranted panic.

Mass media now means mass stupidity.