Pandemic Blunder (Book) - 4/18/2021 9:44:45 AM
I have not heard of this approach that you are taking in this book. But your mention in the excerpt of "leftist media," leads me to believe that you have written the kind of conspiracy that grabs conservative minds these days as a way of explaining why things were always caused by poor political leaders.
Among the poorest of political leaders that I've ever encountered, was Donald Trump. Encouraging all of his followers not to wear masks and to continue to be "free," in their activities, largely contributing to the spread of the pandemic and the death toll in the United States.
I'm not a medical doctor. And it doesn't appear that you may be either, since we have traveled similar paths (part of my engineering master's degree at the University of Wisconsin). My disability definitely cutting off many paths to the kind of career that you had.
If these cheap, generic remedies were so readily available, why haven't I seen them spread in the social media like all of the conspiracy theories that turn out to be bunk? I have a deep suspicion of doctors who claim to have some "cheap miracle cure," that invariably is not.
Ron
Natural Immunity for COVID (Article) - 6/29/2021 10:35:00 AM
A well researched article. And I agree with you that natural immunity is desired, if we have the immune system ability to have a mild case and then get over it like President Trump experienced.
I do not agree with you that vaccines are inherently harmful. I am quadriplegic from spinal cord injury. However, I'm glad that I took the torturous experimental pinprick Salk vaccine, and later, the booster, because my friends with polio are all dying too young after a life of struggle with their bodies not fully functioning.
I'm immune from four different types of measles that I acquired over two years in my childhood. In the case of measles, I wish I had had vaccines because getting immune was not fun and had potential for very serious aftereffects that I may suffer from.
I am also immune to chickenpox. But based on friends and relatives who have had shingles, I have all of my shingles shots. As well as my pneumonia shots after having to have surgery in 2012 to remove a pneumonia that was killing me. All of my quadriplegic friends have died from multiple bounds with pneumonia and long hospital stays.
I agree with you that antibody testing might be all that's needed to get an "all clear" certificate, but the vaccine is readily available and free for most, and even the idea of having to get tested all the time. All of the aftereffects of the vaccines have been reported and they all have been very minor, statistically, while some are very harmful for a very few.
Freedom of choice goes a long way, but we need to eradicate COVID-19 before it mutates into a more serious disease that vaccine will not prevent.
The world can absorb virus death. But individuals, families and other close people, can't seem to. From what I'm hearing of those that have to be hospitalized. The disease is akin to torture. Why would anyone want to go through that on the chance that they have enough antibodies to deal with it?
Ron
Fauci: Pay Attention to What India Did (Article) - 5/18/2021 8:59:30 AM
I agree that cheap generics should be used as symptom relievers and definitely as "cures" have proven so. Perhaps the described "cocktail of drugs" given to President Trump, allowed him to return to business so quickly and declare that he was over COVID.
The drugs you promote have been tested and probably used in the United States. However my own experience with a steroid as a cure for my spinal cord injury, did nothing but give me a feeling of well-being as I gained weight eating too much and acquiring some of the side effects of steroid use until I stopped using the drug and returned to my normal self.
I don't know when you wrote this article, but India is turning out to be one of the worst places in dealing with COVID in the entire world and did not someplace that has succeeded in fighting the virus.
The reason the United States led the world in cases and deaths is the nature of Americans to think that they do not have to follow government requests to lockdown, wear masks and practice social distancing. If they had, like I did, there would have been much fewer people with misery and death. Unfortunately, so many of our "essential" workers are people of color and immigrants. Those on the front lines of the virus every day. In India, I'm sure those of the highest caste are still getting the disease because they live in very crowded apartment style buildings in the cities and mingle together often in the villages.
Ron
Fake Americans, Home Invaders (Article) - 2/7/2017 11:38:27 AM
What a rant! It is especially disturbing from someone who professes advanced degrees and employment in positions of responsibility. Never mind that the net flow of illegals since 2009 has been away from country, not into it. And never mind that the crime rate among those who are here is less than one-half that of citizens. And never mind that they pay into Social Security with no chance of retrieving one thin dime. And never mind that we, the people, ever since 1620 first enslaved, cheated, and corralled Native Americans from their own land; then we enslaved, cheated, and demeaned Blacks for 200+ years, and then we stole Texas, and one-their of America from Mexico; and then we enslaved Chinese workers while they built our rail system to the West; and then we incarcerated Japanese-Americans during WWII, and now we are mistreating Muslims for the "crime" of being Muslims. Trump lost the election but won the Presidency because of the Electoral System that was designed to give wealthy slave owners in sparesly populated states a huge advantage. Your selected "facts" once filtered through the ideology of the hard right cannot be generalized to a population of 325 million.
Alternative Facts (Article) - 2/7/2017 7:27:58 AM
While doing my dissertation, I was told to be, "original." Original meant not just reproducing the data or conclusions of another. So in the case of alternative facts, maybe the reporters are trying to be original.
I also learned in engineering that it was all about the "assumptions." As you pointed out if you considered federal employees to be only the administration, or, you left out say, postal workers or, the military, your alternative data would be correct, but only so, if you stated your assumptions.
Just yesterday, Trump declared that the media was, I believe, "underreporting terrorist attacks." When questioned by the media as to what attacks were underreported, the president's office supplied a list, I believe, of 69. This morning on Good Morning America, many of the items on the list I thought were over reported like the massacres in Pasadena and Orlando. Hours and hours of tediously repeating what little information was available can be tiring to listen to.
A congressman mentioned in an email that people of the United States are many times (I don't have his exact figure) more likely to be killed in a car accident than in a terrorist attack. For some reason, our president wants to make us fear terrorism so that he can beef up security and hamper our daily activities more than they already are. We need to stop living in fear and spending money on the war machine when we can use policing efforts like our drone initiatives to take care of the bad guys.
Ron
Fake Americans, Home Invaders (Article) - 1/5/2017 6:35:02 AM
I am not a "bleeding liberal," but I've looked at this issue with a critical eye for some time. States like Texas and California have always benefited by having businesses hire illegals and pay them cash under the table for work that no one else would want to do, thereby avoiding taxes, paying below minimum wage, and other abuses. That is why so many, even conservative, farmers have always tended to look the other way.
You mentioned the problem with people overstaying their visas. This is rampant among college students. Many of them come to this country, the best and the brightest of theirs, to eventually get jobs in our corporations allowing them to become citizens and not have to go back to their respective countries. Since the 1950s, it has been these immigrants in the scientific, medical, computer science and similar fields that have fueled our dominance in science and technology.
During those prosperous times in the 1950s and 1960s when I was in college, those were the students who were willing to take on the "hard" math and science courses to get ahead. Most of my American-born fellow students only wanted to "get by, get a degree, and get a good job." Most of them did. But it was those students from other countries that made the difference, like Werhner von Braun and his team of German expatriates that got us to the moon.
Go to any medical facility in this country and you will probably find that over half of the doctors are recent immigrants from other countries. Same thing is true of scientists. American born citizens, for the most part, take the easy route to life.
You seem to forget that your ancestors and mine were terrible usurpers of this land who took all we could from those that lived here before, often killing them if they got in our way.
We Americans go everywhere in the world we want without concern about being rejected. Many US citizens have left for good to live and work in other countries. I'm sure that some of those countries are concerned about being overrun by Americans taking over their countries.
Putting up a wall is really an idiotic thing to do. I do agree with enforcing the laws we have to make sure the criminals are treated as criminals.
Ron
Planetary Suicide (Article) - 2/26/2015 4:57:25 PM
Joel, you are preaching to the converted in my case. I've been fighting a one man battle for years and have made it a major theme of my latest novel "No One Left to Clap." Unfortunately, until climate change "bites us on the bum" the world will just bumble along toward the abyss. By then it will be too late.
If esteemed folk such as Ban Ki Moon, Sir Nicholas Stern and others can't get pollies of their shiny backsides to act positively what hope have we got?
God help my grandchildren, that's all I can say.
Planetary Suicide (Article) - 2/11/2015 7:21:04 AM
Unfortunately, Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth, made the issue political. Perhaps he should have stayed out of scientific business because both houses of the Congress are Republican and still dragging their feet on this, perhaps the most important issue, ever.
I live in Texas and have found that, in spite of the atrocities to the people and the land of Texas from past exploitation, the money and power of the petroleum industry here makes it virtually impossible to even raise the issue. Even my Congressman, a liberal Democrat voted recently to support the Keystone XL pipeline, probably for fear of being unable to work with Republicans on other issues that he is concerned about. Texans are interested in jobs and further development, not in the future of the planet.
In 1969, I visited the Athabasca glacier in Alberta. It had receded 1/2 mile away from the hotel and the highway at that time. In the early 1900s the hotel was built at the base of the glacier. By the 1970s, I was aware of the concern about the rise of CO2 and told others about it. In addition to teaching courses on energy and energy conservation, the last part of my career was working in energy conservation. I could only sell conservation by cost savings, not on its value to the environment.
Unless we can educate people to be more scientifically minded (I'm finding that cable TV is doing a very good job of providing scientific information along with a lot of reality garbage), ideologies will rule. Fortunately, we seem to be willing to follow the lead of our neighbors, so once a neighbor has good luck with an electric vehicle, all the neighbors will switch quickly in our throwaway society. Getting the major fossil fuel providers to spend their money on renewable energy sources instead of propaganda blocking progress will be a lot harder.
I'm not sure books like this will do it. Most people don't read much. They tend to rely on what their friends and neighbors say. We have to convince them, and soon.
Ron
Planetary Suicide (Article) - 2/10/2015 5:52:14 PM
2-10-2015
Global Warming Is Scammed Farce!
More Children Die From Pervert Child Molesters
Killed Choked Sodomized To Death Than Will Ever
Die From breathing Dirty Air!
Since Childhood I've Lived Under Cars/Trucks
Gasoline,Carburetor Cleaners,Asbestos Brakes,
On & On-No Thing Wrong with Me Only Wrong With My Son
Hes Intellectual Pathetic F--king Liar...
TRASK...
Hate the Super Rich (Article) - 5/24/2014 4:54:40 PM
thought provoking article
Hate the Super Rich (Article) - 4/30/2014 7:10:34 AM
Ed Phillips and I have repeated articles on this very problem. For some reason, people with conservative thinking, think that democracy is akin to communism. I guess they haven't read Plato's Republic, to know the difference.
Ed sent me a rant by the late George Carlin (died 2008 before the latest downturn) that nails the rich to the wall. He politely calls them, "cock sucking bastards."
Check your figures because you have all billionaires holding $65 trillion and the top 1%, a portion of all billionaires, holding $110 trillion. That isn't possible.
Ron
Constitutional Hypocrisy (Article) - 10/15/2009 9:39:30 AM
Good article Joel. Amazing, how so many Americans live their lives in a stupor while their rights, freedom and income are being stolen by statists who have no regard for our constitution. Apathy is a disease that has gone too long unchecked. Thank god that many folks are finally starting to wake up, albeit a bit late in the game.
Delusional Hope: The Obama Rapture (Article) - 2/22/2008 7:49:46 PM
Mr. Hirschhorn wrote: "What happens if president Obama does not actually deliver any real, substantive changes and reforms in government and public policy? Who will be blamed? Hope-happy Obama or a nation of hope-losers for electing him?"
Consider the metaphor – "A new broom sweeps clean." After the last seven years of American politics, it's quite predictable that there's a desire for "a new broom." Within the metaphor as it applies to a "candidate for political office," there is an anomaly; the inexperienced Obama in this case, like a NEW broom, hasn't swept much, if anything by virtue of the very fact that he is (relatively) new.
So Americans face a dilemma. With political (insider) experience comes the environment we wish for the broom to sweep clean. That's the dilemma.
So what to do? I read Mr. Hirchhorn's article several times but I only found the problem and not an answer. Does Mr. Hirschhorn's website name, "delusionaldemocracy" imply that "democracy" itself is a delusion, or, is he really advancing a campaign piece for candidates other than Barack Obama?
Mr. Hirschhorn also wrote: "He (Obama) has backed away from his clear promise to use public financing for the general election, as John McCain also promised to do." Events of the last two days have revealed that Senator McCain's campaign is run by lobbyists and that the Senator's own under-oath testimony regarding his links to lobbyists and the adverse effects they have on the lives of Americans, is contrary to his "Maverick" image.
Same question: "What to do?" There is no perfect solution but, voting out incumbent individuals and incumbent parties in power, and doing so continuously until both incumbents and challengers get the message, is, if not a "new broom," at least a boot out the door of the folks who dirtied the place to begin with.
Arthur Gurmankin
The Evolution of Evil (Article) - 2/1/2008 11:58:18 AM
Succint and insightful analysis Joel. Thanks for sharing. Malcolm Watts author Reflections from Shadow
