Category Archives: politics

We’re Nice Guys

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We’re not hostile, at all. You’d better stop saying otherwise, and you’d better stop interfering with us. So says the People’s Republic of China’s Ambassador to Great Britain, Liu Xiaoming.

Those who see China as systematic rival or as a potentially hostile state have got it all wrong—they have chosen the wrong target and they are heading in the wrong direction.
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Stop interferring in Hong Kong’s affairs

The People’s Republic of China is not hostile and doesn’t threaten other nations.

Let’s see….

  • Routinely threatens the Republic of China, interferes (or tries to) in its elections, threatens it with military exercises in the Taiwan Strait that practice amphibious invasion
  • Canceled Hong Kong’s semi-autonomous status, interferes in that city’s internal elections
  • Seized and occupied the South China Sea and islands therein, waters that are variously international or owned by other nations (even if disputed among them), islands that are owned by other nations (even if disputed among them)
  • Attempted invasions of Bhutan, India within last year
  • Attempted invasion of Vietnam post-Vietnam War
  • Occupies Tibet
  • Imprisons in concentration camps millions of Uighurs
  • Routinely steals other nations’—especially ours—technology, intellectual property
  • Routinely engages in cyberattacks on other nations’—especially ours—computer networks

No, the PRC isn’t a hostile nation.

On the Count of Three

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…let’s all panic. One, two—oh, wait. It’s just the NLMSM trying to stampede us over Republican-run Florida’s increase in Wuhan Virus detections, a six-fold increase since early June. I’ll elide the positive-test rates being falsely inaccurately reported in so many counties.

Here are some inconvenient truths about that rise, though, from one of those actual experts Progressive-Democrats are so insistent we hear and obey. Just not one of their experts, but an actual expert.  Dr Charles Lockwood, Dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Medicine, is one such:

case fatality rates—that’s the number of deaths over the number of cases—is 1.5%
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[even accounting for the lag in death rates,] we should now be seeing a much higher case fatality rate. It has been predicted that our fatality rate would kind of do a “U” and be heading back up. It’s not. In fact, today in Hillsborough County [where Tampa is located], our case fatality rate was 0.9%

And

We are picking up asymptomatic cases, [and] picking up milder cases than we did before[.]

Hmm….

Market Performance

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Great Britain has decided to bar the People’s Republic of China’s telecom company, Huawei, from participating in the British build-out of their 5G network.

The PRC isn’t happy. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian:

Whether the UK will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese businesses offers a telling clue to how the post-Brexit British market will perform and how secure China’s investment will be in that country. So, we will be closely following the situation.

I certainly hope it’s a telling clue, given that PRC companies are extensions of that government’s intelligence gathering facility.

Besides, diversity in 5G network buildout and operation, which will be facilitated by avoiding Huawei participation and domination, will only enhance the communications market; enhancing national security in the several nations is a happy additional outcome.

Foolishness

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The United Teachers Los Angeles union put out a paper earlier this month, and among the union’s claims is this one”

Police violence is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue.

Wow.

There are thousands of blacks killed or traumatized and families traumatized by other blacks every year. Police violence causes more black deaths and trauma than that?

Thousands of black babies murdered in the womb every year. Police violence causes more black deaths and trauma than that?

The UTLA is insulting the intelligence of all of us with this…foolishness. The UTLA is especially demonstrating its soft bigotry of low expectations with this insult to the intelligence of blacks.

The UTLA doesn’t care a fig about the welfare of blacks or of black children or of any of our children or of any of us. The union just wants money.

Full stop.

Experimenter Bias

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There is a study newly released that purports to link willingness to honor social distance guidelines during the present Wuhan Virus situation to our mental capacity in retaining multiple pieces of potentially conflicting information in our head, which is referred to as working memory capacity.

What interests me isn’t so much the nature of this paper as an example of the publish or perish paradigm of what passes for scholarship in what passes for academia today. Nor is it the purported linkage.

It’s this claim by the lead author, Weizhen Xie, a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health:

As a researcher in cognitive psychology, I feel that it is our duty to figure out why some people follow the developing norm of social distancing while others ignore it.

Xie needs first to investigate the role or experimenter bias in forming hypotheses. A researcher in cognitive psychology should know better.

There is no “developing norm of social distancing.” Social distancing is only temporary stopgap for interrupting an infection cycle.