The chief minister of Australia’s Northern Territory did not take kindly to Ted Cruz criticizing his vaccine mandate, and told him to buzz off.
G’day from Down Under @tedcruz. Thanks for your interest in the Territory. I’m the Chief Minister. Below are a few facts about COVID down here. https://t.co/cGFwBP7Nqx pic.twitter.com/mGNyOxlN41
— Michael Gunner (@fanniebay) October 18, 2021
A new study finds that the scientific consensus that humans are altering the climate has passed the 99.9% level.
The degree of scientific certainty about the impact of greenhouse gases is now similar to the level of agreement on evolution and plate tectonics, the authors say, based on a survey of nearly 90,000 climate-related studies. This means there is practically no doubt among experts that burning fossil fuels, such as oil, gas, coal, peat and trees, is heating the planet and causing more extreme weather.
One has to parse statistics like this carefully to see exactly what has been measured.
The latest survey of peer-reviewed literature published from 2012 to November 2020 was conducted in two stages. First, the researchers examined a random sample of 3,000 studies, in which they found only found four papers that were sceptical that the climate crisis was caused by humans. Second, they searched the full database of 88,125 studies for keywords linked to climate scepticism such as “natural cycles” and “cosmic rays”, which yielded 28 papers, all published in minor journals.
…“It is really case closed. There is nobody of significance in the scientific community who doubts human-caused climate change,” said the lead author, Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University.
The Taliban is backing a nationwide mass vaccination campaign by the United Nations against polio in that country.
The UN has announced a nationwide polio immunisation campaign in Afghanistan for the first time in many years.
Children’s agency Unicef said they had the full support of the Taliban for the project due to begin in early November.
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Back in 1961, the film Murder She Said was released with Margaret Rutherford playing the role of Miss Marple, the amateur detective featured in many Agatha Christie mystery novels. In the books, Miss Marple is an elderly, small-built, demure, soft-spoken character who solves mysteries largely by engaging in conversation and gossip with everyone. Rutherford’s portrayal was as different as you can imagine, except for age. Rutherford’s Marple was a fearless, feisty, tough woman with bulldog determination who spoke her mind and brooked no nonsense even from the exasperated police inspector who tries to stop her from interfering in his investigations. She was heavy-set, very active, a vigorous, bustling, busybody, an expert horse rider and fencer who was more than willing to go undercover to solve mysteries.
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People increasingly use the internet to explore medical issues. That is in general a good thing, provided they are careful about using credible sources for their information and are not too credulous about what they find. Being more knowledgeable about their own health can make for more fruitful conversations with their physicians.
But the old saying ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ can sometimes kick in and people can decide that they know more than their physician, or indeed the entire medical profession, and demand specific treatments. They especially do this when it comes to ‘off-label’ uses of drugs, when people ask that a drug that has been shown to be effective in treating one condition be used to treat a different condition where its efficacy or even safety has not been established. People sometimes seize upon anecdotes about its use to demand that it be prescribed for them.
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Fox News is celebrating 25 years of existence and The Daily Show has created a montage of some of the many instances of sexist and misogynistic comments by its male on-air personalities in the presence of their female co-workers. You can see in some cases how uncomfortable the women are and the struggle they face in deciding whether to show their anger (and be accused of lacking a sense of humor) or the awkwardness of trying to laugh it off while still making it clear that the comments were inappropriate.
There were some comments in response to my post on writing sermons during the time I was a lay preacher in the Methodist Church that expressed surprise that I had been religious at one time and curious about what caused me to abandon my faith. So I thought I would write an explanation.
The main thing that I want to emphasize is that Christianity has been an important part of my life. My personal experience with religion was very positive all the way through. What caused me to leave was not any kind of anger or disillusionment with religion but simply an inability to reconcile my growing understanding of science with even the most minimal formulations of what a belief in the existence of a god implied. I started the transition to atheism in my mid-30s, after I got my PhD in physics. The small seeds of doubt were always there but one can always rationalize away their existence if one is determined enough. In fact, in the progressive, intellectual religious circles I moved in, doubt as a part of belief was taken for granted, not viewed as a sign of weakness or a lack of faith.
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Now that the US has pulled out of Afghanistan, one already sees a drastic decline in media coverage of that country. The PBS investigative program Frontline has just released an excellent documentary Taliban Takeover on the twenty-year old war that the US waged in Afghanistan.
What makes this program particularly notable is that the journalist Najibullah Quraishi is himself an Aghan who was born and raised in that country and has covered the war all this time, providing him with a breadth of knowledge of the country’s languages, history, and peoples that enables him to provide an in-depth perspective that is lacking in most western sources. He has contacts with key members of the Taliban, al Qaeda , and ISIS and was embedded with these groups at various times and thus has access to them and was able to interview them. He also interviewed many courageous women who are wondering what the future is for them.
His reporting shows that the departure of the US and installing of the Taliban in power has brought some stability to the country but at the cost of freedoms as the government seeks to rule according to Islamic law and that now there are power struggles within factions of the Taliban and with al Qaeda and ISIS.
For those seeking to better understand what is going on there and why the US mission was pretty much doomed from the start, I can highly recommend this 53-minute program.
There is an old proverb that says that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. While it is good advice generally, when it comes to health care, one has to be cautious about overdoing prevention.
My former physician in Cleveland before he retired was very much into preventative care. At any sign of something that seemed like an early warning sign, he would suggest prophylactic measures. He would prescribe diagnostic tests and look for signs that something needed attention. So when it seemed like my bone density was slightly lower than it ought to be, a symptom known as osteopenia (which is not the same as osteoporosis which is manifestly low bone density), he suggested that I take daily doses of the drug alendronate (which is marketed under the name Fosomax) which purports to increase bone density. I bought a supply but never got around to taking it and decided to wait awhile. Why? Because in general, I try to avoid routine medicine intake. Since my bone density was still close to normal, I decided to not take any medication to treat it until the signs worsened. After all, I was being compared to the western norm while that may have been my bone density all along. I told him of my decision and he understood it.
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Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Fantasyland) said that the horse de-worming medicine Ivermectin that the nutjobs are pushing as a covid treatment, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Surely she could take a little more care when making stuff up and at least say that it won the prize for medicine, though even then the prize is given to people and not products. We are entitled to expect better lies from our elected representatives. These people really have contempt for their followers.
Show some respect, Marjorie!