Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Gimmie that old time Science It’s good enough for me

Posted: March 28, 2024 by datechguy in culture, medicine
Tags: , , , ,

Matthew Harrison Brady: Does right have no meaning to you, sir?
Henry Drummond: Realizing that I may prejudice the case of my client, I must tell you that right has no meaning for me whatsoever. But truth has meaning… as a direction!

Inherit the Wind 1960

One of the most perverse attacks that the left in general and the Biden administration in general have made on people these days has been claiming that people who opposed them were “anti-science” and “science deniers”. For me this type of thing is the ultimate end in the rush to redefine words and meanings to serve an agenda. While I may no longer work in an engineering field one of the things about being having a Computer Science degree from the 1980’s in the days before “woke” entered everything was the idea of evidence driving conclusions.

Thus the famous quote from Feynman

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.

Richard P Feynman

There was a time when the left and even Hollywood believed this and in fact the most celebrated episode of the entire Star Trek TNG franchise celebrated Science as it was

Picard (as Kanin): Hey, that’s my hobby. Find your own.
Meribor: You’re the one who taught me. Don’t complain if you’ve turned me into a scientist.
Picard (as Kanin): And what has the scientist been up to today?
Meribor: Analyzing soil samples. There isn’t any anaerobic bacteria. The soil is dead. This isn’t just a very long drought, is it, Father? I have entries in my log that go back ten years. You have data preceding that for fifteen years. You’ve reached the same conclusion, I know you have.
Picard (as Kanin): I haven’t reached any conclusion. A good scientist doesn’t function by conjecture.
Meribor: A good scientist functions by hypothesizing and then proving or disproving that hypothesis. That’s what I did.

Star Trek The Next Generation The Inner Light 1992

Note that he doesn’t prioritize if the data confirms to some “woke’ theme or advances a social standard, it’s observation, experimentation and deduction. You go where the evidence takes you no matter how much China or a particular industry might want to pay. Why? To serve the truth:

Meribor: You’ve taught me to pursue the truth, no matter how painful it is. It’s too late to back off now. This planet is dying.
Picard (as Kanin): Perhaps I should have filled your head with trivial concerns. Games and toys and clothes.
Meribor: I don’t think you mean that.
Picard (as Kanin): No, I don’t. It just saddens me to see you burdened with the knowledge things you can’t change.

It’s practically impossible to think of an episode of Star Trek advancing such a line now in an age where everyone has their own “truth” which can be whatever it is. Today science must serve the cause or it must be suppressed.

Thus when a black Harvard professor, a winner of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship, the author of dozens of papers studied interactions with the police and came to a conclusion contrary to THE NARRATIVETM and his own expectations It and he must be attacked

“All hell broke loose” immediately after the 104-page economics paper with a 150-page appendix was published, according to Fryer.

Within four minutes of publishing the paper, Fryer received an email that read: “You’re full of s**t.”

He explained, “I had colleagues take me to the side and say, ‘Don’t publish this. You’ll ruin your career.'”

The hostilities toward Fryer were so intense that he required police protection for about a month, including his then-7-day-old daughter.

“I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with the armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy,” Fryer said during a recent episode of “Honestly with Bari Weiss.”

Mind you he was surprised at his own results but unlike people who trusted “The ScienceTM” he took steps to confirm they were not mistaken:

Fryer said he was surprised by the results because he “expected” to see racial bias towards blacks in police shootings.

He hired eight fresh researchers to ensure the results were correct, and the results remained the same.

Richard Feynman would have been proud but he’s been dead for 36 years plus he’s a white guy so obviously today his opinion wouldn’t count.

I bring all this up because of a story I saw today about a study out of Japan that is rather troubling:

A team of researchers in Japan say that, based on the volume of evidence that has come to light about post-vaccination harms, medical professionals worldwide should be alerted to potential dangers in using blood derived from people who have had the jab, as well as from those suffering persistent symptoms from covid itself (‘long covid’). They say methods to identify and remove the contaminants are urgently needed, and propose a range of specific tests and regulations to deal with the risks.

Again this was not the expected result:

Contrary to initial expectations, the genes and proteins are now known to persist in the blood for prolonged periods, and post-vaccination syndrome, or ‘spikeopathy’, has become a major global problem, the researchers say. The jabs should have been regarded as biomedicine, but because they were classified as vaccines, huge numbers of people were inoculated and many areas of medicine are beginning to become involved with the consequences. ‘This has never happened before in the history of biomedicine, and consequently it is highly suspected that blood products for transfusion have been affected.’

Now as this is from the pre-print of the paper and is yet to be peer reviewed so it’s a tad early to have an opinion it but I predict we will see two different methods of dealing with this study by the media

  1. Ignore it
  2. Attack it

However I being a believer in actual science rather than THE SCIENCETM I’m going to do what an engineer or a scientist of the old school, of the Feynman school would do: Take in the evidence given while awaiting the peer review of this paper before I make any final conclusions. Because that is how the old time science works.

It’s good enough for me.

Voices of the 2024 Catholic Men’s Conference The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property 

Posted: March 22, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, culture, special events
Tags: , , , ,

I spoke to Kenneth Murphy of the Society for the Defense of Tradition Family and Property at the 2024 Catholic Men’s Conference in the DCU center Worcester MA

These folks saw what was coming long before others.

An Interesting Side Note Concerning the “Bloodbath” of Job Losses at Work Women Choosing the Better Portion

Posted: March 21, 2024 by datechguy in culture, economy
Tags: , ,

This week has been a tough one at work. For many people Tuesday was their last day. Last night was the last day for others and today will be the last day for many people I’ve worked with or for over the last six years who were either let go or had to leave because they can’t work a morning shift.

There are a ton of Hispanic people leaving many in management positions who had worked their way up since coming to this country though solid effort and I suspect that they are going to express their displeasure at losing their position at the ballot box when the time comes.

But I want to focus on two ladies in particular, both are young one married under 4 years with one son under two and other other married a bit longer with several children. Both were management and got separation packages that will hold them over for a few months at least.

I spoke to each of them and unlike several of the men who are rushing to get interviews they have decided they are going to spend their newly free time at home with their kids.

This is likely a good move, particularly for the younger mother. You can always get another job even if it’s one below the standard of living that you’re used to but the time with your children when they’re young comes once and the ability to not only share it with your children but to shape them in the image you wish rather than where today’s society wants to lead them is the single most important task a parent has.

Of course once the severance is used up decisions will have to be made but it will be interesting to discover if the benefits of a 2nd solid full time pay in the house trumps domestic life once they get a taste of it. Will need force them back into the workforce, will the economy take a turn after the election and they find themselves suddenly solicited by the company that let them go?

Or will they decide that the value and rewards of being a mother at home for their children is worth the financial sacrifices necessary to continue in that role?

I likely won’t know what choice they will make as I rarely see them outside of work, but it would be fun and fascinating to find out.

Haditha, Gaza and the Up Against the Wall Conundrum.

Posted: March 7, 2024 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east
Tags: , ,

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”

The attacks on Israel in the press, on campus, in large marches and in the arab have one thing in common: The complete lack of reliance on the actual facts on the ground.

No matter what Israel does, no matter how they respond they are accused of genocide and no amount of reality or the pointing out that all of this comes from Hamas not only launching the attacks of Oct 7th but their claim that they intend to repeat said attacks if and when possible.

This brought back to mind a letter I wrote to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit about the Haditha “massacre” before the facts came out and the lawsuit against rep Murtha began and the question: “When will Biden apologize to the Haditha marines?” was asked. The email said:

There is one aspect about Haditha that seems to be ignored by everybody.

Our press and the anti-American left both in this country and outside of it has been reporting “Hadithas” over and over again over the last three years.

Time and time again our friends have accused us of every possible atrocity that there is to the point that internationally people are already able to believe this or the 9/11 stuff or all the rest.

Because of this, internationally it is totally irrelevant if the Marines actually violated the rules of war. Our foes are going to say that we’ve done things if we do them or not, so the only people that it really matters to will be; the people killed (and family) and the people in our own country who support the military.

The real danger is that we who support the war will reach the point that we say “we might as well be taken as wolves then as sheep”. At that point the left can celebrate that they have made our military and those who support it the people they claim we are. Once that happens however any compunction about respecting them will be gone, and remember one side is armed and one is not.

That is a fate that I don’t wish on any of us.

You could take out the word “haditha” and replace it with “Genocide” and take out the word “Marines” and replace it with “IDF” and take out the words “anti-American” and replace it with “anti-Semitic” and that paragraph would pretty much hold up.

This leads to the logical question. Since no matter what they do they will be accused of “genocide” why not simply flatten Raffa, slaughter Hamas without mercy or concern for civilian causalities and end the issue once and for all? You would lose the hostages assuming any are actually alive but would likely save the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers who would die by trying to protect a population that wants them and their families dead anyways.

That’s important to remember. The Palestinians of Gaza aren’t upset at the slaughter of Jews, they celebrated it, they’re upset that said slaughter had consequences for them.

That’s the real question: Will Israel eventually decide to treat Hamas & Gazans they same way every other Arab & Muslim leader treats them if they get in the way. The way any other nation would treat a land that attacked them as they did. When will Israel say: ENOUGH! and give notice to the arabs who want to kill them in Gaza, West Bank, Yemen or even Qatar that if they try to kill Jews or finance those who do so, neither they nor their buildings nor their treasure is safe?

I suspect they will not and the reason is the against the wall conundrum and it works like this:

At any given time there are a lot of people who deserve to be put up against the wall, the problem is as soon as you decide to start putting such people up against the wall you invariably turn into the type of person who deserves to be put up against the wall.

Speaking for myself I’d say that cost is too high.

Israel has decided to set a standard that the world is unlikely to follow, but having made that choice there is no point in changing direction now that the war is almost over.

But the temptation to do so never leaves.

Older Entries
Newer Entries