Big Blue Huddle

Set aside for a second whether or not these sightings are aliens.

Why is it the government is not simply laughing this off?  That's what they used to do. 

What is your most cynical or non-cynical take?

Quote from: Blue4Life on July 20, 2021, 05:35:14 PM
The government cannot limit freedom of speach, expression, etc., private companies can and it's an accepted practice...

Can they coerce? 

In your catalog of accepted practices do you have such an example of a company granted immunity from legal action for content posted having a list of users sent to them by the whitehouse with a suggestion to delete their content or ban them?  Or are you gonna tell me that a company firing someone for expressing views the company finds objectionable the same thing?

I dont think we're making an apples to apples comparison here.  Do you?

So while its perfectly ok to blame Fox News, guess who Biden is blaming?  Facebook.  I'm surprised nobody wants to mention the White House 'gently' suggesting Facebook ban people and that if someone is banned on one platform that they should be banned everywhere.  And yes it is in the context of Covid 'misinformation' or 'disinformation' (there seems to be some hubbub about the distinction between these terms)...but the White House hasn't specifically stated that it need be limited to Covid related posts.

Quote from: MightyGiants on July 19, 2021, 05:34:13 PM
I wasn't going to post this but with Jimmy defending the immoral behavior of FOX News, these stats really show how deadly FOX News really is

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-has-undermined-vaccination-efforts-nearly-60-all-vaccination-segments-2-week-period

How am I defending Fox news?  And you use Media Matters as a source? 

Vaccination stats by race (Kaiser Family Foundation article; don't blame me):

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/

Percentage of people (by race) that have received at least 1 dose:
Whites: 40%
Blacks: 34%
Hispanic: 39%
Asian: 62%

Just a month ago the projected numbers across the board were above 50%.  The vaccination rate seems to have slowed down since then.  Just a slow month or an indicator of how many people are reluctant to trust the vaccine? 

Either way, I'd be willing to bet they're not all Fox viewers.

Quote from: Woody on July 15, 2021, 09:46:49 PM
Morning Joe is a news show ?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Morning Joe is $h!t.   A judge recently ruled that Rachel Maddow's show is not factual and should not be taken that way so when she says something is "literally" anything, you should take that to mean it is literally meaningless drivel.  Yet we have half the country convinced the charlatan is a hard hitting investigatory journalist.  But I'm not sure she's convinced anyone so much as she is providing ammo the half is willing to use no matter where it comes from or whether it works. 

Quote from: MightyGiants on July 06, 2021, 08:50:56 AM
Bob,

There is very little difference, in my opinion, between Phizer and Moderna.  They both use the same technology.   So I will usually read any news on Pfizer or Moderna as applying to both.


As for the freedom aspect, I have to ask you guys-   Why are there helmet laws for motorcycles?

Insurance companies say so...that's why.

The Pentagon's own pilots have become a nuisance to them.

Quote from: MightyGiants on June 16, 2021, 02:19:04 PM
With some major movies going straight to streaming, I wonder what the long term effect on the movie industry will be

I'd be real curious to know if Hollywood films that have gone straight to streaming were as profitable as the movie theater distribution business model.  Wherever there is more money will dictate whether the change is permanent or if we go back to the movies.

QuoteOne of the recurring themes of WWII is that the German and Japanese leadership underestimated their enemies, repeatedly.

The Japanese underestimated US intelligence.  At the battle of the Coral Sea, prior to Midway, US aircraft carriers show up, half of the remaining US Pacific fleet carriers are there.  How in the world did that happen?  The Japanese don't change their codes.  And then they get surprised shortly after at Midway, this time with all of the remaining US carriers.

Yamamoto conceives of the Midway invasion.  But Nagumo is tasked to carry it out.  Nagumo is doctrinaire and not an adaptible thinker.  The first Japanese planes fly over Midway island and there are no planes in sight.  Why is that?  He should've immediately sensed he'd walked into a trap.

The Japanese underestimated the will of the American people.  The War in the Pacific was over the day after Pearl Harbor, just nobody realized that until later.

Both the Germans and the Japanese spent the first part of the war beating up on weaker countries and started to think a bit more highly of themselves than they should have.

The Germans became obsessed with new and more complex technology in the form of weapons while their logistics and supply arm was equipped with horse and cart.

The Japanese invented the Zero and they ended the war with the same effin' Zero.  There were variants equipped to handle different tasks but they were so enamored with the fighter plane that they never saw a need to  improve on it.  Meanwhile the Americans were busy replacing their fighters completely.  By the War's end, America and Japan were fighting with weapons from different eras.  I wonder just how ignorant the Japanese were to the vulnerability of their wooden cities.  If not for the Atomic Bombs, LeMay had planned to firebomb those wooden cities with Napalm

The tank was impactful for some time but its reign on the battlefield only really lasted from the end of WW1 to the end of WW2 when US Air to Ground weaponry made the tank vulnerable.  Today the tank is only dominant when the aircraft have remove other tanks from the enemy's arsenal.

The crossbow decoupled the upper class and warriors.  The knight was once the most dominant weapon on the battlefield.  But to train and equip a knight costs money so only the rich could become knights.  In relative contrast, the bow/crossbow made the Knight an overpriced target.  The idea a peasant could nullify the years of training a Knight underwent was outrage to noblemen.  If captured, bowmen's middle finger was removed to impair use of a bow. Archers would mock Knights on the battlefield by displaying their middle finger. 

Nice summary Bob.

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 25, 2021, 02:09:19 PM
Bob,

Factually speaking the "wrong virus" can already exist in nature or nature will eventually create it.   The whole point of this virus research is to prevent the "wrong virus" from wiping out humanity.   There is a lot of false and bad politically motivated claims about viruses being created or engineered in this lab. Factually speaking, there is nothing to support those claims.  They were studying Covid viruses that they found in nature (mostly from bats) to help learn more about it.   


That's not to say there are not labs around the world that tinker with viruses to see what sort of mutations can cause what sort of harm (called gain-of-function research).   The creation of virus mutations to help better prepare for a future pandemic is controversial, with good reason.    There are serious questions if the benefits derived (in terms of what we learn about these man-made mutations and how it helps mankind prepare for a future pandemic) have to be weighed against the odds of an accidental release of these manmade viruses.   

In many ways that particular debate reminds me of the debate over nuclear power.   



Bob,

Still want to claim that this thread isn't just JimmyZ regurgitating what he learned on FOX News?

That's not politics.  That's a real problem if the media is gonna be the megaphone for science.  If they believed the science why didnt they report the science instead of reporting on Trump's lies? 

Quote from: Bob In PA on May 25, 2021, 01:30:43 PM
Rich: If this particular COVID thread is deemed "political" then IMO all other COVID threads posted on the Front Porch must be political also (and therefore banned).

I don't see how to distinguish one COVID thread from another; I can post a reply mentioning conservatives, liberals, R's or D's & then say the original topic was political because it invited such a response.

If anyone can tell me how to decide which COVID threads are political and which are not, please fill me in and I'll gladly follow those guidelines.

In short, I think it's a sad day... not only for us, but in general, when we can't discuss science without reference to politics.

The origins of the virus are a global, humanitarian issue.  Determining which politicians or scientists were CORRECT or INCORRECT a year ago (or today) is IMO of utterly no importance.

Bob

It can be hard to detangle covid from politics.  The NYT and WaPo both now claim that their opposition to the lab leak theory was Trump's and Pompeo's fault for not disclosing those intelligence reports basically claiming they had no choice but to call it BS. 


Meanwhile:

Quote

Quote from: MightyGiants on May 25, 2021, 12:53:44 PM
"a matter of great significance to all of humanity"   

There are three likely outcomes

1)  The source is never determined.  Being able to definitively trace the origin of a disease requires a bit of luck and not every disease has its source definitively identified.

2)  The source is traced back to zoonotic origins which will nice to know but likely will produce no actionable information.  Rather it will satisfy scientific curiosity.

3)  It's traced back to a lab accident.    It's unlikely humans will stop investigating diseases as outbreaks have and will continue to happen (likely with increasing frequency).   It would be helpful in terms of identifying areas to improve lab safety.  Certainly helpful


None of those outcomes appear to even remotely rise to the level of "a matter of great significance to all of humanity"

Now if you look at this issue through a political lens...

And in the event its option #3, its the one area where, as a policy, the people who fund the research can impose stricter controls on processes; something that was not done up til now.