Tag: superstition

Ain’t much that’s dumber than superstition

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A massive 74% of people surveyed think Apple’s next iPhone should be called something other than “iPhone 13.” And triskaidekaphobia — aka fear of the number 13 — could stop one in five Apple users from buying the next-gen smartphone if it bears that name.

SellCell surveyed 3,000 Apple users in the United States this month, asking what name they would rather Apple uses. While “iPhone 13” scored 26% of the vote, the winning entry is the clean, simple-sounding “iPhone.”

Well, duh, American (voters) consumers…

Trumplets attack Dr. Fauci…because of his virtue

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USAToday.com

“You have to remember that Dr. Fauci is being attacked not for any vice or mistake, but for his virtue,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “Not for any weakness but for his strength, and not for any kind of any kind of incompetence but for his competence. He’s actually a protector of the United States, something that the president has failed to be able to do from the very beginning, so I do think that people need to pay for the incompetence, but it’s actually the president and the vice president who need to answer for it, and these attacks on experts are going to haunt us for years to come.”

“Science is what’s going to get us out of this pandemic and listening to voices like Dr. Fauci, whose hand has guided everything good that’s happened in this pandemic,” Adalja said. “That’s the way to move forward, and I think that this talk of firing Fauci, which I don’t even think the president has the power to do, is really reprehensible.”

Same as it ever was. The greatest noise made – trying to drown out science and reason – comes from the least educated in modern knowledge. If, in fact, they choose to be educated at all in what our society is now capable of achieving.

Celebrate mediocrity: 66% of Americans will vaccinate against COVID-19

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When a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available, 66% of adults say they will likely get it, and have their children vaccinated too, according to a new nationwide survey…

The likelihood of receiving the vaccination is below 60% in 10 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming. It is greater than 70% in 11 other states: Arizona, California, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, and Washington, as well as in the District of Columbia…

The survey also shows that only 58% of those without a high school diploma say they plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 78% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree. Of people who earn less than $25,000, 59% anticipate vaccinating, compared to 78% of those who earn more than $100,000.

Someday – not in what’s left of my lifetime – we may reach a level of education, an understanding of science over superstition in the general population, when and where we need’t be concerned about sufficient vaccination for reasonable effectiveness.

Literacy means nothing if you only read crap. Or worse – you rely on the other great sources of American information: network TV, car radio disc jockeys and incumbent politicians.

Roy Moore Represents the End of the Republican Party

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❝ For the GOP, especially its Trumpist wing, the moment is piled high with irony. The primary victory of Roy Moore in Alabama over the candidate for the U.S. Senate seat backed by President Trump suggests that that not even Trump himself can control the forces that he unleashed.

❝ Moore’s win is an acid flashback to 2010, when GOP voters in Senate primaries nominated Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell in Delaware and the unelectable Sharron Angle in Nevada, who announced a 2018 campaign in March. Republicans had hoped that they had exorcised those characters after that debacle. But years of stoking a sense of perpetual outrage has created a new political dynamic that has given us Roy Moore, a perfect stew of extremism, ignorance and intolerance…

❝ Do not confuse this with any sort of coherent ideology. Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican for Kentucky, tried to diagnose the mindset of the Tea Party voters when he told the Washington Examiner, “I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans.” Massie continued, “But after some soul-searching, I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren’t voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class.”…

❝ While Trump continues to gratuitously stoke culture wars by attacking the NFL, the GOP’s invertebrate dysfunction continues to be on full display…So far, no prominent Republican officeholder has refused to back Moore’s candidacy or been willing to point out its toxicity for the future of the GOP.

…Republicans seem to have given up on talking to voters outside of their own echo chamber. Instead, the party is locked in an endless feedback loop as it tries with diminishing success to placate its most bombastic voices. The most obvious consequence is their inability (so far) to legislate. But in the longer term, we are seeing the crack-up of one of the nation’s two major political parties.

Today, Donald Trump is the face of what the GOP has become. Roy Moore is the face of what it is becoming.

Sisters and brothers, say “Amen”.

We need a baloney detection kit

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Test all the crap stuck into the brains of fear-driven culture — about sex, GMO food, climate change, sex, vaccination, sex, mandatory education. Everything loonies on the Left or Right want to runaway and hide from – and stop anyone else from examining or using.

All anti-science. Even though science enabled our species getting to where we are – from our cave-dwelling days and nights.

Well, from primitive agriculture forward. I can imagine the Shaman’s Association condemning the wheel as endangering future generations.