My, my. We can agree on so many points. It remains fascinating to hear of your observations and your daily life. My Uncle of WWII told me of the depredations of Russian troops and how disgusted our soldiers were about their near primitive actions. Apparently nothing has changed much as the conscripts attempt to supplement their income. I noted elsewhere that cases of vodka ought to be air delivered in order to shorten the war.
It is only because we have become so insanely wealthy that we need 5G to allow more users more time wasted on small computers to entertain ourselves. This started when we no longer needed to haul water for daily life, which really wasn't so long ago. That freed many hours to create for some and to become selfish and lazy for others, me in both camps. Imagining all sorts of conspiracies, some of which might be true, is a luxury of modernity. As we age and understand what remains important, those children and their development are critical. Our evolution continues, as does nature.
Kolomoyskyi has about $3.5 billion, he could spring for 1000 cruise missiles at $1 million each, that's $1 billion, and really would put a crimp in Vlad's plans. He might as well, because if Vlad wins, Igor is toast.
I think $1B is but a decimal point in the US budget. Vlad has already lost but needs to find a way out without him losing his job. Igor will remain above it all anyway.
wait until our side responds to the Ivermectin trial.
They will tell us where the lies and the cheating are.
We've had enough experience now to know what's meant by the double blind study 'gold standard'.
In our naivete and because of the way they improperly put it to us we've thought it meant that any double blind study was therefore a totally believable study in its findings.
The truth, of course, is that it being 'double blind' has no direct relevance to that whatever.
You can quite easily construct double blind studies that will unfailingly deliver whatever results you wish.
And they do. And did.
'double blind' simply answers the question: 'how can we be sure no one knows who got what?'.
In theory.
Even then, of course, in practice, it doesn't. Because people cheat and are slack in following procedures.
But it doesn't matter who knows who got what if your study is set up to suit your ends.
If you know ivermectin is ineffective once the virus has got in the cells then load the study with infected people. for instance. they've done that in some studies.
and more. much more.
they're cleverer than I and it's their field of expertise. I can't make up examples but there's plenty already have been discovered.
and, my point, all under this blanket umbrella of 'double blind, giving them an initial supposed claim to authority. which they totally don't deserve.
Dr Kory going to work and curing thousands of patients with ivermectin is not a double blind study but it is pragmatic evidence.
He could have it wrong in his judgement of what/how/why it worked. Maybe it was the interaction ivermectin with zinc and so on...
Doesn't matter.
Sensible people would follow his regime as closely as possible and start curing people. Resort to asking Dr Kory if they don't get his results. Cooperative. Search, discover, try.
Insane people forbid anyone to use his protocols. His main medication: Ivermectin.
And pull our any 'double blind' study and quote its findings as the word of god.
That's simple irrational wickedness. Don't need any double blind studies to see that.
I'll bet they'll pull this 'study' to pieces and find its another shabby and shameful attempt by authoritative medicine to deceive us. I bet.
Ventilators is a whole different topic. This Todd Callender has a whole riff on them about 15 minutes in. Suggest you take note of his points and offer rebuttals.
Graham, like many codgers (myself included) you suffer from increasingly severe confirmation bias.
On many topics, you and I agree: I don’t think it helps first and second graders to be taught about sexuality — LGBT or straight hetero, for that matter. It’s probably more confusing than elucidating for young children. First things first: 2+2 = 4, “See Spot run.”
I don’t know who’s right about COVID19. Maybe you, maybe not. We’ll find out if 5G waves activate two-foot long blood clots at some point, I suppose. I’ve not been able to confirm a 40% increase in deaths reported by insurance companies related to the vaccinations.
But I respect that it’s your decision not to vaccinate or your family … because I am a Liberal, that shares its root with liberty, and I think you should have as much of that as me.
If you are wrong and there’s a tragedy because of that, you will own it. If I am wrong and there’s a tragedy, I will accept it.
On climate change, I’ll just say “you are wrong.” Over the 40 years I’ve lived in the mountains of Central Oregon, I’ve watched glaciers disappear from the Cascades outside my windows. Wells are going dry. These are facts, not opinion, and certainly more relevant than your “I have not gotten any hotter, and despite claims to the contrary I don't see much evidence of it.”
You don’t see much evidence of it because you don’t look. That’s confirmation bias.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine, and sharing the blogs of others. It has given me a far more accurate picture than anything I get from the mainstream media.
I also appreciate your strength, family values, and … honesty. Without that, there can be no learning, for either of us.
Glaciers come and go. My son Eddie and I read about the Helliwell (if I recall right) glacier in a Smithsonian book on geology. Published in 2010, they noted that it had retreated about 10 miles in the last 10 years. We found it in northern Greenland. Lo and behold, it had grown back 8 of those miles in a couple of years. Same can be said for glaciers on Kilimanjaro. Al Gore was spectacularly wrong about glaciers in the Himalayas.
Water tables all over the United States are affected by agricultural practices more than anything else. The Ogallala is simply being overpumped.
You didn't mention forest fires, the bug bear of Californians. The wisest heads attribute the fire problem more to bad forest management and climate change.
We are not going to agree on this, beyond that there are a couple of sides to the story. One of my favorite writers on the topic is Tony Heller.
Agreed, we won't agree. (smile) Again I'll bring up confirmation bias, recognizing that I am as susceptable as I believe you are evidencing. I'll grant that your comment "I don't see it from here" might have been metaphorical.
That glaciers have come and gone does not in any way disprove man-caused climate change, neither does the fact the Ogallala is being overpumped (I agree). I live at the foot of disappearing glaciers, and recently visited others in Alaska. I think you need to look again at Greenland. I live at the edge of forests decimated by drought and ripped by fires not seen in centuries, long before there was any forest management.
Some of this may be reversable, if we choose to do it. Maybe not if we hit a tipping point of self-reinforcing change, such as methane blowing out of the permafrost or bubbling up from the bottom of the oceans.
We will. If we survive the myriad more immediate crises. I'm dealing with a war, you are dealing with needle-mad bureaucrats. We can wish each other luck on those.
you keep asking him to go look at an instance. at the same time as suggesting his problem is confirmation bias and he can't see the overall. which way do you want it? looking at local instances can be done by either side and examples quoted to support them their side.
but the main point is ignored, i think. the main point being can we do anything we can confidently predict will reverse the trend? and I think there's absolutely no chance of that at all. none.
ah, they say, we don't ask for that, it's a warming trend, admitted, but we can 'slow' it down.
so now they're arguing matters of fine degree within a coarse doubtful measurement. the whole argument taking place within the margin of error.
it's academic, it's angels dancing on the heads of pins.
meanwhile the incontrovertible: human suffering will increase dramatically here and now if 'climate mitigation' steps as proposed are taken.
here and now.
in order to accord with some dubious unproven argument about things in the far future.
it is a madness of misdirected thought on a par with the covid madness.
in order to deal with an imaginery emergency declare and create an emergency right now!
and then tie up the discourse, the discussion, the argument in fine details about irrelevancies such a masks and fomite transmission and vaccine efficacy.
right now the people are suffering and dying from the 'covid mitigation' measures just as they have done from the very beginning when gross killings such as the aged care homes took place.
right now the people are suffering and dying from the 'climate mitigation' measures just as they have from the beginning.
Hello Eric. 40 years isn't even the blink of an eye on the planet's history. That's why I think man made climate change is complete nonsense. Our lifetimes are as nothing. But people are so arrogant now they think a year or two of temperature variation in their lifetimes is significant. It isn't.
Like you, I take notice of Graham's on the ground reporting. Here in the UK it's not worth watching the BBC.
Of course 40 years is nothing compared to geologic time. Agreed that our lifetimes are as nothing.
Neither proves that climate change is not real, nor that it is not man made. My point was that it's occuring, it's visible, and to that I'll add it's clearly more impactful than "a year or two of temperature variation" especially in coastal areas. We may be approaching a "tipping point."
Where I live the problem is too little water. Where most people live, it may be too much.
So, while "our lifetimes are as nothing," man-caused climate change may have a great impact on many lives, on humanity.
Thanks for your reply, Eric. I agree that climate change has always occured and always will. I enjoy reading historical accounts of the weather. In the UK these are perhaps easier to find going back a long way than perhaps in America 😁. We have far too much housing development in the south east which has the lowest rainfall. Pretty stupid really.
Getting back to Ukraine for a moment. As confusing as this war is and even with no end in sight, I am wondering what your thoughts are regarding the returning refugees? For instance, are you and your family prepared to take in Ukranians who are returning to their bombed out homes and apartments? Are others in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine doing the same? Is the government taking the lead or planning this far ahead?
Even more to the point with your computer skills you seem to be an ideal candidate to host a web site dedicated to matching returning refugees with families willing to "sponsor" others for 3, 6, or even 9 months.
Families and neighborhoods are tighter here in Ukraine than elsewhere. I expect that most returning refugees will get help from people that they know.
We own a couple of unheated dachas that would be adequate from now until October. Everybody in our circle of acquaintances knows about them. They are certainly available.
A couple of friends of ours got burned by refugees from the Donbass in 2014. Of course refugees arrived without credentials. The people who accepted them could not vet them. They damaged the apartments and ran up bills in the names of their benefactors. We have made similar mistakes twice with ne'er-do-wells in our own neighborhood.
Yes, we will be ready to help. But we will be most likely to respond to requests from people that we know first or second hand. Otherwise we'll help by giving to organizations such as Rotary that have appropriate mechanisms in place.
My, my. We can agree on so many points. It remains fascinating to hear of your observations and your daily life. My Uncle of WWII told me of the depredations of Russian troops and how disgusted our soldiers were about their near primitive actions. Apparently nothing has changed much as the conscripts attempt to supplement their income. I noted elsewhere that cases of vodka ought to be air delivered in order to shorten the war.
It is only because we have become so insanely wealthy that we need 5G to allow more users more time wasted on small computers to entertain ourselves. This started when we no longer needed to haul water for daily life, which really wasn't so long ago. That freed many hours to create for some and to become selfish and lazy for others, me in both camps. Imagining all sorts of conspiracies, some of which might be true, is a luxury of modernity. As we age and understand what remains important, those children and their development are critical. Our evolution continues, as does nature.
Kolomoyskyi has about $3.5 billion, he could spring for 1000 cruise missiles at $1 million each, that's $1 billion, and really would put a crimp in Vlad's plans. He might as well, because if Vlad wins, Igor is toast.
I think $1B is but a decimal point in the US budget. Vlad has already lost but needs to find a way out without him losing his job. Igor will remain above it all anyway.
wait until our side responds to the Ivermectin trial.
They will tell us where the lies and the cheating are.
We've had enough experience now to know what's meant by the double blind study 'gold standard'.
In our naivete and because of the way they improperly put it to us we've thought it meant that any double blind study was therefore a totally believable study in its findings.
The truth, of course, is that it being 'double blind' has no direct relevance to that whatever.
You can quite easily construct double blind studies that will unfailingly deliver whatever results you wish.
And they do. And did.
'double blind' simply answers the question: 'how can we be sure no one knows who got what?'.
In theory.
Even then, of course, in practice, it doesn't. Because people cheat and are slack in following procedures.
But it doesn't matter who knows who got what if your study is set up to suit your ends.
If you know ivermectin is ineffective once the virus has got in the cells then load the study with infected people. for instance. they've done that in some studies.
and more. much more.
they're cleverer than I and it's their field of expertise. I can't make up examples but there's plenty already have been discovered.
and, my point, all under this blanket umbrella of 'double blind, giving them an initial supposed claim to authority. which they totally don't deserve.
Dr Kory going to work and curing thousands of patients with ivermectin is not a double blind study but it is pragmatic evidence.
He could have it wrong in his judgement of what/how/why it worked. Maybe it was the interaction ivermectin with zinc and so on...
Doesn't matter.
Sensible people would follow his regime as closely as possible and start curing people. Resort to asking Dr Kory if they don't get his results. Cooperative. Search, discover, try.
Insane people forbid anyone to use his protocols. His main medication: Ivermectin.
And pull our any 'double blind' study and quote its findings as the word of god.
That's simple irrational wickedness. Don't need any double blind studies to see that.
I'll bet they'll pull this 'study' to pieces and find its another shabby and shameful attempt by authoritative medicine to deceive us. I bet.
You are asking all the right questions. This is the sign of an agile mind, in my opinion.
Ventilators is a whole different topic. This Todd Callender has a whole riff on them about 15 minutes in. Suggest you take note of his points and offer rebuttals.
Graham, like many codgers (myself included) you suffer from increasingly severe confirmation bias.
On many topics, you and I agree: I don’t think it helps first and second graders to be taught about sexuality — LGBT or straight hetero, for that matter. It’s probably more confusing than elucidating for young children. First things first: 2+2 = 4, “See Spot run.”
I don’t know who’s right about COVID19. Maybe you, maybe not. We’ll find out if 5G waves activate two-foot long blood clots at some point, I suppose. I’ve not been able to confirm a 40% increase in deaths reported by insurance companies related to the vaccinations.
But I respect that it’s your decision not to vaccinate or your family … because I am a Liberal, that shares its root with liberty, and I think you should have as much of that as me.
If you are wrong and there’s a tragedy because of that, you will own it. If I am wrong and there’s a tragedy, I will accept it.
On climate change, I’ll just say “you are wrong.” Over the 40 years I’ve lived in the mountains of Central Oregon, I’ve watched glaciers disappear from the Cascades outside my windows. Wells are going dry. These are facts, not opinion, and certainly more relevant than your “I have not gotten any hotter, and despite claims to the contrary I don't see much evidence of it.”
You don’t see much evidence of it because you don’t look. That’s confirmation bias.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your on-the-ground reporting from Ukraine, and sharing the blogs of others. It has given me a far more accurate picture than anything I get from the mainstream media.
I also appreciate your strength, family values, and … honesty. Without that, there can be no learning, for either of us.
~ Erik Dolson
Erik –
Glaciers come and go. My son Eddie and I read about the Helliwell (if I recall right) glacier in a Smithsonian book on geology. Published in 2010, they noted that it had retreated about 10 miles in the last 10 years. We found it in northern Greenland. Lo and behold, it had grown back 8 of those miles in a couple of years. Same can be said for glaciers on Kilimanjaro. Al Gore was spectacularly wrong about glaciers in the Himalayas.
Water tables all over the United States are affected by agricultural practices more than anything else. The Ogallala is simply being overpumped.
You didn't mention forest fires, the bug bear of Californians. The wisest heads attribute the fire problem more to bad forest management and climate change.
We are not going to agree on this, beyond that there are a couple of sides to the story. One of my favorite writers on the topic is Tony Heller.
Agreed, we won't agree. (smile) Again I'll bring up confirmation bias, recognizing that I am as susceptable as I believe you are evidencing. I'll grant that your comment "I don't see it from here" might have been metaphorical.
That glaciers have come and gone does not in any way disprove man-caused climate change, neither does the fact the Ogallala is being overpumped (I agree). I live at the foot of disappearing glaciers, and recently visited others in Alaska. I think you need to look again at Greenland. I live at the edge of forests decimated by drought and ripped by fires not seen in centuries, long before there was any forest management.
Some of this may be reversable, if we choose to do it. Maybe not if we hit a tipping point of self-reinforcing change, such as methane blowing out of the permafrost or bubbling up from the bottom of the oceans.
I guess we'll see.
We will. If we survive the myriad more immediate crises. I'm dealing with a war, you are dealing with needle-mad bureaucrats. We can wish each other luck on those.
you keep asking him to go look at an instance. at the same time as suggesting his problem is confirmation bias and he can't see the overall. which way do you want it? looking at local instances can be done by either side and examples quoted to support them their side.
but the main point is ignored, i think. the main point being can we do anything we can confidently predict will reverse the trend? and I think there's absolutely no chance of that at all. none.
ah, they say, we don't ask for that, it's a warming trend, admitted, but we can 'slow' it down.
so now they're arguing matters of fine degree within a coarse doubtful measurement. the whole argument taking place within the margin of error.
it's academic, it's angels dancing on the heads of pins.
meanwhile the incontrovertible: human suffering will increase dramatically here and now if 'climate mitigation' steps as proposed are taken.
here and now.
in order to accord with some dubious unproven argument about things in the far future.
it is a madness of misdirected thought on a par with the covid madness.
in order to deal with an imaginery emergency declare and create an emergency right now!
and then tie up the discourse, the discussion, the argument in fine details about irrelevancies such a masks and fomite transmission and vaccine efficacy.
right now the people are suffering and dying from the 'covid mitigation' measures just as they have done from the very beginning when gross killings such as the aged care homes took place.
right now the people are suffering and dying from the 'climate mitigation' measures just as they have from the beginning.
Hello Eric. 40 years isn't even the blink of an eye on the planet's history. That's why I think man made climate change is complete nonsense. Our lifetimes are as nothing. But people are so arrogant now they think a year or two of temperature variation in their lifetimes is significant. It isn't.
Like you, I take notice of Graham's on the ground reporting. Here in the UK it's not worth watching the BBC.
Hi Libby,
Of course 40 years is nothing compared to geologic time. Agreed that our lifetimes are as nothing.
Neither proves that climate change is not real, nor that it is not man made. My point was that it's occuring, it's visible, and to that I'll add it's clearly more impactful than "a year or two of temperature variation" especially in coastal areas. We may be approaching a "tipping point."
Where I live the problem is too little water. Where most people live, it may be too much.
So, while "our lifetimes are as nothing," man-caused climate change may have a great impact on many lives, on humanity.
Thanks for your reply, Eric. I agree that climate change has always occured and always will. I enjoy reading historical accounts of the weather. In the UK these are perhaps easier to find going back a long way than perhaps in America 😁. We have far too much housing development in the south east which has the lowest rainfall. Pretty stupid really.
Getting back to Ukraine for a moment. As confusing as this war is and even with no end in sight, I am wondering what your thoughts are regarding the returning refugees? For instance, are you and your family prepared to take in Ukranians who are returning to their bombed out homes and apartments? Are others in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine doing the same? Is the government taking the lead or planning this far ahead?
Even more to the point with your computer skills you seem to be an ideal candidate to host a web site dedicated to matching returning refugees with families willing to "sponsor" others for 3, 6, or even 9 months.
Families and neighborhoods are tighter here in Ukraine than elsewhere. I expect that most returning refugees will get help from people that they know.
We own a couple of unheated dachas that would be adequate from now until October. Everybody in our circle of acquaintances knows about them. They are certainly available.
A couple of friends of ours got burned by refugees from the Donbass in 2014. Of course refugees arrived without credentials. The people who accepted them could not vet them. They damaged the apartments and ran up bills in the names of their benefactors. We have made similar mistakes twice with ne'er-do-wells in our own neighborhood.
Yes, we will be ready to help. But we will be most likely to respond to requests from people that we know first or second hand. Otherwise we'll help by giving to organizations such as Rotary that have appropriate mechanisms in place.