Opus 2020-078: Baby Talk: The Wisdom of Children

I had a great talk with my grandson yesterday.  It was like talking to a liberal except the baby made more sense.  He was making happy faces and nodding his head.  Okay, so his nods were more like a bobble head doll.  When he got some happy hands we sang a verse of The Hokey Poky. 

The great part was that when he started getting an attitude that may have been rooted in dirty diapers, I passed him to his mother.  That was my chance to act like a liberal.

homo unius libri

Opus 2020-077: A Blip

At this point it looks like the glimmer of yesterday was just a blip.

It is a good illustration of how we are all living in an information fog.  Sometimes it is the fog of guesswork masquerading as data, sometimes simply incomplete information and sometimes outright manipulation.

Always keep your salt shaker handy so you can get a grain when you need it.  The site I listed yesterday revised the numbers later.  The numbers were still low enough to look good but not as dramatic as before.  Okay.  You give data as it comes in.

What makes me get out my salt shaker is that the website it always quoting from the Cuomo daily briefings and ignoring what the president has to say.  That indicates a view of reality that is a bit biased.

I am still optimistic.  A county near me with a city of one and a half million people had five deaths as of yesterday.  Notice it wasn’t five death yesterday but “as of yesterday”.  This is not something to panic over if you have a clean bill of health based on a history of clean living and wash your hands.

And don’t forget to watch for the unicorns spreading the virus.

homo unius libri

Opus 2020-076: A Glimmer

If you are looking for a ray of hope on the Chinavirus you have one this morning.

I am not interested in headlines and the filters put on by media or bloggers.  I try to look for raw numbers and try to interpret them myself.  With that in mind, I confess that I don’t know any more than anyone else, probably less.  One of the sites I find that gives numbers is Worldmeter.  If you have not seen it yet and want data, check it out.  I don’t pay a lot of attention to the number of cases because that is totally dependent on how much testing is being done and how reliable the tests are.  Interesting but not telling us much.  I also discount numbers that come from China or other countries with totalitarian governments.  What I focus on is the number of deaths each day.

Yesterday we had a major turn-down in death reported in both the Untied States and the world.  It could be only a blip.  It could be a lack of reporting.  It could be the unicorns have finally been corralled.  It is still a ray of hope.  Here are the numbers for new deaths in the US starting on March 24:

March 24    225
March 25    247
March 26    268
March 27    400
March 28     525
March 29     264

As you can see we seemed to be spiking on the 27th and 28th and then had a dramatic drop on the 29th.  One day does not a pattern make.  Don’t break out the sparkling cider yet.  But it is still a positive step. 

Keep washing your hands and avoid unicorns.

homo unius libri

Opus 2020-075: Y2K and C-19

I have seen several references to the scare over Y2K.  For those with short memories that was the fear that when the calendars in the computer innards rolled over to the year 2000 they would reset at 0 and throw everything in our culture in the blender. 

Obviously there was nothing noticeable that happened.  Up to that point we are agreed but I am seeing more and more people acting like it was not a real problem, just hype, and then they compare it to the Chinavirus panic. 

I am of the opinion that there was a problem based in Y2K.  It did have the potential to wreak a lot of havoc.  When the concern was acknowledged the geeks got to work looking for a fix.  We will never know how much of a problem we might have had but I think we would have had one.  So don’t put Y2K in the same box with the virus scares.

On the other hand, when this is done we need to find the balance between accepting that we were brought to a slow boil by the media and that some of the things done did help to contain the spread of the disease.  The big, unanswerable question will be, “Was it worth the price?”

If you are on the government dole already and comfortable in your cocoon, you give it all a two thumbs up.  If you work for a living, manage to keep it together, the economy recovers and life become normalized we will say, “Maybe.”  If the damage is enough to bring us to our knees and strip us of our liberty and potential for prosperity, then, “No.”

Remember, even when we are over the hump it is a good idea to wash your hands.  That goes double if you are in a state with a lot of Democrats.

homo unius libri

Opus 2020-074: New Terms: That’s Left

I was reading at the DB Daily Update site on my I-pad and came across a statement that got me to thinking.  When I tried to reference it on my computer I was informed that I could not get there unless I accepted their cookie policy.  Since I try to avoid going there when I can I will try to relate what I can remember.  The statement had something to do with something being right or should we say “left”. 

We need a new phrase to account for woke comments.  I am suggesting “that’s left” instead of a lot of arguing.  When we say “that’s left” we mean that they are so ridiculous that our minds are stupefied at their obtuseness.  We mean that we acknowledge that they are not open to facts, logic or any kind of reason.  We acknowledge their disconnect and the concrete it is set in.

We can have variations on this like raising a fist and saying “left on, brother!”  Obviously it will become better to become a left hand fluid gender person than a right hand man.  How about “Might makes left”?

Wash your hands and watch out for unicorns.

homo unius libri

Opus 2020-073: Quarantine Meditations

Being retired and having a reasonable supply of necessities, I have not had to change my lifestyle much during the time of social distancing.  I am an introvert and feel no confinement be staying home.  It is my default setting.  But for those of you going stir crazy I came across this in my reading today.

(Psa 88:8 KJV) Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.

If you feel isolated, you are not alone.  Relax and enjoy it if you are retired.  If you are younger then pray that the leaders of the free world realize we will have more people starving to death than will be touched by the virus if you are not allowed to go back to work.

Wash your hands and stay away from unicorns.

homo unius libri

Opus 2020-072: Headlines: Justice on a Roll

At first I thought it was the Babylon Bee.  I went to Whatfinger and could not find it so I did a Google search on Nicolas Maduro being indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice.  The first three sources of the story were the New York Times, The Washington Post and Al Jazeera.  Since those sources are satire sights for the left I am still not sure.  But lets go with it.

We, that being Attorney General William Barr, are indicting Mudaro for drug trafficking?  Really?  With Hillary and Comey still walking the streets?  With John Kerry undermining the U.S. government in his globe trotting?  With all of the rampant corruption in our government and media we are spending our time on the Tyrant of Venezuela? 

Does this mean that we are going to allow the U.N. Courts to begin going after Americans in political witch hunts?  This could really open a can of worms.

We need to see some serious priority shifts in the Government and some adults to think about the implications of their theater tactics.

homo unius libri