Via Say Uncle

What is happening with written media? These are people who supposedly were schooled in the fine art of writing articles in a precise and elegant manner. Yet we see stupid stuff like this: 12 Surprisingly Offensive Words You Need to Erase from Your Vocabulary.

I click the link and the first offensive word is not a word but two…huh? I check the whole list and there are only five single words, the rest are what you call expressions.

But the one that caught my ire was this one:

Rue of Thumb
There’s a lot of controversy around the origins of this term. You know it to mean a generally accepted principle. It’s said to derive from laws in England and America dating back to the 1600s. These laws are said to have stated that a man could beat his wife with any stick no wider than his thumb. Hence, the rule of thumb. Scholars have searched but they can’t find any precise proof for this origin. That doesn’t mean that domestic violence isn’t a problem. Here’s what experts wish you knew about it.

So, there is only a legend about where the term comes from. Nobody can find where the damned term comes from, but since we need to check mark the box of “domestic violence” we are going to go ahead and bullshit our way in.

When I was a kid, I was a faithful Reader’ Digest reader. I had the stacks of old issues all over my room.  But by the early 90s, it became a printed clown show, barely a shadow of what it once was. It seems the new century has not helped improve much what passes for editorial oversight.

Stolen from Tacticool Memes

I bet he has watched a lot of Cop Shows.

J.D Kinman pointed us to this exchange:

Back in the ages when I was in High School South of the Caribbean, we had to take a very basic class in psychology, nothing heavy. One of the things we were taught was about Frustration and how important it was to experience them. And also how to deal with them in a healthy and productive way which meant stop bashing the head against a wall and to seek solutions: Go above, go around or go under… (later in life, the use of high explosives came into focus, but that is for another day.)

What I did not expect to see was people going out of their way to stop teaching kids about frustrations. To teach them that it is part of the natural process of living and fix the problem or even accept the problem may have no solution. What we got was a generation taught that dealing with frustrations is bad and that the world has to go out of its way to either solve the problem or reward them for being frustrated. We got us a generation of kids accustomed to participation trophies and attaboys for failing either on purpose or because they did not bother to try hard.

When they are suddenly having to deal with real life, when they find that  one problem without easy solution and nobody that comes and makes things better for them, they lose it. They become unadjusted brats and start acting up to which the medical experts compound the problem by giving them all kinds of chemicals to screw their minds even more.

We substituted the teaching of obtaining self-discipline with a prescription for Adderall and now we have a potential herd of maniacs out there ready to resolve their hissy fits with violence.

One more thought. We now see that teaching Right from Wrong has changed from when we were kids.
Right: Whatever makes you feel good.
Wrong: Whatever makes you feel bad.
We eliminated conscience and let Freud’s Id run the show.

On my last post I touched on the subject of the EU banning disposable food utensils and containers that may lead to transmitting diseases.  We already know about the crappy Social Medicine scheme and how they are forced to ration health care.

So what happens when you add the last ingredient?

Notice the workers are funny donned in hazmat suits.
I wonder why.

Some other scenes from the streets of Paris.

And France is not the only one. The same to different degrees is being repeated all over Europe.
It would be sadly funny that the biological apocalypse will not be due by some specially GMO virus concocted by Evil Pharma but a combination of TB, Diphtheria. Cholera and assorted regular sicknesses that used to be controlled by a little hygiene.

You think I am crazy and perhaps exaggerating just a bit? The third cause of death in the US is Medical Malpractice. Many of those come from infectious diseases simply because personnel did not sanitize their hands or other permanent items.  If you have the misfortune of going to a medical facility, check how many doctors and nurses and assistant actually wash/disinfect their hands in between patients and rely only on wearing gloves, which helps but it is not enough.

The European Commission proposed a total ban on some single-use plastic products and measures to drastically cut the consumption of others, in the latest push by the EU to reduce carbon emissions and marine litter threatening its seas.

The ban will apply to plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and sticks for balloons, according to the proposal unveiled on Monday and is subject to approval by EU governments and the European Parliament. Member states will also be forced to reduce the use of plastic food containers and drink cups by prohibiting their free-of-charge distribution.

EU Proposes a Total Ban on Plastic Forks and Other Products

I love Good Hearted activists that are gonna save us from the End of the World one disposable fork at the time. I mean, the planet will explode at the sheer amount of plastic and Styrofoam floating in our oceans and polluting the land… we are dying!

Then again I am old enough to remember being taught why disposable food utensils and containers were good for humanity: They cut down on transmittable diseases. It started with you humble Dixie Cup by the water coolers and then spread all over the world.

Back in the bad old days, communal water and food locations like water coolers and even restaurants, were notorious focus for transmitting diseases. The eating wares were shared and methods of disinfection like steaming the crap out of plates and silverware in restaurants were not common or could be afforded.

The disposable plates, cups and forks cut down on transmittable diseases by cutting the need to share items. Hygiene was easier to control and much cheaper: plates and silverware infected with a patron’s sickness did not make it back to the food preparation area but was taken directly to the garbage. The low-cost also helped small business be willing part of a really healthier way of eating.

Now, we are going to have those saying we have advanced enormously in the hygiene front and we could perhaps eschew on these evil disposable products and go back to more permanent items.  Understand that even with those advances, we are still subject to human performance or rather lack of it when it comes to keep things clean. You may have heard of a fast-food chain by the name of Chiplote and the issues they had. Also whole cruise ships affected with Norovirus and making what was supposed to be an enjoyable trip for its passengers. a living hell stuck to their toilets.  We keep hearing food recalls from greens, eggs, ground beef and that is under tightly controlled processors. Shit will happen no matter what, but it is the layers of protection we can add which helps avoiding the spreading of diseases.

Getting rid of a safety net because it looks awful to the environment is stupid as hell. Add to that the need to tax and fine rather than encourage cleanliness. Can you imagine what would a small business owner or even a big company would do if instead of being taxed and fined to death in the name of dumb Social Engineering, would be given tax credits and bonuses for helping keep the planet clean?

Never mind: Liberal rather you die first than reduce tax income.

Hat Tip Sean G.

The few ounces of geek in me are just jumping around in sheer happiness. Finally B5 is back where we can see it comfortably without having to go through browsers and obscure websites.

Let’s hope they did a good digital transfer.

Babcom Out.

Officially, the government of Puerto Rico has blamed Hurricane Maria for 64 deaths, but a new study out Tuesday found that the powerful storm was responsible for more than 4,500 deaths.

Hurricane Maria Killed Thousands More Than Official Toll in Puerto Rico: Study

The study done published by the New England Journal of Medicine is titled “Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria” and it is a survey, not hard numbers.

We conducted a randomized survey of 3299 households from January 17 through February 24, 2018. The target sample of approximately 3000 households was calculated to detect a 50% increase in the annual mortality rate from a historic (September 20 through December 31) baseline rate of 8 per 1000,21 with 80% power at a significance level of 0.05.

Even the local government admits that the 64 deaths is a low and incomplete number, but to throw an estimation generated by a poll as gospel? It continues:

In Puerto Rico, every disaster-related death must be confirmed by the Institute of Forensic Sciences. This requires that bodies be brought to San Juan or that a medical examiner travel to the local municipality to verify the death,11 often delaying the issuance of death certificates.

Imagine that, you need proof of death to count the bodies, How dare they?

Furthermore, although direct causes of death are easier to assign by medical examiners, indirect deaths resulting from worsening of chronic conditions or from delayed medical treatments may not be captured on death certificates. These difficulties pose substantial challenges for the accurate and timely estimation of official all-cause hurricane-related mortality. The Puerto Rican government has commissioned an external review of the death-registry data as a result of these issues.12,13

I like this.  So six months later, if somebody is killed during the commission of a crime and it gets blamed because there are not enough cops in the area, the official culprit is the hurricane.

I saw this type of poll used in Iraq some years ago. It made the news that the experts said there were over 2 million civilian deaths and their methodology was similar: just ask people if they knew or suspected somebody was dead. That the answer from 5 different people could be about only one individual but tagged as 5 never crossed their minds.

I always wondered what happened with 2 million bodies and they are not that easy to bury and as far as I know, there were no cremation facilities anywhere in the country.