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Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

Scattershooting 210901

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Scattershooting while wondering why “trust the science” from the left to often abruptly ends at nuclear physics or fundamental human genetics…

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THE ONE and ONLY BEST CO2 and ENERGY-INDEPENDENCE SOLUTION: NUCLEAR: An environmentalist makes a powerful case for nuclear and against so-called “renewables” to supply energy at big scale. There’s a decades-long tradition of unscientific, mathematically ignorant, irrational fear-mongering around nuclear. Never mind that nuclear is (by orders of magnitude!) the most energy-dense fuel source, with the lowest carbon emission, the safest record of all U.S. energy sources (fewest human and wildlife casualties), the least land area used for the amount of energy generated, continual and reliable (unlike solar and wind), has the lowest lifetime total waste volume compared to all fossils/wind/solar, and so on. Truly, nuclear is the greenest of green energy. And the technology to generate more energy with still less waste on an even smaller footprint has improved hugely since currently operating plants were erected in the ’60s through ’80s. Even if the Utopia of fusion isn’t realized soon, nuclear still is the safest, most efficient steady energy source for us all. Only ignorant, petty NIMBY bullcrap, science illiteracy, anti-scientific and illogical fear-mongering, and massive bureaucratic red tape are stopping us from becoming truly energy independent, with the lowest carbon production per capita among all nations. The way there is nuclear. If it were announced tomorrow that a nuclear plant would be built right behind my property, I’d welcome it with bells on. Just tap me into the juice, nuke-man.

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PUBLIC-CRISIS MESSAGING MATTERS: Yes, as a formally published scientist, I know science matters, and changes. I also know messaging is important. As I’ve said before, consistent and clear communications matter in a crisis! Pretend for a minute you’re in a pre-pandemic time machine. SARS and MERS already have happened from remarkably similar viruses, and other RNA viruses have been studied for decades, so much already is known about such viruses in science. You’re told a coronavirus pandemic one is coming and that this will occur. Then, officially…

Let’s deny masks work, tell people not to get them, then mandate masks, then not differentiate between medical grade n95 masks & cloth rags, then say children are fine, then mask only children for a bit while telling the vaccinated to carry on as before the pandemic, officially declare vaccines as the way to end the pandemic, say the vaccines only reduce disease severity and aren’t stopping the pandemic, then reimpose mask mandates on vaccinated people, and then through all this confusing (for most folks, from their perspective) flip-flopping, express incredulous surprise that trust in institutions and expertise is being lost. Can you put yourself in another’s shoes? Do you get this point at all? Of course “the science changes”! Duh. Saying that is a straw man. The sciences of virology, epidemiology and immunology, however, existed before this pandemic, and have not changed anywhere nearly as wildly as the messaging has.

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FOLLY of CONFORMITY in LANGUAGE FADS: On a somewhat related note, I find it annoying that the “woke” politically correct feel like they have to stick their unwelcome and meddlesome noses into everybody’s business, much like the Puritanical small-town busybodies of days of yore, or over-officious homeowner’s-association pests who nitpick the most minute details of everybody else’s house and lawn in the neighborhood. Same mentality! In the pandemic, they forced spineless and overly compliant news organizations to stop saying “Wuhan” when that is factually where the virus originated, in support of an unproven, subjective perception that systemic racism was happening on massive scales against Asians because of that. Then the factually from India “Delta” variant came along, and media and citizens mindlessly comply without question. Factually, it is the Wuhan virus and the India variant, and that’s what I call them. Don’t like it? As I often say: your problem, not mine. I deal in facts, not what might offend some soft, coddled, overly sensitive, privileged, overwhelmingly white-leftist busybodies. Regurgitating the pre-scripted phrase isn’t an act of wisdom nor kindness nor tolerance, it’s instead the opposite: it’s an act of supine conformist submission to a preapproved set of opinions.

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BIG-CORPORATE SUCKING UP to CHINA:

This refusal to even acknowledge Uighur torture and genocide is craven corporate pandering to red Commie China by Coca Cola, much as we’ve seen from many other big companies and the NBA. Their “human rights” people only care about human rights when it doesn’t impact the bottom line much (if at all). Arguable and disputed sociopolitical events in the U.S.? “Woke” to the core, sucking up to the max to that bizarre conformity cult. Actual mass imprisonments, torture, and genocide of Uighurs, long-standing oppression of Tibet, a stiflingly Orwellian mass-surveillance state, and increasingly brutal oppression in Hong Kong? Cowardly silence. China has these faceless corporate suits and ties bought, paid for and leashed like obedient lap dogs. This guy from Coke even looks like a sniveling, spineless bureaucratic weasel, and is playing that part well. He should be in the movies. He wouldn’t have to act.

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RADICAL PUBLIC-SCHOOL BRAINWASHING OF MINOR CHILDREN: BUSTED! Whistleblowers, gadflies and undercover operatives are some of my very favorite and most respected people, as they are heroes of openness and justice, exposing nefarious, illegal and diabolical activity in many levels of governments and corporations. Public education is a level of government and absolutely should be subject to whistle-blowing activity and undercover reporting. Project Veritas did just that with video of a radical Marxist teacher in Natomas Unified School District near Sacramento, one Gabriel Gipes, who:

  • Placed Antifa flag and Mao poster on the wall of his classroom, and shamed a student who was uncomfortable about that
  • Like some of the Capitol insurrectionists on the opposite part of the spectrum, holds that violent overthrow of the U.S. government is a good thing
  • Assigned extra credit for students who attended extremist left-wing events
  • Promised he’s not the only teacher there inclined toward radicalizing students: “There are three other teachers in my department that I did my credential program with — and they’re rad. They’re great people. They’re definitely on the same page.”

    The superintendent confirmed this “teacher” would be fired. Why was he hired? This tells me the real agenda there is: “We’ll radicalize children to the extent we can get away with it, until the PR gets too intense.” According to freelance journalist Andy Ngo, the school-board meeting included these speakers:
  • A black mom who said her daughter was brainwashed in 13 days
  • A Hispanic dad whose daughter noted that on the first school day, Gipe told the pupils that he e would turn them into “revolutionaries.” That’s consistent with Veritas’ recording where he admitted: “I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries … Scare the f*** out of them.”
  • A Muslim parent calling for a criminal investigation into this “teacher”.

    These left-wing “woke” cult radicals are badly overplaying their hand, causing a lot of quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) backlash among the very groups they purport to support: racial minorities (including Ngo, the black dad and Hispanic mom), Muslims, and homosexuals (including Ngo). These lunatics don’t realize this ultimately going to undermine their own cause, which will be so fun to watch. What’s not fun is the damage they do by poisoning young minds with their parasitic ideologies.

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PEOPLE I DON’T UNDERSTAND: Those who deny there’s a pandemic, or call it a “plandemic” seriously. Those who think males (that’s people with the XY chromosomes, for the biologically ignorant) should be using my wife’s or daughter’s bathrooms (and if I see a dude trying to go into a restroom with my wife or daughter, he’s not going to succeed). Those who stormed the Capitol thinking they were “making America great again,” when they were just being ignorant, herd-mentality fools. Those who think if a dude wears lipstick and a dress, he’s not a dude anymore (like putting lipstick and a pink bow on a boar makes it a sow…suuuuuure). Christians who grovel at an abject, unrepentant sinner and bombastic heathen like Donald Trump. Christians who support abortion, sexual activity of any kind outside monogamous man-woman marriage, or critical race theory (as if Jesus cared about race). Sometimes it seems so many on both sides have lost their collective and individual minds, or at least a moral compass of right, wrong and common sense.

Did I offend people on both sides with this segment? I did? Good! Outstanding! Shows I’m doing something right. Namely, thinking for myself, independently of anybody’s marching orders but God’s. And that’s OK with me. Why? Because ultimately, I will be answering to no mortal human — just God. Nobody on Twitter, nobody on Facebook, and not you either. I wasn’t put here to win popularity contests or conform to the worldly fads, but to adhere to truth. Your judgment won’t matter…only His. If you understand where I’m coming from and are cool with that, great — you get it. If not, learn and grow. Become more truly “tolerant” and “inclusive”.

Why Bad Ideas Spread

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Why would anybody take seriously an offhanded, poorly worded statement from Donald Trump (who makes offhanded, poorly worded statements by the hundreds per month…you should know this by now!) about ingesting bleach? I doubt the statement was malicious, or even serious, but it was badly phrased by a bumbling buffoon, and some people have been stupid enough to take it literally. Others have blown it out of proportion as validation for their own deep partisan biases.

Medicine doesn’t have many answers yet about the Wuhan coronavirus. Meteorology can’t tell you why the tornado hit this neighborhood and not the one across the road, nor which neighborhood could be flattened next week. Yet incredibly, people demand such answers, utterly ignorant of the limits of science, and of uncertainty.

When scientists cannot fill a knowledge gap, charlatans rush in to fill it for them, to provide counterfeit certainty. It’s how disgraced, false-teaching “Christian” televangelist Jim Bakker can allow a snake-oil hack to peddle some silver solution as a coronavirus cure. It’s how a weather company can offer specific 40-day temperature forecasts, when there is no demonstrated skill in that whatsoever. I’ve heard this said first-hand to another meteorologist, seriously: “You can’t tell me if it will rain at my sister’s wedding next month? Lame! What kind of idiot weather man are you anyway?”

A fundamental problem exists in common between this bleach-ingestion situation and making insanely unreasonable demands on meteorologists. That problem is failure to understand uncertainty, and it’s rooted in a deeper one in education. Much of the populace has little concept of, nor tolerance for, uncertainty. Too many people think everything is certain, black and white. That’s preposterous rubbish. Medicine is not as simple as that, or the coronavirus already would be exterminated. And if meteorology were that easy, we already could tell you where the tornadoes will track on May 22nd, to within mere feet.

Yet the opposite people, who declare from their high horse of “nuance” that “everything is shades of gray”, have it terribly wrong going the other way, too. They attach a damned error bar to situations that have straightforward answers, and mile-wide error bars to others that are far less complicated in reality. They declare that there are no absolutes. That is equally preposterous garbage. [Next time you see someone write, “There are no absolutes,” or “Everything is shades of gray,” please call them out on that obviously and literally self-contradictory nonsense!]

Black and white, unambiguous factual answers really do exist to a lot of things. The sun rises in the eastern sky. 2+2=4. I love Dr Pepper. Direct contact with bleach outside the body will kill this virus (and maim your insides, maybe fatally, if you drink or inhale it). Tornadoes are made of air. Male or female you were made, dear reader, by genetics, before birth, by biological fact of a chromosome pair still found in all your cells. Simple answers to complex questions and problems really do exist in some cases. Ministers of the “nuance” pulpit fail to see this, and as such, will stay mired in gray ideological mud, missing out on a lot of clarity and vivid insight that absolutes can offer.

“The best answers are found in the middle.” Preposterous rubbish too! I’m not advocating the middle ground is always right, either. Sometimes, indeed I dare say often, alternative and out-of-mainstream solutions end up working amazingly well, saving lives, bettering society. Sometimes, just sometimes, even the ideological extremes are onto something (despite that, more often than not, they’re shrill, annoying parasites sucking intellect out of an issue). If you’re always straddling the middle, trying to stay comfortable in rigid “balance”, avoiding all extremes, taking no risk, and not seeing the benefits that can arise from the unconventional thinking, you’ll miss out on so much accomplishment, discovery and innovation. Your life will be boring as hell, too. If nothing else, pay attention to the extremes, so you can understand how to combat the 90% or more of their crap that is…crap.

The key is knowing when the middle is right, when the conventional wisdom and tradition yield optimal results, when an alternative way is best, when even the extremes are right, when an issue is clear-cut, when it is gray. How? Reasoned, critical thinking — to determine when, how, and why each approach is appropriate, situationally. Situationally!

Much as the science of medicine has lots of uncertainties regarding this coronavirus — how to reverse its severe rampages in some people, how much immunity to mutations you have after you’ve had it, when there will be a vaccine and how effective it will be…so does my science. We get questions like this astoundingly often: “Will it rain on my sister’s outdoor wedding next September 10th at 4 p.m. in Aurora?” Or, “I’m driving my RV from Chicago to Miami on November 3rd. Where will I hit bad weather?” [No way to know, too much uncertainty!] Or, “Can you control tornadoes with hyper-voltage electromagnetic beams?” [No, but the questioner won’t take anything but his own pet theory for an answer.]

What insanely asinine questions those are for anyone who understands uncertainty or has half a microgram of critical-thinking skills! Yet we get them. It’s not necessarily tied to educational level, either. Some of the worst weather-control lunacy I’ve seen has come from engineers and physicists, and even one physician (not any who are personal friends of mine!). Some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories I’ve heard have been proposed by people with advanced degrees. Ph.D. can stand for Phenomenally Dumb, when outside one’s own area of expertise. There are people who are so specialized, as an old instructor of mine once stated, that they, “Learn more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.“

So why do far too many people, whether well-educated on paper or high-school dropouts, either blindly accept seeming authority without question, or reflexively reject it outright, or fail to grasp uncertainty, or think “alternative” must be bad, or think “alternative” must be best, or accept outlandish and thoroughly unreasonable crackpot ideas? Where is the ability in people to evaluate, to dissociate from emotion and other irrationalities, and to use facts, logic and reason to assess ideas and ideals independently and thoroughly?

I strongly believe it’s because critical, independent thinking skills have not been rigorously taught by both public schools and parents, as a whole, for at least 3 or 4 generations. My generation (X) is part of the problem, both on the receiving and teaching end. Parents and schools alike have failed here, miserably. Of course there are exceptions. I’m talking not about the exceptions, but the rule.

Critical thinking doesn’t lead to sucking down bleach, nor eating Tide Pods, nor snorting cocaine, nor partying with dozens of friends amidst a highly contagious pandemic, nor refusing vaccinations because some airheaded celebrity says it causes autism, nor taking essential oils to “cure” cancer, nor being a sucker to unscientific anti-GMO hysteria, nor thinking 5G makes coronavirus worse, nor HAARPing about “chemtrails”, nor sending money to that Nigerian prince who works for the IRS and Citibank and wants your credit-card number so you can pay what you owe and get rich quick.

Anybody with even the most basic critical-thinking skills would not take a verbally handicapped President’s offhanded bleach comment literally, nor a host of other dumb things said by celebrities and politicians of all stripes. Yet here we are.

Unfortunately the solution is hard: massively reform education away from the rote and toward understanding. Stop teaching to test. Don’t make students memorize; teach them how to think conceptually and critically. Stop teaching to feelings, “identity” and “self-esteem” — teach instead to logic and reason. Return to rigorous fundamentals of math, science, reading comprehension, history, and writing in education, including deep immersion in critical-thinking concepts in each of these basics. The results won’t bear fruit for another generation or two. But this is what’s needed. Until then, our society as as much at peril from a profusion of gullible suckers as from any disease.

Scattershooting 180314

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Scattershooting while wondering if any in the Soros-controlled media have half a conscience about using those Parkland kids as pawns to push their radical, extremist, totalitarian gun-removal agenda.

Today I have a few longer entries. If you have a thick skin, and you won’t regret entering the gallery. If you don’t, go reread See Spot Run instead. Onward…

EXPUNGE TOXIC PEOPLE from LIFE — A PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS: Classical stoicism and Christian worldview (as opposed to religious practice) share many common philosophical underpinnings. Given their geographic commingling and conterminous nature in the Greek/Roman power era, this is no surprise. To the substantial extent stoicism is consistent with Jesus’ teachings, this is a good thing! Among the common virtues are: self-control, fortitude, overcoming adversity with dignity, personal responsibility for one’s behavior, ethical/moral well-being, calmness with emotional discipline (anger control, shedding of envy and jealousy). Properly swap in God for “Nature” in the stoic upholding, since He created nature: “Virtue consists in a will that is in agreement with Nature.” [citing Russell Bertrand’s A History of Western Philosophy] There’s another remarkable commonality.

In that vein, I recently read a nice little article by Darious Foroux that offers wise advice for any age: Stop Giving Toxic People Your Time. The essay self-advertises its roots in classical, secular Stoicism, but is consistent with the Christian worldview as well. As such, it’s good for all of us, secular or religious. Who are toxic people in your life or workplace? Quite simply: liars, cheaters, manipulators, backstabbers, thieves (whether of stuff, money or time), and of course the sociopathic. In short, as the article notes, avoid close associations with people who don’t have values. They will bring you down into dark places if you let them. Instead, seek out the strongly moral and the virtuous as friends and role models, acknowledging of course that nobody is perfect, and everybody sins. Perfection isn’t the point, virtue is.

EMASCULATED “MEN” and DEARTH of FATHERHOOD: The wussification of American “men” is well underway and has been for much of the past 15-20 years, maybe more. Too few dads are willing to teach their sons what manhood means! From the Christian-worldview perspective, it means being mentally and physically strong and sturdy in keeping with our God-given biology, while at the same time, servant leaders of households (wife and children) — loving and benevolent, present for them, while also decisive and wise, and firm without cruelty in discipline of kids…and never, ever abusive or manipulative! It means real strength — authentic strength of mind, body and spirit, not the trendy fad-word “vulnerability”. The “vulnerable man” gets used, taken advantage of, beaten up (literally or figuratively), his self-advertised weaknesses readily attacked by human predators, and in the end, he is discarded like yesterday’s garbage when he is no longer useful to his manipulator(s). Unsolicited advice: instead of advertising your “vulnerability”, don’t advertise or hide it…just fix it, with authenticity!

The best outcome we can hope for from the feminist/leftist school-curricula indoctrination of (effectively or actually) fatherless boys, deprived of that sorely needed role model by a broken society full of broken families, medicated to a mentally awry extent on synthetic brain-altering chemicals from early ages, awarded participation stickers/trophies for mediocrity in academics and athletics, “educated” that Christianity is an outdated mythological construct for simple/stupid people, and emasculated psychologically through the feminism’s inherent misandry to believe men are not an equal gender but an inferior one, is that they somehow rebel in a constructive way and learn to be a real man regardless. That has to be rare.

The typical path is they grow into emasculated little pencil-armed leftist dweebs, bereft of strong father figures and therefore of any meaningful understanding of manhood as an ideal, instead perpetual victims “in touch with their feminine side”, and either wondering what the proper use is for that little bitty thing sticking out between bunghole and bellybutton, or ashamed of it. Sometimes the shame extends to a delusional, genetically absurd extreme of defying the XY chromosome and lopping that thing off, much to the insane approval of left-wing social engineers. The worst outcome is of the kind we saw from a deranged orphan in Parkland, FL. Fortunately that is rare also, but gets a lot of attention and is blamed on the wrong thing (guns). What we need are more Christian servant-leader fathers! I mean real fathers — expressively loving while grounded in solid morals, convicted to lead lives of personal and professional virtue, pillars of honor and integrity, leading households both directly and by example. Until we get back to cherishing that role (and that role model), expect more of the same. And more misguided blame…

TRUMP’s CONTINUED DEBASEMENT of HIS OFFICE and of CONSERVATISM: Speaking of personal and professional virtue, the Trump administration clearly lacks this. It’s no surprise. I have no qualms saying, “I told you so”, because it’s the brutally honest truth. I told you it was coming. It has. It will. I told you he would stain conservatism, despite the truth that Trump is not a conservative (but instead a pseudo-populist blowhard and con artist). He has and he will. I take neither pride nor comfort in this, because it’s bad for our nation. It’s bad for our nation to have leftism take over, which is exactly what will happen as a pendulum-swing reaction to this moron (who was a pendulum-swing reaction to an Obama administration that was highly dishonorable for other reasons). It’s bad for us all to have a highly unqualified, immoral and undignified President (regardless of nominal party affiliation) engaging in personal attacks on social media, paying hush money to a smut star over an alleged affair (while married to his third freakin’ wife, after publicly cheating on at least his first!), and firing cabinet members left and right. Donald — if you were going to let ______ go (fill in any name among many from Tillerson on back), why did you hire him/her in the first place? That shows a horrifying lack of either personal or professional judgment, or both. Yet as Mark Levin recently stated, Trump didn’t know Rex Tillerson from Rex Reed or Tyrannosaurus Rex. That’s readily apparent. Get it right the first time, you big blowhard! Apparently that’s too much to ask from someone so administratively incompetent. His ineptitude makes even the notoriously naive, facile, over-his-head Obama’s look sanguine by comparison.

Look, dear reader: as you probably have found, I think independently, am beholden to no party line, follow no herd of lemmings. I will not hesitate to praise what Trump has done right (Gorsuch, Mattis, Haley, agreeing to meet the pot-bellied Nork dictator depending on results), nor wrong (see above, plus steel/aluminum tariffs, tone-deaf responses to several incidents, vile and immoral utterances almost weekly, and too much else to list in brief). Hard as it is to imagine, the alternative was at least as awful. At the same time I am so glad Hillary is not President that even I, one of uncommonly gigantic vocabulary, have inadequate words to describe my relief. I just want to reiterate, for the record, that I did not vote for this a**hole either, and wish he were not the alternative to the unadulterated and multifaceted evil that the Clintons would have unleashed upon us from the White House. Where is the stoic, wise, knowledgeable, strong, intelligent, dignified statesman with a foundationally unwavering Christian worldview, who can and should be our Presidential leader and representative to the world? Will we ever have another?

FEDERAL CRIMINAL CHARGES NEEDED for “SANCTUARY” OFFICIALS: The Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, and other radical left-wing state and local officials enabling and hiding illegal aliens, need to be taught this: illegal immigration is…illegal, under Federal law. Wow, what a revelation! An illegal act is illegal! So is aiding and abetting commission of a Federal crime by harboring fugitives, and also, warning them that law enforcement is coming. That makes her an accessory to a Federal crime. There is no need to over-analyze here. This is very straightforward. In addition to obstruction of justice, which is being considered, she should be charged and put on trial for harboring fugitives, and aiding and abetting a Federal crime: one count of each per illegal alien involved.

“SCATTERSHOOTING” IS HERE TO STAY; DEAL WITH IT: Finally, a misguided mind, whose name is withheld to protect his/her tender and insecure little ego, and whom I care about despite (and perhaps because of) their need for re-education to reverse years of high-school and university indoctrination in the ways of the passive-aggressive virtue signaler, recently suggested that I stop titling this periodic entry, “Scattershooting”. You can guess why.

Short answer: “No.” Long answer: “Hell no”. Longer answer: If you do not have the mental wherewithal to separate the figurative from the literal, nor the metaphorical from the tangible, nor to realize that being offended is a choice, I suggest going back to Romper Room and playing in the safe-space sandbox. Nobody forces you to read this. Yet ya did. Can’t take the heat? Stay out of the kitchen. Sometimes we all need to hear things we don’t want to hear. Call this love — tough love.