EclectEcon

2020 -- Spiraling

I loved all the snow yesterday and I kept hoping it wouldn't rain and get too warm.
I got lucky! It kept snowing and didn't get too warm, and so I went out to do my next snow stomp art project last evening.

I spent some time sketching what I wanted to do, but of course when I actually get down on the lawn, things are always different. Here's the final product before I cleaned it up a bit this morning after we had more snow at 8am (the final image is at the end of this post):

While I was doing the snow stomping, I realized I was doing both snow-stomp and snow-shuffle art: the major spiral is snow-shuffle art, and all the fill between the spiral lines is snow stomp. I mixed the processes to try to find different textures.

Fortunately, Ms. Eclectic took some photos of me while I was working on the project:

And here's what the finished project looked like last night:

After it stopped snowing this morning, I went out to clean it up a bit. I noticed that a rabbit had made a contribution during the night, and I hoped the geese that were not too far away didn't discover it.

And here, once again, is the final product (for now. As it melts, I expect it will look quite different. I'm hoping it lasts through the geese and warmth today).

My previous snow stomp art:

        2020 -- Spiraling (this post)

        Wear me

        The Meaning of Life

        Peter Cottontail Visits the Condo

        Fight CV19 and STAY HOME

        Skool Daze

        I Think It Might Rain

        The Penrose Triangle

        Snowflakes (done with my granddaughters)

       Tobogganing Through the Trees   

        Kilroy Was Here

       Happy St. Patrick's Day, 2019

       Spring is Sprung

       You Wanted Spring? 

       Too Cold to Build a Snowman 

       Simply a-MAZE-ing 

       Let There Be Music

      Ommadawn 

      The First Robin of Spring? 

      Be My Valentine, 2018

      Curling AND the Super Bowl

      I'm No Escher... 

      Hark! the Herald Angel Sings

      Nativity Scene, 2017

      Planning an Escape

      Caught in the Net

Surf's Up 

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

      Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe

      Pikachu

      Happy New Year, 2017

      O Tannenbaum

      Nativity Scene

Special Weather Statement

Think Tropics

Qubix

Valentine, 2016

Paisley'd Circles

Happy New Year, 2016

The House of the Rising Sun

Easter Eggs

A weak pattern in the blowing snow.

The same pattern after some melting

New Year's Champagne

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

Happy Valentine's Day

Cabaret

A Christmas Tree (my first effort)

Please Wear a Mask (at least when you're around me)

We had nice snow last night, and I arose early to do some snowstomp art on the condo lawn. The title is

The title is "Wear Me".

We're a high-risk household, and so we try to isolate a lot, distance, and wear masks the times when we're not isolating.

My previous snow stomp art:

        Wear me (this post)

        The Meaning of Life

        Peter Cottontail Visits the Condo

        Fight CV19 and STAY HOME

        Skool Daze

        I Think It Might Rain

        The Penrose Triangle

        Snowflakes (done with my granddaughters)

       Tobogganing Through the Trees   

        Kilroy Was Here

       Happy St. Patrick's Day, 2019

       Spring is Sprung

       You Wanted Spring? 

       Too Cold to Build a Snowman 

       Simply a-MAZE-ing 

       Let There Be Music

      Ommadawn 

      The First Robin of Spring? 

      Be My Valentine, 2018

      Curling AND the Super Bowl

      I'm No Escher... 

      Hark! the Herald Angel Sings

      Nativity Scene, 2017

      Planning an Escape

      Caught in the Net

Surf's Up 

Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe, Part 2

      Diagonally Warped in a Parallel Universe

      Pikachu

      Happy New Year, 2017

      O Tannenbaum

      Nativity Scene

Special Weather Statement

Think Tropics

Qubix

Valentine, 2016

Paisley'd Circles

Happy New Year, 2016

The House of the Rising Sun

Easter Eggs

A weak pattern in the blowing snow.

The same pattern after some melting

New Year's Champagne

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

Happy Valentine's Day

Cabaret

A Christmas Tree (my first effort)

How Bad Has Covid-19 Been in Ontario (in comparison with a few other jurisdictions)?

To hear the mainstream media talking heads, Covid-19 has been terribly mishandled in Ontario. Because I'm reading about high case loads in so many jurisdictions, I wondered how bad the situation has been in Ontario compared with other places. See the table below.

First I compared it with Michigan, next door, where there was a massive lockdown early and where I was raised.

Next, I thought (no foolin') "When I moved to London, Ontario, it was about the same size as Des Moines, Iowa, so let's look at Iowa.

And then I added some of the Canadian provinces, along with Sweden, New Zealand, and Vermont (which has low totals in the US).

Despite having done lots of testing, Ontario has had a comparatively low number of total cases and a comparatively low number of new cases per day. Places with lower numbers have been comparatively isolated areas (Nova Scotia, which requires quarantine for anyone entering or returning to the province; New Zealand; and Vermont).

All-in-all, it looks as if Ontario has not done such a bad job of dealing with Covid-19. Other people can do other comparisons (I know mine is far from comprehensive), but I think it's time to view the mainstream media treatment of Ontario's experience with even more skepticism.

Aside: I'm aghast that people are not taking care, distancing, avoiding close-quarters indoors with groups, wearing masks when appropriate, etc. There's no doubt the number of cases has risen as children go to school and young people do more socializing, but compare the traffic on your streets these days with the lack of traffic we saw back in March and April. It's not just kids and young people; we're all going out more and taking more risks.

I'm okay with this. There are trade-offs; everyone takes risks to save money or increase their inconvenience. At home, Ms. Eclectic and I are taking reasonably well-planned risks at times to see friends and relatives (well-distanced, masked, etc.). As many people have noted, isolation and loneliness can be deadly, too.

There are undoubtedly myriad explanations for the differences. But the main point of this post is that the media have been treating Premier Doug Ford and the Ontario gubmnt as if they are careless idiots. These comparisons suggest otherwise.

---

The data are from worldometer, and various gubmnt websites. I'm sure they're not always strictly comparable, and I may have made transcription errors.

The Gubmnt Must Do Something! This is something.

The title of this post came to mind when I read this morning's headline in the Democratic Party Newsletter, aka The Washington Post*:

Biden plans to move fast on the pandemic and the economy

Quite frankly this whole-hog determination that the federal gubmnt must do something about these two issues bothers me.

Pandemic policies should be and have mostly been up to the states, not the federal gubmnt (similarly here in Canada, it's mostly up to the provinces). The feds can help by collecting and disseminating information [which the CDC and the Timid Tam have failed miserably at doing] but it's not up to the feds to impose nation-wide restrictions. We're wrong to listen to and look to our federal leaders on this issue. So lefties, stop blaming Trump; righties, stop blaming Trudeau and Tam.

Back in January, when China and the WHO were lying to the world about the nature of Covid19, the federal gubmnts could have done more by imposing strict tests and restrictions on international travelers. But instead they called out the ostriches and denied the seriousness of the issue, hid facts, and actually lied about the usefulness of masks.

So now, what is Biden going to do about the pandemic and the economy?

Well, he's going to do something, and that has to be good.

I doubt it. He'll meddle. He'll hire and take more advice from members of the elitist interventionist caste, and he'll claim victory as the pandemic begins to fade next year and as the economy continues to rebound (assuming the Fed doesn't mess up horribly).

Let's hope he doesn't muck up the middle east peace process. He has a chance of continuing the good work going on there.

* Yes, I have subscription to the Washington Post. They have a very low subscription fee for international subscribers, and we are willing to pay that just to get their crossword puzzles, which we print off and do at our leisure.

 

 

What Questions Are Off-Limits for Academia?

• Is it acceptable to ask whether there really was an historical Jesus?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether cold fusion will ever be a possibility?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether Ashkenazim Jews are, on average, smarter than Sephardic or Ethiopian Jews?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether blacks are, on average, better athletes than whites?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether socialism does a better job than capitalism at looking after the poor?
• Is it acceptable to ask just how many people were killed by Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Turkey, the Hutu, the English, Americans or Canadians conquering First Nations people, the Japanese in their conquests of Korea and China?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether members of different racial groups are more susceptible than others to some diseases?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether fiscal policy is ineffective as an economic stimulus?
• Is it acceptable to ask whether, on average, roughly speaking people of one race tend to be smarter or cleverer or have better memories than do people of other races?

You get my drift, I'm sure. ... if you do, please kept reading. Are there some questions it is just wrong to ask in the first place, never mind the answers? How do you decide which questions are acceptable and which ones aren't? And more to the point, how should a university (or any other institution or group, for that matter) set guidelines as to which are the acceptable and which are the unacceptable questions to ask? Is it good policy for universities to say, "We'll wait until we see the answers"?

What prompts me to ask these questions? This column in a recent London Free Press. 

It says, in part,

This week, Western’s psychology department finally called [the late Phillipe] Rushton’s research for what it is. Racist...

“Academic freedom and freedom of expression are critical to free scientific inquiry,” the statement said, “However, the notion of academic freedom is disrespected and abused when it is used to promote the dissemination of racist and discriminatory concepts.

“Scientists have an obligation to society to speak loudly and actively in opposition of such abuse.”

Would it have been acceptable to the university and to the psychology department if Rushton had asked the questions he asked but had come up with the answer, "There was no statistically significant difference"?

If so, then it must be that what people objected to was his answer, and not his asking the question. If they didn't and don't like his answer, they should have blown him out of the water, academically. However, contrary to the implications of this column, most open minded people who were openly hoping David Suzuki would demolish Rushton in a debate sponsored by the university back then, reluctantly realized that's not what happened. Suzuki's only point was basically, "How dare you assert such things?" He presented zero evidence to show that Rushton was wrong. I note, too, that the linked column provides no references to what I would hope is abundant literature dispute Rushton's claims. I know there's a wealth of literature arguing that he was wrong; but I also know that there is a wealth of literature arguing that he was right.

I will not defend Phillipe Rushton's findings. I didn't like them. I will say, however, that he was always calm and mild-mannered, as the column says, and it was very difficult for someone not up on the literature to argue with him.

More to the point though, is that the recent denunciations and apologies by the Psychology Department at The University of Western Ontario should send a strong shiver down the spines of all academics still teaching there. It says, in essence, "Yes, we believe in academic freedom... so long as we like your results."

It should not be a matter of liking or not liking results. It should be a matter of furthering academic inquiry. If it's okay to ask certain questions only if we like the answers you get, I fear for the future of academic and intellectual curiosity and questioning.