Private Mars Rocket II

Yesterday on Facebook I shared this article in which an Alabama doctor finds herself telling dying COVID patients that it's too late to take the vaccine. I've also seen indications that at least some right-wing opinion leaders are starting to advocate for their followers to get vaccinated. Unfortunately, it's probably too late for many, for reasons medical and sociological.

The medical reason is simple - if you get your first shot today, it's 3 to 5 weeks and potentially a second shot before you become fully immunized. Given the rate of spread in the US hotspots and the logistics of life (people aren't going to drop everything and run to a pharmacy today) many people are going to get infected before immunization kicks in.

The sociological reason is less simple but sadder. Many of the Fake News crowd are heavily emotionally invested in their stance. The book 1984 to the contrary notwithstanding, if you've been beating one drum for months, suddenly beating another drum does not cause immediate change. Most of the Fake News crowd will find a different source of information that tells them what they want to hear.

Alas, many of the unvaccinated will get sick and die before this thing is over.

These would both be a lot funnier if they weren't true.

1) I’m not Sith, I’m Alt-Jedi, clarifies Darth Vader.

2) The truth about the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit:

Like the label on the tin says:

1) Ever wonder why those Nigerian 419 scams are so poorly written? Well, this guy has the answer. (tl;dr = "That's the point," he replied [about the scams]. "The idea is to get you to give them access to your credit card and bank account. Someone with an I.Q. over 30 is not going to give them that. It's a waste of time to start a correspondence with someone who isn't really, really stupid.")

2) Found via the Internet - the profession of Knocker-upper. No, it's not somebody who gets people pregnant - it's somebody who knocks on your door to wake you up in the morning.

3) Charles Sheehan-Miles announces that his latest opus, A Song For Julia, is now available for purchase.

Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that "a lie will get halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes tied." Nowhere is this more true then on the Internet. A certain Libertarian of my acquaintance sent me to this link: Wisconsin Judge Rules No Right to Own a Cow or Drink Its Milk. He was in high dungeon over "tyranny."

Well, this didn't pass the smell test, so I used my critical thinking skills and Googled "Mark and Petra Zinniker" (the losers in the case) and found out that:

1) They were running a dairy farm, providing "owners" of cows raw milk from "their" cow. [It's not at all clear how much "ownership" the absentee owners really had, if any.]

2) In September, more than 30 people from Walworth, Waukesha and Racine counties were diagnosed with a bacterial infection from consuming raw milk traced to the [Zinniker] farm. The majority were children, and one was hospitalized.

3) The ruling actually said (PDF), that:
A) The cases cited by the Zinnikers didn't prove their point
B) The whole issue was irrelevant because the Zinnikers weren't in trouble over their cow, but over running a dairy farm (emphasis in original)
C) So the judge was not going to rule in their favor.

In short, the whole premise of the original post was wrong. Yet links to it are the entire first two pages of the Google search.

So, over at Simberg's Flying Circus, they are arguing that adjustments applied to the raw temperature data at Darwin, Australia, prove that Soylent Green is People! climate change is a hoax. To say that their are a number of problems with this logic is somewhat of an understatement.

First, finding one "bad" record out of thousands doesn't really invalidate anything. Second, as discussed here, the analysis of the data is flawed at best. Third, as discussed here by an actual climatologist, the history of the Darwin station in particular is problematic. Fourth, the lack of data points in general for northern Australia is a problem - as it happens the only legitimate one.

But here's the real issue. To restate the original rule: The problem with stupid people is that it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to refute their stupidity. Therefore, most people don't bother - so the stupidity just keeps getting repeated with no response from any smart people. And therefore the semi-smart people believe it.

So now, instead of discussing what to do about a warming climate, time and effort must be diverted to arguing about one data point in a sea of data points. You wonder why climatologists get snippy with and about their critics?

ETA Do climatologists falsify their data? No.

Profound thought of the day, from MWT (from a comment on Stonekettle Station):

The problem with stupid people is that it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to refute their stupidity. Therefore, most people don't bother - so the stupidity just keeps getting repeated with no response from any smart people. And therefore the semi-smart people believe it.