The point of the “survey” here, of course, is to goad ignorant people into claiming that doctors can say and do anything they like, by way of treating disease, because their free speech is protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In the United States, the practice of medicine is shepherded by the American Medical Association; it’s illegal to claim to treat a disease without an AMA license.  Generally, we citizens approve of this, as it protects us from being scammed with worthless or even dangerous “cures,” and this is especially important in the Internet age, where QAnon and dozens of other anti-science groups can reach millions of gullible fools with whatever baseless claim they choose.

Having said that, doctors have a certain degree of latitude as to how they go about their work and what treatments they recommend.  I happened to ask one of my doctors if she was bound by AMA regulations, to recommend only the “standard of care,” i.e., what the scientific consensus had determined to be the most efficacious approach, and she replied, “No, I can prescribe anything for which there is a solid reason and evidence that would cause me to believe it to be effective.  I can’t offer voodoo, but I have some leeway.”

Now, let’s apply this to COVID-19.  Considering a) the lethality of the early variants of the disease, b) the threat it poses to our entire civilization, and c) the rapid progress the scientific community is making vis-à-vis vaccination protocols and other safety measures, most doctors are particularly careful to follow the guidelines that are put in place from the world’s top epidemiological organizations.

Tagged with: , , , , ,

What we’re looking at here is people of terrible character.  Trump supporters, by definition, approve of racism, lies, and criminality.

Are they all pedophiles?  Of course not.  But it’s a good bet that every one of them has some enormous moral failing.

Tagged with:

Here’s a brief stand-up comic routine that speaks so wonderfully to the American culture here in 2023.

As you watch it, I’m sure you’ll have the same realizations that I did, i.e., it explains the entirety of Trumpism: I have God-given rights that woke, educated sissies can’t take away, and if that means death and destruction to other people, I simply don’t care.

I also approve of the comedian’s closing statement, which, to paraphrase, is I don’t wish him harm; I simply want him magically removed from civilized society.

Who doesn’t?

The problem, of course, is that “magic” doesn’t exist in the real world.  If we want hateful ignorance removed from our society, it’s going to take hard work, in particular, restoring some level of quality in what’s left of our educational system.  Are we able to commit to that?

 

When we see a video like the one here, in which an Australian reporter dismembers Sarah Huckabee Sanders, we have to think how woefully unprepared we are to enter politics at any level.

When asked how Sanders reconciles the Christian values she claims to have with her allegiance to Donald Trump, one of the vilest people in human history, she dances around the question quite nimbly.

If I were in her place, I’d start talking about the New England Patriots or the chance alignment of Venus, Mars, and Uranus.  Either that, or I’d start to cry.

Tagged with:

The game industry was no match for the legislation that ultimately banned “Jarts,” the lawn game of the late 20th Century, a cross between horseshoes and darts, when a tragic accident took the life of a child.

The gun industry, by contrast, has proven that it can withstand any and all pressure brought against it to limit the carnage associated with civilians, some of them mentally ill, in possession of weapons of war.

Americans are furious, but there isn’t a goddamned thing we can do about it.

Tagged with:

As we can see here, the root of bigotry is fear, at least according to Bertrand Russell.

Unfortunately, American politics has taken us to a place where fear abounds, one in which we’re worried about inflation, China, the “radical left,” and most of all the influx of illegal immigrants.

This “ferocity” toward others acts as an enormous impediment in our quest to come together as a civilization to take collective actions to stem the collapse of our environment.

Tagged with:

When my son was perhaps 11, I took him camping for a few days in the High Sierras with some friends.  We needed to buy permits at the regional ranger station, and I noticed that it was replete with cross-sections of a few of the great old trees that had fallen and had been examined by scientists. What can we learn from biologic history?

I noted that the display didn’t mince words about the fact that the age of the Earth was far greater than the 6000 years, as specified in the Bible.  Here was hard evidence that the oldest tree is about 80K years old, not to mention that we have carbon dating that sets the death of the most recent dinosaurs at about 65 million years ago.

I asked the ranger if, occasionally, there were patrons who vehemently disagreed with the evidence in the displays on the basis of their religious beliefs.

“Constantly,”  she replied, and when asked how she responded, “By immediately changing the subject.  My favorites are: ‘OK, take plenty of water,’ and ‘That’s very interesting.  The black bears are harmless, but stay away from the grizzlies.'”

Tagged with:

All the tragedy in American society: the erosion of the middle class, environmental degradation, gun violence, bigotry, educational collapse, authoritarianism, etc., makes one wonder if there are any areas of improvement over the last few decades.

As suggested in the meme here, the answer appears to be no.

 

Tagged with: , , ,

I met a woman just now who believes that nature always repairs itself.  An example she offered was that our local lake (see left), after several years of severe drought, is now full due to the atmospheric river storms that brought record rainfall to the region. “I’m dry,” she said in a sad voice, imitating what the lake told Nature.  “Don’t worry,” Nature replied cheerfully.  “I’ll send you some rain.”

Not wanting to argue, I kept my thoughts to myself, which are as follows:

The biosphere most certainly does have qualities of resilience.  If we stop dumping poison into a river, fish will eventually return.  But there is no intelligent and beneficent spiritual entity that goes about repairing the damage that ignorant and greedy human beings have been inflicting on the Earth.

Further, the myth that such a being exists tends to offer justification for humankind’s criminally stupid behavior.

Tagged with: , ,

These people certainly made the prosecution’s job easy.

Nailing Trump and the other top architects of the attempt to overthrow the U.S. government isn’t going to be quite as easy, because they’re not stupid enough to commit treason and then brag about it on Facebook.

That said, once these people start testifying under oath, the evidence will be overwhelming, if it isn’t already.

 

Tagged with: ,