Fauci claims (incorrectly) that the lab leak conspiracy theory is not a conspiracy theory

Here's Fauci being interviewed on MSNBC as part of his book promotion tour (see below). He's asked about the lab leak conspiracy theory beginning at 10 mins. He points out that there's no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) but he's keeping an "open mind" about the possibility that something could be true in the absence of evidence and in the face of considerable evidence for a natural origin.

The most fascinating part of the interview is when he goes out of his way to say that such a possibility doesn't require a conspiracy theory. Really?

Older but wiser?

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.

Oscar Wilde

Like many baby boomers, I sometimes forget people's names and other important bits of information. Sometimes I can't find a word that's been in my vocabulary for decades. These lapses are often temporary but very annoying. It's a sign of age. (I am 77 years old.)

We often make fun of these incidents and consol ourselves with the knowledge that we may be old but we are much wiser than we were in our younger days. We have years and years of experience behind us and over the years we've learned a thing or two that we never understood when we were listening to the Beatles on the radio. We've lived through the Cuban Missile crisis, the war in Viet Nam, the assassination of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, and a host of cultural changes. We've lived in several different countries and we've raised children. All of these experiences have made us wiser, or so we think.

Election Day in Canada: popular vote predictions

The CBC poll-tracker website tracks a number of public opinion polls and calculates a weighted average. The latest numbers have the Liberal Party winning the most votes with the Conservative Party (current government) in second place.

This is a close election so normally you would have to take these numbers with a large grain of salt but the trend over the past month is pretty obvious.

There has been a steady decline in support for the New Democratic Party (NDP) and a steady increase in Liberal support. The percentage of people who say they will vote Conservative has not changed much. It would be truly astonishing if the actual results tonight are much different than the poll results in terms of total votes. (There could be a total collapse of the NDP vote but not a reversal of fortune.)

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Happy 10th birthday to YouTube!

The first video was posted to YouTube on April 23, 2005 [see YouTube]. I took this photo (right) a few years ago near my daughter's place in Playa Vista, California. It's a production facility, YouTube Space LA, on the site of the former Howard Hughes airport.

The main purpose of this post is to give me an excuse to post one of my granddaughter's favorite YouTube videos (below top). She's a big fan of YouTube and so is my two year old grandson—he likes videos of rocket launches (below bottom).

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On moral absolutes and ethical relativism

Last week I commented on whether bigots should be given permission to discriminate against gays just because the bigots belong to a religion that promotes bigotry [The Kansas anti-gay bill]. My opinion is that societies should not tolerate bigotry no matter what motivates people to discriminate. I said ...

I read some newspaper articles, and some blog posts, that stated the obvious. It is totally wrong, all the time, to discriminate against someone based on their sexual preferences. If they use religion as an excuse then they should re-evaluate their religion. There is NEVER a time when an enlightened society should tolerate, let alone legalize, bigotry. I guess it's almost impossible to come out and say this on television, or maybe I'm just watching the wrong channels (mostly FOX and CNN).

What I mean is that enlightened societies will almost always reach a consensus on discrimination against minorities. They will decide that society functions best when all types of discrimination are bad and should not be tolerated.

The problem of anonymity on the internet

There's a little kerfluffle in the blogosphere because an anonymous blogger has been outed. Michael Eisen posted an interesting comment of the episode and I want to add my 2 cents to something he says at: On anonymity in science and on Twitter. Here's the part I want to address ...

A lot of people who I interact with on Twitter, and whose blogs I read, have chosen to tweet and write under pseudonyms. This puzzled me at first, but I have come to realize that there are a LOT of good reasons for people to mask their real identities online.

Anonymity allows people to express their opinions and relate their experiences without everything they say becoming part of their personal permanent record. It affords people who are marginalized or in tenuous positions a way to exist online without fear of retribution. Pseudonyms help create a world where ideas matter more than credentials. And they provide some kind of buffer between people – especially women – and the nastier sides of the internet.

The myriad and diverse pseudonymous voices out there make the internet a richer and more interesting place. Maybe it’s weird, but I consider many of these people whom I’ve never met and whose real identities I don’t know to be my friends.

Here's the problem. I agree with everything that Michael says but there's still something about hiding behind a pseudonym that makes me uneasy. I much prefer dealing with people who use their real names. I grew up believing that it was admirable to stand up and be accountable for your beliefs and opinions no matter what the consequences.

Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that it's a lot easier for a tenured professor to say this than for someone who is in a much more vulnerable position. Michael Eisen also knows this—read his post. That's part of the problem. We understand that the "consequences" of speaking out against authority can be quite severe and we both understand that there's value in hearing from certain anonymous voices.

I guess where I differ from Michael Eisen is that right now I don't think I follow any blogger whose identity isn't known to me. It may be true in theory that ideas matter more than identity but, in reality, there just aren't very many examples. On the other hand, there are lots of examples where people use anonymity to say things they would never say in public even if their identity was concealed.

Does the upside of anonymity make up for the downside? That's the real question. I don't know the answer but I'm leaning toward "no."

I'd like to live in a society where you could never be punished for anything you say or believe. It makes me uneasy to live in a society that accepts the idea that you will be punished for your opinion and sets up ways of permitting people to say whatever they want without having to face any consequences. It seems like that's a way of giving up on the fight for freedom of expression and legitimizing the idea of systemic intolerance.

I try to get my students to speak up during class and express their views and opinions. I think it's an essential component of learning how to think critically. I try and get them to write essays where they defend a controversial idea, even if it's unpopular. I don't think it's a good idea if it becomes the accepted norm that you can only do this if you can be assured that nobody will find out who you are.

(I know most of the people who comment on Sandwalk but there are some who use pseudonyms. There's a good correlation between people who comment anonymously and those whose ideas don't deserve respect. There's also a powerful correlation between those who use their real names and those ideas are worth listening to even if they disagree with mine.

That's doesn't mean you shouldn't comment using a pseudonym. Just be aware of the company you're keeping.)

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God Only Knows by The Beach Boys

The Pet Sounds album by The Beach Boys was released in 1966. The album ranks in the top ten of almost everyone's list of best albums (English/American culture). It's #2 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Tine.

I wasn't a big fan of the album but I adored God only knows, and I still do.¹ It's one of my top ten favorite songs. The song ranks at #25 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Paul McCartney, who played for another popular group in the 1960s, says that God Only Knows is his favorite song of all time.

The music was written by Brian Wilson² and the lyrics are by Tony Asher. I don't know very much about music so you'll have to read the Wikipedia article to appreciate why so many people admire Brian Wilson. Carl Wilson, Brian's younger brother, sings the song.

The video is from Good Timin': Live at Knebworth England 1980. It's one of the rare occasions after 1965 when all six Beach Boys (Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston) are together. I think it's the only video where Brian Wilson is playing on God Only Knows. (That's him on the piano.)

I never saw a live performance of the original Beach Boys but I've seen the Mike Love version twice.

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1. Some atheists will never like this song because it mentions God. That sort of thing doesn't bother me. I can still sing God Save the Queen and the Canadian national anthem without batting an eyelash. There are much more important things to fret about.

2. I just read in the Wikipedia article that he was inspired by the Lovin' Spoonful song You Didn't Have to Be So Nice. That song is also one of my personal favorites but I never twigged to the similarity until now.

Unchained Melody by The Rightous Brothers

Is it true that the music of the Baby Boomers is a whole lot better than the music of Generation-X or the Millennials (Generation-Y)? Of course it's true. Those whippernappers couldn't touch the best music of the 1960s.

Here's a song that makes my top ten list, although I will admit that it's only #374 on 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. I'm pretty sure this must be a mistake. Rolling Stone also seems to have made a mistake with #9.


(For some strange reason, my son and daughter don't seem to appreciate the music of my generation. I don't know where I went wrong.)

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The 25 Richest People Who Ever Lived

This list is biased toward Americans and Englishmen. I'm sure there are many others who deserve to be in the top 25. There are other problems; for example, property values in the middle ages are probably inflated. Nevertheless, it's an interesting list of men (no women). They are ranked by their estimated net worth in 2012 inflation-adjusted American dollars. You can find out more details at: The 25 Richest People Who Ever Lived – Inflation Adjusted.

There don't appear to be any scientists (or philosophers) on the list. Three of my ancestors are on the list (#6, #15, and #16) but I didn't inherit a penny.

1. Mansa Musa I of Mali (1280-1337): $400 billion
2. The Rothschild family: $350 billion
3. John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937): $340 billion
4. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919): $310 billion
5. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (1868-1918): $300 billion
6. Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967): $230 billion
7. William The Conqueror (1028-1087): $229.5 billion
8. Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011): $200 billion
9. Henry Ford (1863-1947): $199 billion
10. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877): $185 billion
11. Alan Rufus (1040-1093): $178.65 billion
12. Bill Gates (1955 - ): $136 billion
13. William de Warenne ( -1088) $147.13 billion
14. John Jacob Astor (176-1848): $121 billion
15. Richard FitzAlan (1306-1376): $118.6 billion
16. John of Gaunt (1340-1399): $110 billion
17. Stephen Girard (1750-1831): $105 billion
18. Alexander Turney ("A.T.") Stewart (1803-1876): $90 billion
19. Henry of Grosmont (Duke of Lancaster) (1310-1361): $85.5 billion
20. Friedrich Weyerhauser (1834-1914): $80 billion
21. Jay Gould (1836-1892): $71 billion
22. Carlos Slim Helu (1940- ): $68 billion
23. Stephen Van Rensselaer (1764-1839): $68 billion
24. Marshall Field (1834-1906): $66 billion
25. Samuel ("Sam") Moore Walton (1918-1992): $65 billion
26. Warren Buffett (1930 - ): $64 billion

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I Have the Least Stressful Job!!!

According to Careercast.com, I have the least stressful job of all jobs.¹ Here's how it's reported in Forbes magazine by web staff writer Susan Adams: The Least Stressful Jobs Of 2013.

University professors have a lot less stress than most of us. Unless they teach summer school, they are off between May and September and they enjoy long breaks during the school year, including a month over Christmas and New Year’s and another chunk of time in the spring. Even when school is in session they don’t spend too many hours in the classroom. For tenure-track professors, there is some pressure to publish books and articles, but deadlines are few. Working conditions tend to be cozy and civilized and there are minimal travel demands, except perhaps a non-mandatory conference or two. As for compensation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for professors is $62,000, not a huge amount of money but enough to live on, especially in a university town.

Another boon for professors: Universities are expected to add 305,700 adjunct and tenure-track professors by 2020, according to the BLS. All of those attributes land university professor in the number one slot on Careercast.com’s list of the least stressful jobs of 2013. The ranking comes from an annual best and worst jobs list that began in 1995 under the auspices of the Wall Street Journal.

Ironically, this article comes out just as some of my colleagues are getting the bad news about their grant applications. Those who weren't funded face the end of their research career while they are still in their 40s. It also comes out at a time when two of my colleagues are starting to think about their applications for tenure. If they are unsuccessful, they will be out of a job in their late 30s with a family to support.

None of my colleagues took a month off at Christmas and I can assure you that all of my colleagues are here for almost the entire summer running a lab full of graduate students, post-docs, technicians, and summer students. The stress of running what amounts to a small business and getting papers published on things that nobody else has ever discovered is a lot more than most people could stand.

Read to the end of the Forbes article to see how the author responds to the many comments she received. The real problem here is that a prominent journalist could actually believe what she wrote in the first place!

I love the comment from Thomas Epps ...

Given your comment above indicating that you realize the source of your article was poor at best. I think you should consider retracting this article. I know that I would be severely sanctioned for writing this type of article with such questionable sourcing in my academic job. If the same is not the case in your job, then clearly your career is not a terribly stressful one. Maybe, "web staff writer" should be on the top of the "least-stressful jobs" list?

See ...
Do College Professors Have Less Stress?
Top 10 Reasons Being a University Professor is a Stressful Job
Before Professor comes Postdoc: Lower career rung, just as much job stress

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1. I have no intention of supplying specific information about MY job but I'm happy to explain why every one of my younger colleagues is under a tremendous amount of stress every single day.

This Is What a Culture of Guns and Violence Looks Like

The man who is advocating gun culture is Louie Gohmert, a Republican member of the United States Congress representing the 1st Congressional District of Texas. Gun control will never be successful as long as a substantial number of Americans think like this. Gohmert won the last election (Nov. 2012) with 72% of the vote.

Change the culture. Violence is never the answer and more violence will never fix the problem. Change the culture and gun control automatically follows, as in most other countries. It's unlikely that tweaking a few gun laws will make much of a difference as long as everyone thinks it's okay to act like a gun-toting vigilante.

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America Is Headed Toward Socialism or Something Much Worse

I thought that people like Chuck Norris were big fans of the idea that America is the greatest country in the world. Apparently I was wrong.

This is an appeal to evangelicals to prevent the triumph of evil and 1,000 years of darkness.

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[Hat Tip: Friendly Atheist]

Redshirting: Holding kids back from kindergarten

 
Until a few minutes ago I had never heard of "redshirting" although I was familiar with the concept. Some parents want to hold their children back from kindergarten (or have them repeat kindergarten) so they will be older and more mature than the other students in their class. A school teacher advised us to do that for one of our children but we adamantly refused. Best decision we ever made concerning the education of our children.

When I was growing up the best and brightest students were allowed to skip a grade if they were doing well. (I took grades three and four in a single year.) It was a mark of achievement to be among the youngest in your class, especially if you were doing as well, or better, than the other students. On the other hand, if you were the oldest in the class then your achievements were discounted because you had an intrinsic advantage.

When I was growing up it would have been psychologically devastating to be the oldest student in the class and not be at the top of the class academically. (That's partly because the oldest students were usually the ones who had flunked a grade.) I wonder if parents who hold their children back have ever thought about the potential negative consequences? What happens if your child is just average and redshirting doesn't work?

Here's a 60 Minutes segment on redshirting. It features two people from the University of Toronto: writer Malcolm Gladwell (B.A. 1984, Trinity College) and economist Elizabeth Dhuey a professor in the Department of Management.

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Countries That Execute Their Own Citizens

 
Most civilized, democratic countries have abolished capital punishment. This is especially true of those countries with a Christian tradition.

The last execution in Canada took place in 1962 and the last one in Mexico was in 1961. Here's a short list of other countries with the last year of execution: Australia (1967), Israel (1962), Brazil (1876), Argentina (1916), United Kingdom (1964), France (1977), and Italy (1947).

[Blue: capital punishment abolished for all crimes; Green: abolished for all crimes expect some committed in exceptional circumstances; Brown: abolished in practice; Red: legal form of punishment]

The United States differs from its geographical and cultural neighbors. Why does the United States still carry out executions in 2011 when the practice has ceased in all those countries with a similar cultural and religious background?

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The Lost Art of Wit and Sarcasm

PZ Myers on Salon reviews a book that I'm never going to read [David Brooks' dream world for the trust-fund set]. Unfortunately he uses language and style that's probably far above the heads of those who need convincing. But it's loads of fun.

I made it almost a third of the way through the arid wasteland of David Brooks' didactic novel, "The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement," before I succumbed. I had begun reading it determined to be dispassionate and analytic and fair, but I couldn't bear it for long: I learned to loathe Harold and Erica, the two upscale avatars of upper-middle-class values that Brooks marches through life in the story. And then I began to resent the omniscient narrator who narrates this exercise in unthinking consumption and privilege that is, supposedly, the ideal of happiness; it's like watching a creepy middle-aged man fuss over his Barbie and Ken dolls, posing them in their expensive accessories and cars and houses and occasionally wiggling them in simulated carnal relations (have no worries, though: Like Barbie and Ken, no genitals appear anywhere in the book), while periodically pausing to tell his audience how cool it all is, and what is going on inside his dolls' soft plastic heads.

I did manage to work my way through the whole book, however, by an expediency that I recommend to anyone else who must suffer through it. I simply chanted to myself, "Die, yuppie scum, die," when I reached the end of each page, and it made the time fly by marvelously well. In addition, there is a blissful moment of catharsis when you reach the last page and one of the characters does die, although it isn't in a tragic explosion involving a tennis racket, an overdose of organic fair-trade coffee, and an assassination squad of rogue economists at Davos, as I was hoping. That's not a spoiler, by the way; the book is supposed to be all about the happy, productive life histories of Harold and Erica, from birth to death, so it's no surprise that at least one dies. It is incomplete, in that the other one survives ... an unsatisfying ending that I could happily resolve with one more bloody page, and that represents the only case I can imagine in which I'd ever ask David Brooks to write another word.

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Inciting Hatred

 
This video is making the rounds. I'm including it here because so many people have been discussing "civility" and "politeness" in the wake of the Tuscon mass killing. In my opinion, it's not lack of civility that's the problem. The problem arises when you start treating your opponents as anti-American and unpatriotic and their ideas as illegitimate (not just a difference of opinion). That's when it becomes reasonable to consider using force to prevent your enemy from destroying the country. You are protecting America against dictatorial traitors and that's exactly what reasonable citizens should do.

Glen Beck is a master of this technique. He should not be surprised if some of his followers jump to the obvious conclusion. Indeed, CUNY professor Frances Fox Piven (78 years old) has been receiving death threats ever since Beck's rant aired on television last November [Glenn Beck's Ranting Sparks Death Threats Against 78-Year-Old Sociologist]. Is anyone surprised?

Why does Glen Beck still have a job?

A note to Canadian readers. Pay attention. This is the real problem, not simple lack of politeness.

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John Lennon (1940 - 1980)

 
John Lennon died on Dec. 8, 1980 when he was shot four times in the back by Mark David Chapman. His ashes were scattered by Yoko Ono in Central Park in New York at the site of the Strawberry Fields Memorial.

That was thirty years ago today. A whole new generation has grown up since then and I fear we are in great danger of forgetting what Lennon and The Beatles did to help change our culture for the better.

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Bill O'Reilly "Discusses" European Paganism

 
I don't watch Bill O'Reilly's show very often so I missed this segment. I find it extremely interesting that a major television network could air such a discussion in the 21st century. To me, it says something about popular views in American culture. It doesn't say that a majority of Americans agree with these idiots but it does say that their point of view is an acceptable part of the cultural mix. That's shocking.

The priest's comments are interesting from the perspective of the accommodationist wars. He claims that Roman Catholicism conflicts with all kinds of things, including socialism. Who knew?

[I haven't been keeping up with financial news. Is it true that Europe is in much worse economic shape that the USA? I didn't notice that during recent visits to Europe and the USA.]

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[Hat Tip: Pharyngula: A priest, a scientist, and a Communist discuss morality]

Free Health Care Clinic in a Country that Needs It

 
Remote Area Medical (RAM) is a group of doctors, optometrists, dentists, nurses etc. who donate their time to setting up free temporary clinics in primitive places where the natives don't have access to affordable heath care.

Here's a video of this year's annual clinic in Wise County, Virginia. Isn't it strange that such an event is held in a country with the best health care in the entire world?



I got this from Jennifer Smith at Runesmith's Canadian Content: This was Wendell Potter's Epiphany. Read her blog.

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The Dutch are p*ssed as well

 
You just can't make this stuff up, ... oh, wait a minute, it's Fox News. Carry on.

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[Hat Tip: Pharyngula