Interesting idea....

A Kentucky swimmer who tied Lia Thomas, the Penn transgender swimmer, has lent her voice to the notion that there ought to be a transgender division in swimming.   At one level, it makes sense--transgender women lack testosterone and thus are at a disadvantage competing with biological men, and yet retain the height/bone structure/muscular structure of men, and hence it's unfair to let them compete with women.  A "trans" division solves that issue.

That said, I think the idea is going to go over like a lead balloon for a number of reasons, all of them centering around the reality that transgender women want to be seen as women, but they generally do not "pass" well as such.  Hence a "transgender" division would be the athletic equivalent of a drag show, which would irritate those with gender disphoria, and probably more importantly, would not sell tickets among those who aren't.

There are no easy answers here.

This one could be bad...

It's not yet breaking into the "responsible" media yet, so take this with a grain of salt, but Tucker Carlson reports that the World Health Organization is pushing a treaty that will give them a huge amount of power over medical care, especially in the area of epidemics.

Now of course, we've got the basic question of whether top down medicine tends to work very well--it's very emphatically not the model that they use at Mayo, Cleveland, Johns Hopkins, and the like--but more importantly, we need to take a look at the record of the WHO and national regulators regarding COVID.

• They missed the fact that coronavirii are transmitted with aerosols, something that any apprentice immunologist could have pointed out. 
• They completely covered for the likely involvement of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese government.
• They tended to try to shut down the alternative therapies that seem to have shown the most promise in helping people deal with this.
• They failed to raise H*** about states sending COVID patients into nursing homes.
• They promoted plans that simply would not work, like "directional shopping", excluding areas from use (ironically concentrating the "plume" of viruses and the people susceptible to them), and the like.
• They ignored increasing evidence that lockdowns and masks were of little use in preventing transmission.  (this probably has a lot to do with aerosol transmission)
• Dissenters, even with wonderful qualifications, were forcefully suppressed

More or less, there was something very interesting going on with the COVID epidemic where public health authorities seem to have had an "inerring" pattern of making the wrong decision and suppressing dissent.  They have, sadly, made the case that there are many great things we can do to deal with infectious diseases, but granting more power to public health authorities is not one of them.

Don't Californicate our.....country?

(time to annoy Hearthie?  Hope she's forgiving!)

OK, as a former resident of Colorado, I'm of course an expert at disliking the problems Californians bring when they emigrate--gangs, drugs, crime, high prices, liberal politics, tofu, and the like.  And yet even I was surprised when I learned that the Portugese are saying, in effect, "Don't Californicate our nation", as hordes of California refugees have arrived in Portugal and are bringing their particular maladies there as well.  It reminds me of a billboard I'm told got put up in Texas saying "Welcome Californians!  But remember you are refugees, not missionaries."

Now of course, there are a lot of Texans in Colorado as well, and natives also disliked the side effects that Texans brought.  I'm reminded of a joke.

A Californian, a Texan, and a Coloradan (Portugese) are sitting in a bar, talking.  Trying to show off, the Californian takes a sip out of a $100 bottle of cabernet sauvignon, throws the rest of the bottle in the air, and shoots it with his MAC-10.  He then says "where I come from, we've got plenty of that."  The Texan then orders a $110 bottle of tequila and does the same.  "Wheyah ahh come from, we've got plenty of that."

So the Coloradan (Portugese) takes a bottle of microbrew IPA (Port), drinks the whole thing, and shoots the Californian and the Texan.

This'll cause them to surrender

The Russians, that is.  Apparently with the withdrawal of western car companies from the Russian market, they're looking to resurrect the old "Moskvich" brand from the Soviet era.  Now as an avid cyclist, I guess I should be ecstatic that they're giving their citizens such a great reason to ride a bicycle, but at -30F in the winter, I think their subjects will be a little peeved.

But with a bit of (bad) luck, somebody in Russia has the design files to the infamous "Trabant" of East Germany, which will make a great partner vehicle to those T-72s that "pop the cork" on the turret when they're hit.  These two vehicles have something in common; visible emissions.  The T-72 has visible emissions because they haven't been maintained much for the past 30 or so years, and the Trabant has visible emissions because of its two cycle engine.  

Maybe they'll fall in love and get married....or am I getting ahead of myself here?  I'd throw flowers to celebrate, but the T-72 would probably explode from the impact.

If you can't blind them with brilliance....

New White House Spokesman Gay Black Immigrant fails miserably at trying to explain to Peter Doocy how, precisely, raising taxes on corporations might reduce inflation.   Now to be fair, I don't envy Ms. Jean-Pierre's task, as the actual answer to what causes inflation is "various things which suppress supply while increasing demand", so there is no simple answer to how this might be.  Really, most sound economists (e.g. not aligned with Galbraith and the like) would argue that the opposite is true, because taxing corporations will tend to reduce the amount of product they produce (supressing supply) while enhancing demand through increased spending.

There is, however, one way in which President Biden's plan could work, and that is if Biden's "tax and spend" plans lead to a recession.  That noted, it seems as if "stagflation" a la Carter is the more likely effect at this point, because demand for petroleum products is fairly inelastic at a time when every move Biden has made will tend to decrease supply.  

Yes, Biden has, in one short year, achieved what it took Carter three years and a revolution in Iran to "achieve".  

Whoa.....

How badly are things going for the Russian army?  Well, it appears that their surrogates in Donbas are starting to bring tanks from the 1940s out of mothballs to try and keep their offensive going.  I'm no great expert on Soviet tanks, but it looks a lot like a T-54 or a modified IS-2, both developed during World War Two.

I'm not against getting use out of old things--some of my cast iron skillets are probably a century old, and I've got a gun and hammers that are likely that old as well, but there is a certain point where sending men to battle in equipment this old is simply signing their death warrants.  

But the people who would do the things documented here  just might not be terribly worried about that.  With friends like Vladimir Putin--may his name be a shame forever--who needs enemies?

Some people doing things right

 Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, confronted with testimony by Janet Yellen claiming that serious restrictions on abortion would victimize African-Americans most, pointed out that he was the African-American son of a single mother who was fairly glad he wasn't aborted and ended up in the Senate.  He then went on to point out that the "single solution" mentioned by Yellen was a fairly depressing message.  What a beautiful "touch" to put Yellen in her place.

(well, not quite in her place, since she still has her job screwing up the country, but rhetorically speaking..)

On the entertainment front, actress Eva Mendes has noted that if she goes back into acting, she'd wait for roles without gratuitous violence of sexuality.  Amazing how having children often seems to do that.

On the flip side, Russia has demanded a formal apology from Poland after their ambassador was splashed with red paint while visiting a Soviet cemetery in Poland this Monday.  My only thought in response is that if Russia wants their diplomats to be warmly received and protected, maybe.....stop committing war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere?

Just a thought.  And if you're a diplomat working for a country that's committing war crimes, maybe....consider working for someone else?  If you're afraid of polonium in your borscht, maybe....walk through the door at the U.S. Embassy and ask for asylum?

There are times when we ought to act on conscience, and this is one of them.  And of course, Putin delenda est!

Interesting....

 This article about a woman who voluntarily (and irreversibly) sterilized herself to avoid the possibility of pregnancy speaks first of all to the Dobbs issue and Roe, but also to the question of "transition" procedures.  How so?  Well, the woman apparently had her fallopian tubes removed completely at age 24, making it impossible for her to ever change her mind.  It is, really, the sterilization equivalent of "bottom surgery", and she notes that the doctors did not ask her if she really, really wanted to make that decision so young.

In other words, the notion that a doctor needs to consult with the patient before doing something irreversible seems to be disappearing, and that has especially bad implications when we consider that many states are protecting (sometimes it seems like encouraging) teens to "transition".   Really, massive lawsuits (or far worse) seem likely as we remove the barriers that historically ensured that "transitioning" people really wanted that done.

Brilliant from the Bee

In this article from the nation's preeminent news source, the Babylon Bee indicates that a man who would murder his own child to avoid marriage just might not be husband material, but could likely be a pimp, brothel owner, or politician, especially of the liberal variety.

And really, that indicates what is at stake with the Dobbs case and the possible repeal of Roe.  If the hellish 1973 decision is repealed, women could end up better off because cads would no longer be able to eliminate the evidence of their sin and avoid commitment.  

On the light side, a joke from a college friend of mine; most men are so afraid of commitment, they can't even spell it right, generally adding an extra "t" to it.

This could be problematic

Congressman Scott Wiener of San Francisco has announced that up to 19 states are planning on offering "refuge" to transsexual youth whose home states prohibit doctors from administering procedures and prescribing medicines to help minors transition.  Now apart from the question of the propriety of transition procedures, and apart from the question of whether those 19 states really will enact things into law (it's a few legislators in each case so far), there's an ugly reality.

Specifically, if you offer a minor "refuge" in another state to do something that's illegal in his home state, federal law--transporting minors across state borders--comes into play.  Plus, the bill he proposes recommends "slow-walking" out of state warrants for the arrest of those involved in doing these things--and that sets state authorities up for more conflicts with federal authorities.

Sounds like a great way of getting a few zealous law enforcement officials in California put in jail, whereupon far more of them will decide to change careers because they can't risk their own freedom for the sake of guys like Wiener.

An abuse of science

Here's an interesting column noting that the World Health Organization apparently flubbed one of the most basic questions about epidemiology, the question of transmission and whether airborne transmission is a thing.  Now this is really a question, in my view, of "which hypothesis gets assigned as the null hypothesis?", and there's a corollary question of "if history doesn't strongly suggest one side of the argument as the null hypothesis, what do you do statistically?".  

For the uninitiated, the null hypothesis is the base--the idea you keep if you don't find sufficient evidence to reject it.  If you do not perform a test with adequate statistical strength, you will almost always retain it, even if it's false.

In this case, it was well known that coronavirii transmit through aerosols already, and hence I'd argue that the null hypothesis ought to have been that to some degree, COVID-19 would be transmitted that way.  WHO's estimate that this was false appears to have driven any number of wrong interventions against the disease, sadly, and it's an appraisal that seems to be strongly linked to the reasons why mask mandates (and even masks, H/T Powerline), lockdowns, contact tracing, and the like do not seem to have been effective at slowing or stopping the spread of the disease. 

If it's an aerosol transmission, then you can get it from any number of places and have absolutely no clue about why or where you got it.  That certainly was my family's case.  It also illustrates why admitting COVID patients into nursing homes was so deadly--no matter what precautions you took, it was going to spread simply due to the shared HVAC systems.

The one good thing about this is that it is a good illustration of how irresponsible researchers can "bend" research to their own ends by playing games with which notion is the null hypothesis.  I've seen it a fair amount, obviously most strongly where the taxpayer is paying the bill for the work.

Maybe it wouldn't work

As much as I am enjoying the notion of food poisoning being the cause of Putin's hopeful demise,  upon reading the latest news from the Russian foreign service--claims that the Russian army is attacking a nation that is armed to the teeth, full of Nazis, and developing nuclear weapons--I must conclude that the Russian government has supplanted Russia's fertilizer industry with a massive supply of, ahem, natural fertilizer.  So slipping Putin a Oie a la Depp would probably be less excrement than Putin is already used to injesting.  One has to wonder whether he, in the mode of the Dread Pirate Roberts, has built up his immunity....

But seriously, the fact of the matter is that nations that are actually winning wars rarely resort to "spreading the fertilizer" in this way because they can talk about cities conquered, enemies vanquished, and the like.  Especially funny is the claim that Ukraine is somehow full of Nazis, but none of them have apparently ever bothered to trash a synagogue, set up a death camp, or even steal a yarmulke from a rabbi or harass a little Jewish girl with a ham sandwich.  Wimpiest Nazis ever, and Herr Schicklgruber would be appalled.

My best guess here is that they're hoping that their rhetoric will throw gullible people off the track of what they're really doing long enough to salvage half a decent agreement with Kyiv and, probably more importantly, prevent a day of reckoning with a Russian populace that may someday learn that a needless war against an innocent country has deprived their country of its economy and 22000 + of their sons.

(I am using Ukrainian numbers, yes, as they seem to be closely followed by NATO and U.S. estimates.  They seem to be basically honest)

May that day of reckoning come soon for the Soviet Politburo Russian ruling class.  Putin delenda est!

On the light side....

...an Illinois couple has discovered a six decade old meal from McDonald's in the wall of their bathroom, and amazingly enough, after so long, it was still inedible.   (send it to Putin!)

Also in the "foods I won't touch but will send to Moscow" category, apparently Johnny Depp described his ex-wife as "as full of **** as a Christmas goose".   So completely apart from the question over whether either Depp or Heard is telling the truth in the evidence at her defamation trial, I just have to say that Mr. Depp is a wee bit unclear on exactly how you're supposed to stuff a bird.  But yes, I'd send Depp's cooking to Moscow for Putin to eat.

Hideous picture of nationalized healthcare

In Canada, the wait for routine hip replacements that happen within a few weeks in the U.S. is apparently 15 months--well, they promised 15 months, but 3 years after the diagnosis of operable damage to the hip, a Canadian is still waiting to hear back from their government health authorities.  Thankfully, she was able to go to Lithuania to get it done last fall. 

One wonders how many Canadians are on disability because their national health service isn't getting these important "quality of life" operations done, and what the cost is because these people cannot work.

On a related note, socialized healthcare may be partly to blame for the death of our family friend Sam Perry.  His death came after a large heart attack and about a week in an NHS hospital, but I did not hear anything about stents, open heart surgery, or other treatments typically used in the U.S. to improve the life chances of cardiac patients.  In fact, I'm pretty sure this played a role, as 25% of cardiac patients in the UK wait over four months for these life-saving procedures.

Yes, bypass surgery and stents are expensive, but let's consider the alternatives.  And of course, Putin delenda est!

"Defender of the church", my.....

Apparently Russian forces have installed a statue of Lenin in Ukraine.  So I think we can jettison the notion that somehow former KGB agent Vladimir Putin is working to re-establish religion in Russia (and elsewhere).  Lenin, of course, had unbridled brutality to the churches of the Soviet Union, and hence Putin is showing his hand.  Of course, this is not a surprise to anyone who's been watching the invasion target hospitals, schools, and residential areas instead of military targets.  Real Christians should not be terrorists this way.

Lord willing, when Ukraine triumphs over the Soviet Russian army, that statue ought to be melted down to make chamber pots, yes, with portraits of Lenin and Putin in them.  And of course, Putin delenda est!