Enjoying the view from Limbo
As I have predicted, we are beginning to see a significant rise in the number of suicides, as news about the Pandemic that Ate a Planet continues to dominate the public chatter, and as governments, in a desperate race to exploit the mass hysteria, leap to the rescue with increasingly totalitarian “solutions” and “relief.” An observation: Doesn’t it take the nerves of a...
A few new thoughts on the current state of things, proffered to those visiting this site for the same reason I maintain it, namely as an increasingly rare port in an increasingly violent storm. In other words, these are thoughts for the happy few, we lonely and “socially-distanced” holdouts for reason and civility in a world gone stark raving mad. “We have to...
One of the most disturbing social symptoms of America’s coronavirus epidemic is a malady we may call mathematical hysteria: the inability, and even unwillingness, of millions of ordinarily rational adults to look at the numbers dancing before their panic-stricken minds with any sort of context-related sobriety. And perhaps the ugliest manifestation of this mathematical hysteria is the moral argument that this outbreak warrants...
This American moment looks strikingly similar to the early days of the Trump cult. Much as we saw in early 2016, people who formerly seemed reasonable and reasonably “conservative” are being peeled away from their reason and into media-stoked lunacy over this virus outbreak, and suddenly turning on anyone who dares to espouse the principles in regard to this issue that they themselves...
As America’s mass hysteria pandemic picks up steam, and the U.S. Federal Government warms to the task of bankrupting and enslaving the nation for generations, I have noticed a new uptick — the dreaded “second wave” — in people online trying to justify their irrational fear by citing the “fact” that this coronavirus has a mortality rate eight, ten, or fourteen times higher...
One of the most interesting trends in coronavirus propaganda since the virus hit North America — or rather, since it hit an American news media desperate for a new political strategy for defeating Donald Trump, if we are to be perfectly honest — is the frequent appearance of “shock” stories about celebrities testing positive for the virus. First it was Sophie Grégoire (Trudeau),...
Somehow, even amidst all the global “state of emergency” nonsense about coronavirus, with entire countries moving toward complete authoritarian lockdown and the criminalization of free movement — or rather, I suspect, because of this hyperventilating tyrannical lurch — I am beginning to notice occasional random acts of rationality seeping up through the cracks in our collective submission to the World State’s protective embrace....
I see that I am overdue for an update on conditions here in the new global front in the war on the coronavirus outbreak. As of Wednesday morning, March 4th (Korea time), this country has 5,186 confirmed cases of the virus, with 32 deaths. That makes a mortality rate of around 0.6% — which, again, must be measured against the extreme likelihood that...
Korean authorities have just announced 334 new confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country, bringing the national total to over 1,500. Almost all of these new cases are in Daegu, a city of 2.5 million people a couple of hours’ drive from both Seoul and Busan (the two biggest population areas). And they were completely predictable, as I have explained in previous posts...
I live in Korea, which has the second largest number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, after neighboring China of course. Koreans have a tendency to react with extreme caution and/or outrage, and with near-perfect unanimity, to such highly-publicized concerns. Thus, libraries have been shutting down indefinitely, schools and universities (including mine) are delaying the start of spring semester, and small businesses...
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