Are You Tallist? Or Just Tallish?

You may wonder if you are tallist? Guilty of discrimination against people who are not so tall as you?

And what has this to do with Professor Raymond Cattell?

Well, here is a quick series of questions to help you decide. Are you more comfortable with the position in he left column or the right column of this table?

Asian Flu and Hong Kong Flu v COVID-19

Asian Flu in Sweden 1957

Estimates vary about how many people died in the Asian Flu (H2N2) outbreak in 1957- 1958: probably 2 – 4 million[1], which is rather more than the Hong Kong Flu (H3N2) toll of 1 – 2 million in 1968. Scaled up to total global population today, the Asian flu worldwide death toll was the equivalent of 3 – 6 million people today. And most of them were young, particularly in the first wave.[2] Hong Kong: around 3 million, scaled up.

By way of comparison, how is Covid-19 doing? So far, some 2.2 million dead worldwide.[3]  And most of those deaths (not all, for sure) among the elderly and infirm, who would have had much less life expectancy in any event.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, the world did not shut down in 1957. Or in 1968.

For sure, there will be more Covid deaths. Will it eventually catch up with the Asian flu in terms of lethality? Perhaps. It will probably also overtake the Hong Kong Flu on that test. But in terms of YPLL,[4] it has a long, long way to go to catch up.  In terms of damage done from reactive measures (lockdown etc) it must surely already be streets ahead.

A Track Record:

How much of a surprise should the EU’s handling of vaccines be,  given the track record of EU President Ursula von der Leyen, the former German Defence Minister?

Her modus operandum seems to be to blame others for her own incompetence.

From RT:

In autumn 2017, Germany was literally left without its entire submarine fleet as all of the ships turned out to be either undergoing maintenance or in dire need of repairs. More than half of the Bundeswehr’s tanks were revealed to be unfit for service during the same year.

Dozens of assault rifles and pistols, as well as tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, have simply been stolen from the Bundeswehr on von der Leyen’s watch. The year 2014 – her second year in office – saw the biggest amount of equipment go missing, resulting in the loss of 21 weapons and more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition

From Sputnik:

“Von der Leyen is out weakest minister,” said Martin Schulz, a former German president. “That is apparently enough to become Head of the Commission.”

Her tenure as defence minister has recently come under increased scrutiny in Germany. “The Bundeswehr’s condition is catastrophic,” Rupert Scholz, one of her predecessors in the post, said last week.

Trump Card

I might be missing something, but it seems to me extraordinarily unwise of the Democrats to press for the impeachment of former president Donald Trump, for a number of reasons.

To put these detailed reasons in context, it is worth bearing in mind:

• That Donald Trump has repeatedly outmanoeuvred and outwitted the Democratic establishment in the United States since he first decided to run for office. That is not to say, of course, that he will do so again, but it is worth looking at the track record. You might not like him.  But he has proved to be smart.  Smarter than his accusers, at least.
• The track record includes the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump; he was acquitted.
• Impeachment trials are not ordinarily quick affairs. The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, for example, ran for some two months, during which 41 witnesses were heard[1]. During this time, the Senate was unable to get on with its usual business. If the trial of Donald Trump takes a similar time (and Donald Trump’s legal team might well play every possible card to make it last as long as possible), then the lion’s share of the usual “honeymoon period” of the new president will be derailed.
• Depending on how this impeachment trial is run, it is unlikely to spawn welcome news for the Biden administration in the daily news cycle (see below).
• To secure a conviction, the Democrats will need the vote of two thirds of the Senate. That will mean convincing some 17 Republican senators to vote against Donald Trump. Last time, only one Republican senator (Mitt Romney) was prepared to break ranks in that way.  17 this time? Not likely.

So, how the prospects look?

First, the question arises as to whether there is any jurisdiction. Article 2 section 4 of the US Constitution provides that:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

But here’s the thing. Donald Trump is not the President of the United States. Neither is he

The Guilty and the Innocent

I suspect Cutie, here taking a drink at Loch Phenelry, of eating the leaves off my new avocado tree.

But no more! Precautions have now, belatedly, been taken:

At the Drop of Another Penny

Sometimes it takes quite a while things to get a joke. It was only this week that I realised, for the first time in my life, that the first line of Flanders and Swann’s Transport Of Delight (The Omnibus)[1]:

Some talk of the Lagonda, some like a smart MG

is taken from the first line of The British Grenadiers:

Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules

A case, perhaps, of being so familiar with something that one is slow to see the obvious.

As it happens, I’ve always rather liked The British Grenadiers, the lyrics of which apparently go back to the War of Spanish Succession 1702 – 1713:

Sleepy Joe on the Chaise Longue

We all wish Joe Biden well, of course, as he is inaugurated as President of the United States. But it is hard to be very optimistic. The key signs are not good:

• He is not very smart. Trump exaggerated when he said he came last out of his class at law school; in fact he came 79th out of 87 in the second semester of his second year. You might say, I suppose, that everybody who gets to law school in the first place is reasonably smart, but you really do want someone who is very smart as a President of the United States. And that is something that Joe Biden is certainly not.
• He is far, far too old to be President of the United States. He will be 80 in a wet weekend. The historical record of geriatric leaders is not a good one.
• He is already entirely captive of a series of unwise policies, and probably entirely captive to a coterie of unwise politicians. The moment he takes office, he is committed to a series of political moves required by the Flopsies, but damaging to American interests
• It seems inevitable that he will not inherit a united America. He is not, of himself, a particularly divisive figure; on the contrary has in recent weeks conducted himself with restraint and decorum. And he is good at smiling. But that doesn’t cut the mustard. He faces a very substantial caucus of American citizens who feel – with some justification – that their concerns and aspirations have been swept under the carpet by a suffocating concoction of political correctness, spreading through most of the media (including the increasingly powerful demigods of social media), the public service, and the Democratic party.  It is hard to see that Biden has any plan to deal with this disunity, apart from a generalised policy of suffocation (which history tells us is highly unlikely to work).
• To some degree or the other (how much remains to be seen) he will be dogged by investigations into the corruption of his son Hunter Biden, and his involvement in Hunter’s deals. And probably, by belated investigations into election misconduct by his party. Unhelpfully, there is likely to be a lengthy period during which these matters are suppressed by the mainstream media, but will nevertheless bubble up as a pervasive bad smell from underground.

The End of the Reaction

Handguns drawn in the US Congress!

Surely this must spell the end of Trump’s reputation.

He has outmanoeuvred his opponents time after time, and despite the acrimony of his critics, his presidency has been markedly successful on a number of fronts. But his part in encouraging this riot must surely be unforgivable. He might well say that the fault lies with those who perpetrated election fraud, or perhaps with those who have asserted that this was the cleanest election ever. But nothing excuses rioting within any seat of government.corridor.

Feedback on Covid

Clearly, Covid 19 is a nasty little bug. Not as bad as the Russian flu, or the Spanish flu. About as bad as some other more recent bugs. So what is it that has caused most countries around the world to react so vehemently to it?

The answer seems to be “feedback”.

Not feedback in the sense that it is used by BBC talkshows, obviously. But feedback in the technical sense. It occurs in many contexts. For example, sound amplification. If the settings are not right, a bit of sound is picked up by the microphone, and that sound is amplified through the speakers. What comes out of the speakers goes back into the microphone, where it gets amplified yet again, and round and round it goes. Before you can say, “Jack Robinson” there is a most terrible din. Interestingly, the loud sound that you end up with bears little relationship to the original sound that kicked the feedback off.

Starmer to the Tower?

Keir Starmer has indicated that he wants to bring in legislation to “deal with” people who “spread disinformation” about vaccines. We may safely say that by “spread disinformation” what he means is expressing a contrary view to the official line.

A better idea might be legislation to “deal with” people who propose the abolition of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is an absolutely fundamental element of our constitution, and so perhaps the scope of the crime of treason might be extended accordingly.

I should say that I am not by any means and “anti-vaxer”. The case for vaccinating children against serious diseases seems to me to be unanswerable. There is a much weaker case for vaccinating people against a disease that they might or might not contract, that is likely to be asymptomatic or extremely mild if they catch it, particularly when the vaccine is of uncertain efficacy or safety in a number of material respects. Is it safe for pregnant women? Are people who are vaccinated less likely to spread the disease? Is the disease effective against mutations of the virus? In truth, nobody knows the answer to these questions, in respect of any of the vaccines which have been approved. Personally, I would not be too bothered about taking it. But I respect the concerns of people with different views.