Powerless

For the first time in days, the sun has been shining. Hurray! Apart from being good for the garden, and for my spirits, that should charge up my battery.

All was going swimmingly until about 12:30, when the battery stopped charging at about 74% full.

What’s going on here? The sun is still shining away merrily. So the poanels are generating away. However, it seems that some algorithm is now diverting pretty all of the excess power from my solar panels to the grid, instead of charging my battery up to 100%.

I wonder if it’s anything to do with this? The majority of the power being generated right now in the other States is from burning coal. Except for Tasmania, which is lucky enough to have hydro.

Protesting against shampoo for greasy hair

I have been saying from the outset that the UK government, and others, always needed a vaccine. The vaccine would not need to work; all they needed to do was to say that the vaccine is working.  The stupendous success of the Covid propaganda campaign has been that an awful lot of people, perhaps the majority, will believe any old rubbish as long it is pumped out by a significant majority of the media and the politicians.

Happily, the number of deaths from Covid 19 in the UK has been falling. Surprise, surprise, the government claimed that this is because the vaccines are working

There may be some truth in that. It is hard to tell, because the joint efforts of governments and the social media giants have been to censor any even-handed analysis of the situation. Here in Australia, the police have now joined in the effort. Following a significant protest in New South Wales, the police there have been seeking out and fining those who have taken to the streets to protest against the Covid narrative, and say that if it happens again, they will arrest the lot. Very Hong Kong.

It very probably is the case that the vaccines reduce the severity of the disease to those who have been jabbed, or at least double jabbed. But there are other explanations as to why not so many people die from Covid these days, including:

• it has always been the case that the vast majority of Covid deaths occur among elderly people, who are close to death in any event. There are only so many of those, and once they are dead there is only a much smaller number of people who reach that state of vulnerability;
• the UK may well now be approaching herd immunity. The evidence appears to be overwhelming that herd immunity is hugely much more effective than the vaccine in preventing the illness.

Meanwhile, there does seem to be mounting evidence that the vaccine is not universally a good idea. Governments refuse, of course, to publish data as to how many people have died within 28 days of a Covid vaccination.[1] A more pertinent figure might be how many people have died within two days of a Covid vaccination, since it appears that quite a number of the fatalities caused by the vaccine occur within 48 hours. Estimates vary. Dr Peter McCulloch[2] reckoned a month ago that in the United States the Covid vaccines had already killed about 50,000 people. Another estimate puts it at somewhere between 110,000 and 220,000 US deaths from vaccines to date.[3] That is quite a lot of people. It might be an overestimate, or an under estimate. Even if the actual figure is much lower, or even much, much lower, any other vaccine would have been pulled from the market in an instant if it did such damage.

Cock-up, Conspiracy, or Something Inbetween?

The figures as to how many people have so far been vaccinated against Covid 19 are fairly well accessible. About 2 billion people have been injected. The figures as to how much we have paid for this are harder to get to grips with. Governments like to say that the vaccination is “free”.  Clearly, it is nothing of the sort, even if it is “free at the point of delivery”. We pay through our taxes even if we do not pay at the jabattoir.  Probably, in the Western world, we are paying on average something like $20 a dose, not counting what is paid to the doctors who do the injecting. Some people pay much more to get jabbed privately.  The Russian and Chinese vaccines seem to be cheaper. Most people have more than one dose. And so, a broad, ball park guess might be so far we have paid, or will be paying, for the doses administered so far, around $50 billion. In less than a year. Let us be conservative. This business is worth about $50 billion a year.

That is a lot of money.  There are not a lot of businesses generating $50 billion a year that are free from some jiggery-pokery, as people try very hard to get their hands on a bigger slice of such a fat cake.

As far as I can tell, most immunologists take the view that the world’s response to Covid 19 has been, at least in some respect, something of a scam.  Not many of them say so in public, of course: it is more than their job is worth. There are a number of interesting interviews available in which eminent immunologists who have spoken out, and have said just that. But not many of their peers say as much openly: why is this? It is, they all say, because sources of funding in this field of science (as in some others) have become highly politicised. Or should we say highly commercialised? These people say that there is really no difference between the two. They say, plausibly enough, that commercial interest is very easily turned into political power, particularly in the World Health Organisation.

The Wheels on the Bus…

I was asked by The Telegraph in London to write a short piece about the current state of affairs in South Australia.

Which I did.

To my surprise, they put it on their front page. The last time I looked, there were over 500 comments.

For a relatively small city, Adelaide ges a lot of interest.

Working on Maggie’s Farm

I had my music set on auto earlier today, and up popped Bob Dylan. Ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more, he sang. 56 years ago.

And that’s the thing. It was a rare and magic half century. Bucking the usual trend, us baby boomers have been able, pretty much all our lives, to do whatever we like. We did not work on Maggie’s farm.

But the kids today! They seem to be all too keen to climb over each other in their eagerness to work on Maggie’s farm. Not only that, like poison ants, they swarm all over anybody who tries to escape the farm, and either neutralise them or drag them back to the work.

No more flirting, says Maggie. And put on a mask, and get injected with some RNA. Don’t fly, or drive a car unless it is powered by a battery made by the slaves in China. In fact, don’t go anywhere at all. And while you’re at home, no jokes (they might offend someone). And kneel down.

Racing Smart

From MotorSport interview

I see that Carlos Reutemann, the Argentinian racing driver, died this week. Boots off, happily for him. And I also see that his old boss, Patrick Head, remarked:

I wouldn’t say sophisticated, but quite an educated person for a racing driver.

Sir Patrick Head, son of Brigadier-General Michael Head, on the other hand was particularly well educated, at Wellington and then University College London. He has had a highly successful career as Technical Director at the Williams team (which he had co-founded) when Williams was winning world championships. Recently, he has returned from retirement to give a bit of help to Williams, who were languishing at the back of the grid, and I am pleased to say that he has significantly revived their fortunes. Good for him.

I spent one of the better evenings of my life chatting with him over dinner a while ago. He was excellent company, with interesting stuff to say and an easy manner.  As I recall, he had only fairly recently married his Brazilian wife, and he told me that whilst she spoke English, he did not have a word of Portuguese. I suggested that he might invest a week of his life doing a total immersion language course, at the end of which he would probably be able to get by passably well in Portuguese, which would come in handy when meeting his wife’s family and friends in Brazil. I knew about these total immersion courses, because I had qualified as a teacher at the Berlitz School shortly after leaving university, and then in France had been part of the faculty on these total immersion courses, and seen the results that they achieved.

Did he ever take me up on the suggestion, I wonder?

Good game, good game

The football is on again, in the shape of the Euros. This time, so far, England is doing quite well, and has recently beaten Germany (an objective that seems to be quite dear to the English heart), and then trampled all over the Ukraine (less fun, as the Germans will tell you). We are in the knockout stages, where there has to be a winner in every game, and so if the teams are drawn at full-time, they have a penalty shootout.

I am neither an expert nor a fan of football, but it seems to me that they could do better than this. Would it not be more fun to change the rule so that, if the parties are drawn at full-time, they could have some extra time with each side being required to take off a player with five minutes. The winner would be whoever scores first. In the unlikely event that neither side has scored by the time they get down to just the goalkeeper on each side, then they could have their penalty shootout.

Indeed, such sudden death extra time might be more entertaining than the first 90 minutes? Every five minutes, a hooter goes off. The cameras instantly switch to the managers on the touchline, or their gophers, each holding up an electronic board showing the number of the player who must instantly depart the pitch. Then we cut to the players who have been dismissed!  Will they look relieved? Disappointed? Defiant? Will they remonstrate as if they have just been dispatched by Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link? The first two or three departures probably would not change the nature of the game that much. But by the time they get down to 6 aside, 5 a side, 4 a side or so, who knows how much fun there might be to be had?  When the goalkeepers come out to join the attack?

Hamilton when the Music Stops

Apparently, the Mercedes Formula One team has just agreed to pay Lewis Hamilton some £80 million for driving for them for the next couple of years. £80 million. That’s £40 million a year. A very hefty salary.

Why would they do that? Formula One already has 3 ex-world champions driving around in the middle of the field and in their middle age: Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastien Vettel. None of them have been at the sharp end of the grid for some time. But as far as I know, all lovely chaps, and probably enjoying themselves.

And I have never met Lewis Hamilton. Perhaps he is a lovely chap too.  But clearly he is at the end of his racing career now, and here’s the thing: why does he insist on dressing up as if he were a drug dealer? It really is not a good look.  How is that going to persuade people to buy Mercedes cars? Drug dealers drive BMWs or, if they are really successful, Lamborghinis. They are never going to drive a Mercedes.

It is not as if the McLaren team need Hamilton any more. They have George Russell available, and the evidence is that George Russell is not only just as fast as Lewis Hamilton, given the same car, but he does not look like a drug dealer at all. He seems to be much more personable. Image-wise, George Russell is to Lewis Hamilton what James Bond is to Austin Powers. And I am sure that he does not cost £40 million a year.

Saddam Hussein and Covid: the unknowns

The death of Donald Rumsfeld last week got me thinking about Saddam Hussein and Covid.

Rumsfeld was famous for what he said about knowing things. He had three categories:

Known knowns. This is the stuff that we know about.

Known unknowns. This is where we know that we don’t know. We know that someone is going to win the Euros this year. We might hope it is England. Some, like the Scots, might hope that it is Italy. But however much we stomp and cheer, and try to persuade ourselves that it is in the bag for this or that team, the truth is that we do not know who is going to win. And we know that we don’t know. We just hope.

There were then his unknown unknowns. This is the stuff that comes along and hits us on the back of the head unexpectedly. We didn’t know that there was a question, let alone the answer.

What Rummy (can we call him Rummy, as his friends did? He is hardly going to complain now) didn’t mention is what he might have called the unknown knowns. The stuff that we think that we know, but are wrong about. Like the drug thalidomide. We thought it was perfectly safe but we were wrong. It seemed all right at first, but then, nine months later, pregnant women who had taken it started giving birth to deformed children. Or, in Rummy’s case, the Second Gulf War, in which the “coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq on the basis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that it was about to unleash. Rummy was big into that; he thought he knew. But he was wrong. There were no weapons of mass destruction. A very large number of people were killed in that war, on all sides, for no very good reason.

eMusic? Eeeeeeeeh!

It appears that an outfit called eMusic has been deducting the sum of $107.88 p.a. from my PayPal account for some years. When I queried it, they told me (a Jay Mallari) that I had signed up to something called eStories. I have never even heard of eStories, let alone used that service, whatever it is.

Given their reputation (see below), I wonder why PayPal let these people use their service?

Mid-complaint. We will see if they refund…