pilowsky

It can take a while to appear. If you click on the button that tells the blank page to appear in another window that will sometimes work. Or when you come back later and access it from your "completed tournaments" area you will see it. It has never taken more than 5 minutes for me.

The point that thepossum makes is that "Seemingly the much touted vaccines have done almost nothing the situation globally". Is this true? There is no doubt that vaccines save lives so long as they are taken. They also prevent spread of disease. Here is a link to the data from NSW showing the effect of being vaccinated on disease and death (page13). Big Pharma gets things wrong sometimes but so does government. So long as companies are working within in a strong regulatory framework to balance risk and profit everything should work most of the time. Problems arise when the political officers believe that they know more about science and public health than people that do. The outbreak in NSW ATM being a case-in-point. Thepossum makes the specific point about vaccination and globally. This is a good point. The failure of wealthy countries to vaccinate (or provide it to) the whole world is generating a massive reservoir where new variants can mutate without interruption. When it comes to vaccination the world is a Curate's egg - good in parts. Omicron is demonstrating what happens when you only clean 10% of the swimming pool.

Botmaster or robot wrangler?

Joan Didion. 23 Dec 2021 age 87. Her time come round at last. Slouching towards Bethlehem.

The same group of scientists from Walter Reed also published this in 2020: https://pubmed.ncbi....h.gov/32868447/ I'll wait for real world results. What they are doing appears to be using a Ferritin nanoparticle as the carrier for multiple types of spike protein. This is a potentially useful approach to making a polyvalent vaccine. As I understand it this approach is similar to other methods for making polyvalent vaccines. The critical part of the interview is this statement

What people need to maintain a healthy and wise society where the weak are cared for takes more than a popularity contest. Otherwise Spiderman would rule America. To illustrate what a poor method polling is for governing take a look at any of the Bridge polls conducted elsewhere on this forum. Anyone that thinks that my opinion about when to bid 2NT is as good as anyone else's may need to rethink polling as a sensible method of governance. Polling is not the same as democracy. Government cannot function without expertise. Even at the height of the cold war, engineers on both sides of the Berlin wall collaborated to make sure the ***** flowed in the right direction. Texas being a notable exception where they have a separate power grid and when it fails the wealthy flee to Mexico where all the cool people live.

The Democracy in the United States - and Australia - operates at a macro level in the same way as a large dysfunctional family. Most of the time things grumble along tolerably. Some people go out and earn money. People contribute to cleaning the home and taking out the garbage to the extent they are able. Sometimes one member of the family decides they need to make a major purchase - a car perhaps. They consult one of the other people - a decision gets made. The others get no say. After a while, one of the people decides that they want to get a job as a stand-up comedian, or get pregnant or take a few years to walk from Kensington to Katoomba. Or become a Bridge grandmaster. And they want major support from the other people for their personal activity. Its moments like these that test the fabric of a society. Democracy is a metal that is hardened in the furnace of difficult decisions. Sometimes it melts. Right now it looks like a snowman in the Sahara.

Bidding contests seem to be quite popular on forums and in newsletters. They typically generate a great deal of excitement and questions about "the right bid". A notable feature is that the answers from the experts are almost always non-uniform. The non-uniformity of expert responses suggests that it is possible to construct an interesting (as in the solution is not obvious and may be a matter of opinion) game. I suggest a duplicate version of Bridge where each team uses their bidding system in an effort to achieve a contract that is as close as possible to "best" double-dummy result. Such a game can easily be implemented on BBO since the infrastructure is already in place.

As I said, I think your insights about Bridge are useful and helpful (to me anyway). I also appreciate the detail and the thought that you clearly put into them. I am not criticising your Bridge judgement. I am trying to provide some insight into the way that your assistance might come across to the "person on the Clapham omnibus" when you comment on the skill level of others. Typically, people seeking assistance do not find comments pointing out that they lack competence helpful. It distracts from the useful messages you are providing. I for one am well aware of my lack of competence. I don't need assistance in having it pointed out. Maybe I'm alone in this. Perhaps others write questions on the Bridge forum in order to have better players tell them they are being silly, lack judgement and skill. It's possible, I wouldn't know, I'm a rather weak player.

"says a lot about ... skill level" - is an unnecessary aspersion. If you want people who are looking for your expert opinion to take you seriously and not be distracted from your important points it may help your cause to leave these comments uncast. This is not the "Paper Chase" and you are not John Houseman.

I just read a chapter from a book about the Cutter-polio disaster. (Paul A Offit: "The Cutter Incident How America's First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis", Yale University Press, 2005) Apparently the incident occurred in 1955 and affected "Western and Mid-western" areas of the USA. It is easy to imagine that people growing up with something like this in the back of their minds, and lacking knowledge about vaccine production, might have greater levels of anxiety about vaccination. Further in the Chapter there is mention of Benjamin Franklin.

The Economist introduced the MacPPP decades ago as an accurate measure of the cost of living because the Big Mac is a (relatively) uniform product. It is mad all over the world and incorporates a basket of essential goods and services. Labour costs. Freight. Agriculture. etc etc. Which is why everyone bangs on about hamburgers and inflation. Personally I'm not fond of Scottish food.

In news just in the Christmas tree erected in Manhattan by Fox media was attacked by an arsonist. Fox news is concerned that it may be the work of Antifir.

I look forward to the time when my skills at Bridge improve to the point where thinking is not required. How about that? A mind game where thinking is unnecessary.

The really strange thing is that none of it makes any sense. Vaccine mandates are a part of US culture. When I visited UNC my children were initially refused admission to the local school because they didn't have all the necessary vaccinations. At the same time we were jokingly (I assumed at the time) being informed about the war of northern aggression. What is new is the nexus between vaccination and politics. Australia is not short of strange ideas - just look at our Prime Minister - but as of today 90% of the population aged 16+ are vaccinated. Here's a link to a Masters thesis relating the US response to the influenza pandemic.

Sure why not. After all alternative facts appear to be the "American way" as well. How about the American way of: Or does that only apply to certain people?

Those who quote clever people really ought to make an attempt to understand what the quote means. Or is this one of those bits of "American humour" that I don't understand"? From NPR (not Fox) WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it. SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation. WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.

Would I have to be cycling while I was playing?

I was just thinking...https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/1470920598339534849

What is "stupidity"? It has nothing to do with education or accomplishment in any field. There's a nice explanation with cartoons here: https://sproutsschoo...y-of-stupidity/ Here's the Editors introduction: https://ms.wearesparkhouse.org/downloads/9781506402741_Editor's%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Reader's%20Edition.pdf Here's an excerpt: BONHOEFFER'S LETTERS FROM PRISON In his famous letters from prison, Bonhoeffer argued that stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice, because while "one may protest against evil; it can be exposed and prevented by the use of force, against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here. Reasons fall on deaf ears." Facts that contradict a stupid person's prejudgment simply need not be believed and when they are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this, the stupid person is self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

To be fair, suspension of disbelief is a psychological skill that people are trained in from birth. Wouldn't it be great if there was a "lone moral agent" who "knows the difference between right and wrong" - Shane, The Punisher or Batman? Or better still, some bloke who was sent by his Father (only son as it happens) to Earth and for some reason decided to stick around and solve the trolley car problem - Superman amongst others. Not only do you suspend your disbelief but you are absolved of all personal responsibility. Step inside that small confessional where the man whose got religion'll tell you if your sins original.

My understanding of the unfortunately named "Defund the police" slogan was that there was a lot more nuance to the campaign that lay behind it. The single largest demographic of police in the USA (could be true elsewhere) is military veterans who are white males. The primary training of this group is not in the area of deescalation and non-violence. Add to this the toxic swamp of firearms in the USA and there is a recipe for fear, loathing and dangerous escalation of conflict that might otherwise be peacefully resolved. What the "defund" campaign sought was a reallocation of funds within the municipal departments responsible for serving and protecting citizens. Not the elimination of law and order.

[hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st%7C%7Cpn%7CEngineering,Priorities,Database,Developer%7Cmd%7C3SAKQJT98765432HDC,SHAQ853DT72CAKT98,SHKJT4D863CJ76542,SH9762DAKQJ954CQ3%7Csv%7Co%7Crh%7C%7Cah%7CBoard%209%7Cmb%7CP%7Cmb%7CP%7Cmb%7CP%7Cmb%7Cp%7C]300|300|The problem is that the Engineering manager isn't the dealer.[/hv]

Negative double perhaps? Inverted minors?

Kind of sad really.