Monthly Archives: February 2020

One Coronavirus Benefit: Homeschooling

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

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Based on the WSJ headline, I was going to say something like “watch these students thrive.” Kind of like the city that took everyone off social security and saw a surge in retirement savings. Anyway, this schooling issue is in Hong Kong. They’d have phenomenal results regardless of what they did.

Concerns about coronavirus have led to a two-month school closure for the city’s 800,000 students, prompting a crash course in digital learning.

Instead of calling off lessons, many schools expect students to keep up their work online, sending them assignments to complete and submit for grading. Six-year-olds are writing nonfiction books and toddlers are having live video interactions with nursery-school teachers.

The academic experiment has children and their parents, many of whom also have to work at home because their offices are closed, crammed into the same space. It’s a potential harbinger of what might face the U.S. if the virus continues to spread.

Always look for outside examples. Just don’t expect US kids to write books, or even read many. It will be interesting if the HL schools discover this approach works better and switch to it permanently.

He Must Read TPC

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

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I’ll take the credit for lighting the fire under Trump with yesterday’s column. His nCoV presser is supposed to start at 6 this evening. More on that, after the fact and if warranted. The loyal opposition lamented earlier that he didn’t do enough. Now, maybe they’re getting what they want. Maybe it’ll be a little more – another state of emergency might help with some non-pandemic items. Hope.

Reality v The Washington Post

25 Tuesday Feb 2020

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Read this post from Jeff Bezos’s blog. The way they see it:

Step back and think about all of the ways the preceding paragraph reveals the hollowness of key aspects of Trump’s rhetoric.

We can begin with Trump’s continued insistence that Russia didn’t assist him in 2016. It did, as established robustly in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s assessment released in April.

The truth, if Nunes is even partly correct, then there was massive falsification in the Mueller report. Er, robust falsification. Maybe with a little robust prosecution to follow? If so, the WaPo will spin that as climate change or something.

Going Viral – with TPC

25 Tuesday Feb 2020

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M-m-m-my CORONA! Deconstructing a Viral Construct (or Two)

 

I may have been remiss not to mention the Novel Coronavirus 2019 on these digital pages before. As Pop Smoke would have said, “My bad!” A song to get us in the mood for a pandemic!

…

When you gonna sicken me, s-sicken me?

Is it just a matter of time, CORONA?

Is it q-q-quarantine, q-quarantine?

Or is it just a hack in my throat, CORONA?

♭…

*Deepest, deepest, low-grade fever apologies to Doug Fieger, Berton Averre, and The Knack.

Over at Freedom Prepper – which is slowly rebounding(!) – I have been covering the vicious little bug for a few weeks now. Check that out – pretty much any recent link or blurb. There’s a lot to this epidemic and a lot we are not being told. Let’s get this out of the way: I think it’s either about to blow over or about to blow up. Some tips, in case it’s the latter. And, if you trust “your” government, that in China, the mainstream media, the WHO, etc., then please keep track of the “official” damage. The last time I checked the math, on Friday, February 21st, 2,233 of the related (reported) deaths, out of 2,250 total, were in China. That’s 99.244%. The vast majority of cases and of recoveries are also in Asia, most being within mainland China.

Let’s get this out of the way, too: while it appears the nCoV19 can infect nearly anyone (it’s a cold virus strain, BTW), it also appears to be much more dangerous to Asians. And, from what I’m hearing, it really savages the Asian male population. But, don’t take my word for it:

…

 

READ THE WHOLE THING AT TPC

 

UPDATE: A brand new study in the journal Antiviral Research, Volume 176, April 2020, 104742 appears to validate the theory that the nCoV19 was in fact engineered in a lab. The spike glycoprotein of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV contains a furin-like cleavage site absent in CoV of the same clade, Coutarda, Valle, de Lamballerie, et al.
Abstract*

In 2019, a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infecting Humans has emerged in Wuhan, China. Its genome has been sequenced and the genomic information promptly released. Despite a high similarity with the genome sequence of SARS-CoV and SARS-like CoVs, we identified a peculiar furin-like cleavage site in the Spike protein of the 2019-nCoV, lacking in the other SARS-like CoVs. In this article, we discuss the possible functional consequences of this cleavage site in the viral cycle, pathogenicity and its potential implication in the development of antivirals.

**This may be good news, as it could lead to a vaccine and could also lead to the discovery of the furin cleavage spikers. Also, Chinese sources have affirmed that the bug DID NOT original at that fish market in Wuhan. Never believe the initial (official) story. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3051981/coronavirus-did-not-originate-wuhan-seafood-market-chinese

More Benefits of Academic Inclusion

24 Monday Feb 2020

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More Chinese spying. Also in Boston. Hotbed?

When a researcher from a Chinese military academy applied to study with celebrated Boston University physicist Eugene Stanley, he said her affiliation didn’t raise red flags.

“I’m not interested at all in politics. I’m a scientist,” said Mr. Stanley, whose wide-ranging research has included using artificial intelligence to decode financial markets and applying statistical physics to prevent diseases.

…

A range of U.S. agencies, from the Defense Department to the National Institutes of Health, have sounded alarms over Beijing’s alleged attempts to tap U.S. university expertise to boost China’s military and technological competitiveness.

U.S. officials accuse China of targeting academia, including by sending military researchers to American labs and using talent-recruitment programs to attract to China top-flight scientists, entrepreneurs and experts, as well as their intellectual property.

Yet, the Trump and the Mick still want more migrants. And, could that AI also be used to say, track or spread diseases? Heck with it, it’s XFL season!

Langley Barbie

24 Monday Feb 2020

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I need not even consult Tom Ironsides on this one. More (and more and more) lies from DC.

Walder started at Langley in 2000, at the age of 21, eventually becoming an expert in al Qaeda and chemical weapons and interviewing captured terrorist associates in the Middle East. Although she didn’t exactly look the part of a Middle East scholar, Walder writes that she had been terrified of Osama bin Laden for years, having caught a harrowing television interview with him in 1997. Then the unthinkable happened: That very same man attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

Bullshit.

Meanwhile, in the months after 9/11, Walder says, the White House was only interested in intelligence that linked al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein. The problem? There wasn’t any.

Then, “The Girl” left the CIA FBI. In the brief time that she was in the Bureau, she might have learned that OBL was never charged with anything related to 9/11 as, like Saddam, there was nothing to link him to it. BTW, the real masterminds are still out there.

I Think I Can Explain

24 Monday Feb 2020

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A lot of Chinese spies tourists in Florida lately.

In total, four Chinese men have been arrested for trespassing and taking photos at Naval Air Station Key West since September 2018, and two Chinese women have been arrested for trespassing at Mar-a-Lago since March 2019.

“Coincidences take a lot of planning,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.

Maybe. Or maybe it’s all literary. I have no idea about Mar-a-Lago, but the NAS visitors obviously wanted to see where Tom Ironsides crashed that Dassault Falcon in Shaded of Cuba (THE SUBSTITUTE). Ever wonder where the plane came from? You’ll find out soon enough, along with whatever became of their passenger.