Civilization is only a thin veneer. Read Thucydides. Plato thought he could cure the veneer into something solid and lasting. It is an interesting read to the point of silliness.

The great philosopher chezlaw suggests laying vaneer on top of vaneer as the best approach to civilisation.

btw I do hope it was clear I was referring to the the sex pistols 'god save the queen' (and I like hippies)

Yes.

South Korea is where one needs to look right now, to get a close estimate of the actual mortality rate as thus far they have done the best testing.
Still 0.5% is five times deadlier than the seasonal flu. But it is good to know that it ain't close to the 2 or 3 percent figure, that can only be reported.

Neither of my parents can catch this thing this year. 20 to 60 percent of population will.

If I use the lower bound being the 20% figure, I'm calculating 5000 to go soon by an extra cause of death added to the already ways to die. You can run the numbers
for your own land.

It's all going according to the Brahman.

Sex Pistols, now that I can agree with.

Underrated joke.
With a little polishing, this could be a bit.

My mother is 79, and her partner is 80. My only wish is not to pass it on to them, but they are taking every precaution and making that easy. I don't even have to traipse up there for Mother's Day this year.

Caution is one thing; frenzy is another. See the Dreyfus affair about how people react; a good lesson that is soon forgotten and then must be relearn by succeeding generations - but only as necessary. It has been three generations since the Spanish Flu outbreak; two since the depression and more than one since WWII.

* the Dreyfus affair was a political frenzy not disease Related, but still very illustrative.

My folks are in their low 80s. Me and my sister tried so hard to get them to stay in to be safe - hopeless. Then we told them to stay in to keep others safe and it worked like a charm

When things return to normal I might try the same approach with their driving (sorry mum & dad)

Reasonable precautions is all that are required; your older family members will be fine, Charlie and Chez, and everyone else.

They sound like good people. What did they do to deserve you?

Good question. Book of Job?

Costs. While we people are mostly reduced down to costs by the authorities in our society, the foundation is obviously made from the remains of our humanity reduced and packed down into costs.

Civilization is all we have and the reason in the end we will have everything, most important of all wisdom, not just that which is based on suffering but on life long effort to understand the world through the one and only romantic epic, the enterprise of discovery that is the study of natural law. You cannot have science or math without civilization.

I remember Thucydides the realist, the father of scientific history, my fellow Athenian from the distant past. 25 centuries separate us. He lived in interesting times witnessing the glory and defeat of Athens. Athens seemingly never recovered from that. However this play is not over yet because i recall what Athens gave to my childhood and it is precious. Some forms of victory are possible much later than one could ever imagine. But do not ask a cynic to argue that.

I remember his objective nature, his attention to detail and the study of the human condition but also an ever present lack of optimism. I salute his scientific approach to history. But in the end in my opinion he let the time he lived in and things that happened to him to mark his viewpoint with cynicism. A plague and an irrational war after the most glorious of times will do that to a man. Witnessing that democracy needs wise leaders but leaders can also be dangerous to democracy as others noted, however true must not be enough to turn you into a cynic about democracy itself. Ultimately the strength of democracy is not just its leaders but the wisdom of the public that selects them. To think that the public can not improve and become wiser is a cynical position.

This is a special man that aims to teach us about the human nature. I cannot compare our time with his. He did witness suffering and failure and his greatest gift is to make us remember how all can go wrong so easily when fear and not reason dictates choices. A man that doesnt have science and math at his core but only in his peripheral education will forget optimism though in his work.

The ultimate gift of civilization is science. Science teaches you more than everything to not be afraid of darkness, to pursue against odds the impossible, to never feel defeated by a problem as long as you still care to bring clarity.

I will combine Archimedes and Thucydides, Alexander the great and Aristotle among many others. I will observe all and see what each teaches us about the human condition. In the end you have no choice but to want to be objective, a permanent student of natural law but also an unchained optimist with relentless brilliance against all odds. Dare to dream big and embrace what is possible, synthesis, resent cynicism but learn from suffering and failure, never allowing it to lead you to the conclusion this, to be here witnessing all, is anything but a giant miracle.

Instead i will paraphrase the line from a recently lost great one, Freeman Dyson, " This is the most interesting of all worlds and it is our purpose to make it so."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides

if by relativity V (->) -> Time+, then racing thoughts can send a mind to the future. Every few years I share this postulate and not one person has refuted it.

So how come you haven't won the lotto yet?

Bravo! Bravo! May you rest in the arms of unchained optimism and do your small part to make this "the most interesting of all worlds."

One in which objective means subjective? It can compete for supremacy with the factions that made literally mean figuratively.

I've noticed the rise in popularity of the use of "period" as a rhetorical device lately, ala Michael Avenatti. So I'm thinking "period, period" should be twice as effective and "period, period, period" even better. Ellipsis!


PairTheBoard

Yep. Almost all words seem to be moving to just be emphasis words rather than having actual meanings.

The upside to this is that nobody will be able to communicate anymore. That will be nice.

. *

* That is a period in case you’re having difficulties seeing. Footnote communication/commentary will be the last refuge. Don’t abuse it.

METALLICA - To Live Is To Die (cover)







Metallica: To Live Is To Die (San Francisco, CA - December 7, 2011)






PairTheBoard

Useful update/articleread the whole article)

coronavirus-us-italy-not-overreacting

From above link:

To break away from Italy’s trajectory, we have to respond with stronger measures than Italy. We have to respond in ways that feel like an overreaction. In the past few days, we’ve seen the first US steps that are stronger than Italy’s responses at a similar point in the outbreak — steps like the Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order, the follow-up extending it to all of California, New York’s similar order Friday, and state orders shutting down restaurants and bars. That’s what it will take to give ourselves a chance at a different curve.