Author: VD

“Easter” means “Resurrection”

A poster asked about Easter on SocialGalactic:

Why do churches say Easter? Isn’t Easter a pagan holiday? I’ve started to say Resurrection Sunday at church and ppl ignore me.

Easter is not a pagan holiday. That’s atheist nonsense that requires an almost-complete ignorance of literally every foreign language but one. While there is a possible etymological link to the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess named Eostre for whom there is absolutely no evidence outside of the writings of the venerable, but inventive Bede, but since the Germans use “Easter” too and English is partially derived from German, the word is much more likely linked to the old German word for resurrection, which is Erstehen.

One of the earliest appearances of “Easter” in English is in the Tyndale Bible, which actually refers to Ester. Remember, the conventional accusation about Easter being a pagan holiday concerned Ishtar, an Akkadian goddess of love and war, but that was never a viable explanation because none of the other European languages have any possible etymological link to a pagan holiday. Their Paschae, Pasqua, Pâques, Pascua, etc. all trace back to Passover.

So, the usual suspects dug around the history books and came up with Eostre, who was not a German goddess and for whom there is no evidence in the German linguistic record. But they did posit – or to put more clearly, made up – a nonexistent precursor goddess to a probably-invented goddess, whose nonexistent holiday could theoretically have been coopted by English and German Christians in the Sixteenth Century while celebrating the Erstehen on Paschae.

Needless to say, this makes absolutely no sense to anyone who is capable of understanding the conventional ordering of cause and effect. Note in particular that the first and only known reference to Eostre is in 725 AD, and the first known references to Ester and Passover, both of which are English neologisms popularized, if not necessarily coined by Tyndale, were in 1526 AD, centuries after Paskha (πάσχα) was first celebrated by Christians.

From Infogalactic’s Eostre page: a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn is supported both by the evidence of cognate names and the similarity of mythic representation of the dawn goddess among various Indo-European groups… all of this evidence permits us to posit a Proto-Indo-European *haéusōs ‘goddess of dawn’ who was characterized as a “reluctant” bringer of light for which she is punished.

Since Easter most likely means Resurrection, it is unnecessary, redundant, and more than a little spergish to make a point of trying to force “Resurrection Sunday” on others.

Mailvox: deal with it, Boomer

I am a boomer and an ER physician and I agree completely with your prioritizing younger people over older people when resources are limited and given that all other factors are equal. Unfortunately, they almost never are.

Except, of course, they already are now in many countries, and if events follow the expected course, they will be in the USA too. There are 5,000 respirators in the UK available to serve as many as 7.9 million cases. The Italians are already adopting triage practices and other European nations are anticipating the need to do so.

And frankly, this relentless boomer bashing and treating the worst of my generation as exemplary gets really annoying.

This sensitivity is downright amusing. My generation has found the relentless Boomer boomering to be really annoying for as long as we can remember. You Boomers were annoying when you were getting divorced and our friends were returning to elementary school in the fall with haunted expressions and new last names. You were annoying when Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven was named the #1 most-requested song on the main rock station for the 25th year in a row. You were annoying when you first proclaimed 40 the new 30, then 50 the new 30, then 70 the new 50.

And Boomers are still every bit as annoying today. I recently saw a grotesque television commercial that literally showed incontinent old Boomer women rolling around in their underwear, with the tagline OUR BODIES CHANGE, BUT WHY SHOULD WE? The name of the commercial? Of course, it’s AGELESS. Companies wouldn’t still be marketing to the Boomer’s trademark generational narcissism if it didn’t continue to work for them.

The Boomers haven’t changed. They don’t want to change. They are still proud of who and what they are. And that is why the younger generations, particularly Generation X and the Zoomers, will continue to relentlessly despise them. The thing is, we’ve been doing it all along, they were just too self-absorbed to even notice. But now that the media culture no longer caters solely to them, they’re shocked to discover that they weren’t considered cool, they aren’t admired, and no one else wants to be like them.

17 games is go

I hate the concept, of course, as well as the expansion of the playoffs, but no one asked me. In any event, the NFLPA approved the new CBA agreement with the NFL owners in a very close vote:

NFL players voted to approve the new proposed collective bargaining agreement, which signals 10 years of labor peace, increased revenue share for players, added benefits for former players, an expansion to a 17-game NFL regular season and more playoff teams.

The 10-day voting period closed at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday night. Owners voted to approve the new CBA on Feb. 20.

The NFL Players Association issued the following statement:

“NFL players have voted to approve ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement by a vote tally of 1,019 to 959. This comes after a long and democratic process in accordance with our constitution. An independent auditor received submitted ballots through a secure electronic platform, then verified, tallied and certified the results.”

It’s not all bad, and in fact, it helps the average player quite a bit. But it’s still sad to see the records of yesteryear rendered even more irrelevant as what was left of the league’s historical continuity is further destroyed.

If you’re not convinced Q is real

Consider this bit of obvious paid hasbara at CDAN:

5:26 PM
Blogger Yaccub said…
QAnon conspiracy is a fever dream of sick people with dangerous urges. If you Fetishize QAnon you’re likely the problem.

5:26 PM
Blogger Yaccub said…
QAnon conspiracy is a fever dream of sick people with dangerous urges. If you Fetishize QAnon you’re likely the problem.

5:26 PM
Blogger Yaccub said…
QAnon conspiracy is a fever dream of sick people with dangerous urges. If you Fetishize QAnon you’re likely the problem.

Someone is observably going to a lot of trouble to convince people that Q is not legitimate.

Another word for God

Martin van Creveld considers the problem of consciousness from the scientific perspective:

Starting at least as far back as Laplace—much earlier, if one cares to go back all the way to Epicurus—scientists have been arguing that consciousness grew out of the matter that preceded it. Not so, says Dr. Lanza: no natural process known to us could have performed that feat. Instead, he says, it was consciousness which gave rise to the world—so much so that, without the former, the latter could not even have existed.

To understand what he meant, take the popular riddle concerning a tree that has fallen in a forest with no one there to witness the fact. did it make a sound? Of course it did, say ninety-nine percent of those asked. Not so, say Dr. Lanza and a few others. The splintering of the trunk and its crash on the ground certainly gave rise to vibrations in the surrounding air. However, in the absence of anyone to receive those vibrations in his or her ears, transmit them by way of the acoustic nerves, and process them with the help of the brain, they would not have amounted to what we know as sound.

What applies to hearing applies equally well to our remaining senses. What the specialized neurons in the back of our brains register is not the world’s existing, objective, sound, light, and impact. On the contrary, light, impact, and sound are created by those neurons. To adduce another example, a single rainbow that can be seen by everyone who looks in the right direction at the right time does not exist. What does exist are trillions of raindrops. Each one carrying a potential rainbow; and all “waiting” to be discovered by animal sense organs and brains to be brought to bear on them. Instead of the internal and external world being separate and independent of one another, as Descartes would have it, they are merely two sides of the same coin. That, incidentally, is also the best available explanation for the riddle of quantum mechanics where, as far as we can make out, the speed and position of elementary particles seem to be determined by the fact that they are or are not observed.

This premise serves Dr. Lanza as the foundation on which to build everything else in the book, leading up to the conclusion that “the universe burst into existence from life [which is the seat of consciousness], not the other way around.” What I personally found most interesting in it is the following. We present-day humans are immensely proud of our scientific prowess. And rightly so, given that it has enabled us to study, and often gain some understanding of, anything from the bizarre submicroscopic world of elementary particles that exists right under our noses to gigantic galaxies more than thirty billion light years away. Dr. Lanza’s contribution is to point out that, without taking account of consciousness and the life with which it is inextricably tied, we shall never be able to understand reality as a whole.

One of the great conundrums that confound atheists is that while the average atheist intelligence is modestly higher than the average religious intelligence, the most intelligent individuals are considerably more religious than the norm. This is, of course, because we are less likely to cling stubbornly to our preconceived assumptions than midwits are.

The Fourth Turning

Since the concept often comes when people are metaphorically beating up on Baby Boomers, it might be helpful to understand what is meant by the generational Turnings, which is a four-phase model of social change based on the interaction of the availability and demand for social order:

Fourth Turning

The Fourth Turning is a Crisis. Old Artists die, Prophets enter elderhood, Nomads enter midlife, Heroes enter young adulthood—and a new generation of child Artists is born. This is an era in which America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up—always in response to a perceived threat to the nation’s very survival. Civic authority revives, cultural expression finds a community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group. In every instance, Fourth Turnings have eventually become new “founding moments” in America’s history, refreshing and redefining the national identity. America’s most recent Fourth Turning began with the stock market crash of 1929 and climaxed with World War II. The generation that came of age during this Fourth Turning was the Hero archetype G.I. Generation (born 1901 to 1924), whose collective spirit and can-do optimism epitomized the mood of the era. Today’s Hero archetype youth, the Millennial Generation (born 1982 to 2004) show many traits similar to those of the G.I. youth, including rising civic engagement, improving behavior, and collective confidence.

In Parsons’ terms, a Fourth Turning is an era in which the availability of social order is low, but the demand for such order is high. Examples of earlier Fourth Turnings include the Civil War in the 1860s and the American Revolution in the 1770s—both periods of momentous crisis, when the identity of the nation hung in the balance.

I have to say, the Zoomers look a lot more like a Hero generation to me than do the Millennials. But, we’ll see. Of course, the only two things the Boomers will take from this is a) prophet? I like the sound of that, and, b) see, it totally WASN’T our fault!

Mailvox: but you will age too!

This email tends to demonstrate, as if it was necessary, the utter inability of Boomers to imagine that everyone else isn’t as relentlessly narcissistic as they are:

After reading the “boomers need to be left to die” post I was reminded of something. Logan’s Run seemed to advance this basic strategy. Now though, facing another of the inevitable crises that blindside everyones cool plans, age has been upped to about 65+.

Allow me to exaggerate:

Sure sounds neat if you are younger. Because all the points you make are largely true. What you and the bulk of the responses put forth as the logical solution seems incredibly dangerous.

On one hand, if you really believe this, the consequences of the consequences may well roll right over you once it becomes the culture. Perhaps you could volunteer to self extinct upon achieving that benchmark age, because that is at the bottom of the slope you are promoting.

Second, when you successfully implement this “boomers must die” program, the message is: Now that you have spent your life paying and paying not only for your own family, but every unproductive fellow citizen the state could force upon you, just die already, now you are useless and unfortunately expensive.

Please, explain to me why anyone witnessing this regime would feel eager to work to support it, as any contribution in the positive you have made is deemed worthless at the cut off age.

This isn’t some butt hurt defense of being older. This crisis isn’t some Titanic sinking unexpectedly, this is simply life being random and deciding your new and better form of socialism is kill the old. How old is too old? When the bottom really drops out, is 65 too old? How about 40?  30?

Triage is fine, and necessary in short term disasters with small populations of a common culture and will obviously be employed until resources are found to save the remainder. Once you cast aside the elderly, you define life not worth living. Pick a demographic, demonize it. Replay Zimbabwe. $$$$$$$

And yes, boomers are not your friends and yes they have created a lousy situation. Many generations do. Are you promising your way is better? Because that is clearly what they thought.

First, we know perfectly well that we will experience the consequences. So what? We don’t care! We have known we weren’t going to be collecting much, if anything, in the way of social security since literally the very first day we paid into it. We have known that our selfish, self-centered predecessors weren’t going to leave us any inheritances since we first started saving money. Our only mistake was to believe that they would at least leave us a functioning society. The Boomer’s very questions reveal his total ignorance of the generation that follows him, let alone the subsequent generations.

 Second, this isn’t The Day of the Pillow. This isn’t a “Boomers must die” program. This is merely the time-honored, eucivilizational concept of “child-bearing women and children first”. Only a Boomer could possibly assume that not being prioritized is tantamount to a death sentence.

Third, the Boomer again reveals his narcissism. Who would work to support such a regime? The very same sort of men who have planted the acorns for the mighty oaks under whose shade they never sat for generation after generation. The fact that this is not only an alien concept, but one that is actually perceived as a negative one is something that damns the Boomer far more comprehensively than anything I can possibly say.

Fourth, we’re not those who “cast aside the elderly”. We loved our grandparents. We prioritize our children. The Boomers are those who adopted the twin philosophies of “never trusting anyone over thirty” and “he who dies with the most toys wins”. Yes, I promise that our way is better, because our way is the old way, the way of our ancestors, the way that you Boomers proudly rejected.

And fifth, whether what I have put forth as a logical solution is dangerous or not is irrelevant, because it is inevitable. The math doesn’t lie.

You made your beds. Now die in them, preferably with some dignity if you can muster it for the first time in your cursed dyscivilizational existences.

Boomer logic

Save the useless old people first! The cri de coeur of the Boomer facing the possibility of a Corona-chan-based Boomercaust.

Throughout the developing crisis in Italy, however, I’ve noticed a worrying ageism in the language surrounding the question of who to treat first. Some medics have been openly admitting that they are prioritising younger patients over older ones.

I appreciate the huge difficulties doctors in Italy are facing, but this is not acceptable. Ageism is the last bastion of acceptable prejudice in society. Phrases such as ‘they were old anyway’ and ‘they’ve had a good life’ are bandied about without thinking about what they really mean.

Does your age mean your life is worth less than someone else’s?

Yes, absolutely! There are multiple reasons to prioritize saving younger people in these circumstances and every elderly individual worth his salt wouldn’t hesitate to agree. Damned Boomers can’t even die with dignity; it’s no surprise that so many of them are going out caterwauling and crying about their importance to the bitter end.

First, the principles of triage dictate that the old people most at risk be treated last. Their treatment consumes more medical resources to less avail than any other population. Second, the principles of economics dictate that old people most at risk be treated last. Their treatment costs considerably more, which means fewer of them can be treated. Third, the principles of fairness dictate that old people be treated last. They have already lived most of their lives, where the young have not. And fourth, the principles of societal survival dictate that old people be treated last. They can neither maintain or sustain society, while the young must live if society is to survive.

Prioritizing medical treatement for the young over the elderly is not only acceptable, it is absolutely necessary, especially in times when resources are limited. Not only is it not “agism” to deprioritize the treatment of the elderly, it is pure anti-societal narcissism for any elderly individual to demand equal medical priority for his age cohort.

Side effects

It’s fascinating to observe all the beneficial “side effects” of the pandemic developing over time:

The coronavirus outbreak that has led to the quarantine of all of Italy has stopped the activity of migrant transport NGOs in the Mediterranean. Migrant transport NGOs have seen their ships remain in dock due to the spread of the coronavirus with the last activity taking place in late February when the NGO Sea Watch was able to land 194 migrants in the country.

Arrivals of migrants in their own boats from North Africa have also halted since February 28th, according to a report from Italian newspaper Il Giornale, which states that the last boat to depart from the area took place off the coast of Libya and was intercepted by the local coastguard.

The migrant transport NGOs, meanwhile, have written a letter to the Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development expressing their concerns over the coronavirus outbreak and how they can continue to operate, likely fearing a collapse in donation money.

Thank you, Corona-chan!

UPDATE: Looks like a Storm warning….

President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency on Friday over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The president said he will hold a news conference at 3 p.m. in Washington. Trump spoke Friday with Emmanuel Macron, the French president tweeted, about the pandemic, and agreed to organize a video conference with world leaders on Monday to coordinate research efforts on a vaccine and treatments and work on how to respond to the economic fallout.

Trump is under increasing pressure to act as governors and mayors nationwide step up actions to mitigate the spread, closing schools and canceling public events.

This may answer the question “why isn’t Trump acting faster.” It’s a lot easier to act if people are putting pressure on you to do so. And it’s a lot harder for them to claim that your actions are too harsh if they begged you to take action.

But it shouldn’t end with a national emergency, as the next step will be a declaration of martial law as the Storm is unleashed. Note that European governments are already beginning to extend school and other closures to April 30th.

UPDATE: Ever wonder how long it would take to round up, process, and try 150,000 people? Apparently about two months.

White House coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Friday morning that the current state of crisis in the US would last for two months.

This is not fear porn

First, if you think this is fear porn, then you aren’t old enough to remember either AIDS or the Cold War. Second, this can’t be “the same as SARS” or other recent epidemics, because corona-chan is observably at least one, and possibly two, orders of magnitude more infectious.

The SARS epidemic in 2003 reported 8098 cases with 774 deaths, and was eventually brought under control by July, 2003, in a matter of 8 months. Although 26 countries reported cases, the vast majority of cases were concentrated in five countries or regions: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Toronto, Canada. SARS was eventually contained by means of syndromic surveillance, prompt isolation of patients, strict enforcement of quarantine of all contacts, and in some areas community-level quarantine. By interrupting all human-to-human transmission, SARS was effectively eradicated.

By contrast, there are presently 134,317 reported cases with 4,968 deaths in 116 countries in less than three months of the present pandemic. One of these things is not like the others. To claim that it is accomplishes nothing but to parade one’s statistical innumeracy.

The refusal to take action in the face of potential adversity is not indicative of courage or intelligence. To the contrary, it is paralysis based on denial, fear, and binary thinking.

Neither pestilence nor war are influenced by your opinion of the reality of their existence.