I googled ‘crackpot UFO books’ and this picture of the cover of one of the books someone one gave me in middle school came up.I’ve been a science fiction fan for Longer than I can remember, thanks to my mom being a big sf fan who read whatever she was reading at the time aloud to me from the time I was an infant. And so from a very early age I was familiar with the idea that there might be life on other planets. Was it something like we saw in movies like Forbidden Planet or The Day the Earth Stood Still? Or was it something more like The Blob? Or—as I read more science fact articles and the like—it began to seem much more likely that if we encountered alien life, it was going to be something like single-cell life living in the soil of Mars or under the methane clouds of Saturn’s moon, Titan. Which may seem less exciting than saucers descending on various national capital cities, but would be a pretty big deal for science!
During my late elementary and middle school years, because of my interest in science fiction, lots of people who weren’t very versed in the science part of sf always assumed that I believed that UFO sightings were always proof of aliens buzzing the planet. And just as more than one adult in my life felt compelled to loan me a copy of Chariots of the Gods—other books about flying saucers, alien abductions, and the like would be handed off to me when it would turn up in a pile of used books and the like. Including, yes, the one pictured above.
And the sorts of adults who would grab such a book with the intention of giving it to a kid they knew are exactly the sort who do not listen when to that kid when they try to explain that this isn’t really the same thing.
But I’m going to try to do the equivalent type of explanation about a related issue that came up in the news this week.
A whole lot of people on social media were sharing this headline: Pentagon declassifies Navy videos that purportedly show UFOs. And a lot of those people were making the same snarky comment, pointing out that since the videos show something that is unidentified, that it is incorrect to say “purportedly.” Because everyone knows that UFOs are unidentified.
That isn’t correct, for two reasons.
First, true the initialism UFO is from the phrase “unidentified flying object”, but you have to look at the entire phrase. It’s not just any unidentified thing. It is an unidentified thing which is flying, and the most common definition of flying is “the action of guiding, piloting, or travelling in an aircraft or spacecraft.” The next most common definition is “move through the air with wings or other propulsion.” In other words, it’s a loaded term. The other issue is the word object, “a material thing (that can be) seen or perceived.”
Which is one reason why the term used by scientists and aviation experts and military analyst use to describe things like those shown in the three de-classified videos is “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Because we don’t know if it’s a physical object, and we don’t know that it is actually being propelled. Some of the unidentified phenomena could be rare electromagnetic phenomena that is visible to human eyes or cameras and registers are radar and similar devices as if it is a physical thing. We really don’t know.
The other reason why using the term “purportedly show UFOs” is because not all readers interpret the collection of letters UFOs as the initialism I mentioned above. As more than one science writer I read back in the day liked to point out, a lot of enthusiasts and crackpots are convinced that the object is not unidentified at all.
But it isn’t just the crackpots and alien enthusiasts. Language isn’t logical. Human brains don’t process language like an algorithm acting on a string of numbers. I’ve pointed out in other contexts that “any sequence of one or more sounds or morphemes (intuitively recognized by native speakers as) constituting the basic units of meaningful speech used in forming a sentence or sentences in a language.” UFO isn’t just can initialism, it’s a word. Think of it that way for a moment, as if it were spelled euephoe. Words have multiple meaning, not simply one. Sometimes one meaning is much more prevalent than others, and sometimes not.
Again, lots of people think of a euephoe as a physical machine designed by someone to propel itself through the sky. And a substantial fraction of them think that it comes from another world.
Headline writers have to take into account various common meanings of words.
Other news sites used UFO in their headlines, and once you get into the article it is clear that they are using it as a synonym for unidentified aerial phenomena. Which is a legitimate choice, though one I’m less sympathetic to.
Even though I am not an enthusiast who believes that aliens from across interstellar space have been regularly visiting us, I have to acknowledge that there are people who do. But I also have to acknowledge that even among those who think anyone who believes in the possibility of life on other planets is just like the crackpots, the term UFO means a physical machine that came to Earth from somewhere else and was built by someone. So I think the headlines that used the word purported got it right.
But it’s language. So there’s never only one right way to do something.
“The venn diagram of people protesting shelter in place orders because they don’t like ‘the government telling them what to do’ and people who think the government to tell pregnant people who want abortions what to do with their bodies is one giant f-ing circle.”
I had planned to write something else today, but then I saw this post on tumblr:
(Click to embiggen)
“You’ll notice that LGBT pride parades are being cancelled, and LGBT people are not complaining and calling it an injustice. Meanwhile, Christians are calling it an injustice that churches are being closed, and conservatives are calling it an injustice that stay at home orders exist. That’s because LGBT people actually experience injustices, so they know when an injustice is happening. They face way too many injustices to label everything they don’t like as an injustice. And they’re not defying social distancing orders to have the parade anyway.”
—theconcealedweapon.tumblr.com
“We also know the consequences of an unaddressed pandemic.”
—61below.tumblr.com
A couple of other things worth noting. The U.S. stock market started going down in response to pandemic concerns the week of February 20, many weeks before the first stay-at-home order. The Dow Jones officially crashed (prices dropping so fast it triggered an automatic suspension of trading) on March 9th. There were no stay-at-home orders in place anywhere in the U.S. at that time. Companies were already laying people off and cutting back hours in anticipation not so much of stay-at-home orders but the fact that simply having lots of people sick, lots of other people afraid of being sick, and so forth was already causing people to cancel travel plans and so forth.
My employer, for instance, in early February cancelled most schedule employee travel (for sales, installation, and trade shower appearances, for instance) out of an abundance of caution.
Personally, in mid February I woke up with a fairly severe cough on a day that wasn’t scheduled to be a work-from-home day, and decided since I didn’t know if I had a something that I shouldn’t go into the office. The following week, again out of an abundance of caution, upper management encouraged everyone who could work from home to do so full time. Again, this was weeks before stay-at-home orders had been issued in any of the states where my employer has offices.
And when people are working from home, a lot of small restaurants, coffee shops, and the like in the vicinity of office buildings have a sudden significant drop off in business. So employees at those businesses get their hours cut. And so they have less money to spend on anything, and that means they cut out (first) non-essential spending, which causes more small businesses to cut hours, and it becomes a self-perpetuating downward economic spiral for everyone.
Lifting stay-at-home orders isn’t going to make everything spring back. It’s going to put a lot of people in the position of deciding to risk getting infected or starve, because if the order has been lifted not working is no longer involuntary and therefore they can’t collect unemployment. The science of the virus tells us that when people stop doing the mandated social distancing, infection rates will start rising again within a couple of weeks. And they will spike if we don’t have adequate means of testing people and a system for tracking down other people who have recently come in contact when an infected person, and so on.
Which means people will get scared and will cut back on activities that put them in contact with others and we continue to have places like restaurants, bars, theaters, and so forth not making enough money to pay their employees, et cetera.
Note: My cough went away after about two weeks and I never had a fever… but the cough has come back several times. So far, still no fever. I have long suffered from severe hay fever and sometimes when the pollen count has been high for many days in a row, in addition to sinus congestion and typical allergy symptoms, I also get a cough. And we’ve had a lot of really high pollen days during the last two and a half months, so that’s probably what it is. Probably.
But we’ve had a bit of a scare because yesterday my husband was running a fever and had some non-repiratory symptoms that sometimes occur with the coronavirus… today his fever is gone and the other symptoms are subsiding, but that’s not necessarily proof that he’s well.
The New York Daily News has been on FIRE lately!Once again here we are looking at news stories that either broke after I finished the most recent Friday Five, or bring more information about a story included in that post, or that expand upon a story which I have linked to in some previous post—and upon which I want to make more extensive comments than I usually include in a Friday Five blog post, or otherwise didn’t quite make the cut before. Which ought to be a big surprise, but since we are all living in a dystopian timeline, maybe it oughtn’t be a big surprise that some of this didn’t make the cut when I’m trying to limit myself to no more than five stories to each of no more than five categories and trying not to let bad news outnumber the neutral and good news stories. Unfortunately, we are living in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, so any attempt to exclude all the depressing news can be construed as delusional. And I don’t want to be delusional, so…
Before I comment on anything else, please absorb this fact: U.S. hits 50,000 deaths from coronavirus – just as many states announce plans to ease social distancing. Some people have trouble with numbers. So let me give you a couple of comparisons: for every person who was killed in the 9/11 attacks, more than 16 Americans have been killed by COVID-19… so as of Friday afternoon, COVID-19 represents more than 16 9/lls… and yet there are people who think the precautions many states have taken are an overreaction…
Meanwhile, Coronavirus is spreading fast in states that may reopen soon, study finds. I don’t know what to say on this. I know that a fraction of the population doesn’t believe any of the facts we show them. And I know the politicians believe the facts, but they also believe that the people who die don’t matter… I don’t know how to get the idiots who don’t realize that their leaders want them to die to keep the economy moving to see what’s happening…
It is still boggling my mind. Have none of these people been responsible for raising or taking care of small children? When I was a kid I had it drilled into my head that bleach and lysol and ammonia and other cleaning chemicals we kept in the house were poisonous. Once I had a younger sibling, it was emphasized that I should keep an eye out to help make sure my sister didn’t drink any of the poison. And so on. Aaaagggh!
(Yes, I have been reduced to yelling incoherntly at the screen)
Oh, and did you hear that the President fired the health expert in charge of coordinating vaccine development because he would jump on the chloroquine bandwagon? Ex-FDA Head: Ouster Of Vaccine Chief “Sets Us Back”. I mean, I’m sure that whatever sycophant that Trump chose to take over will do a fine job. Vaccines are hard, are they?
“If we want to control the spread of COVID-19, the United States must adopt a new testing policy that prioritizes people who, although asymptomatic, may have the virus and infect many others.
We should target four groups. First, all health-care workers and other first responders who directly interact with many people. Second, workers who maintain our supply chains and crucial infrastructure, including grocery-store workers, police officers, public-transit workers, and sanitation personnel. The next group would be potential “super-spreaders” — asymptomatic individuals who could come into contact with many people. This third group would include people in large families and those who must interact with many vulnerable people, such as employees of long-term-care facilities. The fourth group would include all those who are planning to return to the workplace. These are precisely the individuals without symptoms whom the CDC recommends against testing.”
“Modern-day “capitalism” in America is to flatten the risk curve for people who already have money, by borrowing from future generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy, thereby limiting the upside for future generations.”
“The ability of major companies to receive funding before smaller businesses has emerged as the latest flashpoint in a program that has left many involved dissatisfied since its hurried launch on April 3.”
“Our response to the epidemic is unethical and harmful to health, just like our health system is during normal times. Fundamentally, “choice” of health insurance creates a dizzyingly complex and inefficient morass that reaps profits for insurance executives and shareholders—while creating huge financial barriers to care.
The solution is straightforward: universal single-payer health insurance, or Medicare for All, would cover everyone with the same high-quality care, progressively financed.”
“When Covid-19 reached Italian shores, it found a country in the midst of a private-sector transformation that has been turning the country’s single-payer health care system into an Italian version of Biden’s beloved “public option”—and putting millions of people at risk in the process.”
“Only in America could a billionaire make US pay for HIS golf weekends and tell us WE can’t have food, health, science, or art.”
Once again, here’s some news that either broke after I assembled this week’s Friday Five, or is a new development in a story I’ve linked to or commented on previously. Plus more commentary than goes in my Friday Five posts.
Or maybe not? Member of defiant Central church dies from coronavirus illness. Oops! No one saw that one coming, I guess. Virginia pastor who defiantly held church service dies of coronavirus. Or this one, either. I heard a clip on one of the news podcasts I listen to, where a woman who was leaving one of these church services kept repeating that she couldn’t get sick, because she was covered in the blood of Jesus, just like everyone else in the congregation. When the reporter asked her about people she might encounter afterward who weren’t church members, she replied that if they were covered in the blood of Jesus like she was, they had nothing to worry about.
I can’t find any passage in the Bible where Jesus claims his followers are immune to communicable diseases. It just isn’t there.
And while we’re on the topic of misinformed people trying to spread misinformation, Watch Dr. Tony Fauci debunk Laura Ingraham’s comparison of HIV treatment to treating coronavirus – Dr. Fauci: “Laura, this is different. HIV/AIDS is entirely different”. I have pointed out some similarities in that way that some people are reacting to this epidemic and how they reacted to (and still are) the AIDS epidemic. But that was about attitudes of people toward the victims. Not about how the two diseases spread. AIDS is not infectious through casual contact. HIV take years, many years, to become a threat to the person’s life. And eventually, we developed treatments that let people go even longer without getting sick, and it turns out that those some treatments make the person no longer capable of infecting others (as long as they stay on the meds). A vaccine would still be preferable to the regime of taking a cocktail of anti-viral drugs for decades.
This disease is communicable through casual contact. Because this virus is new to humans, there aren’t large fractions of the population carrying anti-bodies to older strains of the bug like there is for flu. There is no vaccine like there is for some strains of flu. And there is no effective treatment. None: Malaria Drug Study Halted Over Heart Arrhythmias.
And let’s close with this reminder of what our narcissistic president sees as being the important part of a disaster that has killed tens of thousands of his citizens and put more than twenty million out of work:
Over at FiveThirtyEight dot Com they have this wonderful explanation in comic strip form of why mathematically modeling epidemics and pandemics is so difficult:
(click to embiggen)Time for some stories that either didn’t make the cut for this week’s Friday Five, or came to my attention after I composed the Friday Five post, and/or represent new developments in stories I’ve commented on previously. With more commentary/ranting from me than usually appears in a Friday Five post. And we have some doozies this time! Pour yourself your favorite calming beverage and buckle up, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
First, I’ve linked to stories earlier about how some (evil) people have argued that letting part of the population die to keep the economy going is an idea to consider. Well, that’s not the only awful thing people have proposed regarding medical treatment for Covid-19 patients: Autistic support group ‘told it needed Do Not Resuscitate orders’. Or as one blog buddy put it: “Anyway, kill crazy normies control medical rationing.” So the assumption this medical group was making is that people who aren’t neurotypical, if they became sick with Covid-19 are not worthy of the most intensive medical care, because supposedly their lives aren’t as valuable as other people’s. Sure, the story ends by saying the letter had been withdrawn after people protested, but…
Let’s move on to another kind of misinformed medical idiocy: Kansas Republicans Undo Governor’s Coronavirus Order Prohibiting Large Religious Gatherings. That’s right! Because quarantines are a plot to block other people’s religious freedom. And spare me the a-hole pastors saying “We’re willing to die for our faith!” That isn’t what this is about! It isn’t about you deciding whether to risk your life, it’s you deciding to put every single person you come in contact with afterward at risk! Because you can carry the virus and be contagious for days before you feel any symptoms. And one person can cause a lot of illness:
Meanwhile, the grifter-in-chief is making really bad decisions: Federal Support Ends For Coronavirus Testing Sites As Pandemic Peak Nears. He’s lied about how anyone who wants a test can get one. He’s lied several times claiming he hasn’t heard anyone calling for more testing for weeks. And now, it appears, that he’s stopping the federal funding of tests for no other reason than, if fewer people are tested, the number of known infections won’t go up as fast as the actual infection rate. In other words, he’s cooking the books. He’s treating this thing like it’s all about ratings, and not actual lives.
And it’s worse than that: Supplies could be delayed due to confusion from the White House, companies say. The headline is a bit misleading. It’s not confusion, it’s that certain people in Trump’s circle are telling companies not to ship supplies to blue states. In other words, politicizing the pandemic. Which shouldn’t surprise us, because they’ve been falsely accusing Democrats of that for months, and one of the few things you can count on this alleged president and his thugs to do is accuse other people of the crimes they are actually committing themselves.
When it first happened, I figured it was just the usual stupidity from the guy. Someone mentioned it to him, and as a narcissist suffering from some form of severe dementia, he has a constant need to say stuff that make it sound like he knows what he’s talking about. But after being debunked a few times, and after at least one person died trying to self-treat with it, why did he start talking about it again?
Well, it turns out it’s about greed, because of course it is: Pharma-Funded Group Tied to a Top Trump Donor Is Promoting Malaria Drug to the President. That’s right, some of the companies who make the drug that doesn’t work against this thing are donating money to Trump. So, of course, he’s going to tout it so people will buy it and put money in the pockets of people putting money in his pocket!
This shouldn’t surprise us, because Trump’s entire financial career has been about stealing from his investors, contractors, employees, and charities. It has also been about tricking other people into paying for his projects and making it look as if he was the person who raised the money or donated or whatever. All those seasons of his reality show, when at the end the winner (or a charity) got a big novelty check that made it look as if Trump was paying them? Every penny actually came from the network. Neither Trump or any of his businesses contributed so much as a dime. He was paid, the network paid for the production and everything related to it, the network paid the actual award money, and on those occasions when a Trump business was mentioned or a picture of one of his buildings was shown, the network paid said business a royalty.
Trump is also really good about blaming other people, no matter how implausible the blame is: Trump Earns “Pants On Fire” Rating For Insane Claim He Inherited “Broken” Virus Tests From The Obama Admin. So Trump is now claiming that the reason we have been so behind on testing is because Obama left behind thousands or millions of “broken” test kits. Big problem with that lie: when Obama was President, know one knew that the virus which causes Covid-19 existed, yet. So no one had tried to make kits, yet. The problem is that Trump didn’t think the disease was serious (or that it would hurt anyone he cared about), nor was he willing to take and pay for kits from any of the foreign entities that had developed them as the disease swept through parts of China and other countries, nor was he willing to put any money into developing our own.
Unfortunately, his base doesn’t seem to be smart enough to do anything but swallow the lie. Even when the evidence is overwhelming:
How Trump and Kushner Failed on Testing and Ventilators: A Closer Look:
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