Lockdown!

Share your experience, tips, advice, questions…

As it seems most communities world-wide are going into voluntary or enforced quarantine that involves staying at home and avoiding physical contact as much as possible, I thought we could have a thread where we could try a bit of mutual support by cheering each other up over the next few days, weeks, months… Who knows?

I don’t know: suggestions on films to watch, books to read, gardening tips, exercise ideas

Usual rules apply plus a guideline. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.

932 thoughts on “Lockdown!

  1. Nonlin.org,

    I was attempting to explain the concept of 100% to you. You seemed pretty confused by the idea that all alleles must add up to 100%.

    Nonlin.org: I don’t even want to know.

    We’re all pretty much aware that this is your approach to all information, but thanks for reminding.

  2. Lockdown got worse for me (and everyone in our village) as we were cut off from electrical power all day and evening. A pylon got knocked over by a previous landslide and was replaced by a “temporary” wooden post which apparently snapped in high winds.

  3. Nonlin.org: You know, I don’t even want to know.

    This is a very telling remark, non-lin. Thank you for confirming what others were suspecting.

  4. Alan Fox:
    Boris Johnson hospitalized

    Seeing some bizarre personality cultism springing up. A local pub posted a grovelling ‘get well soon Prime Minister’. Four successive comments said more or less the same thing: “get well soon we need you”.

    It’s like being in a foreign country.

  5. Allan Miller,

    What’s up with Johnson’s whole slovenly look all the time, with the messed up hair, and wrinkled clothes, and tie all crooked, and always looks like he just got off a three day bender-is that sort of a British appeal thing, like he is a common guy or something? Or did he actually just come off a three day bender?

  6. phoodoo,

    He has actually been filmed messing his hair up deliberately before a shoot. His bumbling persona is, at least partly, an act.

  7. Books I’ve started to read or hope to begin shortly:

    Gooch, The History of English Democratic Ideas in the 17th Century
    Disraeli,Vindication of the English Constitution
    Trollope, Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices, and Other Stories
    Trollope, The Golden Lion of Granpere
    Mudde/Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction
    Moore, A Mere Accident
    Lagerspetz, Social Choice and Democratic Values
    Shapiro, The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory
    Buchan, Oliver Cromwell
    Foxley, The Levelers
    Pease, The Leveller Movement

    Also, a modern novel I read recently that I recommend is Halle Butler’s The New Me.

  8. Allan Miller: Seeing some bizarre personality cultism springing up. A local pub posted a grovelling ‘get well soon Prime Minister’. Four successive comments said more or less the same thing: “get well soon we need you”.

    I got told off by Mrs F. for tittering.

  9. Alan Fox: I got told off by Mrs F.for tittering.

    Moved into intensive care. As a human being, I wish him no ill, but the way some people are going on, it’s like he’s Kim Jong-Un. They have latched onto him as our way out of this, and, it seems, would be distraught. I’ve never seen the like!

  10. Allan Miller: As a human being, I wish him no ill…

    Me, neither. (down, schadenfreude) but we still know so little about this disease and it seems better to err on the side of caution. Don’t ignore the symptoms!

  11. Alan Fox,

    Prime symptoms, from the app I mentioned the other day, seem to be fatigue and anosmia, and not cough/fever.

    Have to say, it throws into sharp relief the collective hysteria over anyone who dares get within 6 feet of someone in a park, when our own politicians, threatening severe measures if those people don’t behave, can’t follow their own rules.

    Anyway, here’s a bit of doggerel I wrote during Foot & Mouth, updated for the present situation.

    When shall we three meet again,
    In thunder, lightning, or in rain
    When the hurly-burly’s done
    When the battle’s lost and won.

    When picnickers can take their luncheon
    Without the fear of cuff and truncheon
    And politicians too obey
    The rules they blithely send our way

    When garlic-cure has worked its charm
    And herds immune roam ‘bout the farm
    And anti-vaxxers work their magic
    With science weak and policy tragic

    Or quackery doth finally cease
    And this is just another disease
    We hope to raise a glass and meet
    Not wave from 6 feet ‘cross the street!

  12. And when all’s done and ended well
    T’is only rogues wot went to hell.

    There’s irony in the above!

  13. Allan Miller: When shall we three meet again,
    In thunder, lightning, or in rain
    When the hurly-burly’s done
    When the battle’s lost and won.

    When picnickers can take their luncheon
    Without the fear of cuff and truncheon
    And politicians too obey
    The rules they blithely send our way

    When garlic-cure has worked its charm
    And herds immune roam ‘bout the farm
    And anti-vaxxers work their magic
    With science weak and policy tragic

    Or quackery doth finally cease
    And this is just another disease
    We hope to raise a glass and meet
    Not wave from 6 feet ‘cross the street!

    nice! 😄

  14. walto: Mudde/Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction

    Let me know how that is. I like to teach some of the populism stuff (Cas Mudde, Jan-Werner Muller) in my social & political philosophy course.

  15. Two bits of good news!

    “He’s not on a ventilator no,” Gove told LBC radio. “The prime minister has received some oxygen support and he is kept under, of course, close supervision.”

    1. Not on a ventilator,
    2. Under close supervision.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/07/coronavirus-live-news-boris-johnson-intensive-care-uk-donald-trump-america-us-praying-recovery-latest-updates?page=with:block-5e8c259f8f08c35a1d11b5da#block-5e8c259f8f08c35a1d11b5da

  16. Kantian Naturalist: Let me know how that is. I like to teach some of the populism stuff (Cas Mudde, Jan-Werner Muller) in my social & political philosophy course.

    Will do.

    I should note, though, that critical theory is more in your wheelhouse than mine, so our reactions might not jibe. The peer reviewer of my manuscript said s/he thought I could have had a bit more of that kind of stuff (LaClau, Mouffe, etc.) in there. Could be but….it’s not really my thing–except, I guess, for Urbinati, whom I like a lot.

  17. Alan Fox: Where organisms have short generation times (hint – bacteria and viruses) mutations accumulate more quickly.

    I see no accumulation. The only accumulations are when someone intentionally breeds the organism. It’s by design only.

    Alan Fox: Some of those mutations result in the virus being resistant to the immune system.

    Only you cannot forecast anything. You see resistance and only THEN build a story. Hence my comment: “It’s retarded to watch the end of a movie and then “predict” how that movie will end.” IOW, your “explanation” is always post fact hence useless.

  18. Allan Miller: But it is still a simple fact that the genetic change has resulted in enhanced virulence (strictly, a mutation prior to the jump from another species found an adaptive niche in humans.

    False. It’s not “the genetic change”. It’s “the genetic change” WITH a suitable environment. The mutation by itself doesn’t do anything. And the environment is so indescribable that you have nothing but a myth to tell.

  19. Nonlin.org: I see no accumulation. The only accumulations are when someone intentionally breeds the organism.

    You misunderstand. I am talking about the molecular clock. Mutations, copying errors, happen randomly at a steady rate. Whether those mutations fix or are purified out of existence is the selection process.

  20. Schizophora: You seemed pretty confused by the idea that all alleles must add up to 100%.

    False. You will never know “all alleles” for anything more than a few base pairs long. Your “100%” is stupid.

  21. Alan Fox: I am talking about the molecular clock. Mutations, copying errors, happen randomly at a steady rate. Whether those mutations fix or are purified out of existence is the selection process.

    False. No such thing has been proven.

    Alan Fox: Nobody can. Evolution has no foresight either.

    Best admission to date. Therefore the value of “evolution” is ZERO. It’s worthless bullshit.

  22. Nonlin.org: Best admission to date

    It’s a fact. One you should be aware of if you understand evolutionary theory, as you claim to.

  23. Nonlin.org: False. It’s not “the genetic change”. It’s “the genetic change” WITH a suitable environment. The mutation by itself doesn’t do anything.

    There is nothing in your supposed recasting of my statement that changes it at all. You are saying exactly the same as I said (given my parenthetic addition regarding the adaptive niche), but because you don’t understand the subject very well, failed to grasp it. Same shit, different day.

  24. Nonlin.org:
    Only you cannot forecast anything. You see resistance and only THEN build a story. Hence my comment: “It’s retarded to watch the end of a movie and then “predict” how that movie will end.” IOW, your “explanation” is always post fact hence useless.

    Well, that’s Creationism under the bus, then.

  25. Nonlin.org: False. You will never know “all alleles” for anything more than a few base pairs long. Your “100%” is stupid.

    You don’t have to know anything about the alleles to know that their frequencies must add up to 100%. Can you construct an example using simple text strings where this rule would be violated – where you could list all the strings but not 100% of them?

  26. Nonlin.org,

    I will also never know “all trash” in the Mariana trench. However, I can still understand the concept that if you take some trash, you can figure out, by the concept of percentages, that the rest must add up to 100%. Was the explanation too difficult to understand? It might help if you took a middle school level mathematics class.

  27. Nonlin.org,

    I didn’t realize that creationism had predictive power. Surely you will demonstrate that, because otherwise by your own standard creationism is “worthless bullshit.”

  28. Alan Fox,

    That could be a worry, though there are possible confounding variables – the accuracy of the initial test as well as the specificity and sensitivity of the antibody test.

  29. What I was thinking was: what if having had coronavirus is not a reliable guarantee of having subsequent immunity. Even if you are sure you have had it, only an antibody test will confirm that you have immunity. It may not be safe to say “if you’ve definitely had coronavirus, you no longer need to take precautions” and we must wait for a reliable antibody test that is widely available, unless the vaccine arrives at warp speed.

  30. Alan Fox,

    It doesn’t seem likely the vaccine will come so soon…and I doubt very much that major world governments will be willing to be shut down for as long as it will take.

  31. Alan Fox,

    I think antibody test will come first. That one isn’t widely available anyway suggests that the Chinese one may not be sufficiently accurate to draw the conclusions. They need calibrating for sensitivity, and need to target the ‘right’ antigens. I find it pretty unlikely that such a high proportion of recovered victims of a virus have no immunity to it. How did they fight it?

  32. Schizophora:
    Alan Fox,

    It doesn’t seem likely the vaccine will come so soon…and I doubt very much that major world governments will be willing to be shut down for as long as it will take.

    It’s a conundrum!

  33. Allan Miller,
    I did read somewhere that a different part of the immune system may be in play for young people and they fight off the infection without building up antibodies, while older people are both more susceptible to a severe infection and a stronger (if that’s the right word) immune response and more antibodies.

  34. Alan Fox: Oh for Christ’s sake! It’s why DNA fingerprinting works.

    False again. And pathetic:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_clock
    https://www.britannica.com/science/DNA-fingerprinting

    Do a search in one for the other and see no link.

    Alan Fox: It’s a fact. One you should be aware of if you understand evolutionary theory, as you claim to.

    That “evolution” is useless, we’re in total agreement. But check out your disagreement with your fellow evo-zombies.

    Allan Miller: There is nothing in your supposed recasting of my statement that changes it at all.

    Wrong. Check again.

    Allan Miller: Well, that’s Creationism under the bus, then.

    Wrong.

    Allan Miller: You don’t have to know anything about the alleles to know that their frequencies must add up to 100%.

    Yes, you need to know all to talk about 100% the way you did. And I am not digging your original FALSE claim. Feel free to do check again.

  35. Nonlin.org: That “evolution” is useless, we’re in total agreement.

    Don’t put words in my mouth, non-lin.

    As a matter of fact, the theory of evolution , incomplete and unsatisfactory as it is, is the only scientific theory that explains the evidence of what we observe.

  36. Alan Fox: As a matter of fact, the theory of evolution , incomplete and unsatisfactory as it is, is the only scientific theory that explains the evidence of what we observe.

    Someone named Alan Fox wrote: “Nobody can. Evolution has no foresight either.”

    It’s a well known fact that any theory without foresight is useless bullshit. Like astrology, phrenology, “evolution”, tarot reading, etc. A Fraud-ian slip of the tongue, Alan? Someone put the truth in your words (fingers). Ha, ha!

  37. Nonlin.org: It’s a well known fact that any theory without foresight is useless bullshit.

    Is it? Can you find anything to confirm that assertion?

  38. Nonlin.org: Someone named Alan Fox wrote: “Nobody can. Evolution has no foresight either.”

    It’s a well known fact that any theory without foresight is useless bullshit. Like astrology, phrenology, “evolution”, tarot reading, etc. A Fraud-ian slip of the tongue, Alan? Someone put the truth in your words (fingers). Ha, ha!

    That’s an equivocation between the foresight of the process and the predictive utility of the theory.

    There’s actually an interesting question about whether evolutionary theory has any predictive utility, and if predictive utility is the most important thing to look for in a scientific theory.

  39. Nonlin.org,

    Wrong. Check again.

    Checked again. Right.

    Allan Miller: Well, that’s Creationism under the bus, then.

    Nonlin: Wrong.

    Ahem: “Only you cannot forecast anything. You see resistance and only THEN build a story. Hence my comment: “It’s retarded to watch the end of a movie and then “predict” how that movie will end.” IOW, your “explanation” is always post fact hence useless.”

    Creationism evades that how?

    Allan Miller: You don’t have to know anything about the alleles to know that their frequencies must add up to 100%.

    Nonlin: Yes, you need to know all to talk about 100% the way you did.

    Nope. It is a simple mathematical fact that if something increases in frequency everything else in that collection – whatever it is – decreases in frequency. Because all frequencies must add up to 100%. It is unbelievably dim to deny this, but you no longer surprise me in that regard.

  40. It’s a well known fact that any theory without foresight is useless bullshit.

    Maybe so, but I enjoy reading bullshit theories about how solar systems form, about the origin of the moon, and other attempts to explain the past. Even though none of these theories makes any predictions at all.

    There’s actually an interesting question about whether evolutionary theory has any predictive utility, and if predictive utility is the most important thing to look for in a scientific theory.

    Well, evolutionary theory predicts which past organisms will be found in which strata, and where to find those strata. My understanding is that a good many fossils have been found ONLY because evolutionary theory predicted where they’d be found in some detail.

    My intuition is that explanatory power is more important than predictive utility in a scientific theory.

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