Friday Ephemera
Wing man. || “Hingst told the court that Short would enter Hingst’s small, windowless office several times a day and break wind.” || The complete North Bergen High School performance of Alien. || Our betters reminisce. || Eminently binge-able. || Salt mining. (h/t, Pogonip) || Skills. || Signage of note. (h/t, Dicentra) || 23 caves. || Mr Yoshimoto has a curry vending machine. || Crows bearing gifts. || Hand-cranked rhythm generator. || Hooters Air. || A feminist is corrected. (h/t, Darleen) || That’s exactly how I would do it. || The question you’ve always wanted to ask. || Tools of wooing. || Shopping mall ceiling of note. || And finally, the boys’ home-made flame-thrower was a partial success.
A couple of caves they missed:
—The Lost Sea, Sweetwater, Tennessee, USA. Biggest underground lake in U. S, most of the time. When we went it was the middle of a multi-year drought, so it was becoming the Lost Pond, but was still deep enough to take the boat tour.
—Ohio Caverns, West Liberty, Ohio, USA. Has unique “soda-straw” crystal formations. Watch out for the 85-step “steep stairs” formation at the very end!
Tools of wooing
The down side is if you open it it summons Cenobites.
The down side is if you open it it summons Cenobites.
I just saw a wedding ring.
Eh. Tomato, tomahto.
Eminently binge-able.
Although some are looking forward to Lance Reddick impressions.
Morning, all.
The down side is if you open it it summons Cenobites.
Relationships involve compromise.
Although some are looking forward to Lance Reddick impressions.
It’s quite a voice.
The downside of bingeing, given the brevity of the seasons, is it’s ten evenings and done. Then a whole goddamn year to wait.
That’s exactly how I would do it.
I think I’m in love.
Is your sandwich gay-affirming?
“Is your sandwich gay-affirming?”
Oh, M&S…
Never mind that, is your gay sandwich affirming? *Goes off with sandwich to find a local gay*.
😄
I’m officially retired! Emphasis on “tired.” I accumulated a surprising amount of stuff over 28 years which I then had to push across the vast uncharted wastes of the parking lot. By the time I got done my feet hurt!
I’m officially retired!
Did the tearful crowds shower you with rose petals?
The bar on school plays just got considerably higher.
Of course they did.
*adds Bosch to list of things to watch*
*adds Bosch to list of things to watch*
If you like complex, slow-burning detective dramas with long arcs and atmosphere, then… well, there’s plenty of that. Police dramas aren’t usually my thing, but Bosch is very well done.
I forgot to make sure the rose petals were sandwich-affirming. ☺️
Family resemblance.
Bosch is well done and crucially (can’t stress this enough), they plausibly explain how come he lives in a fantastically expensive up-market house while being a mere detective, so you don’t spend the whole thing being uptight about THAT. (Everyone does get uptight about that, don’t they?)
Everyone does get uptight about that, don’t they?
Well, Maddie really grates.
Well, Maddie really grates.
She’s not the most engaging character, though she does actually prove useful in season five. And the Bosch / Honey Chandler team-up was particularly entertaining.
Finally, common sense control of another dangerous weapon in the UK – anyone caught with one will be whisked off to jail.
Someone is beyond stupid if this isn’t a joke.
P T Barnum smiles.
Someone doesn’t quite get the idea of “comedian”, however, NAAFA is a real thing, they are a “civil rights organization”, unlimited pie being in the 57th Amendment.
That’s exactly how I would do it.
Sparks argument about circumcision in 3, 2…
Sorry, should be:
The question you’ve always wanted to ask.
Sparks argument about circumcision in 3, 2…
oh-oh.
Hope this fixes it before our host notices…
I’ll just leave this here, shall I…?
Someone is beyond stupid if this isn’t a joke.
Who’s Zed? Zed’s dead baby, Zed’s dead.
anyone caught with one will be whisked off to jail
Heh.
I can’t help but get the giggles imagining the scenario of a couple of tough youths holding up the convenience store with that kitchen implement.
P T Barnum smiles.
AS MIND-BOGGLING as it sounds, there are people out there who think that there are people who should be taken seriously who think that the earth is flat, some even that it is a disk, with an edge that is an ice wall. They are convinced that the these flat-earth people are serious and not “taking the piss” or whatever, but truly earnest in their beliefs.
That said, the great majority of people who take those supposedly serious people seriously cannot rationally explain why they think the earth is round aside from the “fact” that everyone believes it is so thus it must be true. There are even crazier people, like me for instance, who think that such a thing partially explains socialism. Or even globalistic warmering hysteria.
“given the brevity of the seasons”
I may give it a go again, then. I saw a couple, got distracted by something and then didn’t want to go back and commit to watching 163 episodes or something.
I can’t help but get the giggles imagining the scenario of a couple of tough youths holding up the convenience store with that kitchen implement.
With a hit of laudanum you can picture Humpty Dumpty behind the cash register. Not so funny anymore, is it? Or are you one of those anti-ovites I’ve been reading so much about lately?
Prayers answered.
I Imagine the home made flame thrower was only a partial success because only one guys pants were on fire.
What David wears when holding his mini flamethrower.
Horrorshow.
Via Perry de Havilland.
Somewhere, Quaker William Penn despairs of what goes on in his city of brotherly love.
Hand-cranked rhythm generator.
Does it come with perfect timing?
Mark your calendar:
https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/batman-day/
And the 13th is International Belly Dance Day! 👏
Here’s a useful article from Everyday Feminism:
https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/12/stay-grounded-after-election/
“Stay in your body” is all-around useful advice, especially when you consider the alternative.
go back and commit to watching 163 episodes or something.
Something I realized when going back and rewatching Smallville and Chuck recently is just how much padding and wasted time there is in most television episodes pre- the streaming era. The economics of syndication and the seasonal TV cycle pretty much demand it (David’s UK readers likely won’t know what I’m talking about given that the BBC doesn’t operate under the same strictures).
It reminds me of the aphorism that for decades, the way to get a TV show made in Hollywood was to start the pitch with “it’s like The Fugitive, but…”
rewatching Smallville
He’s feverish. Fetch towels.
Quick! Give him some hump fat!
but Bosch is very well done.
Hinterland on Netflix is another good one. It’s a little bit darker. In the genre of the tortured DI running away from himself and the big city, [spoiler alert] it features an episode where said tortured DI plays russian roulette with another tortured soul who lived through hell in Afghanistan.
Another plus, there are three seasons. So great for binging.
Mark your calendar:
The site informs us that Batman Day will be 15th September, 2019, “to celebrate the anniversary of the character’s first ever appearance, which was in Detective Comics #27 way back in May 1939” what
The moment when I suddenly realized the retro-flowerchild cum fascist at the audience mic was actually a professor.
… retro-flowerchild cum fascist…
Step off, you violent oppressor, she has been to art school for eight years and is an artist, and if that doesn’t qualify her to judge when disrupting speech is fascist violence nothing does.
The moment when I suddenly realized the retro-flowerchild cum fascist at the audience mic was actually a professor.
And what a passive-aggressive, mentally inadequate, morally degenerate piece of shit she is.
You know, the Khmer Rouge were not entirely wrong. Ms. Artist would benefit immensely from a year of minimum-wage-or-less labor. Stoop labor, fast food, big box. Maybe she and her nanny could swap jobs for 12 months.
unlimited pie being in the 57th Amendment
I thought unlimited pie was the seconds amendment.
I’m just leaving.
The moment when I suddenly realized the retro-flowerchild cum fascist at the audience mic was actually a professor.
I got an uneasy feeling when the speaker tried to look up the dictionary definition of ‘violence’…and his wi-fi went out. I’m sure I come across as pedantic on this, but when the word ‘Literally’ literally ceased to literally only mean literally, at that moment we were screwed. Language, as badly as I am guilty of mangling it myself, is the most basic element of humanity. And it has been under attack, serious concentrated and I believe tactical attack for decades now. And I just googled “define violence” and here is the second bullet point for the definition:
Western civilization continues to go whistling past the graveyard.
The moment when I suddenly realized the retro-flowerchild cum fascist at the audience mic was actually a professor.
Your “retro-flowerchild” in the John Lennon glasses is a British animator and graduate of London’s prestigious Royal College of Art.
The following comes from a recent interview she did:
Q Your current animation is centered around female sexuality. What was it like to research this topic?
The research stage […] was the biggest literary adventure of any of the films I’ve ever made. I had a lot of questions when I started so I read a lot, and what I learned from the reading went on to inform the script for the film. The initial question came from a quote by Oscar Wilde:
‘Everything in life is about sex, except for sex, which is about power’
I became obsessed with trying to figure out what this meant, and it if it was true.
Not so obsessed that she paused for a moment to wonder whether or not Oscar Wilde – as intelligent as he was – would have actually had the prescience to be able to speak so fluently and naturally in the idiom of late 20th and early 21st century cultural studies departments.
And evidently also not so “obsessed with trying to figure out what this meant, and it if it was true” that she spent the 10 seconds it takes to search on Quote Investigator and learn the following:
Quote Investigator: QI has found no substantive evidence that Oscar Wilde wrote or said this remark. It is not listed in the valuable compendium “The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde” assembled by quotation expert Ralph Keyes.
The earliest close match located by QI appeared in the “Provincetown Arts” journal of 1995. Author Michael Cunningham employed the saying during an interview conducted by fellow author Paul Lisicky. Cunningham is now best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Hours”. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:
If you’re writing about what people do to and with one another, it’s sort of crazy to leave sex out. I think Oscar Wilde said, “Everything in human life is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” And I think he’s got something there.
Cunningham disclaimed coinage and provided an attribution that was both tentative and implausible. Hence, the saying remains anonymous.
None of us are perfect and we all of us make mistakes … but I find this notable mainly because if she was unable to spot the implausibility of Oscar Wilde having made a Foucauldian quote about sex/power and, worse in my opinion, if she likewise did not make the effort to trace the source of the original quote about which she was to develop the central concept of a film project, one which incidentally has been “generously supported by The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at California State University Los Angeles”, then what does this ultimately say about how well-informed she is about other issues outside of her discipline on which she may also wish to pontificate?
Oh, well, we’ll all be dead in a year or two—you, me, the wokelings—after the wrong person gets on a plane, so why worry?
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2019/05/ebola-numbers-tell-their-own-story.html?m=1
And what a passive-aggressive, mentally inadequate, morally degenerate piece of shit she is.
Indeed, and those are just her good points.
…after the wrong person gets on a plane, so why worry?
Every Ebola outbreak as been touted as TEOTWAWKI, yet never has been. The average case fatality rate (people who are infected and die) is on average 50%, with a low of 25% and an instance of a high of 90%* that occurred during a 2003 outbreak in Congo. The first recorded outbreak was stopped by little more than quarantine, mops and buckets of bleach. There is an experimental vaccine that was 100% effected among over 5000 subjects given it in a 2015 outbreak in Guinea, and several more in development.
No need to run around doing a Michael Jackson Pepsi ad imitation.
*(I am leaving out the case fatality rates of 0 and 100% that involved one person who either lived or died)
what does this ultimately say about how well-informed she is about other issues outside of her discipline on which she may also wish to pontificate?
I’d caution anyone having Miz Sarah as a professor
Alrighty, then….
I discovered that many of the formative ideas I have about my gender and sexuality from my childhood are very damaging to me now.
[ Paging Dr. Freud. Paging Dr. Freud. ]
It’s funny* how Feminazis so thoroughly reject Freud and yet continue to use the language he pioneered while putting forth similar psychoses.
*It’s not really funny at all. It’s the Patriarchal Power of the Penis™, something Freud called Penis Envy.
Farnsworth, Bayou Renaissance Man is African, not prone to unnecessary alarm, and knows the Butembu area well. If he’s scared, I’m scared.
He’s also, as of a couple of days ago, a U. S. citizen, so if any of you have a Gmail account why not leave him congratulations? Or commiserations, as the case may be. 😄
Bosch is very well done.
Season five ended superbly. For a series that dispenses emotion with an LA cool eyedropper, the culmination of it all was excellent.
Hinterland on Netflix is another good one.
And Amazon’s Patriot.
Farnsworth, Bayou Renaissance Man is African, not prone to unnecessary alarm, and knows the Butembu area well.
It is swell he is African, but his missive doesn’t give any particular indication of knowledge of the actual pathology or epidemiology of Ebola, or of any advances in treatment and prevention. As of 1 May, out of a population of 81 million in the DRC, there have been 1444 confirmed cases (or an incidence of 2/100,000) with 928 confirmed deaths from the virus, for a case fatality rate of only 64% in an area with medical support that is at best marginal. By comparison in the 2014-16 Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone outbreak there were about 11,000 deaths and 25,000 cases for an aggregate case fatality rate of 44% (low: Sierra Leone 25%, high: Guinea 67%) – with modern hospitals and support, this would have been less.
All the stuff BRM quotes from The Telegraph, of all sources, is exactly the same thing that has been said at every Ebola outbreak, and conditions for the world wide pandemic that hasn’t happened haven’t changed one bit, a guy could have gotten on a plane during the initial 1976 outbreak and flown into JFK as easily – probably easier – as he could today.
Fun trivia – viruses can be broadly divided into two types, efficient, and inefficient. The common cold virus is among the efficient, they are easily transmitted (like sneezing into a room) via small infective doses, and make the sufferer mildly ill so they can wander about infecting others. In general, the hemorrhagic fever viruses are inefficient because they require direct contact with bodily fluids and comparatively large infective doses, and if they don’t kill a victim in short order, the victim is generally rendered too sufficiently debilitated to wander around infecting others, hence the viruses are more self-limited in their ease of transmission and propagation.
Ebola is not an automatic death warrant.
The bottom line is if that you want to be scared, knock yourself out, but that is a lousy COA as fear breeds panic, panic leads to chaos, and that leads to more unnecessary death as opposed to approaching the problem rationally and with accurate information.
Only 64% fatalities? Well then. Nothing to worry about!
Me and mine don’t fly and avoid crowds, so we’re safer than most Americans, I suppose.
By the way, Brits, what’s wrong with the Telegraph? I thought the Guardian was the silly one?
Only 64% fatalities?
Only 64% in places with with marginal to no medical support and gunmen running amuck shooting Ebola workers is pretty damn good. Of the seven 2014-16 cases that made it back to evil western medical treatment, only one died, a case fatality rate of 14%.
…so we’re safer than most Americans, I suppose.
No, you are neither more safe nor more unsafe than any other American.
More fun facts about the current Ebola outbreak to dispel your fears…
1) There are 26 provinces in the DRC, the outbreak is primarily confined to three in the north-east corner bordering Uganda. This is not exactly a wide spread outbreak.
2) Given that and the population of those three, the incidence bumps up to about 10/100,000 in the whole affected area, which is still not a huge number (US flu was 15,000/100,000 in 2018).
3) The outbreak actually began in 2018 and was officially declared on 1 Aug 2018. This is not exactly a rapidly spreading outbreak (the actual first case being a year ago – see below).
4) In the affected area, the outbreak, since last August, is primarily in two health zones of the three provinces.
Before you freak out over the week of 10 or 15 April in the chart, that is 100+ new cases out of around 13-14 million, or a weekly attack rate of about 1/100,000 – not exactly “…hell’s coming to breakfast”.
5) Number of cases that made it to the US during the 2014-16 outbreak: 4.
With over 30,000 deaths from flu (more correctly, complications therefrom) annually in the US, I’d bet the farm, the oil well, and the riverboat that will get you before Ebola.
We are certainly well overdue for a deadly flu. I swear I recall reading about some viable 1918 flu virus being found in Alaska.
what does this ultimately say about how well-informed she is about other issues outside of her discipline on which she may also wish to pontificate?
I very much doubt that our flowerchild scold, the one boasting of having spent eight years at art school, is overly interested in reality, or coherent definitions, or crime statistics, or whether such-and-such is actually the case. She seems much more interested in status and pretending, and in making others pretend too.
Which is very in right now.
Time for something different.
She seems much more interested in status and pretending, and in making others pretend too.
She seemed profoundly stupid. Her default expression was blank uncomprehending disapproval. She seemed to think using facts to back up an argument was a form of cheating.
Re: the Oscar Wilde ‘quote’; I rather like the idea of supporting an argument with made-up quotes attributed to long-dead but respected people. As Cicero famously said: “The genius of imagination will triumph over the barbarism of actuality.”
“Amazon’s Patriot”
How the protagonist gets that piping job is kind of a shock.
“This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom 7″ gangly wrench…”
Here’s my favorite:
She seemed profoundly stupid.
She does come across that way. Someone with a Fine Art degree ought really to know that Oscar Wilde did not say “Everything in life is about sex, except for sex, which is about power.” Quite simply, Oscar Wilde didn’t use language in that way. Indeed, no-one expressed themselves in those kind of terms until the latter half of the 20th century. Anyone with the slightest sensitivity to language would see that in an instant. It’s like spotting a fake Rembrandt by the Rolex wristwatch that the subject is wearing.
But even that kind of stupidity is no bar to state-funded preferment it seems.
And they wonder at the rise of populist movements.
I rather like the idea of supporting an argument with made-up quotes attributed to long-dead but respected people.
I’ve been fascinated by how the misattribution of quotes meme makes its way through media, but especially academia. There appears to be a slight pattern in who is given credit. As an American, I’ve found Otto von Bismark and Benjamin Disraeli to be popular “sources”. I think they work so well because they are just well known and yet slightly obscure enough that relatively educated people know that they should know who these people were and yet not so well known that whatever quote is being used is suspect coming from that source. Oscar Wilde works as well. Late 19th century European people are good tools for this as they can still be seen as somewhat modern and relevant yet not as moldy as say a William Pitt or Tycho Brahe.
But even that kind of stupidity is no bar to state-funded preferment it seems.
Ooh, why you so anti-intellectual, bro? jk
I swear I recall reading about some viable 1918 flu virus being found in Alaska.
Just stop. The reason why the 1918-19 pandemic had such a high death rate was because there was neither a vaccine, nor any truly effective treatment for complications – like antivirals, antibiotics for secondary pneumonia, ventilators for respiratory support, and effective general supportive care.
A virus is neither alive nor dead, being just a packet of either DNA or RNA, it is neither viable nor non-viable, however the 1918 flu was found by AFIP and other researchers to be an H1N1 variant from samples indeed recovered in Alaska and elsewhere (like samples from Soldiers from 1918). If you think this means there will be a movie outbreak when a chimp busts out of a lab, not to worry, there are antivirals and vaccines now.
However, I’m so old I can clearly remember when we all died from the Hong Kong flu back in 1968, and then all died again from the 1976 and 1988 swine flu, and the H5N2 from a few years ago. I may have died from anthrax too, but with all the previous dying, can’t be sure.
If you think this means there will be a movie outbreak when a chimp busts out of a lab, not to worry, there are antivirals and vaccines now.
But then what hope is there for future generations of nihilists? How will they establish their absolute moral authority over previous generations? What philosophically unprovable pseudo scientific tool will they use to scare the sheeple into submission to their profound, deep thinking leadership? I remember the population bomb, the biblical prophecies of seven headed hydras, running out of/peak oil in 1978, the famines of the 1980s. Good times, good times.
Salt
Inside the astounding “salt cathedral” of Zipaquira, Colombia:
Mrs. Oik on the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia:
Anyone with the slightest sensitivity to language would see that in an instant.
Remember the fake Shakespeare quote that Barbra Streisand repeated years ago? Something about Caesar warning us against President Bush with “beware the man who bangs the drums of war.” For a supposedly great vocal artist (which ought to mean a highly developed sensitivity to language) she failed to notice that it was not Shakespearean language.
However, I’m so old I can clearly remember when we all died from the Hong Kong flu back in 1968…
Don’t forget the Y2K bug, which wiped us all out in 1/1/2000, the monogamous heterosexual AIDS epidemic that killed every in the 1990’s, and the Club of Rome resource depletion that exterminated us all in the 1980’s.
Ah, yes. Y2K. I’d forgotten about that. Of course legions of us American programmers had already been thrown out of work by the advancements in SW development techniques, as per Ed Yourdin’s 1992 book Decline and Fall of the American Programmer. There’s a 2016 paperback edition available on Amazon, I see. He went to MIT, you know. Very, very smart man.
Ed Yourdin
I believe he was one of the Y2K doom-mongers, with books, articles and well-paid talks.
Yes he was. As I said, a very, very smart man. MIT and everything. Of course after we lost our economic battle with Japan in the 1980s and Japan went on to dominate the world economy and we all speak Japanese now, such knowledge only exists in English language backwaters like the internet and stuff.
She seemed to think using facts to back up an argument was a form of cheating.
Heh, yes. That.
Y2K, meh. We all died of global warming almost 100 years ago, untilwe froze to death in the ’70’s.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Farnsworth, calm down before someone throws a lizard at you.
https://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/iguana-thrown-restaurant-manager-protective-custody-62824344
Not that we’d be likely to throw lizards in a classy joint like this. But I have a purse full of small yappy dogs. Let the wise beware!
Farnsworth “Many climatologists see these signs as evidence that a significant shift in climate is taking place–a shift that could be the forerunner of an Ice Age…”
When I was young, there were occasional science fiction novels about humans coping with a new Ice Age.
…changes in the earth’s climate are inevitable and that mankind must leant to predict these variations.”
Now, of course, the theme can only be anthropogenic warming. Those who disagree will lose all funding and will be ostracized.
One of the reasons I don’t take global warming all that seriously is that I too am old enough to remember when the Experts were telling us all we were going to freeze to death.
This does not mean I deny that the climate is changing. Any fool can stick his head out the door and see that it is. It means that I’m unconvinced that the change is going to kill us all.
“I too am old enough to remember when the Experts were telling us all we were going to freeze to death.”
Also because so many of these climate alarmists behave like liars. As has been pointed out, if someone behaves like a liar or a crook you do not need to be an expert in their field to reliably conclude that they should be distrusted and avoided.
…Farnsworth, calm down…
Me ? You are the one advocating for walking around in MOPP4 inside a biohazard level four suit.
Another item for my favorite tag:
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4196358/qatars-2022-world-cup-vagina-stadium-is-finally-unveiled-after-being-ridiculed-by-fans/
Caption artist may be having a laugh: “a man inspects… after it was unveiled” “wore a hard hat as he inspected”
Farnsworth, calm down…
The two of you will have to resolve this in the time-honoured fashion.
[ Unfolds enormous tarpaulin on floor, fetches baby oil and glitter. ]
“walking around in…biohazard suit”
Well, I am concerned about illegal immigrants carrying deadly diseases, but not that it will lead to mass death in America. In Africa, though, thanks to various cultural problems, I would not be all that surprised at tens of thousands dying before Western emergency health teams got it under control. (And speaking of such cultural problems, have you seen accounts and even videos of South African college students militantly rejecting “white man’s science”?)
“I too am old enough to remember when the Experts were telling us all we were going to freeze to death.”
I was in 10th grade when the first Earth Day was celebrated (1970). All the hoopla over riding bikes to school (which stopped the next day … no teen finally able to drive a car to school was trading THAT in) and the mini-seminars all over campus. And it WAS about “global cooling”. Only a couple of nods toward “runaway greenhouse effect”. You had Erlich’s “Population Bomb” being discussed and lots of handwringing revisiting the Santa Barbara oil spill the year before.
As a Girl Scout at the time, conservation was just something we did – and I still do. But listening to the doomsday rhetoric that day, I got to the point of just not buying it. I think I took the day just like most of my fellow students … as a lark to get out of regular classes and run around with flowers behind our ears.
I was in 10th grade when the first Earth Day was celebrated (1970)…
My high school really got into it, with all sorts of trendy bullshit: making soap in chemistry class, green eco flags in art class, and so on. If any teachers questioned the wisdom of such politicization of a public school I never heard–perhaps they prudently kept quiet.
I too remember the first few Earth Days, also in high school. At the time I regarded it as just another thing that the “social” kids were doing. I was into swimming, water polo, and what would now be called STEM, and most of the kids like me pretty much ignored Earth Day.
But what all this reminds me of now is my experience at UC Berkeley with anti-war protests. When the draft officially ended, it was AMAZING* how attendance at the protests dropped off.
*some reader interpretation encouraged here.
Whenever the climate debate moves into the its-not-getting-hotter-its-getting-colder territory, I’m reminded of this Twilight Zone episode…
https://youtu.be/X28v9JmyTlA
Seems the full episode is “unavailable”, but that should work.
In Africa, though, thanks to various cultural problems, I would not be all that surprised at tens of thousands dying…
Though not impossible, bear in mind that in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that covered three countries (combined population about 24 million) there were only 11,000 deaths.
As far as the illegal aliens go, it is not so much that they may carry deadly diseases, but ones with significant morbidity, for example, Leishmaniasis (the visceral form of which is particularly nasty) or American trypanosomiasis, or reintroduce diseases previously eliminated (malaria, for example, was endemic in parts of North America up into Canada and in Europe till around 1950).
…have you seen accounts and even videos…
Indeed, some even within these august pages.
…there were only 11,000 deaths…
The basis for my gloomy thoughts are the reports of not just endemic superstition but increasingly militant superstition: If those reports are accurate, I wonder if it is possible that it will become significantly more difficult to fight such diseases. But of course it is very difficult to assess such reports from so many thousands of miles away.
“…illegal aliens…significant morbidity…”
And I suppose the greater the morbidity the less likely that many infected persons can enter the United States before either they succumb or their grave illness becomes obvious.
[ Unfolds enormous tarpaulin on floor, fetches baby oil and glitter. ]
I dunno, Dave. Are Bambi and Trixie still doing wrestling shows next door?
Dave
See this Monty Python script:
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/edross.php
“Sir Edward…Edward…Ted…Eddie Baby…”
Farnsworth, please show me where I advocated walking around in a biohazard suit.
I was 9 on the first Earth Day, attending a small country school. No one paid much attention to it; the area was mostly farms, and for farmers, every day is earth day.