usa

Boris Johnson cannot win the battle for the union | The New European
“A once great power carving itself up into smaller and smaller units, for no discernible purpose. That is what English nationalism has created. A man alone in a raft, lost at sea, insisting he is a navy.”
(tags: scotland england boris brexit Politics)
The Scourge of Hygiene Theater – The Atlantic
Deep cleans don’t help when most transmission is airbourne.
(tags: covid19 epidemic hygiene)
Why the Pandemic Is So Bad in America – The Atlantic
Not just Trump, but a lot of Trump.
(tags: usa covid19 politics epidemic)

Imperial College simulation code for COVID-19 | Clive Best
In which someone runs the code, and it seems to work reasonably well.
(tags: covid19 simulation model mathematics programming)
The Imperial College code | …and Then There’s Physics
Someone else ran it too.
(tags: covid19 simulation model)
Jared Yates Sexton on Twitter: “PLEASE. Tell people about this. I’m going to provide some history of Neo-Confederate, white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism, what I call the Cult of the Shining City. This is who Donald Trump was messaging yesterday wi
some history of Neo-Confederate, white-identity, apocalyptic evangelicalism, what I call the Cult of the Shining City.
(tags: christianity politics usa evangelicalism)

gmancasefile: TSA: Fail
“I have dealt with TSA since its inception and FAA security prior to that. I have witnessed TSA operate since they became a separate organization in 2002 and seen their reaction to intelligence provided them. I have now watched them operate for a decade, and I have respect for their hard-working employees who are doing a thankless job. But I have come to the conclusion that TSA is one of the worst-run, ineffective and most unnecessarily intrusive agencies in the United States government.”
(tags: america 911 hijacking usa government fbi politics DHS security tsa)
Open letter to violent Muslim protestors | The Chronicle
“I really don’t understand how my fellow Muslims do not see that, with their reactions, they actually prove what has been said about them by their enemies. You call my religion evil or terrorism and, in order to “disprove” this insult, I will go kill people, burn embassies, act like a bloodthirsty crazy person…. Don’t you fellow Muslims see the ridiculousness of this logic and actions! The uncivilized images of these violent protests by these irresponsible and violent Muslims shape the image of 1.6 billion Muslims all around the world. “
(tags: violence religion terrorism quran islam)
Verisign seizes .com domain registered via foreign Registrar on behalf of US Authorities. » blog2.easydns.org – Happenings and observations
Don’t register a .com if you don’t want the US authorities to be able to take it down, apparently.
(tags: SOPA web law DNS verisign internet domains icann)
24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed
“there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.” Includes good stuff about how ears work. Via andrewducker.
(tags: Nyquist sound sampling mp3 science music audio)
The Crazyist Metaphysics of Mind by Eric Schwitzgebel
“Crazyism about X is the view that something that it would be crazy to believe must be among the core truths about X. In this essay, I argue that crazyism is true of the metaphysics of mind. A position is “crazy” in the intended sense if it is contrary to common sense and we are not epistemically compelled to believe it. …. Well developed metaphysical theories will inevitably violate common sense, I argue, because common sense is incoherent in matters of metaphysics. No coherent and detailed view could respect it all. Common sense is thus impaired as a ground of choice. Nor can scientific evidence or abstract theoretical virtue compellingly favor any one moderately specific metaphysical approach over all competitors. Something bizarre must be true about the mind, but which bizarre propositions are the true ones, we are in no good position to know.”
(tags: crazyism david-chalmers epistemology descartes dualism idealism materialism consciousness metaphysics philosophy)

Christians in the Hand of an Angry God is a great 5 part article by bradhicks (the link is to the last part, which itself links to the previous parts). The title of the article is a reference to the famous sermon of Jonathan Edwards.

There’s some interesting historical analysis in it. bradhicks argues that Bible-believing Christianity in the USA sold its soul to the Republican party in exchange for protection from Communism, in a literal Faustian bargain. He says that, taking what the Bible says, the majority of these Christians are following a false gospel and are probably damned for it.

As usual, “what the Bible says” means “what it says when you it the way evangelicals are supposed to”, but then, in this case, that’s the whole point. While bradhicks is an ex-Christian, he studied at an evangelical college and has a good knowledge of what the Bible does say. As he writes:

I’ll still debate Christian theology at the drop of a hat, I still love it, even though (as I’ve said in part elsewhere) I consider monotheism itself to be toxic to human freedom and many of the the distinctive doctrines that separate Christianity from other religions to be potentially toxic to decency and sanity. To me, it’s a game. And when I’m playing a game, it really pisses me off to see other people cheat. And it pisses me off even more to lose to a cheater, let alone an army of cheaters.

He’s not the only one to have realised that Jesus doesn’t necessary vote Republican, some Christians have realised it too.

I don’t recall seeing anything like the political distortion of Christianity which bradhicks describes during my time as an evangelical, in fact, I assumed that as a group of middle-class young professional types, a lot of us voted for Tony, though we didn’t really discuss it much. I’d be interested to know whether that’s changed since I left.