Good morning, kids. And greetings from somewhere in midtown Manhattan. I'll have some thoughts on this sort of surreal experience in a separate piece on Monday, so BOLO for that.
Now on to the "fresh hell" or warmed-over purgatory for the day. In any case, it really is fresh hell for the people of Maui HI:
The death toll from the wildfires that have ravaged vast parts of the west coast of Hawaii’s Maui island over the past 48-hours stood at 53 late Thursday night. Authorities have warned the count is expected to rise.
“In 1960 we had 61 fatalities when a large wave came through Big Island,” Governor Josh Green said, referring to a tragedy that struck a year after Hawaii became the 50th U.S. state.
“This time, it’s very likely that our death totals will significantly exceed that.”
Green said around 1,700 buildings were now believed to have been affected by the blaze, as Breitbart News reported. . .
. . . “There is no doubt everyone would describe this as though a bomb hit Lahaina,” he said. “It looks like total devastation; buildings that we’ve all enjoyed and celebrated together for decades, for generations, are completely destroyed.”
U.S. Coast Guard commander Aja Kirksey told CNN around 100 people were believed to have jumped into the water in a desperate effort to flee the fast-moving flames as they tore through Lahaina.
Prayers for the victims. That said, I hate to be a hard-bitten cynic (yeah. right) but given the fact that some of the residents on that island include such people as Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Clint Eastwood and Larry Ellison, to name but a few, I'm sure it won't be long before President Sponge-Brain Shits-Pants is on the ground to declare a disaster and throw billions of dollars for relief. After all, the residents of Maui are just plain folks. Just like the plain folk of East Palestine, Ohio, right?
Of course, sometimes a natural disaster isn't so natural because of "climate change." Given the wildfires in California and the media's reaction to them, I'm sure some propagandist schmuck somewhere is already working on that angle as we speak.
The present and growing dark age: According to the watchdogs who run the website Retraction Watch, the number of peer-reviewed scientific papers that have been retracted each year has risen from 40 in 2000 to 5,500 in 2022, an astonishing increase of 13,750%.
According to these watchdogs, there are two reasons for this increase in research failure:
Retractions have risen sharply in recent years for two main reasons: first, sleuthing, largely by volunteers who comb academic literature for anomalies, and, second, major publishers’ (belated) recognition that their business models have made them susceptible to paper mills – scientific chop shops that sell everything from authorships to entire manuscripts to researchers who need to publish lest they perish.These researchers are required – sometimes in stark terms – to publish papers in order to earn and keep jobs or to be promoted. The governments of some countries have even offered cash bonuses for publishing in certain journals. Any surprise, then, that some scientists cheat?
I think the watchdogs are missing the major and much more basic source for this problem. Since the 1990s the academic community has largely abandoned — even condemned — the fundamental concepts of the Enlightenment, which established the scientific method with its unwavering dedication to finding the truth, no matter where it led. These fundamentals required from scientists not only the ability to think critically, questioning without mercy everything they did, they also demanded a very high level of ethics from scientists, since without those ethics the urge to lie and cheat becomes so much easier. . .
. . . Compounding this willingness to put politics and ideology first, the Marxist political theories that have taken over many campuses have worked to slander and discredit the Enlightenment, often calling it simply an expression of “systemic racism” because it was established mostly by “old white men.” The high standards of honesty and ethics it demanded from everyone, no matter their race, were obviously “racist” and must therefore be abandoned.
The result in the 21st century has been this skyrocketing retraction rate. Too many scientists no longer see anything wrong with cheating and lying and falsifying data. Too many put their political goals first. And too many scientists are also willing to look the other way in order to keep their jobs.
Interesting and seemingly counterintuitive to me that there are any retractions at all, especially to the extent in the story, given the fact that so much of the scientific community is composed of Trofim Lysenko's, who view and promote narratives and memes that are viewed as Sacred Absolute Eternal Truths.
And, though completely unrelated, that last sentence applies with equal measure to the cops, military and Sean Hannity's/Yawn Inanity's vaunted "ham 'n eggers" if/when push comes to shove in dealing with a citizenry that has finally had enough.
Have a great weekend.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.
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