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Friday, April 03, 2020

Who Dr. Li Wenliang is, or rather… was

“Two decades of the precautionary principle as the key policy tool for managing uncertainties has neutered risk management capacities by offering, as the only approach, the systematic removal of any exposure to any hazard. As the risk-averse precautionary mindset cements itself, more and more of us have become passive docilians waiting to be nannied.”
– David Zaruk, writing in an online science website 


LaurenceJarvikOnline: China, the World Health Organization, and Communism.
I have long been suspicious of WHO. The current situation has done nothing to change that



“Listen, I can’t start an investigation into a street robbery when I have twelve rapes, one homicide, and dozens of assaults reported last night alone.  But tell your mother not to worry.  Usually, anyone who attacks an old lady doesn’t have long to live.” –Police Captain Walter Sanogo.



We are the first societies in human history where the old outnumber the young.”



Harry Miller: “This is a warershed moment for liberty” 


The police response to an ex-officer’s allegedly transphobic tweets was unlawful, the High Court has ruled. 
Harry Miller, from Lincolnshire, was contacted by Humberside Police in January last year after a complaint about his tweets.
He was told he had not committed a crime, but it would be recorded as a non-crime “hate incident”.
The court found the force’s actions were a “disproportionate interference” on his right to freedom of expression.



In a separate story from the one I quote above, the BBC goes on to reportthat
Mr Justice Julian Knowles said the effect of police turning up at Mr Miller’s place of work “because of his political opinions must not be underestimated”.
He added: “To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom.
“In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”


We did not know we still had judges like that. . .




Edit: This is the text of the judgement: Miller -v- College of Policing, 14 February 2020.


Seen on a wall in Prague earlier today. Powerful, because most of us do indeed know who Dr. Li Wenliang is, or rather… was.

 In this time lapse filmed by Jan van IJken, the embryo of a salamander is shown transforming into a hatched tadpole, from a single cell to a complex organism in a three-week process that’s condensed into just six minutes of video.

The first stages of embryonic development are roughly the same for all animals, including humans. In the film, we can observe a universal process which normally is invisible: the very beginning of an animal’s life. A single cell is transformed into a complete, complex living organism with a beating heart and running bloodstream....