Gongol.com Archives: June 2020
June 18, 2020
Reuters reports: "The risk for severe COVID-19 was 45% higher for people with type A blood than those with other blood types. It appeared to be 35% lower for people with type O." Always take reporting on studies with a grain of salt. Reporters usually try their best, but it's extremely hard to communicate things like confidence intervals or significance tests in a news story written for the general public. Conclusions easily get exaggerated. But if both true and accurate, this is an item of the utmost newsworthiness.
Someone's cyber-attacking Australia
It doesn't take much imagination to fill in the "someone" with "China". We need a Cyber Force far more than we need a Space Force.
Anything involving humans is going to be imperfect. It's the striving towards becoming better that counts. Stories of redemption are more important than idyllic reports of perfection.
The academic priesthood model is a problem
The paradigm within academia that equates certain bona fides (like publications) with worthiness is a gigantic problem. That, in turn, sets up expectations of deference that perpetuate the status quo (including the power structures that make up who is "in charge") that have nothing to do with the positive diffusion of knowledge. ■ Federalist Paper No. 36: "There are strong minds in every walk of life that will rise superior to the disadvantages of situation, and will command the tribute due to their merit, not only from the classes to which they particularly belong, but from the society in general."
