Is it a cult or a virus?

By today, perhaps, everyone but this guy sailing solo round-the-world for 9 months have heard about Imperial College of London it its infamous pants-down ex-professor Ferguson who made yet another disastrous prediction that millions will die, unless we all got locked in. And we know it turned out to be an utter bullshit. Yes, you’ve heard me right: he’s doing this predictions like a clock since early 2000’s. However, unlike even a broken clock that shows correct time every now and then, he has never (fortunately!) been correct in any of his.

Well, on top, it turned that one of the reasons for his less than stellar track record, was a computer code these academics were writing for last 15 years or so. After the code has been given to a team from Microsoft and they were fixing it for about a month, a bunch of people found that it is … .well, full of crap. It is hard to say for sure if the original code is significantly worst (you know, it is really hard to make accurate predictions 😉 because ICL doesn’t answer calls to release the original code. Which has been paid for by UK tax payers. Not that I care how they spend their money.

Anyway, I’d like to talk about this interesting phenomena called Festinger effect (you can read more in this article by a physiologist Dr. Hugh Willbourn). His point is quite simple, in fact: people who are so eager to get us and keep us in this lock-down manifest all the properties of a typical cult (yes, like Jehovah’s witnesses, Global Warmers, Scientology, Climate Changers, Hasidic groups, or largest ever – Christian Church soon to be overtaken by another – Islamic – cult). Anyway…

Cult members (or believers) should present the following five conditions in order to avoid cognitive dissonance between their own lives and a system of believes they have in their heads:

1. There must be conviction
2. There must be commitment to this conviction
3. The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal dis-confirmation
4. Such unequivocal dis-confirmation must occur
5. Social support must be available subsequent to the dis-confirmation.

…and boom: you look at all these who are almost coming just from a thought that global economy should be totally shut because of a slightly worst-than average flu-like illness (which perhaps Chinese leaked by total negligence or someone else was trying to perform morally questionable gain-function experiments) – and you see a cult. Enjoy the read!

Why I am not patronizing San Francisco diners anymore

Well, first of, I prefer to pay only for what wanna pay for. Say, if I order a juicy New York steak, then I know that I pay for the steak I’ve ordered. Now, depends on how good is the chief’s cooking and how fast and polite were the servants (my bad – they aren’t servants, they are waiters nowadays; I always was wondering what the hell are they waiting for anyway?), I will pay a certain percentage of what my food costs in the form of tips (aka gratitude; which begs a separate questions if the restaurateurs ever looked it up in a dictionary before putting it on the bill?).

On top of these expected charges there’s a usual amount of theft called “sales tax”. But now some city governments are trying to squeeze in another one and make me to foot the bill for their next reelection.

Already outraged? Totally!

Yet, you’ve heard me right. Say, the stinky city of San Francisco is adding what they called HSF tax on every bill at the diners with 20 employees or more. Where the money go? Well according the website above, the surcharge is paying for health care of the people who can not qualify for other forms of government dole such as Medicare or Medicaid.

Sure, I feel for people in dare circumstances. I donate to charities (mostly animal ones, really). But as any blanket program this one allows for all sorts of abuse and mis-allocations. And what’s more – it doesn’t benefit me slightest, because I do not leave in the city of watermelons (aka San Francisco by the Bay).

I don’t know about you, but I am voting with the only mean I still poses (only partially though): my wallet. And while people of the city can make their own decision of how to deal with it, I am making my own and take any of my hard earned currency (yes, we are not paid in money, you silly!) away from the grabs of the socialist types from the once great bay of California.