Darryl Betts darryllrbetts.wordpress.com Darryl is a businessman and a post-graduate student in Philosophy at the University of Auckland, with particular interests in the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic, and AI. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and a BA in Philosophy, Logic and Computation.
“Social media pseudo-science, superstition and other forms of cerebral masturbation about Covid-19.” Tom O’Connor, Stuff, 15 November 2021 A Stuff article, under the heading Locally-made ‘disinformation’ draws global scorn. Covid-19: A paper on vaccination in pregnancy co-authored by Simon Thornley has been panned by experts around the world,” Stuff
Someone who donates their body to scientific research might have a reasonable expectation their remains will be put to some useful purpose. Training medical students, perhaps. Even being turned into a crash-test dummy might ultimately save lives. Whatever the science-minded deceased might have expected, being turned into a grotesque sideshow
Owen Jennings F.A.R.M NZ farmers are leading the way under the “net emissions target” set by the Government. “Ruminant methane emissions from New Zealand livestock are, by any definition, at net zero now, thirty years ahead of CO2 emitters,” according to F.A.R.M Chairman Robin
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One thing that’s particularly notable about millenarian doomsday cults is that they’ll never admit they’re wrong. It’s as true of Kent Hovind and Jeanne Dixon, as it is of climate alarmists or the Branch Covidians. But at least nutters like Hovind and Dixon have the excuse
Kylie Quinn RMIT University Dr Kylie Quinn is an RMIT University Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow and leads the new Ageing and Immunotherapies Group. Her group is developing ways to improve immune responses in older individuals during infection, vaccination, and new cell-based therapies such as chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy
If there’s no expert dealing with the problem, it’s really actually twice the problem. Cause only an expert can deal with the problem Laurie Anderson, Only An Expert. Only An Expert An expert, it is said, is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until
The term ‘following the science’ that we have often heard through the Covid-19 situation has always bothered me in terms of policymaking. Are the decisions this government is making for its Covid-19 response based on politics or science? Science is not a fixed position and adapts as more is known.
Information Opinion A week ago, The BFD published a review of the Pfizer vaccine trials in which I analysed the actual data released by the company. The takeaway for readers was that the numbers simply did not justify government decisions. Pfizer trumpeted headlines about over 43,000 participants enrolled in
Perhaps nothing exemplifies the bureaucratic lunacy crushing Australians in the name of “covid rules” than the case of Nikolai Petrovsky. Professor Petrovsky is one of Australia’s most respected vaccinologists. He has led the development of an Australian-made covid vaccine: a vaccine currently in phase 3 trials and ready to
Jacinda Ardern, for all her posturing and wind-bagging about climate change, isn’t even deigning to grace the world’s biggest climate gab-fest. Probably she knew she’d be competing for the cameras with the media’s favourite climate pinup-girl. There’s nothing a diva hates worse than having to
James Shaw, co-leader of the Green Party, believes people can reduce the world’s temperature. Perhaps this thinking comes from a Maori legend: How Maui Slowed The Sun. Maui was annoyed that the sun went down too quickly, and he had to eat his meal in the dark. His village
Here’s a weird time-perspective for you to consider: we live closer in time to Cleopatra than she did to the building of the great pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza was more than 2600 years old when Cleopatra was alive. By contrast, she lived less than two thousand years
From the moment astronomers first trained telescopes on it, Venus was long an enigma. Shrouded entirely in thick white clouds which help make it one of the brightest objects in the night sky, nothing was known of Venus’ surface. That mystery allowed speculation to run riot. C. S. Lewis, in
In his epic The Winds of War, Herman Wouk refers to the “curious universal smirk of Germans when discussing Jews: condescending, facetious, and cold, with superior awareness of a very private inside joke”. I’ve often noticed a similar look when discussing climate science with alarmists. Mention a scientist or
