Life inside a bubble

I was just on a call with a bunch of professionals in my industry, and I was …. What’s the right word? Certainly not shocked. I’ve seen this for too long to be shocked. Disappointed? Maybe. But I know how natural and normal this is, so that seems a little harsh.

“Worn out” seems to be good enough.

I was worn out by the failure of these intelligent people to realize how much of a bubble they live in.

We were talking about Covid, which is a big issue in the events business, which is part of what I do. (Events became a big portion of revenue for a lot of publishers a few years ago.)

I don’t care what you believe about Covid and vaccines and masks and standing 6 feet apart and the delta variant and blah blah blah. I’m over it. Believe what you like.

But I do care when people think there is only one perspective. Which applies to all sides of this debate, of course. There are “Covid is a myth” people who act as if their position is the only rational one, and there are “Covid is the end of days” people who can’t understand why everyone else isn’t soiling their underwear over this virus.

Once again … I get it. There’s all kinds of weird “information” out there. People can very easily go down rabbit holes.

But don’t they have the sense to realize that other people see things differently, and that they have (what they regard as) reasonable reasons for their perspective?

This is one of the big failures in modern life. We seem to be losing the ability to realize that other people are coming from a different perspective.

I suppose it’s a result of all that talk about diversity and inclusion.

What 8 year old boy is not guilty of blasphemy?

8-year-old boy becomes the youngest person to face the death penalty in Pakistan

There’s an old saying that goes “show me a young man who is not a liberal, and I’ll show you a man with no heart. Show me an old man who is not a conservative, and I’ll show you a man with no brain.”

As with all sayings like that, it conveys an important message, and it’s a little silly to quibble over how accurate it is.

Along those same lines, I’d like to propose something like this. “Show me an 8-year old boy who has not committed blasphemy, and I’ll show you a boy who needs to read G. Gordon Liddy.”

It’s not that I’m a fan of blasphemy, but I am a fan of boys being boys, which means they do scatalogical, disrespectful, not grown up things. They jump off the roof with a bedsheet as a parachute. They make rickety ramps out of old wood and ride their bikes over them. They kiss frogs, rip off scabs, tease girls, and frighten their mothers.

Any regime that would consider charging an 8-year old for blasphemy should be mocked to scorn.

China and Covid

I just read China Owes The World $35 Trillion If Coronavirus Lab Leak Is True, which sounds as if it’s saying China is responsible for the virus and should pay for damages.

I am not a fan of communist China, but I think that’s a little silly.

My understanding is that the research that was going on in Wuhan was international. Other countries — including the U.S. — were involved.

However, China should still pay a price for their coverup and disinformation campaigns, and that price should be a collective “from now on, we won’t believe anything you say” from the entire world.

That seems a lot more fitting than a bill that China would never pay anyway.

A few quick notes

We’ve put the house I grew up in on the market. (Or … almost. I think it officially goes on the market tomorrow.)

Pigweed and I (and some friends) just got back from Big Meadows, in Shenandoah National Park. That was fun. One of the trails had a couple nice waterfalls, and one of them had a swimming hole at the bottom. It was cold, but refreshing!

The wildlife is so tame in the park that the deer will walk right past you, and even the birds will come pick around just next to your feet. A raven flew right through out camp, which was cool. All the campsites have bear boxes in which you are required to store all your food whenever you are not in camp.

The weather was lovely. While it was in the 90s in the D.C. area, it was 75 in the mountains, and in the low 60s at night.

We usually end our camping trips with breakfast at a diner, or some mom and pop restaurant, and I almost always get eggs and scrapple. It’s the only time I eat scrapple, which I really enjoy, but know is not good for me.

Pigweed and I tried to listen to Nature by Henry David Thoreau on the drive home. What a load of horse manure that thing is! We’re going to do a P&C episode on it soon.

I try to unplug when I go away, and now I’m slipping back into regular life, and catching up on the latest.

  • Cuomo has resigned. I think that’s a good thing.
  • An absurd $1.1 trillion bill pretending to be about infrastructure has passed. That’s bad. I hope every Republican who went along with this nonsense is removed from office. In fact, I want everyone Senator and every Congressman removed from office, and all the Congressional staff fired and banned from ever working for the federal government again. (Not just for this.)

Nothing else of great importance seems to have happened, but if I missed something, please feel free to bring it up in the comments.