Off The Beaten Track

BREITBART.COM -- Numerous Kentucky families will not have to worry about putting food on their tables for quite a while thanks to an anonymous person's generous gift. "Santa Clause is known for delivering toys to children but in Daviess County he just dropped off 246,300 pounds (123 tons) of food for families struggling this holiday season," the Kentucky State Police wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday. The anonymous benefactor reached out to Trooper Corey King, asking for help in finding somewhere to donate the non-perishable items. "This anonymous contribution to our community was a blessing by all means," said David Mudd, president of God's Outreach will help distribute the food. "This is usually the time of year when our troopers ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

BREITBART.COM -- A retired couple in Desert Hot Springs, California, is busy making toys for local children to enjoy this Christmas. "Mike Sullivan and his wife Judy spend their retirement making homemade wooden toys for children. They have been doing this since 2013," KESQ reported. Every Christmas, they donate their toys to needy children in the Coachella Valley. This year, they made 1,500. "Most times we don't even get to see the kids get them but they're going out" said Mike, who is an Army veteran. Despite the shrapnel left in his body from his time in the service, Mike said, "You have to adapt and overcome." The couple spends just about every day ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

QUILLETTE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2007: "The demands of dogma came to replace the disciplines of reason -- and education too often turned into indoctrination.... What the modern world requires, however, is an approach which is the polar opposite of indoctrination."] ARTICLE: In the liberal arts programs in particular, the question for many students has become not "What do I think?" but "What do they want me to write?" Of course, this ought to be a false dilemma, but that it exists at all raises troubling questions. Something has gone fundamentally awry. Students holding views that differ fundamentally from those taught must evaluate the risk that they will be penalized for their opinions, particularly when writing about politically contentious topics. This is not to say that every professor will mark heterodoxy more harshly than orthodoxy, but students hesitate to cite the work or the names of thinkers deemed 'controversial' or beyond the pale by whoever is responsible for grading their work. This has implications for the meaning and value of ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

OFF-GUARDIAN.ORG -- The World Health Organization released a memo on December 14th, warning that high cycle thresholds used on COVID-19 PCR tests will result in false positives. Of course, none of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention. It's been commonly available knowledge, for months now. Many articles have been written about it, by many experts in the field, medical journalists and other researchers. Dr Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR process, was clear that it wasn't meant as a diagnostic tool, saying: "with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody." Even Dr Anthony Fauci has publicly admitted that a cycle threshold over 35 is going to be detecting "dead nucleotides", not a living virus. So why has the WHO finally decided to say this is wrong? What reason could ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

RT.COM -- A peer review by 22 international experts of the paper on which most COVID testing is based has comprehensively debunked the science behind it. They conclude the PCR test is utterly unsuitable as a means for diagnosis -- and the fall-out is immense. The original study, the Corman-Drosten paper, described a protocol for applying the PCR technique to detecting COVID, now used in around 70% of COVID kits worldwide. It was published by Eurosurveillance on January, 23, 2020, just one day after being submitted, which would make any peer review process that took place possibly the shortest in history. The PCR test is cheap, fast -- and absolutely useless. At least four authors of the original paper themselves have severe conflicts of interest. Two are members of the editorial board of Eurosurveillance! And at least three are on the payroll of the first companies to perform PCR testing! But wait -- it gets worse. As has been noted previously ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

OFF-GUARDIAN.ORG -- Imagine going to a doctor suspecting you have a serious illness and being told that there are 2 tests available. If you test positive with the first test they don't know whether or not you have the disease. And the second test, they know for certain is of no value in detecting the disease. Would you find that satisfactory? Obviously not. Yet that is exactly what the Australian government is admitting is the situation with its coronavirus testing. On their web site for health professionals they state that "the extent to which a positive PCR result correlates with the infectious state of an individual is still being determined" and that "there is limited evidence available to assess the accuracy and clinical utility of available COVID-19 tests." In other words, the health authorities do not know whether, if a person tests positive, they are infected or not. Yet testing positive is ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEBLAZE.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: We are reposting this article (originally posted on 31 August 2020) due to new information, from WHO and others, re-confirming the PCR test used for COVID-19 diagnosis is virtually useless.] ARTICLE: In a bombshell weekend report, The New York Times reveals that most of the COVID-19 PCR tests are likely creating thousands upon thousands of false positives or flagging people with tiny quantities of virus who are not contagious. According to the Times, up to 90% of those who test positive in state labs would test negative under more prudent lab protocols. This is not new. The New York Times wrote about this exact flaw in PCR tests in 2007 when, in New Hampshire, the tests had a 100% false positive rate and fuelled the perception of a whooping cough epidemic that never existed. But the false positive rate might be even worse. One study published by Oxford University Press found absolutely no viral growth from samples with a CT above ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

OFF-GUARDIAN.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: We are reposting this article (originally posted on 31 August 2020) due to new information, from WHO and others, re-confirming the PCR test used for COVID-19 diagnosis is virtually useless.] ARTICLE: Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to "diagnose" Sars-Cov-2 infection, the science is clear: they are not fit for purpose. Although Kary Mullis, who invented PCR technology, that also earned him the 1993 Nobel prize in chemistry, passed last year, there is no doubt that he regarded the PCR as inappropriate viral infection test because PCR is a manufacturing technique, not a diagnostic tool to detect viruses. COVID-19 PCR tests do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with, as Jessica C. Watson confirmed in her British Medical Journal paper "Interpreting a COVID-19 test result." For that, we need to know the PCR tests were calibrated particle purified RNA. We asked several study authors "Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus?" But not a single team could answer that question with "yes." Nobody said purification ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- WMBRIGGS.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2008: "Freedom doesn't mean that if you want to abuse that freedom, whatever it is, you legitimise or impose that on others." "We do not ask [others] to share all our ethics, nor should they ask us to share all theirs."] ARTICLE: "The Separation," at the American Mind, suggests the people of the gods go one way, and the people of God go another. However, the people of the gods will never allow it, for they see themselves progressing toward some Great Future in which there is perfect diversity and equality -- by which they mean utter conformity, where disbelief and apostasy is forbidden by law. They say morality is changeable and, paradoxically, individual interpretation. What they say comes into existence, not in reality, but just that they insist everyone admit it is real. The people of God are the opposite. They see morality as fixed, suffering is accepted as part of life, and not always some other person's fault. They say what is spoken by God comes into existence, and into Reality, that life is best when Reality is admitted, and ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- 2020 as the Year of the Expert? Not exactly. In fact, a motif for the year has been the failure of experts. The flip-side of this has been that thoughtful people, who aren't scientists, decided to think skeptically and independently for themselves. And to help them, World Magazine's Book of the Year award for science, for the lay reader, went to "The Mystery of Life's Origin: The Continuing Controversy," an updated edition of the 1984 classic with contributions by scientists like James Tour, Stephen Meyer, Brian Miller, Guillermo Gonzalez, Jonathan Wells. Rice chemistry professor James Tour's essay has the apt title, "We're Still Clueless About the Origin of Life." Tour appropriately ridicules reporters who fall for media hype about purported progress. He quotes ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- CSLEWISDOODLE -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazrat Ali: "A good man revolts against violence, but shows himself mild and reasonable if well treated."] ARTICLE: The word chivalry has meant at different times a good many different things -- from heavy cavalry to giving a woman a seat in a train. But if we want to understand chivalry, we cannot do better than turn to the words addressed to the greatest of all the imaginary knights. "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest", says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot. The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. What, you may ask, is the relevance of this idea to the modern world? It is terribly relevant. It may or may not be ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- DISCOVERY SCIENCE -- Information drives the development of life. But what is the source of that information? Could it have been produced by an unguided Darwinian process? Or did it require intelligent design? The Information Enigma is a fascinating 21-minute documentary that probes the mystery of biological information, the challenge it poses to orthodox Darwinian theory, and the reason it points to intelligent design. The video features Dr. Stephen Meyer, and molecular biologist Douglas Axe, founder of the Biologic Institute. ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- The Pilgrims didn't cross the ocean to flee persecution -- or even England. They'd been living for over a decade in Holland, Europe's most tolerant nation, and a haven for religious dissenters. Free from interference by the Church of England, they feared seduction -- not persecution, worrying that their children would be corrupted by the materialistic Dutch culture. That's why they risked their dangerous 1620 voyage to a wilderness continent. The turbulent sea then deposited them safely -- miraculously -- on a little island within sight of the ideal location for their settlement. It was a deserted Indian village. No, these supposedly cruel conquerors never actually invaded that village. Instead, they expressed a fervent desire to pay the natives for ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "*If freedom of religion deteriorates into freedom from religion*, then societies will find themselves lost in a bleak and unpromising landscape with no compass, no roadmap and no sense of ultimate direction."] ARTICLE: British historian Paul Johnson draws a stark and telling contrast between the two great revolutions of the 18th century. "The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event." That's why the first freedom listed in the American Bill of Rights and first amendment to the Constitution is about religious liberty. Now, two centuries after the Bill of Rights, one of the main goals of the American Revolution, *freedom of religion, has morphed into freedom from religion*, one of the main goals of the French Revolution. This is why the Founders insisted religious liberty be in the Constitution because freedom of liberty was tantamount to freedom of thought. If you aren't free to think ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

CATHOLICNEWSAGENCY.COM -- Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito warned that religious liberty was under threat in the United States and emerging as a "disfavored", "second tier" right. Alito also raised concerns the pandemic has sparked a move to "executive fiat" in terms of lawmaking and "highlighted the movement toward rule by experts." He was critical of states that have restricted access to worship services under the guise of coronavirus safety protocols, but had allowed other larger gatherings to continue without issue. "Take a quick look at the Constitution. You will see the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which protects religious liberty. You will not find a craps clause or a blackjack clause or a slot machine clause." Alito raised concerns that freedom of speech was also on its way to ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- TEMPLETONPRIZE.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Mawlana Sultan Muhammad Shah, 1956: "The young Waezin should each try and find new arguments based on the discoveries in all branches of science for keeping the human soul like [sic] the ocean with the Divine wisdom and power."] ARTICLE: My own view is that, while science and religion may seem different, they have many similarities, and should interact and enlighten each other. I believe they are closely related. Science tries to understand our universe: what it is like and how it works. Religion is aimed at understanding the purpose and meaning of our universe, including our own lives -- which I believe is the most important long-range question. If the universe has a purpose or meaning, this must be reflected in its structure and functioning, and hence in science. In addition, to best understand either science or religion, we must use all of our human resources - logic, evidence, carefully chosen assumptions, intuition, and faith. Many people don't realize that science basically involves assumptions and faith and that nothing is absolutely proved. We must ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEBULWARK.COM -- For some years now, one of the left's favorite tropes has been the phrase "I believe in science." A lot of people prefer the imagery of "science" to the mundane reality. People who proclaim "I believe in science" are just proclaiming their belief in the current, fashionable consensus. In my experience, "I believe in science" is shorthand for, "I have a degree in the humanities." The problem is the word "belief." Science isn't about "belief." It's about facts, evidence, theories, experiments. You don't say, "I believe in thermodynamics." You either understand its laws and the evidence for them, or you don't. "Belief" doesn't enter into it. "I understand the science on this issue" would be better, implying you have engaged in a first-hand study of ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

SPIKED-ONLINE.COM -- Many on the left peddle the narrative that they are more scientifically minded than those on the right. They market themselves as the heirs to the ideals of the Enlightenment -- reason, progress and truth -- while pillorying the right as a collection of creationists or anti-vaxxers. This narrative is a false but useful fiction. It lets the left to dress up its moral and political views as scientific. To question them is, therefore, to question the authority of the science. What the left are really saying is "do not question us." It is tantamount to secular heresy. Science is wielded by those on the left as a stick to hit those who ask reasonable questions. In doing so, they encourage the politicisation of scientific knowledge and the scientification of morality. In abusing science ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

MINDMATTERS.AI -- Even assuming that a living thing could be built from scratch, there is a bigger problem. Life reproduces. Life produces life. We often view this as a mundane fact but it is actually quite profound. A lot goes into the ability to replicate. A replicating part needs to able to reproduce everything, including the reproduction mechanism. In other words, the whole system -- the living thing and its replication system -- must be in place for anything to work at all, otherwise we won't get anywhere. It can't "evolve" to this point, because, before this point, there is nothing that is capable of evolution. This is the reason for much of the public skepticism of origin of life research. This week, in a tweet, Elon Musk put his finger on the issue. When referring to ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- YOUTUBE.COM -- CSLEWISDOODLE -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazrat Ali: "The measure of a man depends on the scope of his resolution, and his sincerity depends on the degree of his chivalric virtues. His courage depends on the degree of honour he has, and his integrity is based on the degree of his sense of shame."] ARTICLE: One point about the virtues is that there is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man. We might think that, provided you did the right thing, it did not matter how or why you did it -- whether sulkily or cheerfully, or fear of public opinion or for its own sake. But the truth is that right actions done for the wrong reason do not help to build the internal quality or character called a "virtue," and it is this quality or character that really matters. We might think God simply wants obedience to a set of rules: whereas He really wants people of a particular sort. You will notice, of course, that you cannot practise any virtues very long without fortitude. Fortitude includes both kinds of courage ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- In 2008, then Senator Barak Obama said: "Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives ... family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation." If "we are honest with ourselves," he went on "we'll admit that too many fathers are missing from too many lives and too many homes." As much as we try to deny the need for real, masculine strength in society, there's no denying its necessity. Healthy families and strong communities depend on the leadership and bravery of good men. Yet, the current trend is to feminize young men in the hopes of achieving some utopian notion of equality and peace. And it starts at the earliest ages. In the school classroom boys are invariably ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEFEDERALIST.COM -- Over at Ask Men, Ian Stobber listed what he considers obsolete man skills, and suggestions for replacing them. Such as replace hunting with cooking, as if it's something men have not been doing since the dawn of time. Although Western restaurant chefs are still typically male, bourgeois Western women traditionally cook for their families. But did you know in Turkey women wouldn't be allowed anywhere near meat? Stobber's advice to take up coding in place of car repair seems a bit odd, too. Computer programming is dominated by men. His most hilarious idea is men should learn to decorate instead of fixing things around the house. Don't put down your power tools just yet. We women ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- What once was the start of healthy debate is now just as often a catalyst for personal and professional destruction. "The mob" is out to cancel anyone who crosses it. Niel Golightly had a long and distinguished career as an executive at Boeing. Until he didn't. James Bennett had a long and distinguished career as an editor at the New York Times. Until he didn't. They and others were cancelled, their careers, their life's work ended in a virtual instant. Former Times columnist Bari Weiss perfectly described the situation in her resignation letter shortly after Bennet's banishment. "Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor." This is the "cancel culture" that now ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- Do you feel forced to keep your values to yourself? Are you afraid to speak up about your views and opinions for fear of creating family tension or losing your friends -- or your job? People, "good people like you," are afraid to say what they think. And why is that? It's because there's a mass affliction spreading throughout the Western world. It's called the Bravery Deficit. Take the "wrong" side of any hot-button issue and your reputation, your friends, and your job ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

FOXNEWS.COM -- Three of the world's top epidemiologists, Harvard Medical School's Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Oxford University's Dr. Sunetra Gupta and Stamford's Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. Some include worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health - with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Furthermore, keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. Launched just 2 days ago, their "Great Barrington Declaration" (at gbdeclaration.org) has already been signed by over 4,000 medical scientists and practioners. The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

NATIONALREVIEW.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2007: "Good people do not all think alike, and that we must constantly learn from one another."] ARTICLE: In 1932, US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis famously called the states "laboratories of democracy." Different states can test out different policies, and learn from each other. That proved true in 2020. Governors in different states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic at different times and in different ways. Some states ordered sweeping shutdowns. Others took a more targeted approach. Still others dispensed information but had no lockdowns at all. As a result, we can now compare outcomes in different states to test the question no one wants to ask: Did the lockdowns make a difference? And the data suggest mandatory lockdowns exacted a great cost, with a questionable effect on transmission. If lockdowns ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Mawlana Sultan Muhammad Shah, 1956: "The young Waezin should each try and find new arguments based on the discoveries in all branches of science for keeping the human soul like [sic] the ocean with the Divine wisdom and power."] ARTICLE: Cells and organisms come pre-equipped with repair mechanisms. It takes foresight to make complex tools and procedures that can restore the functions of other tools. But can a blind, unguided process -- like evolution -- recognize a problem? Furthermore, blind process can only see the immediate present; they are unconcerned about what happens next. Repair implies something worth saving. The easiest thing for evolution, when a problem occurs, is to let the organism die. Uncaring evolution owes it no further existence. Life comes equipped with repair mechanisms far more complex than ever expected. "It is remarkable that embryos can do this," Caltech scientists said. Lawrence Berkeley scientists were surprised by a "master sculptor" surgically straightening DNA before their eyes. If they assume these wonders ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- EVOLUTIONNEWS.ORG -- In cells, complex multi-part machines find errors and fix them. The very concepts of proofreading and repair imply accuracy for a pre-defined purpose. How can cells do that? How do they know what is an error and also how to fix it, know how things should be? Processes like proofreading and repair can't appear by blind material processes. They take foresight. But blind material processes don't have forsight or anticipation, by definition. Only intelligence or minds have foresight. We look at at five different errors that are repaired by five different systems of cellular molecular machines. Each system must not only recognize the error but also know how to fix it. In each case, the machinery is well designed and finely tuned to rapidly and efficiently solve the problem. Behold in wonder ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 1976: "The anchors of moral behaviour appear to have dragged to such depths that they no longer hold firm the ship of life: What was once wrong is now simply unconventional, and for the sake of individual freedom must be tolerated. What is tolerated soon becomes accepted."] ARTICLE: [Former] presidential hopeful Kamala Harris can't get herself to support legislation that compels doctors to give an infant who survives an abortion the same care they would provide any other human being born. 44 Democrats, including [former] presidential candidates Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, blocked Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse's Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that would save all such babies. Bills in both Virginia and New York specifically provide legal protections for doctors who terminate babies who are born-alive and survive an abortion. Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- YOUTUBE.COM -- PRAGERU -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2006: "Public integrity cannot grow out of authoritarian pronouncements. It must be rooted in the human heart and conscience." 1959: "The message I will always give is that humanity cannot deal with present day problems without a basis of religion." 2001: "But the jihad is before anything else, a personal discipline."] ARTICLE: A major difference between the Right and the Left is how to improve society. Conservatives believe the best way is almost always through individual moral improvement -- each person doing battle with their own weaknesses. The Left, on the other hand, believes the best way is almost always through doing battle with society's moral failings. However, as John Adams, the second American president, said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to any other." And President Benjamin Franklin said: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." Why? Because, freedom requires self-control. From its founding until the 1960s, American schools concentrated on character education. But, today children are not taught to focus on their flaws but on America's. Social issues have replaced character education. Another consequence ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- FS.BLOG -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Hazar Imam, 2008: "There are societies where the educated woman will not find a husband because she's educated. So you need to be very, very careful in handling these things, because they can be a real boomerang if you get them wrong.... So there are a lot of criteria there and it's a difficult problem."] ARTICLE: When we seek to change something, if we don't understand how we got "here," we run the risk of making things much worse. Before changing anything, we should know if the original people used second-order thinking when making their decisions and choices. Second-order thinking means not just considering the consequences of our decisions but also the consequences of those consequences so we don't go for quick fixes and end up making things worse. Humility says assume those earlier people knew things we don't or had experience we can't fathom. Their reasons for making certain choices might be more complex than they seem at first. Everyone can manage first-order thinking ...

Click to view ❯❯❯

[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- FS.BLOG -- Most people don't often say what they think. How often do you bite your tongue because you know you hold an unpopular view? We only express opinions that seem safe and our perception "safe" comes from clues we pick up about what we think everyone else believes. The internet lets a vocal minority make their opinions seem far more widespread than they actually are. Consequently, that minority end up having a disproportionate influence on public discourse, especially if that minority already has a lot of power. The end result of the spiral of silence is that no one publicly voices a minority opinion, regardless of how many people believe it. Our desire to fit in with others means ...

Click to view ❯❯❯