This is an interesting result. It is obviously too early to draw conclusions, but does this suggest that Liverpool are back to their best? Newly promoted teams often start the season quite strongly... Watford and Brentford both won their opening game, but Norwich, who were by far the best team in the Championship last season, got picked apart with supreme ease. Is it Norwich weakness, or rather the strength of Liverpool making their opponents look bad?

This is at the heart of it, yes. "Incels" may or may not be more likely to engage in violent behaviour, but when it's a sample size of one, we can't really say anything. If the gunman was wearing a blue shirt, it doesn't mean we should fear everyone in blue shirts.

Mental health here in the UK has been underfunded for years, a legacy of successive governments chipping away at provision until the service is not fit for purpose. I don't think this can be ignored in this instance. And the year and a half of lockdowns and social restrictions only exacerbates the situation:


<sub>https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/mental-health-crisis-care-services-under-resourced-understaffed-and-overstretched/

https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/latest-data-highlights-a-growing-mental-health-crisis-in-the-uk</sub>

Yes, certainly, it's both, you're right. We are to an extent shaped by our experiences. For example someone who has risen to a position of absolute power might see everyone else as inferior to him*, including those people whom, prior to his reaching that position, he viewed as colleagues and equals. It's both nature and nurture, it's not 'either/or', it's 'and'.



*it always seems to be a 'him'.

The question is complicated somewhat by the fact that often those who seek power, particularly absolute power, are those who would use it selfishly for their own ends anyway. If someone wants to become an authoritarian dictator, succeeds in becoming one, and then starts to act in a corrupt fashion, we can't really suggest that it was attaining the power that made them behave that way... they were already that sort of person.

The problem with this* is what happens to the people who haven't heard of Jesus, and are damned for eternity through no fault of their own? Seems quite harsh. I thought God had ditched the Old Testament psychopath thing when he pivoted to Jesus.


I don't think you can use the phrase 'free will' when discussing religion. One of religion's principle features is an utter abdication of personal responsibility.





*_{Well, one of the problems. There are loads of them...}

For once we are in agreement (apart from the 'very nice in theory' bit). I think I've criticised anarcho-capitalism fairly recently in another thread. The worst system has to be the one that is most easily exploited, and has nothing to prevent excesses and abuses. It sounds nightmarish. I've had a read of that post, and theymos also says:


He's a lot more intelligent than I am, so I'm willing to accept that I may be missing something. But superficially at least, ancap appears to me to be a terrible idea, premised on the belief that there is zero exploitation within the current system, and any unfairness or abuse that does exist is caused solely by government intervention.

--

I'd probably agree with this. The private sector is generally more efficient. The issue is who benefits. Rail travel in my country might be a decent example. It used to be run by the government, it wasn't hugely efficient, but prices were cheap. A couple of decades ago it was privatised, and the government started handing out regional franchises to private operators. Effectively a series of local monopolies. Companies are interested primarily in making money for themselves. For companies beholden to shareholders, it's a duty. So, inexorably and inevitably, prices increased and standards slipped. The companies offer the minimum viable service they can get away with, whilst charging exorbitant fees and creaming off all the profit. When a government privatises something and puts something out to tender, the aim is to get rid of the cost, so they invariably accept the lowest offer rather than the offer that is best for the customer. The rail situation here is now much worse than before. I appreciate that privatising infrastructure and utilities is quite different to private companies operating in direct competition with one another... but the ultimate motivation is always self-enrichment. No company works for the benefit of the customer; no company puts money into improving the customer experience unless they believe this will net them an increase in profits.

But I'm certainly not against companies. I'd agree with you that part of the duty of a government is to rein in some of their more egregious behaviour.

Even if this is the case, it's difficult to determine any meaningful conclusion. Obviously it depends on what proportion of the population have been vaccinated, and which people have been vaccinated. If for example 80% of people have been vaccinated, you'd expect vaccinated people to still make up a sizeable proportion of hospital patients. And what if only 20% of people have been vaccinated, but because vaccinations start with the most vulnerable people, this 20% is overwhelmingly old, infirm and immunocompromised people... in this case, even though it's only 20%, and even if the vaccines are highly (but not 100%) effective, you'd still expect the majority of patients to have been vaccinated, just because of who they are.

I'm not forming any conclusion here, just recommending caution in attributing reasons for a thing when there are other factors to consider.

Capitalist democracy is what works better than anything else, not pure capitalism. Capitalism without democracy would lack accountability. We'd be back to slave ownership. It's the accountability that's the important thing. Freedom within a system that acts to inhibit excessive abuses of that freedom. The question of where to set those limits is something for another thread.


I'd agree that globalisation, despite all its faults, is probably the single biggest factor in the absence of world wars since 1945. Having your economy entangled with the economies of every other major power is a compelling motivator for peace.

Yes, how dare I go to the link you supplied and post actual data from there.  
Perhaps I should have checked first, and only posted stuff that matched a baseless, preconceived notion that the vaccine is ineffective or worse... then we could have disregarded all those pesky facts that don't say what you want them to say.

But let's look at the source data from your archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210812003702/https://data.ontario.ca/en/dataset/covid-19-vaccine-data-in-ontario

Yeah, but that was 2016. Things have moved on a bit since then.

If by zero you mean 44, then that's accurate.  
From your link:


https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations

But even if it were zero, it wouldn't be too surprising... it depends on the vaccination level, particularly among the most vulnerable, who were those vaccinated first.
Think about it. If the vaccination rate hit 100% then 100% of those in ICU would have been vaccinated... it's just that there might be 10 people in there, rather than 1000 if the vaccination rate were 0%. If you divest data of context, then some meaning is lost.

I'd say Xi Jinping. US presidents don't have the same level of influence within their own nation as Xi does in China, and are limited to (at most) 8 years in charge. Xi's term doesn't end until he does.

I don't think Elon Musk is very important. He's certainly wealthy and successful, but he wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list.


Don't be silly. We've discussed this before. That's a ludicrous oversimplification of how the science works.

I'm not clicking the link, but is this those Kim Cardassian photos again? She's not even a real Cardassian. She looks nothing like Gul Dukat.
But I'll grant that Dukat looks somewhat convincing as a humanoid manifestation of this non-existent Kraken thing.

I've always thought that the best type of government is one that allows itself to be challenged. Most of us live in capitalist democracies, and of course the phrase is an oxymoron, but that's what makes it valuable. Capitalism works for the benefit of the elite, but democracy works for the general public, and acts as a brake on the excesses of the wealthy. Certainly it doesn't work perfectly in practice, but at least it works to an extent... which is better than any other form of government.

I think the problem is that Man City have become so strong, that the only way they can improve is to buy the best players in the world.

If you want a good player, you have to pay a reasonably high price.
If you want a very good player, maybe one of the best 10 or 20 in his position in the world, they you have to pay a very high price.
If you want a world-class player, one of the best few in his position, then you have to pay something crazy... just because there are so few players available at this standard.

Yes, there are certainly differences as well as similarities. I was just trying to point out that the ability to make accurate mathematical assessments is invaluable in both poker and sports betting, and is the backbone of a successful strategy.

You are right that in sports betting you are often calculating against the house... but not always. There are some online betting platforms where the odds change considerably depending on how other platform users bet... which makes it a little more like poker.

But I'll defer to someone who has the word "Poker" as part of their user name* - I suspect you are more knowledgeable than me in this area!




*I'm still waiting for someone to defer to me on the subject of Anglo-Saxon history, but it's not come up in any of the threads yet

I think he's starting from the premise that all vaccines are ineffective. He's hoping to prove that vaccines have never been effective in the past, therefore the Covid vaccine is useless, too.
However... the proof has failed quite dramatically on his first try, Polio. Perhaps next he'll fail to prove why the smallpox vaccine is ineffective. Or he might go even bigger, and fail to prove that life expectancy hasn't increased dramatically around the world since the advent of modern medicine. Let's wait and see.

Not compared to Trump, no. Biden is more of a lovable rogue. People often misinterpret his actions. Like when he fell over three times on the steps trying to board Air Force One... it wasn't evidence of infirmity, merely standard Biden slapstick antics. He loves messing around with planes...

I think there will be some restrictions, because it's a global event and involves competitors from almost every nation.

Whilst France and the rest of Europe, and many other countries such as the US will likely be highly vaccinated and have achieved effective herd immunity by that time, probably there will still be many countries where vaccination is still ongoing, and where new vaccine-resistant variants are arising.

... but I'm confident that whilst it will still be around in 2024, it won't be anywhere near as much of an issue as it is now.

No. Your assertion is only valid if everyone has been vaccinated. In the real world, some people have been vaccinated and some haven't. If the vaccine is effective, then the pass can be used to prove that someone is 'safe'. Without the pass, there is no proof.