I knew I shouldn't have got involved in this thread, but I couldn't help myself


He doesn't have to be, any more than he has to be a 'he'. The example was made purely in the interests of concision and economy. If I combine the advantaged groups, it means I can use a single example rather than three (comparing rich white male to poor non-white female, rather than taking wealth, race and gender separately).


I'm not denying that global wealth increases over the long-term... but it's certainly a cake. Jeff Bezos' money doesn't magically appear, it comes to him from other people. Is global wealth infinite? No? Then it is finite... even if expanding.
Saying that rich people didn't have cable TV a few decades back, but everyone has it now, therefore poverty doesn't exist... is clearly nonsense.
Are any of the facts below false? How can there not be a moral case for taxing the ultra-rich to support foreign aid?

https://www.atlasmarinesystems.com/most-expensive-yachts/
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water
https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/reports/world-malaria-report-2020
https://www.againstmalaria.com/WhyNets.aspx

TL;DR: Thomas Sowell believes that there is no such thing as inequality of opportunity, no such thing as systemic discrimination, no such thing as the rich and powerful exploiting the poor and vulnerable. He believes that the son of a white billionaire has the exact same chances in life as the daughter of a Mexican illegal immigrant who has to work three jobs just to pay the rent. He's also - although there are no quotes on this above - a climate-change denier.

I'm wary of taking isolated quotes out of context, but there's a clear pattern that many of his statements and opinions are driven by the almost rabid antipathy characteristic of an extremist ideologue, and many, notably his aversion to foreign aid, are morally indefensible. If you genuinely believe that there is no problem with a largely untaxed billionaire spending a hundred million dollars on a new yacht rather than saving millions of lives in poorer nations by providing safe drinking water or malaria nets, then it says a lot about your position on a lot of subjects. But who cares about anyone else, right, so long as you have enough $$$ yourself? 'F*** the poor' appears to be the overriding sentiment, as if poverty were entirely a choice.

Certainly the Bundesliga is less competitive in terms of teams vying for the title, and the point about Lewandowski is also valid... he would remain #1 choice, surely?
But as for Chelsea vs Bayern, Bayern are surely the better team, and will have more chances of e.g. winning the Champions League - Chelsea winning last season was quite unlikely.

I wouldn't be surprised if proportionally more Dems than Reps were taking the vaccine. The main issue with your conclusion is obviously about the effects of the vaccine. If the vaccine protects, as the data indicate quite overwhelmingly, then you might expect statistically more Reps than Dems to contract Covid and suffer severe effects.

The 100 years bit is quite a wild extrapolation, too. Can anyone really say with even the slightest degree of confidence who will be in charge in 2121?

Congratulations. I think this is now ahead of Flat Earth as the most absurd thread on the forum. But at least that was just lunacy and trolling rather than outright racism.

The population of the US is somewhere above 300 million. If you can keep this thread of individual instances going for say a few million pages, then you may have a point. As it stands though, we're only on page 17.
If you can just increase your posting rate to around 10,000 per day, I'll check back in a year...

Okay, I indulged you. I put "America's Frontline Doctors Hydroxychloroquine" into Google. The top result was:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90536

On the women's side, I suppose Swiatek must be the overwhelming favourite now that most of the other contenders have fallen away. Not sure if anyone left in the draw can stop her. Coco Gauff maybe has an outside chance?

Just wait for the Nadal match, if they play each other... Djokovic will surely suffer a dramatic 'injury' which calls for a time-out just when the match is getting away from him, and then he'll just as dramatically recover instantly with no ill-effects whatsoever, almost as if the injury was simply him playing psychological games in an attempt to unsettle his opponent. He's a great player certainly, but these tricks are giving him a bad name.

"BADecker: why would I need credibility?"

I'm seriously considering getting this printed on a t-shirt.

Hydroxychloroquine showed some initial promise, but once scientific studies had been completed, the results indicated that it was of no benefit. You say 'despite the science', yet you ignore the science...


https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/11/studies-find-no-covid-benefit-preventive-hydroxychloroquine-or-convalescent


For some perspective, you may also want to consider this article:
 Fact check: Fauci's emails don't show he 'lied' about hydroxychloroquine

Saying 'we need to see the data' is hardly 'lying to the public despite the science'.

Political leaders around the world have been using war analogies and metaphors ever since the pandemic started. It's not really a good idea. They are instilling fear in the populace, they are implying that a massive death toll is an inevitability, they are promoting a sense of hopelessness and a thing that we just have to see through, instead of protecting medical personnel sufficiently they are simply calling them heroes, as if they need to sacrifice themselves... and so on. And through it all, they are glorying in the drama. Trump kept calling himself a 'wartime president'. Boris Johnson in the UK is impersonating Churchill. It's absurd and self-indulgent. Of course the pandemic is a serious situation that merits serious action, that needs to be taken seriously, but to dress it up as a war is nonsense.

That's what I thought, too. That hold up where Hamilton had to wait for (I think Gasly?) to go past looked costly. But in retrospect, he only lost maybe 2 seconds there, and when he emerged from the pits he was maybe 4 seconds behind Verstappen. It was noticeable that as soon as Hamilton pitted, Verstappen and Perez started to improve their lap times considerably, which suggest that Hamilton was holding them up a little. Certainly Hamilton's inability to pass Perez after the stops suggested that Red Bull had the quicker car at this track.

I'm not sure they're that surprising any more. She is looking more vulnerable with each passing tournament, and it's starting to look less likely that she'll break that total grand slam wins record.
But overall it's been a crazy tournament on the women's side, hardly any seeds remaining!

Yes, unfair is probably the wrong word - of course it is fair. Unlucky is the word, I suppose, if Verstappen had lost a massive points swing just because of a tyre blowout... so Hamilton's incident cancels out Verstappen's bad luck.

Mercedes are saying it was unlucky for Hamilton, he accidentally flicked a switch that took out his braking ability. Difficult to know how much of this is true and how much is to cover the driver from taking a huge amount of blame. I'm a big fan of Hamilton, it's rare that he makes errors, but whatever the cause, this was a mistake that could have a big impact on the season - going from a potential 25 points to 0 is massive. If we expect Hamilton and Verstappen to be P1 and P2 in whatever order in most races, then this is equivalent to 4 race wins that he's lost by flicking that switch.

Wow, more chaos with Hamilton dropping to last, going straight on at the first turn! Those smoking brakes at the restart weren't a good sign...

I'm a Hamilton fan, but it would have been so unfair to get that huge championship swing, this is much less unfair on Verstappen now.

Well, after the red flag... we now will see everyone changing to softs, then a two lap sprint to the finish... maybe it will be Perez to win, or maybe there is more chaos in store.

Good call by Red Bull to the racing director to red flag it, in case the same thing happened to someone else. The safety-first approach is commendable, when they could have just coasted to a Perez win behind the safety car.

The biggest thing here is the potential huge points swing to Hamilton, ignoring fastest lap it goes from 25 Ves 15 Ham, to 18 Ham 0 Ves... so a huge 28 point swing in the title battle.

I don't know anything about that particular person, but longevity research is a serious scientific endeavour, and is yielding results, yes. The field is being funded - generally anything where there is potentially a vast quantity of money to be made is funded.

Has the Star Wars analogy I posted changed your opinion on vaccines at all? I assume not, but it's a nice way of explaining the process.


It's weird coming out of lockdown. I'm definitely having to make a bit of an effort to remember how to function in normal society again, and interact with people. I mean, as much as I ever did...

I was referring to his activities as an individual...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

The question of the impact of his presidency on the US economy is obviously a more complex one, and deserves a serious analysis... but probably not in a joke thread.


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I suppose it's a rare point of agreement between us that the US and China don't see eye-to-eye, and that there is a degree of antipathy and hostility. I just don't see that this will manifest as what would be a hugely expensive physical conflict, that would ultimately damage the victors almost as much as the losers. China aren't able to use tanks and guns to conquer the US, and vice versa. Conflicts between major nations are more abstracted nowadays. Trade wars, cyberwarfare, PR, etc. Any physical conflict is limited to proxy fighting in other geographical arenas.

Gun ownership laws are pretty strict where I am (a small island in the North Atlantic). I think I'd need a police license or something. This is a good thing — I wouldn't imagine I'd be particularly competent with a weapon

The issue Mercedes have had all weekend is that they can't seem to get their tyres in the window for single lap pace - but in the long runs in practice, they looked fine, and right up there with Red Bull.
So Hamilton's new low downforce set-up enabled him to get P2 in qualifying... and it should also increase his straight line speed, which obviously should make overtaking easier for him. You would expect him to pass Leclerc fairly quickly... unless of course Max beats Lewis off the line, and Max has been the quicker on the starts this year...

So Trump works for (or is?) the Chinese Communist Party? I had thought his failure at capitalism was simple ineptitude. Turns out he's trying to bring it down from the inside.

I missed it too, and was very surprised that Hamilton finished ahead of Verstappen. Apparently Mercedes ran a split strategy, trying Hamilton out with a much lower downforce set-up, which seemed to do the trick. It seems they're fine for race pace, it's just the one-lapper where they were struggling.



He wasn't great, but I think that's a bit harsh. It's a shame for Bottas to be so far back, but this time it's not entirely his fault. Mercedes tried two things, one worked for one driver. I'm not saying Bottas would have qualified second if he had Hamilton's set-up, but he'd likely have been at least a few places higher.