Utopia, you are standing in it!

In 1944 the RLM issued a requirement for an aircraft with a range of 11000 km (6835 miles) and a bomb load of 4000 kg (8818 lbs). This bomber was to be able to fly from Germany to New York City and back without refueling. Five of Germany’s top aircraft companies had submitted designs, but none of them met the range requirements for this Amerika Bomber. Their proposals were redesigned and resubmitted at the second competition, but nothing had changed. The Hortens were not invited to submit a proposal because it was thought that they were only interested in fighter aircraft.

After the Hortens learned of these design failures, they the went about designing the XVIII A Amerika Bomber. During the Christmas 1944 holidays, Reimar and Walter Horten worked on the design specifications for their all-wing bomber. They drew up a rough draft and worked on weight calculations, allowing for…

Blog Post by Joe Babaian

Today’s blog is inspired by the so-called human-centered waves of the current pandemic. Attribution and design credits to Victor Tseng @VectorSting for the amazing work seen here.

Take a look at Dr. Tseng’s graphic – it’s representative and not keyed to precise times as of today. He created this to be a start to conversation – it’s wonderful for that purpose and more. Or particular concern is the 4th Wave – what comes after. What comes after is going to define and change society in ways we are just beginning to grasp.

• 1st Wave: Immediate mortality and morbidity of COVID-19.
• 1st Wave Tail: Post-ICU and admission recovery for many patients.
• 2nd Wave: Impact of resource restrictions on non-COVID conditions – all the usual urgent things that people need immediate treatment for – acute.
• 3rd Wave: The impact of interrupted care of chronic conditions (people stayed…

A point that interests me greatly is the status of the concept of truth in contemporary intellectual thought. Insofar as postmodern and poststructuralist modes of thought remain hegemonic in intellectual culture, truth has very little currency. Similarly with our pluralistic and multicultural politics, which privilege a very relativistic approach to issues, rather than an insistence on a particular truth. Terry Eagleton writes, “No idea is more unpopular with contemporary cultural theory than that of absolute truth” (After Theory, Verso, 2004, p. 103). Rather than offer a devastating and unanswerable critique of this position in this blog post, I can only begin by noting that this idea has never been acceptable to me. I cannot do without the notion of truth.

The absurdities of a position entirely dispensing with the notion are well illustrated by the famous anecdote about Wittgenstein and the Rhinoceros in the Room. On one…

There’s a clamour from retailers for government (you and me) to subsidise their shop rentals.

The Risk-Monger understands that his articles can be long and he often includes a special lexicon with novel vocabulary to develop his ideas. Concerning two related articles, I was asked to just republish several key points so it can be more widely read and understood how the precautionary COVID-19 lockdowns were not risk management at all, but rather a result of the failure and incapacity of western risk managers. It is urgent to understand how ill-prepared our risk managers have been as we are falling into deeper, more serious crises including famines, a deep economic depression and supply chain collapse. It is urgent to understand how we need to stop the activists demanding even more precaution and more lost social benefits in the post-COVID-19 world.

How the Precautionary Principle works

While there are many definitions of the precautionary principle, its most common expression today claims that a practice, substance…