Posts

Who's rioting in Portland and why?

From the research sources examining where on the political spectrum news reporting agencies fall, the Washington Post typically is considered definitely left wing. This article from Washington Post reports that the rioters are primarily far left extremists. So if the Washington post is biased toward Progressivism, we would expect it to tend to blame the riots on right wingers, not left-wingers. The fact that it reports the riots as primarily coming from the left-wing then suggests that we can have little doubt that the Portland rioting is a left wing phenomenon. From the Washington Post, 1.23.2020,  " Destructive protests by anarchists and extremists signal divided left as Biden administration begins:" The hundreds of far-left and anarchist demonstrators who gathered in protest mere hours after President Biden swore the oath of office Wednesday signal a fracturing on the left that could become a scourge for the new administration, political leaders and experts say.…   Por...

The Journalistic Harm of Superficial, Dumbed-Down Reporting

How should journalist report on the complexity of an issue? It appears journalist often either don't do the research necessary to dig into a rigorous in-depth understanding or they believe they must dumb down their understanding and writing to appeal to an elementary level reader. What should be a clear, concise explication of a challenging issue often is an over-simplified, folksy story-telling kind of writing. Let's look an example from the August 6 Washington Post. It is an  opinion piece on choosing testing for Covid-19: " What type of covid-19 test should you use? It depends ." Largely, the reporter gives misleading facts as to the two testing choices and confuses the Covid-19 disease with having the SARS CoV-2 virus (its RNA present in the body). Detecting RNA fragments of the CoV-2 virus by the highly sensitive RT—PCR does not mean the person is going to get sick or that they are transmissible unless the viral load is high enough that they are sick and transmis...

Sars CoV-2 Testing and the Permission Society

Testing and the Common Good Here's how the FDA looks at home-based Antigen testing. "This latest FDA authorization is for an antigen test, which is a new type of diagnostic test designed for rapid detection of the virus that causes COVID-19. Each category of diagnostic test has its own unique role in the fight against this virus. PCR tests can be incredibly accurate, but running the tests and analyzing the results can take time. One of the main advantages of an antigen test is the speed of the test, which can provide results in minutes. However, antigen tests may not detect all active infections, as they do not work the same way as a PCR test. Antigen tests are very specific for the virus, but are not as sensitive as molecular PCR tests. This means that positive results from antigen tests are highly accurate, but there is a higher chance of false negatives, so negative results do not rule out infection. With this in mind, negative results from an antigen test may need to be co...

Developmental Philosophy

A developmental philosophy has two purposes: to reflect on human activity to examine problems of human adaptation, and to order the values of human activities as they promote human adaptation. The general problems raised by developmental philosophy first of all lead to scientific activity directed to discovering the facts of the adaptation of human activity as humans overcome problems and challenges of social and material adaptation. This philosophical reflection on knowledge is not a method of truth or for the formation of new knowledge; it is a properly delimited reflection on what is so far known of the human condition, that is, the existing state of our scientific knowledge of human adaptation in whatever diversity it may be. It is directed to the gaps and contradiction so far unresolved in our knowledge which research activity might resolve. And, second, in reflecting on human adaptation, developmentl philosophy abstracts a general framework, a philosophical wisdom ...