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An idle hour in the Covid era
Went to my usual café this morning to buy a coffee. While waiting on a stool outside, sans mask, not even knowing whether that’s allowed or not, I asked the owner whether he’d yet had the jab. Just making conversation. He said he’s had the first one. AstraZeneca? I asked. Yes, he said. How was…
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When inalienable rights aren’t
It’s the exception that proves the rule is one of the more profound of expressions. Often misinterpreted. Replace ‘proves’ with its synonym ‘tests’, and its meaning becomes clear. It means, as Catallaxy readers would know, that if the rule breaks down in exceptional circumstances, then it isn’t a rule at all. It has a Popperian…
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Can no longer spot muppets
Living during lockdown in Sydney meant we didn’t have to wear masks outside. That important freedom distinguishing us from Melbourne. That ended ten days or so ago. Can’t remember what date. Days merge into days these days. I live in Gladys Berejiklian’s electorate. She’s obviously part of the overwhelmingly majority in her party; the new…
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Colour blind in the trenches
I was watching Fox News earlier today. The names of six of the thirteen American soldiers killed in Kabul had been revealed. Their names and pictures of them were shown. It was clear enough that of the six, five were white. Or so it appeared to me. Ordinarily, this would be a completely irrelevant observation.…
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We must trust the government
Our Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said this in their latest weekly report dated 26 August: “Since the beginning of the vaccine rollout to 22 August 2021, over 17.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been given. So far, the TGA has found that 7 reports of deaths were linked to immunisation from 476 reports [of…
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Australia First
I was at my church’s parish council meeting, via Zoom of course, on Monday when our minister referred to the call by Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop Kanishka Raffel for the government to accept more Afghan refugees. I admit to going off a little. In part I said that it would be compassionate if the archbishop was…
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Lockdowns good, freedom bad
I see that cases reached a new record or something in NSW today and Victorian cases continue to defy Daniel Andrews. Clearly the lockdowns are working. Case numbers would be ever so much higher without lockdowns. Rising cases show that lockdowns work because they would be higher without them; just as falling cases some months…
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Yearning for B.C.
One of my sons-in-law runs a carpet repair business. He has established rules which he hopes will allow him to continue to earn a living. For example, customers can make arrangements to leave their keys in a particular spot so that the repairers can enter and do the job while the occupants either leave home…
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Get vaccinated, still die, don’t question
I subscribe to the UK Telegraph. Supposedly conservative. Its readers seem to be at any rate. This email headline came through this morning: “Majority of under-50s of people who died [in England] with the delta variant were unvaccinated.” That means that a distinct minority who died were fully vaccinated. In fact, twenty-four percent. That seems…
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Roll up your sleeves and ask no questions
Hopes of the side, Matt Canavan and NSW Liberal MP Tanya Davies were interviewed by Andrew Bolt this week. Abandon hope. Canavan expressed some mealy-mouthed qualification about enforced vaccinations. Davies was completely hopeless, keen to establish her pro-vaccination credentials, her objection to no jab, no work, was focussed on the deficient supply of vaccine available…