Sunday, 16 February, 12:33:42 CST


Ayn Rand reportedly was a smoker and had lung cancer but was successfully treated and lived some years longer. One can anecdotally support the idea that the statement "smoking causes lung cancer" is not technically correct as many people smoke a lot (two packs a day or more) for many years (fifty or more) and do not have lung cancer or other tobacco-related diseases. My maternal grandfather died at 89 from a combination of factors - advancing dementia and general physical deterioration and the stress of moving into a nursing home - and did not have any respiratory illnesses. He would have smoked for more than sixty years. A widowed friend recently remarried after her husband of forty-some years succumbed to lung cancer. He had smoked since he was a teenager, a two-pack habit. A guy I knew for years recently died at 65 from a heart attack - he was a heavy smoker and had COPD but not cancer and was out of shape and lived a rather chaotic life.

What then should we say? I would suggest that smoking is not good for you and especially cigarettes. It increases the probability of having lung cancer considerably and other respiratory ailments may result. But eating fast food - especially in excessive amounts - considerably increases the probability that you will die from heard disease of other bad ailments caused by a bad diet. I suspect that there are few people these days even in undeveloped regions who aren't aware that smoking is not good for you and might kill you. Is a categorical statement that smoking will cause lung cancer the way or should we simply state the facts: Smoking is not good for you and could kill you, especially if you do it a lot for a long time? And if you eat cheeseburgers and tacos and pizza every day the effect on your health is likely to be deleterious? Most people know that.

My diet these days is a keto/starvation hybrid - heavy on the starvation side depending how my weight is. At my age weight control isn't as easy, especially in the winter when outdoors activity is less. I have a cigar now and then and some whiskey but no beer. Since the doctors went over me pretty good a couple of months back and couldn't find anything wrong maybe in the ten years or so I have left I won't develop any cancers or whatever.

Bastiat demonstrates that the communists of today are no different than two centuries ago except in degree. Wanting the government to control health care (that has worked out really well, hasn't it) or food production (I would argue that zero government intervention in agricuture would improve matters) but the (US) communists would have us believe that not pandering to one percent of the population by allowing them to demand - with government support - that the other ninety-nine percent not just overlook their sick behavior but celebrate it is somehow inhumane to someone or other. I hope that if nothing else the Trump administration can break enough things that when the communists do return to power - the executive level is the only thing that matters for now - it will take a long time just to rebuild. Past Republican administrations never made any significant progress and even rolling things back a little - if we can get eight or twelve years of Republican rule things should be looking good.

The past Democrat presidents were a fairly small part of the picture during the election. Obama made a few weak jabs and Clinton fewer and weaker while their wives were less so. Hillary was near invisible and Moochelle (can't bring myself to descrate a beautiful classic feminine name) was maybe more so. As always the comparisons of presidents was flung around mostly by the communists so I dug this little bit up:

The presidential and spousal IQs are estimated as no reliable official source seems to be available. An associate at Thalos-V tells me that their method aggregates the results of several methods and is at least as accurate as conventional testing and since that isn't feasible we'll have to make do with this. The spousals are less reliable as less information - particularly in public exposure obviously. The NAZI war criminal number were supposedly acquired using the Wechsler-Bellevue test - in any case we have an official source for those. Here's their estimation on the last several presidents.
Jimmy Carter 110-120
Ronald Reagan 120-140
George H. W. Bush 120-120
Bill Clinton 120-130
George W. Bush 120-130
Barack Obama 100-110
Donald Trump 130-140
Joe Biden 100-110
Donald Trump 120-140
 
R. Carter 110-120
N. Reagan 120-130
B. Bush 120-130
H. Clinton 110-120
L. Bush 110-120
M. Obama 100-110
M. Trump 120-130
J. Biden 100-110
M. Trump 120-140
 
Hijalmar Schacht 143
Arthur Seyss-Inquart 141
Hermann Goering 138
Karl Doenitz 138
Franz von Papen 134
Eric Raeder 134
Dr. Hans Frank 130
Hans Fritsche 130
Baldurvon Schirach 130
Joachim von Ribbentrop 129
Wilhelm Keitel 129
Albert Speer 128
Alfred Jodl 127
Alfred Rosenberg 127
Constantin von Neurath 125
Walther Funk 124
Wilhelm Frick 124
Rudolf Hess 120
Fritz Sauckel 118
EmstKaltenbrunner 113
Julius Sueicher 106

That looks reasonably close. I might put Donald Trump a bit higher - his personality makes him hard to guess at. The fact that he is so brutally honest and goesn't give a fig what anyone thinks about him doesn't make it easier. I put the Clintons about where the are - he is pretty intelligent. When being reluctant to ascribe a high IQ to evil people keep in mind that Goering was up there and Seyss-Inquart - demonstrably worse - was higher. Obama at barely average I can believe - you only have to see him without a script a few times go get that he is a performer and nothing more and the lower the intelligence - as long as they're capable of getting in and out the door unassisted and not drooling and urinating - the more trainable and more importantly predictable they are and Obama was nothing if not predictable. He would never appeal to the intellectual top ten percent but anything below that is vulnerable when there aren't any obvious red flags. Hillary Clinton is the epitome of midwittery - the kind that actually believes that it is smart. Same goes for the other Obaba. I would probably give the elder Bush another ten points - he came up in a time when a certain quality of intellect if not character was essential to success. Biden, 100 is about right. I've been around and remember him twenty, thirty years ago. A tool with not much more smarts than Obama. But as Ann Coulter said "If Democrats had any brains they'd be Republicans".

Tomorrow is the fifty week of the Trump administration. Considering what has been done so far I'm good with watching remarking on anything unusually interesting. It seems that Elon Musk may be the object of an attack by the deep state - this looked a little dodgy - actually more a little - and may or not matter. Elon seems to have that same light around him that Donald Trump does.