Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Steve Sailer: How to Stop the Coronavirus Epidemic

In TAKIMAG Steve Sailer calls upon the Trump Administration to replace a containment strategy with a victory strategy:

Physicist and evolutionary theorist Gregory Cochran changed his mind on this subject in a conversation with me on Monday. Cochran had long been advocating flattening the curve as the proper target, but he realized:
But this is the wrong idea. You have to get R0 down close to 1.0 (from around 3.0) in order to really slow the growth—ordinary influenza has an R0 of around 1.3 and it grows way too rapidly.
Don’t aim at getting close to 1.0: aim at getting below. Basically, the region of parameter space that would correspond to “flattening the curve” is tiny, and 90% of the way to a clear win.

In other words, the effort it takes to flatten the curve is almost as great as it takes to win outright.
No longer should the goal be a well-played defeat. As Cochran sums up by quoting Douglas MacArthur:
There is no substitute for victory.
This would require massive sacrifice, although perhaps not quite on the scale of the Chinese lockdown because we have more square feet in our homes, more private cars, and less reliance on public transportation. But, at least there’s now a worthy goal for what all the pain would be for: victory.
The new goal is not to lose more slowly to the virus, but to conquer it.
Which of the 2020 candidates will embrace winning?
Read the whole thing at: https://www.takimag.com/article/crushing-the-coronavirus-curve/

Sunday, March 08, 2020

Michel Houellebecq's SEROTONIN


Serotonin is a chemical in our brain chemistry for which doctors prescribe SSRI inhibitors to fight depression. It is also the title of novelist Michel Houellebecq's dark satire about rural life in contemporary France.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/serotonin-michel-houellebecq-houllebecq-france-globalizatio-1583605495

Tuesday, March 03, 2020

CORONAVIRUS: Danger + Opportunity

(Cartoon from Garry Apgar's Quotes for Conservatives)
The Chinese character for "Crisis" is made up of "Danger" and "Opportunity." This perfectly describes the Coronavirus pandemic confronting President Trump. Proper handling of this health crisis could clear the way to decisively winning the popular vote on Election Day.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

James Kurth's THE AMERICAN WAY OF EMPIRE: How America Won a World--But Lost Her Way


Full disclosure: My company published this book last December. After fruitlessly waiting months for reviews in other media, I'm publishing one here myself, because I think it is an important study which deserves serious public discussion and debate as a worthy successor to Samuel Huntington's 1996 "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order."

Read the whole thing at https://thelatest.com/tlt/james-kurth-the-american-way-of-empire-how-america-won-world-but-lost-her-way-clash-of-civilizations-islamic-1581714474

Sunday, February 09, 2020

Trump Administration Can't Ignore Impeachment Frame Job



Edmund Burke declared: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” After getting away with a fraudulent impeachment attempt, no wonder Democrats thought they could also rig the Iowa caucuses and tear up the State of the Union address...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/trump-administration-can-ignore-impeachment-frame-job-impeachment-nancy-pelosi-joe-b-1581283070

Friday, January 24, 2020

Will We Ever See Jim Lehrer's Unfinished German-American Novel?


A few years ago, at a German Embassy reception, Jim Lehrer told me he was writing a book about the German-American experience, inspired by his own family history. I hope his manuscript might be published posthumously, since it sounded fascinating...and relevant to current debates over immigration and American identity.

Read the whole thing at: https://thelatest.com/tlt/will-we-ever-see-jim-lehrer-unfinished-german-american-novel-jim-lehrer-nixon-impeachment-1579879597