Author: shuttle1

Toronto Star on Unvaccinated

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If an unvaccinated person catches it from someone who is vaccinated, boohoo, too bad. I have no empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated. Let them die. I honestly don’t care if they die from COVID. Not even a little bit. Unvaccinated patients do not deserve ICU beds. At this point, who cares. Stick the unvaccinated in a tent outside and tend to them when the staff has time.

Below the headline, and below the fold, the Star notes in fine print “Selection of recent posts on Twitter.” Presumably this explains the use of alternating bold text, to distinguish the various Twitter posts. But this does not lessen the inflammatory nature of the headline.

While the necessity of hate speech laws is debatable, the fact is that (a) such laws exist in Canada, and (b) the Star broke those laws with its headline. But that is not what prompted me to write this article. Instead, what grabbed my attention was the fact that the headline did not generate any criticism from Canadian political leaders, or from other mainstream media outlets.

Conversely, if an obscure media company published a hateful, but inconspicuous (page 28), headline directed toward any ethnic minority group, or the LGBTQ+ community, politicians and mainstream media outlets would be tripping over themselves to see who could be the first to condemn such hateful, divisive, journalism. So why are they silent about hate speech directed toward the minority group of unvaccinated people?

In contrast to the silence from Canada’s political leaders and the mainstream media, many readers complained about the headline, thus eliciting a backhanded apology from the Star, which we are supposed to interpret as “we made a mistake, and if we could go back, we would not run that headline.” That is doubtful. Editors choose their front-page headlines carefully. Think about it. The provocative headline is prominently displayed on the front page, but the actual story is found on page two, under a different headline that reads “When it comes to empathy for the unvaccinated, many of us aren’t feeling it.” This headline is more palatable, and it is a much better description of the content of the story, but the Star made a conscious decision not to use it on the front page.

Instead, the front-page headline represents The Star’s compilation of various Twitter posts neatly arranged in a way that promotes a hateful, inflammatory narrative that is all too common in social media. This is blatantly obvious. It did not happen by accident. Why the Star printed the headline is open for speculation, but the headline itself was not an oversight, and the editors probably had their so-called apology prepared in advance. This reminds me of a scene I saw recently in a television program, where a reporter refused to submit her story because it would cause unnecessary harm to several people, and her editor told her that she would never be promoted until she learned that scruples have no place in journalism.

Ironically, on the same day the Star ran that headline, they also published an article bemoaning Canada’s ‘hate crime crisis.’ The Star is either the pot or the kettle, take your pick.

It seems that politicians and the mainstream media condemn hate speech only when it is directed toward groups with whom the government wants to curry favour, and unvaccinated people are not one of those groups. As Canadian politicians tighten the noose with their imposition of vaccine passports, perhaps it is becoming fashionable to direct hate speech toward unvaccinated people.

Will the promotion of this hateful narrative by a mainstream Canadian media outlet – which gets a free pass from Canada’s political leaders – encourage some people to commit violent acts against unvaccinated Canadians, to whom they previously only wished death upon. After all, if the Toronto Star’s narrative gets a free pass …?

Abortion

shuttle1

Abortion is no longer a ‘womans’ talking point, and also remember this, you asked for this. Abortion is a ‘birthing people’ talking point. You know, now anyone can become pregnant. It’s our body, our choice. Isn’t this fun?! We don’t want our body violated by a foreign substance, such as a vaccine.

Leonardo and the Peerless Polymaths Who Changed History

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We live in dubious times, when great men and women of the past are being “canceled” by a few politically correct or “woke” fanatics, or, perhaps worse still, their work is being neglected or forgotten. It’s important, then, to remember some of the most remarkable persons of the past, especially those with the most amazing skills, and who made the greatest contributions to civilization.

A group of extraordinary individuals known as “polymaths” perfectly fit this category of world-changing intellects. A polymath is someone with very wide-ranging knowledge and prescient accomplishments. They are rare individuals, and every age seems to have a few of them. Sometimes they are called “renaissance men” (or women) because perhaps the greatest and most famous polymath was the iconic figure of the European Renaissance period, Leonardo Da Vinci.

A polymath’s polymath, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) did so many extraordinary things, it takes one’s breath away. He was one of the greatest painters of all time; his Mona Lisa and The Last Supper are two of the world’s most famous masterpieces. He was also a notable architect and sculptor. He was a visionary inventor, drawing models of a helicopter, flying machine, parachute, gear shift, bicycle, snorkel, monkey wrench, canal locks system, hydraulic jacks, and automated instruments decades or even centuries before technology caught up with Da Vinci’s boundless imagination. His extendable ladder remains in use today. Although he hated war, he drew tanks, machine guns, and submarines long before they were put into use. He was the father of automation; his automated looms foreshadowed the Industrial Revolution by 300 years.

But that’s not all. As a scientific figure, he pioneered botanical science and comparative anatomy studies. In physics, he anticipated modern mechanics, optics, and hydrostatics. As author Michael J. Gelb points out in How To Think Like Leonrdo da Vinci, he also intimated some of the great scientific discoveries and breakthroughs of Copernicus, Newton, Galileo and Darwin long before they made them.

But the influence of polymaths on Western culture extends back further than da Vinci. In the ancient western world, the most notable polymath was the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 B.C. – 322 B.C.). He was a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. His interests included, and he is considered the father of, many of the classical subjects of philosophy, science and scholarship. His writings and discoveries would have a major impact a thousand years later in propelling the West from the Medieval Age to the Renaissance. Only a third of his writings survive, but he is still widely read and regarded as a genius today, 2,500 years later.

America’s great polymath – and another student of Aristotle – was Ben Franklin (1706-1790). He was a scientist, inventor, diplomat, politician, author, and philosopher. Although most Americans today know him as a founding father of our country, his first demonstration of electricity had global scientific impact. He was the foremost printer and publisher in colonial America. He founded the University of Pennsylvania, and was the first U.S. Postmaster General. His diplomatic successes during the U.S. Revolutionary War, particularly winning French support for the American cause, were vital to securing independence. He is considered by many today to have been the most influential American of his age.

Perhaps the least known mega-polymath was Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974), a Bengali genius from the Indian subcontinent. He was a physicist and mathematician who also did serious work in chemistry, biology, philosophy, art, literature, and music. He collaborated with Albert Einstein on early studies of quantum mechanics. The key sub-atomic particle, the boson, was named after him. He spoke several languages and promoted Bengali literature. His work was seminal in the new field of quantum statistics. Self-effacing, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize which he did not receive, but which many peers felt he should have won. He worked with Marie Curie on X-ray radiation during a stay in Europe before returning to Calcutta to head a university department of physics, teach and do further research. As if that were not enough, he was also an accomplished musician.

Of course, few as they have been, there are other great visionary figures whose significant achievements and wide-ranging abilities could be cited, such as Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Schweitzer, Copernicus, George W. Carver, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Galileo, and Winston Churchill — to name only some of them.

Many of these, and other great innovators, achieved so much despite physical handicaps, Helen Keller and the deaf Beethoven for example, that their natural gifts are magnified by their indomitable wills and human spirit.

No matter how the dictates of political correctness change, the lives and work of these extraordinary individuals cannot be erased.