Category: Covid

  • Cognitive dissonance

    Cognitive dissonance has been defined as the perception of contradictory information. I have written about the importance of cognitive dissonance before. In fact, I would argue that it is essential for a healthy evolution of the mind. If you hear an opinion that contradicts the view of the world you hold there are three options:…

  • The myth of science

    I’ve written many times before about science and what is called the philosophy of science. That is, the rules of science, the scientific method and the assumptions that scientists make when they do experiments. Nowadays an understanding of real science is becoming more and more important as ‘science’ (or what is referred to as science)…

  • Numbers and words

    There’s an old Jewish joke of the man who sends his son to school – presumably at some expense – so that he could become successful. When the son returns home the father asks him what he has learnt: “We learnt that if I have two apples and Greta has three apples we have five…

  • So you want the vaccine to prevent Covid

    Leaving aside the conspiracy theorists, everyone knows that Covid is a killer that can threaten the existence of the human race. We are told that thousands of people are dying daily from Covid and unless we wear masks and take steps to avoid contact with other people the outcome will be overloaded health services and…

  • The enemy is not who you think it is

    There’s a movie from around 2010 called ‘V for Vendetta’. It depicts a UK where a right-wing authoritarian regime has come to power and a vigilante (V) takes on the ruling government. The characteristics of the ruling party are: right-wing, intolerant of minorities, pro religion, and resented by the mass of the population. In reality…

  • Your chances of dying from Covid are …?

    I saw a question on Reddit recently asking that if there had been no action taken on Covid, what would have happened? One of the answers said you would notice when your neighbours were dying and the coffins were stacked up in the streets. I hope that people who inhabit the Reddit world are not…

  • This is how it starts

    Many years ago IBM was the big force in computing. They had an advertising slogan ‘No one ever got fired for buying IBM’. In other words, if you need a computer project done and you choose a company other than IBM, and it goes pear shaped (as they often do), your boss is going to…

  • If you want to understand the present, study the past

    My mother was brought up in a very Jewish family in Poland. In the early 1930s her parents — my grandparents — took her and her brother out of Poland to Belgium and then to London. They knew that something dreadful was going to happen and they wanted to move to a safe place. Like many truely religious people…

  • Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and COVID-19

    The anti-blasphemy laws in Pakistan date back to British rule and were undoubtably made for political, not religious, purposes. However they are largely supported in Pakistan. As this BBC article point out: A large majority of Pakistani people support the idea that blasphemers should be punished, but there is little understanding of what the religious scripture says…

  • We are living in a Sci-Fi movie

    When the coronavirus broke out I felt, probably like many people, that I was living through a sci-fi movie. News programs with images of deserted streets and injunctions to stay at home. Now I feel I’m in a different sci-fi movie. It’s the one where the aliens have landed and they put something in the…