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11
Apr
2018
Remember the Ebola virus? The first cases were reported in West Africa in 2013; it became an epidemic in 2014; it faded from prominence by 2016. In between those years, it killed about 11,300 people.
Although it had a 70 per cent mortality rate, Ebola was actually less lethal than the Spanish ‘flu in 1918, which took over 50 million lives – more than all the deaths caused by World War I. The Black Death of the 1300s killed even more, wiping out half of Europe’s population.
Ebola didn’t even exceed the deaths from car accidents and gun violence in the U.S. – each taking around 33,000 lives that year alone.
Nevertheless, Ebola evoked terror.
And a few people capitalized on it.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Ebola, Linda Newkirk, prophet, revelation
8
Facebook has taken a lot of criticism recently in the media -- enough that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bought some very expensive full-page ads in newspapers across America to defend his company. He’s expected to testify before several U.S. Congressional committees; he has refused to testify to a British parliamentary investigation.
Perhaps Facebook deserves its criticism; perhaps it doesn’t. But I think the critics have missed the point. They’ve concentrated on what’s called “data mining,” as if it were intrinsically wrong. They’ve focussed on what was done, not why it was done.
I contend that there is nothing wrong with data mining itself.
The difference is the purpose for which the data is used.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: data mining, Cambridge Analytica. Facebook, B.C. Health Ministry, Adrian Dix, Therapeutics Initiative
4
I’m sitting in a chair. No, that’s not quite right. I think I’m sitting in a chair, but quantum physics tells me there’s really no chair there at all, just infinitesimal packets of energy whizzing around that can only be described as probabilities… And of course, I’m also just a collection of probabilities. So there’s no me sitting in something that isn’t a chair.
It makes me wonder who or what is the “I” that’s wondering all these things.
At the other end of reality, I learn about a universe that’s some 14 billion years old, and more than 28 billion light-years across. Like an ancient psalm writer, I wonder, “Who am I, that anyone should think I matter?”
I can’t comprehend a billion of anything, whether time or distance.
Tags: bubbles, quantum physics, astronomy, dark matter, Abrams