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Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
— Richard Feynman
Reading Time: 5 minutes 45 seconds
Today is Friday, September 15th, the 258th day of 2023. There are 107 days left in the year. It is National Felt Hat Day, National Crème de Menthe Day, National Linguine Day, and National Neonatal Nurses Day.
On This Day
In 1789, the federal government’s Department of Foreign Affairs was renamed the Department of State.
In 1835, the HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reached the Galápagos Islands.
In 1873, the last Imperial German Army troops left France, ending the Franco-Prussian War.
In 1916, tanks were used for the first time in combat, at the Battle of the Somme.
In 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference.
In 1959, Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun-control legislation.
In 1970, Vice President Spiro Agnew claimed that the “youth of America are being brainwashed into a drug culture of rock music, movies, books, and tabloid newspapers.”
In 2004, National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman announced a lockout.
In 2008, Lehman Brothers filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Today’s Birthdays
Filmmaker Ron Shelton is 78. Filmmaker Oliver Stone is 77. Actor Tommy Lee Jones is 77. Pro Football Hall of Famer Dan Marino is 62. Actor, comedian, and writer Ben Schwartz is 42.
The Links
Why is Rhode Island Still Irrationally Targeting School Children with “Masking and Testing” Policies? (Brownstone Institute)
“For the vast preponderance of the world’s population, and workforce, i.e., the ~94 percent under age 70-years-old, we now know that the most aggressive early variants, such as the Wuhan, Alpha, and Delta strains, conferred a very modest infection fatality ratio (IFR; covid-19 deaths/total covid-19 infections) of 0.1 percent, or 1 per 1,000 infections. This seasonal influenza-like IFR for those < 70, overall, dropped precipitously further in the pediatric age range (0-19-years-old) to 0.0003 percent, or 1 in 333,333. Such unalarming IFRs among those < 70, especially children, for the early SARS-CoV-2 variants, have been reduced by at least 3-fold more (so 0.1 percent/3; 0.0003 percent/3!) since the advent of the Omicron wave in early 2022, and its perhaps even milder related subvariants, that are continuing to emerge through the present.”
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