Czechia, Israel have many more daily "cases" per 1M than any Covid powers ever had

...and still nothing is happening...

The radical leftists have rebranded themselves as carriers of the gospel that a flu-like disease named Covid-19 will kill everybody and they made billions of gullible sheep obsessed with the number of "cases" which means positive tests. So all the media for morons have been filled with irrelevant factoids about XY "cases" in this or that country, in the world, during a day, week, or month, "cases" surpassing one psychological threshold or another.

Only top immunologists etc. in countries like mine (e.g. Dr Beran) got the opportunity from the media to explain something that the people should actually know from the high school biology. There is nothing worrisome about a "case" (a positive test). It doesn't mean that the person is actually ill. And the tests on similar viruses including flu would end up positive in a far higher percentage of the tests. Moreover, the number of positive tests is an irrelevant number because it's heavily dependent both on the total number of tests that are being done (and that is always much lower than the full population); and the methodology to choose who gets tested (because the more "suspicious" people you test, e.g. the contacts of recent positive tests, the higher percentage will be positive).

PC cripples technological progress

The unhinged extreme left is ruining the fundamental Western values: freedom, democracy, nation states, family, natural roles of sexes, control of the traditional cultures over territories, integrity of the scientific research, cultural heritage, the historical truth, moral values rooted in the Judeo-Christian religions and the Greco-Roman civilization, and many other things.

These pernicious trends are mostly promoted by "people working in certain convenient jobs" such as education and media (jobs that are subsidized and/or detached from the broader economy – where the employees do well when everyone else is in trouble which really means that the inkspillers and NGO members and others are parasites, not constructive members of the whole) but it is easy to see that the insanity is penetrating to most other jobs and industries, too.



Managements of corporations are increasingly turning into despicable pußies serving far left perverts. But there is still some engine beneath all these things that allows the society operate and the science and technology to advance, right? Well, only to some (shrinking) extent because the technological progress is being undermined by the SJW junk, too. I want to use a seemingly apolitical fact – the fact that the Czech Škoda Enyaq SUV was embraced with far more enthusiasm than other cars based on the Volkswagen Group's MEB brand – and argue that basically everything about the superiority is political in character. And this political disadvantage of the VW brand cars is a prototype of the gradual sublimation of the Western industrial supremacy in general.

A fun trinification \(E_8\) string-inspired model

This funny yet silly 2011 song about Greece's living beyond its means (and how it should be inspired by some Czech tricks; the song targets the Czech character more than the Greek one) has collected almost half a million views. Slovaks recorded a similar song about the Greek debt (secured by Russia), a parody on Modus' Little Pieces of Glass (1984).

Two months ago, I discussed a Mexican string-inspired \(E_8\)-based model of particle physics. "Not quite stringy" but "suspiciously string-like" models with \(E_8\) in ten dimensions must be getting more popular. Today, a Athens-Munich-Potsdam-Geneva paper

\(N=1\) trinification from dimensional reduction of \(\NNN=1\), 10D \(E_8\) over \(SU(3)/U(1)\times U(1)\times\ZZ_3\) and its phenomenological consequences

by Manolakos, Patellis, and Zoupanos uses a compactification of the \(E_8\) gauge theory on a 6-dimensional manifold with some Wilson lines, too. But while the Mexican paper chose an orbifold of the (flat) six-torus, this Greek paper exploits a curved, fancier manifold, namely\[ \ZZ_3 \backslash SU(3) / (U(1) \times U(1)). \] At least I hope that the coset written on both sides is correct, they were a bit sloppy about it. The Wilson lines chosen on the \(\ZZ_3\) transformations break \(E_8\) to \(SU(3)^3\), the gauge group of "trinification" models (a relative of "unification" models that is, in some sense, equally "unified" as unification, assuming a generalized usage of "unified").

The cases for a \(17\MeV\) QCD axion and cosmic strings

Today, after some time, I was intrigued by very ambitious interpretations of two experiments. First, there is the delirium over beryllium, a nuclear signal at \(17\MeV\) observed by Krasznahorkay et al. in Hungary (Krasznahorkay is the Hungarian transliteration of Krásna Hôrka, The Beautiful Little Hill [a castle], in Slovak).

In a new preprint,

Signals of the QCD axion with mass of \(17\MeV/c^2\): nuclear transitions and light meson decays

Daniele Alves of Los Alamos proposes a wonderful conclusion: the excess is real and the particle is nothing else than the QCD axion. The particle's mass is comparable to tens of \({\rm MeV}\) which sounds great, decays to electron-positron pairs, and is piophobic, Islamophobic, and homophobic, which a good axion should be. Note that an axion is a light scalar field \(A\) that is coupled to the QCD instanton density \(F\wedge F\) and is driven towards \(A\sim 0\), thus explaining why the coefficient of the instanton density is tiny and close to the CP-invariant value (zero). The axion is something that can solve the strong CP-problem (the problem why the coefficient of the CP-violating instanton density is so tiny), we say.

Czech PM Babiš: Keep Calm & how the CZ Covid response teams work

Lots of the sensationalist media in Czechia and in the world paint the Covid situation in Czechia as bad. Of course, it's not bad at all. Nothing bad is happening here at all, and I am just 5 km from the district (Pilsen-South) that had the highest number of cases in 7 days per 100,000 folks up to the last night.



In this Sunday video, the Slovak-born prime minister of Czechia sported a "keep calm and wash your hands" T-shirt and he delivered a calm message, indeed. In the spring, I believed that Babiš actually was the right man for a similar situation and he would quickly regain his composure and did a lot to keep the economy running etc. But only in the recent month or two, I am sure about it.

Here is a transcript.

Prime minister Babiš: About the face masks and the death due to Covid

So ciao folks, it's Sunday today. I will obviously talk about Covid-19, about the coronavirus, about the testing, about the lethality rates. And especially, I understand that you're bombarded by negative news from all directions. But I am here to calm you down, to give you some positive news that the Czech media, especially the public Czech Television, are not broadcasting.

Leftist war on meritocracy becomes overt

Bill has pointed out that Andrew Sullivan reviewed a new book, The Cult of Smart, which identifies meritocracy (especially in the world of thinking and intelligence) as the ultimate enemy of the leftist utopias (beneath the four main enemies, of course: they are spring, summer, fall, and winter).

For many years, we have seen that the post-modern or neo-Marxist left was increasingly fighting against some values that have been considered important for a long time, such as:

freedom (including freedom of speech, academic freedoms, freedom of assembly etc.), democracy (with the respect to elected leaders), family, natural roles of sexes, manliness and muscles, courage, women's physical beauty and smile, nation, competition, faith, harmony within a society, hard knowledge, industrialization, fossil fuels, fiscal responsibility, accountability, meat, sugar, fat, ... meritocracy.

The list is far from complete but even in this restricted list, many entries are really very, very important. Nevertheless, meritocracy is arguably more important than the average entry. Meritocracy has been important in the evolution of species – natural selection is just meritocracy involving "less intelligent than human activities" – and in the development of political ideas, scientific and technological know-how, and basically everything else that people do, especially if they are "achievers".

Lithium reserves: enough for 1-5 generations of "cars across the world" and nothing else

Lithium-battery electric cars are a niche market and they will always be. And if most cars were replaced by lithium-battery cars, mankind would run out of lithium after the first generation of cars would be produced. Or soon afterwards. And it's possible that other materials such as cadmium (reserves are estimated at half a million tons only) are even more constraining.



First, note that the number of cars in the world has surpassed 1.4 billion. How much lithium do we need for 1.4 billion electric cars with 70 kWh lithium-based batteries?

I am proud of the Czech, typically non-German, Covid rationality

A commenter with a complex German nickname brought the following Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung diatribe to my attention:

From a model student to a problem child

The German author describes Czechia and Slovakia as the countries that defined the European Covid-19 strategy in spring – Czechia adopted the mandatory face masks on March 18th, the first white nation to do so, and Slovakia quickly followed (although in some limited contexts, Slovakia was ahead; please, brothers, I really don't want you to join the German fascists again, for stupid reasons, again LOL).

I think it's clear that the masks reduce the propagation of the disease. The disease was dropping in Czechia up to early July and when we threw away the masks completely, the disease started to grow again, albeit slowly. The growth accelerated when the kids returned back to school but there's no problem with it. The masks rather demonstrably make a difference (which may turn a growth to a decrease) but it doesn't mean that it's sensible to wear it at all times and in all places. The masks are still annoying and they also discourage people from going outside, to pubs, shops etc. The devil is in the details, only some times and places are reasonable (public indoor spaces were at least somewhat reasonable in April when some uncertainty still existed about the ability of the virus to kill us or cripple us); nations that already have herd immunity who adopted the masks in the summer are way too late and this decision was just totally dumb.

And the text notices that in Czechia, the atmosphere has changed dramatically since March and April and Czechs don't have a problem with the number of cases that was over 1160 on Monday and they have really returned to the normal lives, a fact that the author clearly hates. Czechs have turned into problematic teenage drug addicts, we learn. Well, Czechia almost matched all of Germany on that day (Monday, yesterday) when it comes to this quantity (number of positive tests) and stood at the respectable 8th place in Europe.

Covid: science vs politics, propaganda, and obedience

Fewer than 900 deaths out of 5800+ Swedish deaths with Covid had Covid as the direct cause of death.

In one interview after another, the Czech epidemiologists, infectiologists, and other doctors (mainly top doctors) repeat that they're not worried about the rising number of cases (note that nothing is rising e.g. in Sweden that has nicely reached herd immunity), the disease isn't a big deal, it must be understood as a disease that is analogous to flu etc. Despite this pretty much consensus (which is being increasingly incorporated into Czechia's loose policies, as I happily predicted in early April), many journalists still keep on pushing the "narrative" that Covid is something serious.

I am talking about the physician Martin Balík who has treated lots of serious Covid cases, epidemiologist Jiří Beran, infectiologist Jiří Beneš, female bosses of the infection departments of big hospitals, and dozens of others. Today, a government scientific committee should meet and recommend a further loosening of the Covid rules (note that for a week, the personal quarantine in Czechia lasts for 10 days only instead of the previous 14 days). Only the serious cases should be traced; there should be no quarantine for the people who meet a Covid-positive person if they are asymptomatic; having had an FFP2 respirator in the presence of a Covid-positive person may become a reason for exemption from the quarantine, too.

Most laymen completely misunderstand what a black hole is

I am receiving lots of e-mail from young and armchair physicists. It's often a pleasant exchange. Sometimes the sender wants a theory to be confirmed. And among the layman senders, most of the theories or "theories" are seriously wrong. Many of the misconceptions keep on repeating all the time.

One of those invalid memes that I want to discuss – because I got several copies of that meme just in recent hours – is the idea that

The point of the black hole is the singularity. That is what makes a black hole a black hole and that's also where the mysteries of black holes hide.

This opinion is completely wrong. In this case, however, I have some empathy for those who think of black holes in this way. When I was 8, I (mis)understood black holes similarly – due to the influence of Newtonian prejudices combined with some popular explanations – despite the fact that some of the popular explanations, including those in the TV show "The Windows to the Universe Are Wide Open", went much deeper than to this misconception and I did watch them and read them.

Morens' and Fauci's nutty Gaia religion

Willie Soon sent me a link to a critical comment about an incredible article by David Morens and Anthony Fauci:

Emerging Pandemic Diseases: How We Got to COVID-19 (Cell)

Aside from some generic Covid-19 hysteria which has crippled millions of other brains as well, these two authors promote a rather hardcore version of an older, Gaia religion. It really looks like these two men have completely lost it.