The current state of societal and economic collapse is completely the governments fault. Yet what’s seen as the solution? More Government action. Since the viral epidemic was recognized, we warned here that locking down the economy would make things a lot worse, which sure enough it did.

We’ve had worse viral outbreaks, some within living memory, that weren’t treated by committing seppuku. Read this article for full details – Why Didn’t the 1958 and 1918 Pandemics Destroy the Economy? Hint: It’s the Lockdown.

Deep thinkers often trip over their enlarged frontal cortices. They often can’t see the forest because of the stumps. Dr Fauci now realizes that “Staying closed for too long may cause ‘irreparable damage’.” Really? What ever gave him that idea? His sudden epiphany that actions have consequences reminds me of a story about John Stuart Mill, one of the smartest men who ever lived. He, allegedly, spent a lot of time worrying that we would run out of melodies, as all the good melodies that could be composed would soon exhaust the tune mine. Tchaikovsky, Puccini, and Gershwin failed to get the message.

I read somewhere that there’s nothing new under the sun, which suggests that I should have run my lab at night. Nevertheless, in the spirit of recycling I’m going to reprint an article I published here 11 years ago. It seems to be just as relevant (or irrelevant) now as it was then.

Public Polled on Origin of the Universe

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th February 2009

The report that the public favors the economic stimulus package now before the congress shows how great is popular understanding of complex issues. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp survey A slight majority of those surveyed, 54% , favors the bill while 45% are opposed. Sixty-four percent of those polled said the current bill being debated in the Senate would help the economy a lot or somewhat, while 36%  felt that the package would not help the economy much or at all.

A little later CNN released the results of another poll which showed that 52% of 1286 randomly chosen Americans thought that Friedmann’s equations decisively established an expanding universe. Only 28% were in favor of a static universe. The remaining 20% were either undecided or believed in non-standard cosmologies. A large majority, 85%, thought Einstein erred when he introduced the cosmological constant as a modification of his original theory of general relativity in order to achieve a stationary universe.

Soon to be released is a poll of Americans and Canadians which will ask whether the dual resonance model of string theory should be changed to include any group of related superstring theories. They will also be asked if string theory should be ignored because it has not yet provided quantitative experimental predictions. Only Americans will be asked whether the current stimulus bills should include support for research on hadrons, 11 dimensional M theory, D-branes, quantum chromodynamics, and zero-dimensional horizons.

Vox populi