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tmtomh

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  1. Love this - what an amazing and unexpected thing to drop!
  2. Read the thread title again: "Best Jimmy Page Impersonator EVER!" You seem not to like the entire concept of someone doing an impersonation routine of Page. If that is the case, I absolutely agree with you: I find Zep impersonation acts like this unappealing (the singers are IMHO the worst - it's just farcical and embarrassing to see them dressed like '73-'77 Plant). But it's not reasonable to deny that Sakurai is an incredible impersonator of Jimmy Page - the clothing, the body language and movements, and of course the playing - he impersonates him better than anyone else I've ever seen. You're right that it lacks that extra something of Page himself in his prime. But that's not because he's not an amazing impersonator of Page. Rather, it's because a note-for-note copy of an original live performance that was full of improvisation and spontaneity is by definition a flawed concept. The problem is with the whole impersonation endeavor. But that's not Sakurai's fault. He's the best at what he does.
  3. You've got a lot of axes to grind, and I'm not quite sure why you're flailing away at me about them. I never said anything about Trump one way or the other. Your point about HDQ is meaningless outside the context of COVID in which you raised it. As for name-calling, I didn't say I was hurt, upset, or offended; I merely pointed it out. We certainly have serious disagreements about politics; I think that was obvious from the outset, and that's fine. We also have disagreements about some of the basic facts that form the foundations of the issues we're disagreeing about, and I think that tends to make discussion more difficult. I do very much agree with you that this country has major problems. I suspect we might agree on what some of those problems are, disagree about what some of those problems are, and disagree quite a bit about the sources of them and what should be done about them. At any rate, from my perspective it seems like our discussion has run its course, so I'm happy to leave it on what seems to be a fairly civil note if you are.
  4. Once again, anger clouds the mind. I'm not telling you to get a vaccine - don't get it if you don't think it's safe. The vaccines were indeed rushed, developed very quickly. That's why (with one exception, I forget which) they still have emergency use authorization rather than full regular authorization. They also do have side effects, and some of them are quite serious and life-threatening - for example the 6-7 people who died of blood clot-related issues after receiving the J&J vaccine (which is not an mRNA vaccine BTW). They are quite rare, though (remember, more than 12 billion shots have been administered so far worldwide), and the risk of mortality from a COVID vaccine is many orders of magnitude less than the risk of mortality from COVID. So too is the risk of myocarditis from a COVID vaccine lower than the risk of myocarditis from having COVID. We know all this precisely because there is a massive amount of clinical data on COVID vaccines, and that data is the foundation for the strong international medical and expert consensus that they are safe and effective, and as safe or safer than other vaccines that have been successfully used for decades to protect against (and in some cases, virtually eradicate) diseases. I don't say this to try to convince you to get vaccinated - do as you wish. I say it simply because it's true. Hydroxychloroquine is not an effective COVID treatment, and it's not "perfectly safe" - it produces dangerous side effects (which have been well-known with that family of drugs for decades now - this is not new or controversial information). That's just a fact. I'm not poo-pooing anything. As anyone can clearly see, I agree that the vaccines were developed on an accelerated schedule and that they have side effects, and that people have died from them. But every one of your posts I've seen on this topic contains factual assertions that are clearly and demonstrably untrue. In this exchange, one of us has demonstrated a willingness to discern fact from fantasy and to admit to facts that do not necessarily support their overall position. And the other one has responded with name-calling ("loser," edited now I see to "leftie" - whatever turns you on a fuels your preconceptions I guess), tangential and juvenile memes, and a level of rage that seems bizarrely over the top in a civil discussion between adults. I'm confident anyone reading this thread with an open mind can decide for themselves which is which.
  5. It's amazing how fear and anger makes people stupider.
  6. No, it's from the lunatic Russell Blaylock. This is why I have refrained from linking to sources in this discussion - I will cite sources, you will say they're from a corrupt/untrustworthy establishment; you will cite sources, I will say they're not credible. Of course my view is that the evidence is on my side, but you think the same thing. So it'd be endless back and forth and endless regress. It's the underlying disease of our time - we are not really arguing about opinions; we are arguing about what the facts are and the basic character of reality, and from that it is is hard to see how any consensus can be reached, or even any basis for rational or productive disagreement.
  7. Yes, that comment is consistent with your level.
  8. No you must be kidding. Calling them "fake vaccines" immediately disqualifies your argument, for two reasons: 1. It's the rhetorical fallacy of begging the question: you call them fake, when the entire question is whether or not they are fake. 2. More importantly, they simply are not fake. Their function in the human body is well-documented and they absolutely, positively are vaccines. COVID mortality rates are not lower in unvaxxed people than in vaxxed people. That's simply untrue. Vaccines were not developed to stop all transmission. They were developed to reduce the risk of serious illness and death, which they most certainly have done. Deaths, ICU admissions, and hospital admissions have been and remain far lower among vaccinated people than unvaccinated people, and similar patterns hold true for vaccinated and boosted versus vaccinated versus partially vaccinated. The Omicron variants are the most contagious and have the greatest immune escape of any variant so far (interestingly, while Delta was the most contagious previously, it was actually Beta that had the greatest immune escape capability, but it was not significantly more contagious than alpha or gamma so it did not become a dominant strain - but it was the variant that Pfizer/BionNTech used for their first modified booster candidate, before Omicron came along and changed their plans). So it is not surprising that the vaccines provide less protection against infection of any kind with Omicron - and it is doubly unsurprising that this should be the case given that Omicron came along 6-8 months after most folks had gotten vaccinated, meaning their antibody levels had decreased by then. But the vaccines still provide very good protection against severe illness and death, which is confirmed by the statistics. Conspiracy mongering and adding 2+2 together to get 9 is silly - and it's particularly silly when one chooses that path while claiming that proper science shouldn't be believed.
  9. No, you are either ill-informed; in possession of plenty of information but unwilling to believe it; or well-informed but using unusual definitions. Pollution is definitely human-made. Climate change is a very broad term and includes both natural and human-made causes. Now, if your definitions are meant as a tautology - in other words, if you are saying that any change in the ecological/climatic characteristics of our environment that is caused by humans is, by definition, pollution, then to that I would say two things: 1. Well, okay, but because that's such an unusual way to define things, it obscures more than it reveals, since the vast majority of people you would present these terms to - including (to the best of my knowledge) climate scientists - would not share your understanding, and therefore you could not have an intelligible conversation unless you explicitly clarified from the outset that this was how you were defining your terms. 2. If something like CO2 emissions from manufacturing is to be considered a factor of pollution and not "climate change," then it's a distinction without a difference because the pollution the CO2 emissions create has a measurable impact on the climate. So you are either denying a human role in climate change, or you are saying that human-cause climate change should all be categorized as a form of pollution, in opposition to the concept of climate change. If you'd like to clarify which it is (or I suppose if it's both) that you are claiming, that'd be great.
  10. I have, and I will. And you still have no evidence to support your claims.
  11. Perhaps not. But fortunately the presence or absence of public messaging has nothing to do with whether or not a vaccine or any other medical intervention or treatment is safe and effective. That's about the clinical data, which is overwhelming in the case of COVID vaccines.
  12. I'm not into eating bugs either. But "bugs are not food" is an untrue statement. mRNA injections have experimental approval from the FDA, yes - but that does not mean they aren't vaccines. They're absolutely vaccines. Climate change does occur naturally - the earth's climate has changed, sometimes radically, over the billions of years of its existence. But (a) is' not simply "influenced by the sun," even when it's a natural phenomenon, and (b) the climate change we are experiencing now, which is what you are referring to, is absolutely human-made, or more accurately has a human-induced component. Of course the climate would not be static and unchanging right now if there were no humans, but human activity has had and continues to have a clear and demonstrable impact on the climate.
  13. True False False True Sometimes true, sometimes false False True Indiscriminate skepticism is just as dumb, just as useless, and just as dangerous as blind faith.
  14. Again, no "forum police," just someone who disagrees with you. And you still have no evidence for any of your claims, because there isn't any.
  15. No forum police, just someone making an observation, which you have no evidence or reasoning to counter. Ssuch a snowflake, crying censorship when someone expresses a view different than yours. Poor little aggrieved victim. Yes indeed, Zep, like many bands, did become tax exiles for a period (hence the lyrics to Tea for One). But since I was not arguing they are "bleeding heart liberals," it's irrelevant. It's also irrelevant since one's views on 1970s UK tax policy have nothing to do with whether or not one believes in the basics of science or understands what a contagion is or how a virus works. Normally I might add something like, "Come on, you can do better than that." But you can't do better than that, so I won't.
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