Are religions a form of conspiracy theory?

...Or vice-versa? Religions have always been a convenient tool for calming people in providing them with answers to questions they had about their existence, their reason for being, life and death or a series of inexplicable events and phenomena. 

They have also been very instrumental in controlling and manipulating them for a vast variety of reasons. Their success has depended a lot on the intelligence, education, common sense, fearfulness or gullibility of their target audience. 

When one compares religious faith to belief in conspiracy theories, there isn’t much difference. Both creeds cannot prove their respective validity, and must use hear-say, irrational or unproven theories to advance and state their claims. 

Anything based on commonsense, on science or proven facts is systematically rejected by proponents of both sides (religious and conspiracy advocates) that are all basing - not proving - their “truth” on isolated and group testimonies, ancient, reported events or the sheer numbers of believers they have been able to enlist and enrage to echo their claims. 

The crowd effect if you will. This to me is enough to conclude that conspiracy theories and religions are cut of the same cloth.

Another Covid ski season starts down-under

As snow is beginning to blanket the slopes of Australia and New-Zealand, ski resorts are starting another winter season, still under the presence of Covid-19. 

This time folks are getting used to the routine, but vaccination seems to be lagging woefully behind and is holding up the free-wheeling activity we now see in the United-States. 

Yet, demand appears strong and, as an example, Thredbo in New South Wales, Australia, broke pre-season online sales records but still wants to cap season pass sales, claiming that their new business model is “moving away from a volume-based system. Good luck with that!.

In neighboring New Zealand is still stuck into self-congragutaling itself for their on-line res system, which I thought was horrible as implemented in the US by Vail Resorts. 

In Australia, the slow vaccine roll-out has forced the government in Victoria, where Falls Creek, Mount Hotham, and Mt. Buller are located, to require visitors from the Greater Melbourne area (still a hot spot for the pandemic), to produce a negative Covid-19 test before hitting the slopes. 

As for New Zealand is concerned Paul Anderson, CEO of NZSki, which operates Coronet Peak, Mt. Hutt, and The Remarkables adds: “There doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency to get everyone vaccinated, so a majority of the ski resort staff won’t get their shots until later in the season. Only the ski patrol and medical rescue teams may have access to the vaccine since they’re the ones to be in regular close contact with guests...”

Politics and Covid vaccination

Tomorrow, Biden will miss his vaccination target because protection against Covid-19 has become very much politicized. 

The less educated, the more gullible and the most backward people are, the most likely they were to refuse their Covid-19 shot and to be in support of Trump. 

Including Utah, of course!

 

A first trip ‘round the world, part 19

Having just left South Africa, we now found ourselves in the middle of the Indian Ocean, between Durban and Perth, still battered by a very rough winter sea and again suffering from a horrible seasickness to which neither Jean-Pierre nor I were used to. 

That crossing was 5,200 miles long and took eight days to complete. 

We rarely went out on deck anymore and spent most of our time sleeping, eating, drinking and, when we couldn’t avoid it, dancing. 

Well, there were exceptions; to celebrate his 24th birthday on July 3, after drinking more than a few cocktails, my friend JP had the dubious idea of ​​convincing South African passengers that just boarded in Durban to throw lounge chairs overboard, into the Indian Ocean. 

All of them were caught red handed by the ship security and JP had said in his defense, “We threw these for the sharks, they looked very tired; we thought they’d an opportunity to rest!” 

The crew didn’t appreciate Jean-Pierre’s caustic humor too much, and poor Jean-Pierre and his aids had to reach into their wallets to settle the expense. 

Meanwhile, in France, it was now Marcel's turn to fly to Australia: “I took the same flight as Gérard from Le Bourget, on UTA, with Christophe, Alexis's son, whom I had picked up in Annemasse. Instead of stopping over in Tehran we flew into Athens, Karachi, Colombo among other places. This long trip left us totally exhausted when we made it to Mt Buller the next day! "

First season’s big concert

Spectators and musicians were feeling a bit antsy as the first big outdoor concert that was supposed to fire up the Deer Valley amphitheater last Wednesday night. 

We were pleased to be outside, eating our dinner and returning to our summer routine after last year’s interrupted summer. 

The band, “Lash Larue” didn’t seem to find its groove though, perhaps was it the stage sound that wasn’t up to the task or the musicians who seem no longer able to work the crowd?

At any rate, these concerts have to be seen as a special show where things are turned around. 

The crowd is the stage, wanting to be seen and noticed at all costs, while the band is almost the audience and fills the air with some sound and no one seems to care about how it plays...

Measuring broadband

There’s internet speed and internet speed. We see it and read it on the commercials, put it seldom translate. Mbps ? What’s that ? 

Another acronym we can do without, probably, more gobbledygook we know what to do with… At the end it’s often meaningless, unless we bring in the key question: “In comparison to what?” 

To get started, let’s define what “Mbps” stands for. It means “megabits per second” as a measure of internet bandwidth, or the capacity or bandwidth of the download, or upload rate of an internet connection. So the larger number, the better, okay? 

This brings me to two rankings found on Wikipedia, first the mobile download speed, collected in late 2020 by Opensignal. The second is for the list of top 100 fastest fixed broadband internet connection speed in April 2021, according to Speedtest.net. In my opinion, these results are rather optimistic. 

Not so long ago, before I switched to the new 5G home internet, I was getting internet speed in the 5-7 Mbps range, and this still is the case with my mobile phone that isn’t 5G compatible. 

Yesterday, I checked my son’s “fast” Xfinity internet and found it to be half of what I now get from T-Mobile. Speed delivery widely varies with the kind of device used too; from mobile phone to tablets and to personal computers. 

Then there is Google Fiber, that is offered in 17 US cities claim download and upload speeds around 1,000 Mbps, but actual speed measured by Oakla Speedtest claim that early on, Google Fiber’s average actual speeds were 235.67 Mbps for download and 223.31 Mbps for upload. 

So actual numbers are often a small percentage of what’s promised because the actual speed varies all the time. I suggest you download Oakla Speedtest or some equivalent and test all your internet speeds on phones, desktop and laptop computers. 

Just like me, you might end up being very surprised! 

A first trip ‘round the world, part 18

After being stuck two entire weeks on the boat, with bad weather and very rough seas to boot, we were delighted to see the sun again, as we cruised by Cape Town and its marvelous surroundings. 

The next day, a Wednesday that fell smack at the end of June, saw us reach our Durban stopover in South Africa. We all were antsy to finally set foot on land. 

Seen from the boat, the city was as modern as it was impressive. In 1971, it had a population of around 850,000, and the port of Durban was the largest in South Africa and the 4th largest in the entire southern hemisphere. This time, despite the return of the sun, the cooler air was marking the start of the southern winter. 

The population seemed quite diverse with many Indians who at the time counted for about one third, the other third being made up of blacks, while whites (mostly Brits) and other people of "color", who came from all over the Indian Ocean, accounted for the remaining third. 

Of course, we were still in the middle of apartheid with signs clearly differentiating "White Only" areas and those indicating the opposite "Colored Only". 

The second day, after receiving our per-diem payments in local Rands, we went out to explore the city and its market where both merchants and smells were overwhelmingly of Indian origin; we had bought hash of rather marginal quality which was offered to us all over the market, and that we eventually tried it on the boat. 

JP had previously smoked some in the United States while this was the first time for me, and since I wasn’t a smoker, the stuff only bothered my eyes and I dropped it on the spot. Hey, before I forget, Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, capital of South Africa, on June 28 1971, and was just on day old when we set foot in Durban. I could have flown to visit him and bring him a stuffed animal, it was only a one hour flight from there...

Although skiing, by now, was a very remote notion inside our heads, we were still great skiers at heart, and knew that it was possible to ski near where we were, in a mountainous ridge called the "Great Escarpment" with mountains reaching over 10,000 feet. 

The highest part was known as the Drakensberg range, with Peak Mafadi reaching 11,320 feet above sea level, next to the Lesotho border. This was long before the Tiffindell ski resort, located 310 miles or 7 hour drive from Durban, was established in 1993.