Unintended Consequences from the Covid-19 Pandemic (1 Viewer)

[isladogs]

LOL Its still too big but I couldn't work out the correct proportions for the image.

BTW I had no idea what your post meant!

 

[Pat Hartman]

Thanks AB for the link to the NY times article about the Chinese driving the COVID panic. The media had a lot to do with it but it's good to know it wasn't all their fault. It is rare to see something political that doesn't contain some attack on Trump. Are they sure it wasn't Trump posting using an alias?

 

[Isaac]

I agree about the anti american school system. You have to be over a certain age to get it, have some memory of what we used to learn in schools vs. the anti american viewpoint that is pushed HARD nowadays. the average student currently doesn't even have a respect for the good that our founding fathers did. all they know is one single fact: Jefferson Had Slaves. Capitalized, just like that. :|

 

[Pat Hartman]

We are teaching our children to judge history by what we know about the world today and our current morals rather than giving them a little slack for doing what they thought was acceptable at the time. All over the world at that time, people kept slaves, period. I don't think slavery is right. It was wrong then and it is wrong now but the morals then were different. Even in the class of people who owned slaves, many treated them humanly but others didn't. I'm pretty sure that Thomas Jefferson treated his people humanly or that would be what we talk about rather than the fact that he had slaves.

However, we do NOT judge Muslims by the same standards. I can attest due to personal experience during my year in Kuwait that keeping women as sex slaves is common practice in Kuwait and elsewhere wherever Sharia Law rules. Islam specifically says this is OK so if the Koran is for it, isn't it right? Muslims in the US are allowed to have multiple wives but Mormons are not. I don't have anything against polygamy per se as long as the marriages are entirely voluntary but I have a real problem with two different standards.

BTW - Mosques were NOT forced to close the way Christian churches and Jewish Temples were during the state mandated shutdowns. Look for pictures.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Damn, that has to be the 2nd-3rd sacred cow poked this week. And it's only hump-day!

 

[Steve R.]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a resurgence in COBOL. There have been a variety of recent articles, some very good at providing historical perspective. Just ran across this article, which should be of interest considering the nature of this forum: Forget about Python. Learn COBOL and become a crisis hero.

Why nobody knows COBOL any more…

First of all, because COBOL — COmmon Business Oriented Language — is a language for business people, not for programmers. It’s designed such that a businessperson with no knowledge of code understands what’s going on. Which means that the wellbeing of the programmer behind the code isn’t a priority.

COBOL has a bunch of syntactical oddities that make it palatable for business, but not for hardcore nerds. Like the fact that it doesn’t have any functions or subroutines — instead, there are divisions, sections, paragraphs, and statements. Very much to the disgust of systems programming pioneers in the 1970s.

“The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” — Edsger W. Dijkstra

 

[Steve R.]

Well, it was inevitable. A trial lawyer firm is now soliciting businesses so that the legal firm can file law suites against insurance companies that are supposedly not honoring "business interruption" insurance because of COVID-19. Saw my first commercial today. Anticipate a flood of COVID-19 lawsuits to be filed in the US in the near future. The lawyers will see "red meat" and will descend into a feeding frenzy. In the US, one of the fun legal pastimes is "manufacturing" product liability lawsuits. COVID-19 legal filings offers to be like a drug induced high for the trial lawyers.

 

[Isaac]

It was inevitable. I talked to my brother who runs a string of restaurants on the west coast. He said their business interruption insurance specifically excludes pandemics and most do. The lawyers are probably betting on finding a loop hole there too.

 

[moke123]

Most if not all Bus. Interuption policies require a physical event such as a flood or fire so I doubt any suits will have much success. What the lawyers are probably looking for is "Going Away $" Its more economical for an Ins. Co. to pay a few bucks to make the case go away than to spend a ton of money on litigation. If it will cost $15 - 20,000 to defend the case they'll settle for $7500 to make it go away. The Plaintiff Lawyers make a boatload because they make a few thousand on each case and file dozens of cases while doing very little work.

 

[Isaac]

Makes me regret dropping out of law school after 1 year. But I am older and tireder now, and doubt I could last through the rigors of it at this point.

 

[Steve R.]

While I fully anticipated the emergence of these lawsuits, seems that others beat me to the punch. USA Today had an article on April 3, 2020. A full month earlier. Coronavirus goes to court: After lives and livelihoods come the lawsuits

The coronavirus pandemic is imperiling more than lives and livelihoods. It's also leading to lawsuits.

Workers are suing companies. Businesses are suing insurers. Prison inmates and migrants in detention, abortion providers and gun shop owners are suing federal and state governments.

Colleges, cruise lines and even China have been among the targets of lawsuits seeking damages for the COVID-19 calamity. And the nation's notoriously litigious society is just getting started.

“This early litigation is really, from our vantage point, the tip of the iceberg,” says Harold Kim, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. “The level of litigation could really go into so many different directions.”

 

[The_Doc_Man]

A long time ago my late uncle Ernest told me that only two people in this world ever get rich - politicians and lawyers.

 

[moke123]

A long time ago my late uncle Ernest told me that only two people in this world ever get rich - politicians and lawyers.

Sometimes theres a Lucky (?) Plaintiff who gets rich too.

I used to know a lawyer who took one case a year. If you didnt roll into his office in a wheelchair he wouldn't take the case.

 

[Steve R.]

In one case, we actually got significant cash back. In another, it was really insulting, we were to get a discount on a future purchase. Of course we never made that future purchase, but the lawyers (who were supposedly doing this on our behalf) did get their $$$.

 

[Micron]

Given the thread title, this seems appropriate:
Momma watches The Black List religiously. While poking around the forum I just saw the most bizarre tv I've ever seen. The episode was a mix of regular camera shot scenes and cgi in one episode. The cgi part was Sunday funnies, cartoon like stuff intermixed with regular video. It's no surprise that scenes are not shot in order, but this episode revealed just how far apart they can be. Picture a guy having a medical episode in cgi, then racing to medical attention in video, then recovering in cgi, with plenty of video and cgi on either end of that scene, telling the story in one form or the other. You have to see it to understand it. It's bizarre to say the least, and was replete with a full complement of over-the-shoulder, over the bedside, etc. camera angles in cgi like the regular video you've taken for granted all the time. This might be a sign of tv to come.

 

[Steve R.]

The economy has been flooded with money. Furthermore, those employed can continue to receive there payroll income for a period of time into the near future. We now have some massive protests. One can claim that the ability of those protesting has been indirectly enhanced by all this free money being given to them as they are not constrained by the loss of income.

The unintended consequences irony. The government is "funding" the protests aimed at destroying the government.