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Thursday, September 30, 2021

‘Fiscal Insanity’: Senator Joe Manchin Comes Out Against Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending Proposal

Congress’s efforts to push through a budget-busting $3.5+ trillion welfare and climate change spending bill are coming to a fever pitch. But with the Senate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 50-50, the party-line spending legislation could be doomed—because one prominent Democratic senator just came out swinging against the effort. 

“I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March,” West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat, said in a statement released Wednesday. “At some point, all of us, regardless of party, must ask the simple question – how much is enough?”

“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” Manchin continued. “Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue [to] pay an unavoidable inflation tax. Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery.”

To be clear, Manchin is not exactly a principled free-marketeer or small government fiscal conservative. Indeed, he is actively promoting a $1.2+ trillion spending bill ostensibly dedicated to transportation infrastructure, and is open to the idea of more spending. The senator simply acknowledges the reality of trade-offs. (Unlike many in his party who bizarrely continue to falsely claim their multi-trillion-dollar proposal costs “zero dollars.”

Still, Manchin deserves credit for grappling with the reality that the government cannot create resources out of thin air. Whether through the sweeping proposed tax hikes, new federal debt, or money-printing that drives inflation, all the goodies handed out by the federal government must ultimately come from somewhere else. 

Manchin rightly argued that the current approach of spending trillions and ignoring any consequences is reckless and motivated by an extreme political ideology that ignores fiscal reality. 

“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford – not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending,” he said. “While I am hopeful that common ground can be found that would result in another historic investment in our nation, I cannot – and will not - support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”

If only more politicians in Washington were willing to at least grapple with fiscal reality when crafting spending policies and less content to simply pass the buck onto future generations. 

“America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies,” Manchin concluded. “Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation.”

Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

Brad Polumbo
Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

‘Fiscal Insanity’: Senator Joe Manchin Comes Out Against Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending Proposal

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

GamesMaster (January 1993)

GamesMaster (January 1993)

GamesMaster is a computer and video game magazine that was published in the U.K. from 1993 until 2018. It was originally a spin-off of a TV show by the same name but the show ended years before the magazine. It was also published in Lebanon between 1996 and 1999 and the Philippines between 2003 and 2009. Issue Number 1 from January 1993 includes:

  • Network - Bong! New magazine launched (oh, you're already reading it!) Bong! Game Genie and Action Replay arrive for SNES. Bong! Cheap Sega carts on the way? bong! Etc. Bong!

  • Charts - What's hot and what's, if you must, "not" in the stores. Plus the chance to vote your fave game to the top of the Readers' Chart.

  • Dominik's Big Purple Column - The big barrel of double entendres has its bottom roughly scraped in this, the first of a series of frighteningly unhinged missives from everyone's favorite redcoat.

  • TV News - Who's on when? What challenges are coming up? This is the definitive guide, as you might expect, to what's happening on GamesMaster over the next few weeks. Plus: what on EARTH is that git Douglas doing on the telly?

  • Games Arena - Two young men, one with a stinking cold and the other just stinking, face off for the dust-up of a lifetime on, you guessed it, Streetfighter 2. Think you can do better? Well here's your chance...

  • Previews - Take a sneaky peek at forthcoming stormers for your system. This month we've got Mr. Nuts, Cool World, James Pond 3, Gunship 2000, Star Wars and, as they say, "more"!

  • Win The Ultimate Games Station! - If you thought that your car rent games system was smart think again. Here's the chance to own every 16-bit console, and a bundle of software for each. PLUS: an ultra-smart color TV with full stereo sound to play on.

  • Reviews - For a full list of reviews; eyes right!

  • Subs - Scribble, snip, send, save, smile.

  • Survey - A million miles away from the skull-implodingly dull surveys you're used to filling out, this one will actually improve your state of mind. No, really.

  • Win A Bloody Enormous Telly! - 28 throbbing inches of gristle, sorry, screen. That's what's on offer in our Comet Game Zone Sonic 2 Competition.

  • Tips Zone - From gaming geek to software Schwarzenegger in one super-easy step.

  • Christmas Start Here! - It would be a grumpy old scrooge of a magazine that didn't offer some lighthearted Christmas fun and games, and a bah humbugging reader who didn't enter into the spirit.

  • Secret Level... - That's right. Lurking in this issue of GamesMaster is our very own secret level! Can you find it? Can you beat it?
  • Next Month

  • ...and more!

    Monday, September 27, 2021

    Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (989-992)

    See the previous post in this series here.

    I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

    Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

    This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

    Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

    Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

    This set of photos features various individuals except the first photo which is labeled "Rock wall". The last photo was processed in May 1958. The others do not have any labels or dates but they are all likely from the late 1950s or early 1960s.



    Rock wall






    Processed May 1958

    The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.

    Saturday, September 25, 2021

    Rand Paul Is Leading a Bipartisan Effort to Fix One of the Government’s Worst Immigration Laws

    Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bipartisan bill alongside Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) on Wednesday that provides a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 200,000 “Documented Dreamers.”

    What’s a “Documented Dreamer?” I’m glad you asked, as many American citizens remain unaware of the significant problems a person might face to “come here legally.”

    The term is used to refer to the children of long-term visa holders in the US who were brought to the country by parents or guardians.

    Typically, their families are waiting for decades on the green card backlog, sort of like a waiting room for legal status. In this circumstance, a child is essentially kicked out of their place in line when they come of age.

    Other dreamers have parents who came here on a business visa or another type of visa, and many of these actually punish people if they attempt to get a green card. These families, and their children, are therefore never in line for a green card to begin with—even if they own businesses in the US.

    As the law currently stands, these children must self-deport when they come of age. Some are able to legally stay past their 21st birthday if they go to college on a student visa, but that’s usually the end of the road. This means they face returning to countries they have largely never known as they enter adulthood. Many of them do not speak the language or understand the culture. Their families and their entire way of life are in the US, yet they become a criminal overnight based on an arbitrary birthday.

    Paul and Padilla’s new legislation is called the America’s Children Act, and it’s pretty straightforward.

    The bill would provide a pathway to permanent residency (which is different from citizenship) for dreamers. Under this proposal, the child’s age would be locked into line for a green card on the day they file for one, rather than based on the date the government actually gets to their application. It also allows Dreamers to work while they wait starting at age 16, and continuing into adulthood so long as they graduate college.

    For over a decade, the country has been at a stalemate on immigration. And while the policy discussions rage, many forget that there are real lives hanging in the balance. Both major political parties continue to put people in border camps, both continue to deport large numbers of people, and both continue to direct our law enforcement agencies to apprehend people based on their immigration status.

    The issue with the Dreamers is yet another example of that. Forcing a child to leave their family and rip their lives apart due to government backlog is a heinous thing to do. Put yourself in their shoes, in their family’s shoes. They’ve tried to do things the “right” way and are still sentenced to such a fate.

    On top of that, we waste valuable resources policing these innocent people’s immigration status. Imagine what could be done to stop real crime and violence with those resources. If anyone is actually concerned about nefarious people coming across our border, they ought to be the loudest calling for streamlined immigration. Let the people who just want to live and work do just that, and then we could focus our attention on actual crime.

    When it comes to the Dreamers, it is important to remember that their status is more a factor of government backlog than it is a question of whether or not they should be allowed to be here. And while they wait for that verdict, operating under constant threat from our officials, this community continues to be a tremendous value add for our economy, contributing $42 billion to our annual GDP. These are the people we want here.

    The fact that a young person could be torn from their family and home, just as they are embarking on adulthood is a chilling one. It is imperative that we find a way to ensure these lives are no longer hanging in the balance. Doing so will make us a richer country, economically, culturally, and morally.

     Hannah Cox
    Hannah Cox

    Hannah Cox is the Content Manager and Brand Ambassador for the Foundation for Economic Education.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

    Friday, September 24, 2021

    The Games Machine (November 1988)

    The Games Machine (November 1988)
    The Games Machine, subtitled 'Computer & Electronic Entertainment', seems to have been popular in the U.K. though for a short period of time. It only lasted about three years before morphing on to something else. It covered both computer and console games in the late 1980s but seemed to lean heavily towards the computer side of things. The November 1988 issue includes:

    Regulars

    • TGM Report - What's going down in the world of computers? TGM is on the case to bring you the day after tomorrow news yesterday.

    • Previews - Exclusive previews to whet your appetite - look right!

    • Confrontation: Coin-Op - Our authoritative arcade adventurer examines the very latest in coin-guzzling machines.

    • Getting Adventurous - Rob Steel opens a new school of thought with Fish! and tackes The Beast.

    • TGM's Review Catalog - Page after page crammed with comprehensive reviews of 8-bit, 16-bit and MSX software.

    • Fantasy Games - John Woods takes a journey through King Arthur's Britain...and makes a Knight of it.

    • Poste Haste - Play By Mail on computer? It had to happen - TGM investigates.

    • Music Matters - The Abominable Dr. Vibes - Jon Bates - gets his digits round teh fantabulous Notator program for the Atari ST.

    • Readerpage - Computer gaming is a cover for drug abuse! Readerpage reveals all.

    • Information Desk - Game tips galore from resident expert Robin Hogg.

    • Mercy Dash - The thick chick plus Nik.

    • Endpiece - Everybody's favorite uncle makes techno-verbiage an artform again in this months Trivia Quiz.

    • Competition Results - Oh no, not again! There are none this issue because the pages are so crammed full of wonderful stuff that we ran out of room. Winners have already been notified, and we'll print the lot next month. Promise!

    Features

    • The First British Console? - Could this be the machine to push the Sega and Nintendo aside? Find out in TGM REPORT.

    • The Dark Sprite Returns - TGM goes overseas again to report on Spain's leading software house, Dinamic. And to make it a Dynamic duo we also enter the bat-cave to access the bat-computer and bring you exclusive news on Oceans forthcoming release.

    • The Real Cybernauts - Mel Croucher looks at how technology can help the disabled.

    • Stos - TGM looks in depth at the Mandarin utility that can help you create your own games.

    • Cyberpunk - Stuart Wayne strips Robocop down to the microchip and looks at the film, book and game.

    • The Mouse That Roared - From little apples a newspaper - The Post - is born. TGM investigates the power and versatility of Desk Top Publishing.

    • Walk This Way - Mel Croucher reports on the state of the art in Walkman technology. Did you know that one in ten users suffer from hearing problems? (pardon?)

    • Back Bytes - It's here! At last! All you ever wanted to know about hardware.

    • Nintendo - The state of software for the Japanese wonder machine.

    • Computer Hardware - From Archimedes to ZX Spectrum, it's all here.

    • Independent Repair Services - Where to send you computer when it's sick.

    • The Compleat Keyboardist - 16 pages of Jon Bates waxing lyrical and getting generally ecstatic about keyboards, drum machines, in fact just about every musical widget you could ever want to stick on your computer.

    Monday, September 20, 2021

    Computer Gamer (October 1986)

    Computer Gamer (October 1986)
    Computer Gamer is a computer gaming magazine that was published in the U.K. during the 1980s. It was ultimately not one of the more successful gaming magazines as it only lasted a couple of years. But then the U.K. seemed to have a lot more computer and gaming magazines in the 1980s than did the U.S. from my recollection. The October 1986 issue includes the following:

    Regulars

    • News - The PCW Show Report.
    • Heroic Warrior - Brave the frozen wastes in our free game.
    • Arcade Reviews - Beyond the Forbidden Forest lies games galore.
    • PBM Update - Postal games get our stamp of approval.
    • Dungeon Dressing - Add plausible characters to your make-believe adventures.
    • Hi-scores - Stun the world with your megablast record.
    • Adventure Reviews - A treasure trove of alien worlds and magical mindscapes.
    • Music - When the going gets tough, relax with a light-show.
    • Sports Reviews - More wrist-aching action for armchair athletes.
    • Strategy Reviews - The Protocol of being a Rebel and other trials of logic.
    • Programs - Get keyed up with a selection of our readers favorites.

    Features

    • The Newsroom - Start a fanzine with Ariolasoft's desk top publishing package.
    • The French Collection - Oh la la, can ze French writes ze software? We think they can-can.
    • Deactivators - Explosive action and brain strain in a world of robots.
    • The Trap Door - Make a Burk of yourself with this best cellar.
    • Dan Dare - Who Dares wins hours of fun with the Pilot of the Future.
    • Mindstone - Icon adventuring in a land of magic.

    Offers

    • Trap Door Competition - You've read the review, now win the game.
    • Competition Results - Are you one of our lucky winners?
    • Readers Club - Make contact with other life-forms.
    ...and more!

    Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (985-988)

    See the previous post in this series here.

    I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

    Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

    This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

    Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

    Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

    The first photos was processed in April 1960 and appears to have been taken in some place like Florida. The other photos are unlabled and undated but are also probably from the early 1960s.


    April 1960





    The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.

    Friday, September 17, 2021

    Mask Mandate Advocates Championed ‘Science’ and ‘Experts’ — Until They Didn’t

    For most of the COVID-19 pandemic, wearing a mask, especially indoors, was the official guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, on May 13, the CDC announced that vaccinated people — whether they be indoors or outdoors — no longer have to wear masks except under special circumstances.

    While this was cause for celebration in most parts of the country, Democratic politicians in various states and cities have decided to leave their mask mandates unchanged — even for those who have been vaccinated. Reason reported that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are among those who made that decision.

    Lightfoot justified her decision by saying, "People need to continue to follow the public health guidance that has gotten us this far, and masks are a big and important part of that." Gov. Murphy tweeted that New Jersey’s mask mandate remains in place because many people in his state are still not vaccinated. Gov. Newsom said that he did not change mask policy in his state because he was unsure how to deal with kids in schools or businesses that want to keep requiring them.

    Whatever the merits of mask mandates when they were first implemented, they have clearly overstayed their welcome. Now that the CDC has new guidance, to keep mask mandates in place would be to go against their initial justification: namely, that research and expert authorities suggested that we must have them.

    At this point, the science is clear: once people are vaccinated, they are essentially immune from COVID-19. A study from the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that vaccines had a 97 percent efficacy at stopping symptomatic cases of COVID-19 and an 86 percent efficacy at stopping asymptomatic cases of COVID-19.

    A CDC study showed that the risk of COVID-19 infection was reduced by 90 percent after being fully vaccinated, and another CDC study showed that even for older people — those most at risk from COVID-19 — the vaccine is 94 percent effective at preventing hospitalization.

    After all of this research came out, the last viable pro-mask-mandate talking point was that there are variants out there, and there is simply too much uncertainty about them to lift mask mandates. But, a study on the variants showed that Pfizer’s vaccine was 89.5 percent effective against the UK variant and 75 percent effective against the South African variant.

    Even with this new science, it has been argued by people such as Gov. Murphy in New Jersey that there are still people who are unvaccinated, and therefore we cannot lift the mandates just yet.

    The truth is that for those who are unvaccinated, nobody is preventing them from continuing to wear a mask or taking extra safety precautions. In fact, they are still being encouraged to take those measures. And, it is also true among vaccinated people that if they would like to ensure an extra level of safety, then it is 100 percent their prerogative to wear a mask as well.

    But the converse must also be true. For those people who are unvaccinated and make — in my view — the ill-advised decision not to wear a mask indoors, that is a risk they are freely taking on. And, for those who are vaccinated, there is absolutely no reason to impose mask-wearing in indoor and outdoor settings alike because studies tell us that they are essentially immune from COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated.

    We are at a point where it is more clear than ever that each person can make an individual choice, based on their own situation, whether or not they want to wear a mask. Some people will be more cautious than others, and that is okay.

    At the start of the pandemic, many Americans looked to the government for guidance on how to best protect themselves, and deferred to their recommendations. However, times of crisis have always been a pretext for the expansion of government and limitations on liberty for exactly that reason: it is easy to justify at the beginning of that crisis.

    However, regaining those liberties on the back-end of a crisis is hard. When government officials act in their self-interest — as one would expect them to do — it invariably means not only expanding and maintaining their own power, but also continually trying to impose their preferred version of the world onto others.

    In F.A. Hayek’s book, Law, Legislation and Liberty, he wrote:

    “‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded – and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.”

    That politicians are justifying continued mask mandates even after the recommendation from the CDC has changed is a clear example of what Hayek was talking about. They are stubbornly trying to maintain the state of emergency to cling to the power and importance it gives them.

    Embracing individual choice and liberty now makes more sense than ever because we are on the last stretch of the pandemic and more and more people are not only gaining access to vaccinations but also actually being vaccinated every day. It is past time that our government policies start to reflect that.

    Jack Elbaum
    Jack Elbaum

    Jack Elbaum is a Hazlitt Writing Fellow at FEE and an incoming sophomore at George Washington University. His writing has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The New York Post, and the Washington Examiner. You can contact him at jackelbaum16@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @Jack_Elbaum.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

    Mask Mandate Advocates Championed ‘Science’ and ‘Experts’ — Until They Didn’t

    Monday, September 13, 2021

    PC World (December 2009)

    PC World (December 2009)

    PC World was one of the longest running and most popular PC magazines in the world. The first issue was published in March 1983 and the final issue as the relatively recent August 2013 issue. A 30 year span is a long time for a computer magazine. This issue is from 2009 and while that hardly seems "retro", it's still coming up on 12 years ago. Twelve years was almost the entire life span of the Commodore 64. This issue includes:

    Features

    • PC World 100: The Best Products of the Year - A lot of outstanding hardware, software, and services passed before our eyes this year. Here are the very best ones - the products we most wanted to keep after testing and reviewing them.

    • The TV You Want Today - HDTV features continue to evolve rapidly, in areas that range from motion-smoothing technologies to 3D. we look at the changes and rank the best 40- and 47-inch sets.

    • Sneaky Fees - Slipped into phone bills, tacked on to triple-play packages, or added to financial transactions, hidden fees are everywhere. Read how to identify and avoid them.

    Departments

    • Techlog
    • PCW Forum
    • The Back Page

    Forward

    • Wireless Wars - As carriers and the FCC tussle, users are caught in the middle.
    • Beta Watch
    • GeekTech

    Consumer Watch

    • Avoid Wireless Gouging - Minimize your phone service fees by scrutinizing five crucial areas.
    • Skeptical Shopper
    • On Your side

    Business Center

    • Build a Social Network - Ning makes customization easy.
    • Net Work
    • Tech Audit

    Security Alert

    • Phishers Dangle New Bait - Information thieves devise new ways to steal your personal data.
    • Bugs and Fixes
    • Privacy Watch

    Reviews and Ranking

    • E-Book Readers - A stack of better-quality readers vie for shelf (and luggage) space.
    • Top 10 Cell Phones
    • Digital Photo Frames
    • Top 10 Multifunction Printers
    • iPod Nano, Zune HD
    • Top 10 External Hard Drives
    • HP TouchSmart 600
    • Download This

    Here's How

    • Privacy on Social Networks - Rules for protecting your personal data on Facebook and Twitter.
    • Answer Line
    • Rick Broida's Hassle-Free PC

    ...and more!

    CDC: Schools With Mask Mandates Didn’t See Statistically Significant Different Rates of COVID Transmission From Schools With Optional Policies

    The ACLU on Tuesday announced it is bringing a lawsuit against South Carolina over its mask policy.

    The Palmetto State is one of seven states—along with Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, and Florida— that have policies in place banning schools from having mask policies. Thirteen states, meanwhile, have laws that mandate masks in schools. The majority of states (30) allow school districts to determine their own mask policies.

    “We’re suing to end South Carolina’s ban on mask requirements in schools, with Disability Rights South Carolina, Able South Carolina, and parents,” the ACLU said. “Students with disabilities are effectively being excluded from public schools because of this ban. Courts must intervene.”

    The ACLU’s action is the latest salvo in a battle over a question that divides America: should schools be able to compel children to wear face coverings in school?

    With fall approaching, many Americans are wondering whether they should send their children to school with a mask—or if they’ll even have a choice.

    A recent New York magazine article states that the science on masks "remains uncertain," but noted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in May published a large-scale study of COVID transmission in US schools.

    The study, which analyzed some 90,000 elementary students in 169 Georgia schools from November 16 to December 11, found that there was no statistically significant difference in schools that required students to wear masks compared to schools where masks were optional.

    “The 21% lower incidence in schools that required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional,” the CDC said. "This finding might be attributed to higher effectiveness of masks among adults, who are at higher risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection but might also result from differences in mask-wearing behavior among students in schools with optional requirements."

    As New York magazine’s David Zweig noted, these findings, as well as other statistically insignificant preventive measures, “cast doubt on the impact of many of the most common mitigation measures in American schools.”

    The CDC’s findings on masks and other preventive measures would not be particularly noteworthy or controversial outside the US. As New York magazine noted, many European nations have exempted students from mask mandates—including the UK, all of Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and even France and Italy—though with varying age cutoffs. The results have not been dire. 

    “Conspicuously, there’s no evidence of more outbreaks in schools in those countries relative to schools in the U.S., where the solid majority of kids wore masks for an entire academic year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future,” wrote Zweig. “These countries, along with the World Health Organization, whose child-masking guidance differs substantially from the CDC’s recommendations, have explicitly recognized that the decision to mask students carries with it potential academic and social harms for children and may lack a clear benefit.”

    These findings in the US, however, are another matter.

    Masks have been one of the most polarizing issues in the country during the pandemic, perhaps because US policy has whipsawed back and forth. Americans remain bitterly divided on the issue. There have been careers ruined, messy retractions, and endorsements lost.

    In particular, the CDC’s findings are not helpful to politicians and bureaucrats who continue to argue that students must be masked during school.

    “Whether [students] are vaccinated or not, they need to wear a mask,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said during a recent panel discussion streamed online.

    For this reason or some other, the CDC determined to not include its finding that “required mask use among students was not statistically significant compared with schools where mask use was optional” in the summary of its report, which has received very little media attention to date.

    Meanwhile, the mask wars are heating up.

    The Biden Administration recently directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to employ “all of his oversight authorities and legal actions” against governors preventing schools from passing mask mandates. Cardona acted swiftly.

    “These states are needlessly placing students, families, and educators at risk,” the Education Secretary wrote in a public letter. “Yet in each of these states, there are also educators and others who are taking steps to protect the health and safety of their school communities.”

    The CDC’s findings are hardly the only research on the issue of masks and COVID transmission, and the study will not be the final word—in large part because masks are too politically divisive to allow either side to “win.” The question is why.

    The economist Ludwig von Mises noted many years ago that a great deal of modern social conflict stems from a struggle over who gets to design the world, public authorities or individuals. Masks are no different. By removing this decision from the individual, public health officials turned masks into a political conflict.

    Masks are no longer simply a matter of individual or public health. Bear in mind, children face a low risk of falling sick or being hospitalized with COVID—with or without a face mask. Small children are far more likely to die of the flu, a car accident, a swimming pool, cancer or some other ailment than COVID-19, CDC data show. The battle of school masks mandates has now become a political conflict, part of a larger struggle between the individual and collectivism.

    “Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state does not matter,” Ayn Rand once observed. “Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good.’”

    In modern America, the common good now means using any means necessary to coerce individuals to get vaccinated and wear masks—including government coercion and public shame in various forms. The health of the collective—both literal and figurative—demands it.

    This is unhealthy, some say, and potentially dangerous.

    Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School who studies infectious diseases, recently observed that the way we’re treating the spread of COVID-19 is unique compared to other pandemics throughout human history.

    “For thousands of years, disease pathogens have spread from person to person. Never before have carriers been blamed for infecting the next sick person,” Kulldorff noted on Twitter. “That is a very dangerous ideology.”

    Indeed it is.

    Whether masks promote health is unclear—many Europeans without mask mandates have far lower COVID mortality rates than the US. What is far more certain—in light of the lessons of history—is that a healthy society is one that empowers individuals with choice and freedom.

    Jon Miltimore
    Jon Miltimore

    Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

    Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times. 

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

    CDC: Schools With Mask Mandates Didn’t See Statistically Significant Different Rates of COVID Transmission From Schools With Optional Policies

    Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (981-984)

    See the previous post in this series here.

    I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

    Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

    This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

    Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

    Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

    All of the slides in this set were processed in May 1962 and appear to be from a trip to Italy.




    Processed May 1962


    Processed May 1962


    Processed May 1962


    Processed May 1962

    The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.

    Friday, September 3, 2021

    Maximum: The Video Game Magazine – Issue Number 4 – 1996

    Maximum: The Video Game Magazine – Issue Number 4 – 1996

    You can think of Maximum as Next Generation's sister magazine in the U.K. Much of the content of Next Generation came from Maximum and the magazines were very similar. Next Generation was one of my favorite magazines though I wasn't really aware of Maximum until much later and being in the U.S., I was unlikely to ever see it anyway. Maximum targeted an older demographic than GamePro or even EGM. Issue Number 4 of Maximum from 1996 includes:

    Maxiumum Extended Play

    • Soul Edge - The cover game of Maximum issue #4 is a true showcase of arcade fighting titles, based on the PlayStation technology System 11 board. Soul Edge is graphically breathtaking, and features a technical level to the gameplay that's quite outstanding.

    • Space Hulk - A firm hit on the 3DO, Electronic Arts have been busy bringing their top-rated game onto the PC CD-ROM, Saturn and PlayStation systems. In this triple-format Extended Play, Maximum brings forth huge amounts of info on this involving game.

    • Heretic - The first third party game to use the Doom engine was Raven's Heretic, which has since been superseded by the excellent Hexen. However, the first game never received a general review and the boys at GT Interactive have just put out the latest version with extra levels. Maximum investigates..

    • Real Bout Fatal Fury - Some have been saying that the latest Fatal Furty is (get this) better than Street Fighter Alpha! Is this true, or is Real Bout just another outing for Geese Howard and a pair of outrageous trousers? Perhaps both, maybe neither. Full details later on.

    • Guardian Heroes - When Treasure produce a new video game, true game fanatics tend to sit up and take notice - especially when the game is on as powerful a system as Sega Saturn. True to form, Treasure have performed miracles with this game.

    • Street Fighter Alpha - First revealed in Maxiumum issue #3, Capcom have handed in a truly arcade-perfect conversion of their monster arcade game which Virgin are handling in Europe. We'eve already covered the coin-op, so this Extended Play covers the art of Street Fighting, from throwing your very first punch to pulling off incredible 19 hit Super Combo finishes.

    • Magic Carpet - Bullfrog scored a bit of an own-goal with their last action game translation to the super consoles. Yes, although Hi-Octane was a bit poor, the conversions of Magic Carpet are absolutely spot-on, and for any Saturn or PlayStation owner, it should be considered an essential purchase.
    • Virtua Fighter 2 - The final part of our unrivaled Virtua Fighter 2 coverage gives our valued readership an in-depth examination of the combination system in the game. Hugely damaging multi-hit strikes are revealed, along with basic techniques on improving your play.

    Maximum Close Up

    • Virtua Cop - Now that the game is a couple of months old, Maximum is pleased to announce the full range of hidden options found in this excellent blasting game.

    • X-Men: Children of the Atom - Well, many apologies for the lack of Magneto action, but this single page of mutant mayhem should clue you in to the true power of the unstoppable Juggernaut!

    • Battle Arena Toshinden 2 - Well, to be frank we think this game is pretty bad - however, it seems to have attracted its own legion of fans on PlayStation and in the arcades, so we reveal all of the boss-related secrets.

    • Doom - The third and final installment of Maximum's coverage reveals the five secret levels in Doom, including the celebrated "Club Doom".

    Maximum Regulars

    • New Games...Places...Events... - Well, Maximum's coverage of the places and events is probably a bit lacking this month, since we'eve been enslaved to Lord EMAP and super-glued to our desks to meet an impossible deadline. Again. Still, the coverage of hot games remains pretty decent regardless, with Saturn WipeOut, Formula One and of course PlayStation Tekken 2 taking pride of place in the Maximum line-up. Also worth checking out are the first pictures of Street Fighter Alpha 2 along with Virtua Fighter Kids and more on the Sonic Fighting Game.

    • Maximum Response - After finally being swayed by popular opinion, Maximum unveils its first letters page. For intelligent debate on gaming in general plus a slagging off for Killer Instinct 2, look no further.

    • Reviews - Despite the lean times in terms of software, Maximum retains its enormous 23 page reviewing section where we tell you in plain English whether selected software is worth buying or not. No useless "ratings" and suchlike here - just our informed opinions on the latest wares.

    • Next Edition - For full details on the forthcoming Namco Special Edition of Maximum, it could well be worth your while checking out this page. It's going to be big...

    ...and more!

    Wednesday, September 1, 2021

    Your Computer (September 1984)

    Your Computer (September 1984)

    Your Computer was the UK's biggest selling computer magazine of the 1980s. It covered all of the popular (and some not so popular) computers of the time. The September 1984 issue includes:

    • Editorial and Your Letters - The man who got his money back from Oric, the man who urges us to go easy on the QL and tips.
    • News - Stranglers' adventure game album, Sega SC3000 computer, the search for the Enterprise and cricket for Iceland.
    • VIC-20 Bytes - The art of structured programming: micro intelligence.
    • Computer Club - To be or not to be? Paul Bond in Stratford-on-Avon.
    • Quest Corner - Regular feature on adventure games.
    • Toshiba HX-10 Review - The tip of the MSX iceberg.
    • Competition Corner - Your chance to get organised. This month's exciting conundrum could win you the new box of tricks from Psion.
    • Tatung Einstein Review - Built-in disc drive, alleged CP/M compatibility, OK memory. Bill Bennet decides if this machine is relatively good.
    • Psion Organizer - Kathleen Peel tries Psion's first hardware.
    • BBC Software - Jim Taylor turns on and tunes in.
    • Electronic Music and Home Computers - At last a concise explanation of the basics of music synthesis. Kendall Wrightson looks at musical hardware.
    • BBC Keyboard - You could construct your own keyboard, but you don't have to in order to use this Richard Hines program.
    • How Frankie Gets to Hollywood - Tribes and chips.
    • Music Software - Stuart Kelling plays the field.
    • Musik 64 - Aural sprites? Graham Barbour provides easy to use sound commands for your Commodore 64.
    • Dragon Disco - Synchronized strobe simulation with Ron Gardler.
    • Manic Climber - H.C. Derelli drives your Spectrum up the wall.
    • Mad Jump - Put some bounce back into your Oric or Atmos programming with Matthias Gyllerup's hop-happy game of skill.
    • ZX-81 Barrel Barrage - Hard task to pass the casks.
    • VIC-20 Robot Attack - David Hodgetts shows you how to defend.
    • Hells Bells - If your Dragon's got the hump this will soon put it right. Drew Marshall's program about the dangers of campanology.
    • Amstrad Skydrop - Sandwiched between the acid clouds and the acid sea, drop bombs without being laser-sliced. And you thought acid rain was bad.
    • CBM-64 Bullion - Grab the gold, dodge the droids with R Dunk.
    • BBC Backgammon - Keith Miles makes the first move.
    • ZX-81 Sprites - 256 sprites! Make them bounce back or wrap around the screen! They appear above, below or at the same level as other characters.
    • Hulk - John Dawson looks at a quasi-expert system for the BBC.
    • Text compression - Alan Tobias squeezes more in.
    • Microdrive File - Kathleen Peel continues this series on applications for the revolutionary new Sinclair storage device.
    • Dragon Files - Bernard Hammel re-opens the case on Dragon 32 file storage capacity. Harness the speed of machine code, providing sophisticated databases.
    • Extended BASIC for the ZX Spectrum - Robert Newsman gives the Spectrum extra commands without recourse to Interface 1.
    • Response Frame - Tim Hartnell tries to help you.
    • Software File - Ten pages of software for most micros.
    • Competition Results - Who won the CPC-464?
    • Database - Paul Bonc lists computer events.

    ...and more!