Updates made to The Millenium Project in July 2021
Part 1

Coming apocalypse (3/7/2021)
I'm letting everyone know that there might be a point in the very near future which sees the end to any updates to The Millenium Project. The reason for this pessimism is that I'm booked in for my second AstraZeneca COVID vaccination shot on Friday, July 9, and some very reputable* anti-vaxxers have declared that this is almost a certain death sentence. If I'm dead I can't be updating any web sites. Actually, I will be away on the weekend of July 17-18 because I'll be doing the rally media hobby thing, but I'm reasonably confidant (p<.000000001) that if I'm not back here shortly afterwards it won't be because I've been killed by a vaccine. (I somehow miss the days when any missed weekend would be greeted by an explosion of mouth foam from the likes of the now-dead Mr William P O'Neill declaring that the site had been closed by someone or other.)

* For certain values of "reputable".

See more from Sketchplanations here

They never give up (3/7/2021)
Back in April 2019 I mentioned how anti-vaccination liars lie when submitting spurious reports of "vaccine damage" to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Of course, as lying is what they do, nobody should be surprised by this.

Someone has taken a bit of time to examine some more of the lies, and the image below shows some of the things reported as vaccine damage. Some of them are not surprising because there are some deaths there caused by suffocation when co-sleeping and it is an article of faith for anti-vaxxers that nothing kills babies except vaccines and SIDS does not exist. I have a friend whose father did a lot of research into SIDS and "white heat" doesn't quite describe his rage at this particular set of lies.

This makes me sad (3/7/2021)
A friend of mine died suddenly a few days ago. I knew Shelley through our mutual interest in fighting the liars who oppose vaccination and she was one of the smartest and funniest people I've ever known. I'm not real good at writing obituaries so I'll leave it to our mutual friend Peter to say things better than I ever could.

Anne, me, Maureen and Shelley celebrating a court victory over the Australian Vaccination Network

As Shelley had publicly announced her intention to get the COVID vaccine shortly before she died it was inevitable that the anti-vaccination ghouls would leap on this and gloat that the vaccine had killed her. This started even before any autopsy reports had been announced (and they were only announced to her immediately family anyway).

Two examples from Twitter

When I predicted that this would happen I said that it would be necessary to be rude to the vultures. Someone criticised me for this and said that rudeness was never appropriate, but how else can you respond to the filth coming out of their mouths?

Because of travel restrictions arising from COVID outbreaks and the limits on numbers of people gathered together I can't attend Shelley's funeral, but I'm sure she would appreciate the real reason for me not being there - the time coincides with the booking for my second COVID vaccination dose. I'll dedicate it to her memory.

But this makes me happy (3/7/2021)
The news is not all bad.

In fact it gives me great pleasure to announce that another avenue for "Dr" Sherri Tenpenny to spread lies and disinformation about vaccines has been closed to her. Any day on which something happens to make her miserable is a very good day indeed. The 99,000 people who paid attention to her drivelous ravings will have to look elsewhere to get their daily doses of dangerous lies.

See more from Tom Gauld here

Change of plan (10/7/2021)
My original plan was to do lots of stuff here this weekend and nothing next weekend because I would be off journalisting at a car rally, but the rally has been postponed because of COVID travel restrictions (and I am still waiting for confirmation that my accommodation booking has been transferred to the new date) so things have been reversed.

I'm still doing lots of stuff this week, but it's all to do with moving all the things I've written for magazines across to my personal site at peterbowditch.com. It turns out that this is not as trivial a task as I first assumed so I've been as busy as a one-armed banjo player and also flat out like a lizard drinking as we say upover here in Australia.

Also, I'm supposed to spend this weekend getting over any adverse vaccine reactions to my second COVID vaccination shot. While anti-vaccination liars will be saying that death is probably imminent, I've only suffered one of the common aftereffects - fatigue, but sleeping for almost twelve hours seems to have taken care of that. The good news is that I have no trouble finding my car keys now because they stick to my wrist. (Just joking!)

Which means …

See more from XKCD here

Update to the Plague Bus Tour of Death (10/7/2021)
A couple of weeks ago I reported that I had warned a nearby local council about an impending visit by the Vaxxed bus, coming to town to spread lies about vaccines. Well, despite declaring that COVID is a hoax (like all other diseases), the organisers have cancelled the physical tour because of COVID travel restrictions and it will now be done "virtually", whatever that means. The nice thing is that without the tour it will be simply preaching to the choir as they say in Clichéland and people who are not already committed anti-vaxxers won't get to be lied to. Or exposed to clowns religiously avoiding wearing masks like the sane people do.

See more from Wiley Miller here

Still in brevity mode (17/7/2021)
The project to move all of the things I've written over the years for various publications outside The Millenium Project was a lot bigger than I'd anticipated. The idea was to still have links from here to where the articles are at peterbowditch.com, but my eventual aim is to have everything that I can find that I've written plus any speeches and talks I've given over there. So far I've moved everything published in other outlets and replaced them here with links, but I really had no idea how productive I've been over the years. Also, long experience in the IT industry should have warned me that any project that has computers anywhere will always make jokes of budgets and estimates.

I've still got to collect all the speeches and talks there but that can wait.

To add to the subtractions from my time (add to subtractions??) I'm about to become a Field Officer for the coming Australian census and I was given very short notice of when the training would take place and how much of it there would be. That all happens in the next few days and after that I have no idea how busy I will be, but my supervisor suggested "very" so I don't know how much time I will have to do hobbying over the next few weeks. The census happens on August 10 but the work doesn't stop then. Also there's the continuing COVID scare to make things difficult for people who have to go from house to house distributing, explaining and collecting papers. I might be fully vaccinated but that doesn't give me total freedom of movement. It's a wait and see situation. I was supposed to be doing media work at a car rally this weekend but it's been postponed to August 28 (and might yet be cancelled), and another one next weekend has already been cancelled.

One day I'll be able to plan my life out for more than a few days. I was never this busy when I had a job before I retired. I don't know how I ever found the time to go to work.

The TL;DR version of this is that I'll be here when I'm here and not here when I'm not here. But everything will return to 2019 normal one month soon. Have I mentioned that 2019 saw everywhere in flames from bushfires? Maybe go back to 2018 normality.

See more Speedbump here

Where has he been and where is he going? (24/7/2021)
I was a bit optimistic last week. The project to move everything I've written for other publications over to my personal site at peterbowditch.com (which I thought was done) seems to be complete now that I have located all the ones I missed and sorted out the database changes to make sure all the links from the various lists here work. Like all IT projects it took longer than expected and was one of those jobs which a sensible person would not have started in the first place. I've still got to move all the speeches and talks, but there's no urgency and that will happen over the next few weeks.

To make sure I had no spare time I had to do three days training for my job on the coming census

And speaking of the next few weeks and the census, the census happens on August 10 and because of a staff shortage I will be doing the work that would have been allocated to two people. This means that I have a lot more area to cover handing out forms, explaining the census to residents (and finding residents who live on remote farms) and following up after the date than I first expected and the date of the census isn't going to change. With everyone's movements severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak (thank you, mask and vaccine refusers!) the days ahead will be challenging.

Don't expect to see much here for the next three or four weeks.