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September 17, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin, I have been watching the sudden rise to prominence of the word ‘Indo-Pacific’ these last couple of months. These last couple of days it may have been the most repeated word on Radio New Zealand. According to Wikipedia today, Indo-Pacific is “biogeographic region”, although Wikipedia includes an outdated section on the ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – Indo-Pacific: The World’s New Geopolitical Buzzword" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/09/17/keith-rankin-analysis-indo-pacific-the-worlds-new-geopolitical-buzzword/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – Indo-Pacific: The World’s New Geopolitical Buzzword">Read more</a>
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September 13, 2021
Essay by Keith Rankin. New Zealand is under siege from Covid19. We can learn some things from medieval city sieges. A traditional siege takes place in a fortress, and the besieging agent waits outside the wall or the moat. The defenders also waited, in a battle of attrition; they won if the besieging attackers went ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Breaking NZ’s Covid Siege: What Needs to be Done, and When" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/09/13/keith-rankin-essay-breaking-nzs-covid-siege-what-needs-to-be-done-and-when/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Breaking NZ’s Covid Siege: What Needs to be Done, and When">Read more</a>
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September 8, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Public Health measures are restrictive ‘health’ imposts by an authority over some or all of the people subject to that authority. In most cases they are both ‘merit goods’ (having benefits which people ought to be willing to pay for), and ‘public goods’ (goods whose benefits are shared). Quarantine may be ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Quarantine, an effective temporary Public Health measure" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/09/08/keith-rankin-essay-quarantine-an-effective-temporary-public-health-measure/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Quarantine, an effective temporary Public Health measure">Read more</a>
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September 3, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Dynamic living processes get into feedback loops. The most common is a negative feedback loop, whereby processes self-regulate; when something happens then something else happens, in response, to offset the initial event. If it gets cold, we put on another layer of clothing. If a consumer good becomes scarce, its price ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Pandemic Feedback" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/09/03/keith-rankin-essay-pandemic-feedback/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Pandemic Feedback">Read more</a>
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September 1, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The first two charts show official case numbers and deaths, for all countries, including the little countries that tend to dominate in the peak of the northern summer holiday season. Chart 1 shows the countries with the highest case numbers per person – from French Polynesia (Tahiti) to Greece, plus four ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: State of the World at the end of August 2021" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/09/01/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-state-of-the-world-at-the-end-of-august-2021/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: State of the World at the end of August 2021">Read more</a>
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August 31, 2021
Essay by Keith Rankin. Following the completion of the Taliban reconquest of Afghanistan, I heard Helen Clark on the radio news say, among other things, that the Taliban are a “medieval theocracy”. While she’s literally correct, ‘medieval’ has unfortunately become one of those problem derogatory words of casual historical racism; words like ‘neanderthal’, ‘philistine’, cretin’, ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay: Positively Medieval" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/31/keith-rankin-essay-positively-medieval/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay: Positively Medieval">Read more</a>
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August 26, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The first chart shows the three largest western countries: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. The solid line plots represent quarterly average rates of excess death. It is clear that the United Kingdom copped Covid19 very early and very hard. The mid-June peak represents the period from mid-March to mid-June. It is ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Excess Deaths in New Zealand and Comparator Countries" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/26/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-excess-deaths-in-new-zealand-and-comparator-countries/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Excess Deaths in New Zealand and Comparator Countries">Read more</a>
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August 20, 2021
Covid-Delta, Science, and the Problem of Known Unknowns – Analysis by Keith Rankin. It’s a known known that the late Donald Rumsfeld’s principal legacy to the world is the following quote: “As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say ... <a title="Keith Rankin Analysis – the dangers of Delta, versus the dangers of reduced community immunity" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/20/keith-rankin-analysis-the-dangers-of-delta-versus-the-dangers-of-reduced-community-immunity/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Analysis – the dangers of Delta, versus the dangers of reduced community immunity">Read more</a>
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August 13, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. In our age of unnuanced media reporting, cynicism, and political correctness, words and meanings are subject – perhaps increasingly – to an effective process of cancellation. It’s not a new process, in the past certain words might be replaced by others – eg ‘race’ replaced by ‘ethnicity’, ‘illegitimate’ replaced by ‘ex-nuptial’, ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Loss of Language, and the Future of Science" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/13/keith-rankin-essay-loss-of-language-and-the-future-of-science/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Loss of Language, and the Future of Science">Read more</a>
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August 6, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. The issues to watch out for now are the extent to which countries with high vaccination rates are (1) getting positive cases, and (2) getting Covid19 deaths. And one particular point to watch out for is the extent to which early vaccinator countries show signs of relapse, as immunity levels wane ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Latest Covid19 Statistics, in the Northern Hemisphere Summer" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/06/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-latest-covid19-statistics-in-the-northern-hemisphere-summer/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: Latest Covid19 Statistics, in the Northern Hemisphere Summer">Read more</a>
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August 3, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. We have this pretty fiction that the world is made up of approximately 200 politically autonomous nation-states. This in the entrenched ‘Wilsonian’ view of the political world that, in particular, was sort-of realised after World War One; a view that rendered the national empires (such as the British Empire) of the ... <a title="Keith Rankin Essay – Territorial Fundamentalism in our Post-Globalisation Era" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/08/03/keith-rankin-essay-territorial-fundamentalism-in-our-post-globalisation-era/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Essay – Territorial Fundamentalism in our Post-Globalisation Era">Read more</a>
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July 23, 2021
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Finland and Greece are in the East of Europe, but generally thought of as western countries, having not been behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ during the Cold War. They can be seen as a benchmark to help understand the other Eastern European countries. And, like other eastern countries, they had low levels ... <a title="Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: East Europe in the European Union, Excess Deaths in Context" class="read-more" href="https://eveningreport.nz/2021/07/23/keith-rankin-chart-analysis-covid19-east-europe-in-the-european-union-excess-deaths-in-context/" aria-label="Read more about Keith Rankin Chart Analysis – Covid19: East Europe in the European Union, Excess Deaths in Context">Read more</a>
