Sunday, November 24, 2019

Sunday/Forgiveness

Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC's fourth summary report released in 2007, speaking in 2010: "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world's wealth." 

Got back easily from Boston. Left a good book on the plane. Really tired and fat. Slept nine hours last night and gained 4 pounds in three days.

Environmentalists and their political allies attribute the recent increase in deadly forest fires to global warming. However, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, forest fires reached their peak in the 1930s and have declined by 80% since then.

Whatever money China spends subsidizing its exporters is money that could have been used by a Chinese industry that doesn’t need to be subsidized. Every additional renminbi yuan Chinese consumers are paying for automobiles or other products upon which they place high tariffs is one they no longer have to spend on something else, making the Chinese poorer for all the same reasons US tariffs make Americans poorer.--Mullen

This is a reflection by Diedre McCloskey, A profound and productive economist and observer of the world, on her decision to change her gender. It is very sad and moving. https://quillette.com/2019/11/10/reflections-on-my-decision-to-change-gender/




That's a surfer. Why are those watching him not running for their lives?




                                         Forgiveness

Today's gospel is The Good Thief, where Christ promises the thief crucified with him that he will be with him in paradise.
Forgiveness is a key element in Christianity. It has been said that a person is in thrall to whomever he cannot forgive. So does that mean that forgiveness is the state of ultimate freedom? Like divinity? Is forgiveness a prerequisite of the divine?

And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools:
But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.
To what base ends, and by what abject ways,
Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise!
Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the critic let the man be lost!
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.

(Pope--Alexander, the "the")

No comments: