Sunday/Stoning

In a manifesto published on the WordPress blogging platform, Shut the System (STS), the group that claimed credit for the action in the City that took place in January, says it is “kickstart[ing] a new phase of the climate activist movement, aiming to shut down key actors in the fossil fuel economy”.
“We vow to wage a campaign of sabotage targeting the tools, property and machinery of those most responsible for global warming, escalating until they accept our demands for an end to all support for fossil fuel expansion.”

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James Madison warned “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm” (Federalist No. 10).

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Sunday/Stoning

Today's gospel is the 'cast the first stone' gospel where Christ forgives the adulterer. It is a lynchpin in Christian thought. Christ turns Mosaic law on its head and demands not retribution for sin but its forgiveness--after showing how one can not judge another.

It has always been curious to me that the common image of Catholicism is the guilt it inflicts on its believers when its nature is the exact opposite. Forgiveness--and self-forgiveness--is a conflict in our DNA that even Freud could not solve, yet here, 2000 years ago, it was all crystalized.

Modern society hinges upon human commonness, qualities that form bonds among us, allow us to recognize ourselves in others, and, hence, create empathy. The loss of these bonds allows us to objectify others, promotes guiltless behavior, and is a rodent to the soul. Here, the accuser is asked to identify with the accused; it is no longer us against her, it is us against ourselves. And we drop our stones and walk away.

And what was Christ writing in the dirt, and why didn't anybody tell us?

White Male Writers

Schools in Beijing will introduce AI courses and teaching methods into the primary and secondary school curriculum starting September, to nurture young talent and boost growth in the advancing sector.

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Catholic suggestions for filling Jubilee sacrifice include "social media fasting."

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A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of neural stem cells to treat his spinal cord injury.

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White Male Writers

It’s easy enough to trace the decline of young white men in American letters—just browse The New York Times’s “Notable Fiction” list. In 2012 the Times included seven white American men under the age of 43 (the cut-off for a millennial today); in 2013 there were six, in 2014 there were six.

And then the doors shut.

By 2021, there was not one white male millennial on the “Notable Fiction” list. There were none again in 2022, and just one apiece in 2023 and 2024 (since 2021, just 2 of 72 millennials featured were white American men). There were no white male millennials featured in Vulture’s 2024 year-end fiction list, none in Vanity Fair’s, none in The Atlantic’s. Esquire, a magazine ostensibly geared towards male millennials, has featured 53 millennial fiction writers on its year-end book lists since 2020. Only one was a white American man.

Over the course of the 2010s, the literary pipeline for white men was effectively shut down. Between 2001 and 2011, six white men won the New York Public Library’s Young Lions prize for debut fiction. Since 2020, not a single white man has even been nominated (of 25 total nominations). The past decade has seen 70 finalists for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize—with again, not a single straight white American millennial man. Of 14 millennial finalists for the National Book Award during that same time period, exactly zero are white men. The Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, a launching pad for young writers, currently has zero white male fiction and poetry fellows (of 25 fiction fellows since 2020, just one was a white man). Perhaps most astonishingly, not a single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker (at least 24, and probably closer to 30, younger millennials have been published in total).--Savage

mRNA Cancer Vaccines

Five years ago, politicians and bureaucrats went berserk and pointlessly ravaged Americans’ freedom. The Covid-19 pandemic taught that in the long run, people have more to fear from politicians than from viruses.--Boyard

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In the last 18 months, there have been 250 attacks by Houthis on international shipping.

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The government added $838 billion to the national debt in the first four months of fiscal 2025 (October through January).

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Oliver Stone is back with a new JFK routine.

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We are no longer subjected to incremental amaturism in politics; with tariffs, Trump has us fully committed.

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mRNA Cancer Vaccines

With the help of mRNA technology proven effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers are now closer than ever to creating viable cancer vaccines.

In an interview with Wired, Lennard Lee, an oncologist with the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) working on mRNA cancer vaccines, says he believes the groundbreaking research may prove to be a "silver lining" in the brutal COVID-19 pandemic.

Before COVID, as Lee told the magazine, "cancer vaccines weren’t a proper field of research."

"Pretty much every clinical trial had failed," the NHS oncologist said. "With the pandemic, however, we proved that mRNA vaccines were possible."

As with mRNA COVID vaccines, the logistics of these potential new cancer inoculations work by "giving the body instructions" to fight troublesome cells, as Lee detailed, ultimately providing the immune system with a how-to manual on fighting cancer.

"Going from mRNA Covid vaccines to mRNA cancer vaccines is straightforward," he told Wired. "Same fridges, same protocol, same drug, just a different patient."

Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach taken with the widespread usage of mRNA COVID jabs, however, these new cancer vaccines will be personalized for each individual cancer patient.

"In the current trials," Lee elucidated, "we do a biopsy of the patient, sequence the tissue, send it to the pharmaceutical company, and they design a personalized vaccine that’s bespoke to that patient’s cancer."

"That vaccine is not suitable for anyone else," he recounted to the magazine. "It’s like science fiction."

According to Lee, breakthrough cancer vaccine innovation came on the heels of the UK's rapid infrastructure-building during the COVID pandemic, which saw the country "open and deliver clinical trials" much faster than anyone would have expected.

England and Reading

Gerrit Cole had TJ in Los Angeles by orthopedist Neal ElAttrache. It is the first major surgery of Cole's 13-year career. The Yankees are also without AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil, who is out indefinitely with a high-grade lat strain.

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A sign at Columbia University's demonstration shows that "student workers" are back.

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England and Reading

In the last year, the median Briton has only read or listened to three books, with 40% of the public not reading or listening to a single book in that time.

A quarter of Britons (23%) say they have read or listened to between one and five books in the last year, with a further 10% reading or listening to between six and ten, and an extra 10% consuming between 11 and 20 books. There are a small number of mega-readers, with 4% saying they have read more than 50 books, i.e. roughly one or more books a week on average.

While two-thirds of women (66%) say they have read or listened to a book in the last year, just over half of men (53%) say they have.

Older Britons are also more likely to be readers, with 65% of over 65s and 63% of 50-64 year olds having read at least one book or listened to one audiobook in the last year, compared to 57% of 25-49 year olds and 53% of 18-24 year olds.

Half of Britons (50%) say they read or listen to books at least once a week, including 37% who say they read at least most days, and 20% of the public professing to read every day. Just 15% of Britons say they ‘never’ read or listen to books at all.

Women are roughly twice as likely to be daily readers, with 27% of women reading every day, compared to 13% of men.

Calumny as News and Education

Norway’s entrepreneurs are disappearing. In the past two years alone, 100 of Norway’s top 400 taxpayers, representing about 50 percent of that group’s wealth, have fled the country to protect their businesses.

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Community water fluoridation has been named one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century for its role in improving dental health. Fluoride has large negative effects at high doses, clear benefits at low levels, and an unclear optimal dosage level. I leverage county-level variation in the timing of fluoride adoption, combined with restricted U.S. Census data that link over 29 million individuals to their county of birth, to estimate the causal effects of childhood fluoride exposure. Children exposed to community water fluoridation from age zero to five are worse off as adults on indices of economic self-sufficiency (−1.9% of a SD) and physical ability and health (−1.2% of a SD). They are also significantly less likely to graduate high school (−1.5 percentage points) or serve in the military (−1.0 percentage points). These findings challenge existing conclusions about safe levels of fluoride exposure.--Roberts, from Journal of Health Economic

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Calumny as News and Education

April Fool's Day, once an opportunity for annoying dim-wits, has become a national holy day of obligation. The silliest frauds are presented as accurate with the straightest of faces. Social lies are routine.

The lead singer behind the New York Times’ lauded 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is on record calling the white race “the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief in the modern world.” Despite this, the 1619 educational curriculum—much of which conveys basically the same point of view—is one of the more popular educational supplements in American schools. Major magazines and journals, at the level of Salon, quite regularly run articles with titles like “White Men Must Be Stopped–the Future of Mankind Depends on It.”

It may be that the victims of this kind of calumny are simply too afflicted with a Victorian politeness to object but it appears that, eventually, they have had their revenge. The outrageous waterfall of hyperbolic accusations did not fall on deaf ears, only dumb mouths. They had their day on election day. And the NYT has had a revision--like shooting the editorial staff is a revision.

So there seem to be parallel cultures in the U.S., one that is shouted from the rooftop, and one that is lived.

 

Fossil Fuel and Shakespeare

I am now, officially, worried about Trump.

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15% of Canadians use pronouns in their email signatures.

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Our findings indicate that the shale gas boom reduced average U.S. annual greenhouse gas emissions per capita by 7.5%.--Lindequist

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The former Pittsburgh anesthesiologist who was arrested for trying to kill his wife in Hawaii had previously been married to sex worker Jessica Patella; The two married when they were both just 20 and stayed married for over 15 years, sharing two children.
One of their children, a trans man who goes by Kieren, shared details from his difficult childhood in an essay published online and written in the second person.

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Fossil Fuel and Shakespeare

A recent article by Mills argues that energy sources are rarely replaced; they are augmented.

Michael Cembalest, J. P. Morgan’s chairman of market and investment strategy, notes, “After $9 trillion globally over the last decade spent on wind, solar, electric vehicles, energy storage, electrified heat and power grids, the renewable transition is still a linear one; the renewable share of final energy consumption is slowly advancing at 0.3%–0.6% per year.” Cembalest’s bottom line: “Growth in fossil fuel consumption is slowing but no clear sign of a peak on a global basis.” That is to say, no “energy transition” is in sight.

So, what's the story? Are we not trying hard enough? Not spending enough? Not distorting our economies enough?

Humanity has used the same six primary energy sources for millennia:  grains, animal fats, wood, water, wind, and fossil fuels. The world today uses more of all of these categories than ever before. But “energy transition” means more than a different emphasis, it means replacement and elimination. Is that happening?

Civilization hasn’t even transitioned away from slavery, at least not in the case of African mining, as documented in the book Cobalt Red. If the Global Slavery Index is correct, more humans are mired in forced labor now than at any time in history. Read that again. More humans are mired in forced labor now than at any time in history. Likewise, the world today uses more “working animals” than ever—some 200 million, fueled by grain, even in the U.S. with its weird grain-to-ethanol cult.

Mill's recent City Journal article pointed out a single example of replacement of an energy source: whaling. Today, global biofuel production (biodiesel) is about 1,000 times greater than two centuries ago. While that production is now dominated by plant oils (especially soybean and Jatropha), roughly 100 times more animal fats are used today for fuel than during the peak whale-harvesting era. Abandoning whale oil is history’s one clear exception to the no-energy-transitions rule.

Whales were not saved by esthetics but by advances in chemical science and the invention, circa 1840, of coal-to-kerosene synthesis; one ton of coal could yield as much oil as harvesting three tons of whales. The value of harvesting whales simply collapsed.

Wood? Overall, burning wood supplies the world with twice as much energy as all the world’s solar and wind machines combined. Even in the U.S., the use of wood for fuel is greater now than a century ago. 

The use of watermills for the industrial grinding of grains dates back to ancient Greece. It soared during the Middle Ages when an estimated 500,000 watermills operated in Europe. But that was hardly peak waterpower. Global hydro dams today produce roughly 500 times more energy. Global wind turbines harvest at least fifty-fold more wind energy than ever in history.

And, presumably, nuclear power will eventually overcome prejudice and become a factor.

No energy source is thrown away unless, like whale oil, it becomes economically impractical. Of course, no energy has been vilified and placed on the Index before, but religious suppression, however strange and fanciful, never works for long. It becomes something we learn to live with, like shingles. Even Shakespeare suppression is having an ignoble--if laughable-- revival.

But once we get past the pitchforks-in-the-street phase, things will work out. Why they're even burning electric cars!

Sunday/Prodigal

"As long as they're born faster than we can make them hate us, we're in business."--airline employee quoted in the New York Times Sunday Magazine

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Would witholding federal money from universities be reasonable if the government did not like, for example, the school's content in the science department's global warming programs?

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There are rumors that several Republican seats in the House that are up for vote in the next several weeks are at risk. The margin the House is tight, so tight they are keeping Stephanik in the House and canceling her UN appointment for fear of losing their majority. If the Democrats take the House, do you think they will impeach Trump again? 

(In one of the Florida races, the Republicans have spent $100 million, the Dems almost one billion dollars.)

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Sunday/Prodigal

In the Old Testament reading, Moses argues with God, who plans retribution against the 'depraved' Israelites, and wins. 

The New Testament Gospel has three parables: one of a shepherd going after a lost sheep, one of a fussy woman who has lost a coin, and the last a doting father who is thrilled with the return of his prodigal son. A responsible loner in the mountains, an obsessive cleaner/collector, and the father in love-- nothing like the fierce and vengeful God depicted in the Old Testament reading--all devoted to he lost, the separated, the failed. All are the victims of chance or, in the case of the Prodigal, free will. Only the righteously offended older brother of the Prodigal comes off badly because he cannot forgive; he is blinded by justice. He is, in a sense, a strange reflection of the Old Testament God in the first reading.

These parables have emerged recently as a defense of the current culture's obsession with the culture's outliers.