Sunday/The Wedding Guest

On this day:

1634
The Burchardi flood – “the second Grote Mandrenke” killed around 15,000 men in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany.

(On the 16th of January 1219 the first Marcellus flood took between 36,000 and 100,000 casualties, drowning people along the coasts of Westfriesland and Groningen, as well as along the River Elbe and also the Jade Bight. The Second Saint Marcellus flood — 15th and 17th January 1362--was so disasterous that it was given a name of its own, the First Big "Mandränke". Mandränke translates into English as 'great drowning of men,' with 100,000 casualties. It swept across the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Schleswig, and Denmark, southern Jutland. Some 30 to 40 villages were lost.)

1649
Sack of Wexford: After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops (under Oliver Cromwell) stormed the town of Wexford, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians
1809
Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder’s Stand.

1962
Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
1968
Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.
1972
A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker.

***

Most scientific breakthroughs result from accidents that smart people recognize as important. Breakthroughs are not determined by committees, even Nobel Committees, by the consensus of experts, or by Congressional legislation.--Happer

***

Stanton’s contract carries a total value of $325 million, making him one of the most expensive players in franchise history. There are rumors the Yankees might cut him.

***

Who did Germany's ex-spymaster spy for?

***

Guardians won last night to complete their comeback. They struck out 21.

***

What is Trump doing with oil and Ukraine? Does he  expect Ukraine to sacrifice itself for the betterment of the West? Remember Hilary's comment on hearing of the Russian invasion, "Good. Russia will bleed itself dry."

***

Anthropic says it now prohibits “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.” What?

This sounds crazy but it is meaningful in that it implies Anthropic believes its machines are capable of subjective experiences. Nobody else believes that, nor do they think we should be analyzing AI as if it is sentient.

What could this mean? Are AI's feelings in development? Are its creators themselves confused? Or is this just insincere marketing? Do they want you to think of its mechanical product as personal? Which is to say, are the leaders of this technology manipulating us?

***

A gambling addiction nonprofit, the nation's largest, accepted a $2 million donation from Kalshi.

***

Sunday/The Wedding Guest

This week's gospel is the wedding guest gospel. In it, a king invites his people to his son's wedding. His people first ignore, then kill his messengers. The king attacks them and destroys their city. He then invites strangers and passers-by to the wedding.

Then things get really tough.

One new guest is improperly dressed. The king berates him, binds him and throws him into the darkness. This to a guy who was a stand-in for the original guests; a throw-in. A substitute. Just along for the food, the ride. He is judged as strictly as the original guests who owed the king.

Spiritually, Woody Allen is wrong: You get no credit for "showing up."

SatStats

On this day:

19
Roman general Germanicus suddenly dies in Antioch under mysterious circumstances. Roman historian Tactius records that Germanicus was poisoned by Syrian Governor Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso under orders from Roman Emperor Tiberius.
680
Battle of Karbala: Hussain bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Muslims as Aashurah.
732
Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, the leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle.
1580
After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir, Ireland.
1780
The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean.
1911
The Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.
1933
United Airlines Chesterton Crash: A United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.
1938
The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.
1945
The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang signed a principle agreement in Chongqing about the future of post-war China. Later, the pact is commonly referred to as the Double-Ten Agreement.
1957
The Windscale fire in Cumbria, U.K. is the world’s first major nuclear accident.
1970
In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
1973
Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with federal income tax evasion.

***

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power--Daniel Webster

***

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck near Panama's southern tip on Friday morning, shaking buildings more than 100 miles away in the capital and prompting evacuations, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A second powerful 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck the country later in the day following a series of aftershocks.
Amazingly, there have been no reported deaths yet and the predicted tsunami never materialized.

***

The Battle of Tours in 732, also called the Battle of Poitiers, pit the Franks against The Umayyad Caliphate. Islam was invading France. Charles Martel (The Hammer) defeated ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, who was killed. The significance and the facts are always debated. It is assumed that the two armies met where the rivers Clain and Vienne join between Tours and Poitiers. The Franks (and Burgundians) numbered about 30,000, the Muslims about 80,000. (But there is significant disagreement over these numbers.) Europe has always claimed it a great victory, Islam less so.

What is without doubt is that 109 years after the death of the Prophet, when communication was very limited, a most powerful army developed from nowhere and, under the inspiration of this dead man, threatened to conquer the entire known world.

***

Kimberly Guilfoyle was preparing for her congressional hearing to become U.S. ambassador to Greece when she reached out to a Trump donor with an urgent request: She needed $100,000 that she said she owed American Express—in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail.

“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on Signal, according to messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Please, honey.”

This will be Trump's son's ex-girlfriend, not Newsom's ex-wife.

***

Weeks after revealing the city was five years away from running out of reserve funding, Pittsburgh leaders announced a series of reforms Tuesday aimed at increasing transparency and cracking down on a mayor’s ability to spend money without the council’s authorization. Huh? Like DeBlasio's wife's $800,000 million?

***

The government plans to televise the execution of the Fort Hood fanatic. They've actually created some sympathy for this lunatic.

***

President Trump said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “immediately” release hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel fuel onto the global market.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social and said the action would will help bring diesel prices down.

Since its invasion of Ukraine, wide-ranging sanctions have been applied to Russia. In order to get the diesel fuel moved, the Treasury Department simultaneously announced Friday that it would be easing sanctions on Russia through April 7.

What exactly are we doing? What will Ukraine think? Europe? Are we skewering international politics for local effect?

***

Trump's success has never been his own. He has been an outsider in a corrupt game run by incompetents. Imagine running against the Biden Regency in America. Then Kamala. But the bell curve is flattening and Kamala actually got over 48% of the votes. Trump's success has hinged on his seesaw not tipping into the Regency-Kamala authoritarian-incompetence-foolish range. He's close.

***

SatStats

The number of Japanese companies operating in China fell to the lowest level on record.

*

College:

While the money premium from college is falling, the friends and marriage premium from college is going up and probably will rise further still.

The data show that college-educated people are more likely to marry, and to stay married. More generally, college-educated folks have superior social indicators of all kinds, including resistance to alcohol, drug, and gambling addiction. (Charles Murray wrote a whole book on this theme, called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.)

If you have a bachelor’s degree and are over 25 years of age, your chance of being married is 64 percent. If you have only a high school degree, your odds of being married are an even 50 percent.

For divorce, the results are more dramatic yet. The chance of a woman remaining married for at least 20 years is 78 percent if she went to college, but 41 percent if she is only a high school graduate. For men, the gradient is less sharp though still significant—namely, 65 percent versus 47 percent.

People who finished college also have more extensive networks of friends. For instance, they are twice as likely to have six or more close friends, and less than half as likely to have no close friends at all.

*

1% and 2% of people worldwide have red hair, which makes it the rarest natural hair color. In Ireland and Scotland, roughly a tenth of people have it, and a much larger share of the population carries the trait without showing any sign of it.

*

Jupiter's moon Europa contains the fourth-biggest saltwater ocean in the solar system. Earth has about the ninth-biggest. Pluto does have a saltwater ocean, and Pluto's ocean may be as big as, or bigger than Earth's.

*

If you took all the DNA in your body and stretched it out end to end, it would be roughly 42 billion miles long. That's enough to go from Earth to the Sun and back more than 200 times. All of that DNA is packed inside microscopic cells. So, do it.

*

Italy:

Italy could lose nearly 4 million residents by 2050, with the population falling from 58.9 million at the beginning of 2025 to 55 million in 2050, the national statistics office Istat predicted on Monday.

By 2080, the number is expected to fall to 45.8 million, according to the Istat forecasts. The main reason is said to be a low birth rate, as the death rate rises.

In her first government policy statement, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared that promoting the birth rate would be a political priority for her government and appointed a birth minister. A birth minister. This has not halted the downward trend.

*

The age 20-24 unemployment rate is unchanged since the AI boom began.

*

Rome
The people, 320,000 of whom depended on public rations for food, were ready to follow any man who promised to obtain for them by revolution what they could not obtain by law. Ergo, Caesar.

320,000!

*

In the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, released Friday and covering the three years ended 2025, the share of families behind on loan payments jumped from about 12% in the prior survey to nearly 20%.
That is the highest level since the 2010 survey, when the country was still climbing out of the 2007 to 2009 crash.

Families two months or more behind rose from 5% to more than 8%.

Families spending more than 40% of income on debt payments rose from 6.5% to 8.6%, the highest since 2013.

*

California’s top 1% pay nearly half the state’s income taxes.

A Plague

 

On this day:

1514
Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor.
1604
Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.
1635
Founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
1740
Dutch colonists and various slave groups begin massacring ethnic Chinese in Batavia, eventually killing 10,000 and leading to a two-year-long war throughout Java.
1845
The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
1854
Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol begins. As does Tolstoy's career as a writer: “A disagreement that has not been solved by diplomacy will still less be solved by powder and blood.”
1919
Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series

1936
Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.
1940
World War II: Battle of Britain – During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.
1967
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
1969
In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began on September 24.
2006
North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device.
2009
First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecraft as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program. LCROSS set out to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon’s south pole. On October 9, 2009, the vehicle’s spent Centaur upper stage impacted the crater Cabeus. Then the Shepherding Spacecraft descended through Centaur’s ejectate plume, collecting and relaying data before impacting the lunar surface six minutes later. It found water.


***

"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible." -David Brin, scientist and science fiction author (b. 6 Oct 1950)

***

Arline Goldbaum married Richard Feynman while she was in a sanitarium with TB. Can you imagine what she must have been like? She was also a beauty, and he was crazy about her. She died three years later. 

After her death, Feynman wrote her a letter, writing on the envelope, "Please excuse my not sending this, but I don't know your new address."

 
*** 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick for a key housing post once likened wealthy homeowners to “cartels”


***

A Plague

Smallpox is the only human disease to have been eradicated.

Smallpox is highly infectious and has no known cure. It has been found as early as 1350 BCE, with cases in Egyptian mummies. Its infectivity has made it a popular adjunct for engineered bioweapons.

The ancient practice of variolation (named for smallpox, also known as variola or ‘la variole’) was widely used in Asia and some parts of Africa.  Small amounts of material from smallpox sores were transferred to healthy people, resulting in milder illness and much lower mortality than natural infection. Some sources suggest people practiced variolation as early as 200 BCE.

Written accounts from the mid-1500s describe a form of variolation used in China known as insufflation, where smallpox scabs were dried, ground, and blown into the nostril using a pipe.

In India, similar practices used inoculation with a lancet or needle to transfer material from smallpox pustules to the skin of healthy children. Accounts from the 18th century suggest this technique dates back hundreds of years. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced the practice to Europe in 1721, after she observed the practice in the Ottoman Empire, where her husband was stationed as ambassador to Turkey. In the American colonies, after his slave Onesimus told him how it worked in 1716, Cotton Mather publicized it and argued for its use in response to a 1721 outbreak of smallpox in Massachusetts. John Adams and his wife used it on their children.

In 1796, hearing of local beliefs and practices in rural communities that cowpox protected against smallpox, Dr Edward Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps with matter from a cowpox sore on the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a local milkmaid. Later efforts to infect Phipps with smallpox failed, showing the idea worked. (The good doctor was experimenting on a child.)

Vaccination can apparently be a hard sell. Rumours circulated that it would turn people into cows.

Mandatory smallpox vaccination started in Britain and parts of the United States of America in the 1840s and 1850s, as well as in other parts of the world, leading to the establishment of the smallpox vaccination certificates required for travel. Despite over 2 million people dying every year, it took decades to achieve global unity in the fight against the disease. By the 1950s, advances in production techniques meant that heat-stable, freeze-dried smallpox vaccines could be stored without refrigeration.

In 1970, in West India, an outbreak led to a door-to-door search and vaccination program.

In 1980, with the virus limited to laboratory zoos, WHO declared smallpox officially eradicated.--much from a WHO paper

Origins and Definitions

On this day:

314
Roman Emperor Licinius is defeated by his colleague Constantine I at the Battle of Cibalae, and loses his European territories.
1480
Great standing on the Ugra river, a standoff between the forces of Akhmat Khan, Khan of the Great Horde, and the Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia, which results in the retreat of the Tataro-Mongols and the eventual disintegration of the Horde.
1895
Eulmi incident- Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, is assassinated and her corpse burnt by the Japanese in Gyeongbok Palace.
1918
World War I: In the Argonne Forest in France, United States Corporal Alvin C. York kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
1921
KDKA in Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field conducts the first live broadcast of a football game.
1967
Guerrilla leader Che Guevara and his men are captured in Bolivia.
1969
The opening rally of the Days of Rage occurs, organized by the Weather Underground in Chicago, Illinois.
1970
Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects US President Richard Nixon’s October 7 peace proposal as “a maneuver to deceive world opinion”.

***

Just because something is good does not mean that we have the obligation to maximize that.--Lowe

***

Violence of WWI killed about 16 million people. The flu killed 50 million.

***

Patricia Krenwinkel, a former Charles Manson follower, was granted parole on Tuesday after nearly six decades in prison for her role in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles.

This is the third time California's board of parole hearings has approved Krenwinkel, 78, for release. The first two paroles were blocked by the governor.

***

The smallpox epidemic in the United States is the story of one of the first major American government public health measures, the start of required vaccinations, and the start of the antivax movement.  

***

Origins and Definitions

Both socialism and communism flower in the manure of conflict and strife. To one degree or another, both originate in the smoldering--if often unspoken--antagonism among peoples, and each sees itself as the protagonist in the maturation of human economics requiring the destruction of the current corrupt system run by an actively hostile opponent.

The playbook for these conflicts is written down and distributed. Many are revered and taught in universities. The generalities are that a group--or groups--of people, knowingly or not, are selfishly strangling most of the population and must be overthrown and destroyed--in Marxist thought, deracinated--and replaced by the next phase embodied by a more pure, worthy, and inevitable group. The animosity between these groups--whether understood by the antagonists or not--must be taught to the protagonists and brought to a boil to destroy the other group.

So one group is generalized, hated, and, if history is any indicator, hunted down and killed--every man, woman, and child representative of the enemy class-- and replaced.

So why, looking at history and the self-declarations of these groups, isn't socialism a Hate Crime?

Enchantment, Disenchantment, and Deacon Blues

On this day:
3761 BC
The epoch reference date epoch (origin) of the modern Hebrew calendar (Proleptic Julian calendar).
1571
The Battle of Lepanto is fought, and the Holy League (Spain and Italy) destroys the Turkish fleet.
1582
Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day is skipped in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain
1763
George III of Great Britain issues British Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing aboriginal lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlements.
1777
American Revolutionary War: The Americans defeat the British in the Second Battle of Saratoga, also known as the Battle of Bemis Heights.
1780
American Revolutionary War: Battle of Kings Mountain American Patriot militia defeat Loyalist irregulars led by British colonel Patrick Ferguson in South Carolina.
1940
World War II: the McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States
1985
The Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestine Liberation Organization.
2001
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.
2006
Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya is shot and killed outside her home in Moscow.

***

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher 

***

This is the anniversary of the attack by Hamas on Israeli civilian populations, the torture and murder of many, and the kidnapping of others.  Savagery indeed exists in every part of the world, and we risk becoming numb to it. (I am reluctant to call it inhumanity because it might well be just another aspect of us.) What is different is the inexplicable admiration and support demonstrated by some across the West for the terrorists themselves.

***

Data centers are set to reach 12% of total U.S. electricity demand by 2030, according to Rystad Energy. That’s the equivalent of between 30 and 60 nuclear plants of additional capacity. Supplying all the copper to wire them would have led to a 25% shortfall of supply for the vital metal by 2040, according to S&P Global. (A major new copper mine takes 15 to 20 years to get up and running.) Paying for data centers is starting to create strains too. After exhausting their own mighty cash flows. In just one year, their share of the leading investment-grade bond index grew by 78%, according to Capital Group.

***

"We need to clean our own house. Our house is not clean right now," Steeler coach McCarthy said.

***

Enchantment, Disenchantment, and Deacon Blues

I do not know Ms. Ruxandra Teslo, but this is from her Substack, on The Secular Age by the philosopher Charles Taylor:

"According to Charles Taylor, modernity is marked not merely by a decline in religious belief, but by a profound transformation in our imaginative horizon. What he calls the transition from an enchanted to a secular world is this shift in how the world is experienced.

In the pre-modern “enchanted” world, the world of “spirits, demons and moral forces”, reality was thick with agency and meaning. The cosmos was not neutral or inert, but constantly impinging upon humans. Human beings were vulnerable to forces beyond them, open to both corruption and elevation by powers that exceeded their control. The boundaries between self and world were permeable.

Taylor describes this as the condition of the porous self: a self that was embedded in a morally charged universe, susceptible to outside influence, and conscious of its dependence within a larger, divinely structured order. That dependence came with a recognition of a certain impotence, but it also conferred belonging. One’s life was situated within a cosmic order not of one’s own making.

Disenchantment dissolves this structure. What disappears is not simply belief in spirits, but the very sense that meaning resides in the fabric of the world. The modern cosmos becomes impersonal and governed by physical laws that can be scientifically deciphered. The locus of meaning is relocated from the world to solely inside the human mind. Thoughts, feelings, aspirations — what Taylor calls “fullness” — are now understood to exist only within human minds.

This gives rise to what Taylor terms the buffered self. The buffered self encounters the world from behind a kind of membrane. It is no longer vulnerable to cosmic forces; nature is no longer enchanted, but inert, available for explanation and manipulation. Even when we acknowledge the limits of our powers as humans, the dominant modern posture assumes that natural obstacles yield, eventually, to technology and science. We do not propitiate unseen powers for a good harvest. Instead, we now design irrigation systems and engineer crops.

The advantages of a buffered self and of living in a disenchanted world are clear: no longer do we feel a sense of helplessness in the face of the powers of nature. No longer do we feel like our very destinies are at the mercy of Gods. The modern, buffered self can control fate itself. We are Gods on Earth.

Yet, in my interpretation, with such immense empowerment comes a crushing burden: that of radical responsibility. Once we anchor meaning within the individual and we understand him to be radically able to improve his condition, there is no longer any refuge to be found in helplessness. The secular mind implicitly understands power and merit as matters of will. The loser is solely responsible for their condition.

This goes the other way too. In earlier times, even the powerful, kings included, understood themselves as subordinate to God. Now, it is one’s talent and will, or agency, if one is to speak in currently popular terms, that brings about their fortune."

Yes. And there are enemies. Powers and forces, often ethnic or national, that conspire against your success. Kulaks, or Jews, or history, if you are unable to bear the new burden of your life.

Plague

On this day:
1600
Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, receives its première performance in Florence, signifying the beginning of the Baroque Period

1777
American Revolutionary War: General Sir Henry Clinton leads British forces in the capture of Continental Army Hudson River defenses in the Battle of Forts Clinton and Montgomery.
1789
French Revolution: Louis XVI returns to Paris from Versailles after being confronted by the Parisian women on 5 October
1945
Baseball: Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat are ejected from Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the 1945 World Series. (His curse leads to 71 years of World Series failure for Chicago.)
1973
Egypt launches a coordinated attack with Syria against Israel, leading to the Yom Kippur War.
1981
Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat is assassinated.

***

When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. -Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)

***

Buffett wrote an essay in 1999 on the new, exciting technology of the day: the internet. He noted that a technology can change the world, but that doesn't necessarily make it a smart investment.Using airplanes as an example, he explained that while air travel had fundamentally transformed society, 129 airline companies had filed for bankruptcy in the last 20 years. "The key to investing," Buffett explained, "is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage."

***

Wall Street banks are pushing large law firms to cut fees, arguing that the business model that has enriched top lawyers for decades is not sustainable in an era of AI.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have told major law firms they want to set up new payment arrangements that would save them money.
“If the number of hours they’re working on a matter has come down because of AI . . . our expectation is for costs to come down significantly per transaction,” Adam Meshel, global head of legal at Citigroup, told the FT.

***

A former head of Germany's foreign intelligence service was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion that he had passed state secrets to a foreign intelligence service, the federal prosecutor's office said.

***

The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games two years ago. This year, Chicago finished the 2026 regular season 84-78, becoming the first team in MLB history to reach the postseason immediately after at least two consecutive 100-loss seasons—and the White Sox had actually lost 100 games three years in a row. 

This year, the White Sox swept the Houston Astros in the Wild Card round, their first postseason series win since 2005. They are now 2-0 against Cleveland in their best of 5 playoff series.

***

Plague

Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev wrote on Telegram that a resident, Darya Shipilova, "may have contracted a particularly dangerous infection," but did not specifically name pneumonic plague. That's like saying a swimmer died after being attacked "by a large fish" off a Florida beach.

Nearly 200 people have been placed under medical observation in Russia’s Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia over suspected exposure to plague, according to local media reports. One woman, Darya Shipilova, said by the Russians to be a lab researcher, has died. 

This is the pneumonic (pulmonary) presentation of the bubonic plague. In a Russian lab worker. The bubonic plague.

The Russians started their bioweapons program the year after they signed the U.N. resolution to ban them. They worked for years on gain-of-function of Ebola, Anthrax, and smallpox, and efforts to combine high infectivity (like chickenpox) with those more deadly. More recent efforts tried to develop organisms for which the usually reliable anti-infective agents did not work. These are vicious weapons, indiscriminate and usually brutal and fatal. And socially disruptive. Plague in the Middle Ages killed over 33% of Europe's population, with each recurring episode.

If we poor citizens need to be reminded, these are terrible weapons, but they are wielded by terrible people. War is bad enough, but these are cataclysmic in concept, aimed at men, women, and children for the purpose of civilization destruction.

Nor are our hands clean. The Chinese lab at Wuhan had American medical--MEDICAL--support and then, when the murderous genie was out of the bottle, they, i.e., we, joined the mendacious Chinese autocrats and lied about it to our citizens and the world.

If this kind of behaviour doesn't sour you on the promises of the average politician masquerading as an average guy with a good heart, it should. It should scare you witless. And you should scrutinize any power you cede to them. These people have nuclear weapons! And anyone who thinks that AI can be muzzled with "internal controls" is not paying attention. 

The danger of the virus, the bacteria, the weapon, or the software is real and frightening, but it all starts with humans who create them, aim them, and pull the trigger.

Rules, agreements among caring men, will not be enough.

Straining at the Leash

 

On this day:

1582
Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.
1789
French Revolution: Women of Paris march to Versailles in the March on Versailles to confront Louis XVI about his refusal to promulgate the decrees on the abolition of feudalism, demand bread, and have the King and his court moved to Paris.
1793
French Revolution: Christianity is disestablished in France.
1864
The Indian city of Calcutta is almost totally destroyed by a cyclone; 60,000 die.
1948
The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 110,000.
1966
Near Detroit, Michigan, there is a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor.
1968
Police baton civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland – considered to mark the beginning of The Troubles.
1982
Chicago Tylenol murders: Johnson & Johnson initiates a nationwide product recall in the United States for all products in its Tylenol brand after several bottles in Chicago are found to have been laced with cyanide, resulting in seven deaths.
1986
Israeli secret nuclear weapons are revealed. The British newspaper The Sunday Times runs Mordechai Vanunu’s story on its front page under the headline: “Revealed — the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal”.
2001
Robert Stevens becomes the first victim in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

***

"If the United States is to compete effectively, its policymakers must spend less time worrying about how to weaken their rival and more time figuring out how to make their country the best and most vigorous version of itself."--Foreign Affairs, in an article on China

***

Discarding standardized tests does not benefit struggling kids, any more than throwing out my scale will help me get back in shape. But it’s happening everywhere educational bureaucrats can get away with it. They don’t want to measure their failures, even though our children’s success demands it. --The Hill

***

Under President Donald Trump’s Proclamation 10998, the United States has suspended or limited entry and visa issuance for nationals of 39 countries.

***

Nearly 200 people have been placed under medical observation in Russia’s Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia over suspected exposure to plague, according to local media reports.

***

Straining at the Leash

Apparently, the bonds of common decency are in a bear market. As is personal responsibility. A few minutes with the so-called "Cornell Seven" reports are pretty eye-opening. This is simple depravity by young people on a reservation of learning and reflection. But, according to the alleged victim herself, "none of the sexual stuff was illegal.” The voluntary use of mind-obliterating drugs presumably awaits later comment. Read the story with caution. These young people, men and women, lived a night of almost demonic disregard, akin to the frenzied self-gratification of men at war.

There was never an arrest. There was never even a police report. The school which accepted the parental responsibility of caring for and supervising the alleged victim apparently had the alleged perpetrators write "reflection papers" on the episode. Seemingly, everyone-- including the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrators--felt this was a social error, like wearing white after Labor Day. Silly me.

After several years' consideration, the alleged victim is back, probably on the advice of an attorney, to make something more of it.

One cannot help but be reminded of the Duke lacrosse episode. No one knows the commonalities these two cases will have, but we do know one: countless educational, activist, financial, racial, and gender factors will be gnawed upon publicly, but the simple civilized demands of personal responsibility, human decency, and shared humanity will not arise. And we can confidently await all these charming representatives of the nation's future to assume positions in society, working, teaching, living, and parenting with us to form the backbone of the culture and for whatever else awaits creatures like these.

At least, none of the sexual stuff was illegal.