Ritualized Mendacity

On this day:

1826
Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
1865
American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks – In Siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1873
The British steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547.
1924
Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.
1939
Generalísimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
1944
Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen.
1949
The Canadian government repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years.
1957
The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama.

***

“If you can detach yourself temperamentally from the crowd, you'll get very rich. You won't have to be very bright. It doesn't take brains. It takes temperament.”--Buffett

***

Newly released photos appeared to show the husband of former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem cross-dressing in private messages to several women.


***

“It was once believed that clones were identical to the original, but it has become clear through this study that mutations occur at a rate three times higher than in offspring born through natural mating.” That quote is one of the clearest summaries of why the study matters: genome sequencing showed that cloned mice were not preserving a perfect copy of the donor. Instead, the defects kept being passed forward, with no genetic reshuffling to help remove them.--project head, Wakayama

***

"We're not a rich country. We're a debtor nation," then-candidate Trump told The Washington Post in an interview on March 31, 2016 (a full transcript was published two days later). "We've got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt."

How long would it take to do that, asked the Post's Bob Woodward.

"Fairly quickly," Trump replied. When pressed for a more specific answer, Trump provided a shocking timeline. "Well, I would say over a period of eight years."

***

Ritualized Mendacity

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.

Just like daily life.

In our modern culture of unchallenged opportunism and mendacity, April Fool's Day has become more of a cautionary tale.

The lead singer of the New York Times’ 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.” Maybe we have become so tolerant, so non-judgmental, we will tolerate anything. 

As Sec. Mayorkas said, "The border is closed."

April Fools' Day has become a welcome day of benign jokes and foolishness amidst our days of serious lies, manipulation, and propaganda. There have been some real efforts made at its comic relief. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
There is probably little to learn about humans through this. Most of us, simply by observing politics, know that some people will believe anything.

The origin of April Fools' Day is uncertain. The best explanation is the confusion caused by the change of the New Year from April First to January First.
Ancient cultures, including those of the Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year's Day on or around April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st). In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1.
It is said that some refused to accept the new calendar and became the object of ridicule at that time of year.

In a great story, Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University, explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.
"In a way," explained Prof. Boskin, "it was a very serious day. In those times, fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor."
This explanation was brought to the public's attention in an Associated Press article printed by many newspapers in 1983. Wonderfully, Boskin had made the whole thing up. It took a couple of weeks for the AP to realize that they'd been victims of an April Fools' joke themselves.

So, enjoy your spaghetti or your left-handed whopper. You need the break. 

Tempest

On this day:

1146
Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492
Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1717
A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1854
Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1994
Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995
Selena, an American singer, was murdered by her friend and employee of her boutiques, Yolanda Saldívar, who was embezzling money from the establishments. The event was named “Black Friday” by Hispanics.

***

“The worst enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge”--Hawking

***

America first, right after I call my broker: 

A broker for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make a ​big investment in major defense companies in the weeks ‌leading up to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

***

Bangorian Controversy: From John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world." Hoadly deduced, supposedly at the request of the king himself, that there is no biblical justification for any church government of any sort. He had not delegated his power, like temporal lawgivers during their absence, to any persons as his deputies; and that the church of England, as all other national churches, was merely a civil or human institution, established for the purpose of diffusing and perpetuating the knowledge and belief of Christianity.

***

NASA is targeting an April 1 launch for the historic Artemis II mission, with meteorologists currently tracking an 80% "Go" weather forecast at Kennedy Space Center.

***

13 starting pitchers across all of MLB were drafted out of high school, are still with the team that drafted them, and, according to FanGraphs' 2026 playing time projections, are projected to be one of their team's primary starting pitchers this season. The Pirates have four of them — Mitch Keller, Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler, and Jared Jones.

***


Tempest

The American court is a microcosm of the evolution of the American democracy. 

A debate over right and wrong, sometimes life and death, is moderated by a supervisor of uncertain--but undeniably unpredictable-- intelligence and knowledge, carried out between equally unpredictable individuals willing to debate either side of the conflict for money. This is resolved by the votes of twelve average citizens assigned this duty against their will.

A recent case is enlightening. Meta, a huge company that deals in complex technology and algorithmic predictability, was accused of luring children into an interactive computer program, habituating them to it, and distorting their personalities and judgment. They were accused of developing a product that encouraged people to like it and then changing how they think.

People selling a product with the hope that customers will like it? A technology company can predict how people's minds develop and work when no psychiatrist, or physician, or research scientist can? The complex ball of yarn that is nature and nurture has been untangled?
These complexities will be debated and decided by the same people on your bus?

Oh, brave new world!

Reflections in a Twisted Mirror

On this day:

1842
Anesthesia is used for the first time, in an operation by the American surgeon Dr. Crawford Long.
1855
Origins of the American Civil War: Bleeding Kansas – “Border Ruffians” from Missouri invade Kansas and force election of a pro-slavery legislature.
1856
The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War. (Included for irony.)
1867
Alaska is purchased from Russia for $7.2 million, about 2 cent/acre ($4.19/km²), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward.
1944
Allied bombing raid on Nuremberg. Along the English eastern coast 795 aircraft are dispatched, including 572 Lancasters, 214 Halifaxes and 9 Mosquitos. The bombers meet resistance from German fighters along the coasts of Belgium and the Netherlands. In total, 95 bombers are lost, making it the largest Bomber Command loss of World War II.
1981
President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.

***

Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

***

Epstein had a lot of philanthropic interests. Or, maybe better said, interests in philanthropy.
By some estimates, philanthropy provides at least 20 percent of funding for science research at U.S. institutions. With little government oversight of this revenue stream, it's easy to imagine how someone like Jeffrey Epstein could use philanthropy to rehabilitate their reputation. 

Somehow, this potential problem is limited in discussions to reputation building rather than partisan influence and distortion.

***

A trailer for Worry #1:

https://tv.apple.com/us/clip/trailer/umc.cmc.4efghwf347j1ig5d80kdl8nnx?targetId=umc.cmc.4a45bulcd7e4urydi90xmfu86&targetType=Movie

***

Today is the anniversary of the Democrat "Bleeding Kansas" plan, a nice poetic reflection with the "Nullification" plan they did then and now.


***

Does "No Kings" also apply to other people? Does it also mean "No Shahs"?

***

Reflections in a Twisted Mirror

It is said that with the rampant mendacity in the last administration, the clear priority of power over representation, the incredible incompetence, and the willingness to maintain a shadow government--and deny it--the Democrat party is irreparably damaged.

But Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. For a woman with no discernible talents who is a representative of the Biden Regency--that's a lot of votes.

The Democrat party has survived slavery, the Civil War, the Wilson administration, Roosevelt, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, The Great Society, the national debt, and, now, nullification. Nullification!  How anyone who sees this, sees the Democrat undemocratic Super Delegates or the astonishing charade of the Biden Regency can take the Democrats seriously is a mystery.

The Democrat Party may not be good for democracy but democracy does not seem to understand that. Or, maybe, care.

Sunday/Palm Sunday

On this day:

1461
Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton – Edward of York defeats Queen Margaret to become King Edward IV of England.
1847
Mexican-American War: United States forces led by General Winfield Scott take Veracruz after a siege.
1857
Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry revolts against the British rule in India and inspires a long-drawn War of Independence of 1857 also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.
1879
Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.
1936
In Germany, Adolf Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany’s illegal reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters.
1945
World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England.
1951
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
1973
Vietnam War: The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.
2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

***

Trade is not just about transactions. It’s about relationships and trust built and earned over time. This establishes that trading partners will play by agreed-upon rules and that market access is not a bargaining chip to be leveraged whenever one side, in this case Washington, needs a political victory.--Hebert

***

Indian Rebellion of 1857, a widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in 1857–59. The revolt began in Meerut with an uprising of Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Company. 

The pretext for revolt was the introduction of the new Enfield rifle. To load it, the sepoys had to bite off the ends of lubricated cartridges. A rumor spread among the sepoys that the grease used to lubricate the cartridges was a mixture of pig and cow lard; thus, to have oral contact with it was an insult to both Muslims and Hindus. There is no conclusive evidence that either of these materials was actually used on any of the cartridges in question. However, the perception that the cartridges were tainted added to the larger suspicion that the British were trying to undermine Indian traditional society.

***

No Kings Report: Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast.

***

Sunday/Palm Sunday

An Old Testament battle begins over succession to Saul, the first King of Israel. Solomon is David's choice over a false claimant. Solomon arrives in victory to Jerusalem riding on an ass. He then builds the new temple.

So, the bible endorses symbolism and poetry. The concrete world, not so much. 

Today is Palm Sunday, a long and difficult Gospel from Holy Thursday to Christ's burial, filled with drama, conflict, and ambiguity. It is so dramatic, so much a part of the Western world, it is hard to believe students are regularly deprived of it. 

That frustrating, "That is what you say." And this strange back-and-forth, which sounds bitterly ironic, even in Christ's mouth:
He said to them,
“But now one who has a money bag should take it,
and likewise a sack,
and one who does not have a sword
should sell his cloak and buy one.
For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me,
namely, He was counted among the wicked;
and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment.”
Then they said,
“Lord, look, there are two swords here.”
But he replied, “It is enough!”

The Gospel is oblique as Christ is passive throughout; the real actors are the humans. Humans fail on just about every level you can imagine. Christ's friends leave Him, the future head of the Church denies Him, the religious organization that He is a member of conspires against Him, and the State washes its hands of Him, unable to follow even its own laws. 

It's a pretty ugly picture. There are some obvious explanations. Christ is the only answer. Friends are fickle, and the world transient. Organizations can not be relied upon. They may all be true. But there seems to be very little faith in human beings or their constructs. Even the tried-and-true customs and institutions that we all think of as society's DNA fall apart.

It is a nightmare, a moral and social dystopia. Chaos of the spirit. The storm that comes later after Golgotha is only an exclamation point. 

What does come through in astonishing clarity is the unbelievable gentleness of the victim, gentle and forgiving. 

It is overwhelming.

SatStats (crime)

On this day:

193
Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus.
1802
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man
1871
The Paris Commune is formally established in Paris.
1939
Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquers Madrid.
1941
World War II: Battle of Cape Matapan – in the Mediterranean Sea, British Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham leads the Royal Navy in the destruction of three major Italian heavy cruisers and two destroyers.
1969
The McGill français movement protest occurs, the second largest protest in Montreal’s history with 10,000 trade unionists, leftist activists, CEGEP students, and even some McGill students at McGill’s Roddick Gates. This led to the majority of the protesters getting arrested.
1979
Operators of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, fail to recognize that a relief valve in the primary coolant system has stuck open following an unexpected shutdown. As a result, enough coolant drains out of the system to allow the core to overheat and partially melt down.

***

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.--Voltaire

***

The Commune of Paris was an insurrection against the French government from March 18 to May 28, 1871, following France’s defeat in the Franco-German War, including the Siege of Paris by the Germans and the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852–70).

***

Previous research has suggested that dogs likely diverged from wolves more than 15,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic period.

Domesticated dogs were already widely distributed across western Eurasia by at least 14,300 years ago, according to a recent paper. Dogs were the only domesticated animal present in Europe before agriculture, the researchers said.

***

SatStats (crime)

In 2023, during the Biden administration, the FBI made unmarked and unprecedented revisions to murder data for the prior two decades. These changes increased annual murder estimates during prior presidencies by as much as 7% and decreased estimates during Biden’s presidency by as much as 5%.
As a result of the FBI’s 2023 revisions and other factors, the number of homicides recorded on death certificates that were not reported as murders by the FBI rose from a low of 16 killings in 2003 to an average of 3,711 killings per year during Biden’s presidency

*

If the U.S. murder rate remains at the same level as in 2023, one in every 200 people in the nation will ultimately be murdered.

*

In 1964, about 16% of recorded aggravated assaults with a firearm resulted in death. By 1999, this figure fell to about 5%. 

     Per a 2002 paper in the journal Homicide Studies: The “principal explanation” for this “downward trend in lethality” is improvements in medical technology and related medical support services.

*

In the United States, the portion of murders in which a suspect is identified and acted upon by the criminal justice system declined from 92% in 1960 to 58% in 2023.
From 1965 to 2022, roughly 337,601 murders were committed in the U.S. that were still unsolved as of 2022.

*

In 2023, the police chief of Washington DC reported that “the average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide.

*

Among suspects arrested for homicide during 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland:

     -81% had prior criminal records.
     -52% were previously arrested for violent crimes.
     -27% were on parole and probation.
     -They were previously arrested an average of eight times.

*

A Bureau of Justice Statistics study based on crime data from 1974 to 1985 found that:
     -42% of Americans will be the victim of a completed violent crime in the course of their lives.
     -83% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed violent crime.
     -52% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed violent crime more than once.

The Science of Study

On this day:

1306
Robert the Bruce is crowned King of Scotland at Scone.
1814
War of 1812: In central Alabama, U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
1836
Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre – Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas.
1915
Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
1964
The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
1993
Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo.

***

“I have caused great calamities. I have depopulated provinces and kingdoms. But I did it for the love of Christ and His Holy Mother.”--Queen Isabella

***

In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain evicted as many as 2,000 people from Diego Garcia, so the U.S. military could build the base there.
The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have urged the U.K. to end its “colonial administration” of the islands and transfer sovereignty to Mauritius.
After long negotiations, the U.K. government struck a deal last year with Mauritius to hand over sovereignty of the islands. Britain would then lease back the Diego Garcia base for at least 99 years. But passage of the U.K.-Mauritius deal through Parliament has been put on hold until U.S. support can be regained.

***

The HBO Max series Harry Potter has an estimated budget of $100 million per episode.

***

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend was fought between the American Army under Andrew Jackson and the Red Stick faction of the Creeks who were aligned with the invading British (and the Iriquois organized around Tecumseh and his famous "Make war on their dead" speech). The Dreek War was savage on both sides. The Indian tribes, as a fifth column for invading forces, led to their harsh treatment later.

***

The Science of Study

Scientists are a group of people who believe that observation and experimentation leading to follow-up observation and experimentation, will lead to reproducible results and a more accurate reflection of reality. That is to say, scientists believe that there is a method that improves the accuracy of scientific research that removes bias. A consensus. A consensus we never hear from. (ibid)

One reason is that science is hard. It's hard to do well and is often hard to understand. The other reason is that science is judged unscientifically. Scientific results are seen as means to other, sometimes abstract, ends. Grants are applied for from third parties, often parties with an agenda. Political grease must be applied under the best of circumstances. And non-scientific positions demand their own narrative.

How often do you see studies with negative results reported?

Studies including unscientific motives are simple declarations at best, enchantments at worst.


 

Betting on America

On this day:

1830
The Book of Mormon is published in Palmyra, New York.
1917
World War I: First Battle of Gaza – British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks block their advance.
1971
East Pakistan declares its independence from Pakistan to form People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Liberation War begins.
1975
The Biological Weapons Convention comes into force.
1997
Thirty-nine bodies are found in the Heaven’s Gate cult suicides.
1998
Oued Bouaicha massacre in Algeria: 52 people are killed with axes and knives, 32 of them babies under the age of 2.

***

"The first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form."--Munger

***

OpenAI plans to build “an autonomous AI research intern”—a system that can take on a small number of specific research problems by itself—by September.

***

An interesting internet question: How does Ghostwriting fit with AI writing?

***

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), or Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), is a disarmament treaty that bans biological and toxin weapons by prohibiting their development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling, and use. Signed April 10, 1971, it became effective March 26, 1975.
Russia opened its Biopreparat bioweapons development program the following year.
Unlike the chemical or nuclear weapons regimes, the BWC lacks both a system to verify states' compliance with the treaty and a separate international organization to support the convention's effective implementation.

A fantasy. A simple collection of actors going to great dinners, drinking great wines, with conferences disguised as cooperation, debate disguised as principle, and timelines disguised as progress.  

Like Heinlin.

***

In a similar vein, Trump continues to report on negotiations with people who deny they are negotiating with him. Would they be like Harvey, the invisible rabbit? Or would Harvey be Trump?

***

Betting on America

Freedom, like free verse, requires leeway.

But there must be some deference paid to the system that permits that freedom, some compromise with freedom to allow the health of the social fabric permitting freedom to flourish. Freedom cannot feed off its nourishing parent until it is a lifeless husk. There are no beach monitors. There are not enough police patrols to guard every traffic light.

Freedom must restrain itself.

--On Monday, $580 million in oil futures flooded the market in a sudden spike — with no public news to explain it — roughly 16 minutes before Trump announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants.

--On the Friday before the war began, an unusual surge of more than 150 Polymarket accounts placed hundreds of bets predicting a U.S. strike on Iran by the next day, according to a New York Times analysis.

--On Jan. 2, a trader turned roughly $32,000 into more than $400,000 by betting on the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro before it was announced the next morning.

--Last April, a surge of bullish stock trades appeared minutes before Trump announced a dramatic 90-day pause on the "Liberation Day" tariffs that were roiling the market.

Shameless? The death of shame? The question is not who is an unpatriotic crook; the question is who is not?

Freedom has limits. In a successful free culture, those limits must be mutually agreed upon and self-imposed. But if those limits are ignored and abused, someone will impose them.

The cops will move in on the beach party. Some forms of poetry will be banned.