Sunday/Caesar

 

On this day:

320
Pappus of Alexandria, a Greek philosopher, observes a solar eclipse and writes a commentary on The Great Astronomer (Almagest).

1356

Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroys the town of Basel, Switzerland.

1851
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.
1860
The Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.
1867
United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.
1898
United States takes possession of Puerto Rico.
1945
The USSR’s nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1967
The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.

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“The problem with consensus societies is that sometimes the consensus is wrong, and when it is, there is no corrective mechanism.”-- Wolfgang Münchau, author of “Kaput—The End of the German Miracle.”

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China’s total R&D expenditure exceeded $583 billion in 2025, and according to state news agency Xinhua, spending grew at an average annual rate of 10% over the five years through 2025, making China one of the fastest-growing major research investors

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In "the greatest good for the greatest number," is there a definition of "good," and does it have any limits?

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Reports indicate Trump has expanded his personal net worth by $2.2 billion during his second term. His elder sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have joined investment firms, while twenty-year-old Barron Trump reportedly accumulated a $150 million cryptocurrency fortune.

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Every dollar added to the debt shifts resources from productive enterprise to debt maintenance.

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An “extremely reliable” informant told authorities about the missing murder weapon, according to newly unsealed records. The informant’s brother told The Times his sibling was at the crime scene.--NY Times

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A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist won a legal victory this week after losing his position following sexual misconduct allegations made by a female colleague.
Dr. David Sabatini, a former MIT biology professor and prominent biomedical researcher, was awarded $6 million in damages Friday after a jury found that his former colleague, Dr. Kristin Knouse, had defamed him.
Quite a story.

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Sunday/Caesar

 “[O]ur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”--John Adams

The Gospel today is the "Give unto Caesar..." gospel. The wolves are circling. Christ has delivered three parables since his return to Jerusalem, and all are grim assessments of the organized Jewish religion; in the middle one about the tenants and the vineyard, he identifies himself as the Son of God. The Caesar question is asked to isolate him from either Rome or his religious followers. When asked a difficult "either-or" question, Christ answers "Yes." Almost vaudevillian.

If everything were not so serious, it would be funny. But this implies the government has certain responsibilities, certain authority that might be seen as "divine right." It certainly is not an anarchistic view.

Christ shows himself to be very understanding of our lives. He is willing to give the material world--the bustling business and marching political world--its place. But it is a limited place. The world has its demands, practical and real--working on the sabbath to rescue the family cow from a ditch. Christ does not begrudge us our practical anxieties. But he follows with the hugely diminishing clincher: While you understandably must render to Caesar what is his, so must you render what is God's to God. God and Caesar are not competitors because Caesar is part of the whole.

And so the great Caesar and giant Rome are allowed a large shadow, but in their very small world.

SatStats

On this day:
539 BC
Cyrus the Great marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile. Cyrus allows the Jews to return to Yehud Medinata and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
1346
Battle of Neville’s Cross: King David II of Scotland is captured by Edward III of England near Durham, and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
1448
Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.
1604
Kepler’s Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus.
1660
Nine Regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, are hanged, drawn, and quartered.
1777
American Revolutionary War: British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York.
1781
American Revolutionary War: British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown.
1907
Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland.
1961
Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.

***

If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. -Samuel Adams, revolutionary

***

Re Zacharia: When was it decided that not becoming a lawyer was a bad thing?

***

Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, now thinks AI that can build its own successor is more likely to arrive in 2027 than 2028. I’ve followed Jack for years, and I think he’s right. If anything, he might be understating it. You think AI is improving quickly now? Just wait… this is going to accelerate things even further.

***

Lewis's Moneyball was about baseball talent evaluation. There was a history of subtle subjectivity, the belief in a baseball physiognomy, an American 'baseball face.' The jury's out, but talent from DR and Venezuela may require a little fine-tuning.

That said, what do you think were the factors in Katie Zacharia's appointment?

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Dyson, on the prehistoric brain: "It was not helpful to have brains questioning whether the stories were true." That is an extremely provocative idea and directly opposes the aims of the Enlightenment.

***


SatStats

Sudan’s artisanal gold mining sector employs about two million people.

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Analysis of 857 Chinese open model releases between September 2021 and September 2026, including 741 product models and 116 research models. Of that pool, only 31 models, or about 3.6%, had safety reports attached, and only 9 of them were available at or before release.

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The U.S. arrested two Americans accused of helping North Korea run a tech worker impostor scheme.
The scheme touched more than 70 U.S. employers and made about $3 million for the fake workers. 

Fake workers?

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The proportion of people unable to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing and evaluating the validity of statements" (which includes logic skills, not just arithmetic) has risen by 25% worldwide. But it's up by 35% in the U.S.

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Space:

For the Earth to become a black hole, it would have to be condensed down to about the radius of an olive.

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For every one of the roughly 436 quadrillion seconds since the Big Bang, there are roughly 160,000 stars. There are roughly 1.6X as many planets as stars. For that reason alone, it’s highly improbable that we are alone in the universe.

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Normal matter only accounts for around 5% of the contents of the Universe. Around 25% is Dark Matter — we can’t see it (ie it has no interaction with light), but we can see its indirect gravitational effects. And the rest is Dark Energy, completely unrelated to Dark Matter; that is the term we use for what is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.

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At the speed of light to Proxima Centauri it would take 4.24 years for someone watching from Earth. For you, it would be instant. Time stops at the speed of light

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There are more stars in the observable universe than there have been seconds since the Big Bang.

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A 'magnetar' is a highly magnetized neutron star. It is the ultra-dense core left behind when a massive star collapses whose magnetic field decays by emitting high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.

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95% of stars that have, or ever will be born, have already been born. We are at the end of the age of star formation.
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95% of all the stars/galaxies we can see are forever unreachable, even if we could travel at the speed of light, due to the expansion of space.

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95% of all the mass-energy in the universe is dark. All the light from all the stars and galaxies we see only makes up 5 percent of the universe.

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The nearest star is so far away that if the Voyager II (the fastest and farthest ship we have) were headed to it, it would take 82 THOUSAND years to get there.

Representative from Bristol

On this day:

1529
The Siege of Vienna ends as the Austrians rout the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
1582
Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.
1764
Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
1783
The Montgolfier brothers’ hot air balloon marks the first human ascent, by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, (tethered balloon).
1793

Queen Marie-Antoinette of France is tried and convicted in a swift, pre-determined trial in the Palais de Justice, Paris, and condemned to death the following day.
1815

Napoleon I of France begins his exile on Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
1863
American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship, sinks during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.
1880
Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists.
1888
The “From Hell” letter sent by Jack the Ripper is received by investigators.
1894
The Dreyfus affair: Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying.
1917
World War I: At Vincennes outside of Paris, Dutch dancer Mata Hari is executed by firing squad for spying for the German Empire.
1934
The Soviet Republic of China collapses when Chiang Kai-shek’s National Revolutionary Army successfully encircles Ruijin, forcing the fleeing Communists to begin the Long March.
1945
World War II: The former premier of Vichy France Pierre Laval is shot by a firing squad for treason.
1951
Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducts the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first two oral contraceptives.
1956
Fortran, the first modern computer language, is shared with the coding community for the first time.
1997
The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
2001
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter’s moon Io.
2003
China launches Shenzhou 5, its first manned space mission.
2008
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 733.08 points, or 7.87%, the second worst day in the Dow’s history based on a percentage drop.

***

From everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living, nothing in my eyes is better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad. -Ivo Andric, novelist, Nobel laureate (9 Oct 1892-1975)

***

There's a movement growing aimed at Peter Theil's legal use of a legal government tax program devised to help people avoid impoverishment in their old age by the tax and spend governmental system and the failing government social security plan.

***

Sally Rooney, the very successful Irish novelist has had her book royalties impounded by the British government because of her support of an organization they have declared 'terrorist.'

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Beyond Understanding Department:

Moscow accused Ukraine of launching its first strike against a Russian oil refinery in the Ryazan region since Trump abruptly declared an “energy ceasefire” that neither Russia nor Ukraine said they had agreed to. Sort of an incomplete Memorandum of Understanding.
Zelenskyy said Russia had attacked Ukraine with more than 850 Shahed drones at a time when the speed of Ukraine’s defensive capabilities was being “artificially restricted”, a reference to the sudden limitations on Ukraine’s use of the Starlink and Starshield mobile internet terminals.
Tech mogul Elon Musk has suggested that the US government could be behind the decision to restrict the speed of SpaceX’s satellite-technology used by Ukraine’s military.

***

Vast numbers of nonwhites are being raised to believe that America hates them. This, itself, should be a hate crime.

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Representative from Bristol

On November 3, 1774, the great quasi-liberal conservative member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, delivered his immortal “Speech to the Electors of Bristol.” He was responding to a claim by his opponent in an election that a representative ought to be a mere servant of the self-interested opinions of their voters. Burke declared, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. . . . Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.”

That is to say, the representative from Bristol gives Bristol's voice to the national debate.

The Gospel According to Munger

 On this day:

1066
Norman Conquest: Battle of Hastings – In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England.
1322
Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
1586
Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.
1656
Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.
1867
The 15th and the last military Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan, returning his power to the Emperor of Japan and thence to the re-established civil government of Japan
1912
While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech.
1913
Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, the United Kingdom’s worst coal mining accident, occurs, and it claims the lives of 439 miners.
1943
The American Eighth Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers in aerial combat during the second mass-daylight air raid on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories in western Nazi Germany.
1947
Captain Chuck Yeager of the U.S. Air Force flies a Bell X-1 rocket-powered experimental aircraft, the Glamorous Glennis, faster than the speed of sound - over the high desert of Southern California - and becomes the first pilot and the first airplane to do so in level flight.
1962
The Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot fly over the island of Cuba and take photographs of Soviet missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads being installed and erected in Cuba.
1968
Jim Hines of the United States of America becomes the first man ever to break the so-called “ten-second barrier” in the 100-meter sprint in the Summer Olympic Games held in Mexico City with a time of 9.95 seconds. He generally did not run out of blocks.
1994
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of the future Palestinian Self Government. And some wonder why Peace Prizes are not taken seriously.
2003
Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman becomes infamously known as the scapegoat for the Cubs losing game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series to the Florida Marlins. This has become known as the Steve Bartman incident.

***

Eric Trump's book documents that he and his family received 112 subpoenas and spent 400 million dollars in their defense during the Biden Regency's legal attack on Trump and his family. The shocking intensity and the volume of these attacks in a free nation make Trump's response look less churlish.


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As of August 28th, 170 billionaire families have spent over $1.7 billion to influence the outcome of the 2026 federal midterm elections.

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An error by Guardians All-Star José Ramírez, who is their reliable and constant hero, and Peralta's six scoreless innings, allowed the Rays to even the playoffs with Cleveland, 1-1.

***

The Pope's cancer is adenocarcinoma, a more random, and generally more aggressive, lung primary. It sounds early.

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Well, Guilfoyle is gone, as if it would make a difference. The Greeks called her removal "an issue of national dignity." 

The ethics of the political charade are simple: do not let them see behind the disguise. But Trump seems to relish it. No wonder his representatives can get confused.
"National dignity."

***

Across the board, affecting everything from attention spans to problem-solving skills and numeracy, or the ability to work with and understand numbers and mathematical concepts, the OECD's Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies shows declines among all age groups.

It is, however, worse here in the U.S. in some cases than in the rest of the world.

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The Gospel According to Munger

Munger was a great success and thought about it a lot. Here are some of his suggestions from several sources, organized by Burns.

 

1. Let Go of High Expectations

“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. That’s one you can easily arrange. And if you have unrealistic expectations, you’re going to be miserable all your life.” –- Charlie Munger

This does not suggest low effort. People hear “low expectations” and picture someone who has quit trying. Munger meant something closer to realism. You can work as hard as you want on a goal but accept that the world owes you nothing for the effort.

2. Let Go of Envy and Social Comparison

“Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is no great tragedy.”--Charlie Munger

Aquinas defined envy as sadness at the success of others. Sadness.

Munger had a low opinion of envy. In his words, “Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at.”

Yet it can be relished and sometimes turned into a lifestyle or a job in politics.

3. Let Go of Resentment and Self-Pity

“Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought.” --Charlie Munger

Self-pity feels comforting for about a day. After that, it keeps you parked in the same mental spot, replaying how unfair things were while the problem sits there untouched.

Resentment is worse because it hands your mood to someone else. The coworker who took credit for your project probably isn’t thinking about you at all, and neither is the relative who said something cruel at Thanksgiving. Munger’s fix was practical. Take whatever lesson the hit offers and focus on what you can still change.

4. Let Go of Bad Habits Through Inversion

“Invert, always invert.” – Charlie Munger

Munger picked up this habit from the German mathematician Carl Jacobi and applied it to stock picks and to his own life. Instead of asking how to be happy, you ask what reliably makes people miserable. Then you stop doing those things.

He liked to put it in a joke: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

Make a short list of what reliably leaves you worse off. For a lot of people, that list includes spending money they don’t have, saying yes to plans they’ll bail on, scrolling at 1 a.m., and one friend who always leaves them drained. Pick the worst item and quit it first.

Munger thought avoiding dumb mistakes beat chasing brilliance. “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

5. Let Go of Stagnation and Become a Learning Machine

“They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up, and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” – Charlie Munger

Learning, you can see yourself getting better at something even when the rest of life is flat.

The Melting Pot

On this day:

54
Roman Emperor Claudius is poisoned to death under mysterious circumstances. His 17-year-old stepson Nero succeeds him to the Roman throne
409
Vandals and Alans cross the Pyrenees and appear in Hispania.
1307
Hundreds of Knights Templar in France are simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair, to be later tortured into a “confession” of heresy.
1773
The Whirlpool Galaxy is discovered by Charles Messier.
1884
Greenwich, in London, England, is established as Universal Time meridian of longitude.
1917
The “Miracle of the Sun” is witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people in the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal.
1972
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes mountains, near the border between Argentina and Chile. By December 23, 1972, only 16 out of 45 people lived long enough to be rescued. Survival can be a mixed blessing.
2010
The 2010 Copiapó mining accident in Copiapó, Chile comes to an end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground awaiting rescue.

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“There’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism.” -- James Talarico. Strong answers to unasked questions are always political fun.

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Unknown hackers have remotely compromised industrial refrigeration systems across hundreds of French supermarkets, forcing cooling units into continuous defrost cycles and spiking temps up to 50°C (122°F). (Le Monde) Imagine waking up in the morning with the sole goal of gratuitously harming strangers.

***

The U.S. is a net diesel exporter.

"...if Trump were really concerned about the price burden on Americans (and the midterm prospects of Republicans), he could simply end his imbecilic trade war with Canada, our ally and neighbor. Because of the complexities of the global diesel market, as well as such inane American policies as the Jones Act and the discouragement of new refining capacity, we do import some diesel despite being a net exporter. The vast majority of those imports come from Canada — from which we could easily import more if necessary without violating sanctions laws and lending comfort to our Russian enemy. But Trump being Trump, he’d rather appease Putin than admit that his trade policies antagonize our allies while crushing Americans."--from a NR article on Trump's strange decisions on diesel, which includes this: 

"The second reason for doing the diesel deal with Putin is, as ever, corruption. In early October, the New York Times reported that Trump is working on an even more execrable multibillion-dollar oil deal with Putin: The U.S. would waive sanctions so that an investor group could buy up oil fields, refineries, and gas stations around the world that are owned by Lukoil, the Russian energy giant. The deal has been negotiated by Trump’s aforementioned emissaries, Kushner and Witkoff. Among the major beneficiaries are said to be one of Trump’s major donors (Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to Trump political causes) and Middle Eastern executives who have business ties to Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff. These include Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the top security official of the United Arab Emirates — who, as I detailed in a series earlier this year, is a part owner of the Trump and Witkoff families’ crypto enterprise, into which Tahnoon has poured $2.5 billion. (That enterprise is the main explanation for the jaw-dropping increase in Trump’s net worth during his second term in “public service” — well over $2 billion in just 20 months.)

***

There's a movement growing aimed at Peter Thiel's legal use of a legal government tax program devised to help people avoid impoverishment in their old age by the tax and spend governmental system and the failing government social security plan. 

Seemingly the demand for equality does not cut both ways.

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A Six Flags Over Georgia park visitor died after an incident on the Goliath roller coaster on Monday. Four others were injured in the incident.

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Bednar is a free agent.

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The Melting Pot
 
My seventh grade teacher would repeat her mantra daily as she wagged a bony finger at us: "Remember, children, America is not a melting pot of culture." 

I puzzled over this at the time, and it was years before I understood what she meant. Her point is, years later, a basic question in this country: what binds the people of this country together? How does a free people not spin off in all directions? Do the individual cultures transplanted here have to be managed and constrained? Where does the nation-state start to conform to unify? What must be lost?

Wasn't America the great melting pot?

No, not of culture, but there has been a melding. The essence is that the men and women of America have come together and agreed that all men are created equal, that all men have an inherent value that makes them equal among each other and before the law. And, as a result, every man can pursue his life freely as long as he adheres to this essential principle. That is the country's foundation and it allows the separate cultures to develop as they will. It permits the diverse peoples in the country to pursue their different lives and beliefs, to pursue their separate cultures, and not surrender their many cultures into a common alloy. The Americans are joined in the mind, not at the hip.

Other cultures are joined by a common history. Or ethnicity. Or religion. It will be difficult for an Algerian to be French. Sadaharu Oh was never truly Japanese. A Mormon will not find peace in Saudi Arabia.

America's unity is not in a melting pot of culture. It is a philosophy, an a priori agreement of its citizens of the rights and responsibilities of man.

“What do We mean by the Revolution? The War?” Adams wrote to Jefferson in his old age. “That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People.”  

The Antagonists

On this day:
539 BC
The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
1216
King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge
1279
Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon
1492
Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached India
1692
The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
1773
America‘s first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds’in Virginia
1823
Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1871
Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals. Repealed in 1949, after Independence of India. Critical theory?
1960
Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
1960
Inejiro Asanuma, Chair of the Japanese Socialist Party, is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The cameras were rolling at the time, so the moment was caught on film.
1984
Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
2000
The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39
2002
Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
2005
The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè Hǎishèng for five days in orbit.

***

“And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of."--Peterson 

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Today is "Columbus Day" or Indigineous Peoples Day," commemmorating the meeting of two peoples, a tribel namadic people of earlier times and a new people, of the wheel, of steam power, of cities, of distance weapons, religeous ferver, and mass organization. History then sat back to watch the encounter.
Some people are shocked at the results of this collision.

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Ideocracy: noun:
1. Government according to the principles of a particular ideology.
2. A state or society governed in this way.

ETYMOLOGY:
From ideo- (idea) + -cracy (rule). Earliest documented use: 1813.

Ideocracy is one letter away from idiocracy (government by idiots). The pairing even has presidential precedent: John Adams proposed ideocracy on the model of ideology but his written coined word appears to read 'idiocracy,' while his grandson’s 1851 edition prints 'ideocracy.' So it's a thin line between rule by ideas and rule by idiots.

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President Trump stated that inflation could pay down the debt rapidly. That is, high inflation is a de facto method of reducing the real burden of debt. Is that the plan?

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One common observation about American government is the apparent concern with the letter of the law and not with the crucial element in government the Founders recognized: the ability and willingness within the nature of politicians to sacrifice the community's well-being for their own advantage. The sanctity of the individual citizen seems to have been displaced in the hubbub.

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A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Sunday to stop airing ads funded by the U.S. government that portray President Donald Trump in a favorable light, effective immediately.
Why is this even debatable?


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Funny shirt but, like so much in politics, doesn't actually describe what's happening.

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After being drafted by the Pirates last year, third baseman Murph Gray hit .305 with a 1.042 OPS, 32 home runs and 97 RBIs in 2026.

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The Antagonists

In most of the adventure stories I remember, the really, really bad guy is a businessman. I can't think of a Bond movie without one. It's never a politician with his nukes, or his lab making a homicidal virus, or his army. And, of course, the ubiquitous revolutionary wants the government to solve the problem of evil so the evil must not be centered in the government.

Indeed, the fear of the impact of corporations and businesses on our lives might be exaggerated by special interests who seek their own power through government. Commerce is a good target. It's everywhere and more personal than government. Problems can be personalized, as at some point, a commercial transaction always occurs.

Monopoly accusations are hard to deny when a business is successful. And there's always the Jews. They own lots of businesses and were perfect for Hitler. So a businessman can be shot in the street by a stranger, and many people debate about it. They consider the factors.

Strangely, commercial interests are seen as wealthy, even though they pale in comparison to government wealth. 60% of American land is privately owned; the other 40% is government land. For fiscal year 2025, the budget proposed $7 trillion in spending. Put that number up against your average business. Commercial companies hope you buy their product; the government sends you a bill for the money they need and arrests you if you don't comply.

Governments are armed to the teeth, have unimaginable weapons, have a police force and an army, write rules you must obey, manipulate the economy, crush disagreement, regulate borders and trade, invade and destroy people they don't like, build weapons of mass destruction and end-of-life potential, and constantly harrangue their citizens about the danger of the neighborhood grocer.

With all this power, you would think they would do a better job--a bigger question. After all, how many of us could list government job requirements? How could you tell a good government leader from a bad one? And what about his legions of assistants and advisors? None of the bureaucrats I've encountered resemble any of those noble idealists Michael Lewis knows. What if these guys are there by chance, or simple persistence? Are they going to be able to rise to the occasion when real business threats like dangerous pharmaceuticals, military accidents, or AI present themselves? They don't seem to be able to keep the streets drivable or safe.

That might be a good place to start.

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.

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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

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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.

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Who did Germany's ex-spymaster spy for?

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

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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."

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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?

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

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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."