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.

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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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?

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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.

Consensus, Filth Parties, and Betting Against the Spread

On this day:1199
Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
1306
Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
1807
The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
1811
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
1894
Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
1911
In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
1931
The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.

***

Language is fossil poetry. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

***

Russia (the world’s largest supplier) has announced a one-month pause in ammonium nitrate fertiliser exports

***

Since her astonishing spontaneous combustion at the European Security meeting, AOC has been in a phase of quiescence. She knows her audience. 

The democracy forgets. Soon a consensus of American voters will say she never went to Europe.

***

Britain has become strangely concerned about Iran after it attacked Diego Garcia.

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Coxey’s Army, officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, was a group of unemployed people who marched to Washington, D.C., in the depression year of 1894. Led by businessman Jacob S. Coxey, the group left Massillon, Ohio, on March 25, 1894, with about 100 men, accompanied by a large contingent of reporters, and arrived in Washington on May 1 with about 500. Coxey hoped to persuade Congress to authorize a vast program of public work programs. 

While ineffectual, it was the first significant popular protest march on Washington.

***


Consensus, Filth Parties, and Betting Against the Spread

The consensus elected Trump and Lincoln, nominated Goldwater (but not Harris), and picked Barrabas over Christ. It is the essence of the point-spread.

But in science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

In the 1700s, one woman in six died of puerperal fever after childbirth. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes and that he could cure them.

In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management.

In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the “pellagra germ.” The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called “Goldberger’s filth parties.” Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him

South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at 'continental drift' for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology—until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2 . Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. (from Crichton)

Consensus has many suspected fathers. Arrogance. It breaks the tie. Who determines the consensus extends the influence of the aristocratic gatekeeper. Uncertainty is paralyzing: no one wants to invest in windmills if opinion will change in five years and invalidate the reason you built them. Consensus is clarifying and allows the public debate to move on. It allows the investment to move on.

Scientists are a group of people who believe that observation, experimentation leading to repeated observation and experimentation, will lead to reproducible results and a more accurate reflection of reality. That is to say, all scientists believe that. A consensus. 

A consensus we never hear from.

Diego Garcia

On this day:

1603
James VI of Scotland also becomes James I of England.
1603
Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yozei, and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, Japan.
1765
American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
1832
In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.
1882
Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero is killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240000 oilbbl of petroleum after running aground.
1998
Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, aged 11 and 13 respectively, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.
2000
S&P 500 index reaches an intraday high of 1,552.87, a peak that, due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble, it will not reach again for another seven-and-a-half years.

***

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."--Thomas Jefferson

***

Prompt:

Can a parent limit a kid’s screen time simply by tweaking some of the settings on the smartphone? Are these services available?

GPT Thinking answer:

Yes. On both iPhone and Android, a parent can limit a kid’s screen time largely through built-in settings (no extra app required), and there are also optional third-party services.

***

Rainer Zitelmann, a German historian and sociologist, received a letter from Berlin police informing him he was under investigation for violating Germany's criminal code by using "symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations."

The post in question, which Zitelmann reshared, showed a side-by-side image of Adolf Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hitler's speech bubble read, "Give me Czechoslovakia and I won't attack anyone else!" and Putin's read, "Give me Ukraine, and I won't attack anyone else!" It was not the quote that put Zitelmann in trouble with the law, but Hitler's swastika armband.

Under Section 86a of the German criminal code, it is illegal to distribute Nazi symbols and related expressions.

***


In the Jonesboro massacre, Mitchell and Golden killed four students and one teacher and wounded nine students and one teacher. All 10 injured survived. The two shooters were convicted of murder, and both were sentenced under the juvenile statutes of Arkansas. 

They were both released back among the unsuspecting public at the age of 21.

***

Diego Garcia

Before it became a pseudonym for college kids in bars all over America, Diego Garcia was, and is, part of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. The United States has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa.

The four-decade conflict between the U.S. and Iran has centered around the Americans insisting that Iran is building a nuclear warfare program and Iran's insistence that they are not. The Americans fear that Iran will eventually attack its political and religious enemies with nukes, destroy the Middle East, destroy the world's petroleum industry, and make much of the Mediterranean uninhabitable for several millennia.

As proof of its good intentions, Iran has previously put a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers).

Iran has, however, developed a space program that, theoretically, prepares it for long-range missile flight. If they have not developed a nuclear weapon, Iran would be the only nation with a space program that hasn't.

U.S. officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, and this month, Iran fired several missiles at Diego Garcia. At about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran. Diego Garcia is well outside Iran's promised range of 2000Km. Other cities within that radius include Bonn, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, and New Delhi.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said that the attempt to hit Diego Garcia may have involved the improvised use of Iran's Simorgh space launch rocket, "which could offer greater range as a ballistic missile," though at the cost of reduced accuracy.

Mendacity, aggression, and mistrust with Extinction-Level-Weapons on an international level, controlled by suicidal lunatics and morons. 

So, how are reasonable men of good will supposed to live and raise their children in that kind of world? And what kind of responsibilities do the grownups in the room have?