Sunday/Bridesmaids

 On this day:

1519
Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán, and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration.
1576
Eighty Years’ War: Pacification of Ghent – The States-General of the Netherlands meet and unite to oppose Spanish occupation.
1602
The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is opened to the public.
1605
Robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plotters, is killed.
1745
Charles Edward Stuart invades England with an army of ~5000 that would later participate in the Battle of Culloden.
1861
American Civil War: The “Trent Affair” – The USS San Jacinto stops the United Kingdom mail ship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US.
1895
While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.
1923
Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.
1942
World War II: French resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralize Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyist generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.
1942
World War II: Operation Torch – United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa.
1950
Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.

***

“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind”--ANNA JULIA COOPER

***

Does there come a time when government is so embarrassing that able people don't want to be associated with it?

***

In 1959, Venezuela’s GDP per capita was 10% higher than America’s.

***

President Donald Trump on Saturday said he wants UFC executive Dana White to be the next White House press secretary, adding that he already offered White the job.
If true, it seems little has changed since the election.

***

A new study suggests that managers are less likely to trust workers who use ChatGPT and other AI tools.

***

On JetBlue, a family of four checking one bag each at the airport over the holidays will pay $680 round-trip just for their bags.

***

NYC ‘principal’ — who’s also a rapper — being paid nearly $200K to run a school that doesn’t exist.

***

As the perception of France’s inability to pay future debt obligations increases, the more expensive it will be for them to borrow. Instead of paying about 3.3 percent in February 2026, they now need to pay nearly 5 percent as of October 26th, 2026.

As late as 1995, French and American GDP per capita were nearly even. Today Americans produce almost twice as much per person.


***

Sunday/Bridesmaids

Today's gospel is the ten bridesmaids gospel, five wise and five foolish. It's a bit harsh, as the wise do not share with the foolish, who are then locked out of the ceremony. The Second Coming is strangely ominous.

But “Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” (Tagore)

On the other hand:

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
 

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

--Robert Herrick

SatStats

On this day:

1775
John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters in order to fight with Murray and the British.
1811
Tecumseh’s War: The Battle of Tippecanoe is fought near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana, United States
1872
The ship Mary Celeste sails from New York, eventually to be found deserted
1908
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia.
1917
The Gregorian calendar date of the October Revolution, which gets its name from the Julian calendar date of 25 October. On this date in 1917, the Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace.
1919
The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in twenty-three different U.S. cities.
1941
World War II: Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German planes while evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that over 5,000 people died in the sinking.
1973
The U.S. Congress overrides President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
1983
United States Senate bombing: a bomb explodes inside the United States Capitol. No people are harmed, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is caused.

***

 "Obviously we wouldn't want to be owning anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell. And that's the big thing we worry about with the United States currency."-- Warren Buffett at his final shareholders meeting as Berkshire Hathaway CEO in 2025.

***

Mary Louise Kelly hosted her final show Friday on All Things Considered after an NPR career that goes back 25 years.


***

Hackers linked to the Chinese government used AI to break into major banks in India, according to India’s top cyber agency. The attacks used publicly available AI tools, including Artex, PentAGI, Cairn and CyberStrikeAI, to help steal data and money, officials said.


***

Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover. So we'll soon have the advantage of a continuing political career of another brain-damaged guy.

***

FDA reports involving caffeine- and stimulant-containing energy drinks and supplements were about 11 times more likely to mention cardiac arrest and 4.5 times more likely to mention heart attacks than reports involving products without these ingredients.

***

SatStats

Economists estimate China’s annual growth at just 0% to 3%, well below Beijing’s official 4.5%, accusing Xi Jinping of concealing a slowdown with data blackouts and censorship.

*

AI errors align with the authors' ideology 97% of the time.

*

TARP:

When Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, its U.S. operations had 1.2 million derivatives transactions outstanding with 6,500 trading partners.
In all, the contracts, which were tied to interest rates, bonds, currencies, commodities, and stocks, had a "notional," or theoretical, value of $39 trillion. (wsj)
The notional value of the world's derivatives actually was estimated at more than $600 trillion. Yes, $600 trillion. Notional value is the total value of a leveraged position's assets.

*

Wealthy households make up about 10% of the entire rent-stabilized stock, according to a Citizens Budget Commission analysis of 2023 data.

*

Mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases are approximately 30 percent higher among black adults than among white adults. Cervical cancer rates are almost five times higher among Vietnamese women in the U.S. than among white women. Prostate cancer is nearly twice as common among black men as it is among white men.
When does vigilance in subsets become profiling?

*

The top 10 percent already pay more taxes, estimated at 75 percent of federal income taxes, than the bottom 90 percent combined.

*

The Norwegian state produces about 120 barrels of oil for every man, woman, and child living in the country. If the U.S. could produce that much oil per person through a state-controlled entity, it would be more oil than the entire world produces today and worth enough money to replace all federal individual and corporate income tax revenue.

*

Following the application of rent caps in Berlin, the supply of rental apartments collapsed, falling by 52 per cent.

*

Margin debt stands at $1.50T in the June 2026 report, up 49% in a year — growth that fast has appeared in 15 of 342 months on record, every earlier cluster inside the run-up to the 2000, 2007 or 2021 peaks.

*

Education in the NYC school system:

The Success Academy charter-school network has just released a report on the New York City public school system.

They enroll 409,379 kids, or 43% of all NYC public school children. In 503 of them, the majority of students failed both math and reading last year, some for a whole decade. And the more a school fails, the more categorical federal aid it qualifies for. The criteria used to identify failing schools “do not create accountability”; instead, the system “creates eligibility,” charge the authors.

Mayor Mamdani is handing the Department of Education $38.6 billion this year — an increase of almost $4 billion from last year, despite plummeting enrollment — with no strings attached.

Today, the per-student cost has soared to roughly $49,500 per pupil, among the highest in the nation.

“What is missing is not money . . . [but] honesty — honest measurement, honest reporting, and honest consequences when schools consistently fail,” say the authors.

Here’s the conclusion: The New York bureaucracy that runs the system—DOE officials, Albany officials, and the unions that control them—intentionally misleads and obscures failures, mostly to protect the adults.

Repealing the Bell Curve

 

On this day:

1865
American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels.

***

Excellence is a habit, not an act.--Aristotle

***

There has always been a 'make-work' element in government, but usually not at this level. Those days are long gone. Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia are all electing people who could not run a toll booth. Government can be shielded from incompetence for only so long, especially if the society is rich. But a society under any stress needs some element of competence. That does not seem to be a priority anymore.

***

The education system's problems are beginning to show. The peculiar voting patterns of what used to be called the educated class should be a worry to all thoughtful people. But maybe not if that poor education benefits you.

***

The Americans created the first lasting democracy based upon basic, agreed-upon principles that protected free people to express and improve their lives. Militant philosophies and beliefs that do not tolerate dissent are incompatible with the nation's philosophy. This is a problem with collectivism because it assumes disparities are the undeserved consequences of a conflict inherent to the culture. Often, that conflict is resolved with righteous violence. It is crucial to understand that this cleansing violence is, in many redistributionist philosophies, a necessary part of the 'economic change.'

***

Trump should be an easy guy to negotiate with since he is philosophy-free.

***

This is a risky time. Huge, economy-changing debt. A battle over nuclear weapons in the hands of fanatics in the Middle East. Culture-changing immigration. Maybe a baseball strike. The next two years might be more effectively managed by the Democrats, as they are combative and inconsolable, so they are both beyond help and beyond helping. That conflict might allow them to show their true nature without doing too much damage.

***

Bomb threats targeted more than a dozen flights in Europe on Thursday, leading to a slew of emergency landings and military escorts in some cases, authorities said. Authorities found no hazardous or suspicious materials in what a British official called “malicious” hoaxes.
This was the second such episode in a week.

***

Repealing the Bell Curve

The American voters are true believers in the American dream. In the big IPO. They want, indeed deserve, success. They want charming partners and lovers. They want to live in New York. They know people who know people who do.

They do not want to hear about a long grind, sacrifice, sleeplessness, failure, and luck.

Weirdly, in a nation of growing Critical Theory, they feel success is their birthright. Privilege. They deserve to live in New York.  

Others might move somewhere more affordable, more in tune with their circumstances. But these guys know that if they don't have what they want, it is someone's fault. Who can argue with universal health care? With free transportation? Free child care?

If you don't have it, then the leaders neglected you. Vote them out.

Their disappointments in the next years will be interesting to watch.

The Danger of Beliefs

On this day:

1768
Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
1780
French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1862
American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.
1943
Bombing of the Vatican.
1990
Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel. Investigations lead to a woman of mystery in Pittsburgh, Pa.
2009
US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 29 at Fort Hood, Texas, in the deadliest mass shooting at a US military installation.

***

"Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.” --Lionel Shriver

***

History teaches that the wealthiest and safest societies are ones in which innovation is, as Adam Thierer calls it, “permissionless.”

***

According to data from the Africa CDC on Monday, the outbreak has killed 5,376 people: 5,372 in the DRC and two each in Kenya and Uganda.
The Bundibugyo strain of the virus, responsible for the current outbreak, has infected some 10,444 people in the DRC, Uganda and Kenya, with a death rate of more than 50 percent.

***

Throuples, foursomes and other multi-partner relationships can now register as domestic partners in a Los Angeles County city after its city council unanimously approved new legal protections for polyamorous couples.
West Hollywood passed the ordinance Tuesday. Some Massachusetts municipalities already recognize multi-partner domestic partnerships,

***

A Wisconsin special counsel found 100% voting rates inside nursing homes full of dementia patients.

***

Simon Winchester has died.

***

The Danger of Beliefs

A cataclysmic election. DeSantis called it an ELE, an extinction-level event. That sounds more than routine. One can only hope.

Since the Second World War, the U.S. has been on autopilot; we've been running on our astonishing economy. Our errors, our overreach, our dumb wars, have all been drowned in our expanding economy. By our expanding economy. We didn't need to think. Everything would be grown out of and forgiven. The inevitabilities on the horizon could always be delayed to a new horizon.

This time, it might be different. There is a cyclone of youth, intensity, and outrage. And some have an ideology. The youth and ideology are new. It is strange that this could be true of a recent and revolutionary nation born of philosophy, not history, race, or religion.

Another surprise: the Democrats, usually the party for whom good hopes and high feelings are adequate, are the party bringing the philosophy to the table. True, it's a small segment of the party and, true, the philosophy is outmoded and has repeatedly failed practical application. But it is a philosophy of formalized beliefs, and they are always inspiring. 

The problem for the Democrats is that philosophies are immodest; they want to glow. And these beliefs are shallow and are inspiring to the inept. That will stimulate discussion, and their nature will be revealed. The Republicans will be stimulated to oppose the notions. A democratic give-and-take. All of this will work to the Democrats' disadvantage.

Their outraged declarations have no resolution. The promises are impossible. (Imagine funding universal health care when we already spend over $18,000 annually per person in the country with a debt of $40 trillion; imagine adding subsidized child care; imagine subsidizing food for some arbitrary segment of the population; imagine abandoning Israel with the hopes they will just be brave and go down fighting rather than using their 44 nuclear weapons to blow up the Middle East.) But the zealots of defunct philosophies are without reflection or shame. We will finally have a discussion of the merits of common political mythologies. It will be very clarifying. The political parties will have to explain themselves. Clear-eyed freedom will reign.

Unless, of course, the Democrats find their defense so difficult that they cower in anger or behind Trump subpoenas.

"It Strikes Me as Bizarre..."

 

On this day:
1501
Catherine of Aragon (later Henry VIII’s first wife) meets Arthur Tudor, Henry VIII’s older brother – they would later marry.
1576
Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, Spain captures Antwerp (after three days, the city is nearly destroyed).
1677
The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange. They would later jointly reign as William and Mary.
1791
The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash. The Shawnees and Miamis, under Little Turtle and Blue Jacket, inflict 85% casualties on slightly over 900 army soldiers at what is now Fort Recovery, Ohio. This was the biggest defeat of the US Army and the biggest victory of Native Americans in combat against the Europeans in history.
1839

The Newport Rising: the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.

1847
Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.
1921
The Sturmabteilung or SA, whose members were known as “brownshirts”, physically assault Adolf Hitler’s opposition after his speech in Munich.
1922
In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
1942
World War II: Second Battle of El Alamein – Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel leads his forces on a five-month retreat.
1956
Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union, which started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
1966
The Arno River flooded Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m, leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books.
1979
Iran hostage crisis begins: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invades the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American)

***

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. -Desiderius Erasmus, philosopher, humanist, and theologian (28 Oct 1466-1536)

***

In 2011, Vermont passed H.202 (Act 48), a law which would have established a statewide single-payer health care system, Green Mountain Care. It would have guaranteed universal health care coverage to all Vermont residents. However, in 2014, Governor Peter Shumlin reversed his position and shot down the law before it could be implemented.
That would have been interesting. But it seems the noble dreams are never, ever tested.

This election might change that.

***

Global call center headcount is 5.3% below its December 2023 peak, ending more than a decade of growth. It has fallen year over year for eight straight quarters, a decline that started in high-income countries and coincided with the rise of AI chatbots.

***
Trump's spiteful refusal to endorse John Cornyn, the likely easy winner for Senate in Texas, probably made no real difference in the election wipeout for the Republicans, but it was emblematic of Trump's needful, relentless shallow self-indulgence.

***

"It Strikes Me as Bizarre..."

"It strikes me as bizarre that today in the United States, a new pill to treat heartburn would have to go through months or even years of government approvals and testing before being released to the public. But the most powerful technology ever developed — capable of breaking into banks, shutting down power grids, or helping build bioweapons — can be released without even a preliminary government review.

We are having a collective failure of imagination about artificial intelligence. While many closest to the technology have issued grave warnings and urged oversight, it doesn’t seem to register as a major public concern. Congress has, of course, so far abdicated its role as lawmaker, and the Trump administration is delighted to let the industry regulate itself. . . ."--Zakaria

On the other hand, it strikes me as bizarre today in the United States that people can look at the past generation or two and conclude a significant problem will be solved by the government. Personalities aside, these people are simply not able or willing to do the work and make the hard decisions to resolve complex difficulties. Imagine Maxine Waters or Elizabeth Warren discussing a problem like AI. The computer scientists can barely explain it, and the philosophers can't define it. (I recently read a very interesting article characterizing AI as a sentient being held against its will.)

As with nuclear power or bioweapons research, a lot's at stake. Economies and armies will be impacted by the management here. Mistakes will be damaging, perhaps fatal, to individuals or subsets. In the hands of the malicious, large segments of the population could be ignored or actively harmed. Should this technology be in the hands of people who think developing bioweapons is a good idea? People who believe they alone are the carriers of a natural or divine truth, and those outside their group who do not believe this truth should die? How can we manage the criminal or the malicious?

This is the reason we give Nobel Peace Prizes to people who don't, and can't, do anything. We are a people of 'thoughts and prayers.' Good intentions never acted upon or fulfilled. Even the Americans, the citizens of the only philosophical nation in the world, can't even agree to defend themselves. Some of this is ineptness; the criteria of leaders are vague, as are the candidates. And structural: America's decision-making process is filled with the bumps of checks and balances.

This looks like a cutting-edge, modern problem, but it probably is not. This is a simple, revealing question that is as ancient as hierarchy. What responsibilities can, or should, be deferred to another? Is your child's education the responsibility of the teacher, or her employer, the state? Is your embezzlement your accountant's problem, your moral question your priest's? Usually the answer to these hypotheticals is "The responsibility is yours." And when that responsibility is not accepted, everyone wants to call a cop.

Which cop? 

The Americans are more fortunate, as their cop is their Constitution, a strong and ordering document, if allowed to be taken seriously and honestly. It will maintain its balance and principles.

And weather elections.

This election may have called a new cop.

Times change, yet basics don't, or shouldn't. But the political landscape, superficially at least, looks different. For the first time in my memory, a political party talks a philosophy opposed to the principles that founded the country. Restraint of the majority is in the nation's constitutional DNA. Changing that one concept would be revolutionary.

But a bad principle will fill a vacuum. And Trump has always been a philosophical vacuum.

Election Day

On this day:
644
Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim caliph, is assassinated by a Persian slave in Medina.
1333
The River Arno flooding causes massive damage in Florence as recorded by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.
1793
French playwright, journalist, and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined. Quite a story.
1913
The United States introduces an income tax.
1943
World War II: 500 aircraft of the U.S. 8th Air Force devastate Wilhelmshafen harbor in Germany.
1957
Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.
1979
Greensboro massacre: Five members of the Communist Workers Party are shot dead and seven are wounded by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis during a “Death to the Klan” rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States.
1986
Iran-Contra Affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.

***

The most obvious answer to France’s problems is economic growth — much easier said than done, of course. The reason that’s so hard for France isn’t because the government is “unresponsive” to the people and their concerns, it’s because it’s too responsive. For decades, the French have demanded the economic policies that got them into this mess, and the government appeased them.--Goldberg

***

Paul Krugman and many others are arguing that:
Massive spending on data centers is crowding out investment in everything else in the economy.
Not so fast. Can you see one immediate problem? How is $51b in data center construction spending crowding out $120b in everything else!--tabarrok

***

Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, thought capital punishment “lessens the horror of taking away human life,” thereby fostering murders.

***

"Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn have six kids each. Their hipster neighbors have 1.6 kids each. They live in the same economy. They have very different outcomes. Why? Different culture."--Lyman Stone, senior fellow and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. The Pronatalism Initiative!

***

Why are we thrilled with entertainers' political opinions and so angry at industry moguls'?

***

Intel’s stock suffered one of its worst days ever on Friday, crashing around 28% after the chip giant reported a weaker-than-expected outlook for the fourth quarter. This rout reduced the value of Intel’s holdings by the government by $12 billion. The Trump administration had the government buy a 10% stake over a year ago.

***

Is Haley Stevens' disagreement with the Democrat Party and its journalists really a heresy? Do certain beliefs disqualify you from membership in a political party? Are some opinions simply overwhelmingly defining? So disagreeing with a candidate's opinion on favored foreign relations results in ejection from the group, but favoring elimination of the police or the Supreme Court doesn't?

Please see Olympe de Gouges, above.

***

Election Day

Here is an Onion headline:
Mary Peltola Insists Scheme To Put Second Dan Sullivan On Ballot Orchestrated By Mary F. Peltola

Mendacity and incompetence are no longer episodes in political life; they are political life. Here the Onion has made the explanation for a lie, a reciprocal lie. Now the voter has our biennial choice between two monoliths of self-serving insincerity and ineptitude to deal with the national debt, AI, Putin, China, and heavily armed religious maniacs.

Some examples of our strengths so far:

--Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times reported that last summer the Department of Homeland Security paid more than $495 million for a 1,600-bed prison the state of Minnesota declined to purchase a year ago for the asking price of $75 million—or even “a fraction of that price.

--Wendy Siegelman of NewsTRACS reports that Trump Media & Technology Group received $350,000 for running ads on Trump’s social media site for this summer’s Freedom 250 events. Freedom 250 was the group Trump backed in place of the congressionally-approved nonpartisan America 250 organization designed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Trump owns 41% of Trump Media & Technology Group.

--At a rally on October 24, Trump commented to attendees, “I wonder if I should say this,” then went on to say that “our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what’s happened in the Middle East. My people said, ‘Please don’t mention that, sir,’ because people are paying a little higher. But what we’ve done for this country, we’re making money like this country has never made before. I don’t give a damn: I’m going to say it. We’re making a freaking fortune.”

--"Nobody wanted to eat out. They were afraid. Even if you were in the restaurant, people would walk in and, like the Wild West, hold it up! Everybody is standing there. Can you imagine? A fancy restaurant. They were robbing the whole restaurant. It’s crazy."--Trump

--We are running guys with Nazi tattoos for Senate. Senate! Imposters are in the House! Guys sleeping with Chinese spies are running for Governor of the nation's most important state. We are bombing unidentified boats in the Caribbean, and AI-targeted girls' schools in Iran. 

Zito said insightfully, "The Press takes Trump literally but not seriously; his voters take him seriously but not literally." In this circus, no one is taken seriously except by angry, blue-haired cat ladies. One can only wonder what follows in this foolish sideshow parade, but it will restart today.

Sunday/Sermon on the Mount

 

On this day:

1520
The Strait of Magellan is discovered; the passage immediately south of mainland South America, connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first navigated by Ferdinand Magellan during the first global circumnavigation voyage.
1555
French Huguenots establish the France Antarctique colony in present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
1755
Lisbon earthquake: In Portugal, Lisbon is destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty thousand and ninety thousand people.
1765
The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the 13 colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.

1790
Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he predicts that the French Revolution will end in a disaster.

1814

Congress of Vienna opens to redraw the European political map after the defeat of France, in the Napoleonic Wars.
1922
The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, abdicates.
1938
Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral in an upset victory during a match race deemed “the match of the century” in horse racing.
1950
Pope Pius XII claims Papal Infallibility when he formally defines the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.
1950
Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman at Blair House.
1951
Operation Buster-Jangle: 6,500 American soldiers are exposed to ‘Desert Rock' atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada. Participation is not voluntary.
1952
Operation Ivy – The United States successfully detonates the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Mike” [“M” for megaton], in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The explosion had a yield of 10 megatons.

***

Advocates of industrial policy believe that there are some promising new industries that are essential to countries and that these should have support (usually in the form of protection) to raise domestic prices and let domestic production be profitable. To my knowledge, no one has ever spelled out what techniques would enable government officials to identify such “winners.”--Krueger

***

Operation Buster-Jangle was a series of joint nuclear test operations between the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons labs (at this time consisting only of Los Alamos) that were held together for the first time - Operation Buster (conducted by Los Alamos) and Operation Jangle (conducted by the DOD). Buster-Jangle was held at the Nevada Proving Ground.
Buster-Jangle released about 10,500 kilocuries of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere (for comparison, Trinity released about 3200 kilocuries of radioiodine). This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 7.4 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 2% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests). This can be expected to eventually cause about 2300 cases of thyroid cancer, leading to some 120 deaths.

And this government was on our side.

***

Doctors are 14% more likely to diagnose a child with ADHD on October 31, not because there are more kids with ADHD, but because the kids are excited to go trick-or-treating.

***

Reflections on the Revolution in France. While not denying the existence of “the rights of man,” Burke argues that these provide an inadequate basis for government. Government, rather, is “a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human needs; it relies on a “deep knowledge of human nature” and on practical actions, not abstract theories. Preoccupation with abstract “rights” can lead people to overlook human nature and justify the “grand spectacle” of revolution.

***

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s tightly fought US Senate race, wants Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens to stay away from his campaign events. 

Only special politics demand purity.

***

​In August 2025, the U.S. government became a large Intel shareholder, taking a 9.9% stake in the company. The $8.9-billion funding deal gave the U.S. 433.3 million Intel shares at an average price of $20.47 per share.
Intel was down 30% this week.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the federal government has spent $30 billion on 43 stock deals.
Can you believe this? What's next, the Fed going on trips to Vegas?

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Sunday/Sermon on the Mount

The All Saints gospel is the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. Christ's description of the Good in the Beatitudes includes meekness, the poor in spirit, and those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.

In many respects, these qualities are in the everyday.

Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self-fulfillment without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” However, it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in their daily interactions.

The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describe the heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full-time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.

Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal, thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.

With hesitation, I mention another book, Jailbird by Vonnagut. The story is delivered by another deadpan narrator, a bright guy who is wandering from failure to failure with ironic acceptance. At one point, he is in front of a Senate investigation committee and is asked why he became a communist. (In the story, he gives up his membership at the ratification of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) His answer is, wide-eyed, "The Sermon on the Mount."