"Thinking is the source not of truth but of meaning. It flirts with doubt, perplexity and wonder, and because of this it is the permanent enemy not just of ideological dogmatism but of all forms of intellectual complacency and elitism." -- Finn Bowring
We humans share more than half our genomes with flatworms; about 60 per cent with fruit flies and chickens; 80 per cent with cows; and 99 per cent with chimps. What this really means is not that we are similar beings but that the building blocks are similar, nothing more. This means that we are human, rather than another species, less because we carry different genes from those other species than because our cells read differently our remarkably similar genomes as we develop from zygote to adult. The alphabet is the same, the writing varies, but so does the reading.
One question on a 2018 Gallup Poll asks whether the “effects of global warming have already begun.” 60 percent said “yes,” up substantially from 48 percent in 1997. When the question was presented in a slightly different way — ”Do you think global warming will pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime” — the answer was even more dramatic; 45 percent said “yes,” up from 25 percent in 1997.
There is no bipartisan consensus. By and large, Democrats accept global warming and urge tougher policies to stop it, while many Republicans are skeptics. In the March poll, Gallup found that 91 percent of Democrats worried “a great deal/fair amount” about global warming; the comparable Republican figure was only 33 percent. The gap has grown. In 2000, it was 78 percent to 64 percent. Moreover, fighting global warming doesn’t rate high on Americans’ priorities, Bowman and O’Neil note.
Here’s a list of 19 public priorities that Pew asked about in the January poll. Dealing with climate change ranked next to last. Fighting terrorism was first. The “other” category includes priorities that are opposed or considered not important.
T.B kills more people in three days than Ebola kills in a year. But T.B. is old news and its management is not theoretical, it is understood and uncomfortable for people and societies.
When Kaci Hickox, a Doctors without Borders RN, was exposed to Ebola in West Africa, she returned to this country--with a fever--and defied all the efforts to shield the society from her risk for 21 days, with the active support of the press.
Freedom!
The dollar value of international trade activities (exports + imports) represented more than 20% of the dollar value of state economic output (GDP) for almost one in three US states in 2017, and 31% or more for the six states.
One of the solutions to the apparent scourge of income inequality is to destroy the successful. The usual way is taxation but, if guys like Antifa get their way, there may be more direct solutions. Interestingly, research on raising incomes has been done and the results are in. Two economists, Tomas Hellebrandt and Paolo Mauro, studied this and concluded, in a 2015 paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, that global income inequality declined between 2003 and 2013 due to rapid economic growth in poor nations. Growth, not destruction, was the answer.
One of the scandals of the Clinton White House was the number of staffers who did not have security clearance. Many could not even chair their own committees. Now this:
President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, was escorted out of the White House on Monday, two senior administration officials said. The cause of the firing was an unspecified security issue, said a third White House official with knowledge of the situation.
Several White House officials have lost their jobs over the past month since White House Chief of Staff John Kelly imposed a stricter security-clearance policy.
Mr. Kelly told reporters earlier this month that when he joined the White House as chief of staff this summer, he realized a large number of staffers still held interim clearances after more than seven months in the administration.
His review turned up “a couple spreadsheets worth of people” at the White House operating with interim security clearance after the first nine months of the Trump administration. He also found at least 35 officials who were inappropriately given top secret clearance. (wsj)
Who is...Christopher Steele?
In response to the charge that the Japanese government was subsidizing its steel producers at that time, Friedman said:
Number one, it’s very dubious that it’s true, but suppose it were true. Then that would be a foolish thing for the Japanese to do from their own point of view, but why should we object to them giving us foreign aid? We’ve given them quite a bit.
Suppose a college student you personally know wants to major in a low-paying, impractical major - like Fine Arts or Archaeology. How would people in your social circle react if his parents, though willing to pay for college in general, refused to pay for their kid to pursue such a major?--Caplan, looking for trouble
Prime Minister Theresa May said the U.K. would expel 23 Russian diplomats from the U.K., saying Moscow had showed complete disdain for the gravity of the use of a nerve agent on British soil. And they will be replaced by....?
While the U.S. population is today 48 percent higher than it was in 1977 (when the current U.S. run of annual trade deficits began), real U.S. household and nonprofit net worth is today 255 percent higher than it was in 1977.
This is really getting ugly. Trump may indeed be the most benign of options.
A new book by Isikoff and Corn suggests that the infamous relationship between former British spy Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS and the FBI was forged not by Clinton but by Obama officials at the State Department in an opposition research program that included the compiling of an enemies list of Romney donors. One can only surmise what that information was for.
A lawsuit in Connecticut against a leading maker of AR-15 rifles is awaiting a pivotal court ruling over whether the gun industry can be held legally responsible for mass shootings. This goofy idea is said to be terrifying gun manufacturers; who should really be scared is McDonalds.
All the talk about the problems of containing costs in medicine may be coming to a head. The myth of efficiency leading to decreased cost in a product that has an insatiable consumption may be coming to an end. The Hill (3/14, Hellmann) reports the Congressional Budget Office estimates that an updated Alexander-Murray legislation “would reduce premiums by 10 percent next year and by 20 percent in 2020 and 2021.” That is premiums, not expenditures. Soooooo......
AAaaawwwww....."Alicia Vikander, as the new Lara Croft, has leapt into the void of a franchise reboot, based on a video-game reboot, that generates no joy, makes negligible sense, and seals its own tomb with a climax of perfect absurdity" --Joe Morgenstern in the wsj.
At the Heritage Auction, the James C. Seacrest Collection, assembled over decades by a Nebraska publisher and philanthropist, sold for a combined $918,196 and claimed nine of the auction’s 10 most expensive lots.
The Seacrest Collection’s Signed and Inscribed Copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby sold for $162,500 - a house record for a 1925 first edition.
John Skipper, the former president of ESPN, says his decision to step down after more than 20 years at the company was prompted by an extortion attempt by a person from whom he purchased cocaine. (wsj) You may want to read that again.
An interesting distinction from Pipes: "Russia’s experience indicates that freedom cannot be legislated; it has to grow gradually, in close association with property and law. For while acquisitiveness is natural, respect for the property – and the liberty – of others is not. It has to be inculcated until it sinks such deep roots in the people’s consciousness that it is able to withstand all efforts to crush it."
The Munich Pact was a vain attempt to forestall Germany’s imperial aims.
On September 30, 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. Without those resources, the Czech nation was left vulnerable to complete German domination.
As early as October 1938, Hitler made it clear that he intended to force the central Czechoslovakian government to give Slovakia its independence, which would make the “rump” Czech state “even more completely at our mercy,” remarked Hermann Goering. Slovakia indeed declared its “independence” (in fact, complete dependence on Germany) on March 14, 1939, with the threat of invasion squelching all debate within the Czech province.
Then, on March 15, 1939, during a meeting with Czech President Emil Hacha–a man considered weak, and possibly even senile–Hitler threatened a bombing raid against Prague, the Czech capital, unless he obtained from Hacha free passage for German troops into Czech borders. He got it. That same day, German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. The two provinces offered no resistance, and they were quickly made a protectorate of Germany. By evening, Hitler made a triumphant entry into Prague. (from History)
AAAAaaaannnnnddddd....poll results:
Top Priority Less Important Priority Other
1. Fighting terrorism 73% 21% 6%
2. Improving schools 72 23 5
3. The economy 71 23 6
4. Cutting health costs 68 26 7
5. Strengthening Social Security 67 27 6
6. Strengthening Medicare 66 27 7
7. Protecting the environment 62 29 9
8. Creating jobs 62 30 8
9. Helping the poor 58 32 9
10. Reducing crime 56 33 12
11. Improving race relations 52 31 17
12. Improving transportation 49 39 13
13. Reducing drug addiction 49 38 12
14. Cutting the budget deficit 48 37 15
15. Immigration 47 35 18
16. Curbing special interests 47 32 22
17. Strengthening the military 46 32 23
18. Dealing with climate change 46 24 30
19. Dealing with global trade 38 44 17
Source: Pew Research Center THE WASHINGTON POST
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