Reverie

"I am just going outside and may be some time" Lawrence Oates, leaving his tent to die on Scott's return from his doomed South Pole expedition.

Recently President Trump said that "flipping" a witness to incriminate a prosecutorial target "almost ought to be outlawed," saying that individuals who flip are often untruthful.This statement raises the important question of whether it should be illegal to offer a witness a valuable consideration for providing testimony, as prosecutors allegedly did with Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn. Interestingly, it is already illegal for a lawyer to do that -- if the lawyer is a defense attorney. If any defense attorney offers a witness an inducement to testify favorably to his client -- even if his testimony is 100% truthful -- that lawyer will be disbarred, prosecuted and imprisoned. But it is perfectly legal, indeed widely regarded as commendable, for prosecutors to offer major inducements in order to get witnesses to testify against their targets. These inducements include money, freedom from imprisonment and even life itself.-- from an Alan Dershowitz  article

Uh oh. Penguin Random House’s new company-wide goal for both new hires and authors to “reflect UK society by 2025 taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability.”

And authors? There's going to be a lot of new pseudonyms out there mailing MS in from fake addresses.

What is ....Title IX?

I had a lapse and watched a short news segment on the "immigrant children separation crisis."  With all the problems we have, I could not understand why the press decided to make this problem so important. I just assume it is a good emotional way to leverage anti-Americanism but I was very surprised at the DHS woman they were attacking. She was a real grownup, smart and unintimidated. She focused the problem in an interesting and, it seems to me, an important way: She said they, as an executive branch, had no authority or right to parse the law, they had to enforce it. (This, of course , is opposite current direction where the executive is given a blank check of behavior--as has happened with EPA.) She said that it was an outrage for the legislature to write the law and then criticize the executive for enforcing it; the legislature should, if they don't like the law, change it. The press tried to get her on some moral grounds, comparing her position to the Japanese internment of the Second War, but she was having none of it. It is a curious position for the press. She also said something shocking: of the 12,000 children in DHS custody, 10,000 of them were sent to cross the border alone or given to strangers to cross with. What a mess. Of course the press will report this as their own victory, but they did not do themselves proud, in my view.

Reuters reported a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 65 percent of Americans are “very concerned” about the overall cost of health insurance, and that the concern is consistent across all demographics. The poll also found that 66 percent are “concerned about their ability to see a doctor of their choice going forward,” and 58 percent are “very concerned” about rising drug prices. In addition, 33 percent are “very concerned” about losing Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

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Here is an astonishing stat:

Of the top 25 (50) largest Multinationals(MNC) in the world ranked by foreign assets, only 6 (11) are located in the US, and of the top 100 MNCs, 80 are located outside the US and these foreign-based rivals are engaged in intense competition with US-based companies for global sales and market share. So every little bit Trump does, hurts.

In the Washington Post, Northeastern University professor Suzanna Walters wrote what must be one of the most hate-filled, sexist, bigoted op-eds in the history of the paper that universally condemned all men on the planet (including apparently all gay men, black men, Muslim men, trans men, etc.). The diatribe was titled “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” with the answer being, according to Prof. Walters, “we can,” or in her words “We have every right to hate you.” (I can't remember where this came from.)

 

In 1917, during the third year of World War I, Britain’s King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and surnames, changing the surname of his own family, the decidedly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor.

Perseid: Noun: Astronomy. any of a shower of meteors appearing in August and radiating from a point in the constellation Perseus

Perseid may have been introduced into English from Italian Perseidi, coined by the distinguished Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910), who is unfortunately best remembered today for the mistranslation into English of Italian canali “channels” on Mars as “canals,” which has inspired decades and decades of science fiction. Perseid ultimately comes from Greek Perseídēs “offspring or daughters of Perseus,” because the meteors appear to be coming from the constellation Perseus. Perseid entered English in the 19th century

Perseus, in Greek mythology, was the great hero before Hercules. He was the slayer of the Gorgon Medusa and the rescuer of Andromeda from a sea monster. Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius of Argos. ... He turned the sea monster to stone by showing it Medusa’s head and afterward married Andromeda.

Here is a curious trend I am noticing. I have several left-wing sites I like and read regularly. They are beginning to develop a new theme: Respecting people in red states. Maybe that Bourdain quote is indicative of some growing understanding. The question is, is it a realization or a technique?

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2017/02/sn-1572.html

steeleydock: SN 1572 steeleydock.blogspot.com Last night of all,When yond same star that’s westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of heaven Where now it burns--Bernardo, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, introducing The Ghost

The DHS separation of children is on the front of Time magazine. What is going on here? Everywhere you turn you see highly leveraged outrage over less and less.

Pedro Alverez has been designated for assignment. Thus is winding down one of the true disasters of MLB draft where everyone mishandled this good talent. He should sue.

Since November 2016, the Democrat Socialists of America membership has increased from about 5,000 to 35,000 nationwide. The number of local groups has grown from 40 to 181, including 10 in Texas. Houston’s once-dormant chapter now has nearly 300 members.

A 2016 survey of 18- to 29-year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that 16 percent self-identified as socialists, while 33 percent supported socialism. Only 42 percent supported capitalism, while 51 percent did not. Another survey in 2017 found that 51 percent of millennials identified socialism or communism as their favored socioeconomic system. Only 42 percent favored capitalism.

This is getting weird.

“A third of children under 19 are regular users of dietary supplements or alternative medicines,” researchers concluded after analyzing “data from a large national survey.” The data revealed that “multivitamins were the most common supplements, followed by vitamin C, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D and melatonin.”

An interesting distinction: The defense of the mobility of capital is a question of freedom. This is not a matter of “the freedom of capital,” as the critics complain, because capital is not a person capable of being free or unfree. It is a matter of people’s freedom to decide what to do with their own resources – the freedom, for example, to invest their pension savings wherever they believe it is best to do so….

There is also a question of businesses being at liberty to seek financing from other countries. Factories and offices do not build themselves – it takes capital.--Norberg

George Will has officially left the Republican Party.  He switched his voter registration from Republican to “unaffiliated” in the state of Maryland. He told the Washington Post, where he writes a column, that he made the change several weeks ago, after House Speaker Paul Ryan endorsed Trump for the 2020 election. This is a big deal, especially with the death of Krauthammer. Will is pretentious but bright, focused and very persuasive. He will be a significant opponent.

ABC apparently is planning a "Roseanne" this fall without Roseanne. Think about that a minute.

From Pinker's new book: "Perhaps most damaging, the [false] impression that the modern economy has left most people behind encourages Luddite and beggar-thy-neighbor policies that would make everyone worse off."

Our success as a species over the last several hundred years is truly wondrous. Only a special mind would be un-awed and bitter. This makes the urgency of the current unrest all the more bewildering. One can only hope that our success is not as fragile as the minds that criticize it.

The politician's obsession over "jobs" implies that work itself, with a paycheck, is of value. But is that true? The whole idea of competition is the developing of a more efficient, more rewarding pathway and that process certainly must involve job loss as much as capital loss in the esteemed "disruption." So that not only does competition advance the economy by weeding out inefficient businesses and capital allocations, it must also weed out jobs that are similarly deficient.

Will on Krauthammer: https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/charles-krauthammer-dies/

A quote from Krauthammer: "America is the only country ever founded on an idea. The only country that is not founded on race or even common history. It’s founded on an idea and the idea is liberty. That is probably the rarest phenomena in the political history of the world;"

Thomas More was another of Henry VIII's casualties. He has had a mixed review in history. Some thought him a pedantic ascetic. "A Man for All Seasons" was more kind.  He interestingly made sure his daughters received the same education as his son – which was very rare during his time. His last words: "I die the King's good servant, and God's first."

Popper's idea of "falsifiability"-- that to be a scientific concept there had to be a way of disproving it--became a basic in thinking. So Einstein's Relativity was falsifiable (for example by Eddington) and thus science whereas Freud's psychiatric dynamics were neither. He had some trouble with evolution and this definition and many creationists jumped on it. He fought his way out of it, arguing that selection, not evolution, was the theory and quite falsifiable. But what would he have done with Multiple Universes? Or String Theory? Has science begun speculating on the number of angels on the head of a pin?

In 1972, Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 was enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. What it has become is a lot, lot more.

AAAAaaaannnnndddddd......Graph of degrees by gender: