Inactivism

What made us rich was liberty, not helpful nudges and lovely industrial policies and wonderful protections enforced by the government’s monopoly of coercion, on display in China in the hugely unprofitable governmental enterprises.--McCloskey

Happy Halloween!

Tremendous series. I stayed up til the end last night. Nothing I expected--or anybody expected. Just a terrific event. Washington deserved every bit of it.



Rob Lowe and Liv Tyler on a redo TV series?

Fighting sexual inequality: Monogamy reduces the ability of high-status males to monopolize women and helped to equalize mating opportunities. Reproductive justice! This decreased violent competition among males. Jordan Peterson has been especially vocal about the sexual-egalitarian and violence-reduction benefits of monogamy.

AR-15: AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, which is manufactured by Colt Manufacturing Co. 

If the solidarity and love for our fellow compatriots that we do not personally know led us to forbid the importation of goods from other producers that we also do not personally know - say, like those in Asia or Europe - we would destroy the ability of markets to support specialization and thereby create wealth and human betterment.  Such conflict prominently takes the form of sharp controversies over inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, and whether or to what extent wealth creation generates inequality through innovation and the subsequent distribution of its benefits.--Smith and Wilson.
If politics disrupt that relationship--through whatever stated grand motive (like "social justice")--that virtuous relationship is replaced by something else, certainly inferior to what it started with. Controlling wealth creation is more than arrogant, it is by definition destructive.

Science: from Latin scientia, present participle of scire (to know). Ultimately from the Indo-European root skei- (to cut or split), which also gave us schism!

An unmanned X-37B space plane landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday, wrapping up a record 780 days in orbit, the US Air Force said Sunday. The mission broke the mysterious plane's own record by spending more than two years in space. "The X-37B continues to demonstrate the importance of a reusable space plane," secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett said in a statement.

Competition is, to paraphrase Hayek, how we decide who will serve us best.  (Murphy--Jon, not the dog)

“At this time there are no known benefits for taking CBD over-the-counter,” explains Dr. Davey Smith, Chief of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego. “CBD is this generation’s snake oil, where millions are engaging with the product without evidence of any benefit.”

On October 31, 1517, legend has it that the priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation.

                          Inactivism

Retired community activist and former President Obama said in an interview that publicly shaming people on Twitter is "not activism."

"I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people — and this is accelerated by social media — there is this sense sometimes of 'the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,'" he said.

Obama went on to say, "This idea of purity, and you're never compromised, and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly."

Calling for more nuance in difficult conversations, Obama said, "The world is messy, there are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you."

This, of course, is totally untrue. Shallow outrage and virtue signaling is exactly what social activism is. And a constituency that needs to be told that the world is "messy" and has "ambiguities" cannot possibly be expected to initiate any significantly worthwhile change. 

The Transition to Renewables

Actually, one reason to read history is to know how little has generally been known about what was coming next.--Will




The Jim McCague Fat Tour continues: Another dinner out, this time with Jim Bauerle at PGC.

Max Scherzer vs. Zack Greinke on Wednesday night in Game 7. For the championship. I never would have believed this. On pitching, today, the advantage goes to the Washington starter  (although he is hurt) with the deep Astros bullpen their advantage later. But this is amazing. Verlander gets beat again. But it was too late for me to see the whole game--aggravating.

On the other hand, the Pens looked great.

In December last year, veteran naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough warned attendees at the United Nations climate-change summit that the “collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”This pronouncement was very much in keeping with Attenborough’s long-standing neo-Malthusian views, from his insistence that he has “never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more,” or his fondness for heterodox economist Kenneth Boulding’s saying that “anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.” Attenborough’s remarks generated some pushback, both on the grounds that not even the IPCC predicts such a dire outcome, and that his warning of imminent catastrophe is at odds with the positive trends observable in public health, climate, reforestation, and other environmental data. Critics could also have pointed out that warnings of incoming climate apocalypse are much older than the global cooling scare of the 1970s. As the biogeographer, Philip Stott observed, “every age has viewed climate change cataclysmically, as retribution for human greed and sinfulness.” (Spiked.com)

From Phillip Dick's writing in 1996:

1995: Computer use by ordinary citizens (already available in 1980) will transform the public from passive viewers of TV into mentally alert, highly trained, information-processing experts

2010: Using tachyons (particles that move backward in time) as a carrier, the Soviet Union will attempt to alter the past with scientific information.

How does the internet affect government approval? Using surveys of 840,537 individuals from 2,232 subnational regions in 116 countries in 2008-2017 from the Gallup World Poll and the global expansion of 3G networks, we show that an increase in internet access reduces government approval and increases the perception of corruption in government. This effect is present only when the internet is not censored and is stronger when traditional media is censored. Actual incidents of corruption translate into higher corruption perception only in places covered by 3G. In Europe, the expansion of mobile internet increased vote shares of anti-establishment populist parties.--the abstract from a paper by Guriev et al

A military guy disagreed with Trump's call to the Ukraine. Is that grounds for impeachment? There are some anarchistic precedents being set here. The fact Pelosi wants a vote now makes me think the secret meetings with leaks are not polling well.

A CBC investigation found that escalator accidents happen every second day in the Montreal Metro. In the U.S., about 10,000 escalator-related injuries end in emergency room visits every year. Many of those victims were likely walking. A  study in Tokyo found almost 60 percent of escalator accidents between 2013 and 2014 resulted from people using escalators improperly, which includes people walking or running on them. Danger everywhere.

Americans think that about 24 percent of people are gay or lesbian, but the true percentage is closer to 2 percent. The biggest study I have ever seen, which demanded homosexual contact of some sort, was 1.4% men, 0.7% women.

"I have sought to present the political ideas of the humanists as the expression of a movement of thought and action, similar in its physiognomy if not in its content to the movement of the philosophes of the Enlightenment.  It was a movement that was stimulated by a crisis of legitimacy in late medieval Italy and by widespread disgust with its political and religious leadership.  Its adherents were men who had wide experience — often bitter, personal experience — with tyranny.  They knew that oligarchs and even popular governments could be as tyrannical as princes.  Their movement was largely in agreement about its goals: to rebuild Europe’s depleted reserves of good character, true piety, and practical wisdom.  They also agreed widely about means: the revival of classical antiquity, which the humanists presented as an inspiring pageant, rich in examples of noble conduct, eloquent speech, selfless dedication to country, and inner moral strength, nourished by philosophy and uncorrupt Christianity.  The humanist movement yearned after greatness, moral and political.  Its most pressing historical questions were how ancient Rome had achieved her vast and enduring empire, and whether it was possible to bring that greatness to life again under modern conditions.  This led to the question of whether it was the Roman Republic or the Principate that should be emulated; and, once the humanists had learned Greek, it provoked the further question of whether Rome was the only possible ancient model to emulate, or whether Athens or Sparta, or even the Persia of Xenophon’s Cyrus, held lessons for contemporary statesmen." 
This is from James Hankins' new book Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy. I don't know if it addresses the attempt of European intellectuals to isolate the new humanist movement and make it free of Christianity.

"...today the U.S. government is in the midst of forcing a standoff with China over the global deployment of Huawei’s 5G wireless networks around the world. This is a complicated issue, and financial interest probably plays a big role. But global security also matters here. This conflict is perhaps the clearest acknowledgment we’re likely to see that our own government knows how much control of communications networks really matters, and our inability to secure communications on these networks could really hurt us."-from a cryptography blog 


"The War of the Worlds”—Orson Welles's realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth—was broadcast on the radio on October 30, 1938. 
                    The Transition to Renewables

The West's incredible self-inflicted Auto-da-fé continues. A new report by consulting giant McKinsey finds that Germany's Energiewende, or energy transition to renewables, poses a significant threat to the nation's economy and energy supply. This is culled from an article in Forbes and is dense but is well worth the read. Keep in mind, these strictures upon the citizens and the economy are "voluntary;" they are government-imposed, presumably the result of the agreement of the general political population and not the wishes of a small, successful minority. This promises incredibly difficult restrictions upon life and living.


"If emissions reductions continue at the same pace as they did over the past decade, then CO₂ targets for 2020 will only be reached eight years later, and 2030 targets will not be reached until 2046."

Germany has failed to even come close to reducing its primary energy consumption to levels it hoped. McKinsey says Germany is just 39% toward its goal for primary energy reduction.
Germany still generates just 35% of its electricity from renewables. And if biomass burning, often dirtier than coal, is excluded, wind, water and solar electricity in Germany accounted for just 27% of electricity generation in 2018.
McKinsey issues its strongest warning when it comes to Germany's increasingly insecure energy supply due to its heavy reliance on intermittent solar and wind. For three days in June 2019, the electricity grid came close to black-outs.
As a result of Germany's energy supply shortage, the highest observed cost of short-term "balancing energy"  skyrocketed from €64 in 2017 to €37,856 in 2019.
Renewables are causing similarly high price shocks in other parts of the world including Texas, Australia, and California.

And Britain and Australia have faced similar energy supply problems in recent years as they have attempted to transition to intermittent renewables.

“We have to have systems in place to make sure we still have enough generation on the grid -- or else, in the best case, we have a blackout, and in the worst case, we have some kind of grid collapse,” Severin Borenstein, a University of California energy economist told Bloomberg.

"The ongoing phase-out of nuclear power by the end of 2022 and the planned coal withdrawal will successively shut down further secured capacity," explained McKinsey. "In particular, the industrial regions in western and southern Germany are affected, in which many capacities go off the grid and at the same time, one can not expect high rates of development of renewables."

The growing insecurity of German energy supply is made worse by the fact that its neighbors Belgium and Netherlands may shut down baseload capacity: coal plants in the Netherlands and nuclear plants in Belgium.
To stabilize the electricity grid and avoid becoming too dependent on imported natural gas, Germany is expanding coal mining to the Hambach forest, where environmental activists were arrested last September.
Meanwhile, local communities and environmentalists have successfully blocked the building of transmission lines from the windy north to the industrial south. German electricity prices are 45% above the European average, McKinsey reports. Green taxes account for 54% of household electricity prices.
Electricity prices will continue to rise through 2030, McKinsey predicts, despite promises in recent years by renewable energy advocates and German politicians that they would go down.
And higher prices will threaten the German industry's competitiveness. Among the radical changes required include building transmission lines eight times faster than they are currently being built, building new back-up power plants, and installing instruments to control electricity demand, all of which would drive electricity prices even higher.

"But it is also clear that the consequences of a blackout would be much higher," warns McKinsey.
Alternatively, Germany could abandon its phase-out of nuclear energy, something the consultancy, like many others in the country, does not mention.

The Failures of the Market

Wind and solar can’t even produce enough energy to manufacture the hardware they are made from. They are a parasite on the larger economy, making a few people wealthy at everyone’s expense. They are wealth-destroying technologies. --Patrick Moore

Another dull Steeler game. The way Rudolph throws, they should draft nothing but power forwards as wideouts. Everything was a jump ball except the open guys who were overthrown. It may not be the Steelers, it may be the game itself.
Joe Flacco has a herniated disk in his neck that puts his season and possibly his career in jeopardy and leaves Denver’s dysfunctional offense in the hands of a trio of quarterbacks who have never taken a regular-season snap in the NFL.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio's "Special One-Time Assistance Program," (SOTA) local homeless families are given a full year's worth of rent - which has cost NYC taxpayers $89 million on rent alone since August 2017 - before exporting some 5,074 homeless families (12,482 individuals) to cities as far as the South Pacific, according to the New York Post, citing data from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS).

"The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800.

Add to the tab the cost of furnishings, which the city also did not disclose. One SOTA recipient said she received $1,000 for them.

DHS defends the stratospheric costs, saying it actually saves the city on shelter funding — which amounts to about $41,000 annually per family, as compared to the average yearly rent of $17,563 to house families elsewhere." -New York Post

As retail sales continue to slow, stores like Nordstrom, Crate & Barrel and Tiffany & Co. are investing in eateries to give shoppers a new reason to come through their doors. (wsj)

...contrary to what American progressives believe, most wealth isn't devoted to extravagant consumption. Instead, it's invested in companies; it's used to fund research and development that will create better goods and services for consumers; it serves as the capital that innovators and producers borrow from banks to grow their businesses. In other words, most wealth is used to fuel other wealth-producing activities that improve well-being.
So whether a wealth tax will create a real disincentive to accumulate capital or force rich taxpayers to send a larger share of their money to the IRS, less capital will be available for everyone in the economy to use for their own businesses and training. That means that many Americans beyond the super-wealthy will get burned by the tax.
So whether a wealth tax will create a real disincentive to accumulate capital or force rich taxpayers to send a larger share of their money to the IRS, less capital will be available for everyone in the economy to use for their own businesses and training. That means that many Americans beyond the super-wealthy will get burned by the tax.--deRugy
The basic problem is, is a society better off with politicians doing the spending?

Killer smog hovered over Donora, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 1948. Over a five-day period, the smog killed about 20 people and made thousands more seriously ill.

          The Failures of the Market

Ebeling has an article on the Collectivists' assessment of the failures of the free market. These failures are seen without the context of the modern world's remarkable successes, the incredible advances in health, life expectancy, comfort, and diversion. And, if one is allowed to see it as an advantage, freedom. That said, it is an adequate summary of opinions that are usually presented in a disjointed--and emotional--manner. Adequate, but subjective, utopian and not very convincing. And, of course, it never considers the alternatives.

"First, the financial crisis of 2008-2009, claimed to have been caused by unregulated financial markets that produced an artificial housing market that then collapsed, leaving many in financially desperate circumstances, from which many of those have still not fully recovered, a decade after the banking debacle was set in motion. 

Second, this is closely connected to another of capitalism’s sins, the persistence and worsening of income and social inequality, that carries with it various forms of societal injustice. Basically, it is asserted that the richest have been getting richer, while the vast majority in society languishes in either stagnation or falling economic circumstances. 

Third, and closely tied to that second accusation, is the claim that free-market liberal societies create and cannot operate successfully without sexist and racial bigotry and discrimination. The presumption is that a capitalist system, based on exploitation of others in general, always ends up particularly oppressing and abusing “people of color” and the one half of the human population still generally called “women.”

Fourth, profit-guided market economies pursue methods of production that have caused the global warming cataclysm said to be hanging over the world, and having caused it, self-interested greedy ways of making millions offers no solution to the global environmental problems in general. 

Fifth, it is said that free-market liberalism is an inherently elitist social and political system because it is the narrow number of people who own the methods of production and therefore control the means of earning a living, who use their political power to thwart the majoritarian well of the “the people” to control their lives through government regulation and planning of humankind’s economic and social affairs through a truly democratic system free from the control of the “one percent.” 

And, sixth, liberal market society is based on a mythical and false notion of individualism and personal freedom that denies and tries to destroy the ethnic and cultural communitarianism that reflects the real social needs of people as collective wholes, and which give people a sense of identity, belonging, and security for which they are longing." 

The Prisoner's Dilemma

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.--Sowell


The WSJ does not like Trump but they had a scathing editorial on the illegality of the impeachment circus, comparing it to "a bill of attainder."

I was happy about the Astros. Hudson looked like the guy the Pirates gave up on.

The cost of implementing a wealth tax and annually assessing assets often costs more than the tax actually raises in revenue. In France, for instance, the administration cost was double the revenue raised. As such, it's not surprising that the country dropped its wealth tax in 2018.

“The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be ‘spun’ to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition.”--Lindzen

No. 361: On April 25, 2003 the crew of a Chinese fishing boat noticed a periscope drifting above the surface of the water. The fishermen notified the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) which promptly dispatched two vessels to investigate to find all of the crew members of the submarine dead from suffocation.


                                   The Prisoner's Dilemma

Wikipedia has a good explanation of the "prisoner's dilemma." Try as I might, this always seems more complex a problem than as it is presented.

"The prisoner's dilemma is a standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher while working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence rewards and named it "prisoner's dilemma", presenting it as follows:

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge, but they have enough to convict both on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent. The offer is:

• If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves two years in prison
• If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve three years in prison (and vice versa)
• If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve one year in prison (on the lesser charge).

It is implied that the prisoners will have no opportunity to reward or punish their partner other than the prison sentences they get and that their decision will not affect their reputation in the future. Because betraying a partner offers a greater reward than cooperating with them, all purely rational self-interested prisoners will betray the other, meaning the only possible outcome for two purely rational prisoners is for them to betray each other.  The interesting part of this result is that pursuing individual reward logically leads both of the prisoners to betray when they would get a better reward if they both kept silent. In reality, humans display a systemic bias towards cooperative behavior in this and similar games despite what is predicted by simple models of "rational" self-interested action.^"

Simone Weil

Reparations: To have a child born with the hereditary right to expropriate another's goods or efforts is a virtual definition of royalty.--me


Pizza at the McGraws and watched the series where the Astros began to look as advertised. Merideth is chipper, holding up very well.

Today's gospel is the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. It is familiar but worth an extra thought. The two prayerful people are extremes, at both ends of a spectrum where most people would not be. Christ paints a portrait where the audience can not identify with either.

Europe’s birthrate is among the lowest in the world. At 1.59 per year, the European Union’s current births are too low to sustain its survival. But while native birthrates have declined, Europe’s overall population continues to grow due to mass immigration. Importing assistance.

Reuters and Newsweek are reporting that the Islamic State’s self-styled Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in a United States Special Ops overnight raid Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash on the Turkey-Syria border while fleeing Syria’s northwestern Idlib Governorate.

No longer a team defined by the play of quarterback Tom Brady, New England is fielding one of the most dominant defenses in NFL history. The 48 total points allowed by New England heading into Week 8 are the lowest since the AFL-NFL merger and the second-lowest on record, trailing only the Otto Graham-led 1946 Cleveland Browns. The Patriots’ score differential of 175 points is the best all-time through seven games. Surprisingly, they are below average at pressuring the opposing quarterback. 

The Church of Scientology, its members, and companies controlled by its members have spent $103 million over the past three years buying retail property in downtown Clearwater, Fla., according to the Tampa Bay Times. Times investigative reporters pored over 1,000 deeds and business records, and interviewed more than 90 people, to connect the dots from the church buying its first hotel in the area in 1975, to Scientologists and their businesses now owning 185 properties covering 101 acres in the heart of downtown Clearwater — which is also Scientology’s headquarters, and home to its “flag” campus, to which Scientologists across the globe make pilgrimages. What is done on these pilgrimages is not known.

10 percent of all American workers are making $100,000 or more a year, but most of those high paying jobs are concentrated in the major cities along the east and west coasts.  For much of the rest of the country, these are very challenging times as the cost of living soars but their paychecks do not.  According to the Social Security Administration, the median income in the United States last year was just $32,838.05.  In other words, 50 percent of American workers made more than $32,838.05 and 50 percent of American workers made less than $32,838.05 in 2018. 

On this day in 1659, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, two Quakers who came from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, were executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. The two had violated a law passed by the Massachusetts General Court the year before, banning Quakers from the colony under penalty of death. Whether the Society of friends plans to sue for reparations is not known.

                            Simone Weil

This is the poem that the ecstatic Simone Weil, a staggeringly complex woman whose life was confusion, erratic and overwhelmingly religious. Born into a Jewish family--but not knowing what a Jew was until her teens--this woman, thought to be one of the brightest women of her generation, alternately was adored by all who knew her and drove them crazy. In WWII she walked with one foot in the War, one in Heaven.
This was the poem that, according to her, revolutionized her life, a frightening poem when one thinks on how Weil died, essentially on a hunger strike against life.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack,
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd anything.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and tast me meat:
So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert

Mathematics is Oppressive

A painter is a man who paints what he sells; an artist, on the other hand, is a man who sells what he paints. -Pablo Picasso



Went to Garbarino's, my fourth dinner out in a row. I'm up 5 pounds and feel it. The place was really loud but the food--Italian--was good and with affordable options. There is a new breed of waitstaff that looks and acts as if they are embittered, indentured servants. There are a lot of those there.

Roughly one year after the University of Manchester Student Union banned clapping at its events - choosing to instead ask audiences to use 'jazz hands' to show their appreciation for a performance - students at the University of Oxford are working to "replace clapping" because it could "trigger anxiety." Like their peers in Manchester, they will ask audiences to use silent hand-wave motion called "jazz hands". The motion to "mandate the encouragement of silent clapping" successfully passed in a vote taken by the school's Student Union during their first meeting of the new school year.

"Jazz hands" is the British Sign Language movement to express applause. It is considered a "more inclusive" gesture.

Many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. But actually, it’s English that is odd: almost all European languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders that way.

Trump told the Columbians that if they did not control their border better he would cut their aid. Was that quid pro quo?

'...college admissions policies can either be based on academic excellence, or they can pursue social justice and diversity goals, but they can’t do both simultaneously. To the extent that colleges like Harvard pursue social justice and artificially engineered diversity goals in admissions, they compromise academic excellence and have to discriminate against Asians to do so. Just like top college football or basketball programs like Clemson or Virginia can either pursue athletic excellence to win national titles, or pursue social justice and diversity goals, but it can’t do both at the same time. If elite, highly competitive college sports programs pursue social justice and engineered diversity to make a top basketball or football team “look more like America” or “look more like the student body on campus,” it could only do so by compromising athletic excellence. Why should participation in elite, highly competitive college sports programs, which are based solely on merit and ability, be any different from participation in elite, highly competitive academic programs at America’s colleges?"--Mac Donald

75% of immigrants integrate into the majoritarian culture over the period of a generation. 
That said, there is a high school in LA that has fifth-generation Hispanic families that do not speak English.

The Big Sky Conference named the University of Montana runner June Eastwood, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman, the cross-country female athlete of the week. “June Eastwood finished second in a field of 204 runners at the Santa Clara Bronco Invitational,” helping “Montana place seventh as a team,” the conference noted in its announcement Tuesday. Eastwood previously competed on the University of Montana’s men’s team.

Tulsi Gabbard, the last House member still in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Thursday she would not seek reelection for her Hawaii seat.
“I believe I can best serve the people of Hawaiʻi and our country as your President and Commander-in-Chief,” she said in an announcement posted on Twitter.
I think she is the most un-political of all the awful candidates. I'm beginning to like her.

“Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.”--Richard Lindzen

On October 26, 1775, King George III addressed both houses of the British Parliament to discuss growing concern about the rebellion in America, which he viewed as a traitorous action against himself and Great Britain. He began his speech by reading a “Proclamation of Rebellion” and urged Parliament to move quickly to end the revolt and bring order to the colonies. The king spoke of his belief that “many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation, and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them.” With these words, the king gave Parliament his consent to dispatch troops to use against his own subjects, a notion that his colonists believed impossible.

                       Mathematics is Oppressive

We seem to be opening a cultural door where the new standard is that standards are evil. This inherent contradiction seems to offend no one. To coin a new contradiction, we are entering a time of repressive open-mindedness. Nowhere is this more obvious and dangerous than in education, where the groundwork for the social and political future is laid.
The basic problem is the disparity of outcomes. Why do some in a land of equality do better than others? We believe that there is a bell curve for individuals but not for groups. We blamed dumb kids eating lead paint. Despite the extraordinary social advances, we blamed poverty. Now, it's a conspiracy.

Robby Soave writing at Reason on how Seattle public schools will now start teaching that mathematics is oppressive:

The new guidance also includes some extremely political, simplistic talking points that might be popular among activist academics but are in reality somewhat dubious. This is verbatim from the proposal: Students will be able to “identify the inherent inequities of the standardized testing system used to oppress and marginalize people and communities of color,” “explain how math has been used to exploit natural resources,” and “explain how math dictates economic oppression.”

And  in response from John Hinderaker writing at the Power Line blog:

The ability to do math transcends race and other irrelevant factors. Facility at mathematics, earned through many hours of hard labor, has allowed countless Asian-Americans to prosper, to the point where Asian-American incomes are now on average considerably higher than white incomes. Why were all these “people of color” not “oppressed” or “marginalized” by mathematics? Because they did their homework and studied for tests.

So, in a land that loves diversity, we demand conformity of results. A contradiction. 

Vaping

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They do not mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.--Eliot


Medical meeting last night at Eddie Merlot. I have been out for dinner three nights in a row. My weight is up four pounds.

San Francisco has a  newly proposed Office of Emerging Technology. The proposed Office would impose a new permitting system on anyone looking to launch new technologies that might somehow use public rights-of-way, such as sidewalks and roads. Operating freedoms would be doled out under a pilot program for emerging-technology devices.
Think Taxi Medallions.

Hmmm. Attorney General William Barr’s expanding review of the Russia probe has evolved into a criminal investigation, giving a federal prosecutor who is leading the inquiry the ability to subpoena witnesses and use a grand jury. (wsj)

The origins of the term Deep State are from the secretive Turkish network known as derin devlet, literally "deep state."  This group was founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with the purpose of undertaking clandestine acts to preserve the current governmental structure. These acts included coups and private assassinations of figures who were seen as hostile to the establishment; they were particularly targeted toward the press, communists, Kurds, and other dissenters.


In 1800, 75% of [an American's] working man's expenditures went for food alone. By 1850, that had dropped to 50%. Today it is a little more than 11%.

~The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 1996

“The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be ‘spun’ to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition.”--Richard Lindzen

In a 2013 paper published by the Brookings Institution, economist Scott Winship reviewed claims made about inequality and their negative impact on various aspects of our lives. In a summary of that paper for National Affairs, he writes that there’s “little basis for thinking that inequality is at the root of our economic challenges, and therefore for believing that reducing inequality would meaningfully address our lagging growth, enable greater mobility, avert future financial crises, or secure America’s democratic institutions.”

During the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, Henry V, the young king of England, fought and won the Battle of Agincourt in northern France. Two months before, Henry had crossed the English Channel with 11,000 men and laid siege to Harfleur in Normandy. After five weeks the town surrendered, but Henry lost half his men to disease and battle casualties. He decided to march his army northeast to Calais, where he would meet the English fleet and return to England. At Agincourt, however, he encountered a vast French army of 20,000 men. An English advantage was their innovative longbows with a range of 250 yards.  As more and more French knights made their way onto the crowded battlefield, their mobility decreased further, and some lacked even the room to raise their arms and strike a blow. At this point, Henry ordered his lightly equipped archers to rush forward with swords and axes, and the unencumbered Englishmen massacred the French. Almost 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives during the Battle of Agincourt, while English deaths amounted to just over 400. With odds greater than three to one, Henry had won one of the great victories of military history. After further conquests in France, Henry V was recognized in 1420 as heir to the French throne and the regent of France. He was at the height of his powers but died just two years later of camp fever near Paris.

                   Vaping              

Vaping is under fire but the story is strange. Every report has been very critical of half measures taken over the control of nicotine. But the wave of lung injuries and deaths have been linked to the vaping of tainted marijuana concentrates, not simple nicotine. The episode reveals the dangers created by the federal government’s decade long refusal to challenge state laws legalizing pot and promoting risky uses of its derivatives.

According to an analysis by health officials in Wisconsin and Illinois, about 87% of those recently injured said they had vaped tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, from prefilled cartridges purchased from “informal sources” during the three months before they developed symptoms. A majority of the victims said they used THC every day.

Data from state marijuana dispensaries show that inhalation of these liquid concentrates from a vaping device is now the second most common way to consume THC, exceeded only by the old-fashioned way. Because the vape cartridges are prefilled, users don’t know what they’re getting. To prepare the concentrates, dodgy suppliers are known to add ingredients to thicken the liquids, since viscosity is seen as a measure of the concentrate’s potency. But these emulsifiers, including vitamin E acetate, can be deadly if inhaled into the lungs. The liquids can also contain pesticides and other contaminants that, when heated, produce gases that can directly injure the lungs.

But despite the confusion over jurisdiction and the peculiar legal cutouts, the real problem is the unwillingness of the culture to investigate THC and make a decision on its safety.

Happy Birthday Earth

The American Constitution declares "All men are born equal." The British Socialist party adds: "All men must be kept equal."--Churchill


Joan's Cercone's father died and we went to the funeral home. Lively. Gina looked pretty good. Stopped for dinner at the strangely named "Fish nor Fowl" and was impressed.

I am just astonished at how the Series has gone so far.

However you feel about Trump, the environment in Washington has to worry you. Repeated wild accusations that never seem to be proved but morph into another critical iteration, relentless criticism of what has become generic political behavior but is presented as uniquely Trumpian, now secret hearings where things are carefully and selectively leaked. (So far, no torture seems to be involved.) While all of this is unfair, it is pointed, planned and organized. It is a teaching moment as to how important an objective and un-invested Press is to a democracy. And a warning as to the threat posed by those enlightened ones who want to sacrifice principles for a greater good.

On March 2, 2018, when Fox Business Network’s “Mornings With Maria” asked whether China would retaliate against the metal tariffs, Mr. Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro replied, “I don’t believe any country in the world is going to retaliate for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world.” He was wrong: Everyone has retaliated against us. A recent study by the economists Mary Amiti of the Federal Reserve, Stephen J. Redding of Princeton and David Weinstein of Columbia shows that our trading partners, “especially China, have retaliated with tariffs averaging 16 percent on approximately $121 billion of U.S. exports.”--de Rugy

A 25-year-old driver today arrested on suspicion of murder after 39 bodies were found in his lorry in Essex.


Assortive Mating. Smart women with good educations are marryng smart well-educated men. Their children are often smart and get good educations. This, believe it or not, is being seen as a social problem, an argument  (from Milanovic) that can become very scary.
"Looking at twenty-two countries around the world, Miles Corak showed in 2013 that there was a positive correlation between high inequality in any one year and a strong correlation between parents’ and children’s incomes (i.e., low-income mobility). This result makes sense, because high inequality today implies that the children of the rich will have, compared to the children of the poor, much greater opportunities. Not only can they count on greater inheritance, but they will also benefit from better education, better social capital obtained through their parents, and many other intangible advantages of wealth. None of those things are available to the children of the poor." 
These dangerous things like individual choice and decision have serious consequences for those who make bad choices and decisions. Now, just how could a good hearted bureaucrat help here....?

“When an issue becomes a vital part of a political agenda, as is the case with climate, then the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research.”--Lindzen

On this day in 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years' War and radically shifting the balance of power in Europe. The Thirty Years' War, a series of wars fought by European nations for various reasons, ignited in 1618 over an attempt by the king of Bohemia (the future Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand II) to impose Catholicism throughout his domains. Protestant nobles rebelled, and by the 1630s most of continental Europe was at war. As a result of the Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands gained independence from Spain, Sweden gained control of the Baltic and France was acknowledged as the preeminent Western power. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken and the German states were again able to determine the religion of their lands.

The principle of state sovereignty emerged as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia and serves as the basis for the modern system of nation-states.

                Happy Birthday Earth One Day Late



This is one of my favorite days of the year. Today is the birthday of the earth.

James Ussher was born in Ireland in 1581. His mother was Catholic but he grew up a Calvinist. He became a priest, was a well regarded academic and scholar. He became Bishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland in 1625 and continued so until his death in 1656.

But, while a powerful and influential political and religious figure, he is known best for his historical research into the age of the earth. He started with Adam. The bible records an unbroken line from Adam to Solomon. There were some estimates necessary because not all of the information correlates perfectly, and there is some guesswork from begat to begat.

After Solomon, more historical resources were necessary but good historic points existed up to the Destruction of the Temple. After this--the so-called Late Age of Kings from Ezra to Jesus--the Bible offered little help and most of the dates had to be taken from independent history. For example, the death of the Chaldean King Nebuchadnezzar II, who conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C., could be correlated with the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiachin (2 Kings 25:27).

He finally published his most famous work, the Annales veteris testimenti, a prima mundi origine deducti ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world"), which appeared in 1650, and its continuation, Annalium pars posterior, published in 1654. In this work, he calculated the date of the Creation to have been nightfall on October 22, 4004 B.C.. Probably at 6 p.m..

Before you roll your eyes, be aware that his estimates do not differ much from other such bible-based estimates of the time, estimates from significant thinkers, notably Johannes Kepler who estimated the birth of the earth as 3992 B.C. and Isaac Newton as 4000 B.C.. And Ussher was a very accomplished man; his collected works make up eighteen volumes.

The annoying and disappointing Stephan Jay Gould would write in "Fall in the House of Ussher" in Eight Little Piggies:

I shall be defending Ussher's chronology as an honorable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology…

So times change. Methodologies change. And brilliant minds work within their contexts. And some, despite their greatest efforts, will be remembered only for their errors.

Happy Birthday, Earth!