Memorial Day

                        Memorial Day

War is man's most evil pursuit. Every single human motive morphs into something horrible and destructive; the most noble of man's qualities become misapplied. Somehow the diffident grasshopper becomes the predatory locust. 

Yet within the world of men, some things must be done. Individuals must live and act within the admitted abomination that is war. In the Second War the Germans and the Japanese were asked to fulfill their destiny, to complete history. This involved destroying or subjugating everyone who was not them. The Allies' children were asked to fight for their lives. Their behavior in this gargantuan struggle should always stand as a testament to man's higher elements in the midst of man's lowest. Yet questions always arise.

When Obama was in Japan and visiting Hiroshima, new discussion of the WWII atomuc bombing began. An article in the LA Times asserted the bombing was cruel, gratuitous, and not a factor in the ending of the war. "Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today," the article states. More, the cause of Japanese surrender was actually the Russian invasion of Manchuria. "It was not the atomic evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the Pacific war. Instead, it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and other Japanese colonies that began at midnight on Aug. 8, 1945 — between the two bombings." Indeed the sentiment at least seems to be in line with current thinking; the majority of Americans in polls think the bombs should not have been dropped.

Of course, people will differ in the assessment of history. Some assessments will be more accurate--sometimes more honest--than others. And many military men did not want to drop the weapons. But of all the wars in history, World War Two is the least ambiguous to analyze.

The History website has this summary:
Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused. (Italics added)

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.” They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided–over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists–to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb–such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state–believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world. (italics added)

On August 6, 1945  an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

So the Emperor cites the bomb as a factor. And the alternative was an island-by-island attack on Japan that the experts accepted would cost one million--MILLION--American lives.

The LA Times article suggests the U.S. ignored a Japanese peace approach to the U.S. requesting only the Emperor survive. But that is not entirely true. Their proposal was to keep the Emperor and the current governing militaristic system intact, something the Allies thought nonnegotiable. Another element overlooked in the LA Times article is the continuity of events. Over 200,000 people were killed in the atomic attacks. Isolated, that is horrific. One wonders how the essayist saw those deaths in the context of the war itself. Or do they spare themselves the difficulty? China suffered between 15 and 17 million--MILLION--deaths directly related to combat--many described as "crimes against humanity." The Russians lost 25 to 27 million. MILLION. Certainly, we need kinder, gentler wars.

Nonetheless, the LA Times article was quite critical of American behavior and motives in one of the world's most easily evaluated conflicts, the American democracy vs. Nazis and Japanese imperialists. Applying morality to war is tricky and can be practiced only by our best and brightest. Fortunately, a look at the by-line has the reassuring information that the LA Times article was authored by none other than Oliver Stone, the esteemed and awarded movie director. He is certainly qualified. As a member of the exclusive self-absorbed entertainment cult and the reliable creator of the movie JFK, one of the cult's more astonishing productions of historical analysis, we can certainly rely upon his opinion.

And I'm sure he would have been willing to talk to the widows, the orphans, and the parents of those million Americans, explaining that those soldiers had to die assaulting the Japanese islands because we were true to our inner nature and did not drop the cruel bombs that could have ended the war. That was not who we are.

Sunday/The Alchemist's Gate

 

                 Sunday/The Alchemist's Gate

Ted Chiang is a writer of several books of short stories with unusual sci-fi concepts. (His story "Story of Your Life" was the basis for the film, Arrival.)

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is a story of time travel. As in all time travel stories, there are some contradictions but prominent is the idea of fixed history and the need to come to peace with the past. In an interview, Chiang said he chose to place the story in the Islamic culture because he was interested in the Arabian Nights' tales within tales and in the culture's "acceptance" of fate. There are other non-Western qualities of the story setting too, like a formality that never becomes stilted, a politeness that becomes easy.

But the culture also reflects the themes of the story, forgiveness, repentance, and atonement.

Belief in God allows many to accept the tragedy of life. Faith permits those very notions of forgiveness, repentance, and atonement. Is Chiang implying the West no longer supplies the environment for these essential human needs?

SatStats

 

                                         SatStats

The state's war against inequality.

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 and given control over the nation’s money supply, the Consumer Price Index has increased by a factor of 27.25 times which has caused the US dollar to lose 96.3% of its value/purchasing power. (Perry)

Uncritical Theories

                        Uncritical Theories

"Critical race theory (CRT) is decades old but, having insinuated itself just in the last few years into cable television, social media, public school systems, and the very public institution of “cancel culture,” is receiving precisely the backlash one would hope for, even from those who do not know it by its name.

Developed in academia, it combines paranoid racial conspiracy theories with a now-orphaned pro-Soviet Marxist ideology. The fingerprints of its creators show up in its singular focus on racism in one particular country and in one particular era against one particular group. This makes it a very narrow idea, whose adherents can simultaneously turn a blind eye toward actual genocide in China while making the ludicrous claim that everyday life in America is a constant genocide.

…..

It is also a thoroughly racist ideology because it imputes evil to people solely based on the color of their skin. It is already bad enough to attribute faults to people based on their own ancestors’ misdeeds before they were born. But critical race theory establishes guilt based on far less than that — a vague resemblance to long-dead suspects is sufficient."

This is from the Washington Examiner and is a reasonable summary of the pernicious anti-American quasi-philosophy of Critical Theory. It is impossible to have a culture based upon reverence for the individual when everyone is seen as members of malicious, competing groups. This bigoted, racist nostalgia for the problems of Old Europe--and the equally vicious "solutions" of the new "Old Left"--would be laughable were they not so incredibly dangerous, Proven dangerous.

Anyone with a brain who believed such a horror would, with any conscience, devote their lives to eradicating it.

Bad Guys with Leverage

 

                     Bad Guys with Leverage

From an Issues and Insights editorial:


"The birthplace of most electric cars is the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where the diamond trade has helped finance civil war. There, “slave labor” is feeding “big tech’s quest for cobalt,” an element used in the batteries that drive EVs.

“Our children are dying like dogs,” a Congolese mother whose son and cousin died while working in the Congo’s cobalt mines. She and others have filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court that “insists companies are simply turning a blind eye to the egregious abuses that include children killed in tunnel collapses or losing limbs or suffering from other horrific injuries caused by mining accidents.”

The United Nations says that “nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves” are found in the Congo. But it’s not the only element needed to build “green” batteries. They require lithium, natural graphite, and manganese, raw materials that are “highly concentrated,” according to the U.N., “in a few countries.”

“Nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 58% of lithium reserves are in Chile, 80% of natural graphite reserves are in China, Brazil and Turkey, while 75% of manganese reserves are in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Ukraine,” says the U.N.

Look at the list again. What do some of those nations have in common? They are, the U.N. admits, “susceptible to disruption by political instability.” They also create by their Third World nature “social and environmental impacts” directly linked to “the extraction of raw materials for car batteries.”

The hypocrisy of the green movement emits a bad odor. The political left hates mining, but apparently only in the U.S., and maybe Canada. Seems that dirty mining is OK as long it’s out of sight. It’s the same with kids. “It’s for the children,” Democrats and progressives claim when their big-spending plans are challenged. Yet none on the left are calling for a halt to the green agenda until child slave labor has been eradicated from the supply chain."

I do not know Issues and Insights. This is how they describe themselves: Issues & Insights is a new site launched by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page.

Buffaloed

                           Buffaloed

As the bell curve becomes more and more a straight line, it is harder and harder to find a place to fall off. For example, it is often said that Qanon is a group that is representative of the right. I have never met one or anyone I know who has any knowledge of them. They only appear in Left articles. Maybe the Left knows a lot about them but, as far as one can see, they are not a significant group and their followers seem to be nonexistent. But they continue to appear, front and center, as prominent examples of the Conservative political movement. (The guy with the horns on his head in Washington was called the "Qanon Shaman" presumably by himself. He also has several regular names and a lawyer who says he has autism. What he is truly representative of is uncertain.)

Another seemingly peripheral group is those who believe in the "pregnant man," people that the Right seems to believe is representative of the Left. It sounds equally unlikely except it also appears as a theme in the left Press. The USA Today ran its second story this year on pregnant men.

So does that give credence to the idea that such thinking is ingrained in the Left?

Crack

 

                          Crack

The University of North Carolina has rescinded its offer of a tenured journalism professor position to the New York Times '1619 Project' author after an intense backlash.

Instead, UNC officials confirmed this week that Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won the Pulitzer Prize for the 2019 series which 'reframed' American history to focus on when the first Africans arrived in Virginia as slaves, will join its faculty this summer with a five-year contract.

That means one of the New York Times's most vaunted reporters who the newspaper has doggedly stood by even as the project has come under withering criticism by historians for its inaccuracies didn't qualify for a permanent appointment.

This is from The Daily Mail, a bit of a surprise, and is heart-warming--except it sounds as UNC changed its mind for PR reasons rather than rational and idealistic ones. But at least that means the observers are rational and idealistic, even if the institution isn't.

Vae victis!

                                   

                        Vae victis!

I knew a guy who was head of a municipal commission, a paid job with some responsibility. He showed up for work one day and found there were two new appointees to his commission. These guys were appointed after a change in an election and my guy sat down with them to explain the responsibilities of the job, to the clear discomfort of the two men. Finally, one interrupted and said he understood this was a "no show" job, a political reward, and they would not be available; they had other, real jobs. My guy quit on the spot.

Here the incumbent mayor has been defeated and the resignations are pouring in. The new mayor, understand, is of the same party, he just has different friends. There will be chaos and despair, then everything will settle down to a new baseline incompetence.

But not without a lot of disruption and a lot of heartbreak. Is this any way to run a railroad?

By the Numbers

                          

                   By the Numbers 

Althea Nagai of the Center for Equal Opportunity has spent years studying racial disparities in undergraduate and law school admissions. She’s studied law-school admissions at the University of Oklahoma, University of Wisconsin, University of Nebraska, University of Utah, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and University of Michigan. It is said that every single one of these law schools admitted black applicants who were significantly less academically qualified than white applicants. 

This is what Dr. Nagai found:

"In all 15 cases, the median LSATs of white admittees were greater than the medians of black admittees. The largest differences were found at Nebraska in 2006 (a 12-point difference), Wisconsin in 2006 (11 points), and Nebraska in 2007 (10 points). The smallest gap in median LSAT scores between white and black admittees was at Arizona State in 2007 (5 points).

In all 15 cases, the college GPAs of white admittees were greater than those of black admittees. Here too the largest black-white difference was found at Nebraska in 2006 (a 0.6-point difference), followed by Arizona in 2006 and Arizona State (0.5 of a point). The smallest difference was at Arizona in 2005 (a 0.1-point difference)." 

Are those numbers big? Small? Are they significant numbers at all?

Measuring people is fraught with assumptions and unknowns and this culture has no humility. Those differences in LSATs do not look big on the graph below.

LSATs give three scores on Test Day:

• A raw score (0-~101), the total number of scored questions answered correctly translated into…
• A scaled score (120-180), the score by which law schools will evaluate your candidacy; and
• A percentile score, comparing test-takers across various testing cohorts
• These number s are a little old but the basics are the same. Grades range from 180, the highest, to 120, the lowest.

An average score is 151 with a standard deviation of 9. Are any of these numbers important?

Regulators of Business et al

 

                           Regulators of Business et al

Shares in Chinese food delivery giant Meituan have fallen sharply after its boss reportedly shared a 1,000-year-old poem on social media.
The Book Burning Pit by Zhang Jie was posted, then deleted, by the firm's billionaire chief executive, Wang Xing.
The Tang dynasty poem was interpreted as a veiled criticism of President Xi Jinping's government.
Meituan is currently under investigation over allegations of abusing its market dominance.
The company is one of China's biggest takeaway food delivery and lifestyle services platforms and is backed by technology giant Tencent.
It has a market valuation of around $220bn (£156bn) and in April raised $10bn to fund its investment plans for deliveries using drones and self-driving vehicles.
Last month, Meituan became the second-ever major domestic technology company, after Alibaba, to face an antitrust probe by China's market regulator.
It is suspected of "monopolistic practices" such as penalising merchants for appearing on competitors' marketplaces, the State Administration for Market Regulation said at the time.
The Chinese government has been seen as cracking down on leading internet firms in recent months.
Jack Ma, who co-founded Chinese technology giant Alibaba, angered Beijing last year when he spoke out publicly about what he saw as the outdated approach of the country's regulators.
His speech was swiftly followed by authorities tightening consumer lending rules, which derailed plans for the record $35bn market debut of Alibaba's financial services affiliate Ant Group.
Last month, Alibaba was fined a record $2.8bn after a probe found that it had abused its market position for years

                                 The Offending Poem

The Qin Dynasty is ruined with the burning of bamboos and fabrics.

The Hangu Pass and the Yellow River guarded the residence of the ancestor of the Chinese dragon in vain.

Before the ashes in the burning pit turned cold, a riot had already started in Shandong Province.

It turned out that Liu Bang and Xiang Yu were both uneducated people.

Written by the famous late Tang dynasty poet Zhang Jie, the Book Burning Pit is a sarcastic criticism of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who ruled China hundreds of years earlier.
The emperor was infamous for silencing his critics by killing dissenting Confucian scholars and burning their books.
With Meituan currently under investigation, Mr Wang's post was seen by some as comparing the current suppression of dissent with the tyrannical rule of an emperor in the past.
President Xi Jinping's rule over the country has been seen as increasingly authoritarian, with little room for free speech.
(from BBC)

Are There Any Upsides in the Middle East?

 Are There Any Upsides in the Middle East?

An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets on Saturday. So the sufferings of the press will remain the big story in the endless Middle East savagery.

When are we going to start to take this problem seriously? I'll bet everyone under the age of 35 thinks that the world's greatest threat is global warming. If that is true, how do we see the Middle East problem being resolved, a struggle between two completely egocentric, self-absorbed cultures who have no regard for anything but their own desires? The Palestinians going away somewhere? Israel suffering a knockout and becoming a dwarf state or being banished to Guam?

The things we know are these: On the Palestine side, they have been trying to regain their territory since the late 1940s and there is no evidence they will give up their homeland. And they have proven wonderful proxies for other enemies of Israel who will support their fodder indefinitely. The Palestinian armory has been improving every several years; rifles have been replaced by rockets. What will the Middle East armorers give them next? From the Israeli position, they think this is their ancestral homeland and feel they need some place of safety. So they have amassed 90 nuclear weapons and have the material for 200 more.

At some point, Hamas is going to get tactical weapons from Iran or Pakistan. What then? Are we going to rely upon their better natures? So what are the possible scenarios here? Israel eventually gets worn down? Isreal eventually gets overrun?

Israel in chains? In camps? Does anyone think the Israelis are going quietly into the night? Or, as Israel staggers under the unending hostilities of their neighbors, will they strike back and, like Sampson, pull the whole area--with its oil--down on them. After all, how many targets are there in the Middle East for their 90 nukes?

If Israel is defeated, the Middle East will be uninhabitable for a thousand years.

Sunday/Unity and Joy in the World

 

                   Sunday/Unity and Joy in the World

Disorder, sadness, despair; it is tempting to see the gospel today in terms of the modern world. Christ is talking to His Father and we, with the apostles, are listening in. What He talks about is unity, integration, which we must have with each other and with God. While we do not really belong in the material world, we are encouraged to live in it, with some caution.

"I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world
but that you keep them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world."

But Christ is not talking about withdrawal, isolation. That very unity plays here too. Then he says something shocking:

"I speak this in the world
so that they may share my joy completely."

His joy in the world!

Another name for the Devil in the Bible is "The Scatterer."

  

Sat Stats

                      Sat Stats

More recent NAEP test results show that average reading scores for students in grade 12 declined from 292 in 1992 to 285 in 2019, the lowest average score during the 1992-2019 period. Average math scores for 12th graders have been flat since 2005.

Despite the significant increase between 1970 and 2018 in the number of public school teachers (57%) and non-teaching staff (152%) relative to the 11.3% increase in students and the significant 30% decrease in the pupil-to-teacher ratio in public schools and the significant 156% increase in inflation-adjusted spending per pupil attending public schools over that period, there was basically no change in academic achievement.

 The nature of Man, Nature versus Nurture, has been the topic of philosophers and thinking people and politicians forever. The world of statistics has muddied these currents of thought as people generalize from larger and larger samples. These collections demand some reaction, as do the numbers above, but the basic reaction must contain the understanding that we, and our worlds, are the products of complex, interacting systems.

Technology and Carbon Units

 

                      Technology and Carbon Units

Technology is often thought of as isolated, like a microscope or an electric fan. But interaction with a person complicates things a lot so that technology and people become something of an alloy where properties change. Here is an interesting study from Current Affairs:

"Using personnel and analytics data from over 10,000 skilled professionals at a large Asian IT services company, we compare productivity before and during the work from home [WFH] period of the Covid-19 pandemic. Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank considerably. Employees also spent less time networking, and received less coaching and 1:1 meetings with supervisors. These findings suggest that communication and coordination costs increased substantially during WFH, and constituted an important source of the decline in productivity. Employees with children living at home increased hours worked more than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than those without children."

Increased time spent in similar production. 

Not what you would have thought.

Power Failure

                      Power Failure

"There used to be widely shared boundaries on personal and public behavior. Not anymore. A lot of people no longer know how to behave or where the lines are that one shouldn’t cross.

Or, as with last summer’s political street protests, the former lines and limits have been erased. That July’s Democratic National Convention passed without one person addressing the destruction in numerous cities was a big event, a turning point, for U.S. society generally.

We are paying a high price for this transition to few limits. Derek Chauvin is about to pay a very high price for not knowing when to let up on George Floyd.

Most striking is how many people have become unconscious of or psychologically detached from the consequences of what they are doing."

This is from a wsj editorial. They are only observing; they offer no conclusion. As if there is not an obvious one. Power does not simply restrain and punish, it shepherds and rewards. Guidelines are maintained by power, internal or external. Contrary to what the revolutionary thinks, violence does not lead to liberating power, violence arises in the absence of power. It is the demonstration of the current power's failure.

I'll Tell Ya...

                       I'll Tell Ya...

In a nine-page Instagram post, singer and songwriter Demi Lovato called gender reveal parties “transphobic” and claimed that “there are boys with vaginas and girls with penises.”

Lovato claimed throughout the lengthy post that transgender activists dislike gender reveal parties because they divert from “reality.” To Lovato and other activists, reality is the concept that humans are born without any concept of gender. Lovato also claimed that basing sex off of genitalia is “inconsistent with science.”

At some point, the democratization of opinion becomes the propaganda of ignorance. What is most surprising is the confidence people have in wading into areas that are often complex and technical. This is a particularly American behavior with their rough-and-ready belief in the contributions of the average guy. The individual reigns supreme, lounging in coffee houses and arguing in bars, as they uncover flaws, defects and improvements in baseball, the steam engine, or electrical circuitry. This is a charming, wonderful human optimism, especially in our increasingly distant world.

It's worth the Lovatos.

Disparities and Racism

 

                         

                Disparities and Racism

Murray is back with more cold numbers. The response is usually strange and distant. This is from a review:

"The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart float free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have 1) different violent crime rates and 2) different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.

What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.

We on the center-left and center-right who are the American Creed’s natural defenders have painted ourselves into a corner. We have been unwilling to say openly that different groups have significant group differences. Since we have not been willing to say that, we have been left defenseless against the claims that racism is to blame. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer. We must. Facing Reality is a step in that direction." (From Amazon's review of Murray's new book.)

Facing reality is great but it is important to know the limits of these numbers. Numbers are just that and nothing more. Numbers are not people. We are complex and should view any attempt to generalize about us with caution. This is true of all, regardless of one's wishes.

Sunday/Friends and Slaves

 

        

           Sunday/Friends and Slaves

"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”

It's hard to excerpt this gospel. Christ is making a point he wants everyone to understand, so He repeats and repeats it: Love one another. This single revolutionary notion is the bane of social and political groups who insist on advancing themselves over the corpses of their presumed enemies. Whatever our competitive natures are, they must be tamed to live within this rule. The Christian "opiate" of the Marxists is more than just complacency, it is pacifying. It disarms the Christian and makes him a poor soldier and lousy fodder for the revolution. It more than binds his friends, it humanizes his enemies.

And what do you think of the "I no longer call you slaves" line and the revenge of The Tree of Knowledge?

Sat Stats/Baseball

 

                             

Sat Stats/Baseball

Last night was the fourth no-hitter of the season. One of those no-hitters was by Joe Musgrove.

Theo Epstein became the youngest general manager (GM) in the history of MLB, when the Boston Red Sox hired him at the age of 28 in 2002. In 2004, the Red Sox won their first World Series championship in 86 years and won another championship in 2007.

On October 21, 2011, he resigned from his job in Boston to become president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs won the 2016 World Series, their first World Series championship in 108 years. In 2020, Epstein stepped down as president of the Chicago Cubs.


This year he joined Major League Baseball as a consultant "regarding on-field matters." Epstein will focus on determining how various rule changes might affect the game. He'll work with baseball analytics experts from the Commissioner's Office and the 30 MLB clubs.

Epstein said, "The executives like me who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to try to optimize individual and team performance have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game in some respects. We need to find a way to get more action in the game, get the ball in play more often, allow players to show their athleticism some more, and give the fans more of what they want."

Some problems he noted recently:

25% of at-bats end in strikeouts. That is comparable to Sandy Kofax or Nolan Ryan at the peak of their games.

The average time between pitches in the 1970s was about ten seconds; now it is about 60.

A fan watching a game will wait on an average of 4 minutes before he sees a ball in play. Just in play.

The average fastball is 94 mph. There is no need for a pitcher to pitch deep into a game; everybody in the bullpen can throw over 94.

The game is slower, the competition has shifted more to batter-pitcher, away from any idea of team competition. Management can hide their decisions in their adherence to analytics. And the quality of play has faded into statistical generalities. Last night I saw a team with the bases loaded not score. The following inning a man was picked off first--and he got back safely! On the next pitch, he was picked off again.

And this doesn't consider the nomadic nature of the players and the disparity of team quality caused by the disparity of investment and baseball management skill.

That Epstein was hired at all implies a lot about baseball's anxiety.

Carbon Units

                                            Carbon Units

China dominates global coal production, and accounted for almost 47% of the world's entire output in 2019. It extracted almost 3.7 billion tonnes during the year, reflecting an annual growth rate of 4%. The country is also the world biggest consumer of coal, devouring around 53% of the global total. India is second on the list of the world’s largest coal-producing countries, producing around 783 million tonnes in 2019 – just under 10% of the global share.
State-owned Coal India, the world’s largest coal-mining company, accounts for around 80% of the country’s output, and has more than 360 mines in operation.

The U.S. coal production is in a virtue-mandated decline.
As of 2020, 350 coal-fired power plants are under construction. They include seven in South Korea, 13 in Japan, 52 in India, and 184 in China with the rest underway in other parts of the world.
China is also building and financing hundreds of other coal-fired power plants in countries such as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Egypt, and Bangladesh.
Those countries will be grateful. And we, of course, will be depriving ourselves of the cheapest energy source available to try to make up for their carbon production. I'm sure those unemployed by our highmindedness will find comfort in their contribution to the symbolic and unwinnable war against CO2.
And, as an aside, where do you think those new plants are going to get their coal from?

Tres Plus Dos Equals Cinco de Mayo

 

          Tres Plus Dos Equals Cinco de Mayo

The painting often identified as commemorating Cinco de Mayo in Mexico actually depicts the Spanish war with Napoleon's France two generations before the French war in Mexico. Nor is the event of Cinco de Mayo of much political significance--other than ironic--although it was a shocking military one.

Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War, a savage affair fought by Spanish partisans against hard, regular French troops. This famous painting was The Third of May (along with its companion piece, The Second of May 1808 or The Charge of the Mamelukes.)
Third of May:



A half-century later in 1862, Spain's creditors ran out of patience with her debts. France, eager to expand her territory and following long-accepted custom of seizing a reluctant debtor's ports and collecting the tax receipts in lieu of their loan, invaded the Mexican port of Veracruz with the intent of collecting customs receipts until the debt was repaid. They also had another aim: They hoped to make their stay permanent with the placement of Maximilian on a Mexican throne. The French marched inland. This was an experienced, tough group and they proceeded virtually unopposed until they were confronted by a good sized Mexican force at the small town of Puebla. There, against all expectation and logic, on 5 May 1862, Mexican troops, led by Ignacio Zaragoza, defeated a larger force of the elite French Foreign Legion. Mexican President Benito Juarez declared 5 May a national holiday -- Cinco de Mayo--although he certainly knew the truth. The French replaced their commander and sent thirty thousand reinforcements. In no time they controlled the cities and created the election that elected Maximilian Emperor of México.

Research Choices

 

                                   Research Choices

The history of man has been one of constant struggle against the elements, hunger, and violence from his fellows. In the last two centuries, we humans have suddenly escaped the everyday risks of the elements. Hunger is diminished and relative poverty today looks much different from three hundred years ago. Yet when the condition of man is discussed, we emphasize the causes of the remaining diminished poverty rather than the explanations of the cultures' economic success. 

Why is that?

History Through the Proper Filter

 

                                        History Through the Proper Filter

A British survey of teaching tendencies revealed this incident.

One history department looked at by the fact-finders was found to have cut information about the Holocaust from its lessons due to worries that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions. Said the report: “For example, a history department in a northern city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils.”

This event has been declared symbolic of the educational system of Britain although it was a single, local Board decision. But any reworking of history to placate the ignorance of a group is not healthy. 

Sunday/Vines, Branches, and Fruit

                     Sunday/Vines, Branches, and Fruit

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own
unless it remains on the vine,
so neither can you unless you remain in me."

Every so often, Christ sounds mystical, as if He expects a translator to step in and clarify everything. While He was speaking to many who were educated in the Old Testament, many were fishermen and most were illiterate.

There is the hint of the physical-spiritual dichotomy here, the pruning of the physical to promote spiritual growth. But this passage raises a real question: what is the fruit? Is it essential to the vine? Because if it is, it sounds as if the branches are integral parts of the vine and essential intermediaries to some larger scheme. Is it the Grower? Does His creation expand? Is there some endpoint here?

Stats/"Is Schrödinger's Cat Male?"

             Stats/"Is Schrödinger's Cat Male?"

A characteristic of the modern West is the peripheral has moved to the center. Everyone is in the spotlight. This change in how we think is as important as what we think. Some stats and perspectives. (Some of this information is presented from reviews written when these questions were thought to be illnesses. The DSM-5 still classifies GD as a diagnosis.)

Gender dysphoria (GD) according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders (DSM 5) is defined as a “marked incongruence between their experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth.” It was previously termed "gender identity disorder."

Children or adolescents who experience this turmoil cannot correlate to their gender expression when identifying themselves within traditional societal binary male or female roles, which may cause cultural stigmatization.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, gender dysphoria prevalence accounts for 0.005–0.014% of the population for biological males and 0.002–0.003% for biological females. In both Japan and Poland, the prevalence of gender dysphoria is higher in biological females.

According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.

Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT-affirming countries.

Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) are human illnesses that cause the development of ambiguous genitalia in newborns and children. This is not dysphoria.

Most DSDs can be diagnosed and the outcomes predicted; physicians use the diagnosis to advise parents on which gender the child is likely to identify with. For instance, the most common cause for a DSD is congenital adrenal hyperplasia — which can result in ambiguous genitalia for XX children. This is an illness of the adrenal glands where steroids are made imperfectly. This is a treatable biochemical defect. Between 90% and 95% of people with the condition identify as female.
Adrenogenital syndrome is 100% curable. (This was the condition of the Press sisters, two women who were untreated by the Soviet state so that they could compete in women's international sports. Tamara Press dominated the women's field events in the late 50s and 60s.}

As many as 1 out of 30,000 adult males seek sexual reassignment surgery (sex change).

At least 1 out of 100,000 adult females seek sexual reassignment surgery (sex change).

About 80% of mothers and 45% of fathers of individuals with Gender Identity Disorder had a psychiatric problem or had psychiatric treatment.
About 24% of children live with their mothers only, with the absence of a father or surrogate father figure at home according to the 2012 U.S. Census figure (double the 1977 figure.)
In homes of boys that are severely disturbed with Gender Identity Disorder, the father is absent 100% of the time.

According to a recent national survey, 1.4 million individuals (0.6%) in the United States identify as transgender.

Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome affects 2 to 5 per 100,000 people who are genetically male. Partial androgen insensitivity is thought to be at least as common as complete androgen insensitivity. Mild androgen insensitivity is much less common. In androgen insensitivity, male hormones and anatomy are normal but the cells do not recognize androgen stimulation and do not develop maleness. This, like the adrenogenital syndrome, results in a true dichotomy between the genetic and phenotypic. 

The model Hanne Gaby Odiele in 2015.

8,920: number of provisionally reported TB cases in the United States in 2019 (a rate of 2.7 per 100,000 persons) .

Testicular cancer occurs in about 1 in 100,00.

Birth defects affect one in every 33 babies (about 3% of all babies) born in the United States each year.

Each year, about 6,000 babies born in the United States have Down syndrome. This means that Down syndrome occurs in about 1 in every 700 babies.

So, how does the psychodynamic work? Or is this just a variation of the gender spectrum? And the DMS-5 definition implies "distress;" what about those who experience no distress? 

An opinion from an article on Johns Hopkins' McHugh, who works the dynamic side. A piece: "Dr. McHugh does not believe surgery cures gender dysphoria. He thinks that condition, along with anorexia and body dysmorphia, is a “disorder of assumption,” characterized by an “overvalued idea,” or a ruling passion that “fulminates in the mind of the subject, growing more dominant over time, more refined, and more resistant to challenge,” as he has written.
In the case of anorexia, the overvalued idea is that it’s good to be thin. The primary goal of the psychiatrist ought to be to help the patient change behavior. The prevailing standard of care for sufferers of gender dysphoria—“affirmative care”—is the opposite: It calls for mental-health professionals to accept both a patient’s self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the corresponding behavior."

We are in a fascinating time where we minutely search for norms. But that search is beginning to include diverse seekers. All data is available for comment and available to all. It is a time where the removed observer is at a disadvantage.