Hogmanay

Hogmanay

Hogmanay is the Scottish New Year, a mixture of ancient traditions and, possibly, a more modern reaction to the strict Cromwellian restrictions of the Middle Ages. It has a number of characteristics. Bonfires are a part, perhaps from Viking or Clan days. "Redding" the house is another. It is a ritualistic cleaning, a readying for the new year. The fireplace is swept and some read the ashes, like auguries. After midnight, neighbors visit, bringing small gifts, usually food, and receiving them, usually whiskey. Importance was placed on the first to enter in the new year, the "first foot." (Tall handsome men were good, redheaded women bad.) The house and the livestock are blessed with water from a local stream--which sounds really old--and then the woman of the house would go from room to room with a smoldering juniper branch, seemingly counteracting all the "redding" with smoke. Robert Burn's version of the traditional Scottish Auld Lang Syne, which translates to “times gone by,” is sung.

Origins of Resolutions

Origins of Resolutions

Pale Gas is the mnemonic for the seven deadly sins (vices): pride, avarice, lust, envy, greed, anger, and sloth. These were originally listed by Pope St. Gregory the Great but, of course, redefined by Aquinas who felt they were rather vices that led to sin. It is a shame that lust so dominates our cultural prohibitions because the other vices are vibrating and alive. They all deserve some thought. And these old thinkers thought about them so well.

Five are of the "inordinate desire" variety: "For one's own excellence"--pride (Aquinas changed this to "vainglory", the desire for the recognition of one's own excellence), of "possession or riches"--avarice, "sexual pleasure"--the old reliable lust, "of food and drink"--gluttony, "for revenge"--anger (vs. the righteous anger of seeking justice.)

Anger, the Achilles killer, is surprising as only revenge, an interesting sharpened point. And the church fathers struggled over pride and where it fell among fulfillment, ambition, and achievement which explains St. Thomas' modification away from excellence and into the recognition of same. Envy is defined as "sadness on account of the goods possessed by others." Envy is sadness! And sloth is "sorrow in the face of spiritual good", not just laziness but "a malady of the will which causes us to neglect our duties." (Sheen, Fulton not Martin) Sloth is more than slobbering weakness or self-indulgence, at its core is sorrow! Therapists take note.

The world is the lesser for the absence of these thinkers, high-minded, confident and clear. And it misses the debate on these qualities--or lack thereof. There is a frisson in just the reading of them.

Tension, drama, fullness are all impossible without confines, without a fixed point, without the right of judgment.

Pandemic Parenting

Pandemic Parenting

From Slate and their Slate Parenting Facebook group.

'My daughter, 11, has been wonderful throughout the pandemic. She social distances at all times, we never have to remind her to put her masks on, and we found a fully virtual scholastic program so she can avoid the significant risks of large crowds in the public schools.

A few weeks ago, however, her other parent and I had an obligation that we both had to be present for (we are both vaccinated, it was socially distanced, and we were wearing masks). Usually one of us would stay home with her, but because of her maturity level and the short time we would be gone, we assumed we could trust her on her own.

When we arrived home, we found her with a friend of hers who lives about a block away. She has visited on occasion throughout the pandemic but they know the rules. They are to stay outside and on opposite ends of the driveway or patio. The patio only offers about 5 feet of distance, but we decided that should be enough as long as they stay outside and keep their masks on.

Anyway, when we arrived home on this particular day, both her and her friend were in the living room, sitting on the same couch, not wearing masks, not socially distanced, and each putting their hands into the same bowl of chips. Why she would take this kind of risk, I still don’t understand.

I immediately told her friend that she had to go home and to please inform her mother to call me at her earliest convenience. I then expressed my disappointment with my daughter and informed her how dangerous what she did was. I reminded her about the delta variant and how it’s caused so many children her age to end up in the ICU. I told her that she only has to wait a few more months until she’s eligible for the vaccine, and this isn’t the time to become complacent.

We took all the necessary steps to remain safe. She immediately quarantined in her bedroom for the suggested two weeks. I cleaned the house thoroughly and opened multiple windows to circulate the air. Luckily, we all came out of this debacle safely.

I still don’t feel I can trust her, though. I understand it’s normal for her to make mistakes, but this wasn’t forgetting to turn a light off or close the refrigerator. She put her life at risk. How do we start building the trust back?'

Is the Babylon Bee starting to send letters to the editors or do we really have a pandemic of hysteria?

Can Liberty Survive Shallowness?

So, now Covid does not have a federal solution? And diagnosis may not be as important as illness? And maybe testing should be targeted? What's next, a scientific approach?

Can Liberty Survive Shallowness?

Climate activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 recently waged a proxy war to put insurgent directors on Exxon’s board. Reuters described it as “the first major shareholder contest to make climate change the leading issue for choosing directors.” Engine No. 1 gained the support of BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors, which voted their combined 21% of Exxon’s shares in favor of two insurgent directors who won election to Exxon’s board. BlackRock supported a third insurgent who was also elected.

The Employees Retirement System of Texas and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas also voted in favor of the three successful insurgent director nominees and a shareholder proposal requiring a report on corporate climate lobbying aligned with the Paris agreement, which passed.

Now what? Is Exxon supposed to abandon its projects in the middle of an energy shortage and start a national coffee chain?

So the activists are in favor of higher gas prices, contraction of the petroleum-based economy, with an inevitable decline in wellbeing and livelihood. And apparently, those corporations who have ridden the free trade train for generations are not committed to it when stressed.

The average guy has fewer and fewer friends.

The Magi

And a more complex view of Christmas by a very complex man:

The Magi

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

--Yeats

The Holy Family

The Holy Family

Today is the feast of The Holy Family, one of those feasts that are so Catholic; it is not a feast of an event, it is from "The Feasts of Ideas." The gospel involves the astonishing loss of the young child by his parents on a trip back from Jerusalem, something that would be a felony nowadays. He is found teaching the teachers and seems curiously dismissive of his parents' anxiety, as if just outside of empathy, looking in.

This is Thom Gunn's "Jesus and His Mother:"

My only son, more God's than mine,

Stay in this garden ripe with pears.
The yielding of their substance wears
A modest and contented shine:
And when they weep in age, not brine
But lazy syrup are their tears.
"I am my own and not my own."

He seemed much like another man,
That silent foreigner who trod
Outside my door with lily rod:
How could I know what I began
Meeting the eyes more furious than
The eyes of Joseph, those of God?
I was my own and not my own.

And who are these twelve labouring men?
I do not understand your words:
I taught you speech, we named the birds,
You marked their big migrations then
Like any child. So turn again
To silence from the place of crowds.
"I am my own and not my own."

Why are you sullen when I speak?
Here are your tools, the saw and knife
And hammer on your bench. Your life
Is measured here in week and week
Planed as the furniture you make,
And I will teach you like a wife
To be my own and all my own.

Who like an arrogant wind blown
Where he pleases, does without content?
Yet I remember how you went
To speak with scholars in furred gown.
I hear an outcry in the town;
Who carries this dark instrument?
"One all his own and not his own."

Treading the green and nimble sward,
I stare at a strange shadow thrown.
Are you the boy I bore alone,
No doctor near to cut the cord?
I cannot reach to call you Lord,
Answer me as my only son.
"I am my own and not my own."

Christmas

Christmas

Today we celebrate God's stepping into Time. In this extraordinary integration, He enters a Middle Eastern family and places Himself in their care, the finite and the Infinite in a simple domestic human scene.

Always responsible to Him, humans became responsible for Him.

Imagine that. This is a moment of almost Nordic complexity.

The message of Christianity--that of forgiveness, love, family, and community of man--so distilled down in the symbols of this holiday, is so optimistic and hopeful one is always struck by the homicidal, nihilistic, despairing, and similarly faith-based philosophies that have risen as alternative explanations of man's condition.

It is hard to believe an active evil force is not present to influence it.

Merry Christmas.

Joseph Has a Dream

Joseph Has a Dream

In the gospel, Joseph has a dream where he is told the child Mary is carrying is not the product of an illicit relationship, the child is the Son of God. The entire New Testament hinges on this moment. On the meaning of a dream. The divine nature of Christ is brought to the outside world for the first time. The resurrection of Christ is the edifice of Christianity, the nature of Christ's conception is its foundation. 

Enter Arius.

Arias, an early Christian bishop, argued that Christ had a beginning and therefore could not be God. He was declared a heretic, then absolved, then made a heretic again. But his distress is crucial as it was--and is--the world's distress. The Prophet Mohammad formed his opinion of Christianity through an Arian philosopher and, while he accepted the Jews as monotheists, he thought Christians polytheists.

Logic brought to bear on a being that rises from the dead seems misapplied. If either part of the story is acceptable, then it is hard to limit the rest of the story with petty human concerns. But, strangely, human reaction is the essence of the story. Like all the nativity scenes, humanity is at the center. Christ comes to the world as a vulnerable infant, dependent upon human care. Christ's later claims will mean nothing to the world without the disciples' translation, acceptance, and proselytizing. Humanity is the linchpin of the entire story. After all, human faith--humanity itself--was the basis of it all, for Mary--and Joseph--could have said "No."

Astonishing. And a hell of a dream.

A Christmas Story

 A 200-pound male black bear was trapped Wednesday morning in downtown Pittsburgh by the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

A Christmas story about a Christmas icon:  
For its December 1963 issue, Esquire Magazine's managing editor Harold Hayes let his cover designer George Lois pick the cover. The cover became a close-up of boxer Sonny Liston in a Santa Claus hat. Esquire's advertising director would eventually estimate that the magazine lost $750,000 due to the cover. According to Vanity Fair, "Hayes lit the fuse, and Sonny Liston exploded a ragged hole in the country's Norman Rockwell preconceptions of Christmas." An art-history professor at Hunter College proclaimed the cover "one of the greatest social statements of the plastic arts since Picasso's Guernica." For Hayes, Liston-as-Santa was "the perfect magazine cover," he wrote in a 1981 article in Adweek magazine, "a single, textless image that measured our lives and the time we lived them in quite precisely to the moment." Published in a national climate "thick with racial fear," he explained, "Lois' angry icon insisted on several things: the split in our culture was showing; the notion of racial equality was a bad joke; the felicitations of this season—goodwill to all men, etc.—carried irony more than sentiment."

"Norman Rockwell preconceptions?" "one of the greatest social statements..?" ".. image that measured our lives..?"

Wait a minute here. Race trumps everything in this culture but.....Liston was a criminal and was mob-connected. He knocked out the extremely popular, (and black), Floyd Patterson in 1962, a fight that was opposed by the NAACP because of damage they thought the fight would do to the Civil Rights Movement. And Liston threw a championship fight against Ali. Liston told a sportswriter later, “That guy [Ali] was crazy. I didn’t want anything to do with him. And the Muslims were coming up. Who needed that? So I went down. I wasn’t hit.”

Liston was terribly unpopular for a lot of good reasons.

Can this race monster ever get sedated? And is it possible these media types might be taking themselves a little too seriously?

SOLSTICE

SOLSTICE

SOLSTICE: either of the two times during the year when the sun is farthest from the equator, about June 21st when the sun is farthest north of the equator and about December 22nd when it is farthest south: The summer solstice has the longest days, and the winter solstice has the shortest.



The seasons have nothing to do with how far the Earth is from the Sun. If this were the case, it would be hotter in the northern hemisphere during January as opposed to July. Instead, the seasons are caused by the Earth being tilted on its axis by an average of 23.5 degrees (Earth's tilt on its axis actually varies from near 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees). Here's how it works:

The Earth has an elliptical orbit around our Sun. This being said, the Earth is at its closest point distance-wise to the Sun in January (called the Perihelion) and the furthest in July (the Aphelion). But this distance change is not great enough to cause any substantial difference in our climate. This is why the Earth's 23.5-degree tilt is all-important in changing our seasons. Near June 21st, the summer solstice, the Earth is tilted such that the Sun is positioned directly over the Tropic of Cancer at 23.5 degrees north latitude. This situates the northern hemisphere in a more direct path of the Sun's energy. What this means is less sunlight gets scattered before reaching the ground because it has less distance to travel through the atmosphere. In addition, the high sun angle produces long days. The opposite is true in the southern hemisphere, where the low sun angle produces short days. Furthermore, a large amount of the Sun's energy is scattered before reaching the ground because the energy has to travel through more of the atmosphere. Therefore near June 21st, the southern hemisphere is having its winter solstice because it "leans" away from the Sun.

Advancing 90 days, the Earth is at the autumnal equinox on or about September 21st. As the Earth revolves around the Sun, it gets positioned such that the Sun is directly over the equator. Basically, the Sun's energy is in balance between the northern and southern hemispheres. The same holds true on the spring equinox near March 21st, as the Sun is once again directly over the equator.

Lastly, on the winter solstice near December 21st, the Sun is positioned directly over the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.5 degrees south latitude. The southern hemisphere is therefore receiving the direct sunlight, with little scattering of the sun's rays and a high sun angle producing long days. The northern hemisphere is tipped away from the Sun, producing short days and a low sun angle.

What kind of effect does the earth's tilt and subsequent seasons have on our length of daylight (defined as sunrise to sunset)? Over the equator, the answer is not much. If you live on or very close to the equator, your daylight would be basically within a few minutes of 12 hours the year around. Using the northern hemisphere as a reference, the daylight would lengthen/shorten during the summer/winter moving northward from the equator. The daylight difference is subtle in the tropics, but becomes extremely large in the northern latitudes. Where we live in the mid-latitudes, daylight ranges from about 15 hours around the summer solstice to near nine hours close to the winter solstice. Moving to the arctic circle at 66.5 degrees north latitude, the Sun never sets from early June to early July. But around the winter solstice, the daylight only lasts slightly more than two hours. There becomes a profound difference in the length of daylight heading north of the arctic circle. Barrow, Alaska at slightly more than 71 degrees north latitude, lies just less than 300 nautical miles north of the arctic circle. Barrow sees two months of total darkness, as the Sun never rises for about a month on each side of the winter solstice. On the other hand, Barrow also has total light from mid-May to early August. And what about the north pole, or 90 degrees north latitude? The Sun rises in the early evening near the spring equinox and never sets again until just after the autumnal equinox, or six months of light. Conversely, after the Sun sets in the mid morning just after the autumnal equinox, it will not be seen again until the following spring equinox, equating to six months of darkness.
(NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE)

Saturnalia

Saturnalia

Saturn is the Roman Chronos, an early Titan in the history of the evolution of the gods and man, the son of the Earth and Sky. He defeats his siblings and, in fear of a prophecy that he will be overthrown by a son, eats his children. One child, Zeus, is hidden by his mother and grows to rescue his siblings and overthrow his father. 

 Saturn is the original fertility symbol in mythology, preceding Persephone in chronology and hierarchy. He does not quite fit the popular notion of a historical evolutionary progression away from female fertility goddesses to the more combative male deities. As the second layer of the gods, supplanted by Zeus and his siblings, he is much less active but had a significant old mythological following. 

 Saturnalia originated as a farmer's festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season (satus means sowing). It started as a two-day celebration but grew longer and later; it was seven days around the winter solstice in the third century A.D. when numerous archaeological sites demonstrate that the cult of Saturn still survived. 

The poet Lucian of Samosata (AD 120-180) has the god Cronos (Saturn) say in his poem, Saturnalia: "During my week the serious is barred: no business is allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping...an occasional dunking of corked faces in icy water--such are the functions over which I preside." A public holiday with gifts, masters and slaves swapping clothes, the strange election of a temporary house "monarch." A time for feasting, goodwill, generosity to the poor, the exchange of gifts, and the decoration of trees. 

 By that time, with Christianity well established, it is difficult to determine which gave and took.

Sinterklaas

 Sinterklaas

Amsterdam hosts the largest Saint Nicholas parade in the world. The white-bearded legend traditionally makes his spectacular entrance into the city by sailing down the Amstel River then trades his boat for his white horse Amerigo, and the parade continues through the streets. Although the feast of Saint Nicolas falls on 6 December, the evening of 5 December is the main gift-giving occasion during the holiday season in the Netherlands. Called 'sinterklaasavond' (Sinterklaas evening) or'pakjesavond' (presents evening), Sint drops off a sack full of gifts on the doorstep before heading back to Spain. Following his late-night visit, much like at Christmas, everyone unwraps their presents from Sinterklaas and reads aloud the poems that have been written especially for each recipient. The author of these light-hearted poems remains anonymous.
Saint Nicholas has had close ties with Amsterdam since 343 AD. Legend has it that Sinterklaas originally came from Turkey to Amsterdam as St. Nicolaus, the Bishop of Mira. He is specifically described as a benefactor of young women. No one really knows why he then chose to live in Spain but historians point to the Spanish domination over the Netherlands in the past. His name appears on the oldest Greek list and on five other lists of participants in the Council of Nicaea and he is said to have physically attacked and beaten the major Arian bishop over the nature of the Trinity--and is often pictured as having a broken nose as a result.
The Christmas-like celebration on Dec. 5 has in recent years become part of the polarized discourse about race in The Netherlands. At the heart of the discussion is "Black Pete," Sinterklaas' helper--often the Saint's "enforcer" who punishes naughty children--who is often played by white people in blackface makeup and Afro wigs. Opponents see him as an outdated and offensive caricature that harks back to slavery, while the majority of Dutch people see Pete as a harmless children's character who has come to symbolize what they see as attacks on Dutch culture and traditions. Even the sacred United Nations has weighed in, with its Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination last year urging the Netherlands to "actively promote the elimination of those features of the character of Black Pete which reflect negative stereotypes and are experienced by many people of African descent as a vestige of slavery."
This has persisted in the country's public debate with the Black minority increasingly annoyed and the traditional Dutch surprisingly resistant to change. Some additions have been made with Zwarte Pieten evolving into a sort of sooty chimney-sweep.
Dutch Stamps:

  

Sunday/Mary, Jael, and Judith

 

Sunday/Mary, Jael, and Judith

Today's gospel is the meeting of Mary with Elizabeth. Both the cousins are pregnant, Elizabeth with John the Baptist. Elizabeth meets Mary with the famous 'Hail [Mary], full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.'

The bible is remarkably clever and has to be read cautiously. As often occurs, there are several references to the Old Testament; they are not accidental, and they are demanding. The first is 'Blessed art thou among women.'

There are two other women described this way in the Old Testament, Judith and Jael. Both are assassins. Both kill, brutally, old enemies of Isreal.
Jael (or Yael) delivered Israel from the army of King Jabin of Canaan in the Book of Judges. Sisera was a warlord for Jabin, the king of Canaan who had been oppressing the Israelites for years. But under the leadership of Barak and Deborah, the Israelites finally succeed in defeating Jabin's army. Sisera flees and seeks refuge in the tent of Jael who hammers a tent spike through his head.
In the Book of Judith, the beautiful widow seduces and beheads Holofernes, the general of Israel's ancient enemy, the Assyrian King Nebuchadnezzar.

How does Mary fit in here? Perhaps as a pivotal woman in the rescue of Israel and the world.

And the 'fruit' of the womb? Most think it's a reversal of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

 

Question 34

Question 34

Bill Virdon died.

J. D. Vance is running in Ohio for the Senate seat as a Republican and his erstwhile admirers are furious.

'If I worried about every last thing that someone said and I had to try to change it, then I would never be me. Anyone wouldn’t be them! That’s why I think cancel culture is the most ridiculous thing, because I really do believe—and you and I have been at several dinners together where people are discussing their thoughts on it—in rehabilitation and freedom of speech.'--Kim Kardashian
Kardashian, a beacon of common sense and insight

Why is there no statute of limitation on ads?

The FBI raided James O'Keefe's home last month amid an investigation into a diary allegedly stolen from President Biden's daughter. Now, how is this a good thing? If it was because there was nationally important info in it, that is really bad; if there was nothing in it, that is really bad.

A man who left a bag of bombs in downtown Pittsburgh during the 2020 George Floyd protests won't have to go to prison.

A record annual high of nearly 35,000 people was murdered in Mexico in 2019 as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador struggled to rein in violent crime in his first year in office. A government agency reported a total 34,582 murders last year, a 2.5% increase from 2018, when 33,743 victims were recorded. To put 68,325 drug-related deaths in Mexico over a two-year period (2018 and 2019) in perspective, consider that 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War over a 20-year period from 1955 to 1975.

A CNBC story claims that Amazon has been censoring book reviews at the request of the Chinese government.

Europe is on a precipice. It has marched, blindly, towards something very much resembling tyranny. Austria will shortly criminalise those who refuse the Covid vaccine. Germany looks set to follow. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, is wondering out loud if every member state should do likewise and make offenders of those who reject this form of medication. In Italy you are deprived of your livelihood rather than your liberty if you say no to vaccination: the unvaxxed are not permitted to work. Anywhere. In Greece, everyone over the age of 60 must pay the government 100 euros for every month they remain unvaxxed. As if the Greek government, in cahoots with its masters in Brussels, had not immiserated Greek pensioners enough already.... we are living through a chilling overhaul of the entire relationship between the state and the individual, with the state empowered to such an extraordinary degree that it can now instruct its citizens on what to inject into their bodies, and the individual so politically emaciated, so denuded of rights, that he no longer even enjoys sovereignty over himself, over that tiny part of the world that is his own body and mind. We are witnessing the violent death of European liberalism and the birth pangs of a new and deeply authoritarian era.--O'Neil

The Spending Bill has $170 Billion in housing subsidies.

The most enthusiastic converts to homeschooling were African-Americans, among whom DIY education went from 3.3 percent of students pre-COVID to 16.1 percent in the fall of 2020.

For all the worries about the omicron variant, Covid now has an estimated fatality rate of 0.085 percent (not dramatically greater than flu, which is believed to be 0.04 percent), and deaths have continued to fall.--Telegraph

 

Questions and Quotes

Questions and Quotes

Right now Russian ships are offloading gas in Boston harbor because we are not allowed to retrieve our own.

Personal liberty is no longer a right. It is a conditional privilege that can be recalled whenever current circumstances which are (unlike aerial bombardment by a military enemy) hazily defined, uncertain in their effect, and only barely understood, seem to indicate a possible need.---Daley 

This would never occur among a people who took liberty seriously.

Kathleen Parker writes that “[t]he relative risk of widespread infection from travelers may be statistically insignificant, but why to take a chance?” --Parker 

Wait. The possibility of a problem justifies what and how much response?

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. Prohibition has not only failed in its promises but actually created additional serious and disturbing social problems throughout society. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.--Mencken

Indeed, so much of what we became hysterical about—mask-wearing and vaccine hesitancy as applied to the low-risk—was a poor substitute for communicating about and acting on distinctions in risk. The worst part is we knew better on day one, but political imperative did not favor realistic communication about risk or prioritization.--Jenkins

“stronger Covid measures produce stronger economic outcomes.” --Klain. 

Now here is an insight. The effect of regulations to kill economic creativity and development is good for economic creativity and development. Orwell lives.

Aside from its effects on health, education, and the economy, lockdown represents the greatest infringement on civil liberties in modern history. Here and elsewhere, the state used its monopoly on force to outlaw some of the most basic human interactions, such as having a meal with friends.--Carl

“They’re really criticizing science because I represent science.”--Fauci

You may all rise.

Hayek was trying to show his readers that planning, everyone’s favorite remedy for the ills of the world, might sound good in theory, but would not work out in practice (or, at least, not unless the western democracies were prepared to accept severe constraints on personal liberty of the sort on display in the systems against which they currently [in 1944] were fighting).--Caldwell

As chair of the South African Medical Association and a GP of 33 years’ standing, I have seen a lot over my medical career. But nothing has prepared me for the extraordinary global reaction that met my announcement this week that I had seen a young man in my surgery who had a case of Covid that turned out to be the Omicron variant. And let me be clear: nothing I have seen about this new variant warrants the extreme action the UK government has taken in response to it. No one here in South Africa is known to have been hospitalised with the Omicron variant, nor is anyone here believed to have fallen seriously ill with it.--Coetzee

The muscle memory we have acquired from repeated executive-imposed lockdowns is impossible to unlearn. The Government’s continued avoidance of parliamentary scrutiny — unless forced by backbench pressure — treats democracy as part-time, debate as futile, and opposition as something to be squashed. Let’s be honest, this is exactly how politicians intoxicated with power want it to be.--Carlo

A Fraternity Spat

A Fraternity Spat

The FDIC issued a website correction recently: “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) posted on its website a document, purportedly approved by the FDIC, requesting comment on bank mergers. No such document has been approved by the FDIC” and “there was no valid vote by the Board” and no such request for public comment “has been approved by the agency for publication in the Federal Register.”

The CFPB tried to commandeer a function of the FDIC! Conflict in the hierarchy is so revealing.

Sunday/St. John and Cassius

 

Sunday/St. John and Cassius

The essence of 'social justice' is the righting of others' social wrongs.  

In last week's gospel, God asks what has disrupted the Garden. Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the snake. This week, John is asked what a man can do to better his life. John tells the man to share his excess with the needy, the tax collector not to steal, the soldier not to use his power to extort. The world is improved when the individual improves. Holding others responsible for the wickedness of the world leaps over the prime cause; it's misdirected and useless.

The fault, dear Brutus...

Question 33

 

Question 33

Can a white investor take a minority position in a company?

Biden one-on-one with Putin? Can you imagine?

So Smollett is guilty. A weird story. Perhaps bigotry inflation: More indignation chasing fewer instances.

Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials.
But what about transexual bathrooms?

The prosecutor in the Abery murder was thinking of not bringing charges. The prosecutor in the Smollett fraud tried not to bring charges. Anyone see a pattern here?

Moreover, this is also a time when authoritarianism is seen as a viable alternative to free societies. Even though the Soviet Union’s moral bankruptcy is plain for all to see, there are still those who look to repressive methods to help society function.
There are those who believe that to reach full vaccination, we must resort to authoritarianism and coercion to get as many people as possible on board. By pushing objectors to the margins and threatening their livelihoods, those in power believe we achieve a utopian society where illness is eliminated.--Strinic
'a time when authoritarianism is seen as a viable alternative to free societies.'

Prantl’s Bakery is coming to East Ohio Street in the North Side, taking over the former Priory Fine Pastries space.

Biden’s agenda for swollen government resembles Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in 1933 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s in 1965. The stark differences are the popular-vote margins that put the three into the presidency: FDR, 17 percentage points; LBJ, 23 points; Biden, 4.5 points. So, in 1933, there were 59 Democratic senators (out of 96) and 313 Democratic representatives. In 1965, there were 68 Democratic senators and 295 Democratic representatives. Today, the numbers are 50 and 221.

Last week’s Post-ABC News poll revealed that a landslide 59 percent are concerned that Biden would “do too much to increase the size and role of government.”

Economic development seems to bring a gradual shift from survival values to self-expression values, which helps explain why richer societies are more likely to be democracies.--Inglehart
I'm unsure that follows.

Immune memory, however, appears to be stronger following infection. The Rockefeller research group found in an earlier study, also published in Nature, that the antibodies produced by memory B cells—which quickly multiply in subsequent encounters with the virus—continued to evolve at least a year after infection. The study on vaccinated people found that the antibodies produced by their memory B cells didn’t change much over time.--wsj

A homeless man was arrested after vandalizing a Muslim library. Some lines cannot be crossed.

In her new book, “Laptop from Hell,” Post columnist Miranda Devine reconstructs the Biden family’s quest for cash by using files left on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. Ugly. The reception--if it's not ignored--should be interesting.

From the Guardian: Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

...

The new Omicron variant of the coronavirus results in mild disease, without prominent syndromes, Angelique Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association, told Sputnik on Saturday.

…..
“It presents mild disease with symptoms being sore muscles and tiredness for a day or two not feeling well. So far, we have detected that those infected do not suffer loss of taste or smell. They might have a slight cough. There are no prominent symptoms. Of those infected some are currently being treated at home,” Coetzee said.
Buuuuuut...Americans need to be prepared to do “anything and everything” to fight the omicron Covid variant, U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday. Still, it’s “too early to say” whether lockdowns or new mandates will be appropriate, Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Do those two observations scan?

Drug offenses account for nearly half (46%) of federal prisoners, and more than 16% of people jailed in state prisons. Today, about 500,000 Americans are behind bars for drug law violations, 10 times the number in 1980.

Culture Notes

Culture Notes

On Monday, while still locked away in jail, detectives say Jeramiah Williams left a bible study group to brutally beat and sexually assault the veteran Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy. He then returned alone to his cell.

When the woman was found, she was unrecognizable.

Mr. Williams has been incarcerated for raping two joggers in the park.

Harris County jail is a huge jail, the third-largest in the nation. I know someone who works there. This astonishing story is true. How is this possible?

Are reasonable people in control here? Or are we no longer able to manage our infrastructure?




An Axios Survey:

College students who would not  (       )  someone who voted for the opposing presidential candidate

Survey of 850 college students nationwide conducted Nov. 18–22, 2021

Democrat (red)

Republican (blue)

go out on a date with

71%

31%

shop at or support a business of

41

7

be friends with

37

5

Does this seem a little extreme?

Sunday/Man's efforts

 

Sunday/Man's efforts

There is a Christian precept that any spiritual effort will fail without God's active help. That is the essence of the Nativity and the Crucifixion.

Is it possible that the tendency for fundamentalists to be more conservative in their expectations of government is related to this?

Question 32

Question 32

NYC is opening safe injection sites for narcotics users. Will the city now be responsible for their injury and death?

“When we set out to write a book about his crimes, we thought we knew the whole story. Before long, however, what we uncovered was compelling evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was a spy—largely for Israel’s Mossad—and allowed to operate in the United States seemingly without consequence,” Dylan Howard told Fox News. “This is a much bigger story than the world has ever known and is continually being ignored or glossed over in much of the new reporting about Epstein.”

When the WHO named the “mu” variant in August, “nu” was next in line. But the WHO decided to skip it over because officials felt the letter was too similar to the English word “new,” which could have led to a bit of confusion. Then came “xi,” but the WHO also decided to nix it because it is the same as the common last name Xi and using it would violate the organization’s guidelines to name diseases. The WHO always seeks to “avoid causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups,” the organization said in a statement.
Nothing to do with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

From a religious newsletter: For anyone who saw on television, the Jan. 6th horrific attack on the Capitol, it’s hard to understand how the Republicans in Congress can possibly describe the vicious attackers as “tourists.” Let’s call it what it is, “a fascist Republican conspiracy” and they are the conspirators.

The Nordhaus model concludes that the optimal carbon tax, given the goal to reduce carbon usage, is $40 per ton. This will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars over years. But what, someone asked, if a geo-engineering solution that doesn’t involve reducing carbon costs only $1 billion?

NYC's public schools spend nearly $30,000 a year per student.

Candidate Gov. McAuliffe, on Oct. 7, claimed that 1,142 children were in ICU beds. For the week ended Oct. 2, the number of all children in hospitals, not necessarily in intensive care, was just 35. On October 21 there were only 334 people (of all ages) in ICU beds in Virginia, according to the state health department data. So, are we supposed to take these people seriously?

President Biden said about the multi-trillion-dollar spending plan’s cost, “We pay for everything we spend. It’s going to be zero. Zero."

Since the 1920s, the global death rate from extreme weather events, for instance, has fallen by 98% despite the tripling of the world’s population. Average global life expectancy at birth in 1850 was just over 29 years; a century later it was over 45 years, and in 2019, it was almost 73 years. In 1820, almost 90% of the global population lived in absolute poverty. By 2015, this had dropped to less than 10% despite a sevenfold increase in world population.--Forbes

Even assuming meager 2 percent growth, U.S. GDP in 2100 will be 400 percent larger than now. At 3 percent compounded growth, there will be 1,000 percent more GDP than now. From 1940 to 2000 there was 3.8 percent compound annual growth, and GDP increased 10-fold.

The White House on Monday said businesses should move forward with the vaccine mandate requirements despite the court-ordered pause. Persuasion takes time and effort and is less efficient than other available methods for achieving the desired results. In a democratic republic, this is a fundamental corruption of power according to Plato. And, because technocratic elites are inclined to regard the unsophisticated many as cognitively impaired, in the Beautiful City of the Republic, the rulers’ lies are justified on the ground that one wouldn’t give weapons to madmen.

According to the latest figures from the CDC, in the U.S. 75 percent of “deaths involving COVID-19” are of people 65 years old and older, with people 85 years old and older accounting for a whopping 27 percent of all Covid deaths. The percentage of Covid deaths of people below the age of 50 is a mere six. The risk posed by Covid to the very young is minuscule. As summarized on Twitter by Stanford medical professor Jay Bhattacharya, “Mortality from #COVID19 differs more than a thousand-fold between the old and young.”

WTA Courage

WTA Courage

Commentators often bore people to tears about 'nerves' and 'anxiety' as factors in high-level women's tennis. But WTA courage is leaving men's sports far behind. 

The Women’s Tennis Association said Wednesday that it would halt all of its tournaments in China because it isn’t satisfied that Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai is safe following an allegation of sexual assault against a retired senior government official made last month on her verified social-media account.
Though the decision could cost women’s tennis hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue, WTA Chief Executive Steve Simon said he would willingly cut off one of the sport’s largest business partners until Ms. Peng’s status was clarified.
Other sports organizations, such as the National Basketball Association and soccer’s English Premier League, have previously found themselves in conflict with China over various matters, usually integrity vs. profit. Integrity is usually defeated handily. But the WTA’s move to suspend the nine tournaments it has scheduled there for next year appears to be unprecedented in global sports. Brave and laudable.

And the Olympics in China is coming. (much from WSJ via Don)

Covid Questions

Covid Questions

Verein Sterbehilfe – the German Euthanasia Association – has issued a new directive, declaring it will now only help those who have been vaccinated or recovered from the disease.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge say the social distancing rule of six feet does not protect against catching COVID-19, even outdoors.

An email from a school contained the following sentence: “Those pupils who were exempt from wearing a mask last academic year will once again be exempt and should wear a yellow badge to indicate this.”

Covid-19 cases in the U.S. need to fall “well below 10,000” per day for the country to achieve some semblance of pre-pandemic life, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated Tuesday. This is a completely fabricated number with no basis in science or epidemiology.

Sorta like 'social distancing.'

New York’s mayor announced that children aged five and older would get $100 for being vaccinated against Covid. Based on seroprevalence surveys, it appears that close to half of American schoolchildren have already had Covid. (The estimate was about 40 percent as of June and has undoubtedly risen during the spread of the Delta variant.) So, with a very low rate of significant disease in children under age 18, uncertain risks of vaccine side effects and half of these kids already immunized, why the enthusiasm to vaccinate?

David Rubin was banned from Twitter for a week in July for predicting that the Biden administration would impose a federal vaccine mandate.

The vaccine does not stop disease transmission. So, support for lockdown policies has nothing to do with the risk posed by unvaccinated.

The government has just had a significant defeat with the courts' disallowing the OSHA mandated vaccine for companies with over 100 employees.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle’s tweet, “OSHA doing this vax mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate workaround for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.” "Work-around." Let's think about that. Does that mean "not exactly permitted," something OSHA is supposed to prevent? Doesn't that mean 'illegal?'

French study finds most long COVID symptoms (except loss of sense of smell) not associated with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. NIH will spend $1.1 Billion on it anyway.

Surprising no one paying attention, a french study seems to demonstrate that “long covid” is not, in fact, predominantly caused by covid.

A November 14 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper on the pandemic and test scores led by Brown University economist Emily Oster found that (in Oster’s words) “Bottom line: losses are big, and much bigger with less in-person school.” 

Strangely, this is optimistic regarding formal education.

Across Europe, basic norms of civilised society are giving way to panic. The unvaccinated are being excluded from an ever-wider range of basic rights. Austria has criminalised them. Italy has stopped them doing their jobs. The Dutch police have fired on anti-lockdown demonstrators, seriously injuring some of them. We are witnessing the ultimate folly of frightened politicians who cannot accept that they are impotent in the face of some natural phenomena.--Telegraph

The ‘politician’s fallacy’ was first identified on 'Yes Minister.' It reads, ‘We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.’

Registered nurse Donna Schmidt, 52, is on unpaid leave from her job at a Long Island-based healthcare system. She has both religious and scientific objections to Covid-19 vaccinations. “I’m not against vaccinations,” she told me. “Traditionally, the Covid-19 vaccine isn’t a vaccine. The CDC changed its definition of a vaccine. It’s truly gene therapy. The mRNA technology has never been used in human beings before.” She adds: “Historically, government doesn’t give back power. What’s next?”

Seventy-five percent of Covid deaths in America are of people retirement age (65) and older. On the other side, only 7 percent of Covid deaths are of people below the age of 50.

By mid-October, New York State reported that 4,100 unvaccinated workers were put on furlough or unpaid leave, 3,100 had been fired and another 1,300 quit or retired.

In the first year of the pandemic, around 100,000 people in the UK died after testing positive for Covid. Of these, just 0.025 percent were children. That’s tragic for the families of those 25, of whom six were otherwise healthy. But during that same period, around 50 children were killed on Britain’s roads, and around 16,000 were injured.