Question 83

Question 83

Whipped cream is being banned in New York.
“The chargers that propel whipped cream through a canister nozzle are filled with nitrous oxide gas, which can be inhaled to produce a high. The inhalant has long been a popular recreational drug – called ‘whippets’ – among teenagers due to the availability of whipped cream canisters at grocery and convenience stores,” the Albany Times Union reported.
Maybe a whipped cream ID, or TSA, or Pre-check.

“We have created the first example of an engineering material that can simultaneously sense, think and act upon mechanical stress without requiring additional circuits to process such signals,” Harne said. “The soft polymer material acts like a brain that can receive digital strings of information that are then processed, resulting in new sequences of digital information that can control reactions.”--Nature

 
'Nate Hilger’s has written a brave book. Almost everyone will find something to hate about The Parent Trap. Indeed, I hated parts of it. Yet Hilger is willing to say truths that are often not said and for that I would rather applaud than cancel.
Hilger argues that the problems of poverty, pathology and inequality that bedevil the United States are not primarily due to poor schools, discrimination, or low incomes per se. The primary cause is parents: parents who are unable to teach their children the skills that are necessary to succeed in the modern world. Since parents can’t teach the necessary skills, Hilger calls for the state to take their place with a dramatic expansion of not just child care but collective parenting.' (from somewhere)

[F]ewer families are taking in boarders and lodgers. In 1900 one urban family out of four shared its home with a boarder or lodger; by 1930, only 11 percent did so, and by 1970, a mere 2 percent did.

[appliances]... reduced housewives’ meal preparation and cleaning time from 6 hours a day to 1 1/2. Time was thus freed for education, the pursuit of “culture,” leisure.--lebergott

From the abstract of a new paper on new gaps:
Using data from a nationally representative sample of bachelor’s degree recipients, I find a significant earnings and mental health gap between self-identified LGBTQ+ and comparable heterosexual cisgender graduates. On average, sexual and gender minorities experience 22% lower earnings ten years after graduation. About half of this gap can be attributed to LGBTQ+ graduates being less likely to complete a high-paying major and work in a high-paying occupation (e.g., STEM and business). In addition, LGBTQ+ graduates are more than twice more likely to report having a mental illness. I then analyze the role of sexual orientation concealment and find a more pronounced earnings and mental health gap for closeted graduates.

They used 19 special prosecutors, more than 40 FBI agents. We footed that entire bill. They produced three separate reports that basically said, 'well, we can't prove a connection between Trump and Russia, but we can't disprove it.' All it would have taken is five minutes spent in a room with this guy who could have said, ‘yes, actually, it was greenlit by Hillary Clinton. Actually, yes. There was not one modicum of truth to this. And instead, this really important person is the one who approved of and spearheaded it being leaked to the media. And listen, if I was one of the attorneys on Mueller's team, I would not only be extremely embarrassed right now, but I would have a lot of questions. Because either they did know and it didn't make it into the report, or they didn't know. And either of those answers are absolutely unacceptable.--campagno

A senior colonel in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was shot dead by gunmen riding motorbikes, with the country’s media pointing the finger at Israel for the attack.

Energy Prophets

 President Biden announced plans today to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for anyone making less than $125k per year. In completely unrelated news, the nation's colleges and universities announced plans to immediately raise tuition by $10,000.--Babylon Bee

Astonishing: on a per capita basis the average bottom quintile household received 14% more income than the average second-quintile household and 3.3% more than the average middle-income household.

                                           Energy Prophets

Energy manipulation is just another phrase for 'industrial policy,' politic's application of fiction's 'magical realism.' This entails the ability of the government to predict the future with, and without, intervention. One of the elements that plague legitimate discussion about global warming is the notion that energy demands are, and will be, static. This is from an article interested in future energy demand and alternative hardware's costs.

In a new report due out next week from the Manhattan Institute, Mark Mills takes on the “dangerous delusion” of a global energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels. Surveying energy markets and public policy around the world, Mr. Mills asks readers to “consider that years of hypertrophied rhetoric and trillions of dollars of spending and subsidies on a transition have not significantly changed the energy landscape.” He notes:

Civilization still depends on hydrocarbons for 84% of all energy, a mere two percentage points lower than two decades ago. Solar and wind technologies today supply barely 5% of global energy. Electric vehicles still offset less than 0.5% of world oil demand.

Mr. Mills then explains why the global appetite for energy is not heading south:

One can begin with a reality that cannot be blinked away: energy is needed for everything that is fabricated, grown, operated, or moved... digital devices and hardware—the most complex products ever produced at scale—require, on average, about 1,000 times more energy to fabricate, pound for pound, than the products that dominated the 20th century... it takes nearly as much energy to make one smartphone as it does one refrigerator, even though the latter weighs 1,000 times more. The world produces nearly 10 times more smartphones a year than refrigerators. Thus, the global fabrication of smartphones now uses 15% as much energy as does the entire automotive industry, even though a car weighs 10,000 times more than a smartphone. The global Cloud, society’s newest and biggest infrastructure, uses twice as much electricity as the entire nation of Japan. And then, of course, there are all the other common, vital needs for energy, from heating and cooling homes to producing food and delivering freight.

Advocates of a carbon-free world underestimate not only how much energy the world already uses, but how much more energy the world will yet demand... In America, there are nearly as many vehicles as people, while in most of the world, fewer than 1 in 20 people have a car. More than 80% of the world population has yet to take a single flight.

He then proceeds to take on the argument that wind and solar power are now becoming competitive with fossil fuels:

Claims that wind, solar, and [electrical vehicles] have reached cost parity with traditional energy sources or modes of transportation are not based on evidence. Even before the latest period of rising energy prices, Germany and Britain—both further down the grid transition path than the U.S.— have seen average electricity rates rise 60%–110% over the past two decades. The same pattern is visible in Australia and Canada. It’s also apparent in U.S. states and regions where mandates have resulted in grids with a higher share of wind/solar energy. In general, overall U.S. residential electricity costs rose over the past 20 years. But those rates should have declined because of the collapse in the cost of natural gas and coal—the two energy sources that, together, supplied nearly 70% of electricity in that period. Instead, rates have been pushed higher thanks to elevated spending on the otherwise unneeded infrastructure required to transmit wind/solar-generated electricity, as well as the increased costs to keep lights on during “droughts” of wind and sun that come from also keeping conventional power plants available (like having an extra, fully fueled car parked and ready to go) in effect by spending on two grids.

None of the above accounts for the costs hidden as taxpayer-funded subsidies that were intended to make alternative energy cheaper. Added up over the past two decades, the cumulative subsidies across the world for biofuels, wind, and solar approach about $5 trillion, all of that to supply roughly 5% of global energy.

Whether it’s to cool a home, heat steel, or power a data center, the eternal engineering challenge has always been to find the lowest-cost way to make energy available when it’s needed to meet inherently variable demands, especially in the face of inevitable challenges from nature’s attacks as well as supply chain and machine failures. Oil, natural gas, coal, and even wood and water are easy to store in very large volumes at very low cost, but not so electricity. Hence, grid-scale electric availability has been made possible by using electricity-producing machines (turbines) that can be turned on when needed, fueled by large quantities of primary energy sources (such as natural gas, coal, and flowing water) that are easily and inexpensively stored. Such metrics characterize, for now, more than 80% of U.S. electricity production and more than 90% of transportation. The U.S., on average, has about one to two months’ worth of national demand in storage for each kind of hydrocarbon. Such enormous quantities are possible because it costs less than $1 a barrel per month to store oil or the energy equivalent of natural gas. Storing coal is even cheaper. Thus, over the past century, engineers achieved the feat of building a nation-spanning group of electricity grids that powers nearly everything, anytime, while still consuming less than 3% of the GDP.

Storing electricity itself—the output from solar/wind machines—remains extremely expensive despite the vaunted battery revolution. Lithium batteries, a Nobel-winning invention, are some 400% better than lead-acid batteries in terms of energy stored per unit of weight (which is critical for vehicles). And the costs for lithium batteries have declined more than 10-fold in the past two decades. Even so, it costs at least $30 to store the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil using lithium batteries. That alone explains why, regardless of mandates and subsidies, batteries aren’t a solution at grid scales for days, never mind weeks, of storage.

 

The Limits of Venality

The lockdown has, in retrospect, become condemned. Draconian! Limited liberty! Harmed education! Destroyed businesses and economies! Would people be complaining if the lockdowns had worked or are their objections based on principle?

The Limits of Venality

300 billion dollars, Biden's effort to be kind to some people at the expense of others, may be closer to 800 billion. Are other debts worthy of displacement to others? Are some unworthy? How are the distinctions made?

This shift of debt from one to another is unreasonable, morally suspect, an effort at bribery of the constituents and, perhaps, a desperate effort to flood the economy with money before the election to counter the recessionary consequences of previous such nonsense.

Most of the motives place the politician first at the expense of the well-being of the nation. 

The venality of politics has become a tautology. And the political debate will never be venal-poor. It seems the essence of the American structure is that it demands its citizens escape this. We cannot be governed by good intentions any more than we can be governed by bad. Biden probably thinks he is being kind. He also hopes to buy votes. But the nature of the country does not allow either and both are equally wrong. Both confound the very nature and structure of the nation in which government powers are specifically and limitedly assigned. The very structure of the nation.   

The people, for better or for worse, are otherwise on their own.

That quality--which is admittedly harsh--is America's defining characteristic, the very lynchpin of the land. The government cannot step out of character for the benefit of one cohort or another.

And the real question is whether the citizenry can engage in the basic arguments involving this basic question or, worse, even stand considering it.

Sunday/Unrequited

 

Sunday/Unrequited

Today's gospel is one of the 'first will be last' gospels where Christ seems to be structuring a message He knows we can't hear. It is a triangulation. First, He describes seating at a banquet where taking a seat of honor might embarrass you, and a lower seat reward you. So humility, far from pure, might be worthwhile, might be advantageous. His next analogy is a feast where the guests are incapable of returning the favor.

He seems to be putting the otherworldly in a worldly setting, describing the motiveless love of a motiveless God.

Question 82

Question 82

Is the American effort to improve the world's CO2 levels without China and India crazy, naive, or just ill-informed?
What is memorable in our current times is the tendency to approach very serious problems in an unserious way.

Which debts, and whose, are worthy of shifting to others? Which are not? How is that determined?

On the student debt-shifting bill:
Meanwhile, my rough new estimate is that the cost to taxpayers will be $427 billion. To put that in perspective, it is more than the gross domestic product of Hong Kong and 182 countries. For those who support federal social programs, it is nearly 36‐​times greater than the federal government spent on Head Start in 2022. And if you support defense spending, it is nearly two‐​and‐​a‐​half times larger than the U.S. Army’s 2022 budget.--mckluskey

I've read estimates at twice that.

“Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now,” Biden said.
Responding to the president later in the day on Twitter, Mr. Bezos wrote: “Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”
After credit card fees and other operating costs, net profit for gasoline sales averages 3 cents a gallon — less than one cent per liter — according to the National Association of Convenience Stores. When gas prices soar, and drivers think they're being gouged, stations are barely scraping by or even losing money.

Meghan Markle’s new podcast “Archetypes” has soared to the top of Spotify’s podcast charts, taking the top spot from longtime No. 1 title “The Joe Rogan Experience” in the US.

A good letter to the WSJ on Hutchinson/Peggy Noonan: Regarding Peggy Noonan’s column “The Courage of Cassidy Hutchinson” (Declarations, July 2): Ms. Hutchinson may be a wonderful person, but her appearance before the Jan. 6 committee was neither courageous nor heroic. It takes no courage to walk into a friendly room and tell the people sitting there exactly what they want to hear. Neither is it heroic to speak to a set of specifics for which she had no firsthand knowledge, as Ms. Hutchinson often did.
Little in Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony is admissible anywhere other than the court of public opinion, which is exactly where the Jan. 6 kangaroo court is conducting its trial of Donald Trump.

The Targaryans and the Administrative State

The Targaryans and the Administrative State

The Game of Thrones franchise--and the American culture--was just savaged in a recent National Review article. It seems that, as the old line states, "Everything is politics." And, if you enjoy the story, you enjoy power, abuse, and servitude. Everything has purpose, everything fuels a battle. And even those things we see as relief are not allowed.

Here are some quotes from the article: 

Susan “the Explainer” Sontag might have seen through the Game of Thrones phenomenon — now extended into HBO’s prequel series House of the Dragon — and pronounced it “Ignorance as Metaphor.” Each show epitomizes the violence, profanity, and sex formula that HBO uses to sell its ancient-mythology programming.

HBO romanticizes the administrative state for the Millennium audience just as Sontag claimed that Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will romanticized Nazism — but without the “talent” and “art” that Sontag granted Riefenstahl. Each show is a costume-pageant version of the same decadent urban dramas that HBO peddled in The Wire and The Sopranos — guilty-pleasure nightmares of depravity favored by liberal media.

These ersatz history tales do not inform our present condition but exacerbate it.

Premiering Sunday nights, the episodes offer new immoral Sunday School lessons about the post-Christian world, teaching viewers to enjoy ruthlessness.

Tolkien’s religious allegory is cheapened into secularism, meant to appease today’s politically confused consumers, thus fitting the metaphor of fascist art that Sontag expounded upon in her 1975 thesis Fascinating Fascism.

All that prurience, violence, and political overreaching that HBO sells in the power struggles and sex wars of Dragon and Game fulfill what Sontag exposed as the essential appeal of fascist art, resembling “an anthology of pro-Nazi sentiments” (remember, Biden forbade the media to say “Antifa sentiments” when he asserted that “Antifa doesn’t exist”).
Game and Dragon show us that “fascist aesthetics endorse two seemingly opposite states: egomania and servitude.”

That’s the basic House of the Dragon, Game of Thrones drama — far different from Michael Jackson’s assessment that “every legend tells of conquest and liberty,” in his song “HIStory.” House of the Dragon was filmed during April 2021 and February 2022, produced under the willed tyranny of government and media. Its exaggerated fantasy repeats today’s bureaucratic self-aggrandizement. If subservient viewers enjoy this egotistical rubbish, they ought to realize that it is rubbish.

Question 81

Question 81

The Left wants to defund the police. Does the Right want to defund the FBI?

Does the president have the authority to forgive debts? Is that question more important than the inflation risk?

Justice Thomas to the media: "I will absolutely leave the Court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours."

A groundbreaking 2019 study by four economists, “Capitalists in the Twenty-First Century,” analyzed de-identified data of the complete universe of American taxpayers to determine who dominated the top 0.1 percent of earners.
The study didn’t tell us about the small number of well-known tech and shopping billionaires but instead about the more than 140,000 Americans who earn more than $1.58 million per year. The researchers found that the typical rich American is, in their words, the owner of a “regional business,” such as an “auto dealer” or a “beverage distributor.”

Perry on the direction of health care costs: "One of the reasons that the costs of medical care services in the US have increased more than twice as much as general consumer prices since 1998 is that a large and increasing share of medical costs are paid by third parties (private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Department of Veterans Affairs, etc.) and only a small and shrinking percentage of health care costs are paid out-of-pocket by consumers. According to government data, almost half (47.1%) of health care expenditures in 1960 were paid by consumers out-of-pocket, and by 2020 (most recent year available) that share of expenditures has fallen to only 9.4% (see chart above). It’s no big surprise that overall health care costs have continued to rise over time as the share of third-party payments has risen to more than 90% and the out-of-pocket share has fallen below 10%. Consumers of health care have significantly reduced incentives to monitor prices and be cost-conscious buyers of medical and hospital services when they pay less than $1 themselves out of every $10 spent, and the incentives of medical care providers to hold costs down are greatly reduced knowing that their customers aren’t paying out-of-pocket and aren’t price sensitive."

Which is to say, no product or service is infinite. Rationing always occurs; the question is always where and by whom.

"...it is difficult to spot any obvious correlation between the pandemic–suppressing measures taken by different members of the WHO, and the outcomes in terms of excess mortality. This suggests we should be more tentative about what works, and probably have much still to learn about how such viruses spread. Mask-wearing was far less common in Sweden than in Britain, yet we had twice as many excess deaths, though most Swedes live in urban environments, like us. There’s a strong case for serious and exhaustive study of the role of masks involving human challenge trials, about which (to my bafflement) there seems to be some kind of academic horror."--Parris
 

Question 80

 Question 80

England has doubled the amount of forestland in the past 150 years, and now has as much land dedicated to forests as the year 1350.

Following the science:
A corporate income tax cut leads to a sustained increase in GDP and productivity, with peak effects between five and eight years. R&D spending and capital investment display hump-shaped responses while hours worked and employment are much less affected.
That is from a new NBER working paper by James Cloyne, Joseba Martinez, Haroon Mumtaz, and Paolo Surico.

Lawmakers pressed NIH leadership for answers about the mysterious disappearance of the Scientific Management Review Board, a committee that Congress empaneled in 2006 to ensure the agency was operating efficiently…
“There wasn’t any notification that we weren’t going to meet again — it was just that the meetings stopped getting called,” Nancy Andrews, a onetime board member and the former dean of the Duke University School of Medicine, told STAT in May.
She added: “I had the sense that we were asking questions in areas that they didn’t really want to get into, and I suppose Francis [Collins] in particular didn’t really want us working on.”

Legal decisions are getting stranger. perhaps because in a war with evil, the law must not be neutral.

As a recent example of common practices in science funding in North America, I was denied funding opportunities twice by Canada’s federal science foundations, both of which were detailed in these pages, purely because I said I would hire research assistants based on merit, regardless of their gender or ethnic or cultural backgrounds.
Over the past year, the encroachment of the cult of DIE into academia has only grown. There are now many positions that are simply off limits to straight white men who are not handicapped. One must pledge allegiance to these illiberal principles in order to be a practising scientist in 2022.-- Kambhampati

Question 79

Question 79

The fiscal strains in Ukraine are showing more broadly. Naftogaz, the state-owned energy company asked holders of $1.5bn of its bonds to accept a delay in payments as it seeks to preserve cash for purchasing gas. It would amount to the first default by a Ukrainian state entity since the war began.

China tried to build a network of informants inside the Federal Reserve System, at one point threatening to imprison a Fed economist during a trip to Shanghai unless he agreed to provide nonpublic economic data, a congressional investigation found.
Outlaws

The investigation by Republican staff members of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that over a decade Fed employees were offered contracts with Chinese talent recruitment programs, which often include cash payments, and asked to provide information on the U.S. economy, interest rate changes and policies, according to a report of the findings released on Tuesday.--wsj

Global [environmental] standards involve reducing the speed of oceangoing vessels, in an effort to save fuel and reduce emissions. As ships go slower, expected profits decline because ships will be able to complete fewer trips in a given amount of time than they used to.
Convenience, availability, comfort, profit, reinvestment--all subservient to a cult of true believers in something that is at least debatable.

The “seasteading” movement, which began in earnest in 2008 in California with the financial backing of Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, has been likened to the phenomenon of micronations for its vision of establishing sovereign communities outside the control of existing states.

 

Question 78

Question 78

Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons.

And:
In 2020, Congress approved $1.9 billion to remove Chinese-made Huawei and ZTE cellular technology across wide swaths of rural America. But two years later, none of that equipment has been removed and rural telecom companies are still waiting for federal reimbursement money. The FCC received applications to remove some 24,000 pieces of Chinese-made communications equipment—but according to a July 15 update from the commission, it is more than $3 billion short of the money it needs to reimburse all eligible companies.

If a household moves to a state with a higher (lower) average alcohol purchases than the origin state, the household is likely to increase (decrease) its alcohol purchases right after the move. The current environment explains about two-thirds of the differences in alcohol purchases. 

So there is an infective quality to alcohol consumption. Be careful.

A recent CATO study found that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to voice their true views. Nearly a quarter of American academics endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration. And nearly 70 percent of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something that students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey. Think about that. A majority of students in America think it is a virtue to inform on their wrong-thinking professors.

From an article on the Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch by Strimple: 

But at the heart of Badenoch’s political firepower is her grasp of the epistemological battles being fought for the soul of the West. Currently on her bedside table is an academic book called “Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief” by the University of Oklahoma philosopher Linda Zagzebski. Badenoch’s chief concern is “people not being able to understand what the truth is anymore.” Policymakers are “starting to make bad decisions because they don’t know how to reason anymore. People don't know what is true and what is false, so they go on how they feel,” she said. “‘I don't like the way this feels’ is not the right question. The question is: ‘Is this right or wrong? Will this work or will this not work?’”
What, in the end, does Badenoch want?
“I want us to go back to normal,” she told me. “I want to bring more rigor to the debate, more truth. I want to bring clarity and honesty about the difficulties we face, to be open and honest and free.”

An interesting question raised by Good in his article on the charming Ortiz being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and not the annoying Bonds or Clemons: How many times did Bonds bat against steroids-using pitchers? How many times did Clemens pitch against juiced hitters?

What is more a 'breaking the Republic,' the Jan. 6 riot, or Packing the Supreme Court?

Sunday/Spiritual Effort

 

Sunday/Spiritual Effort

Today is the "First will be last" gospel where Christ explains that entrance to heaven is difficult (the door 'narrow') and man must 'strive' to attain entry.

There is a curious observation here. Man may not be interested in murder and pillaging but, apparently, heaven is not attainable by default.

The startling St. Teresa of Avila said she regularly conversed with God. One day she asked why there were so few saints. He answered, "Because men do not desire holiness."

CDC, not OK (WSJ)

CDC, not OK (WSJ)

From the WSJ on the CDC:

One problem is that bureaucracies always seek to expand their power and reach, often at the expense of their core mission. The CDC is no exception as it has sought to address social and environmental issues that are better left to the states or other agencies. Meantime, it has failed in its core responsibility, which is to track diseases, collect data to inform decision-making, and deploy resources to support local public-health responses.

At the start of the pandemic when public officials were blind to the virus spread, CDC employees failed to follow standard lab operating procedures and contaminated Covid tests. Even after the agency realized its blunders, it refused to share virus samples with private commercial labs to help develop and deploy tests.

Dr. Walensky now plans to make the agency more “action-oriented.” But the CDC’s problem isn’t inaction. It has taken wrong and often counter-productive actions, including support for lockdowns and other government coercion. 

As our contributor Scott Gottlieb explained in his book “Uncontrolled Spread,” agency scientists took a proprietary interest in their intellectual property: “Companies seeking to make the test kits described extended negotiations with the CDC that stretched for weeks as the agency made sure that the contracts protected its inventions.”

This culture of control has hamstrung the CDC’s response in other ways. During the early months of pandemic, the CDC struggled to set up technical systems to analyze and share data. Some hospitals had to fax in information. Frustrated by the CDC’s pace, Health and Humans Services Department leaders seized control of the Covid data in summer 2020.

Democrats accused the Trump Administration of politicizing the CDC, but HHS’s seizure made data more transparent. The CDC now posts more Covid data, but often late and it omits critical information. Instead of publishing raw data for outside scientists to analyze, the CDC often only releases studies that support its policies, such as mask mandates.

Politics drives many CDC decisions, including one last spring not to collect information on breakthrough Covid cases lest this show declining vaccine efficacy. Its school reopening guidance was written in part by American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten

Most egregious was its eviction moratorium. The eviction ban was first imposed under Donald Trump, but the Biden Administration repeatedly extended it based on dubious science that purported to show it reduced the virus spread. The Supreme Court eventually ruled it illegal. The CDC’s usurpation of Congress and states continued with its illegal mask mandate on public transportation, also based on thin science.

The agency’s public guidance is often confusing. But the larger problem is that its recommendations are seemingly arbitrary and don’t acknowledge scientific uncertainty. The agency has also been slow to adjust its guidance. Last spring it was still advising the unvaccinated to wear masks outdoors.

While failing at its core responsibility, the CDC has stretched its powers and mission. Consider a CDC study in May, which attributed increased gun violence in 2020 among young, black men in part to “longstanding systemic inequities and structural racism.” Its suggested remedy: More government transfer payments.

Ms. Walensky commissioned a review of her agency in the spring, and it’s ironic that she hasn’t made it public since one criticism is the CDC’s lack of transparency. Instead she has released boiler-plate recommendations such as “promote results-based partnerships,” “translate science into practical, easy to understand policy,” and “prioritize public health communications.”

More spending is Dr. Walensky’s other proposed remedy. The agency received a 7% raise this year, but she wants more for a new office of “equity” to increase workforce diversity and improve communications with minority groups. Isn’t that what the CDC’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Office of the Associate Director for Communication already do?

It’s hard to believe the U.S. would have handled Covid worse if the CDC didn’t exist. The agency needs to shrink and focus on its central mission: Tracking and helping to stop disease.

Francis Fukuyama 3

 

Francis Fukuyama 3

The third argument

The Economic Case

The third major justification for liberalism had to do with its connection to economic growth and modernization. For many nineteenth-century liberals, the most important form of autonomy was the ability to buy, sell, and invest freely in a market economy. Property rights were central to the liberal agenda, along with contract enforcement through institutions that lowered the risk of trade and investment with strangers. The theoretical justification for this is clear: no entrepreneur will risk money in a business if he or she thinks that it will be appropriated the following year either by a government, business competitors, or a criminal organization. Property rights needed to be supported by a large legal apparatus that included a system of independent courts, lawyers, a bar, and a state that could use its police powers to enforce judgments against private parties.

Liberal theory did not only endorse the freedom to buy and sell within national borders; early on it argued in favor of an international system of free trade. Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations demonstrated the ways in which mercantilist restrictions on trade (for example, the Spanish Empire’s requirement that Spanish goods be carried only in Spanish ships to Spanish ports) were highly inefficient. David Ricardo laid the basis for modern trade theory with his theory of comparative advantage. Liberal regimes did not necessarily follow these theoretical dictates: both Britain and the United States for example protected their early industries with tariffs, until the point where they grew to a scale that allowed them to compete without government assistance. Nonetheless, there has been a strong historical association between liberalism and freedom of commerce.

Property rights were among the initial rights to be guaranteed by rising liberal regimes, well before the right to associate or vote. The first two European countries to establish strong property rights were England and the Netherlands, both of which developed an entrepreneurial commercial class and saw explosive economic growth. In North America, English Common Law protected property rights prior to the time when the colonies gained their political independence. The German Rechtsstaat, building on civil codes like Prussia’s 1792 Allgemeines Landsrecht, protected private property long before the German lands saw a hint of democracy. Like America, autocratic but liberal Germany industrialized rapidly in the late nineteenth century and became an economic great power by the early twentieth century.

The connection between classical liberalism and economic growth is not a trivial one. Between 1800 and the present, output per person in the liberal world grew nearly 3,000 percent. These gains were felt up and down the economic ladder, with ordinary workers enjoying levels of health, longevity, and consumption unavailable to the most privileged elites in earlier ages.

Francis Fukuyama 2

 

Francis Fukuyama 2

Part Two of his essay:

The Moral Case

The second justification for a liberal society is a moral one: a liberal society protects human dignity by granting citizens an equal right to autonomy. The ability to make fundamental life choices is a critical human characteristic. Every individual wants to determine their life’s goals: what they will do for a living, whom they will marry, where they will live, with whom they will associate and transact, what and how they should speak, and what they will believe. It is this freedom that gives human beings dignity, and unlike intelligence, physical appearance, skin color, or other secondary characteristics, it is universally shared by all human beings. At a minimum, the law protects autonomy by granting and enforcing citizens’ rights to speak, associate, and believe. But over time autonomy has come to encompass the right to have a share in political power and to participate in self-government through the right to vote. Liberalism has thus become tied to democracy, which can be seen as an expression of collective autonomy.

The view of liberalism as a means of protecting basic human dignity that emerged in Europe by the time of the French Revolution has now been written into countless constitutions of liberal democracies around the world in the form of the “right to dignity,” that appears in the basic laws of countries as diverse as Germany, South Africa, and Japan. Most contemporary politicians would be hard-pressed to explain precisely what human quality gave people equal dignity, but they would have a vague sense that it implied something about the capacity for choice, and the ability to make decisions about one’s own life course without undue interference from governments or the broader society.

Liberal theory asserted that these rights applied to all human beings universally, as in the Declaration of Independence’s opening phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But in practice, liberal regimes made invidious distinctions between individuals, and did not regard all of the people under their jurisdiction as full human beings. The United States did not grant citizenship and franchise to African Americans until passage of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Amendments in the wake of the Civil War, and after Reconstruction shamefully took them back in a period that stretched up to the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. And the country also did not grant women the right to vote until passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919. Similarly, European democracies opened up the franchise to all adults only gradually, removing restrictions based on property ownership, gender, and race in a slow process that stretched into the middle of the twentieth century.

AI

 

AI

The cover of this month’s Cosmopolitan magazine was created by a human/machine partnership, based on an image created by AI. The human (Karen X. Cheng) typed the sentence, “wide-angle shot from below of a female astronaut with an athletic feminine body walking with swagger toward camera on Mars in an infinite universe, synthwave digital art,” into OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. After a little editing by the human, here are the results:

We’re on the cusp of a new era of “movie magic.” The impact will be global. Kids will be born into a world where they can create anything they can imagine – no craft skills needed, just the ability to describe their vision. Deepfakes will evolve as well; there will be no more believing what you see or hear (yes, this works for audio too). A complete shift in the way we communicate and how we experience content is coming soon, and you can test it with a few taps on your smartphone.--Shelly Palmer

Francis Fukuyama 1

Francis Fukuyama 1

The Pragmatic Case

The pragmatic argument for liberalism needs to be understood in the historical context in which liberal ideas first arose. The doctrine appeared in the middle of the 17th century towards the conclusion of Europe’s wars of religion, a 150-year period of almost continuous violence that was triggered by the Protestant Reformation. It is estimated that as much as one-third of central Europe’s population died in the course of the Thirty Years War, if not from direct violence then from the famine and disease that followed upon military conflict. Europe’s religious wars were driven by economic and social factors, such as the greed of monarchs eager to seize Church property. But they derived their ferocity from the fact that the warring parties represented different Christian sects that wanted to impose their particular interpretation of religious dogma on their populations. Martin Luther struggled with the Emperor Charles V; the Catholic League fought the Huguenots in France; Henry VIII sought to separate the Church of England from the Rome; and there were conflicts within the Protestant and Catholic camps between high and low Church Anglicans, Zwinglians and Lutherans, and many others. This was a period in which heretics were regularly burned at the stake or drawn and quartered for professing belief in things like “transubstantiation,” a level of cruelty that is hardly understandable as an outgrowth of economic motives alone.

Liberalism sought to lower the aspirations of politics, not as a means of seeking the good life as defined by religion, but rather as a way of ensuring life itself, that is, peace and security. Thomas Hobbes, writing in the middle of the English civil war, was a monarchist, but he saw a strong state primarily as a guarantee that mankind would not return to the war of “every man against every man.” The fear of violent death was, according to him, the most powerful passion, one that was universally shared by human beings in a way that religious beliefs were not. Therefore the first duty of the state was to protect the right to life. This was the distant origin of the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the US Declaration of Independence. Building on this foundation, John Locke observed that life could also be threatened by a tyrannical state, and that the state itself needed to be constrained by the “consent of the governed.”

Classical liberalism can therefore be understood as an institutional solution to the problem of governing over diversity, or, to put it in slightly different terms, of peacefully managing diversity in pluralistic societies. The most fundamental principle enshrined in liberalism is one of tolerance: you do not have to agree with your fellow citizens about the most important things, but only that each individual should get to decide what they are without interference from you or from the state. Liberalism lowers the temperature of politics by taking questions of final ends off the table: you can believe what you want, but you must do so in private life and not seek to impose your views on your fellow citizens.

The kinds of diversity that liberal societies can successfully manage are not unlimited. If a significant part of the society does not accept liberal principles themselves and seeks to restrict the fundamental rights of other people, or when citizens resort to violence to get their way, then liberalism is not sufficient to maintain political order. That was the situation in the United States prior to 1861 when the country was riven by the issue of slavery, and why it subsequently fell into civil war. During the Cold War, liberal societies in Western Europe faced similar threats from Eurocommunist parties in France and Italy, and in the contemporary Middle East the prospects for liberal democracy have suffered due to the strong suspicion that Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt do not accept the liberal rules of the game.

Diversity can take many forms: in 17th century Europe it was religious, but it can also be based on nationality, ethnicity, race, or other types of belief. Byzantine society was riven by a sharp polarization between the Blues and Greens, racing teams in the Hippodrome that corresponded to Christian sects professing belief in Monophysite and Monothelite doctrines respectively. Poland today is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous societies in Europe, and yet it is sharply polarized between social groups based in its cosmopolitan cities and more conservative one in the countryside. Human beings are very good at dividing themselves into teams that go to war with one another metaphorically or literally; diversity thus is a prevalent characteristic of many human societies.

Liberalism’s most important selling point remains the pragmatic one that existed in the 17th century: if diverse societies like India or the United States move away from liberal principles and try to base national identity on race, ethnicity, religion, or some other substantive vision of the good life, they are inviting a return to potentially violent conflict. The United States suffered such conflict during its Civil War, and Modi’s India is inviting communal violence by shifting its national identity to one based on Hinduism.

Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama has a new book out and has an essay on liberalism which is really just an excerpt of the book. In the next couple of days I'll put out some of his observations on the origin/rationale of liberalism

First, a summary of the three moving forces of liberalism.

"There have been three essential justifications for liberal societies that have been put forward over the centuries. The first is a pragmatic rationale: liberalism is a way of regulating violence and allowing diverse populations to live peacefully with one another. The second is moral: liberalism protects basic human dignity, and in particular human autonomy—the ability of each individual to make choices. The final justification is economic: liberalism promotes economic growth and all the good things that come from growth, by protecting property rights and the freedom to transact.

Liberalism has a strong association with certain forms of cognition, particularly the scientific method, which is seen as the best means of understanding and manipulating the external world. Individuals are assumed to be the best judges of their own interests, and are able to take in and test empirical information about the outside world in the making of those judgments. While judgments will necessarily vary, there is a liberal belief that in a free marketplace of ideas, good ideas will in the end drive out bad ones through deliberation and evidence."

Outgrowing the Past, or Not

Outgrowing the Past, or Not

Rushdie is recovering.

Police identified his attacker as Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey.

“The Satanic Verses” stimulated death threats after it was published in 1988, with many Muslims regarding as blasphemy a dream sequence based on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, among other objections. In that sequence, the Prophet was depicted as considering a sort of polytheism, then rejecting it. Rushdie’s book had already been banned and burned in India, Pakistan and elsewhere before Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death in 1989.

That means that the fatwa is older than the attacker.

And the past has a legacy.

Atavism

 

Atavism

Atavism, in biology, is defined as 'recurrence of traits of an ancestor in a subsequent generation.'

From Jane Stroup on Hayek:

'While he didn’t specifically try to figure out why civilized people become barbarous, Hayek learned it as he went along. He was trying to understand why leftist policies are so appealing. That is the case even though they damage the economy they are supposed to guide and they tend toward totalitarianism. He developed what some call the “atavism thesis.”

Hayek concluded that humans have instincts that evolved genetically, starting with humans’ predecessors, animals in a pack, and continuing when humans lived together in small bands. This evolution ended only about 12,000 years ago.

Those instincts weren’t inherently bad. In fact, they included essential emotions, such as solidarity and compassion, that kept the band alive. But they were beneficial only when people lived in small groups. The growth of what Hayek called the “extended order”—trade and communication outside the band, the modern economy—required people to act differently.

“Mankind achieved civilization by developing and learning to follow rules (first in territorial tribes and then over broader reaches) that often forbade him to do what his instincts demanded, and no longer depended on a common perception of events.”

Humans have never entirely given up their early instincts,  however, and that draws them to socialism and fascism, said Hayek. Socialism and fascism give them the “visible common purpose” so essential in the distant past. But forcing people to share a visible common purpose is not compatible with freedom.

The wars and other horrors of the twentieth century revealed what can happen when people go back to these old instincts, Hayek wrote.

“Most people are still unwilling to face the most alarming lesson of modern history: that the great crimes of our time have been committed by governments that had the enthusiastic support of millions of people who were guided by moral impulses. It is simply not true that Hitler or Mussolini, Lenin or Stalin, appealed only to the worst instincts of their people: they also appealed to some of the feelings which also dominate contemporary democracies.”

Contemporary democracies can seek the goals of socialism. But if they allow those goals to obliterate the workings of the market they may find they are planting the seeds of totalitarianism. And that is barbarity.'

Questiion 77

 

Questiion 77

Does political pork achieve anything? Is it supposed to? Or is it a simple transfer of wealth and nothing more? Do we just put up with the stupidity and greed because we think we can afford it? And, if that's the case, do we think green pork is any different?

The IRS is advertising for applicants. Requirements include working a minimum “50 hours per week, which may include irregular hours, and be on-call 24/7, including holidays and weekends” and “Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
Never thought of the IRS and "deadly force."

The most widely celebrated paper in recent years on the economics of climate change concludes that green-energy subsidies mostly just increase total energy consumption rather than displace fossil fuels. The impact on CO2 and temperatures is “minuscule,” according to Princeton’s José Luis Cruz Álvarez and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg.

If a bill that reduces the deficit by $300 billion over 10 years represents “inflation reduction,” what are we to make of a law Congress passed last year that increased the deficit by an estimated $1.7 trillion in less than two years?--wsj

"Structural"--as in structural racism or structural poverty or structural sexism--is a word perfect for its time. It preempts cause and effect; that is, the lack of evidence does not diminish it. Which is to say, it is an assumption. Or, as is probably the case for many, a wish.

Mosaics and Chaos

Mosaics and Chaos

Homelessness. Criminality. Violence. Inexplicable government behavior for inexplicable motives. Schools that don't educate. Ignoring that a border implies national integrity.

Now the President of the United States stands in front of the Press and the American people and whispers "Zero." He says that the inflation rate in the country is "zero." This is simply idiotic.

So much in the nation requires holding your nose, watching where you put your foot as you get up and go to work. Terrible problems engender no comment. Idiocy is put in context. Dangerous processes are ignored. We have become a nation that holds its breath and hopes for the best.

At what point does tolerance become approbation?

And when do those problems become institutionalized?

Question 76

Question 76

We forgot the 1970s, so active industrial policy is back, from Beijing to Brussels. Therefore, the new book “Questioning the Entrepreneurial State”, eds Karl Wennberg and Christian Sandström, is a blessing. 30 scholars explain the state of knowledge about industrial policy, and remind us that it usually fails, big time. The problem with picking winners is that losers are so good at picking governments.-Norberg

US refineries are already operating at 94 percent of their capacity, with US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico running at 98 percent, which is the highest rate in 30 years.

Basing law on false presumptions and utopian goals is bound to undermine the natural rights of life, liberty, and property that each individual can share in without depriving others of their equal rights. Adam Smith, in his 1762 lecture “Of Jurisprudence,” called these “perfect rights”—because they are rights that all individuals “have a title to demand and if refused to compel another to perform.” In contrast, “imperfect rights” relate to “those duties which ought to be performed to us by others but which we have no title to compel them to perform.” Smith emphasized that only perfect rights are consistent with “commutative justice,” while imperfect rights, which he called “metaphorical” rights, are associated with “distributive justice” (Dorn)
As Bastiat wrote, human law is different from Holy Commandments. Law is defensive. "When law and force confine a man within the bounds of justice, they do not impose anything on him but a mere negation. They impose on him only the obligation to refrain from injuring others. They do not infringe on his personality, or his liberty or his property. They merely safeguard the personality, the liberty, and the property of others. They stand on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all. They fulfill a mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable, and whose legitimacy is uncontested."" (Bastiat, "The Law")

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall exercise all duties and functions in a manner that fosters the elimination of disparities across racial and ethnic groups with respect to employment, income, wealth, and access to affordable credit.--Maxine Waters' bill to put racial equity into the Fed's charter.

Since people will differ in many attributes which government cannot alter, to secure for them the same material position would require that government treat them very differently. Indeed, to assure the same material position to people who differ greatly in strength, intelligence, skill, knowledge and perseverance as well as in their physical and social environment, government would clearly have to treat them very differently to compensate for those disadvantages and deficiencies. (Hayak)

Obsession. This search in Mar-a-Lago better not end up looking like the poor guy who shot up the pizza shop looking for the kids enslaved by Hilary.

A resurgence of a modern problem seen years ago by the Founding Fathers: the belief that the government is us. It is not.

The Inflation Reduction Act

The Inflation Reduction Act

The budget modelers at Penn‐​Wharton estimate that the Senate bill would reduce the deficit by $86 billion in 2031, at most. That would be just 4 percent of the projected deficit that year and just 0.2 percent of U.S. GDP. So the bill’s impact on inflation through reducing deficits and demand would be close to zero.

Tax Foundation calculates that the Senate bill would reduce deficits by $178 billion over 10 years, which is just 1 percent of expected deficits over the period. Both Tax Foundation and Penn‐​Wharton find that the Senate bill would actually increase deficits the first few years, and thus have the opposite effect on inflation as the “reduction” promised by the bill’s title.--Edwards

A 15% business tax, doubling the size of the IRS, subsidies to EVs, cap on pharmacy prices--it looks like a primer for bad government policy. But you can be reassured. The Inflation Reduction Act sends $300,000 to Botswana for transgender education.

Is any culture rich enough to afford this kind of behavior?

Question 75

 

Question 75

From Twitter:
Big shout out to whoever it was that turned in 62 3D-printed guns for $150 each at a Houston gun buy-back.

On May 9th China reported that its goods exports to Russia fell by over a quarter in April, compared with a year earlier, while its imports from Russia rose by more than 56%. Germany reported a 62% monthly drop in exports to Russia in March, and its imports fell by 3%. Adding up such flows across eight of Russia’s biggest trading partners, it is estimated that Russian imports have fallen by about 44% since the invasion of Ukraine, while its exports have risen by roughly 8%.
A trade surplus

But we are not all good, neither is any of us good all of the time; in fact, one might say that the essence of human nature is that far from being “flawed,” we are not very damned good at all. And we know it.
The repression of this knowledge is an engine of human wickedness. And we’ve seen, in this last year, that once begun, it must escalate, like a fire searching for air.--mamet

Helsinki alone has more than 5,500 nuclear/chemical bunkers, with space for 900,000 people. Finland as a whole has shelter spaces for 4.4 million, in more than 54,000 separate locations.

Quality Assurance & Systems Manager Joseph Cox:
There are many other examples of this effect. In periods leading up to government personnel decisions in Chinese provinces, GDP figures are routinely inflated — when measured against harder-to-fudge information such as electricity and rail car usage. In fact, when comparing official GDP vs. nighttime electric light visibility, researchers have discovered a clear pattern: the more autocratic the government, the higher the deviation between GDP growth and the observable economic signal of electric light usage. In fact, authoritarian regimes inflate their GDP growth by a factor of 15 to 30%. Normally, this inflation is seen as a side effect of regimes wanting to maintain their own legitimacy.

The MIG-25 so frightened the US that they forced a complete re-engineering of the F-15. The MiG had been observed flying over Israel during the 1973 war at 63,000 feet and up to Mach 3.2. The U.S. spent $1.1 billion (real money in those days) to counteract the dreaded Foxbat. In fact, the aircraft’s performance was almost laughable. Effective combat range was 300 kilometers. And those very scary Israeli runs? They actually destroyed the engines, which had to be swapped out afterward. The whole aircraft was window dressing. It is quite possible the senior leadership of the USSR believed some of what the West did.
    In a way, the MiG-29 was even more revealing. It performed wonderfully in some ways, particularly mechanically. But the avionics were woeful. The Soviet war-fighting methodology was top-down and so MiG-29 pilots weren’t given the systems necessary to make decisions on their own. Targets had to be effectively called out for them by radar operators. The US was considering using its own stock of M-G-29s in Kosovo but decided against it because they were more trouble than they were worth.
    Both aircraft looked almost impossibly good. Senior management could easily believe they were. On parade and demonstration, they were stars. 

What explains the Great Enrichment is not material but a novel liberty and dignity for ordinary people, among them the innovating bourgeoisie. In a word, it was the first, modest moves toward social and economic and political liberalism, Adam Smith’s “obvious and simple system of natural liberty.”--MCCLOSKY

Sunday/Waiting

 Sunday/Waiting

Luke's gospel today is long and divided into three. The first encourages men to sell what they own and travel preaching. The other two are parables on how to manage the preparations for the arrival of God. Interestingly, the advice places man in a workplace setting, as if God was returning to a place requiring maintenance.

It's spiritual maintenance, true, but it's still a curious dichotomy.

For all its spiritual cautions and spiritual-material conflict, there is always that element in the background, also in Luke: “Which of you shall have an ox or an ass fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?”

Question 74

Question 74

Is the Taiwan crisis manufactured? Is Pelosi trying to eclipse Biden? Is her trip consistent with the State Department's policy? Is the Chinese response to this photo op reasonable? Was Biden's support of the House Speaker being threatened by a foreign power adequate? Who leaked this trip and why? Is this brinkmanship worth the risk? Is all this being done by the same giant brains that managed the Afghanistan withdrawal and the economic shutdown? This is so stupidly dangerous, was it all choreographed?

A paper tracing incomes from 1960 found that income inequality increased but consumption inequality did not.

Gregg on what happens when the government tries to impose a moral or social vision on an economy (as advocated by Brooks): "And here’s the problem: The more you allow the government to intervene in the economy—whether through regulation, subsidies, tariffs, or industrial policy—to try and, say, diminish wealth differentials, the greater the opportunities for what economists call rent-seeking. This is when an individual or business tries to attain wealth by extracting resources from others (e.g., the government) but without actually doing much by way of economic productivity—in short, without adding value. There’s no reason why government interventions to address some of the wealth differentials and their effects that Brooks laments would not become yet another source of rent-seeking."

Senate voted to hand $66 billion in new subsidies to computer chip manufacturers as part of an overall effort to boost domestic manufacturing of high-end electronics. But the corporate tax increases included in the Inflation Reduction Act would fall most heavily on the manufacturing sector, according to the JCT.
As a result, senators voting for both bills would effectively be voting to hike taxes on the very industries they just voted to subsidize.--boehm

Apparently, consistency is not a requirement of good government.

The rise of the newspapers was itself an aspect of the explosion in publishing which took place in the mid-seventeenth century. In the year 1500 just over fifty books were printed in England, in 1600 the number was 300, come 1648 more than 2,300 titles poured off the presses in a single year. Perhaps 30 percent of all men and 10 per cent of all women could read, and over double those percentages in the capital, a readership now offered an addictive weekly news fix that involved them as never before in the turbulent goings on of their kingdom.-- Keay

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has collected Americans’ financial records in bulk, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Wyden revealed the existence of a DHS financial surveillance program in a March 8 letter to the department’s inspector general, calling for an investigation into the previously unknown activities.
Wyden said he has recently learned that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)—a law enforcement component of DHS—was operating an “indiscriminate and bulk surveillance program that swept up millions of financial records about Americans.”
“After my staff contacted HSI about the program in January 2022, HSI immediately terminated the program,” Wyden wrote to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.

But surely it was in a good cause.

Question 73

 

Question 73

Economic logic itself contradicts social engineering in its varied forms. If the social engineers were so smart, as I noted long ago in studying the rhetoric of storytelling in economics, why aren’t they rich? Industrial policy, anyone? It’s a fair question to ask of any expert proposing to run your life with helpful suggestions or with coerced policies based on an alleged ability to predict the future. Supernormal profit … is a strict implication of a supposed ability to predict and control. Yet we can’t predict and control, not profitably, in a creative economy. Name the economist who predicted the internet or containerization or the Green Revolution or the automobile or the modern university or the steam engine.--mccloskey

Matriculation and graduation rates in General Surgery programs for Black men declined over the study period 2005-2018. Only 2.7% of general surgery residency graduates in 2018 were Black men, down from 4.3% in 2005.

Expressway shootings in Chicago-Cook County rose from 51 in 2019 to 130 in 2020 to 273 in 2021. These expressway shootings pushed Chicago’s actual 2021 murder total north of 800.
Expressway killings aren’t counted in the official city numbers because expressways are under state jurisdiction. But try telling that to Chicagoans. “It’s almost like a modern, 21st century form of dueling,” said Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly. “[People get into fights with] each other on social media, they threaten one another and they say . . . ‘Let’s take this out to the expressway.’”

Carlsen was briefly #2 in the Norwegian Poker Championship (among more than 1000 players total).

He considered the fact that primarily women were responsible for Russia policy in the Obama administration to be an intentional attempt to humiliate him. --krastev on putin

 
Re: Stacy Schiff’s “Witches,” a 2015 history of the Salem trials. “The delusion ran for about 18 months,” Mr. Mamet says, summarizing the book, “and after that, since they couldn’t explain it, they just forgot it. It never happened.” 

In January 1937, the USSR commissioned a census, the first census since 1926. The census was not intended for public dissemination. Instead, it was developed purely for leadership decision-making purposes. When the data was collected and reported, it showed a massive level of mortality due to the famines of 1932-3. The data, while accurate, was unacceptable. As a result, all of the statisticians involved with the project were arrested and executed. Again, the data was never intended for public consumption. The leadership themselves could not allow themselves to be exposed to data that contradicted what they wanted to hear.

EVs: Mining and Impact

EVs: Mining and Impact

Today, a typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. 1000.  It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

All those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery. 

We don't know what Mother Gaia thinks, but that's a big hole.

To repeat, 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.

80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.

Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.
Since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from natural gas, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are natural gas-powered.
Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from nuclear, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are nuclear-powered.

EVs are not a solution to the perceived world's energy problem. It is a middleman in the chain from fossil fuel to work. That middleman is expensive and dangerous to produce, expensive and dangerous to dispose of, and benefits a very, well-connected few.

Reversal

Reversal

There are some changes in the popular political media.

A very Left website has turned against masking, especially the masking of children. They picked out this information:

Fourteen of 16 trials performed before the pandemic found the recommendation to wear a mask did not significantly reduce infection rates compared to unmasked controls. Two trials on community masking have been performed during the pandemic. A trial in Denmark called DANMASK showed the recommendation to wear surgical masks did not reduce infections. A trial in Bangladesh showed reusable cloth masks did not reduce infections.

Many conservative pundits have turned against the American involvement in Ukraine, targeting Zelinsky. FOX has been particularly critical and has jumped on the Ukraine First Lady showing up on the cover of Vogue.

A headline from CBS:

Long COVID may now be less common than previously thought

And, just for fun. In 2008, Brian Deese – who’s currently President Joe Biden’s Chief Economic Advisor but at the time worked for Obama – said, “Of course economists have a technical definition of a recession which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.” But last week, he said the complete opposite. “Two negative quarters of GDP growth is not the technical definition of recession. It’s not the definition that economists have traditionally relied on.”

Question 72

Question 72

So....Pelosi is caught between two options, to look foolhardy by going to Taiwan or look cowardly or subservient by not going. 

How could those options have emerged from an intelligent office?

Democrats are organizing to vote in primaries for Republicans they think are weak and will be easier to beat. Anyone who looks with pride at the history of the American political structure and dreams of the democratic battle of ideas in the public marketplace should throw up. What could this mean? Irony in pirating an old Rush Limbaugh joke? Doubtful. Irony is rare on the Left. More likely it is an absence of new, positive ideas and fear of presenting the old ones they have. So rather than develop programs based on appealing philosophy, they try to hamstring their opponents. Probably because they can't kidnap them. Yet.

al-Zawahri is said to have been killed by an American drone in Afghanistan. A murderous guy. It is peculiar that so many revolutionaries come from physician ranks--maybe not so much if analyzed proportionally, but it seems so. At least there are a high number of physicians who had a revolutionary impact:
Joseph Warren, Benjamen Rush, Guevera, Marat, Sun Yat-sen, Alberto Garcia, Alan Berkman

Question 71

Question 71

“The intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people.”--orwell

On one hand, Mr. Furman insists that raising taxes will help reduce inflation in large part because “[d]emand reductions resulting from tax increases … are much larger and more immediate than any impact they have on future supply.” On the other hand, he asserts that it “isn’t at all clear” that raising corporate taxes will reduce business investment – which is another way of saying that it isn’t at all clear that demand reductions will result from corporate-tax increases.--Gibbrish noted by Bordeaux

If taxing rich corporations is a moral and legal priority, why is it a good idea to fund rich corporations with the CHIPS Act?

Why is federal funding of electric vehicles so bad if federal funding of chip manufacturers is so good?

D.C. is furious about the illegal immigrants being sent there. But isn't that what a 'sanctuary city' is?

Dolphins identify themselves with a unique whistle that scientists have likened to a human name.

Good thing they don't have a voting district.

A paper in Management Science by Kini, Shen, Shenoy and Subramanian finds that labor unions reduce product quality.