Googol Trends/Stats

I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.--Bono

***

More than 300 literary figures have signed an open letter denouncing the publisher Penguin Random House for its decision to publish a new book by Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the aftermath of her vote to overturn Roe v Wade and end the right to aboriton access in the US.

***

The crux of Fetterman's disastrous candidacy is not his illness, it is the ambition revealed by the party's and the candidate's persistence in the campaign. An impaired senator does not benefit the nation but may benefit both the candidate and his party. First things first.

***
Beginning in fiscal year 2023, the Department of Energy will require applicants for research funding to explain how their research projects will incorporate the tenets of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

***

Googol Trends/Stats


Google Trends follows the trend from 'feminism', to 'racism,' as the latter replaces the former, at least on graphs.

 

But first, atheists moved to feminism. Apparently, "this atheism blog is now a feminism blog" was kind of the unofficial slogan of the 2015 blogosphere.





Hmmmmm....



New Socialism matches the predicted cyclical backlash. But it's always inching up, stabilizing at higher norms.

Wood on 1619

Mandates are concerning for two reasons. First, it is not clear they are ethical. The standard rule in medicine is simple: We do not intrude upon individual autonomy unless that intervention provides sufficient benefit to third parties. This means there must be a large benefit to others— enough so the loss of autonomy is acceptable. Given that the Covid-19 vaccine does not halt virus transmission, the prerequisite is not met.--Prasad

***

Warming is said to be bad for the economy but Florida, on average 26 degrees warmer than Michigan, has grown faster.

***

Interesting article in the WSJ on the Durham case that discusses the FBI and, more importantly, the Press and the management of the Trump fiascoes. One line: the Columbia Journalism Review criticized MSNBC not for opposing Mr. Trump reflexively but for doing so stupidly—in ways that strengthened him.

***

If Catholic schools were a state, they’d be the highest performing in the nation on all four NAEP tests.

***

Wood on 1619

A letter to the NYT by historian Gordon Wood on the growingly farcical 1619 Project:

I have read your response to our letter concerning the 1619 Project. I have no quarrel with the idea behind the project. Demonstrating the importance of slavery in the history of our country is essential and commendable. But that necessary and worthy goal will be seriously harmed if the facts in the project turn out to be wrong and the interpretations of events are deemed to be perverse and distorted. In the long run the Project will lose its credibility, standing, and persuasiveness with the nation as a whole. I fear that it will eventually hurt the cause rather than help it. We all want justice, but not at the expense of truth.

I have spent my career studying the American Revolution and cannot accept the view that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” I don’t know of any colonist who said that they wanted independence in order to preserve their slaves. No colonist expressed alarm that the mother country was out to abolish slavery in 1776. If southerners were concerned about losing their slaves, why didn’t they make efforts to ally with the slaveholding planters in the British West Indies? Perhaps some southern slaveholders were alarmed by news of the Somerset decision, but we don’t have any evidence of that. Besides, that decision was not known in the colonies until the fall of 1772 and by that date the colonists were well along in their drive to independence. Remember, it all started in 1765 with the Stamp Act. The same is true of Dunmore’s proclamation of 1775. It may have tipped the scales for some hesitant Virginia planters, but by then the revolutionary movement was already well along in Virginia.

There is no evidence in 1776 of a rising movement to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, as the 1619 Project erroneously asserts, nor is there any evidence the British government was eager to do so. But even if either were the case, ending the Atlantic slave trade would have been welcomed by the Virginia planters, who already had more slaves than they needed. Indeed, the Virginians in the years following independence took the lead in moving to abolish the despicable international slave trade.

How could slavery be worth preserving for someone like John Adams, who hated slavery and owned no slaves? If anyone in the Continental Congress was responsible for the Declaration of Independence, it was Adams. And much of our countrymen now know that from seeing the film of the musical “1776.” Ignoring his and other northerners’ roles in the decision for independence can only undermine the credibility of your project with the general public. Far from preserving slavery the North saw the Revolution as an opportunity to abolish the institution. The first anti-slave movements in the history of the world, supported by whites as well as blacks, took place in the northern states in the years immediately following 1776.

I could go on with many more objections, some of which I mentioned in my interview with the World Socialist Web Site. But for now this may be enough to justify some correction and modification of the project. Again, let me emphasize my wholehearted support of the goal of the project to demonstrate accurately and truthfully to all Americans the importance of slavery in our history. 

 

Social Credits

With the recent Biden chip sanctions, I don’t think it is ridiculous to assert that the United States is very close to being informally at war with the two other most destructive nations in the world.--Cowen

***

Artificial intelligence can now produce prose that accomplishes the learning outcomes of a college writing assignment.

***
Although Rishi Sunak is a Hindu, he will still be able to advise the King on ecclesiastical appointments. Only Jews and Roman Catholics are barred from doing so by statute.

***
Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, Olof Scholz, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky are all 5’7".

***

Some local girls are marrying one VDV [part of the military] guy after another because they’re dying quickly enough that you can get several compensations in a few months. 

***

Social Credits

A fascinating enhancement of the modern state has emerged in China: Social credits. Like a credit score, it implies trustworthiness, only social, not financial. They are behavior grades, on-line and off-line, and can impact whether you can travel, buy plane tickets, buy property, take loans.

What in the West are basic rights, the direct results of human dignity, are being doled out in China by the state, the exact obverse of modern Western thought. In America, rights are inherent in every human being. In China, these rights are earned and stored, to be banked and spent, on deposit in some bureaucratic vault to be accessed under certain conditions. Or denied.

So are freedoms becoming commodities?
 

 

Will, Wood and 1619

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. -Oscar Wilde, writer

***

In the U.S. chess championship, which has new and stronger anti-cheating protocols, Hans Niemann is 13th in a field of 14.

***

American high school students' ACT scores have dropped dramatically in the past year. There was also a drop in the percentage of students meeting the ACT's "College Readiness Benchmarks." That's academic for 'they can't read.'

***

Will Work from Home (WFH) become Work from Pub(WFP)? In the UK, the Fuller brewery's chain of more than 350 pubs now offers WFP packages that start at £10 (about ₹933) per day and include lunch and a drink (non-alcoholic beverages are also available). A lunch and unlimited tea and coffee are typically included in the £15 ( ₹1,400) per day bargain offered by Young's, another significant brewery, which has 185 pubs.

***

More than ten percent of Americans with recent work experience say they will continue social distancing after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, and another 45 percent will do so in limited ways.

***

Will, Wood and 1619

From an old George Will article on the 1619 lie:

The Times’s original splashy assertion — slightly fudged after the splash garnered a Pulitzer Prize — was that the American Revolution, the most important event in our history, was shameful because a primary reason it was fought was to preserve slavery.

The war was supposedly ignited by a November 1775 British offer of freedom to Blacks who fled slavery and joined British forces. Well.

That offer came after increasingly volcanic American reactions to various British provocations: After the 1765 Stamp Act. After the 1770 Boston Massacre.

After the 1773 Boston Tea Party. After the 1774 Coercive Acts (including closure of Boston’s port) and other events of “The Long Year of Revolution” (the subtitle of Mary Beth Norton’s “1774”). And after, in 1775, the April 19 battles of Lexington and Concord, the June 17 battle of Bunker Hill and George Washington on July 3 assuming command of the Continental Army.

Writing history is not like doing physics. But event A cannot have caused event B if B began before A.

He then quotes Gordon Wood:

“It was the American colonists who were interested in abolitionism in 1776. ... Not only were the northern states the first slave-holding governments in the world to abolish slavery, but the United States became the first nation in the world to begin actively suppressing the despicable international slave trade. The New York Times has the history completely backwards.”

He finishes: It is the agenda of clearing away all impediments, intellectual and institutional, to — in progressivism’s vocabulary — the “transformation” of the nation.

The United States will be built back better when it has been instructed to be ashamed of itself and is eager to discard its disreputable heritage.

The 1619 Project aims to erase (in Wood’s words) “the Revolution and the principles that it articulated — liberty, equality and the well-being of ordinary people.” These ideas are, as Wood says, the adhesives that bind our exceptional nation whose people have shared principles, not a shared ancestry.

The Times says “nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional” flows from “slavery and the anti-black racism it required.”

So, the 1619 Project’s historical illiteracy is not innocent ignorance.

Rather, it is maliciousness in the service of progressivism’s agenda, which is to construct a thoroughly different nation on the deconstructed rubble of what progressives hope will be the nation’s thoroughly discredited past.

Diogenes' Carbon-Free Lantern/Statistics

The Roman Republic failed when its government switched from managing the people in the country to managing the other people in the room.--Chris

***

The WSJ reports that 75% of Americans 17 to 24 are ineligible for military service because of obesity, addiction, or criminal history.

***

In the United States, 20,000 people die of heat, but 170,000 die of cold. So, could the launching of reflective devices to cool the earth be considered a crime against humanity?

***

Julian Assange speaking in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war"

***

The words Black and Indigenous are both capitalized now. Is white? If not, why?

***

Several research articles co-authored by Nobel-prizewinning geneticist Gregg Semenza are being investigated by publishers after internet sleuths raised concerns about the integrity of images in the papers. Journals have already retracted, corrected or expressed concerns about 17 papers over the past decade, and others are investigating image- and data-integrity issues in further studies.

***

Diogenes' Carbon-Free Lantern/Statistics

Sometimes large questions are confounded by small ones. But small problems require effort and diligence. And, of course, an interest in the truth, which recently has become cultish.

The entire U.S. generated only 163,703 thousand megawatt hours of electricity from utility solar power in 2021, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, while employing 255,037 workers in the industry, according to the National Solar Jobs Census. In contrast, nuclear power generated 778,152 thousand megawatt hours of electricity while employing 66,800 workers, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

So each solar worker generated only 640-megawatt hours of electricity (enough to power 57 homes), while each nuclear-power-industry employee generated 11,648-megawatt hours of electricity (enough to power 1,059 homes), making the average nuclear employee 18.2 times as productive at generating carbon dioxide–free electricity as the average solar employee.

There are a lot of suppositions in the climate harangue, and, sadly, there are some realities.

Managers

 

Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss.~Gregory I

***

Re Boston University's new virus:

Some of the headlines aren’t making clear that the newly created chimeric virus is deadlier than Omicron (in mice) but less deadly than the ancestral strain. The authors, however, did not go through P3CO review, a rule requiring agencies under HHS to review grant applications for any research on “a credible source of a potential future human pandemic.”

Well, I'm sure we can rely on these elite thinkers.

***

The Yankees hit under .200 in winning over Cleveland.

***

Managers

Top-down managers and dictators love the 'long view,' the shucking of the short-sighted and egocentric decisions of the individual. Policy and the 'Grand Vision' always win.

So, what are we to make of this?

Special interests ranging from Silicon Valley’s tech industry to Los Angeles County supervisor Mike Antonovich intervened to change the bullet train’s route through the state, which accordingly ended up in a suboptimal configuration “not based on technical and financial criteria,” as a former official told the Times. (WashPo) (These guys can't even confess honestly.)
So a government project was repurposed to benefit a few insiders. I'm shocked! Shocked!

And this?

In 2002, the Japanese Ministry of Finance’s Policy Research Institute stated: “The Japanese model was not the source of Japanese competitiveness but the cause of our failure.” Far from industrial policy positively contributing to Japan’ economic reemergence after World War II, it had created economic and political dysfunctionalities that were impeding necessary changes. Thirty years later similar patterns had become apparent with regard to the People’s Republic of China.

And this?

...after spending about $1 trillion on loans to numerous developing countries, China’s once-vaunted Belt and Road initiative (which many U.S. wonks wanted to copy) is now hemorrhaging cash, laden with bad debts, and getting rebranded as “Belt and Road 2.0.” Zero COVID and Xi’s crackdown on tech and other private companies, meanwhile, have caused entrepreneurs to flee the country. And they’re fleeing Hong Kong, too. Now come the inevitable purges of various party apparatchiks for their totally-not-sketchy “crimes” of “disloyalty” and “graft.”--Linscome

Sadly, the 'long view' has to struggle with the limited information--and wisdom--of managers--as well as their egocentric predatory predisposition to take advantage of 'the short run.'

Gerrymandering the Hierarchy

Liberalism is liberal. It is an emancipation philosophy, and a joyous celebration of the creative energy of diverse people near and far. The liberal order is about a framework of rules that cultivates that creativity and encourages the mutually beneficial interaction with others of great social distance – overcoming such issues as language, ethnicity, race, religion, and geography.--Boettke

***

The chess scandal: A report, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, alleges that Niemann likely received illegal assistance in more than 100 online games, as recently as 2020. Those matches included contests in which prize money was on the line.

***

The left likes to present religious liberty as a bigotry loophole for intolerant white Christians, so it’s worth highlighting another case that’s an ideological scrambler: Last month a federal appeals court ruled that a male Muslim prisoner in Wisconsin can have an exemption from strip searches involving a transgender guard who is biologically female.

“The moral tenets of his faith” prohibit him “from exposing his body to a woman who is not his wife,” writes Judge Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. When the inmate objected to a 2016 strip search, the warden responded that the transgender guard “is a male and is qualified to complete these duties.” Prison officials threatened discipline if the inmate raised more complaints. (WSJ)

***

According to the U.S. government, some of the left-wing groups are being funded by Russian influence operations to “sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States.”

On July 29, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of a Russian national for working on behalf of the Russian government to sow discord in the United States.

***

Biden expands efforts to lower gas prices and secure energy independence. This is an actual headline from the NYT.

***

Gerrymandering the Hierarchy

Some young women threw tomato soup on Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" in protest of the production of oil. They are members of Just Stop Oil, which wants the British government to halt new oil and gas projects. The two protesters also glued themselves to the gallery wall. The exact relationship between the painting and oil production is unclear. Perhaps they objected to it being an oil painting. Every little bit of symbolism helps. They certainly think that art is at least superfluous to the world's problems.

That is to say, they see a hierarchy in the world.

In a time of increasing unruliness, the assumption of a hierarchy in our thinking is probably good news. But a hierarchy in energy raises some serious questions. Because shortages imply allocation differences. Since everyone is admitting hierarchies, how will those shortages be resolved? What will the method of distribution be through the 'hierarchies?'

Planned energy contraction implies some agreement, a general and widespread self-sacrifice. Shutting down the world's energy will create circumstances considerably deeper and more serious that can be born by a stiff upper lip. Without energy, production will decline. Living standards will decline. Economies will implode. Agricultural and industrial production will be reduced, sometimes to nothing. People will die. Some cultures will suffer disproportionately. Some will be unhappy with their allocation and the suffering they will experience. 

What if some resist? Or, worse, what if they see their energy-less neighbors as an opportunity for exploitation? Or revenge?

What if everybody sees the 'hierarchy' differently? 

What if some see it to their advantage?

Bankruptcy of the Fourth Estate

The prime minister is head of government but not head of state. The separation of those functions inoculates Britain from the infantilism peculiar to the American republic. Here the cult of the presidency invests absurd glory and expectations in that office’s occupants, who generally are mediocrities because politicians, like lawyers and plumbers and columnists, etc., produce a bell-shaped curve.--will


***

Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars to promote GOP candidates who denied the results of the 2020 election and embraced kooky conspiracy theories. Now, would they do that with America's best interest in mind?

***

...at a time when Democrats controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, it’s telling that McAvoy and Sorkin aim their sights at conservatives seeking power — not moderates and liberals wielding it.
--WashPo. Yep, that WashPo

***

Bankruptcy of the Fourth Estate

The Press has capitulated. They will say anything but would prefer to discuss the state of the country through the lens of people who are not in office and not responsible for the current state of things.

One wonders about the capacity of the people to tolerate mendacity. Does the mind fill up like a glass and excess lies just spill out, unretained? Are the lies incorporated into normal thought like a virus takes over the DNA of its host? Since lies are a distortion of truth, do we start confusing them? If you hear the cry "Wolf" often enough, do you develop a callous?

One also wonders about the frantic persistence to tar Trump. He does not offer an oppositional philosophy; in fact, he does not offer a philosophy at all. Why does he generate such opposition? Some of it is political opportunism...but the rest? Is it that politicians recognize the unvarnished reflection of what they are, like Dorian Grey? Or is it nothing more than a magician's diversion?

Mendacity and the focus on people not in the government. A sure formula for improving the country.

Neanderthals R Us

 

Shady Side Academy has received the largest gift in the school’s 139-year history, a $15 million personal commitment from S. Kent Rockwell and his partner, Pat Babyak, in support of capital projects included in the school’s campus master plan.

***

John Fetterman’s stroke occurred on May 13, the Friday before the Tuesday primary in Pennsylvania.
His first brief statement about the stroke came out on Sunday, May 15.
First things first.

***

In the 17th century, words were sometimes coined by adding the suffix -tonian in a contemptuous manner. Other examples are sillytonian and simpletonian. The trend appears to have started after Muggletonian and Grindletonian, religious sects in 17th century England. Muggletonianism, for example, was started by two tailors one of whom was named Muggleton. According to Wiki, “Muggletonians avoided all forms of worship or preaching, and met only for discussion and socializing. The movement was egalitarian, apolitical, and pacifist, and resolutely avoided evangelism.”

***

The White House is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth to temper the effects of global warming, a process sometimes called solar geoengineering or sunlight reflection.

Who are these people?

Winter is coming.

***

Messrs. Tupy and Pooley describe the shift in argument as “the intellectual pilgrimage from worrying about running out of resources to worrying about running out of nature.” In this view, critics concede capitalism’s ability to produce the goods, but argue that this productive capacity itself is speeding us to our destruction. What use is everyone’s being able to afford a car if the price is making the climate unlivable?
But, the authors argue, it isn’t only that we produce more. It’s that we produce more in smarter ways, using fewer resources, and then using them in ways less harmful to the environment. --McCune

***

Neanderthals R Us

Prof Paabo is seen as one of the founders of the scientific discipline of paleogenomics. He won the 10m Swedish kronor (£800,000) prize this year, as did his father, Sune Bergstrom, who won the same Nobel Prize in 1982.
Scientists found a 40,000-year-old finger bone in the Denisova cave, in Siberia. Prof Paabo was able to sequence a sample of DNA and the results showed it was a previously unknown hominin - known as Denisovans. And it turned out Homo sapiens bred with Denisovans. In parts of South East Asia up to 6% of people's DNA is Denisovan.

Some of this genetic inheritance helps the body cope with low levels of oxygen, aids survival at high altitudes, and is found in present-day Tibetans.

His work shows there were already two distinct groups of hominins (Neanderthals and Denisovans) living in Eurasia when Homo sapiens spread from Africa. 

Analysis suggests these now extinct populations were small and relatively inbred and may not have been able to compete with rapidly expanding modern humans.

Further comparisons between Neanderthal DNA and humans from around the world showed their DNA was a closer match to humans coming from Europe or Asia.
This tells us that Homo sapiens bred with Neanderthals after migrating out of Africa around 70,000 years ago.
And you can still see the legacy of that today. Between 1-4% of modern human DNA comes from our Neanderthal relatives. (culled from BBC)

 

 

The War on Windmills

It's said that "power corrupts", but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable. -David Brin, scientist and science fiction author

***

Kari Lake, a 2020 election denier, is a rising Republican star in Arizona. But an anti-Trump Republican group is targeting the GOP gubernatorial nominee with a $2 million TV and digital ad campaign. The Republican Accountability PAC will begin running digital ads against Lake on Tuesday and will launch its TV campaign on Monday.

***

The Spartans at Thermopylae were betrayed by Ephialtes, who showed the Persians how to get around the pass and so attack the Spartans from their rear. Today, Ephialtes in Greek indicates traitor, and it is the word for nightmare.


***

Peter Thiel, the zillionaire tech investor is a german immigrant. He invests heavily in conservative causes. He has also become a New Zealand citizen and has, according to the NYT, applied for citizenship in Malta.

***

After maxing out at 22% in 2017, China’s share of US goods imports has fallen to 17%

***


The War on Windmills


Professional conferences use to bring scientists together to discuss important scientific issues. They have become training centers. Now conference organizers will have to spend the bulk of their effort meeting bureaucratic requirements on diversity and “conduct.”

“Beginning in FY 2023,” the announcement from the DOE states, “proposals requesting funding to support a conference will require that the host organization of the conference have an established code of conduct or policy in place that addresses discrimination, harassment, bullying, and other exclusionary practices…. Applicants will also be required to submit a recruitment and accessibility plan for speakers and attendees. This plan will need to include discussion of the recruitment of individuals from groups historically minoritized in the research community.”

"...discrimination, harassment, bullying, and other exclusionary practices." Has there ever been such a complaint at a scientific conference?

The absence of these motives will be difficult to prove, of course. They must long for the days when a Certificate of Purity could be obtained with a few birth certificates and, if necessary, an attestation from an Obersturmbannführer.

Evil Incantations from The Climate Book

Communism failed and is bound to fail for at least two reasons: one, that to enforce equality, its principal objective, it is necessary to create a coercive apparatus that demands privileges and thereby negates equality; and two, that ethnic and territorial loyalties, when in conflict with class allegiances, everywhere and at all times overwhelm them, dissolving Communism in nationalism, which is why socialism so easily combines with “Fascism.”---Pipes

***

The cost of operating many British pubs has already doubled in recent months, and the government plans very modest assistance to country pubs that use heating oil and liquefied natural gas.

***

On the eve of the Civil War, there’s a figure by the name of George Fitzhugh who’s considered probably the most prominent pro-slavery theorist in the United States. Fitzhugh opens his book, not by attacking the abolitionists outright, but by attacking the doctrine of free trade and laissez-faire economics. Fitzhugh declares that free-market capitalism is “at war with slavery” by introducing a free-labor system and styles of production that he sees as unsuited to the agrarian slave economy.--magness

***

The Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to wade into the so-called fetal personhood debate, deciding not to take up a case out of Rhode Island over whether fetuses should have constitutional rights.

***

Evil Incantations from The Climate Book

An article called "...an edited extract from The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg" has appeared in The Guardian. Here are some interesting notions, with comments.

"The fact that 3 billion people use less energy, on an annual per capita basis, than a standard American refrigerator gives you an idea of how far away from global equity and climate justice we currently are."

---Here is a new, at least to me, element in the climate change catechism: climate justice and global equity. While the concepts are ephemeral, we know what it means: someone is going to pay for their success. And there are some practical questions. 14% of Irish households heat the home with peat. Under the new Equity created by the Global Warming Giant Brains, with those households be elevated to join the rest of the West, or will the rest of the West decline to theirs? They'll probably use their EVs to power their homes.

"Beyoncé was wrong. It is not girls who run the world. It is run by politicians, corporations and financial interests – mainly represented by white, privileged, middle-aged, straight cis men. And it turns out most of them are terribly ill-suited for the job. This may not come as a big surprise. After all, the purpose of a company is not to save the world – it is to make a profit. Or, rather, it is to make as much profit as it possibly can in order to keep shareholders and market interests happy."

---Ah! The white, privileged, middle-aged, straight cis men are integral to global warming. But race-baiters, Leftists, and professional apocolypsettes are immune to charges of thoughtless bias. And they can insult their moneyed friends with impunity because the gravy train is sumptuous and never-ending. White, privileged, middle-aged, straight cis men invited to the banquet will put up with a lot in order to finance and supply a revolution, even one that threatens their own.

"Journalist Alexandra Urisman Otto describes how she started investigating Swedish climate policies and found that only a third of our actual emissions of greenhouse gases were included in our climate targets and the official national statistics. The rest were either outsourced or hidden in the loopholes of international climate accounting frameworks. So whenever the climate crisis is debated in my “progressive” home country, we conveniently leave out two-thirds of the problem. An investigation by the Washington Post in November 2021 has shown that this phenomenon is far from unique to Sweden. Though the figures vary from case to case, this process and the overall mentality of constantly trying to sweep things under the carpet and blame others is the international norm."

---Dangerous waters, here, but they clearly don't care. Not only does she disparage the companies who are much of the driving force of climate change--and profits to be made thereby--she also disparages the accuracy of the climate studies on which all of her assumptions are based. She says those inaccuracies are underestimating the problem. But why so? Why are inaccuracies limited to her view? Maybe the whole concept is flawed.

"Our politicians do not need to wait for anyone else in order to start taking action. Nor do they need conferences, treaties, international agreements or outside pressure. They could start right away. They also have – and have had for a long time – endless opportunities to speak up and send a clear message about the fact that we must fundamentally change our societies. And yet, with very few exceptions, they actively choose not to."

---Now, something subtle. Our leaders can move quickly, without approval. Who's delaying? International groups are the presumed procrastinators. But one group unmentioned is the citizen, the guy who will finance this seppuku and then suffer it. His approval is not necessary. Leaders have their own criteria, listen to their own inner voice. Their own vision is all that is necessary. We don't have names for these new enlightened ones yet. But we know their citizen-victims by many names: serf, villein, liegeman, vassal, helot, thrall, slave, peon, servant. It's hard to imagine that any of these people have ever read a history book.

"We cannot live sustainably within today’s economic system....Even if we carried out all of our climate action plans, we’d still be in trouble. Net zero by 2050 is simply too little, too late. There is just too much at stake for us to place our destiny in the hands of undeveloped technologies. We need real zero."

---This, amigos, is staggering. The climate cherub is saying that the substitute technologies of wind and solar are undeveloped and unreliable. Instead, we should not aim so high or promise so much as to try to recreate the modern world with alternative energy sources. We must face the music and turn the entire energy spigot off. Cultural Luddism. The damage and human misery she casually ordains is simply beyond calculation. Which power source will be regression enough? Are we talking pre-steam here?

Peat?

Was globalism a fad?

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. -William Faulkner

***

The International Monetary Fund is urging Argentina against unconventional currency measures such as creating multiple exchange rates at a time when inflation is expected to reach 100% by the end of this year.

***

“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism. Who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our constitution.” Gabbard, on Twitter, leaving the Democrat Party

***

'Surly' originally meant lordly or majestic. Surly is an alteration of sirly, from sir, shortening of sire.

It is famously used in the poem “High Flight” by the fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee.

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth” 
Magee was born in China to an American father and British mother. He joined Canadian Air Force and was posted in England. Inspiration for this poem came to him in 1941 while flying a Spitfire at 33,000 feet. The poem celebrates the joy of flying. “Surly bonds” can be seen as gravity, “surly” emphasizing its unrelenting nature.
Later that year his Spitfire collided with another plane in mid-air. Both pilots died. Both were 19.

***

Was globalism a fad?

We are beyond platitudes. And are probably beyond grand self-sacrificing positions and theories. The free world has got to reboot with an emphasis on safety. Not international brotherhood and safety. Not low CO2 production and safety. Safety. We are too well-armed to go into the next decades fighting with each other for land. Or energy. But, if those adventures occur, the West must be safe.

This requires cynicism when dealing with others. And some assumptions when a nation supports a leader or country which has disdain for the health of the world. We cannot set aside common sense or risk-evaluation to advance the causes of dangerous people, ideas, and states. North Korea deserves no platform. China's main relationship with America is that of a thief. Russia has a strange slav(e)phile philosophy that allows it to roam and eat whatever country is historically tasty. Iran is locked in a murder-suicide pact. No free country should sacrifice itself to some uncertain--or malignant--whole. Joining with a bad apple will not improve it. And good intentions are neither a policy nor infective.

Integrity and safety, these should become the watchwords of the free world. That, and an assumption of evil. Budgets must be managed. The needs of the country should be internalized as much as possible. There should be no energy dependence upon Russia. Or Iran. Or Venezuela. Or the Saudis. And as little dependence on China as possible.

And the "Yes, but..." argument has got to be returned to the Hope Chest.

Tulsi Gabbard, Past and Present

“Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”--milton

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Dr. Jill in Ukraine, Angelina in Poland.
I wonder if we will send Melania Trump to Eastern Europe during all this high-profile American travel. She's a compelling success story and speaks a number of the local languages so I suppose she's a shoo-in to be asked to go.

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California has the sixth-highest rate of congenital syphilis in the country, with rates increasing every year. In 2020, 107 cases per 100,000 live births were reported, a staggering 11-fold increase from a decade prior.

Tulsi Gabbard, Past and Present

Tulsi Gabbard has left the Democrat Party. I have no idea why but integrity, among politicians, generally can be ruled out as a motive for any action.  

She was attacked by FOX's token liberal over her trip to see Assad a few years ago. Here is a look back into that past.

Hillary Clinton floated a conspiracy theory that the Russians were "grooming" Tulsi Gabbard to be a third-party candidate in 2020, while claiming 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein is "also" a Russian asset. (In 2016, Stein won enough votes in the key states of Wisconsin and Michigan to keep those states blue, had she been able to magically gift them to Hillary. In other words, it’s a pretty fair statement that, all other things being equal, a third-party candidate, Jill Stein, may very well have cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election. Shades of Perot.)

Do you notice a preoccupation with Russians and Evil here? And when did the Left start getting afraid of the Russians anyway? I thought the Republicans were the conspiracy theorists.

During the Democratic debate, Gabbard blasted debate co-sponsors CNN and the New York Times for "smearing" her along similar lines. CNN commentator Bakari Sellers called her a "puppet" for the Russian government and the Times reported on her “frequent” mentions in Russian state news media.
"Just two days ago, The New York Times put out an article saying that I'm a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears,” Gabbard said. "This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I'm an asset of Russia — completely despicable."

Then she tweeted this.
"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.
It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."

And, true to journalistic ethics, this from a CNBC panel: “One thing that was interesting about Tulsi Gabbard’s response, I mean she went after Hillary Clinton, she was strong, she said she wasn’t gonna run as a third party candidate — she never denied being a Russian asset,” said a panelist MSNBC identifies as Kimberly Atkins. “That was the one aspect that was missing from her response, which, you know, you would think that would be within the first line or two. It was not there.”

So it was probably silly to bring up the idea of "integrity" anyway.

 

Trade and Culture

It is by character and not by intellect the world is won. --Evelyn Beatrice Hall, biographer

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The ACT is a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States. Results are the lowest in 30 years.

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U.S. refineries are running at full capacity, or just short of full capacity. This is why oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases got sent to Europe and Asia, because they had the room and equipment to turn it into actual usable fuel.

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The SEC is after Kim Kardashians for her touting Crypto. My bet is they have a lot of regard for her influence and little regard for her audience; they want to save us.
But this is still a free country. Kardashian should be able to sell her influence like all these public figures do.

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The U.S. is preparing to ease sanctions on oil producer Venezuela. This, and the countries of the West shutting down energy production, damaging their own countries, and placing themselves in thrall to some pretty awful leaders and cultures, will be a headscratcher for the ages. At any other time in history, the public would assume treason.

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Originally the word 'hipster meant a person who carries a hip flask.

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Trade and Culture

So how are trust and cultural adhesiveness generated?

From a new paper:

"We conduct rule-breaking experiments in 13 villages across Greenland (N=543), where stark contrasts in market participation within villages allow us to examine the relationship between market participation and moral decision-making holding village-level factors constant. First, we document a robust positive association between market participation and moral behaviour towards anonymous others. Second, market-integrated participants display universalism in moral decision-making, whereas non-market participants make more moral decisions towards co-villagers. A battery of robustness tests confirms that the behavioural differences between market and non-market participants are not driven by socioeconomic variables, childhood background, cultural identities, kinship structure, global connectedness, and exposure to religious and political institutions."

Markets and trade increase trust, cooperation, and universal moral action without regard to background or religion.

Whoa.

Barriers in Basics

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate

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Musgrove threw a one-hitter for seven innings against the Mets.

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After leaving the vice presidency in 2017, Biden’s wealth came in at $2.5 million. In the years since, it has grown to $9 million. Vice President Kamala Harris is worth about $5 million. Pelosi, $120 million.

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AFT president Randi Weingarten has gone to Ukraine "to assess the situation."

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Freiermuth has had 3 concussions in the last 12 months.

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Barriers in Basics

We are inundated with terrifying information about changes in the climate. Why we should think there is an interlocking relationship between local and systemic events is unclear but it has been stated by the government that there is no increase in floods, hurricanes, or fires in the U.S. over the last century nor has the changes in the Greenland ice sheet accelerated. Nonetheless, whenever there is a flood or storm we are encouraged to run outside and burn our car. 

One famous slow-motion crisis is in the Great Barrier Reef. Here's an update.

"For years we were told that this glorious coral reef off the coast of Queensland was being slowly strangled by mankind. The Guardian even published an obituary. It was literally titled ‘The Great Barrier Reef: an obituary’. ‘[The] seeds of the reef’s destruction are well embedded’, it declared. And we all know who was to blame for this ‘destruction’: marauding mankind. It’s always us. Shipping, the transformation of the reef into a tourist hotspot and, of course, Queensland’s evil coal industry have been on a ‘collision course’ with this natural wonder for decades, we were told. ‘Climate change is killing the Great Barrier Reef’ – that was the frank, scary verdict in 2017.

And now? The reef is fine. It’s in better nick than it has been for ages, in fact. The reef’s obituarists focused on the problem of ‘bleaching’. This is where the coral becomes stressed by warmer-than-average waters, responds by expelling the algae that live within it, and then becomes weak and sometimes dies. The coral turns a deathly white, hence the term ‘bleaching’. Huge swathes of the coral in this vast reef system, which stretches for a mind-boggling 1,400 miles, have been bleached in recent decades. And unless ‘climatic conditions are stabilised’, unless mankind reins in his Earth-warming, sea-heating antics, then the rest could be bleached too, we were told. Only that isn’t what has happened. At all. A new survey of the reef by the Australian Institute of Marine Science reports that coral cover on the reef has recovered spectacularly. In two-thirds of the reef, coral cover is at its highest level since records began, 36 years ago. From newspaper obituaries just a few years ago to good health in 2022 – this reef is the Lazarus of the natural world."--O'Neill

Adjectives

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.--cs lewis

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Sasse may resign.

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Pittsburgh Police responded to an armed carjacking and robbery in Shadyside on Tuesday night, marking the third carjacking reported in the neighborhood within the last seven days.

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Liberalism held that society’s work should be carried on, its responsibilities met, and its difficulties dealt with, by the application of social power, not governmental power; social power meaning the power generated and exercised by individuals and groups of individuals working in an economy which is free of governmental interference – an economy of free contract.--Knoc

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Adjectives

Years ago the Beat poets used to link words for their sensual effect. They had no real, coherent meaning but sought an impression. 'Radio belly.' 'Cat shovel.' They created a sense without a definition.

'Peoples democracy' is a Marxist-Leninist term for an economic/social/political movement. That is, it is democracy with an adjective. Not really a democracy. Not an elaboration, but a distortion where 'democracy' softens the moderator.

Now, what does 'social justice' mean? Is it 'justice' with a curve? Isn't that actually the definition of 'injustice'?

So, does the adjective refine or distort the meaning of the word? And what kind of culture reveres inaccuracy and distortion?

Sunday/1 in 10

The Steelers are 14 point underdogs for the first time since Bradshaw was drafted.

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San Francisco spends $105,000 per homeless person a year.

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In the playoffs this year there are 18 former Pirates playing. One is a catcher who is starting. The Pirates waived him.

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Sunday/1 in 10

In today's gospel, Christ cures ten men of leprosy, and only one returns to thank him. Interestingly he is a Samaritan, an outsider.

The Greeks saw the elements of life devolving into Comedy, where truth is revealed in laughter, and tragedy, where truth is revealed in fear. Christianity introduced a new element: Gratitude as a prerequesite of happiness.

Discrimination/Stats

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate

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According to a report from Daily Faceff’s Frank Seravalli, Penguins general manager Ron Hextall has called all 31 other teams in the NHL about a deal for D-man P. O. Joseph.

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One in seven Irish households still burns peat for heat. They can't wait for EVs, I'll bet. Probably will use them as generators.

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The British statesman Lord D’Abernon referred to the 1920 Polish-Soviet War as one of the eighteen decisive battles of world civilization. “The history of contemporary civilization knows no event of greater importance than the Battle of Warsaw, 1920.″ In his evaluation of the Polish victory in 1920, historian Norman Davies noted: “Had Pilsudski and Weygand failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of Western civilization would have been imperiled.”

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France spends about 14% of gdp on public pensions, compared with an OECD average of 8%.

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Discrimination/Stats

A recent study (Quillian et al) on discrimination in 9 countries in Europe and North America finds there is some discrimination in every county but, if anything, the USA has one of the lower rates of discrimination while France and perhaps also Sweden have very high levels. These results run counter to the narrative that the US is uniquely or especially discriminatory because of its history of slavery and capitalism. Capitalism, in fact, is likely to predict less discrimination.

National histories of slavery and colonialism are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for a country to have relatively high levels of labor market discrimination.

Top of Mind

The national debt is now over 31 trillion dollars. 31 Trillion.

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EcoHealth Alliance, the U.S. nonprofit that used National Institute of Health funds to conduct dangerous coronavirus research in partnership with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the global Covid-19 pandemic, has been approved for yet another five-year federal grant, despite a history of violating the terms of its contracts. (NR via Don)

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North Korea fired a rocket over Japan. That is probably all the world needs to know about the reliability and responsibility of government leaders. Like flying up to foreign jet fighters, these people need to be the center of attention, need to be a player. Even if they stimulate an equally bent foreign leader to react and blow everyone up.

Remember, during the Cuban Missle Crisis, Castro begged the Russians to attack the U.S., despite knowing the first response by the Americans would be to obliterate Cuba and its people. Castro's peopel.

And remember, too, the mood in the Kennedy White House was to attack.

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Top of Mind

“I want to thank all of you here, including bipartisan elected officials like Representative [Jim] McGovern, Senator [Mike] Braun, Senator [Cory] Booker, Representative Jackie — are you here? Where’s Jackie? — I think she wasn’t going to be here — to help make this a reality,” the president said.
The Indiana Republican, who was the co-chair of the House Hunger Caucus, had died earlier in an August car accident that also killed two of her staffers.

Jean-Pierre came to Biden’s defense, noting that it’s not “unusual to have someone top of mind,” especially at a “big event.” “If you put it into the context,” she continued, “it happened at an event where we were calling out the champions, congressional champions in particular, of this issue, this important issue when it comes to food and security.”

"Top of mind." What was she saying? It became a meme, repeated over and over by Jean-Pierre and her friends. What were they saying?

"Top of mind" is a marketing term referring to the idea of associating a particular need with a particular solution. Think 'Kleenex.' It's a relatively recent term. There is an idiom definition of "occupying one's foremost attention or concern."

If you Ngram it, it is rare, appearing over the last thirty years with 10% of the frequency of "Glioblastoma," a very unusual brain tumor.

Why would she use such a phrase? Because these people create bizarre beliefs and then assume their audience holds that ground in common with them.

These people create their own worlds, live in them, and demand you do too. "Top of mind" means nothing to the average guy who is not in marketing. So she takes it, repurposes it, and then uses that redefinition to explain why it's reasonable that the President of the United States is looking for a woman he knows is dead. In the same way, they create a fuel shortage purposely, give fortunes to Iranian theocrats who despise us, explain the advantages of declining police roles and the increasing public riots, redefine the meaning of "recession," raise deficit spending to fight inflation, fight discrimination with discrimination, declare the border 'secure'--all for our benefit--all outrageous notions delivered with a calm straight face, breaking serenity only to pose in astonishment when disbelief appears.

 

 

 

Bros

de Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws is the second most referenced book by the American Founders. The first most referenced is Deuteronomy.

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How do electric vehicles work during an evacuation, like the recent Florida hurricane, for example? (from w.e.)

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The federal government's attack on lobstermen in Maine may be a classic example of government destructive manufactured highmindedness.

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Bros

The movie "Bros," with a gay theme, is not doing well in attendance. Several editorials have appeared debating whether its economic failure is the "fault" of straight people. 

Apparently, some groups have a claim on the attention and finances of strangers. And this claim seemingly supersedes quality or interest.

High-mindedness and Small Minds

  

Pirates Appreciation Day should be a month.

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Stacy Abrams has sued to overturn the election on the basis of voter suppression. This charge cost the Georgians a small fortune in virtue signaling. She lost her case this week and trails in her second try at governor. One more loss before she gets an offer from "The View."

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Is socialism compatible with the heart and mind of the American Constitution?

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There is an 18.7% gap in the wages of men and women. This is clearly the result of a cabal-influenced trans-economic anti-woman discrimination. Now, there is an 18.2% difference between the earnings of Asian men and white men. Soooo....

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High-mindedness and Small Minds

The Constitution’s appropriations clause, says: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” This alone invalidates Biden's student loan bill money transfer.
If you are not willing to play by the rules--or, worse, if you don't know them--you shouldn't play. 

Unless, of course, you are trying to destroy those rules.

Evil Content

Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back. -Gore Vidal 

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China’s vaunted Belt and Road Initiative, where China was supposed to have taken the lead in influencing the developing world, as well as creating markets and sources of raw materials, is in trouble with rising rates and unstable economic circumstances.
 
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Legendary former pro-surfer Chris Davidson is believed to be the victim of a lethal attack in a country bar in New South Wales, Australia. Davidson was reportedly punched in the face outside of South West Rocks Country Club in South West Rocks on Saturday around 11 p.m., causing Davidson to fall and hit his head on the pavement.

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"That is how we see it. And why? Because that's what's happening. Madam President, I yield the floor but clearly, you know, this is, this is a literally (sic) call to arms in our country." What. To arms? What? What is?
An abortion bill.

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Evil Content

The media has raised questions about Dr. Oz's TV program being used as a platform for questionable products and views. So the media sees itself as a questionable platform? The mind spins. But nothing said or promoted on the good doctor's show approaches the views of his senatorial opponent and their known results. His face cream might not help wrinkles but it won't steal your farm and deracinate your family.

Fetterman

“If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.”--Blackadder’s Anthony Melchett

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Medical schools in the country are weeding out applicants who are insufficiently devoted to the creed of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), according to a new report released by the non-profit Do No Harm.

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It is now routine for hospitals, as employers, to require employees to take training that includes the employee admitting to racism. It is not known how patients respond to having their health and well-being managed by admitted racists.

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Fetterman

In Pennsylvania, the senate race is between a television personality and a socialist. Fetterman is left of Sanders. And he is not just a nonsense-spouting old man, he is a hulking guy devoted to the cause. As a young man, he had an epiphany. He became sensitized to the shortness of life and its inequalities; he saw these as injustices. He emerged a serious socialist. He married a bright, Melania-beautiful idealist and the two of them embarked on their vision quest.

He is currently camouflaged. His radical campaign opening was poorly received and has been softened. But he has not. Yet he is running ahead of the television personality that the Republicans, apparently, thought was desirable. Control of the Senate may hang in the balance.

There is probably some horrifying metaphor here, how the democracy denatures things to a palatable toxin. But it is not the fault of democracy. Rather it is the cynicism of the politician--particularly the political party--and the saddeningly unthinking and uncritical electorate. Nothing will improve until those two elements improve.

Intellectuals and Politics

Pittsburgh police are investigating a reported carjacking in the city’s Shadyside neighborhood after they say employees of a pizza shop were robbed at gunpoint.
Officers responded to the 200 block of South Highland Avenue shortly before 2:50 a.m. Thursday where witnesses reported three men approached two employees of a nearby pizza shop who had finished their shift. The men reportedly took cash, personal items and jewelry from the employees, said Pittsburgh Public Safety spokeswoman Amanda Mueller.
All three men were carrying guns, police said.

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China has opened dozens of “overseas police service stations” around the globe to monitor its citizens living abroad, including one location in New York City and three in Toronto.

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Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro is freeing some of Venezuela's most violent criminals from prison and sending them to the U.S. southern border, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report.

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Some job candidates are hiring proxies to sit in job interviews for them — and even paying up to $150 an hour for one.

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M2 — one broad measure of the money supply — went up about 40% between February 2020 and February 2022. In the quantity theory approach, that would be a reason to expect additional inflation, and of course, that is exactly what happened.


                    Intellectuals and Politics

The philosopher Robert Nozick once described the academic frame of mind in a 1998 essay called “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” He wrote:

"Intellectuals now expect to be the most highly valued people in a society, those with the most prestige and power, those with the greatest rewards. Intellectuals feel entitled to this. … Intellectuals feel they are the most valuable people, the ones with the highest merit, and that society should reward people in accordance with their value and merit. But a capitalist society does not satisfy the principle of distribution `to each according to his merit or value.’ Apart from the gifts, inheritances, and gambling winnings that occur in a free society, the market distributes to those who satisfy the perceived market-expressed demands of others, and how much it so distributes depends on how much is demanded and how great the alternative supply is. Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as do the wordsmith intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces that animus."