China and EVs

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always.--Robin Williams

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Did the U.S. admit they have sabotaged Nord Stream 2?

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How big a climate disaster was the explosion of Nord Stream 2?

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There are illegal immigrant activists.

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China and EVs

The island of unintended consequences is becoming a continent. The growth is so big and unreasonable that one becomes suspicious that 'unintended' is appropriate.

This is from Forbes at an EV conference:

China’s carmakers will take a 12–15 percent market share in Western Europe by 2025. To date, a key selling point for Chinese EVs has been a cheaper sticker price, an advantage reinforced by the fact that European EV manufacturers have targeted a more upmarket segment, in part perhaps because (at a guess) they have not yet mastered the ability to make cheaper models at the margins they need. But the prospect that China will also be aiming at the higher-end market should worry the German auto sector. As a reminder, the German auto sector is the backbone of Germany’s vital industrial sector, much of which is dependent on exports. The largest market for German auto-sector exports is China. How long will that last?

The EU charges a 10 percent tariff on Chinese car imports, while China imposes duties between 15–25 percent on autos headed east. He wonders how long that regime will continue. Meanwhile, the U.S. imposes tariffs of 25 percent.

In short, by forcing this switch to EVs, the West (and Europe in particular) is not only throwing away its longstanding lead in auto manufacturing but handing a great chunk of that market to s geopolitical rival. Even by the dismal standards of central planning, this is remarkably stupid.

NHS

The Kremlin dismissed Boris Johnson’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike.

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An increase in the minimum retirement age to 64 from the current 62 is part of a flagship reform package pushed by President Emmanuel Macron to ensure the future financing of France's pensions system.

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AlphaZero was set up in late 2017. Almost immediately, it began training by playing hundreds of millions of games of chess against itself. After about four hours, it was the best chess-playing entity that ever had been created. The lesson of this story: Under the right conditions, AI can improve very, very quickly.

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NHS 

The NHS is getting slow but persistent criticism, as are many of the government--run health care systems in Europe.

In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.

Some Ukrainian refugees in the UK are returning back home to get medical care.

[Thiel] has described British people’s affection for the state-backed health service as “Stockholm syndrome.”

The venture capitalist’s comments came during a Q&A session after a speech at the Oxford Union, a 200-year-old debating society, on Monday. He also said that the crisis-stricken health service, currently grappling with strikes and long wait times for emergency care, was making people sick and needs “market mechanisms” to fix it. Such mechanisms include privatizing parts of it, avoiding rationing and loosening regulations…

“In theory, you just rip the whole thing from the ground and start over,” Thiel said after an address in which he argued that a perceived fear of disruption was holding back technological and scientific developments. “In practice, you have to somehow make it all backwards-compatible in all these ridiculous British ways.”

The first step to fixing the NHS was, he said, to break away from the view that it is “the most wonderful thing in the world” and understand it as an “iatrogenic” institution, which means it makes people sick.

Sunday/Mount

A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government's Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Military operatives in the UK's 'information warfare' brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.
They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No 10.--Daily Mail

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A Rhode Island school encouraged teachers to donate money to help pay off a cartel “coyote” who brought one of its students to the US, according to leaked emails.
Emails shared to Twitter on Friday showed Mount Pleasant High School Assistant Principal Stefani Harvey asking her colleagues to give money to help an unnamed student pay off a $5,000 debt to the cartel member.
The assistant principal said that the boy was $2,000 short of his goal at the time the email was sent.
“We have a student who came to America with ‘Coyote’ which is a group that helps people,” Harvey wrote in the email. “This group gives you a time frame to make a payment of $5000 dollars to those, who bring them to the states.”--nypost
I hope this is untrue

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"The fictitious email referred to a presumably equally fictitious conversation between the Clinton campaign’s Amanda Renteria and Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch about making sure the Clinton server investigation didn’t “go too far.” The words found their way into a Russian intelligence document, which found its way to the FBI, becoming the justification for FBI chief James Comey’s chaotic actions in the 2016 election, which likely elected Mr. Trump."--from WSJ article on fraud and disinformation in American politics and the eagerness of Federal agencies to participate

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Sunday/Mount

Today is the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. Christ's description of the Good in the Beatitudes includes meekness, the poor in spirit, and those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.

In many respects, these qualities are in the everyday.

Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self-fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in their daily interactions.

The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describe the heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full-time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.

Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.

Here are two minority reports:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
--Hamlet Act 1, scene 3, 75–77 

PERHAPS too far in these considerate days
Has patience carried her submissive ways;
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do,
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Land of our fathers, in thine hour of need
God help thee, guarded by the passive creed!
As the lone pilgrim trusts to beads and cowl,
When through the forest rings the gray wolf's howl;
As the deep galleon trusts her gilded prow
When the black corsair slants athwart her bow;
As the poor pheasant, with his peaceful mien,
Trusts to his feathers, shining golden-green,
When the dark plumage with the crimson beak
Has rustled shadowy from its splintered peak,--
So trust thy friends, whose babbling tongues would charm
The lifted sabre from thy foeman's arm,
Thy torches ready for the answering peal
From bellowing fort and thunder-freighted keel!                          
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

And Blake's summary of unresolved conflict:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears; 
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole; 
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.                          
--William Blake

Power Slap

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.--Voltaire

***

In 2004, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 60 percent to 31 percent, according to Pew Research Center polling. By 2019, this had flipped: 61 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage, while 31 percent opposed it. Similarly, Gallup found in 2002 that 55 percent of Americans viewed gay and lesbian relationships as morally wrong, with 38 percent viewing them as morally acceptable, but by 2022, 71 percent deemed homosexual relationships to be morally acceptable, with only 25 percent saying they were morally wrong.

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HALO Space is a global space tourism company developing a Near Space flight program that will offer zero-emission commercial flights between 25 and 40 kilometers high, allowing passengers to observe the curvature of planet Earth and the vastness of Space in a flight lasting up to 6 hours. This will be possible thanks to its aerospace balloon, equipped with a pressurized capsule with a capacity for eight passengers and a pilot, which will have panel windows offering a 360º view.

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Power Slap

"... there is a new show called "Power Slap: Road to the Title," and the title is a perfect description of the show. In this "sport" two adults slap one another as hard as they can until one of them is knocked out, cannot continue, or the "judges" stop the "competition." The "slap-fighters" are not allowed to put up their hands to defend themselves or flinch. The participants in this human zoo have been knocked head over heels (literally) and appear to have suffered severe concussions as well as bloody and swollen faces that could result in permanent disfigurement. The crowd in the studio cheers as the competitors slap each other into oblivion."

This is from an internet thing called "RawStory," The article then continues with its implications to society and explanations on how to improve things. The hub of the problem seems to be conspiracy theories and Trump.

"It is all one more example of how American society is "amusing itself to death" as a culture that is infantile and broken — both socially and politically. Today's America is extremely anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-rational, unreflective, impulsive, narcissistic and juvenile. Such a dynamic breeds fascism, authoritarianism, fake populism, white supremacy, misogyny, violence, and a larger culture of cruelty and debasement that does not value or elevate human dignity and human respect."

It goes on, presumably not understanding that, among humans, bad taste is its own reward.

A Press Release

For almost six decades, international students have come to a University of Pittsburgh institute to improve their English and, in many cases, they would eventually teach the language to others.
Citing enrollment losses and financial pressures exacerbated by the pandemic, Arts and Sciences Dean Kathleen Blee has informed the institute and the linguistics department to which it belongs that the unit will cease operations as of June 30.
The institute is one of the nation’s oldest intensive English programs, officials said.

***

In a survey, two-thirds (66%) said elected officials represent mostly the views and values of their big donors, not average Americans. Just 16% said they felt their elected officials represented their constituents. Another 18% said they weren’t sure.

***

The roughly $2.8 trillion deficit in fiscal 2021, during which Biden was in office for more than eight months, was about $360 billion lower than the roughly $3.1 trillion deficit in fiscal 2020, Trump’s last full fiscal year in office.

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A Press Release

"The first Native American woman in space ventured out on a spacewalk Friday to prep the International Space Station for more solar panels.

NASA astronaut Nicole Mann emerged alongside Japan's Koichi Wakata, lugging an equipment bag. Their job was to install support struts and brackets for new solar panels launching this summer, part of a continuing effort by NASA to expand the space station's power grid.

Mann, a Marine colonel and test pilot, rocketed into orbit last fall with SpaceX, becoming the first Native American woman in space. She is a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California." (From Yahoo)

Wait. Nicole Mann earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy in 1999. Earned a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a specialty in Fluid Mechanics from Stanford University in 2001. She is a Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps and served as a test pilot in the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet. She deployed twice aboard aircraft carriers in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From her NASA page:
Mann was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in 1999. Following graduate school, she completed The Basic School (TBS) in Quantico, Virginia and reported to Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida, for flight training in 2001. She earned her wings of gold as a Naval Aviator in 2003 and reported to VFA-106 for fleet training in the F/A-18C. She began her operational flying career in 2004 with the Thunderbolts of VMFA-251 based out of Beaufort, South Carolina. During this assignment, she deployed twice with CVW-1 aboard the USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) and flew combat missions in support of Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM. Upon return from her second deployment, Mann reported to the United States Naval Test Pilot School, Class 135, at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. In June 2009, she began her Developmental Test tour at Air Test and Evaluation Squadron TWO THREE (VX-23) as an F/A-18 Test Pilot/Project Officer. While at VX-23, Mann executed a variety of flight tests, including loads envelope expansion, flying qualities, carrier suitability and ordnance separation in the F/A-18A-F. In the spring of 2011, Mann assumed duties as the VX-23 Operations Officer. In July 2012, Mann was assigned to PMA-281 as the Joint Mission Planning System - Expeditionary (JMPS-E) Integrated Product Team (IPT) Lead when she was selected as an astronaut candidate. She has accumulated more than 2,500 flight hours in 25 types of aircraft, 200 carrier arrestments and 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

NASA Experience:
Mann was selected in June 2013 as one of eight members of the 21st NASA astronaut class. Her astronaut candidate training included intensive instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalks, Russian language training, robotics, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. She completed astronaut candidate training in July 2015. She has served as the T-38 Safety and Training Officer and as the Assistant to the Chief Astronaut for Exploration where she led the astronaut corps in the development of the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System, and Exploration Ground Systems for missions to the Moon. She launched to the International Space Station as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on October 5, 2022.

Awards/Honors:
Awarded two Air Medals, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals, two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals and various unit commendations. Trident Scholar, Academic All-American (soccer), Distinguished Graduate - U.S. Naval Academy, Honor Graduate - U.S. Naval Test Pilot School Class 135, Leroy Grumman “Best Paper” Award - East Coast Society of Experimental Test Pilots Symposium, NASA 2015 Stephen D. Thorne Safety Award, 2017 Jerry Yeagley Award for Exceptional Personal Achievement and was inducted into the Academic All-American Hall of Fame.

And the lead in the story is that she is a Native American? Or is trivializing achievement the point?

PDF Version

Constructs

When competition is working as a process, some competitors are almost certain to be hurt. Those for whom equality is not just an ideal but a dogma simply cannot accept this. Sinister theories are one result of their attempts to reconcile their dogma with a reality that repeatedly mocks it.--Sowell

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“If you undertake to divide all these appropriations and have many committees where there ought to be but one, you will enter upon a path of extravagance that you cannot foresee the length of or the depth of, until we find the treasury of the country bankrupt.”--Samuel Randall in 1885

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There’s always been an irony in the haughtiness of America’s coastal elites. These people look down on Middle Americans and their cranky beliefs – they ‘cling’ to religion, as Obama infamously said – and yet they themselves hold far wackier views. They think there’s a hundred genders. That racism is the original sin of the United States that will never be washed away. That whites must engage in the self-mortification of checking their privilege. And that climate change is Mother Nature’s punishment of mankind for his hubristic industrial antics. That last one is positively pre-modern. It makes the other religions in the US look perfectly sane.--O'Neill

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Constructs

According to a recently released report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, a center-right think tank that researches partisanship in academic and scientific fields, almost 40 percent of students at liberal arts colleges identify as LGBTQ.

The data used to compile the report show that overall 23 percent of U.S. college students identify as LGBTQ

At three of the 159 campuses surveyed, a majority of students identified as LGBTQ. This was true of 51 percent of students at Oberlin, 61 percent at Wellesley, and an incredible 70 percent at Smith College. The latter two are women-only schools.

What could this mean? We are strong enough to forge ourselves in any identity? We are shallow and rootless enough that any soil is nourishing? Identity is as thin as a chameleon's color? Are identities a simple matter of belief? Or declaration? And, if so, what about other doctrines?

Retirement Accounts

 

On December 1, 2022, Britain's Office for National Statistics released the latest 10-yearly census, carried out in 2021, showing that the fastest-growing population in England and Wales is Muslims. According to the census:
"For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as 'Christian'..."

***

Orthodox Jews make up 18 percent of U.S. kidney donors.

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71% of Americans said that, in the past 12 months, their community had experienced at least one of the five forms of extreme weather the Center’s survey asked about. Among those who had recently encountered extreme weather, more than eight-in-ten said climate change contributed at least a little to each type of event.


***

Retirement Accounts

Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data. The Federal Reserve also estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average of $255,200.

The average income for those in their 40s is just above $50,000, but the median retirement savings amount for this age group is $63,000.

Federal Reserve SCF Data of average retirement savings:

Ages 40-44

$101,899.22

A June 2022 study by Vanguard called “How America Saves 2022” calculated average and median retirement account balances of Vanguard account holders by age. Here’s how the numbers break out:

Vanguard Retirement Account Balances by Age
Age Bracket	Average Balance	Median Balance
25 and younger	$6,264	$1,786
25 – 34	$37,211	$14,068
35 – 44	$97,020	$36,117
45 – 54	$179,200	$61,530
55 – 64	$256,244	$89,716
65 and older	$279,997	$87,725

 

Davos 2

Riley Dowell, 23, of Melrose, is charged with assault by means of a dangerous weapon, destruction or injury of personal property, and damage of property by graffiti/tagging, stemming from an incident at the Parkman Bandstand, according to authorities.
Boston police were called to the bandstand around 9:30 p.m. Saturday for a report of a protest and allegedly saw a person, later identified as Dowell, spray-painting the monument with the words “NO COP CITY” and “ACAB,” the department said in a statement, which identified Dowell, who was assigned male at birth, using her birth name.

She is the daughter of the Democrat Senate Whip.

Some pictures from the Daily Mail and Twitter:

Dowell, 23, was charged with Assault by Means of a Dangerous Weapon, Destruction or Injury of Personal Property and Damage of Property by Graffiti. Pictured: Clark and Dowell in 2018 

Riley Dowell Twitter

Jared Dowell Twitter

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So the big Mexican anti-drug cop has been taking millions of dollars from the cartels. Is anyone surprised?

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Thomas raised the interesting question as to whether the Hamlin excitement distracted the Bills.

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Davos 2

On Wednesday, a nine-month investigation by The Guardian, produced with Die Zeit and non-profit investigative outlet Source Material, revealed that forest carbon offsets mostly don’t work.

On Thursday, a second report criticized this approach as well: Researchers in several countries found that carbon removal technologies are still a long way off from being able to suck up the vast amounts of emissions that corporate net-zero plans are banking on.

Novel methods like direct air capture today account for just 0.1 percent of the 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere, itself a small fraction of the roughly 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted worldwide last year.

Self-appointed expert activists do not want control of their proclaimed problem out of their hands. And they really don't want private businesses to do it. Speaking alongside Kerry at one panel of extraterrestrials was Helena Gualinga, a 20-year-old indigenous climate activist from the Kichwa Sarayaku community in the Ecuadorian Amazon, whose credentials are obvious. “Putting business first is exactly what has led us to the point where we are at right now,” she said, reacting to Kerry’s comments that point to private sector climate solutions. “In this building, we have people who are enabling those crimes against humanity and against planet. Let’s not get confused here. We’re talking about not expanding on fossil fuels,” she said. “We don’t want any new oil wells. We don’t want any new coal mines,” she added, or “any new fossil fuel development.” At the end of the panel, Gualinga directly asked Kerry and Germany’s climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, also on the panel, if they would commit to ending new fossil fuel exploration.

“I love and respect your passion and your voice is really critical in this,” the extraterrestrial-in-chief said, noting that he had just met with “your environment minister,” newly-appointed Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva, “about the forest.” Kerry seemed to erroneously believe Gualinga was from Brazil. (Extraterrestrials have a broader vision, beyond arbitrary national lines.) Politely, Gualinga chimed in as he continued talking about the Rainforest Protection Pact: “Make sure to include Ecuador also, my country.”

There is no greater example of American tolerance than the open-mindedness shown toward a dangerous political-scientific belief championed by extraterrestrial morons and a child.

Provorov

 

The past may be many things, but it is clearly irrevocable. Its sins can no more be purged than its achievements can be expunged. Those who suffered in centuries past are as much beyond our help as those who sinned are beyond our retribution. To dress up present-day people in the costumes and labels of history and symbolically try to undo the past is to surpass Don Quixote and jeopardize reality in the name of visions.--Sowell

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YouTubers said they destroyed over 100 VHS tapes of an obscure 1987 movie to increase the value of their final copy. They sold it on eBay for $80,600.

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The Northernmost part of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the Southernmost part of Brazil.

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Provorov

Provorov declined to participate in the Flyer's Pride Night and sat out the warmup with the gay pride jersey. He cited religious reasons. This was a promotion night for hockey and Provorov said, while he respected everyone, he was not doing promotions.

He received an avalanche of criticism from sports writers. One suggested the Russian defenseman should go fight in Ukraine.

Tolerance is a curious banner because it demands attention, forbearance but not approval, and, at the same time, forbearance the other way, forbearance with someone who disagrees. Tolerance is a two-way street.

Advocacy is not.

The results have not been pretty. The sports writers have asked Provorov be benched, called his religion 'archaic,' and criticized his ethnicity. And, of course, he's a bigot.

Forbearance without approval is essential in this culture because every citizen is equal before the law, with his own value. So each citizen emerges onto the cultural-political stage with a value he does not have to prove. Tolerance is not desirable, it is essential in this modern world of identity. It affirms the individual's value and by-passes his religion, race, origin, or language as acceptable, peripheral add-ons.

When these personal characteristics become evangelical and demand approval, things change. No one is annoyed with a Jehovah's Witness until he shows up at your door and interrupts the football game.

Interestingly, after the spat, Provorov's jerseys sold out of the NHL store.

Sunday/Fishermen

I watched CNN for an hour with the Lunar New Year shooting at the dance studio in Monterey Park before any broadcaster mentioned the word 'Asian.'

***

The concern over anti-Asian violence in the U.S. is curious when the government actively supports anti-Asian educational policies.

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Ehrlich made himself (in)famous when he in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb predicted that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” Instead of rising as Ehrlich predicted, the global crude death per 1,000 people has fallen from 12.5 in 1968 to 7 in 2019 before ticking up to 8 in the pandemic year of 2020.--Bailey
For some reason, 60 minutes had a long segment on Ehrlich, as if he were not the poster child of foolish doomsaying. And, AND he has a new book!

***

Sunday/Fishermen

In today's gospel, Christ recruits the apostles. There is no preaching, no Sermon on the Mount. He walks along the shoreline and asks people to join him. One wonders how this happened because the gospel is intent on making some points. All these men were working guys, guys recruited actually at their boats. Several were working with their families. The gospel describes no discussion. No debate. The men simply hear the call and leave, following him. This debate over the importance of the spiritual over the day-to-day has always been painful in the gospel, but it is astonishing that Christ's early appeal to working, family men is accepted without reservation.

Report from Davos

Over 220,000 Cubans attempted to cross the southern border illegally from December 2021 to December 2022, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Migrants are also making their way to the U.S. by sea.

***

Hunter had a key to the super-secret garage.

***

A minister, a priest, and a rabbit walk into a blood bank to donate and the nurse asks each their blood type. “I’m pretty sure I’m a Type O”, says the rabbit.

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Report from Davos

Before he became a politician, Al Gore planned to be a minister. You can still see the residual, the shouting lectures, the burning skies, the boiling seas. He's become silly--along with his sidekick, the child from Sweden. The two are like some biblical prophecy stepping out of the mist, the Jeremiah and the simple soul, fierce and earnest, preaching against the current.

But the real story here is Kerry. His appearance at Davos was witheringly revealing. Here's what he said:

"When you start to think about it, it's pretty extraordinary that we — select group of human beings because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives — are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet. I mean, it's so almost extraterrestrial to think about ‘saving the planet.’"

He sees himself--and the other Darvosians-- as the Christ to Gore's John the Baptist. He is the intervener, "select" and special, a being above the fray, bringing Truth to the unruly and struggling mob. And sometimes the Truth is painful and requires an angry force by a stern god. Such a vision of yourself must be intoxicating, elevating yourself above such mundane human qualities as lordliness and lust for power.

And, of course, shamelessness.

Taiwan and Japan

 

Evidently, the will of the majority is the will of the majority and not the will of “the people.” The latter is a mosaic that the former completely fails to “represent.”---Schumpeter

***

The proposed carbon tariff in the EU will have (at least) two effects. First, they will push some production out of foreign nations and into the EU. Second, they will induce some foreign nations to move to greener energy sources over time, to avoid the tax.
In the short run, the first effect dominates: The tariffs will lead to more coal use and a dirtier energy supply

***
A new study looked at the GPT-3 program’s ability to match humans in three key factors: general knowledge, SAT exam scores, and IQ. Results, published on the pre-print server arXiv, show that the AI language model finished in a higher percentile than humans across all three categories.

***

Taiwan and Japan

The People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Party's armed wing, has a handbook analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of Japan. Here's an excerpt assuming Taiwan falls:

"As soon as Taiwan is reunified with Mainland China, Japan’s maritime lines of communication will fall completely within the striking ranges of China’s fighters and bombers…Our analysis shows that, by using blockades, if we can reduce Japan’s raw imports by 15-20%, it will be a heavy blow to Japan’s economy. After imports have been reduced by 30%, Japan’s economic activity and war-making potential will be basically destroyed. After imports have been reduced by 50%, even if they use rationing to limit consumption, Japan’s national economy and war-making potential will collapse entirely…blockades can cause sea shipments to decrease and can even create a famine within the Japanese islands."

There Is No US in Ukraine

I think the WEF [World Economic Forum] envisions a world where most people “have everything they need” in the same way that animals in a zoo have “everything they need”. Everything except freedom.--Fortier

***

Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the U.S. FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, has written in the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s top medical journal, calling for an end to the mass vaccination of anyone at low risk from the virus. In an op-ed titled “Bivalent COVID-19 Vaccines – A Cautionary Tale”, Dr. Offit writes that Covid boosters are “probably best reserved for the people most likely to need protection against severe disease.

***

The idea of shrinking the discretionary portion of the government back to the size that it was literally just a month ago is “impossible,” according to Politico reporters Caitlin Emma and Connor O’Brien (and their congressional sources), who describe the Republican plan to hold discretionary funding level as relying on “severe cuts” and say the futility of the exercise would “put Don Quixote to shame.”--Boehm

***

35 of Kamala's staff have left over the last two years.

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There Is No US in Ukraine

The invasion of Ukraine shines a light so bright we may not be able to look.

Outrageous international behavior must be seen 'in context.'

In national conflicts, land is more important than people.

An "Ism" outweighs a person.

Humans separate tolerable murder from intolerable murder.

Nations will demand the ultimate sacrifice from their citizens but will not
make that sacrifice themselves, except Ukraine, Iran, and Israel.

The Good Samaritan will not cross the road if it has extinction-level mines.

Leaders will not necessarily rise to the occasion.

Individual human heroism and sacrifice are incalculable.

American leadership on both sides has been lacking and, in the case of Harris, mortifying.

Shame is not a factor in politics.

Even international, totalitarian threats will be viewed through a partisan domestic filter.

The political problems facing the average citizen may be beyond his educational base.

It's A Confusing Life

After Putin choked off natural gas supplies to Europe, hoping Europeans would “freeze to death” and “turn on their elites,” the Biden Administration immediately committed to delivering an extra 15 billion cubic meters of U.S. LNG to make up for the shortfall. The U.S. ended up delivering nearly 40 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe (almost three times the previous record) and is en route to becoming the world’s largest LNG exporter. Europe is fully weaning itself off Russian energy, reducing its dependence on Russia from 46% to a minuscule 8%, with gas prices falling to lower than pre-war levels.

***

John Carlson has not played in a game or skated with the Capitals since absorbing a Brenden Dillon slap shot to the side of the head on December 23. Apparently, his ear had to be reattached.

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Surveys show that only 1 in 3 Americans can pass a citizenship test, because most of them aren’t familiar with the foundational ideas outlined in our texts and documents.

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It's A Confusing Life

Apparently, there's a group of It’s a Wonderful Life haters and they meet at Kamala Harris's house.

During oral arguments in the case 303 Creative v. Elensis, which concerns whether a website designer who opposes same-sex marriage must be legally compelled to create a site for a same-sex wedding, Justice Jackson brought up Capra’s classic as part of a strange hypothetical:

"What I’m asking you is, [say] I have a public business, I’m a photographer. My belief is that — you know, I’m doing It’s a Wonderful Life scenes. That’s what I’m offering, okay? I want to do video depictions of It’s a Wonderful Life. And I — knowing that movie very well, I want to be authentic, and so only white children and families can be customers for that particular product. Everybody else can — I’ll give to everybody else, I’ll sell them anything they want, just not the It’s a Wonderful Life depictions.

I’m expressing something, right? For your purposes, that’s speech. What about — what’s the other step? It’s speech, and I can say anti-discrimination laws can’t make me sell the It’s a Wonderful Life package to non-white individuals. . . .

Everybody can come, but I have certain products that I’ll only sell to non — to — to white individuals because the speech that I’m trying to depict is the authentic depiction of that scene as I understand it and that I want to put out there in the world, and it has my signature on the bottom of it, so people are seeing my photos and I want my photos of It’s a Wonderful Life to be as authentic as possible, meaning no people of color."

This strange logic appeared in the Supreme Court in the argument over Creative v. Elensis. The Supreme Court.

 

Questiions

Questiions

After Putin choked off natural gas supplies to Europe, hoping Europeans would “freeze to death” and “turn on their elites,” the Biden Administration immediately committed to delivering an extra 15 billion cubic meters of U.S. LNG to make up for the shortfall. The U.S. ended up delivering nearly 40 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe (almost three times the previous record) and is en route to becoming the world’s largest LNG exporter. Europe is fully weaning itself off Russian energy, reducing its dependence on Russia from 46% to a minuscule 8%, with gas prices falling to lower than pre-war levels.--Fortune

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John Carlson has not played in a game or skated with the Capitals since absorbing a Brenden Dillon slap shot to the side of the head on December 23. Apparently his ear had to be reattached.

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Tom Brady and billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft held substantial stakes in Sam Bankman-Fried's business.

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Politico cybersecurity reporter Eric Geller exited the publication after a tweet blasting the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI while sharing news of his death on social media.
Geller wrote on Twitter, “Homophobic pedophile protector and Hitler Youth alumnus dead at 95,” while sharing a link to a news report on Pope Benedict’s death on December 31st.

"A policy of deliberate ignorance"

I do count my blessings, but then I end up counting those of others who have more and better blessings, and that pisses me off.
~Bob Mankoff New Yorker cartoon caption

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Roman concrete has white chunks in the concrete, referred to as lime clasts, giving the concrete the ability to heal cracks that formed over time. The white chunks previously had been overlooked as evidence of sloppy mixing or poor-quality raw material.

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About 41% of New York City students were chronically absent, missing at least 18 days of last school year, according to city data released Friday.

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Chinese state-media said COVID-19 testing requirements imposed by several places around the world in response to a surging wave of infections were "discriminatory"

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"A policy of deliberate ignorance"

Major scientific organizations are forbidding the publication of research that offends some political sensibilities. Even investigations are being impaired. This is from James Lee, a behavioral geneticist at the University of Minnesota, talking about the NIH’s restrictions on behavioral science:


"A policy of deliberate ignorance has corrupted top scientific institutions in the West. It’s been an open secret for years that prestigious journals will often reject submissions that offend prevailing political orthodoxies—especially if they involve controversial aspects of human biology and behavior—no matter how scientifically sound the work might be. The leading journal Nature Human Behaviour recently made this practice official in an editorial effectively announcing that it will not publish studies that show the wrong kind of differences between human groups.

American geneticists now face an even more drastic form of censorship: exclusion from access to the data necessary to conduct analyses, let alone publish results. Case in point: the National Institutes of Health now withholds access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may wander into forbidden territory. The source at issue, the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP), is an exceptional tool, combining genome scans of several million individuals with extensive data about health, education, occupation, and income. It is indispensable for research on how genes and environments combine to affect human traits. No other widely accessible American database comes close in terms of scientific utility.

My colleagues at other universities and I have run into problems involving applications to study the relationships among intelligence, education, and health outcomes. Sometimes, NIH denies access to some of the attributes that I have just mentioned, on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.” Sometimes, it demands updates about ongoing research, with the implied threat that it could withdraw usage if it doesn’t receive satisfactory answers. In some cases, NIH has retroactively withdrawn access for research it had previously approved.

…The federal government was under no obligation to assemble the magnificent database that is the dbGaP. Now that it has done so at taxpayer expense, however, it does have an obligation to provide access to that database evenhandedly—not to allow it for some and deny it to others, based on the content of their research."

Oedipus and Bruce Jenner

Don’t be misled by statements that private property rights put rights of property over rights of people. Private property rights are rights of people over uses of goods they own.-- economists Armen Alchian’s and William R. Allen’s Universal Economics (2018; Jerry L. Jordan, ed.)

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The environment has recently become our misunderstood and abused friend. The government has wrecked sanitation by ruining our appliances in the name of conservation. Come the virus. And now we suddenly discover that we care about cleanliness and getting rid of germs. Suddenly the environment might be, as it always has been, our enemy. It is like those terrible stories where some poor soul raises a chimp from a baby and it grows up and destroys her. These people think the fences in zoos are to protect the animals. The tiger isn't walking the fencing to bond; it's shopping.

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In the 21 years from the first full year of the George W. Bush administration (fiscal year 2002) through today, the U.S. government has not balanced its budget once. This is the longest sustained period of deficit financing in American history, leading to a rise in the gross national debt to about 125 percent of total output. This is higher than it was at the end of the war fought by the Greatest Generation. Contrast that to the period 1900–1930. This is the time when the Greatest Generation was born, grew up, and reached early adulthood. The federal government ran budget surpluses in 20 of those 31 years. During the Roaring Twenties, the national debt declined by one-third, as Presidents Warren Harding and especially Calvin Coolidge worked assiduously to reduce the debt burden.

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Oedipus and Bruce Jenner

A recent article reports almost 40 percent of students at liberal arts colleges identify as LGBTQ. The historic rate has been between 0.75% for women to 1.5% for men.

What has happened? This is certainly not reflected in the rest of the world. Was there an awakening in the halls of education? An epiphany? An insightful book available only in English? Are the other, non-educated working people suppressed or inhibited? Have the Russians poisoned the water?

Or have the days of Freudian self-oppression returned? Is everything a construct and have those of us locked into our identities through circumstances--like pregnancy--the true tragic figures, unable to escape our self-imposed chains?

Some Reflections on 2022

But if you do the arithmetic, you find you’d need to build about a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of batteries to store the same amount of energy that Europe has in storage now for this winter. It would take the world’s battery factories 400 years to manufacture that many batteries.--mills

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The word limnophilous is one of the few words in English that have four consecutive letters of the alphabet in a row. Some everyday words are understudy and overstuff.

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The British aviation regulator issued licenses to Virgin Orbit which would allow it to conduct the first-ever satellite launch from Blighty using a converted Boeing Max 747. This comes just one month after Britain’s first-ever spaceport got its launch license.

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Of the 69 rulers of the unified Roman Empire, from Augustus (d. 14 CE) to Theodosius (d. 395 CE), 62% suffered a violent death. Emperors faced a significantly high risk of violent death in the first year of their rule. Their risk of violent death further increased after 12 years.

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Some Reflections on 2022

No one believes Joe Biden is conceiving and developing the massive government programs and policies that his administration has presented over the last years. America has a shadow government, unelected and organized, that develops policies that proceed, gradually and inevitably, toward an agreed-upon end.

Democracies are inherently unstable. Given enough time, they will vilify even their best and brightest, undermining their history, and call into question their present.

Human qualities: Faith. Hope. Charity. The greatest is charity, the commonest is hope. But, in motivation, the strongest is fear.

There is little in common between abstract science and practical technology.

Science, like democracy, is very poorly understood by the public.

The election of Trump and Biden should carve in stone the basic American idea that government is dangerous and needs constitutional structure and limits. Both men needed supervision in office by people the voters did not choose.

Current culture is obsessed with acceptance and so will drive the peripheral to the center. Gender dysphoria in women is 1/5th as common as dwarfism; these unfortunate outliers have become quotidian.

In the Titla 42 decision, the Supreme Court decided that the absence of legislative action mandates judicial intervention. So the judiciary fills in for a lax legislature. How in our philosophy of segmentation, checks, and balances does that work, exactly?

Anyone who knows anyone with a genetic defect or severe illness knows the truth: equality is a philosophical concept--spiritual or political--not a quality of life.

Capitalism is not a philosophy, it is the awkward outgrowth of the commercial behavior of a free people. Thus the attack on capitalism requires a subversion of the liberty that made it possible.

Coal use is up globally. Some people are taking the CO2 problem of the world less seriously than others.

Has anyone told the developing nations the sacrifices they will have to make with the forced substitution of expensive, unavailable energy sources for cheap, available ones?
 

A disparity is the result of hierarchy. It is rarely personal.

Wanting what someone else has earned is envy. Anger over the success of others is jealousy.

Crime is beginning to be presented in the news and politics as a 'health problem.'

African leaders are beginning a campaign for cheap energy using the phrase 'energy poverty.'

 

Epiphany

“Human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.”--deVries

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On November 22nd, the NHL tweeted that “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary identity is real.” The NHL supported and -sponsored a “All-Trans Draft Tournament” held in Middleton, WI—reportedly the first tournament of its kind in the history of hockey.

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A third of adults who use TikTok say they regularly get news there, up from 22% two years ago.

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Congress is giving the Food and Drug Administration expanded power over the cosmetics industry.
Some 3,500 pages into the bill arrives the “Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022,” and by “modernization” Congress means giving the federal bureaucracy more power. Peddlers of lotions and lip gloss now will have to register their facilities, report “adverse events,” and abide by stipulated manufacturing practices. Another section establishes new labeling requirements. The FDA will have the power to issue mandatory recalls. (WSJ)

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Epiphany

Shakespeare is famous for encapsulating the essence of a play in his opening scene. And there are many examples in literature where a scene or chapter is a concentration of the larger vision. The Epiphany is such a scene in the New Testament. The Magi--astrologers and dream interpreters--follow thin scientific promptings to Jerusalem and ask Herod for help in their final leg to find the Christ child. Herod asks his priests to explain who they are seeking. The priests use the Old Testament to explain Christ's prophesies. Then the Magi leave for Bethlehem and Herod plans to find the child and kill him.

So Christ is born, is sought and adored by Gentiles from a metaphysical caste, and is stalked by killers trying to protect their worldly power and position. So far, so good. But the priests are the stunner: They are the academic resource, the intellectuals who know the connection between the Old Testament and the evolving New, the students and teachers of the question. They explain why the Magi are there and explain where they likely are bound. The Messiah may be at stake. And then they, the intellectuals,....do nothing.

Some graphs

George Monbiot argues in his book, Regenesis, that ‘farming is the most destructive human activity ever‘

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The Chinese, for better or worse, already can buy lots of data on you from private data brokers, just as other parties can. Few people seem worried about that. 

Nor do we ban trips to China, which often result in a “stripping” of all the available information accessible through that person’s devices. (People who matter or just know better often just bring burner phones and laptops, etc.).
What exactly would be the legal basis for such a ban?

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"Appreciate" used to have a noun object, now its object is almost always a proper noun or pronoun.

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Biden is going to the southern border. Why?

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Some Graphs:

In 1967, when miscegenation laws were overturned in the United States, 3% of all newlyweds were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. Since then, intermarriage rates have steadily climbed. By 1980, the share of intermarried newlyweds had about doubled to 7%. And by 2015 the number had risen to 17%.

Ukraine and the Third World

"Today, the Islamic Republic is the world's number one power. The outside world is not informed enough about our mind-boggling achievements," says Friday Prayer Leader for Tehran, Ayatollah Kazem Sadiqi.

“the United States never had lockdowns. (Not like elsewhere in the world, at least.)” This is an opinion in the NYT

So, which of the two opinions above is the craziest?


Ukraine and the Third World

An interesting article appeared in the NYT about the international instability revealed by the Ukraine War.

S. Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, believes, the war is a transformative moment. A “world order which is still very, very deeply Western,” as he put it in an interview, is being hurried out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of “multi-alignment” where countries will choose their own “particular policies and preferences and interests.”

India has rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and dismissed the perceived hypocrisy of the West. Far from apologetic, its tone has been unabashed and its self-interest broadly naked.

“I would still like to see a more rules-based world,” Mr. Jaishankar said.

With its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, India has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty. That need is non-negotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, even some extra for export. For Mr. Jaishankar, time is up on the mindset that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s.”

The Ukraine war, which has provoked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, has caused a different anger elsewhere, one focused on a skewed and outdated global distribution of power. As Western sanctions against Russia have driven up energy, food, and fertilizer costs, causing acute economic difficulties in poorer countries, resentment of the United States and Europe has stirred in Asia and Africa.

“Since February, Europe has imported six times the fossil fuel energy from Russia that India has done,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “So if a $60,000-per-capita society feels it needs to look after itself, and I accept that as legitimate, they should not expect a $2,000-per-capita society to take a hit.”

India is a deeply divided country but it is still a gigantic demographic force whose aims and needs may not correlate with those of the West. At some point, this will have to be resolved and that resolution will need shepherding by insightful, intelligent people. And if those people are not found in the U.S., they will be found elsewhere.

An Early Ratzinger Essay

“In one day, he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local Proud Boy’s chapter. And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.”-- Hope Hicks on the Trump response to the January 6th nonsense, showing all hierarchies have 'little people.'

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Pro-Publica (with Vanity Fair) is putting its reputation on the line with a very damning report suggesting COVID emerged from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The new information isn’t about the virus but about political reports that indicate that there was some kind of emergency at the lab in November of 2019, an emergency that was so serious Xi himself got involved.

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In Berlin in the early hours of New Year's morning, about 200 masked assailants attacked firefighters attempting to extinguish burning garbage cans blocking the road, according to a statement from the city fire brigade.

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An Early Ratzinger Essay  

A restructured Church with far fewer members that is forced to let go of many places of worship it worked so hard to build over the centuries. A minority Catholic Church with little influence over political decisions, that is socially irrelevant, left humiliated and forced to “start over.”
But a Church that will find itself again and be reborn a “simpler and more spiritual” entity thanks to this “enormous confusion.”

This was the prophecy made 40 years ago on the future of Christianity by a young Bavarian theologian, Joseph Ratzinger.

Ratzinger said he was convinced the Church was going through an era similar to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. “We are at a huge turning point – he explained – in the evolution of mankind. This moment makes the move from Medieval to modern times seem insignificant.” Professor Ratzinger compared the current era to that of Pope Pius VI who was abducted by troops of the French Republic and died in prison in 1799. The Church was fighting against a force that intended to annihilate it definitively, confiscating its property and dissolving religious orders.

Today's Church could be faced with a similar situation, undermined, according to Ratzinger, by the temptation to reduce priests to “social workers” and it and all its work reduced to a mere political presence. “From today's crisis, will emerge a Church that has lost a great deal,” he affirmed.

“It will become small and will have to start pretty much all over again. It will no longer have use of the structures it built in its years of prosperity. The reduction in the number of faithful will lead to it losing an important part of its social privileges.” It will start off with small groups and movements and a minority that will make faith central to experience again. “It will be a more spiritual Church, and will not claim a political mandate flirting with the Right one minute and the Left the next. It will be poor and will become the Church of the destitute.”

The process outlined by Ratzinger was a “long” one “but when all the suffering is past, a great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simple Church,” at which point humans will realize that they live in a world of “indescribable solitude” and having lost sight of God “they will perceive the horror of their poverty.”

Then and only then, Ratzinger concluded, will they see “that small flock of faithful as something completely new: they will see it as a source of hope for themselves, the answer they had always secretly been searching for.

(From La Stampa)

Questions

Questions

So McCarthy can't get the Republicans to come together to elect him. How do you think they will do on their job, like deciding the debt ceiling? 

A divided nation facing tremendous and diverse problems unifies over the guy with the football injury. The game, the league, the rules, the standings, the fantasy leagues, the betting--all the mechanics of the arbitrary world fell victim to common humanity.

So the Moscow police were actually really smart. Where is Nancy Grace?
 
Chicago government-worker pensions are massively underfunded. So in typical Chicago-land fashion, the City Council is betting on casino revenue to plug the pension gap. Do taxpayers and workers feel lucky?
City aldermen last month approved a $1.7 billion casino and entertainment complex by Bally’s Corp. that will supposedly generate $200 million annually in tax revenue for the city police and firefighter pension funds—assuming financial forecasts prove accurate. Remember, this is Chicago.

Origins of Resolutions

What was the Great Barrington Declaration's evil plan? To stop lockdowns and mandates from turning the formerly civilized world into an economic & social dumpster fire? To give poor kids a decent, uninterrupted education? To prevent rabid, prissy hypochondriacs from destroying third world economies?-- Jay Bhattacharya

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India will likely become the most populous country on Earth this year, and, yet, outside of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, there are only four State Department consulates in the country of 1.4 billion. That is fewer consulates than the State Department operates in France and fewer offices than the U.S. Embassy services in Spain. The Canadian province of Quebec, whose population totals less than nine million, merits two consulates in the State Department’s view.

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Taliban update.
Women now need a male guardian to travel more than 48 miles, or to undertake basic tasks such as entering government buildings, seeing a doctor, or taking a taxi. They are banned from nearly all jobs, except medical professions and, until Wednesday, teaching. Women also can no longer visit public parks.

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Origins of Resolutions

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

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

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

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

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