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

***

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.

***

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.

***

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.

***

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.'