Overcoming Failure

You can bet on professional wrestling.

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Dilbert syndicator Andrews McMeel has called the strip “the most photocopied, pinned-up, downloaded, faxed and emailed comic strip in the world”.

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There is over $1.5 trillion in student debt in the U.S. Who pays that if those that assumed it do not? Are there other debts the government can cancel?

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Overcoming Failure

Readers who have followed the 1619 Project from its inception in 2019 as a New York Times Magazine special edition through its metamorphoses into a classroom curriculum in 2020, a book released in November 2021, an ongoing campus and library-lecture tour by 1619 Project impresario Nikole Hannah-Jones, and now a slickly photographed miniseries on Hulu narrated by Hannah-Jones, should by now not be surprised at four things.

First, while the project contains some useful perspective on the history of slavery, segregation, and racism in America, it is wrapped in a highly tendentious ideological framework that ranges from rank Democratic partisanship to Marxist economic and political theory. Second, it gets important facts glaringly wrong. Third, it advances arguments without the slightest shame or self-reflection after being called out publicly on getting the supporting facts for those arguments glaringly wrong in the past.

And fourth, it remains a lucrative brand entirely without regard to whether it gets its facts straight or peddles partisan or ideological agitprop. ---McLaughlin

Apparently, in American culture, quality and accuracy are not predictors of success or failure.

Sunday/

 

Is the appearance of a bumbling, stumbling, falling, stammering man in Ukraine a 'show of force?'

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A CNN panel discussing the East Palestine train wreck suggested the solution was higher corporate taxes and more regulations. 

Is this a typical view of the effectiveness of government?

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Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) wife was slammed on social media Friday after she revealed that the first thing she did after her husband was hospitalized with severe depression was flee the country to go on a vacation. 

Are family decisions reasonable public discussion topics for strangers? 

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The Board of Trustees at the Catholic Marymount University, located in Arlington, voted 20-0 in favor of removing nine undergraduate majors and one graduate program due to low interest. Those eliminated are: B.A. Art, B.A. Economics, B.A. English, B.A. History, B.S. Mathematics, B.A. Philosophy, B.A. Secondary Education, B.A. Sociology, B.A. Theology & Religious Studies, and M.A. English & Humanities.

Sunday/ 

The readings today are brilliant and provocative.
The first is from Genesis where Adam and Eve are tempted based on two ideas, first, that God does not want us to be like Him or, two, that humanity is incapable of seeking the Good. Both positions demand we recognize an animosity between man and God.
The second is Paul's epistle where he argues that the Fall depended upon one man and that Christ's sacrifice was a symmetrical salvation.
The gospel is the Temptation in the Desert where Christ stands against the material and humanity's worst instincts and, at the same time, argues for Free Will.
Very interesting, concentrated stuff well worth the time to read and ponder. And something to include in the pondering: The devil in the first two temptations starts each with "If you are the Son of God..." Does that mean the devil was unsure?

Unintended Consequences

While the Western world was just as guilty as other civilizations when it came to enslaving people for thousands of years, it was unique only in finally deciding that the whole institution was immoral and should be ended.--Sowell

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The online sci-fi magazine Clarkesworld has seen a steep increase in submissions, driven by stories created using ChatGPT and similar systems. A graph makes it look like they had fewer than 20 submissions per month for every month October 2022 and prior and then:
December: 50
January: ~115
February so far: nearly 350

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In Utah, it is legal to forcibly sterilize a person with a disability.

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Unintended Consequences

A significant contribution to understanding the unintended effects of regulation was Peltzman’s 1975 study of the effects on traffic safety of a slew of US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations on the design of cars. In the mid to late 1960s, the federal government made a number of safety features mandatory. These included seat belts for all occupants, an energy-absorbing steering column, a penetration-resistant windshield, a dual braking system, and a padded instrument panel. In his study, Peltzman stated that the mandates aimed to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries sustained as a consequence of vehicle accidents. But he found something different. Fatalities were not reduced at all. Instead, deaths of vehicle occupants fell but those of pedestrians and motorcycle drivers rose. Peltzman’s tentative explanation was that by reducing the probability of being killed in a given accident, the mandates caused drivers to drive more “intensely.” His finding became so well known that economists started referring to the “Peltzman effect.” 

Later studies found that drivers with anti-lock brakes tended to follow the cars in front of them more closely. A 2010 study of NASCAR accidents found that the “mandated use of a head-and-neck- restraint system has almost completely eliminated serious driver injury, while simultaneously increasing the number of accidents per race” 

(from Pope and Robert D. Tollison, 2010).

Can Government Be Funny?

Historical reenactors say new rules effectively ban reenactments of battles at state-owned historical sites in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission said it will no longer permit reenactments of “simulated warfare or violence between opposing forces” on sites it controls. Last year, the commission asked the organizers of the annual reenactment of the Battle of Bushy Run, which took place in the colonial era between British troops and American Indians, to cancel it because non-Indians are allowed to play Indians. The reenactment, which has taken place for 40 years, typically draws around 1,500 spectators.

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Can a show of strength be delivered by an infirm man?


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While a recent UN resolution does not force Russia into leaving Ukraine, it signifies an international censure against Moscow's aggression. Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Mali, and Nicaragua all joined Russia in opposing the declaration.

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Can Government Be Funny?

A Democratic lawmaker in Nebraska is being accused of "anti-religious bigotry" by Republicans after she proposed to ban children from attending church youth groups or vacation Bible schools.

State Sen. Megan Hunt says her amendment, which would ban children under 19 years of age from attending a "religious indoctrination camp," is intended to kill the underlying bill, LB 371, a measure put forward by Republicans to ban minors from attending drag performances. The text of the amendment asserts there is a "well-documented history of indoctrination and sexual abuse perpetrated by religious leaders and clergy people upon children."

It is a tongue-in-cheek response to Republicans who have said children should not be exposed to explicit sexual content at drag shows.

It defines a "religious indoctrination camp" as "a camp, vacation Bible study, retreat, lock-in, or convention held by a church, youth group, or religious organization for the purpose of indoctrinating children with a specific set of religious beliefs."

The text mimics the underlying bill, LB 371, which Slama said "keeps kids from attending hyper-sexualized events."

Funny, no?

Is it fair to compare groups where criminality is an accident at the event with one where the debatable behavior is the event's purpose? Is all education indoctrination? 

And how dangerous is self-parody to the very nature of politics, which demands a willing suspension of disbelief?   

 

The Third Rail

As sweeping layoffs plague Big Tech, DEI jobs are taking the brunt of the blow.
According to a Bloomberg report, listings for DEI roles were down 19% last year — a larger downtick than in legal or general human resources departments per data from Textio, a company helping businesses create unbiased job ads.
“I’m cautiously concerned — not that these roles will go to zero but that there will be a spike in ‘Swiss army knife’ type roles,” Textio Chief Executive Officer Kieran Snyder told Bloomberg.
Other sectors besides have dramatically carved into their DEI departments after deploying mass layoffs in anticipation of a pending global recession.

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Buoyed by imports from China and exports to Russia, Turkey’s economy grew by 5.3% in 2022, after expanding 11.4% in 2021. Only two years ago, the country’s currency was melting down and government bond yields spiked to 24%.
Now its stock market is the world’s top performer with a year-on-year gain of 70% while the Turkish lira has stabilized.
This is the most remarkable turnaround in the checkered history of emerging markets, and what makes it all the more remarkable is that domestic economic policy had little to do with it. Turkey’s wily president Recep Tayyip Erdogan traded political chips with China, Russia, the Gulf States, Israel and Europe to position Turkey in the middle of a flood tide of trade flows created by American sanctions on Russia.--Goldman

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Jamaica experienced no economic growth in exports per capita from the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the Second World Wars. Since there is a high correlation between exports per capita and GDP per capita, at least after 1850, Bulmer-Thomas argues that there are solid grounds for concluding that the Jamaican economy on a per capita basis experienced no growth at all for more than a century after the end of slavery.

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The Third Rail

Social Security and Medicare.

Spending on these two programs alone consumes 45 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicaid, these programs drive our current and future debt. And to emphasize the seriousness of our predicament, note that Medicare and Social Security together face a shortfall of $116 trillion over the next 30 years.

$116 trillion!

This is not a situation created by serious people. So where will the solutions come from?

Well, not from the Democrats or the Republicans. Joe Biden's State of the Union address included many slurs amid the astonishing volume of personal invasions and fine tunings he thinks we need. One slur was the charge that the Republicans want to cut Social Security. The Republicans were outraged. Cries and catcalls! Of course, the Republicans would never think of such a thing.

That's probably true. As Sowell has said, "If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an “alternative’ plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week."

How can we escape these numbers?

Limits on Social Security and Medicare are a minor threat to the elderly in this country compared to the disaster of a $116 trillion deficit in 30 years. The evil is not in its control, it's in the mindless pandering that created it. And the insincere and foolish claim that such a deficit will not be interfered with is not open to debate; the question is how it will be interfered with and how much destruction will be reaped from what the incompetents disguised as American leaders have sown.

Diversity: True Only to Itself

The growth in American productivity was sufficient to produce real hourly earnings for high school dropouts in 2017 that were higher than those earned by high school graduates with some college or technical training in 1967. High school graduates in 2017 had higher real hourly earnings than college graduates in 1967, and high school graduates with some college in 2017 earned about as much as people with advanced degrees earned in 1967.--Myth of American Inequality

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World Bank president David Malpas is stepping down.

Mr. Malpass was under particular pressure to turn the bank into another slush fund for financing green-energy boondoggles. Some in the media are crowing, without evidence, that he’s been pushed out after Al Gore and the media climate conformity caucus raked him for comments last year they misconstrued as climate “denialism.”

The critics prefer to ignore the evidence that developing countries have figured out that Western-imposed carbon policies will trap their people in poverty. The danger is that the global climate clique will take the opportunity of Mr. Malpass’s retirement to remake the bank in their image.

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Social Security and Medicare.

Spending on these two programs alone consumes 45 percent of the federal budget. Along with Medicaid, these programs are the drivers of our current and future debt. And to drive home the seriousness of our predicament, note that Medicare and Social Security together face a shortfall of $116 trillion over the next 30 years.

This is not a situation created by serious people.




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Diversity: True Only to Itself

Originally diversity meant exotic, interesting. Nobody hoped for diversity that was, for example, criminal or perverse or insane or degrading. Diversity always had an underlying assumption, that of quality. Diversity always implied an enhancement of one's life or circumstance with "the different," the hard personal view fleshed out. At the worst, it would be spice.

That very element, the element of specialness, was its undoing. Specialness opposes sameness and, while we encourage elitism in our political and thought leaders, we hunt it to ground in us. Diversity changed and became egalitarian in its most destructive way. One could no longer pick and choose diversity, find one edifying or expansive and reject one less so. Diversity became un-judged. Random. When we encounter a community that practices mutilation, we open our hearts and turn our minds away. Like art, the diverse was true only to itself. Everything is of equal value. Equality became sameness. The very lack of judgment.

Diversity is no longer a celebration of human breadth and scope. It is a weapon against quality.

Flogging

Envy plus rhetoric equals “social justice.”--Sowell

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For much of our history, we were indeed one of the freest, most democratic, most “equal” countries in the world. Where we were bad, other countries were (and are) much worse. America was never utopia; it has always been a mix of good and bad, plus and minus. It began as an experiment in letting people run their own country. Not all people, but more than were allowed to have power in England or France, or anywhere else. The experiment worked. But it also meant that law reflected, and had to reflect great waves of popular sentiment. It could never stray too far from the mean. It could express ideals, it could express “enlightened” opinion, but it could never be dramatically better or worse than the values of articulate people. That was its weakness, and also its strength.--Freidman

This is an important observation and demands, demands, the country emphasizes raising the vision and aspirations of its people.

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Reason has an article that discusses the reviews of the climate book Unsettled. It's damning. Here's the gist:

We couldn't find a single negative review of Unsettled that disputed its claims directly or even described them accurately. Many of the reviewers seem to have stopped reading after the first few pages. Others were forced to concede that many of Koonin's facts were correct but objected that they were used in the service of challenging official dogma. True statements were downplayed as trivial or as things everyone knows, despite the extensive parts of Unsettled that document precisely the opposite: that the facts were widely denied in major media coverage and misrepresentations were cited as the basis for major policy initiatives.

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Flogging

In Defense of Flogging by Peter Moskos.
Moskos has a semi-Swiftian thesis: Prisons are so bad, it would be better if we punished convicts with flogging instead of incarceration. I say “semi-Swifitian” because he makes his case so eloquently that you struggle to believe that he’s not serious. The two main flaws: First, Moskos barely mentions one of the strongest arguments for flogging over incarceration: Criminals are impulsive and macho, so front-loaded, humiliating punishments are extra-good ways to deter them. Second flaw: Moskos tries so hard to convince readers that flogging isn’t too harsh that he barely tries to convince readers that flogging is harsh enough. Yet that’s probably the greater concern, at least according to this poll:

Pelosi and Chang

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.~Admiral Hyman Rickover
He knew he was talking about people, right?

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In polling conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) last September, 68 percent of Ukrainians answered yes to the question “Do you consider yourself a happy person?” compared with just 53 percent in 2017.
Purpose makes up for a lot.

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A recent interview focused on the rise of American-Asian gun ownership had an Asian man say the expansion was evidence of 'diversity and inclusion.'

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Pelosi and Chang

Politico ran a piece recently on Pelosi's trip to Taiwan titled "Taiwan’s Tech King to Nancy Pelosi: U.S. Is in Over Its Head." It raises some serious concerns about the semiconductor industry specifically but also about the general direction of the U.S.

Morris Chang, the 91-year-old founder of the chipmaking goliath TSMC, used a luncheon at Taiwan’s presidential palace to deliver a biting soliloquy to Pelosi and other visiting American lawmakers about the new industrial policy emerging in the United States. (He was so relentless, his wife intervened.)

Taiwanese executives present voiced hesitation, with some questioning whether American environmental and labor laws were consistent with the goal of nurturing a sophisticated industry.

Over lunch, Chang warned that it was terribly naïve of the United States to think that it could rapidly spend its way into one of the most complex electronics-manufacturing markets in the world. The task of making semiconductor chips was almost impossibly complicated, he said, demanding Herculean labor merely to obtain the raw materials involved and requiring microscopic precision in the construction of fabrication plants and then in the assembly of the chips themselves.

Chang has questioned in other settings whether the United States is a suitable environment for semiconductor manufacturing, pointing to gaps in the workforce and defects in the business culture. On a podcast hosted by the Brookings Institution last year, Chang lamented what he called a lack of “manufacturing talents” in the United States, owing to generations of ambitious Americans flocking to finance and internet companies instead. “I don’t really think it’s a bad thing for the United States, actually,” he said, “but it’s a bad thing for trying to do semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”

Sunday/Perfection

Nobody is needy in the market economy because of the fact that some people are rich.--von mises

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To fulfill [Biden’s] vision of an emission-free grid by 2035, the U.S. needs to increase its carbon-free capacity by at least 150%. Expanding wind and solar by 10% annually until 2030 would require a chunk of land equal to the state of South Dakota, according to Princeton University estimates and an analysis by Bloomberg News. By 2050, when Biden wants the entire economy to be carbon-free, the U.S. would need up to four additional South Dakotas to develop enough clean power to run all the electric vehicles, factories, and more.--bloomberg

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An abstract:
This paper studies gender differences in performance in a male‐dominated competitive environment chess tournaments. We find that the gender composition of chess games affects the behaviors of both men and women in ways that worsen the outcomes for women. Using a unique measure of within‐game quality of play, we show that women make more mistakes when playing against men. Men, however, play equally well against male and female opponents. We also find that men persist longer before losing to women. Our results shed some light on the behavioral changes that lead to differential outcomes when the gender composition of competitions varies.


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Sunday/Perfection

Today's is one of the difficult gospels--and insights--of the New Testament: the 'love your neighbor' gospel. Christ's position is almost unfathomable, especially for the times. National hatred was, and is, an elaboration of tribal hatred, something inherent in us. Christianity's broad reassessments--charity, equality of value of the individual--were not just revolutionary, they were unheard of. (Aristotle thought women were incomplete men.) Christ's realignment of thought here was simply stupendous.

And an astonishing demand, a challenge to any non-theologian with an opinion, for Christ is asking for perfection, behavior eerily similar to Christ's coming Passion.

But it seems to be more a tableau, a portrait of the problem rather than a simple solution. Turning one's cheek in Ukraine will be fatal, surrendering your family to slavers almost collaborative. The purity Christ asks for is less a demand than a context, a way of measuring the moral failures that are guaranteed by our natural limits and those of our natural world. Christ's sacrifice is humanity at its purist, his torturers, man at his worst. Between those extremes, Christ expects us not to be Pilate.

Chaos

The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer? -Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher

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Arms dealing.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India aims to more than triple its annual defense exports to $5 billion over the next two years. While India aspires to become a manufacturer of sophisticated defense equipment in collaboration with global giants, first to meet its own needs and eventually to export, it will have to depend on arms imports until then. Their usual supplier is Russia--and India has declined to criticize Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But the U.S. is in India displaying their new Lockheed Martin F-35s.

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The district earlier this school year replaced the honors classes at Culver City High School with uniform courses that officials say will ensure students of all races receive an equal, rigorous education.

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Chaos

On a winter day 50 years ago, Edward Lorenz, SM ‘43, ScD ‘48, a mild-mannered meteorology professor at MIT, entered some numbers into a computer program simulating weather patterns and then left his office to get a cup of coffee while the machine ran. When he returned, he noticed a result that would change the course of science.

The computer model was based on 12 variables, representing things like temperature and wind speed, whose values could be depicted on graphs as lines rising and falling over time. On this day, Lorenz was repeating a simulation he’d run earlier—but he had rounded off one variable from .506127 to .506. To his surprise, that tiny alteration drastically transformed the whole pattern his program produced, over two months of simulated weather.

The unexpected result led Lorenz to a powerful insight about the way nature works: small changes can have large consequences. The idea came to be known as the “butterfly effect” after Lorenz suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings might ultimately cause a tornado. And the butterfly effect, also known as “sensitive dependence on initial conditions,” has a profound corollary: forecasting the future can be nearly impossible.

Like the results of a wing’s flutter, the influence of Lorenz’s work was nearly imperceptible at first but would resonate widely. In 1963, Lorenz condensed his findings into a paper, “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow,” which was cited exactly three times by researchers outside meteorology in the next decade. Yet his insight turned into the founding principle of chaos theory, which expanded rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s into fields as diverse as meteorology, geology, and biology. “It became a wonderful instance of a seemingly esoteric piece of mathematics that had experimentally verifiable applications in the real world,” says Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at MIT. (from MIT Technology Review)

Demand vs. Command Economies

In a survey of college tuition, Franklin & Marshall College’s tuition came in at $65,652, beating out second-place Columbia University by a little over $100.
The school isn’t the only one in Pennsylvania that landed on the list, either: Haverford was ranked eighth overall in terms of being expensive with a $62,850 price tag.
“College is expensive,” reiterates the study. “And these schools are unusually expensive. The average tuition at a private college is $39,400, and all of these colleges are advertising tuition in excess of $60,000 per year.

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In 2018, Charles McGonigal, the FBI's former New York spy chief, traveled to London where he met with a Russian contact who was under surveillance by British authorities, two US intelligence sources told Insider.

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On the night of Jan. 6, 2021, Fox News host Tucker Carlson referred to then-President Donald Trump as “a demonic force” in a text to his producer after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol that day.

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Demand vs. Command Economies


There is always optimism among free nations. They know they will win with their evolving economy, as opposed to economies by fiat.

China recently pulled up short in its race with the U.S. for dominance in chip manufacturing. While the U.S. has strengthened its commitment to rebuilding its domestic production through the passage of the Chips Act this past summer, spurring nearly $200 billion in private investment in manufacturing projects, China has abruptly paused its investment of 1 trillion yuan (about $148 billion) in the industry.

August reports from the Chinese government revealed a flurry of antigraft probes that investigated many of the industry’s top figures, including Ding Wenwu, general manager of the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund. This $45 billion fund, known as the “Big Fund” in the industry, is the Chinese government’s official vehicle for managing its colossal investments in the chip industry. The fund invested in a host of companies, including China’s largest chip-makers, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.--WSJ

Freedom-based countries have great confidence in their own curiosity and innovation. One can be very dismissive of economies that are based on suppression, conformity, and aristocracy. But markets can be wrong for a long time before correction is demanded. Russia pursued a homicidal, antiscientific, paranoid culture where power supported a failed idea for three generations before collapsing. And they created dangerous mischief all during their slow-motion fall.

Vice

This is how I see mainstream media. The problem isn’t limited to race, gender, and sexual orientation, where Richard [Hanania] agrees that the media is crazy. The problem isn’t specific factual errors, either. The central problem is that the mainstream media’s standard operating standard is to use selective presentation to spread absurd views about practically everything that matters.--caplan

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Several rescue groups have withdrawn from their efforts in Turkey because of security threats

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The Richmond FBI prepared a memo on what it called “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” and the threat they posed, as a potential recruiting ground for ethnically motivated right-wing extremism.

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Vice

There is a remarkable evolution in the world's vision of virtue. The ancient Greeks felt that virtue could--and must--be taught. Such a notion in the modern West would be simply an inconceivable outrage.

The Atlantic has an article on the rising legalization of vice.

Vice has made some legal advances, mostly as part of a hands-off, libertarian, personal responsibilities theme.
Since the Supreme Court struck down previous restrictions on sports betting in 2018, 36 states have legalized it (26 of which allow mobile betting), and new ballot initiatives are proposed every year.

Only four states still prohibit all uses of marijuana. In 19 states, the recreational use of marijuana is now fully legal; all other states allow medicinal use of cannabis products.

Natasha Dow Schüll’s book, Addiction by Design, carefully documents how electronic slot machines are designed to get players addicted.

As much as 50 percent of revenue comes from “problem gamblers,” while one study showed that in 1998, only 4 percent of gambling revenue from video lottery games came from “responsible” gamers. Just as tobacco companies would go out of business if people used their products responsibly, gambling wouldn’t be a multibillion-dollar industry if it weren’t for addicts.

"Virtue is not simply doing good deeds, but also a set of dispositions and habits that must be practiced in order to flourish. Just as people can be sucked into addictions, we can also work to develop the virtues inside us so that we can be kind, generous, and self-controlled throughout our lives.

Driven by this rich view of life together, we should make it as difficult as possible to access things that impair our ability to make good decisions. It’s not the government’s primary job to protect people from their own worst impulses, nor is the state the primary source of our virtue formation. But we do recognize that policy plays a role in shaping the environment so that we can develop our virtues."

Is This an Illness?

Marburg is back.

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The response by the government and the press to the train derailment in East Palestine has been peculiar, distant and casual. I'll bet it would be a lot different if the snail darter had been there.
 

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In 2021, 26% of Black adults ages 25 and older – 7.5 million people – had earned a bachelor’s degree or more, up from 15% in 2000. Black women have seen a larger gain than Black men, leading to a widening gender gap in educational attainment. In 2021, 29% of Black women ages 25 and older had earned at least a bachelor’s degree, up from 16% in 2000. Among Black men of the same age, 22% had earned at least a bachelor’s degree in 2021, up from 13% in 2000.

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Is This an Illness?

There are some things in politics that are so stupid that they cry out for diagnosis. Maybe the Left is actually a post-Covid syndrome.

The House of Representatives rejected a pair of laws passed by the District of Columbia City Council.

In votes Thursday, the House overturned a rewrite of the criminal code passed by the City Council last year and a new law that granted noncitizens the right to vote in local elections. Congress has oversight over the district under the U.S. Constitution, and the votes were significantly bipartisan.
The D.C. council overrode a veto by Democratic mayor Muriel Bowser to ease sentences on carjackings, burglary and other felonies even as carjackings and theft have become an epidemic in the city. The House vote was 250-173, with 31 Democrats joining the GOP. Minnesota Democrat Angie Craig, who voted with the majority, was assaulted in the elevator of her apartment building the same day as the vote.

The vote to overturn the noncitizen voting bill was even larger, 260-162, with 42 Democrats joining the GOP. The D.C. law grants noncitizen residents of the district the right to vote in local elections. That includes illegal immigrants as well as diplomats from foreign countries such as China that don’t allow free elections. An estimated 50,000 noncitizens might be eligible in a resident population of some 700,000.

This means the Chinese and the Russian delegations would be eligible to vote in American elections.

Amazingly, the House measures face an uncertain fate in the Senate.

(from the WSJ via Don)

Baked In

In 2022, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

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A highly drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea has been detected in the U.S. for the first time, raising concerns among public health officials about the scarcity of treatments and a future when gonorrhea could become untreatable.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said on Jan. 19 that it had detected two cases of a novel strain of gonorrhea that was more impervious to existing antibiotics than any other strain previously recorded in the U.S.

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The families, who filed their suit on Thursday, say dealers used snapchat to communicate with their kids to sell fake prescription drugs, many of which were laced with fentanyl, and that the popular app ultimately helped lead to the deaths of their children.
According to a report by ABC News, Snapchat was implicated in 75% of overdose deaths among teens 13 to 18. The main reason for its popularity among drug dealers is that the app has features that are conducive to illegal activity – specifically, messages disappear after being sent, so there’s no evidence of deals.

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Baked In

Jack Phillips’ successful U.S. Supreme Court case concerned his refusal to make a same-sex wedding cake. He said he could not bake a cake for a ceremony his religion opposed. Not people, ceremony.

He now faces a civil lawsuit for declining to make a cake celebrating a purported gender transition of a transgender-identifying attorney. Again he states he is happy to make the person a birthday cake but can't make a cake celebrating something his religion opposes. (He doesn't make Halloween cakes either.)

So the edge of the culture is hunting this guy? Will he be subjected to social tests for the rest of his life? Is the idea here to break him? Make him change his mind? Is this the agenda for outliers?

And will we be forced to pay for these little projects?

What is wrong with these people?

Eritrea

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it. -Charles Dickens, novelist (7 Feb 1812-1870)

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Dozens of students walked out of their New Hampshire school after the district banned urinals in a compromise to a proposal that would have blocked children from using facilities based on their gender identity.

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Since the Supreme Court struck down previous restrictions on sports betting in 2018, 36 states have legalized it (26 of which allow mobile betting), and new ballot initiatives are proposed every year.

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Eritrea

"Occupied," on Netflix, is a Norwegian-produced series conceived by the author Jo Nesbo, originally released in 2015. It has a mixed reputation, the first two seasons is apparently of high dramatic quality, then they lost their minds and thought they could run the thing for ten years and jumped the shark. A fourth season is coming.

One actress in the show is a woman named Selome Emnetu. She is a Norwegian actress, born in 1981 in Stavanger, Norway. She studied acting for three years at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She is of Eritrean descent.

Eritrean?

Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year war

Eritrea is located in East Africa. It is bordered to the northeast and east by the Red Sea, Sudan to the west, Ethiopia to the south, and Djibouti to the southeast

Capital: Asmara

Area: 117,600 sq km

Population: 6.2 million

Languages: Tigrinya, Tigre, Arabic, English, Beja, Kunama, Saho, Bilen, Nara, Afar

Life expectancy: 64 years (men) 68 years (women)

The country has a single party and has had one leader since independence, President Isaias Afewerki, Eritrea has no legislature, no independent civil society organizations or media outlets, and no independent judiciary.

The name Eritrea is derived from the ancient Greek name for "Red," the Red Sea.

At Buya in Eritrea, one of the oldest hominids representing a possible link between Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens was discovered by Eritrean and Italian scientists. Dated to over 1 million years old, it is the oldest skeletal find of its kind and provides a link between hominids and the earliest anatomically modern humans.

Around 2000 BC, parts of Eritrea were most likely part of the Land of Punt, first mentioned in the twenty-fifth century BC.

The Red Sea became important with the completion of the Suez Canal and Eritrea was taken over by The Kingdom of Italy in 1889. 

The Italians lost the area in WWll and the British took over. After insistence by Halle Salasi, Eritrea was merged in a sort of federation with Ethiopia until it was granted independence after a 30-year resistance war.

Sunday/Marcion

Claims that real hourly earnings and real median household income have stagnated in postwar America and that the poverty rate has remained unchanged for fifty years are solely the result of a failure by the statistical agencies of the American government to count most transfer payments as income and to use the most accurate available price indexes to adjust for inflation.--from the myth of American inequality

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Microsoft plans to release technology to help big companies launch their own chatbots using the OpenAI ChatGPT technology, a person familiar with the plans told CNBC.
Companies would be able to remove Microsoft or OpenAI branding when they release chatbots developed with the software.

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“Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”--Assar Lindbeck

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Sunday/Marcion

Marcionism was a religious movement based on the teachings of the 2nd-century heretic Marcion of Sinope. While, unsurprisingly, none of Marcion’s writings have survived to the present, we know of his teachings through several early Christian writers including Justin Martyr (AD 100—165), Irenaeus of Lyons (AD 130—200) and Hippolytus (AD 170—235) who wrote in opposition to him.  

Marcion was an Arian, but he is primarily known for his belief that the Old Testament Scriptures were not authoritative for a Christian. He denied that the God of the Old Testament was the same God presented in the New Testament. For Marcion, the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New were, literally, two different gods. He did not deny the existence of the god of the Old Testament (what he referred to as a 'Demiurge'). He simply classified this god as a secondary deity, one that was inferior to the supreme God revealed in Jesus.

The Old Testament God is centered on Israel and is violent in defending the growing nation. He is reminiscent of a noncommissioned officer as He organizes and develops His people. Christ in comparison seems more inclusive as He delivers a message of hope. And forgiveness.

There is a wonderful sociological logic here and it has stimulated some fiction writing, pitting one testament god against the other. 

Marcion did more than take the Old Testament in context, he had to delete a lot of the New Testament, too. This gospel is one of them.

How would Marcion accommodate these?

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place."

"whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,
whoever is angry with brother
will be liable to judgment;
and whoever says to brother, 'Raga,'
will be answerable to the Sanhedrin;
and whoever says, 'You fool,'
will be liable to fiery Gehenna."

and, the Carter-killer,

"You have heard that it was said,
You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

 

Balloongate

Balloongate

Another spy ship? Are these people just foolish? Or careless? Or are we just the butt of a bunch of dangerous jokers? Or are these the product of the greatly underestimated, mysterious, and dangerous Unangax people?

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What if they're not testing us? What if they're just dumb?

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Why was the second balloon worthy of shooting down and the first not? The talk about commercial risk is weak because the first was powered and guided up and down through commercial levels as well.

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One thing that is a direct result of this sneaky, insincere, aggressive behavior and the feckless American response is the average guy is now aware of China's risk and the danger posed by the meandering American response. Was that a smart thing for China to do?

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If we put some Chinese companies on a 'forbidden list,' will that work or will they just change their names?

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Ford is building a lithium plant in partnership with a Chinese battery company in Michigan. Is that a good idea?

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The Chinese are not answering the emergency phone. Pique? Childishness? What is the point of the emergency phone if there is a policy not to answer it?

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Maybe we should hire the balloon guys to monitor the southern border.

Disasters

 

The Richmond FBI prepared a memo on what it called “Radical Traditionalist Catholics” and the threat they posed, as a potential recruiting ground for ethnically motivated right-wing extremism.

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Political and military figures in Germany have suggested a return of compulsory military service after the new defense minister described the 2011 phase-out of general conscription as a “mistake” that had contributed to alienating the general public from civic institutions.

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Black students have lower six-year completion rates for any kind of degree or certificate program than students in any other racial or ethnic group, a new study has found.

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Disasters

The Turkey/Syria earthquake so far has killed over 21,000.

The World Atlas has a list of what they think are the deadliest natural disasters in the 20th Century.

A natural disaster is defined by the World Health Organization as "an act of nature of such magnitude as to create a catastrophic situation." Some of the most common natural disasters are hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. The 20th century (1901-2000) saw many catastrophic events take place, some of which are considered to be deadliest natural disasters of all time.  

War and stupidity are not included

10. Erzincan Earthquake

The 1939 Erzincan earthquake struck the eastern region of Turkey on December 27 with a magnitude of 7.8. The earthquake occurred on the North Anatolian Fault Zone and created a 223-mile-long surface rupture, which devastated the village of Erzincan and villages along the Iran border. It is believed that 20,000 people died as a direct result of the earthquake, but by January 5, the death toll rose to 30,000 due to blizzard conditions and floods. Erzincan was so badly destroyed due to the earthquake, the site was completely abandoned and a new settlement was found further to the north.

9. Manjil-Rudbar Earthquake

The destruction caused by Manjil-Rudbar earthquake. Image credit: M. Mehrain, Dames and Moore./Public domain

In 1990, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake occurred in the Gilan Province between Iran’s northern towns of Manjil and Rudbar. The earthquake was the largest to ever be recorded in that part of the Caspian Sea region. Rescue missions were hindered by adverse weather conditions and roads were blocked by extensive landslides as a result of the earthquake. Around 100,000 buildings collapsed and between 35,000 to 50,000 people were killed. The total cost of the damages was USD 8 billion.

8. Eastern Guatemalan Floods

In 1949, a violent storm triggered a series of devastating floods across Guatemala. The floods lasted for two weeks and caused huge social, economical and financial impacts. It was reported that the floods had destroyed most of Guatemala’s infrastructure; the cost of the damages was estimated between USD 15 million and USD 40 million. 40,000 people lost their lives as a result of the floods. Landslides caused further devastation to the country; the towns of Escuintla, San Marcos and Quezaltenango were some of the worst affected by the natural disaster.

7. Quetta Earthquake

More details Opera Talkies, a cinema set up for the recreation of the soldiers, was destroyed in the quake.

On May 31, 1935, the city of Quetta in Pakistan was hit by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake. The entire city was destroyed, as well as nearby towns, and an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 people died from the impact. Thousands of people were injured and many were left homeless. The largest aftershock from the earthquake measured at 5.8 on the Richter scale and seriously affected the towns of Mastung, Kalat and Maguchar. The disaster is considered to be the 23rd deadliest earthquake worldwide to date.

6. Tokyo-Yokohama Earthquake

A view of the destruction in Yokohama

At approximately midday on September 1, 1923, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area. The earthquake ravaged the city, more than half of brick buildings and one-tenth of reinforced concrete structures collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed, many were burned down by the fires triggered by the earthquake. The earthquake also generated a tsunami on the Sagami Gulf, which demolished 150 homes and killed 60 people. The overall death toll from the earthquake and its aftermath exceeded 140,000.

5. Tangshan Earthquake

1976 Tangshan earthquake site. Image credit: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Public domain

The Tangshan earthquake of 1976 or the Great Tangshan earthquake took place on July 28, 1976, in China. With a magnitude of 7.9, the natural disaster ravaged the coal-mining city and killed 242,000 people. The death toll is one of the highest in recorded history. 700,000 people were injured as a result of the earthquake and infrastructure damage was extensive; more than 75% of unreinforced homes and buildings were destroyed. Later on in the day, an aftershock occurred in the city of Luanxian, 43 miles from Tangshan. This caused additional damage and more casualties.

4. Bhola Cyclone

Image of the Bhola cyclone taken on November 11, 1970.

On November 11, 1970, a cyclone hit Bangladesh and produced mass storm-surge flooding, which devastated the country’s low-lying lands. The event is the world’s deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded. The cyclone began over the Bay of Bengal before traveling northward, gaining intensity as it moved. When it made contact with the land in Bangladesh, it devastated villages and farmlands; the most severely affected areas were Upazila and Tazumuddin, where over 45% of the population was killed by the tropical storm. In total, at least 500,000 people lost their lives as a result of the Bhola cyclone.

3. The Indian Famine

Government famine relief, c. 1901, Ahmedabad

At the turn of the 20th century, India was devastated by a famine that affected an area of 476,000 square miles and impacted 60 million people. The famine began as the monsoon rains failed in 1899, this caused a drought and resulted in crop failures and famine. The Central Provinces and Berar, the Bombay Presidency and the Ajmer-Merwara province were just some of the badly affected areas. Over two years, from 1899-1901, it was estimated that over 9 million people died as a result of the famine.

2. Yellow River Flood

Yellow River(Huang He), Lanzhou Gansu , China. Image credit: Faye kao/Shutterstock.com

The Huang He or Yellow River is a river in China that was prone to flooding. It caused three deadly floods in 1887, 1931 and 1938. However, the river flooded again in 1958 due to torrential rains exceeding 100mm of rain per day. The flood affected 741,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes in more than 1,700 villages. More than half a million acres of crops were completely submerged. It was reported to be more destructive than the 1931 flood, which left 80,000 people homeless and killed between 850,000 to 4,000,000.

1. Yangtze River Floods

An overflowing Yangtze River in the present day. Image credit: Humphery/Shutterstock.com

Torrential rains hit southern China in August 1931 and caused the Yangtze River to flood. The river was already at maximum capacity due to heavy rains that fell in April. The Yangtze floods covered more than 30,000 square miles, causing more than 40,000,000 people to lose their homes and croplands. 15% of the wheat and rice crops of the Yangtze Valley were completely destroyed. The flood killed 3.7 million people both directly and indirectly, with many people dying from poor sanitation and diseases.

Prosperity Without Wealth

"Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny that permeates the world we live in."--Madonna, responding to criticism of her appearance at the Grammys

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The top 10 percent of households in the United States earn about 33.5 percent of all income, but they pay 45.1 percent of income-related taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes. In other words, their share of all income-related taxes is 1.35 times larger than their share of income. That is the most progressive income tax share of any OECD nation. In Germany, the top 10 percent earn 29.2 percent of the income and pay 31.2 percent of income-related taxes, 1.07 times their share of income. The French top 10 percent earn 25.5 percent of the income and pay 28.0 percent of the income taxes, 1.10 times their share of income.--Gramm et al

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Tracking Of An Eagle Over A 20 Year Period  

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Prosperity Without Wealth

Stuppa writing on the strange paper in Nature on 'degrowth,' subtitled “Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective:”

'To begin with, it is sad to see one of the most prestigious journals (the same journal that published the Watson and Crick paper on DNA…) is publishing this kind of rubbish. The article does not have a single piece of data. It is just a manifesto for a deindustrialization of the west, filled with naïve and simplistic comments. For example “it is necessary to ensure universal access to high-quality health care”. Nobody disagrees, but do they realize that such health care requires expensive doctors, expensive medications, expensive machinery (MRI, CAT, etc.)? And why would big pharma invest in discovery if their board of directors are more interested in the environment than they are in dividends and returns? And why would a kid invest 10+ years in becoming a doctor, with gruesome hours, if he cannot make a bunch of money at the end? Sure…love for humanity, etc etc, but at the end if you leave it to passion we simply won’t have enough people to go around.

But what is even more sad is to see that most of the authors are very successful and highly published and highly cited academics. This tells us that this is not a fringe movement. It is a movement that, in Gramsci’s words, has accomplished the long march in the institutions, and now controls funding, publications, etc.'

Just an estimate of costs of this brave new world. The ten-year assumption of the cost of universal healthcare would be an additional $30 to $40 trillion dollars. Trillion. Additional.

And Freeman in the WSJ on the same article:

'Prosperity without profits? The piece goes on to suggest plans for universal income and canceling international debts and by now readers may be getting the feeling that this is not so much about saving the environment as it is about tearing out the institutions of capitalism root and branch.'

UK's Economy

A construction worker in 2020 produced less than a construction worker in 1970, at least according to the official statistics. Contrast that with the economy overall, where labor productivity rose by 290 percent between 1950 and 2020, or to the manufacturing sector, which saw a stunning ninefold increase in productivity.

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Around seven in 10 people in Haiti back proposed the creation of an international force to help the national police fight violence from armed gangs who have expanded their territory since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, according to a survey carried out in January.

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ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study on Wednesday.

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UK's Economy

Some hard times may be coming in Great Britain.

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.

There's more.

"GDP is a simple multiplier of two factors: people and their productivity. But we don’t have people we need, nor the productivity,” CBI director general Tony Danker added.

The United Kingdom is the only G7 economy that hasn’t recovered fully from the pandemic. Soaring energy and food costs drove inflation to a 41-year high in October. Widespread strikes have become the norm recently as workers feel the sting of a worsening cost-of-living crisis.

UK workers suffered the most significant drop in their spending power in more than 20 years between April and June as average real wages — which take inflation into account — fell by 3%. The drop in real wages was less severe in the third quarter but was still one of the largest since official records began in 2001.

By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.