Gospel/Heaven's Gate

"How To Blow Up a Pipeline" is an effective film in more ways than one. Not only is it a tense, terse, small-budget heist-style thriller, more indebted to Reservoir Dogs than An Inconvenient Truth, it’s also a subtle—if entirely unintended—indictment of the climate movement’s violent fringe activists.--Sunderman (I know nothing about it)

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As part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s push for affordable housing, homebuyers with good credit will soon have to pay higher mortgage rates and fees to subsidize people with riskier credit ratings, according to a report by The Washington Times.

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Bay Area former County Health Officer Erica Pan said the COVID lockdown would be easy because Californians had DoorDash. When you get discouraged, you can always fall back on the deep insightfulness of our leadership.

Gospel/Heaven's Gate

Today's gospel is the provocative gate gospel where Christ talks about the sheep hearing the shepherd's voice and entering through the gate. There are a couple of questions here. 

First, the shepherd's voice is familiar to his sheep; how does that translate to humans? Is there a Socratic recognition of the truth or the holy? Is that innate? Is our tendency toward the good and holy?

Second, does this gospel suggest a personal relationship with the Divine?

A Homage to Costco

A new book, authored by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland is subtitled How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. One excerpt of the summary points:

Two-parent families are beneficial for children.

The class divide in marriage and family structure has exacerbated inequality and class gaps.

Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.

Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.

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Activists have used polar bears as an icon of climate apocalypse for decades, but the best data show that far from dying out, their numbers are growing. The official assessments from the leading scientists who study these animals—the Polar Bear Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature—peg the global population today at 22,000 to 31,000. That’s higher than the 5,000 to 19,000 polar bears scientists estimated were around in the 1960s.

The main reason has nothing to do with climate. An international agreement enacted in 1976 limits polar-bear hunting, always the key threat to polar bears’ numbers. Polar bears survived through the last interglacial period, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, when it was significantly warmer than it is now.--Lomberg

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Some South Korean youth are so cut off from the world, the government is offering to pay them to “re-enter society.”

About 3.1% of Koreans aged 19 to 39 are “reclusive lonely young people,” defined as living in a “limited space, in a state of being disconnected from the outside for more than a certain period of time, and have noticeable difficulty in living a normal life,” according to the ministry’s report, citing the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

A Homage to Costco

Venture into a Costco warehouse – a more diverse place than many a university or legislature – and you will see shoppers from all walks of life gathered together in the pursuit of consumer goods. Here, people of various faiths and backgrounds peruse the aisles, in search of the latest giant-screen television sets, buckets of ice cream, and rotisserie chickens, treating one another with respect, regardless of their beliefs. The only judgment passed is reserved for those who bump carts or try to skip the line. Upon departing this peaceful and lively consumer’s paradise, some may venture to their respective places of worship, while others linger and indulge in a beverage and a $1.50 hot dog with friends. One family may commemorate a milestone with a baptism, another might celebrate a traditional rite of passage, while still others head to the ballpark in the comfort of their spacious SUVs. And as this diverse tapestry of personal journeys is woven, everyone finds contentment.

--Tabarrok

Gimme Shelter

With a gross domestic product of roughly $3.7 trillion, India just this year overtook the United Kingdom (population: ~67 million) to become the world’s fifth-largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund. Germany and Japan sit just ahead with economies of roughly $4.4 trillion a piece, while China sits at No. 2 at $19.4 trillion and the good ol’ U.S. of A holds the top spot at $26.8 trillion

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Does sloppy language result in sloppy thinking? Or is it the other way? Either way, they are indicative of each other.

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In their comprehensive review of diversity training, Paluck et al (2021) put it this way: “…studies do not justify the enthusiasm with which implicit prejudice reduction training has been received in the world over the past decade.”

"Robin Di’Angelo, author of the bestselling White Fragility, has charged $20,000 for a 3-day training. A university could do more to reduce inequality simply by taking that fee and creating a fellowship for a student from a low-income background or marginalized group. Then, at least, they would know for a positive fact that one deserving person was actually helped."--Psychology Today

Gimme Shelter

When a hurricane hits Florida, it might kill no one, but when the same storm hits Haiti, thousands can die instantly through drowning and subsequently in disease epidemics like cholera. The difference is that Florida is in a wealthy nation with hardened buildings and roads, advanced weather forecasting, and emergency management. Haiti, by contrast, is poor nation that lacks modern infrastructure and systems.

If you consider yourself to be an environmentalist who is concerned about the condition of the environment because of its consequences for human beings, then you should be a vigorous supporter of economic growth.-- Michael Shellenberger’s 2020 book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All 

We're in Good Hands

Because maximum shareholder value is no longer management’s exclusive aim, managers will wrangle endlessly over which goals to pursue and how to trade them off against one another and against shareholder value. That’s bad for both investors and the economy.

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Sean Wilentz of Princeton notes, “the colonists had themselves taken decisive steps to end the Atlantic slave trade from 1769 to 1774. During that time, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island either outlawed the trade or imposed prohibitive duties on it. Measures to abolish the trade also won approval in Massachusetts, Delaware, New York, and Virginia, but were denied by royal officials.”

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Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research developed the world's first messenger mRNA-based single-dose vaccine that is 100 percent effective against a lethal bacteria.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, the study suggests that this paves the way for developing more vaccines for bacterial diseases, including diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The study, conducted on mice, demonstrated that all vaccinated animals were fully protected against the bacteria that causes the plague.

We're in Good Hands

China's ambitions in Southeast Asia, the growing appearance of lawlessness as a lifestyle, the astonishing growth of American debt, the decline of American education, an energy policy based upon self-harm--these are all random problems plucked from the forest of the issues facing what we call American leadership. So it's reassuring to see this insightful thought content from the Vice President, the proverbial one-heartbeat-away:

"So I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future."

Personal Responsibility

Hannah-Jones meets von Daniken
Hannah-Jones has been showered with the highest awards the American intelligentsia can bestow, including a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “genius grant,” an endowed chair in “Race and Journalism” at Howard University, and an entire Center for Journalism and Democracy at said school, which will fund her in producing a next generation of imitators of her approach to historical truth. These accolades are based entirely on the 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones, who was scarcely known before the publication of the project, has done little else since.--McLaughlin

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Capitalism’s edge was in putting many minds to work with the freedom to innovate, protected by the rule of law to protect personal and property rights, in place of a small group of planners.--Meltzer

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At the American Economic Association, there were roughly three times as many sessions featuring papers on each of race, gender, and climate as there were sessions on the topics of inflation or growth. For the conference as a whole, that means 13.2 percent of all sessions featured gender issues, 12.6 percent climate, 12.4 percent race, against just 4.4 percent for inflation and growth

Personal Responsibility

Leading artificial intelligence safety researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky has called for a cap on compute power, said GPU sales should be tracked, and believes we should be prepared to blow up rogue data centers. Rogue centers. In China?  Iran?

Yudkowsky, best known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence and research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), has written an article in Time Magazine claiming that humanity's future is in the balance.

"If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter," he said.

He added: "Shut down all the large GPU clusters (the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined). Shut down all the large training runs. Put a ceiling on how much computing power anyone is allowed to use in training an AI system, and move it downward over the coming years to compensate for more efficient training algorithms. No exceptions for governments and militaries. Make immediate multinational agreements to prevent the prohibited activities from moving elsewhere.

"Track all GPUs sold. If intelligence says that a country outside the agreement is building a GPU cluster, be less scared of a shooting conflict between nations than of the moratorium being violated; be willing to destroy a rogue data center by airstrike."

He concluded: "We are not ready. We are not on track to be significantly readier in the foreseeable future. If we go ahead on this everyone will die, including children who did not choose this and did not do anything wrong."

It's nice to hear a renowned expert call for multinational agreements, an outburst of individual responsibility, bombing rogue computer farms anywhere or...we are all gonna die. So it goes when there is an endless cry over myriad extension events. And all we need are miracles.

Cleopatra as The Little Mermaid

Bed Bath and Beyond spent 9 billion dollars on stock buybacks, outsourced everything and when the supply chains slowed, had nothing.

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Satellites, as weapons, trump the American global geographic advantage.

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From Henry II (born 1133) until George I (born 1660), monarchs’ average lifespan was fifty years. But when including childhood mortality of royals, average life expectancy was hardly better than that of commoners tilling fields in Sussex—the high 20s to low 30s—with little to no improvement over these years. Roughly 60 percent of royal children died before the age of five—a rate worse than their subjects.

Cleopatra as The Little Mermaid

There is wisdom in the world's observations of this country. This is from Faisal Abbas' wonderfully titled "Queen Cleopatra is not the Little Mermaid"

The only issue is that Netflix labeled the series as a “docudrama”. This by default means viewers expect it to be as factually accurate as possible. Given that all we know of Cleopatra suggest she was of Macedonian-Greek origins, she would have more accurately been played by a white actress. (So, not even an Arab would have been the most accurate for the role).

This by the way is not my personal view, but it is the informed opinion of Dr. Zahi Hawass, a world’s leading expert on Egyptology. He recently penned a column for Arab News summarizing all the historic evidence that Cleopatra was, in fact, of European — not African — origin.
“Cleopatra was many things, and well deserving of having her story told to modern audiences, but one thing she most definitely was not was black,” he said.

The problem — at least from our perspective — seems to be an intentional attempt to drag a glorified, historical Egyptian icon into the muddy waters of current US divisions.

Director, Tina Gharavi, insinuated ..[the political nature]...in a column for Variety magazine two days ago confessing that the casting was indeed political.
“Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a black actress,” she wrote.
“The hunt was on to find the right performer to bring Cleopatra into the 21st century,” she added.

Excuse me? Cleopatra is believed to have reigned over Egypt between 51 BC and 30 BC — that is where she belongs. If you bring her into the 21st century, then it no longer is a docudrama, but a parody and you might as well have her wearing jeans and a pair of sneakers!

Sunday/Emmaus

 

Data: United Nations Population Fund; Chart: Rahul Mukherjee/Axios

The distribution of people across our planet is changing pretty dramatically, with populations booming in sub-Saharan Africa and shrinking in parts of Europe and East Asia, including China.




Sunday/Emmaus

Today's gospel is the brilliant Road to Emmaus gospel where two of Christ's apostles are discussing Christ's death on their way to the town of Emmaus. They are joined by Christ, whom they do not recognize. He joins the conversation, explains the life and death of Christ, particularly in the context of prophecy.

The travelers reach a point in the road where it seems the new man who joined them is going to go his own way. The men encourage him to continue with them to Emmaus. They eventually recognize him at the breaking of the bread at dinner.

This story is especially interesting in its connection to the Eucharist but what is fascinating is the journey of men, met by Christ whom they do not recognize and the moment where they, the travelers, must initiate the true development and enhancement of their understanding.

Without their positive efforts, Christ will move on alone.

The Pros and Cons of Homelessness

WSJ poll finds more than four in ten Americans now support abortion bans at six weeks — half of the previous threshold.

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A male weightlifter once dubbed "New Zealand's Strongest Man" applied last week to compete in a women's powerlifting competition. His intention was not to defeat women in the sport, but rather to discredit the notion that biological men don't have a physiological advantage over their female peers — an advantage which male transsexuals appear keen to simultaneously exploit and deny.

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Romeo and Juliet: The average age for women to marry in Elizabethan England was in their early 20s; the average age for men was their late 20s. Shakespeare’s audience would have seen Juliet as a mere child. They would have been shocked that she was neglected by her parents in the face of the dangers she faced.

The Pros and Cons of Homelessness

Interesting story out of Arizona where a strangely even-handed debate has developed over the problem of homelessness. Some people oppose intervention.

An Arizona judge ruled this week that the city of Phoenix must remove the tents belonging to over 1,000 homeless people from downtown.

The ruling comes after a group of property owners and businesses sued the city for its failure to enforce bans on public camping, which they claim has led to a rapid increase in the number of homeless living in an encampment downtown that locals call “the zone.” It’s estimated that more than 1,000 homeless people now live there.

The business owners claim the encampment prevents them from operating, while other locals claim the city has essentially made the homeless encampment and surrounding area “off-limits to law enforcement,” which presents safety concerns.

Residents claim that public defecation and urination, drug use, and violence are common in the area and that it spills over onto their private property.

“You know, the shelter started letting people camp on our property, then it just happened and it exploded because the city has no control,” sandwich shop owner Joe Faillace told News Nation.

During the lawsuit, Phoenix officials claimed that their hands were tied by a Ninth Circuit precedent from 2019 that ruled it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to arrest people for “involuntarily” sleeping on the streets.

The city was also facing a suit from the ACLU of Arizona in November, which sought to prevent the cleanup, saying that the cleanups “criminalize, punish and scatter” people living outdoors. Ultimately, the judge presiding over the business owners’ suit did not buy this defense since many of the homeless people in the zone are there by choice and have refused to go to a homeless shelter in the past.

After the judge’s ruling, a city spokeswoman said that Phoenix is “committed to addressing the needs of all residents and property owners,” and that they continued to work to “address the complex issues surrounding those experiencing homelessness,” including connecting people with indoor shelter. The city has until July 10th to clean the area. (from morning wire)

Scottish Enlightenment

Dogs are incredibly talented sniffers — their noses have millions more scent receptors than human noses, which is why dogs are often used to sniff out evidence at crime scenes or in airports. Despite their strong noses, they only have about a sixth of the number of taste buds that humans have.


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According to a recent WSJ/National Opinion Research Center poll published last month, only 27 percent of Americans say “Community involvement” is a value they personally consider “very important,” down from previous readings of 47 to 62% over the last two decades. Community involvement is not valued by members of either political party (32% of Dems, 23% of Independents, and 25% of Republicans rate it as “very important”).

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Leading artificial intelligence safety researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky has called for a cap on compute power, said GPU sales should be tracked, and believes we should be prepared to blow up rogue data centers.

Scottish Enlightenment

From Murray Pittock's book on Scotland on the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment:


Charles II’s brother James’s rule in Edinburgh as Duke of Albany 1679-82 has been characterized as ‘a brief period of enlightened government’ made possible by the Catholic heir’s exile from the irrational hysteria of the aftermath of the ‘Popish Plot’ in England. 

Both Charles and James carried out extensive building in the Scottish capital and supported civic redevelopment; indeed what was eventually to become the New Town development was first envisioned under James. James created or supported many of the institutions which underpinned the Enlightenment: the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1681), the Edinburgh Merchant Company (1681), the Advocates’ Library (1682) and the Order of the Thistle (1687), as well as the offices of Historiography and Geographer Royal (1681-82). 

In the aftermath of Union, new institutions were developed to defend and preserve Edinburgh’s capital status, such as Allan Ramsey’s theatre (1736) and the Academy of St. Luke, Scotland’s first art school, in 1729. A large number of clubs and associations for improvements were formed, such as the Society for Endeavouring Reformation of Manners (1699), the Rankenian and Associated Critics Clubs (1716-17), the Honourable Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland (1723), the Society for the Improvement of Medical Knowledge (1731) and the Philosophical Society (1737). The University Medical School (where over three-quarters of students in the eighteenth century were not Scots) was founded by the support of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1726. 

Like the other Scottish universities, Edinburgh went on to benefit substantially from the addition to the student body of English and Irish dissenters, who were unable to attend Oxford and Cambridge because of their religious affiliations.

Hanson's Answers

Not only is ESG failing to make money, but it is not even achieving its non-financial goals. One sizeable Columbia University and London School of Economics study published in 2021 found that US companies in 147 ESG portfolios had worse compliance records for both labour and environmental rules than US companies in 2,428 non-ESG portfolios. They also found that companies added to ESG portfolios did not subsequently improve compliance with labour or environmental regulations. This study added to a growing body of evidence that ESG investing is not only anti-democratic but ineffective.--Masko

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77% of age-eligible males in the U.S. are not physically qualified to join the U.S. Army.

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Collective decision-makers superimpose their decisions without cost to themselves.  

Hanson's Answers to the questions from yesterday:

1) Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-American Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the largest air base in central Asia — recently retrofitted at a cost of $300 million — and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliation.

2) The Biden administration allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continental United States, spying on key American military installations. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administration simply lied about the extent that China had surveilled top-secret sites.

3) In March 2021, at an Anchorage, Alaska mini-summit, Chinese diplomats unleashed a relentless barrage at their stunned and mostly silent American counterparts. They lectured the timid Biden administration diplomats about American toxicity and hypocrisy. And they have defiantly refused to explain why and how their virology lab birthed the COVID-19 virus that has killed tens of millions worldwide.

4) In June 2021, in response to Russian cyberattacks against the United States, Biden meekly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to at least make off-limits certain critical American infrastructure.

5) When asked what he would do if Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden replied that the reaction would depend on whether the Russians conducted a “minor incursion.”

6) Between 2021 and 2022, Biden serially insulted and bragged that he would not meet Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and one of our oldest and most valuable allies in the Middle East.

7) For much of 2021, the Biden administration made it known that it was eager and ready to offer concessions to re-enter the dangerous Iran nuclear deal — at a time when Iran has joined China and Russia in a new geostrategic partnership.

8) Almost immediately upon inauguration, the administration moved the United States away from Israel, restored financial aid to radical Palestinians and both publicly and privately alienated the current Netanyahu government.

9) In serial fashion, Biden stopped all construction on the border wall and opened the border. During the 2019 Democratic presidential primary, Biden made it known that illegal aliens were welcome to enter the United States — some 6 million to 7 million did. He reinstated “catch and release.” And he did nothing about the Mexican cartel importation of fentanyl that has recently killed more than 100,000 Americans per year.

10) In the past two years, the Pentagon has embarked on a woke agenda. The Army is short by 15,000 in its annual recruitment quota. The defense budget has not kept up with inflation. One of the greatest intelligence leaks in U.S. history just occurred from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon refused to admit culpability and misled the country about Afghanistan and the Chinese spy balloon flight. The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese communist counterpart and head of the People’s Liberation Army to advise him that the U.S. military would warn the Chinese if it determined an order from its commander in chief, former President Donald Trump, was inappropriate.

Hanson Questions

In the United States, life expectancy in 2021 was 79.1 years for women and 73.2 years for men. That 5.9-year difference is the largest gap in a quarter-century.

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One in four US teens at some schools are abusing prescription stimulants such as Adderall, a Government-funded study suggests.

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Former President Donald Trump got a big bounce among Republican primary voters after his indictment in New York in late March — but now that swell of support seems to be fading fast, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

Hanson Questions

Hanson asked these questions recently.

Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?

Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the U.S. lead in boycotting Russian oil?

Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationship”?

Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?

What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral or a de facto enemy?

Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?

Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?

Why was Egypt secretly planning to send rockets to Russia to be used in Ukraine, according to leaked Pentagon papers?

Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?

Why is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador bragging that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States, most of them illegally? And why is he interfering in U.S. elections by urging his expatriates to vote for Democrats?

Why and how, in just two years, have confused and often incoherent President Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?

Climate

Some of history's most feared dictators tried their hand at romance novels, with both Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini publishing love stories. Hussein's novel, Zabiba and the King, was published in 2000.

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There is a fabulous ancient treasure still buried at Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples. It is an actual ancient library that has been locked under a veritable rock of volcanic ash since 79 A.D. It likely contains thousands of scrolls, comprising hundreds of books.

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About 1 in 3 children in the United States cannot read at a basic level of comprehension, according to a key national exam. The outcomes are particularly troubling for Black and Native American children, nearly half of whom score “below basic” by eighth grade.

Climate

Is there a shift going on in the culture's appreciation of climate reality?

“I don’t think we can count on people living an impoverished lifestyle as a solution to climate change,” Gates said at an event in India on March 1.

The Microsoft co-founder also suggested that even when the United States uses “half as much energy per person,” it would be “unjust” to ask India to maintain consumption at its current level.

According to Our World in Data, energy use per person in the United States was 76,634 kilowatt-hours in 2021, which is close to 11 times India’s energy consumption of 6,992 kilowatt-hours per capita.

“For people who want to go Vegan that is great but I don’t think most people will do that.

Last year, Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, claimed that climate change is based on false narratives.

In an email obtained by The Epoch Times, Moore, who left the organization back in 1986, said that Greenpeace was “hijacked” by the political left when they became aware of the money and power involved in the environment movement.

“The ‘environmental’ movement has become more of a political movement than an environmental movement,” Moore stated. “They are primarily focused on creating narratives, stories, that are designed to instill fear and guilt into the public so the public will send them money.”

In June last year, the independent foundation Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) received signatures from over 1,100 scientists and professionals worldwide for its World Climate Declaration (WCD) stating that there is no climate emergency.

In an interview with The Epoch Times, Marcel Crok, the founder of CLINTEL, said that even if it is accepted that carbon dioxide is the main driver of current climate change, there still is no “climate emergency”

“We simply state that all evidence so far indicates that the increase in CO2 and the increase in temperature [are] not harmful for us or for nature and therefore the climate hysteria surrounding the topic is totally unjustified [and] that the ‘cure’—getting rid of fossil fuels asap and replacing them with renewables—probably will be worse than the ‘disease’ [climate change].”

(Epoch Times via Don)

Sunday/Thomas

The press is interviewing a former Gitmo prisoner for his opinion on DeSantis' presidential candidacy.

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Question from Chris: who believes that the Chinese--or anybody else, for that matter--would pay an idiot loser like Hunter Biden for anything? That exchange implies a group to influence, not idiot Hunter. (Although the 'Mickey Blue Eyes' painting transactions are provocative.)

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The rationale for the price controls is to save taxpayers and seniors money. But the savings on existing drugs are minuscule in comparison to the loss in health resulting from a decrease in drug innovation, which is already taking place. The Congressional Budget Office finds the Inflation Reduction Act will cut drug spending by $238 billion by 2031. Meanwhile, a University of Chicago analysis predicts the cuts in innovation in new drugs will lead to health losses valued at $18 trillion during the same period. 

(This kind of prediction sounds whimsical but is in a new research paper.)

 Sunday/Thomas

Today's gospel is the "Doubting Thomas" gospel. It could be a short story. It is an insight that unfortunately has become a cliché.

Thomas is not portrayed as a fickle guy in the gospels; he is actually a brave, committed man. When Christ wants to return to a town where they tried to kill Him previously, Thomas, after losing the argument against going, announces he will go with Christ so they can die together. So his caution over the talk of Christ's resurrection stems from only one thing: his desire for the truth.

"Thomas" means "twin." Doubting Thomas is a twin. The other side of doubt is belief. So his other twin is "belief," the product of doubt. Doubt is a process. But that is not true for all.

Solipsism: the position in Metaphysics and Epistemology that the mind is the only thing that can be known to exist and that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. It is a skeptical hypothesis and leads to the belief that the whole of reality and the external world and other people are merely representations of the individual self, having no independent existence of their own, and might in fact not even exist. It is not, however, the same as Skepticism (the epistemological position that one should refrain from even making truth claims).
There are people who make their livings talking like this.

Several modern currents of thought are rushing us toward the rapids. One is doubt itself, as a philosophy, a tenet of modern life. For many, doubt is the endpoint.

Descartes asked, "What can I know?" He described us as isolated individuals whose knowledge was individually subjective. But this comes at a price. I can doubt the existence of the external world, and I can doubt the existence of what appears to be my body. But when I try to also doubt the existence of my inner self, my thinking, then I find that I am still there--as a doubting mind. Doubting is the thing that in the end I cannot doubt. Doubting, however, is thinking, and the existence of thinking implies the existence of a thinker. Hence Descartes' famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am." So the self sees us as isolated individuals prioritizing our subjectivity above all else. And the agent of thought is doubt. And, unlike Thomas, those doubts are never answered.

This has implications for more than the individual. "Community" implies shared beliefs, things held in common. So doubt, as an endpoint, is as destructive, as isolating, as paralyzing as any heresy. It is the keep of the immobile and the somnolent. Like the pacifist, doubt requires the efforts, and the sacrifices, of others to exist.

When Christ appeared the second time, He was probably really happy to see Thomas.

SatStats: Birth Rates

The FBI infiltrated a Catholic church congregation in Virginia.

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Renewable subsidies have distorted and destabilized the Texas electric grid, which resulted in a week-long power outage during the February 2021 freeze. To prevent more blackouts, Republicans in the Lone Star State now plan to subsidize gas power plants.
The Texas Senate last week passed putative energy reforms to “level the playing field,” as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick put it. Texans will now spend tens of billions of dollars to bolster natural-gas plants that provide reliable power but can’t make money because of competition from subsidized renewable energy.

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The least advantaged in market societies are better off than the least advantaged in nonmarket societies and may be better off than the most well-off in some nonmarket societies. This material fact, we argue, is of moral significance.--Storr and Choi

SatStats: Birth Rates 

The nations of the world are under significant demographic pressure. The most vulnerable are said to be Germany, Italy, and China. There are implications regarding identity, workforce, and the modern state's strange notion that current promises can be paid for by subsequent generations. This is culled from The Daily Mail.

A baby boom in the mid-20th century saw the average woman give birth to between three and four children. Today, just 1.6 children - the lowest level recorded since data was first tracked in 1800.

Dr Melissa Kearney, an economic professor at the University of Maryland, told DailyMail.com: 'There has been a greater emphasis on spending time building careers. Adults are changing their attitudes toward having kids.'They are choosing to spend money and time in different ways... [that] are coming into conflict with parenting.' She continued that younger people are also showing more interest in leisure activities and travel now than they did before, on top of career building.'[Wanting to travel] just comes into conflict with parenting,' she said.

This could lead to economic devastation in America down the line - as the federal government would need to collect more taxes to fund programs such as Medicare and Social Security - while dishing out fewer benefits to each person.

Fertility in the US has long been falling. A half-century ago in 1970, the average woman was having 2.39 children over her entire life span.

In 1920 - a full century ago - the rate was at 3.17. The earliest available data from 1800 puts the rate at 7.04. The Census Bureau predicts there will be 94.7 million Americans over the age of 65 by 2060, accounting for 23 percent of the nation's population. In 2020, the most recent Census, 56 million Americans were over 65 - accounting for just 17 percent of the population. A half-century ago in 1970, seniors made up around 10 percent of the US population.

Scandinavian countries such as Sweden (fertility rate of 1.6) and Norway (1.5), which have strong welfare states also suffer from a declining birth rate.

Men are now having their first child at 26.4 years old on average, while women are giving birth for the first time at 23.7. Both have increased greatly in the last two decades

The number of American women with at least one child has fallen to just 52.1 percent, while the number of men dropped to 39.7 percent in 2019

Estimates are that the American population will start to decline in 2035.

Law and Anti-Law

In “It’s Destructive and Unfair to Tax ‘Unrealized Capital Gains’” (op-ed, March 31), Richard McKenzie observes that President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders would like “a levy on unrealized capital gains.” Their thinking would be OK if the future were known and the reasoning was consistent.

Consistency demands that taxpayers could take deductions for unrealized capital losses as well. Follow the logic further and reach unrealized deductions for future dependents. Pregnant women could even deduct for the life in utero, along with unrealized child-care and educational expenses.

For that matter, if older people are likely to become dependents, a deduction for them could be made by those who anticipate their future dependent status. And why not deduct unrealized but anticipated, i.e., future, costs of doing business? Maybe, on second thought, the unrealized future is better left out of tax policy.--letter to editor

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San Francisco’s 1.7-mile Central Subway, which opened in January at a cost of $1.95 billion, three times as much as initially estimated. The subway is drawing fewer than 3,000 daily riders, no doubt because the design doesn’t make sense: Riders have to walk the equivalent of three football fields to connect to other transit lines and take three escalators to reach platforms 12 stories underground.

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Law and Anti-Law 

Earlier this month, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was relentlessly heckled and successfully shouted down by a frothing mob of mini-Robespierre jackals who call themselves Stanford Law School students. The mob was simultaneously juvenile and outright vile, with one student unconscionably yelling to the esteemed jurist, "We hope your daughters get raped!" Even more galling, "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach finally rose up upon the judge's plea to restore order...and, in pre-prepared remarks, sided with the protesters and ludicrously asked whether the "juice" (of Judge Duncan's planned remarks) was worth the "squeeze" of the alleged "harm" to the pampered brat students that Duncan's mere presence caused. (Steinbach has since been placed on administrative leave by Dean Jenny Martinez, although the culpable students have tragically escaped thus far with impunity.)--Newsweek, of all places

One can only imagine the future of these young attorneys who see the world as one-sided, as they enter a judicial system that is basically adversarial.

The Spread of English

“Smoking cannabis on the street in Amsterdam’s red light district will soon be illegal, the city council has announced, as part of a range of bylaws designed to deter tourist excesses and make life more bearable for despairing local people.” And: “The city is still investigating a possible ban on stag and hen parties and the mayor wants to bar tourists from its cannabis coffeeshops.”

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April 5, 1933—the day that FDR ordered the seizure of the private gold holdings of the American people.

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With the current surplus of generation in the country’s energy system, Ukraine is ready to resume exporting electricity to the EU, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said after he met with EU Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson in Brussels.

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The Spread of English

From One Summer: America 1927.

. . . Universal and Paramount were both dominated by German stars and directors. Universal was said, only half in jest, to have German as its official language.

A few European actors – Peter Lorre, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo – adjusted to, or even thrived in the new sound regime, but most actors with foreign accents found themselves unemployable. Jannings, winner of the first Academy Award for acting, returned to Europe and spent the war years making propaganda films for the Nazis. Behind the scenes Europeans still thrived, but on screen movies were now a thoroughly American product.

Though the significance of this wasn’t much noticed in America, globally the effect was profound. Moviegoers around the world suddenly found themselves exposed, often for the first time, to American voices, American vocabulary, American cadence and pronunciation and word order. Spanish conquistadors, Elizabethan courtiers, figures from the Bible were suddenly speaking in American voices – and not just occasionally but in film after film after film. The psychological effect of this, particularly on the young, can hardly be overstated. With American speech came American thoughts, American attitudes, American humor and sensibilities. Peacefully, by accident, and almost unnoticed, America had just taken over the world.

Asteroids

When Audrey Jean Knauer, a woman from Kentucky, died in 1997, she shocked her family by leaving over $300,000 to actor Charles Bronson. Knauer had never actually met Bronson and was merely a huge fan of his work.

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In the 1960s, the Beatles attempted to obtain the film rights to The Lord of the Rings. The band reportedly wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct the movie, and planned on John Lennon playing Gollum, while Paul McCartney hoped to play Frodo. Their plans never came to fruition because J.R.R. Tolkien refused to give the band the rights to adapt his novel.

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The current disorder in America might seem encouraging to its enemies. But one could worry that a canny politician in the U.S. might be happy to be challenged by an international opponent with the hopes the challenge could be used to rally and unify the country. Dangerous times.

Asteroids

In September of 2022 NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid. A new set of five papers in Nature has now demonstrated that not only did NASA hit its target, but the mission was also a success in diverting the asteroid:

DART, a spacecraft the size of a golf cart, collided with a Great Pyramid-sized asteroid called Dimorphos. The impact caused the asteroid’s orbit around another space rock to shrink — Dimorphos now completes an orbit 33 minutes faster than before the impact, researchers report in Nature.

…As DART hurtled towards Dimorphos at more than 6 kilometers per second, the first part that hit was one of its solar panels, which smashed into a 6.5-meter-wide boulder. Microseconds later, the main body of the spacecraft collided with the rocky surface next to the boulder — and the US$330-million DART shattered to bits….the spacecraft hit a spot around 25 meters from the asteroid’s center, maximizing the force of its impact….large amounts of the asteroid’s rubble flew outwards from the impact. The recoil from this force pushed the asteroid further off its previous trajectory. Researchers estimate that this spray of rubble meant Dimorphos’ added momentum was almost four times that imparted by DART.

…Although NASA has demonstrated this technique on only one asteroid, the results could be broadly applicable to future hazards…if a dangerous asteroid were ever detected heading for Earth, a mission to smash into it would probably be able to divert it away from the planet.

Lightbulbs

Loneliness is widely quoted to be as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes daily. It increases the overall risk of death by 26%.

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In Feb, exports to China slumped by 12.4%, while exports to the US rose 19%. This means that the US is by far the most important export market, and France is also establishing itself as #2, far ahead of China.


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Turkey borders seven different countries all of which use different alphabets.

Lightbulbs

Where freedom of choice comes from.

This article does not look very rewarding but it really is.

Competitive markets with low costs of entry mean businesses can’t raise prices without offering extra value to the consumer. Competition — even potential competition that would leap into the market for the right minimum price — keeps prices low. If an industry leader, or even a few large brands, “conspired to raise prices,” a startup would quickly gain market share. Market leaders, instead, protect themselves from competition and creative destruction by blocking new competitors through regulation.

In 2011, GE, Philips, and Sylvania manufactured more incandescent light bulbs than all other companies combined. But lightbulbs were 100-year-old technology with low material costs and little difference between manufacturers, so store brands and imports were flooding the market with indistinguishable 25-cent bulbs.

Alternative bulbs, now familiar as corkscrew-shaped compact fluorescents, use less energy and last longer for certain uses. Fluorescent lights were common in brightly-lit places where energy savings paid off and bulbs were changed very infrequently, like grocery stores and office buildings. But making them ‘compact’ wasn’t the barrier to practical household use: fluorescents give off tinted light, have to ‘warm up’ when switched on, and contain toxic mercury gas. Most people don’t live in the same home long enough to realize 20-year energy savings, and taking $20 light bulbs with us when we move is impractical. Consumers didn’t want CFLs even for a price comparable to traditional bulbs, and they were vastly more expensive.

CFLs had some remarkable advantages, however, for Philips, Sylvania, and GE. Higher technical barriers to engineering and manufacturing (compared to very simple traditional bulbs) and more expensive materials kept potential competitors out of specialty bulbs. But the barriers weren’t high enough that brands could hike prices, even for existing users of fluorescents, without inviting a start-up into the game. Here, where leading brands faced no serious competition, was where they wanted to ‘compete’ for customers.

Philips Electronics formed a coalition with environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, to lobby for “higher energy efficiency standards” — special regulation to ban traditional bulbs and force consumers to buy higher-cost bulbs that only the three market giants could make. Rather than offer consumers free choice in which bulbs made economic sense for their own homes, corporate interests authored regulation to choose for us.

Regulation passed by Congress, and worse, by unaccountable bureaucratic agencies, is subject to manipulation by those with the most to gain. A rapidly expanding lobbying industry exists solely to influence policymakers, and the still-shadowier public affairs and policy fields disguise that corporate influence as public good.

Such restrictions are rarely influenced by the priorities and relative values of average citizens. The costs of lobbying are simply too high for us, and the returns too small. Even if we were successful, the average American stands to gain less than $100 annually by having cheaper light bulbs available — major manufacturers can gain billions in market share by removing consumer choice.

No human, whether employed by the federal government or otherwise, possesses the cognitive empathy or emotional imagination to make good choices for hundreds of millions of citizens. Lobbying to limit access to lightbulbs is costly and frustrating, but it is trivial when compared to the catastrophes of mismanaged veterans’ care, a hogtied medical innovation, the disastrous housing bubble, or a lengthy foreign occupation.

Regulatory capture and rent-seeking trace for us explicitly the modern American mercantilists’ self-interest in limiting trade and replacing individual consumer choices with regulatory force. Licensing and tariffs, permits and inspections and certifications: elites have found many names for the permission we must seek to operate businesses and trade as we wish.--Williams