Surveys

Social Security is running out of money, and doing nothing will result in a 23% cut to benefits within a decade. The retirement trust fund, according to the latest report, will be depleted in 2033, at which point the incoming cash “will be sufficient to pay 77 percent of scheduled benefits.”

***

The 2021 infrastructure bill instructed the FCC to prevent “digital discrimination” of broadband access “based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin.” While the statutory language is broad, the agency’s proposed rule stretches it further to force broadband providers to prioritize identity politics.

***




Surveys

In America today, is there too much individual freedom or too much government control?
To curb climate change, should gas, meat, and electricity be strictly rationed?
Are your personal finances getting better or worse?
Can government be trusted to do the right thing most of the time?

These are questions from pollster Scott Rasmussen and here are some of his results (from Jacoby)

"In [Scott] Rasmussen’s general surveys, about 16 percent of respondents said there is too much individual freedom, while 57 percent said there is too much government control. But among the polled elites, three times as many (47 percent) believed there is too much freedom. Just 1 in 5 responded that there is too much control.

Strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity? In broad-based surveys, 63 percent opposed rationing and 28 percent approved. When elites were surveyed, on the other hand, the results flipped: Fully 77 percent favored rationing, while only 22 percent said they were opposed.

…..

Decades later, Rasmussen’s data suggest that the arrogance of such elites remains entrenched. In America they see a nation where people have too much freedom and should be told what to do by a government that knows best. Recounting a presentation he gave at Harvard a dozen years ago, Rasmussen tells me he has never forgotten one faculty member who demanded in exasperation: “Why won’t Americans let us lead? It’s what we were trained to do.” You don’t have to scrutinize poll numbers to recognize the impact of that attitude on America’s civic life. Too many elites look down on their fellow citizens, and an awful lot of their fellow citizens return the favor." 

Oxfam

Liberalism is not about finding all life’s meaning in a shopping list, it just says that we need more meaning than can be found in a ballot paper. And that those who seek the meaning of life in collective projects that they try to enforce on everybody else have less of a sense of the beautiful richness and diversity of human nature than the alleged cold and robotic market liberals.--norberg

***

Since 2020, there have been about 500 encounters between orcas and boats, Alfredo López Fernandez, a coauthor of a 2022 study in the journal Marine Mammal Science, told NPR. At least three boats have sunk, though there is no record of an orca killing a human in the wild.

***


Oxfam

Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International.

You wouldn’t learn it from Oxfam, but the global Gini coefficient measuring inequality has fallen from 92 to 88 since 2000. The top 1% saw their share of global income cut from 49% to 44.5%.

More important, the world’s poorest five billion have become significantly richer. The Oxfam report makes it seem as if things have gotten much worse for the poor since the pandemic. Oxfam makes this claim five times in its report, but never says by how much. It turns out that the poor’s share of global wealth—as measured by assets minus debts—declined by 0.2%, a figure so small that it is within the margin of error.

Something else you won’t find in the Oxfam report: Global poverty is now at its lowest level ever recorded—8.6%, down from 29% in 2000.

Not sure what these numbers truly mean but it is interesting that the numbers the organization takes seriously are better and the organization itself tries to minimize that.

Questions

Questions

When Amazon announced plans in 2017 to open a second headquarters (“HQ2”), it encouraged “local and state government leaders” to compete for the project. After receiving several multibillion-dollar offers, Amazon chose Arlington—directly adjacent to Washington, D.C. The state offered as much as $750 million in conditional grants for Amazon to build its campus in Virginia, and in April 2023, the company requested its first tranche of taxpayer funds—over $152 million. While phase one of the project was completed in May 2023, construction is paused indefinitely on phase two.--Lancaster

***

Anthony Fauci – who wielded tremendous power over many decades – funded dangerous research, lied to Congress and the American people, flip-flopped on many of his prognostications, issued edicts that defied science, and attacked and smeared his scientific critics. His reprehensible behavior reminded me of nothing so much as C.S. Lewis’s description of the moral busybody: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. . . . [T]hose who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”--Paul

***

Economic illiteracy, mixed with foggy nostalgia and unseemly xenophobia, is a familiar populist cocktail served by demagogues to the gullible. Do you remember the 1989 angst when Mitsubishi’s purchase of Rockefeller Center supposedly somehow signaled Japan’s ascendancy over a declining America?In 2000, a U.S. company bought Rockefeller Center. So, politicians manning the nation’s ramparts to fend off foreign investors can breathe a bit easier.--Will, on the 'threat' of Japan buying U.S. Steel

***

Norway in the late 1800s:
Women doing laundry through a hole in the ice. Painting by Jahn Ekenæs, 1891.
Before capitalism and technology destroyed the beautiful simplicity of indigenous life. 😎 (Hicks)

Election Questions

This month whoever the Biden administration is renewed their attacks on fossil fuel by urging the slowing down or halting the approvals of new liquified natural gas (LNG) export licenses. It sounds like the script for "Occupied," with the accents changed.

***

12 U.N. officials participated in Hamas' attack on Oct. 7? Is that possible?

***

Election Questions

There are many unanswered --many unasked--important questions about the upcoming election.

Who is running the country? Certainly, Biden is not. That admitted, would a different Democrat president make a difference? So, is the administration foundationally immobile and beyond change? If the elected leaders are not running anything and all administrators are essentially unelected, how are the Democrats running to 'save democracy?' Is a hidden administration good for the country? If so, what defects in the system is that work-around working around? Does the Democrat Party have no obligation to preserve the national values? Or is the only point to win?

And...with the disasters of the last three years, who could vote to reelect whoever this administration is?

Some Election Bullets

Handwriting, compared to typing, results in more complex brain connectivity patterns, enhancing learning and memory. A study used EEG data from 36 students to compare brain activity while writing by hand and typing.
Handwriting, whether in cursive on a touchscreen or traditional pen and paper, activated extensive brain regions, vital for memory and learning. These findings highlight the importance of balancing traditional handwriting instruction with digital literacy in educational settings.

***

Americans received a preview of a second Biden term on Friday when the President halted permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects. Climate politics has become the tail wagging this Administration’s economic, national security and foreign policy. President Biden isn’t running for re-election. Climate lobbyist Bill McKibben and his TikTok army are.
“This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time,” Mr. Biden said. “We will heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act.” Didn’t he campaign in 2020 by promising to be the adult in the room?--wsj

***


Some Election Bullets

Some strange numbers are coming out of the election fury.

Former President Trump beats President Biden with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a hypothetical 2024 ballot, according to a new poll.

With independent candidate Cornel West and the Green Party’s Jill Stein also added to the ticket alongside Kennedy, Trump’s lead over Biden climbed to 11 points, with 42 percent to the incumbent’s 31 percent.

Nearly two-thirds of voters in the poll said the country “needs another choice” this year if Biden and Trump end up as their parties’ respective nominees. And more than half — or 55 percent — said they’d consider an “independent moderate candidate” in that case.

Fox News voter analysis looked at 1,800 voters in the New Hampshire Republican Primary and found that over one-third of them said they would NEVER vote for former President Donald Trump.

All three potential Republicans, Halley, DeSantis, and Trump beat Biden in a general election--Halley doing better than DeSantis, both better than Trump--according to a recent poll.

What's astounding is all win by a narrow margin. According to Rasmussen, Biden has the general support of 45% against all opponents. That has nothing to do with Trump. How is that possible? How could whoever is running this administration get any support at all?

The Substance of Work

Dubas struck down any notion that Guentzel would be moved speaking on his bi-weekly GM Show with Josh Getzoff and said a conversation will be had with the forward about his future, but he has not been shopping the forward.

***

The U.S. secretly warned Iran that Islamic State was preparing to carry out the terrorist attack early this month that killed more than 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings, U.S. officials said. The confidential alert came after the U.S. acquired intelligence that Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, was plotting to attack Iran, they said.

***

King Charles III announced he had been suffering from an enlarged prostate, also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia, and would be undergoing a corrective procedure at the hospital sometime this week.

***

Roughly 70% of battery-powered electric car sales in the United States are courtesy of Tesla. However, for four straight quarters, TSLA stock has plummeted after reporting earnings, and the stock is more than 50% off its all-time high of $414.50, which was achieved in 2021.

***


The Substance of Work

The FAA website carries the declaration that the FAA is actively recruiting disabled people to employ. That is to say, disabilities have entered the hierarchy of desirable employment elements--but not skills--presumably competing with more traditional qualities--skills.

What does this mean?

Apparently, the search for workers has separated from worker performance; the job itself has become the objective of the hire. The purpose of the entity has become employment, not the achievement of an occupational objective. So the job does not demand efficiency and quality. 

If this has a familiar ring to it, it should. The old Marxist idea is that the value of a commodity can be measured by the average number of labor hours required to produce that commodity. The product and the workers that produce it are only distantly related. Indeed a product created by one organization in X hours has half the value of the same product in another organization created in 2X hours.

This confuses value with cost. Such thinking adds value to inefficiency and mediocrity. 

It's a bad economic idea. We can only wait to see what kind of aerodynamic idea it is.

Righteousness

Twenty-eight percent of Gen Z adults — which the survey’s researchers specify as those ages 18 to 25 — identify as LGBTQ, according to a report by the Public Religion Research Institute.

***

The key reason behind a huge amount of elite failure in the Catholic Church, Harvard, the ACLU, or the Republican Party is that the normal feedbacks cease mattering as much as the feedback from other folks at the top. And that very rarely reflects mundane practical concerns, let alone popular norms.--someone

***

If your constant objective is to expand the government’s permeation of society — to enlarge its role in allocating capital and opportunity — you have a permanent incentive to invent or misdescribe social problems. So, if you are a progressive, you will embrace the myth of a U.S. “manufacturing crisis.”--will

***

Righteousness

The drive for equity is relentless. And pure. It is fierce and honorable. It has a high vision, a bigger plan without reflection. And is shameless.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting workers who suffer "severe intellectual" disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.

"Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring," the FAA’s website states. "They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism."

MMT

I see the abortion issue is back.

***

Joe Torrey was a Braves' broadcaster for 16 years before becoming the Yankee's manager.

***

93 of the top viewed TV broadcasts last year were NFL broadcasts

***

MMT

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org and a Senior Writer at AIER and recently wrote an article on the American growing debt and the strange reactions to it. This is from it.

"NPR’s Leila Fadel asked Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University, if Americans should “be afraid” of this mountain of red ink.

“No. They shouldn’t,” Kelton responded. “It’s the word debt that makes people afraid. And so when I think about this, you know, I look at this number, and I think, well, it’s just keeping track of our savings.”

The idea that debt is just “keeping track of our savings” is peculiar. But Kelton is a peddler of strange ideas.

For those who don’t know, Kelton, an advisor to Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential run, is a disciple of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a school of economics typically rejected (and often laughed at) by other economists.

MMT is distinguished from other economic schools of thought in that it posits that governments that issue fiat money don’t actually need to collect taxes to pay for their goods and services. As the New York Times stated in a 2022 profile of Kelton, “How will you pay for it?” is considered “a vapid policy question” in the MMT world. Things like budgeting are for cavemen.

In case you think I’m exaggerating, I’ll quote Kelton directly.

“[T]he idea that taxes pay for what the government spends is pure fantasy,” she writes in The Deficit Myth. “[I]t is the currency issuer — the federal government itself — not the taxpayer, that finances all government expenditures.”

Since the state can simply print money, its only real financial constraint is inflation, MMT proponents argue. This is, of course, true in a sense. Governments can print as much money as they want, but there is nothing profound or “modern” about this revelation.
‘The Carpenter Can’t Run Out of Inches’

China’s Song dynasty introduced paper money way back in the 10th century. Paper notes were convenient, and all went well initially because the notes were at first backed by coins made of precious metals. Things went south, however, when Chinese officials began printing notes that weren’t backed by coins. Hyperinflation ensued, and Song China was soon swallowed by the Mongol Empire.

History is replete with similar examples, most recently in Argentina, where Peronists for years tried to solve its social problems by printing money.

Inflation is a curse. And MMT is a recipe for hyperinflation, as Harvard economist and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has noted, along with countless other economists.

The economics of this are not complex. Every economist knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Printing mass amounts of money cannot solve the problem of scarcity. This fundamental economic reality, that we have limited resources and limitless wants, seems lost on Kelton.

“The carpenter can’t run out of inches,” she tweeted in 2019. “The stadium can’t run out of points. The airline can’t run out of [frequent flier] miles. And the USA can’t run out of dollars.”

Kelton’s tweet reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of scarcity.

A carpenter might not be able to run out of inches, but he can run out of lumber and nails. Airlines might not be able to run out of frequent flier miles, but they can run out of seats and fuel, something better economists than Kelton have pointed out.
The ‘Court Intellectuals’

This brings me back to NPR.

It’s unclear why the media network chose to interview an economist with such discredited views to explain away the country’s mountain of debt. Whatever some may think, public debt is no laughing matter. Thomas Jefferson once described it as “the greatest of the dangers to be feared” for any country.

It seems unlikely that NPR wouldn’t know Kelton’s views on debt, which is to say they would know exactly how she’d answer their questions as to whether $34 trillion in federal debt is a problem. But then why have her on? A cynic might suggest that it stems from the fact that NPR receives 10 percent of its funding from government entities, all of which benefit from the government’s inflationary policies.

NPR would no doubt bristle at such an accusation. After all, the media network quit Twitter after Elon Musk branded the company “state-affiliated media.”

Many took issue with Musk’s label, but there is indeed something deeply troubling about government-funded media. Americans laugh at the clumsy propaganda organs of other countries, but many grow indignant at the suggestion that the government shoveling tens of millions of dollars to NPR could influence its media coverage.

Perhaps NPR’s government largesse is indeed the product of altruism. But there’s another possibility.

The economist Murray Rothbard, who spent a better part of a lifetime analyzing the state, had a dark theory on why the state takes interest in intellectuals like Kelton and media organizations like NPR.

Rothbard understood that the source of political power (“might,” as the economist Ludwig von Mises said) is ideology. Therefore, those who seek to maintain power have an incentive to shape ideas, opinions, and thoughts. And Rothbard argued that a primary purpose of the modern nation-state involved opinion-molding — essentially convincing the masses that its existence was valid, necessary, moral, and useful.

This is where Kelton comes in.

Rothbard wrote:

Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of ‘Court Intellectuals,’ whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public.

Kelton (and to a lesser extent Fadel) are what Rothbard would describe as Court Intellectuals, tools of the state’s opinion-making machine.

This is not to say that NPR doesn’t do any good journalism. I believe it often does. But it helps explain why NPR tapped Kelton, an economist with bankrupt ideas, for its piece on America’s $34 trillion debt, instead of any number of credible economists.

Kelton was all but certain to say the $34 trillion debt was no problem. Don Boudreaux, Peter St. Onge, David Henderson, Bob Murphy, Antony Davies, or any number of other free-market economists would have given a very different answer, one that no doubt would have been far more grounded in economic reality. But as a media entity receiving tax dollars, NPR has little incentive to promote a free-market economist or free-market views. Indeed, they have an incentive to do precisely the opposite.

Regardless of what NPR told its viewers, the $34 trillion national debt is a serious problem, not a mark of government “savings.”

And we know the primary cause of the problem.

“Washington has been spending money as if we had unlimited resources,” Sung Won Sohn told the Associated Press.

Our leaders in Washington, it seems, suffer from the same delusion as Kelton."

Something so whimsical--and non-academic--is hard to explain in this culture. Unless, of course, you look at 64 genders, borderless security, unlimited access to illegal, fatal drugs, and individuals responsible for abstract group acts and abstract groups responsible for individual acts.

We have become a culture of notions.

All tech is Good Tech

The six registered voters of tiny Dixville Notch in New Hampshire all cast their ballots for Nikki Haley at midnight on Tuesday, giving her a clean sweep over former President Donald Trump and all the other candidates.
Lead story.

***

The Dems seem to have a new election approach: Trump is too old to be president

***

Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CBS in June that “he is a consummate narcissist. And he constantly engages in reckless conduct. … He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. Our country can’t, you know, can’t be a therapy session for you know, a troubled man like this.”

His own interests first. It's good to hear that's unusual.

***

All tech is Good Tech

Some disturbing studies are emerging. These are not hard studies but the topic, learning, is not hard.

The Department of Education’s most recent survey, released in June,  found that text comprehension skills of 13-year-olds had declined an average of four points since the Covid-affected school year of 2019-2020, and more alarmingly that the average drop was seven points compared with the 2012 figure. The results for the worst-performing students fell below the reading skill level recorded in 1971, when the first national study was conducted.

What if the principal culprit behind the fall of middle-school literacy is neither a virus, nor a union leader, nor “remote learning”?

A soon-to-be-published, groundbreaking study from neuroscientists at Columbia University’s Teachers College has come down decisively on the matter: for “deeper reading” there is a clear advantage to reading a text on paper, rather than on a screen, where “shallow reading was observed”. Soft? Probably...but it's what we got.

Social scientists, including the Norwegian scholar Anne Mangen, have been reporting on the superiority of reading comprehension and retention on paper for more than a decade. As Froud’s team says in its article: “Reading both expository and complex texts from paper seems to be consistently associated with deeper comprehension and learning” across the full range of social scientific literature.

What if ease and accessibility are not enough? Indeed, what if the effort they replace is essential?

Diversity as 'Conditional'

 Trump has floated creating “a ring around the U.S. economy” by imposing a blanket 10 percent tariff on all imports to the U.S. This would directly raise the prices of trillions of dollars of imports, eroding the purchasing power of consumers’ wages and incomes. It would raise the prices of intermediate goods for U.S.-based firms, which would lead to further price increases for American consumers. And it would lead to retaliatory tariffs from other nations, causing further price hikes.--Strain

***

On the website of the American Sociological Association describing its 2024 annual meeting, we have the official "theme" of the meeting:

"..sociology as a form of liberatory praxis: an effort to not only understand structural inequities, but to intervene in socio-political struggles."

"To intervene." "Political struggles." Your idea of academic study?

***

Diversity as 'Conditional'

Harvard history professor James Hankins, writing at Law & Liberty, offers a diversity statement to Harvard:

"Since, however, you require me, as a condition of further employment, to state my attitude to these “values” that the university is said to share (though I don’t remember a faculty vote endorsing them), let me say that, in general, the statement of EDIB beliefs offered on your website is too vapid to offer any purchase for serious ethical analysis. The university, according to you, espouses an absolute commitment to a set of words that seems to generate positive feelings in your office, and perhaps among administrators generally, but it is not my practice to make judgments based on feelings. In fact, my training as a historian leads me to distrust such feelings as a potential obstacle to clear thinking. I don’t think it’s useful to describe the feelings I experience when particular words and slogans are invoked and how they affect my professional motivations. It might be useful on a psychoanalyst’s couch or in a religious cult, but not in a university.

Let me take, as an example, the popular DEI slogan “Diversity is our strength.” This states as an absolute truth a belief that, at best, can only be conditional. When George Washington decided not to require, as part of the military oath of the Continental Army, a disavowal of transubstantiation (as had been previous practice), he was able to enlist Catholic soldiers from Maryland to fight the British. Diversity was our strength. On the other hand, when the combined forces of Islam, under the command of Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik, besieged Constantinople in 717, diversity was not their strength. At the crisis of the siege, the Christian sailors rowing in the Muslim navy rose in revolt and the amphibious assault broke down."

Simple scrutiny can be withering when applied to philosophical pablum and bumper sticker slogans. That probably explains why scrutiny is so discouraged.

Sunday/Cher

A Deloitte Global Automotive Consumer Survey last week found that 67% of U.S. consumers said they would prefer an internal combustion engine for their next vehicle purchase. Only 6% said they favored a battery-powered EV—down from 8% last year.

***

The United States has the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy, producing a larger share of global manufacturing output than Germany, South Korea, India, and Japan combined.

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Sunday/Cher

In today's gospel, Christ begins to collect his disciples. They are Galileans--local men whose district was associated with a radical political sect--and fishermen. And these men will lead a revolution in human social and religious thought. To develop a universal rethinking of mankind, these are very parochial messengers.

This is not meant as a diversity joke but this is a very limited group of evangelists in an ethnic community that will carry Christ's word across languages, races, and cultures. And the subset of people most obviously absent are the intellectuals and the civic and religious leaders.

The notion that they were the most needful does not answer the other side of their conversion, the evangelical side, as the intellectuals and successful would presumably be the most persuasive.

It's like having a bunch of Cajuns change the world.

Chevron

The future, though imminent, is obscure.--Churchill

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***

Chevron means 'badge.' It specifically now means an inverted 'v,' like a 'pfc.' It has a wonderful origin:

late 14c., in heraldry, "a device in the shape of an inverted V," from Old French chevron "rafter; chevron" (13c.), so called because it looks like rafters of a shallow roof, from Vulgar Latin *caprione, from Latin caper "goat" (see cab); the hypothetical connection between goats and rafters being the animal's angular hind legs. Compare gambrel, also Latin capreolus "props, stays, short pieces of timber for support," literally "wild goat, chamoix."

***  

Chevron

The rule adopted in the 1984 Chevron Case was a well-intentioned effort to free the executive branch from judicial micromanagement.

Chevron claimed for agencies the power to change how the courts interpret the meaning of laws passed by Congress. Under Chevron, where a statute is “ambiguous,” courts defer to the agency’s interpretation — even if the agency had a different interpretation under the last president.

Defenders of Chevron say that it would unsettle precedent and violate the doctrine of stare decisis to overrule the decision, but Chevron itself unsettles both precedents and the expectations of regulated parties by allowing agencies to flip-flop in how they read the law without going through Congress to change it.

An NR summary of the question is this: "The two cases heard Wednesday, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, were brought by herring fishermen whose budgets were strained by intrusive regulation. Congress authorized the secretary of commerce and the National Marine Fisheries Service to “require that one or more observers be carried on board a vessel . . . for the purpose of collecting data necessary for the conservation and management of the fishery” — for example, to prevent overfishing.

The problem: The agency (the NMFS) ran short on its budget to hire observers. It could have asked Congress for more money, or for the power to make the fishermen pay for their own regulation. It did neither. The statute never said anything about the NMFS having the power to compel the fishermen to pay the costs of the observers. Imposing that cost is a further exercise of government power, above and beyond compelling the vessels to carry the observer. When pressed at argument to identify the government’s authority, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued for a chain of inferences from four separate parts of the statute, none of them close to an explicit grant of that power. Yet, lower courts used Chevron to say that because the statute never says who pays for the observers, it is ambiguous, and they deferred to the agency when it claimed that power. As Justice Neil Gorsuch put it, this is a rule under which “the government always wins” against the individual citizen or business."

Law should have a few basics, including a connection to reality in both logistics and costs. The criteria should be to advantage the citizen, not the government itself. And the government should not be allowed to mandate the creation of elephant ears and giraffe necks in honor of some idea of consistency. 

Underlying this self-admitted spotty thinking is the arrogant referral of responsibility: 'Let's invade Normandy. The non-comms can figure the details out.' 

The closer you look, the more common this is. For example, the decision that global warming is a threat to life--true or not--is only the first step of countless steps. The rest will not just 'fall into place.'

War and Rumours of War

Throughout the world, the "Red' movement is reserved for the radical left and its homicidal Communist affiliates. So how, in the strange 'Red State--Blue State' press creation, did the Left avoid being called the 'Red State' groups?

***

How did the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity -- 'DEI'--escape being 'DIE'?

***

A Japanese author who won one of Japan's most prestigious literary awards for her novel — in which artificial intelligence played a central role — revealed that an AI chatbot wrote part of the book.
Rie Kudan's novel, "The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy" ("Tokyo-to Dojo-to"), took home the Akutagawa Prize on Wednesday, with judges lauding the book as "flawless," according to The Times.
After the ceremony, Kudan admitted that around 5% of her novel had been "quoted verbatim" from sentences generated by ChatGPT.

***

War and Rumours of War

There have been some strange news stories in the last few days.

Germany is preparing for Vladimir Putin's forces to attack NATO in 2025, according to leaked secret documents from the German Ministry of Defence. These reveal a step-by-step, 9-stage process on how Russia will escalate the conflict in Ukraine to an all-out war in the next 18 months.

The leaked plans, published by German newspaper Bild, reveal in detail the path to a Third World War with Putin using Belarus as a launching pad for an invasion - as he did in February 2022 for his war in Ukraine.

The secret 'Alliance Defence 2025' document details how Russia will mobilise another 200,000 soldiers in Russia before launching a spring offensive against Ukrainian forces in Spring this year.

By June, amid dwindling Western support and weaponry, Russia would achieve success on the battlefield and make significant advances through Ukraine, according to the leaked documents.

These scenarios are connected to the vulnerability of the Ukraine conflict and, noticeably, the defeat of Biden in the U.S. elections which would, according to the estimates, result in chaos--and possibly some American ambivalence toward NATO.

Curiously, the release of the documents comes just days after Sweden's civil defence minister warned that his country could soon face the prospect of war and urged citizens to join voluntary defence organisations in preparation for a Russian attack. 

As soft as the 'leaked report' is, the Swedes are famously both neutral and serious.

Frankly, this has the appearance of a war game, not a military assessment, and its connection with Biden's election is suspiciously propagandist. But the Swedes are disturbing. And the repetition of rumours can create accidental next steps.

 

Cultural Ideals

Jim Irsay was found lying in his bed unresponsive, cold to the touch, and gasping for air during a suspected overdose in December.

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Cultural Ideals

Identity Politics, when rooted in whatever myopic philosophy you follow, essentially pares your vision down to one or two generalities that become imposed upon the individual as more than essential; it--or they--are foundational. And as such, they are purifying and exclusional. Supposedly, the cultural isolation that is hoped for will generate bonding and stabilize that identified community--for political, not social, reasons.

The conflict and isolation that result in despair and violence are not seen as failures in such a culture but rather its inevitable course. Maybe even its ideal.

The Hatfields and the McCoys are not an atavistic detour but the desirable, natural state of things.  

Metamorphosis

McTaggart wore his eccentricities with pride. He rode a tricycle. He walked “with a curious shuffle, back to the wall, as if expecting a sudden kick from behind,” a fact that may or may not be explained by his having been bullied at boarding school. He saluted every cat he met. His dissertation for a fellowship at Trinity, later published as Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic; had elicited from that older Apostle, Henry Sidgwick, the remark; “I can see that this is nonsense, but what I want to know is whether it is the right kind of nonsense.” Apparently, it was--from a book on eccentric Oxford philosophers

***

Imports from Mexico now surpass imports from China.

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Metamorphosis

Before she was Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay was involved in pushing out a dean after students protested his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein.

Imagine a major American school whose students and leaders opposed a lawyer because he was willing to defend an unpopular man--just as John Adams, one of America's founders, did in his defense of the British soldiers at the Boston Massacre. And Adams won his case in front of an American jury.

What are we changing into?

 

Bigotry and Madness

We find that the most generous welfare states in Europe do not perform better than other less comprehensive welfare state regimes.--a paper

***

Reuters reports the German government, Siemens AG, and other parties will provide billions of euros in project-related guarantees to support Siemens AG's struggling wind turbine division. This financial assistance comes just weeks after the company warned about mounting losses amid a meltdown across wind and solar industries.

***

The average Puerto Rico number of births per woman was 0.9 in 2021.

***



Bigotry and Madness

Three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington, Vermont in late November. Initial reports were that the attack was a textbook case of Islamophobia: the shooter, James J. Eaton, had allegedly “harassed” the students and then opened fire on them because they were wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic.

But that description did not fit the shooter, who was a known “progressive” who had made social media posts in support of Hamas in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Nor did he say anything to the students before the incident. The shooting probably wasn’t political at all: According to Eaton’s mother and his girlfriend, he had a “history of violence and mental illness.” Probably, he simply picked his targets at random in his moment of lunacy. (from don)

I try to keep current on these things but I never heard that. Just as I haven't heard the motives of so many of these murderers. It is as if the generalities society demands we make of the subsets that we are told divide and separate us suddenly do not apply--or are mailable for some larger, unspoken purpose.

But should the culture allow these random mad acts to be translated by motivated people as bigoted animosity? Can a free people tolerate that?

The Hidden Costs of Fighting CO2

The Scottish Covid inquiry recently heard from Ashley Croft, an epidemiologist, who said that there never was any reliable evidence to confirm facemask mandates and that “the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years”. He referred to “individual, societal and economic harm” of lockdown “that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.”

***

Europe's GDP to U.S.: $17.8 trillion to $26.8 trillion. In the Bush years, the two economies were roughly equivalent and there was a lot of chatter that Europe represented the economic future. That turned out to be a combination of excessive hype and optimism about Europe, excessive pessimism about the U.S., the effects of the Great Recession, Covid, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a couple other factors.--NR

***

"The special counsel shall be selected from outside the United States government." — Code of Federal Regulations, Title 28, Chapter VI, § 600.3(c).
Special counsel is supposed to be independent of the current government, not an employee...

---Dershowitz

So, why do we have Weisse?

***

WOD

Albedo: Noun. In astronomy "proportion of light reflected from a surface," 1859, from scientific use of Latin albedo "whiteness," from albus "white."

Late Old English albe "white linen robe" worn by priests, converts, etc., from Late Latin alba (in tunica alba or vestis alba "white vestment"), fem. of albus "white," from PIE root *albho- "white" (source also of Greek alphos "white leprosy," alphiton "barley meal;" Old High German albiz, Old English elfet "swan," literally "the white bird;" Old Church Slavonic and Russian lebedi, Polish łabędź "swan;" Hittite alpash "cloud"). Hittite!

Albania might be derived from this but it's hard to understand--as is the fact that Scotland was sometimes called Albania by the British.

****


The Hidden Costs of Fighting CO2

"You write as if you have solid information confirming that the best way to deal with climate change is to reduce emissions of CO2 and methane. I understand that nearly everyone assumes that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is the only, or at least the unquestionably best, means of dealing with climate change. But this assumption is no more than that: an assumption – and, at that, an assumption taken on faith.

We have, as far as I know, no solid information showing that the costs of efforts to reduce CO2 emissions (by whatever amount) are worth the resulting benefits. What would be sacrificed by such efforts? And how do we know that the value of these sacrifices would be less than the value of what would be sacrificed if humanity dealt with climate change instead in some alternative manner – say, by building higher seawalls and more air-conditioning? Or by arranging to increase the earth’s albedo? Or by reducing government-erected barriers to the construction and use of nuclear power plants? Or perhaps even by simply suffering climate change’s negative (along with its positive) consequences? Or by some combination of these (and other) means of dealing with climate change without reducing emissions of CO2?"--Bordeaux, in a post responding to a guy urging immediate reduction of CO2 production--and presumably the economic decline with it.

An assumption made by global warming devotees in the anti-carbon dogma is that the endpoint of unrestrained carbon production is very--but undefinably--bad. But the loss of energy production as the world moves back before steam power (and, presumably, solar and wind filling in the blanks) is definitely terrible. 

Imagine, purposely, recreating the joys of the 1700s

Sunday

India has both a lower crime rate and a lower murder rate than the United States, even though more than 14% of all Indians don’t get enough to eat, India has one of the worst child malnutrition rates on Earth, and India’s per capita income is only about $2,500, compared to over $75,000 in the U.S.

***

The media continues to flog the Iowa caucus to its inevitable conclusion.

***

"We do not support independence," Biden told reporters when asked for comment on DPP candidate William Lai’s victory over the rival Koumintang (KMT) party following Saturday’s election. This was reported without any comment.

***

Sunday

The temptation of Eve did not hinge upon the denial of God's existence. Rather the serpent attacks God's truthfulness. God's reliability.

In our uncertain world, where evil has such sway, that is a clever argument.

Vonnegut and Music

I came across a Ms. Sarah Laurel. She is described as "a harm-reduction professional."

***

[T]he reasons for the failure of the New Deal are clear. The Depression endured because the means by which America’s leaders, President Herbert Hoover and then, especially, President Roosevelt, chose to cure it: top-down federal intervention.---Shlaes, a serious academic

***

Vonnegut and Music

 Everyone knows that Kurt Vonnegut loved music. Here’s how it appears in A Man Without a Country:

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC.

He goes on to say that he likes “Strauss and Mozart and all that” but what he really loves is “that specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression” also known as the blues.  

In a 1991 interview with Hustler, believe it or not, Vonnegut, was asked about his musical tastes. “We’ll start from the back and work forward,” Vonnegut said. “I hate rap. The Beatles have made a substantial contribution. Bob Dylan, however, is the worst poet alive. He can maybe get one good line in a song, and the rest is gibberish.”--redone from Temple in The Hub

Changes and the Alliances of the Future

"3 Body Problem" releases on Netflix on March 21, 2024. 

***

While estimates vary, almost all economists in Buenos Aires expect annual inflation to surge past 200% in December.

The debate about the risk of deficit spending will go on until the predicted happens. Or not. The problem is that deficits are a symptom first.

***

For the period from October 2023 through December 2023, the budget deficit totaled just shy of $510 billion, following a shortfall of $129.4 billion in December alone.

***

Adda Coffee, a high-end local coffee business, has four local sites. Yesterday their employees voted to form a union. Last night the company closed its doors.

***

Changes and the Alliances of the Future

There is a fascinating study done by the European Council of Foreign Relations on the values of people across nations and cultures. This is culled from the report.

Our poll shows that Europe and America are seen as more attractive and having more admirable values (or, as having more soft power) than both China and Russia. But this does not translate into political alignment. For most people in most countries – including some inside the EU itself – we have entered an à la carte world in which you can mix and match your partners on different issues, rather than signing up to a set menu of allegiance to one side or the other.

Our new poll again shows that much of the rest of the world wants the war in Ukraine to stop as soon as possible, even if it means Kyiv losing territory. And very few people – even in Europe – would take Washington’s side if a war erupted between the US and China over Taiwan.

People in much of the rest of the world, however, see the European Union as an attractive destination, but not a hard power (that is, the power that derives from military and economic means) to be reckoned with. In fact, while many people outside the West value American and European ways of life, they also seem to have doubts about whether these liberal societies will survive.

In short, people from countries all over the world still want the West in their lives for everything that it has to offer and is managing to hold onto as the world changes. But Western leaders will not maximize their potential for geopolitical leadership if they continue to frame world politics in terms of bipolar choices (“with us or against us”) reminiscent of the cold war or former US President George W Bush’s “war on terror”.

Sharing the Wealth

“It’s no longer 1937,” Zegler, the actress playing Snow White in the upcoming movie, said. “She’s not going to be dreaming about true love, she’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”

***

The “fatal conceit” (Friedrich Hayek’s term) is the optimistic delusion that planners can manage economic growth by substituting their expertise for the information generated by the billions of daily interactions of a complex market society.--Will

***

There is a group before the courts called The Satanic Temple. They are suing over abortion laws, saying they think abortion is a sacrament.

The Bell Curve is spreading, as is civilization's tolerance.

***

Sharing the Wealth

"Sharing the wealth" historically has had a vindictive tone, a snarl from those who feel wronged because they are on the wrong side of the "fixed pie fallacy." And sharing the wealth is painful and difficult. There can never be enough sacrifice. Sharing wealth always results in a loss of wealth rather than lifting the poor. What, for example, is the logical endpoint of the rising tide of migrants in New York?

Here is a narrow representation of world poverty.

"It’s easy to treat reducing carbon output as the world’s priority when your life is comfortable. Things can still be tough for people in high-income countries, but the 16% of the global population who live in those countries don’t routinely go hungry or see their children die. Most are well-educated, and the average income is in the range of what was once reserved for the pinnacle of society.

"Much of the rest of the world, however, is still struggling. While conditions vary, across poorer countries five million children die each year before their fifth birthdays and almost a billion people don’t get enough to eat. More than two billion have to cook and keep warm with polluting fuels such as dung and wood, which shortens their lifespans. Although most young kids are in school, education is so dismal that most children in low- and lower-middle-income countries will remain functionally illiterate.

Opportunity is restricted in particular by a lack of the cheap and plentiful energy that allowed rich nations to develop. In Africa, electricity is so rare that total monthly consumption per person is often less than what a single refrigerator uses during that time. This absence of energy access hampers industrialization and growth. Case in point: The rich world on average has 530 tractors per 10,000 acres, while the impoverished parts of Africa have fewer than one."--Lomborg

                                       *
Lomborg believes in the reallocation of resources. This is a twist on egalitarianism which aims to bring everyone low. One wonders if the apparent vengeful objective of these climate activists has an element of hairshirted self-denial that attempts to share the pain of the poor through self-mortification rather than helping them rise and alleviate that pain.

Science and its Enemies

Am I the only guy who thinks that the box cutter found wrapped in a guy's arm ace bandage by the Philadelphia TSA is more than just a quirk?

***

Every once in a while, a guy with a small ax to grind reassures your faith in the land. 

A recent editorial in the WSJ decried the horrifying "unrealized tax gain (aka wealth) tax." 

This is a letter to the editor in response to the editorial and the evil idea of such a tax: 

"Ilya Shapiro warns against “The Wealth Tax You May Already Owe” (op-ed, Dec. 7) and the havoc that will result if the court recognizes a congressional right to tax unrealized gains as “income.” He understates his case.
The government only taxes net gains—that is, after deductions. Therefore, I hereby declare my future charitable donation of $50 million. An unrealized deduction, you say? Why should I get the benefit today of a donation that may never occur? Exactly"

***


Science and its Enemies

Rice University offers a course called “Afrochemistry: The Study of Black-Life Matter,” in which “students will apply chemical tools and analysis to understand Black life in the U.S. and students will implement African American sensibilities to analyze chemistry.” The course catalog notes that “no prior knowledge of chemistry or African American studies is required for engagement in this course.”

When a group of physicists led by Charles Reichhardt wrote to the American Physical Society, publisher of the Physics Education Research journal, to object to an “observing whiteness” article, APS invited a response, then refused to publish it because its arguments, which were scientific and quantitative, were based on “the perspective of a research paradigm that is different from the one of the research being critiqued.”

In 2021 Mount Royal University in Canada fired a tenured professor, Frances Widdowson, for questioning whether indigenous “star knowledge” belonged in an astronomy curriculum. The same year, New Zealand‘s Education Ministry decreed that Māori indigenous “ways of knowing” would have equal standing with science in science classes. The Royal Society of New Zealand investigated two scientists for questioning this policy; they were exculpated but resigned.

After all, how different are astrology and astronomy?

Unequal Schools and Students

So there are powerful, hungry men around the rich and influential Epstein. Is someone surprised? Despite his creepiness, are those men, by definition, suspect?

***

The first U.S. moon landing attempt in more than 50 years appeared to be doomed after a private company’s spacecraft developed a “critical” fuel leak just hours after Monday’s launch.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology managed to orient its lander toward the sun so the solar panel could collect sunlight and charge its battery, as a special team assessed the status of what was termed “a failure in the propulsion system.”
It soon became apparent, however, that there was “a critical loss of fuel,” further dimming hope for what had been a planned moon landing on Feb. 23.

***

 

Unequal Schools and Students

In his pursuit of more equity, Chicago's Mayor Johnson plans to dismantle his city’s selective-enrollment schools, thereby reducing competition among students and rendering all of Chicago’s school kids equal insofar as they would all be shackled to the same underperforming system.

Johnson’s board of education assured Chicagoans that the reforms it is pursuing won’t shutter the city’s selective schools. Rather, the plan is designed to dismantle the “stratification and inequity in Chicago Public Schools,” the board’s CEO said. The advantages enjoyed by high-achieving students in facilities with discriminating admissions policies amount to “educational apartheid,” read a statement from the Chicago Teachers Union welcoming the reforms. 

Educational apartheid.

This, of course, is really a war on merit.

The problem is that Johnson thinks the stratification is caused by the schools and their competitive system. That misunderstands the basic circumstances of life. The inequality is in the people. The diversity that is a characteristic and creative force in the species has become a curse.

The Left has decided to attack something everyone knows and believes:

Some of the kids are better students than others. 

These better students usually also have higher ambition, more energy, and better motivation. The distinction that develops among the students might be enhanced by better education circumstances but the basic reason is they are better students. The only way they can be stopped is with more aggressive, personal suppression. And one can only imagine what horrible ideas these very limited people might come up with.

 

Morons

Do illegal migrants who are flown to American cities by the government have to go through TSA?

***

Morons

The Maine official who moved to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot on Thursday visited the White House this year to meet with President Biden and previously referred to the Electoral College as a “relic of white supremacy.”

An unelected official has made a decision to deprive a guy of participating in an election based on her own, personal tastes and eccentric--bizarre--politics.

The lesson here is that just because these opinions are laughable does not mean they are innocuous. These people are making decisions. And they can present nonsense as if it were reasonable, nonsense that will go uncritized by the press. The very existence of these people is a profound argument in favor of republics.

Imagine such an astonishing misunderstanding of the nation's founding by a public official. Imagine the foolish position of a white hierarchy as the founding premise of a revolutionary first democracy with a written constitution declaring equality for all men. 

There is a hierarchy here. It's structured law, law founded on the equality of man. And that law is enhanced by the structure of the country as a republic, avoiding the irrationality, passions, and exclusionary nature of democracies. 

We might add, to protect us from morons.

Epiphany

President Joe Biden was not aware for days that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. 

Does anything about these people make sense?

***

A New York Times opinion piece openly speculated this week whether Taylor Swift is a closeted queer person. The NYT. Fit to print.

***

Big day tomorrow.
United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday at 2:18 a.m. EST (0718 GMT). The launch — the first ever for the powerful new rocket — will carry the private Peregrine moon lander.
The Vulcan Centaur will replace ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV workhorses.
The 202-foot-tall (62-meter) Vulcan Centaur consists of two stages, and its thrust can be augmented by up to six strap-on solid rocket boosters. Vulcan's first stage is powered by two of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, so Monday's mission is also a big one for Jeff Bezos' aerospace company. (The BE-4 is also the first-stage engine for New Glenn, Blue Origin's big, reusable rocket, which remains in development.)

Monday's liftoff will be the first for Peregrine as well. The robotic lander, built by Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic, will aim to become the first private spacecraft ever to touch down softly on the moon.

Peregrine is flying via NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which aims to help pave the way for the agency's crewed Artemis moon landings. The private spacecraft carries a variety of scientific payloads, provided by NASA and other space agencies, as well as some commercial cargo. (culled from space.com)

***

Epiphany

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

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

Democracy and its Enemies

When Biden was nominated, the price of oil was 40 dollars a barrel. Today it is 72 dollars a barrel.

***

In the 2020 election, The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a previously small Chicago-based nonprofit, quickly amassed hundreds of millions of dollars it donated to local election offices — most notably, $350 million from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

***


Democracy and its Enemies

Today is Biden's kick-off day for his reelection. He has picked January 6th as it is the anniversary of the attempt of some enthusiasts to demonstrate in favor of Trump's assertion that the election of 2020 had been rigged. What looked like a riot to the whole world became, in the eyes of the press, a tipping point of near Gettysburg or Shiloh proportion. The Republic trembled and nearly fell before an assault of scores of unarmed citizens led by a guy wearing deer antlers.

If only Lee had known.

Let's say these misguided fools and the Antler Guy actually had plans of upsetting the election. It's a big country; how would they have done it?  We don't know. But let's say they had some secret plan. How would you rate their chances of success? (Assuming the Antler Guy has some wonderful--if, as yet unseen--planning and leadership qualities.) How would they have fared? Against the Feds? The U.S. Marine Corps? 2500 SEALS?

On the other hand, what if the President of the United States promises 'fundamentally transforming the United States of America.' What if the President is so infirm that all of the executive decisions are deferred to a faceless cadre of unelected government employees? What if the national debt rises so high it destabilizes the currency, prompting an alternative world currency and leaving its citizenry impoverished and in despair? What if the integrity and safety of the country are threatened by hundreds of thousands of unvetted, illegal immigrants crossing the border every month with only cursory attention? What if the government becomes so venal, so corrupt, so insincere, and so inept that the people become estranged?

Which scenario threatens the democracy?

The Moon

The Moon

This is a big year for lunar science flight.

Two private companies are working to get the U.S. back in lunar landings, more than five decades after the Apollo program ended.
It’s part of a NASA-supported effort to kick-start commercial moon deliveries, as the space agency focuses on getting astronauts back there.

“They’re scouts going to the moon ahead of us,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology is up first with a planned liftoff of a lander Monday aboard a brand new rocket, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan. Houston’s Intuitive Machines aims to launch a lander in mid-February, hopping a flight with SpaceX.

Japan will attempt to land in two weeks. The Japanese Space Agency’s lander with two toy-size rovers had a big head start, sharing a September launch with an X-ray telescope that stayed behind in orbit around Earth.

If successful, Japan will become the fifth country to pull off a lunar landing. Russia and the U.S. did it repeatedly in the 1960s and 70s. China has landed three times in the past decade — including on the moon’s far side — and is returning to the far side later this year to bring back lunar samples. And just last summer, India did it. Only the U.S. has put astronauts on the moon.

Landing safely is no easy feat. There’s hardly any atmosphere to slow spacecraft, and parachutes obviously won’t work. That means a lander must descend using thrusters, while navigating past treacherous cliffs and craters.

A Japanese millionaire’s company, ispace, saw its lander smash into the moon last April, followed by Russia’s crash landing in August. India was successful a few days later near the south polar region; it was the country’s second try after crashing in 2019. An Israeli nonprofit also slammed into the moon in 2019.

The United States has not attempted a moon landing since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of 12 moonwalkers, explored the gray, dusty surface in December 1972. But Mars beckoned and the moon receded in NASA’s rearview mirror, as the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union came to a close. The U.S. followed with a handful or two of lunar satellites, but no controlled landers — until now.

Not only are Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines looking to end America’s moon-landing drought, but they’re also vying to be the first private entity to land — gently — on the moon.

Despite its later start, Intuitive Machines has a faster, more direct shot and should land within a week of liftoff. It will take Astrobotic two weeks just to get to the moon and another month in lunar orbit, before a landing is attempted on Feb. 23.

If there are rocket delays, which already have stalled both missions, either company could wind up there first. “It’s going to be a wild, wild ride,” promised Astrobotic’s chief executive John Thornton.

His counterpart at Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, said the space race is “more about the geopolitics, where China is going, where the rest of the world’s going.” That said, “We sure would like to be first.”

The two companies have been nose to nose since receiving nearly $80 million each in 2019 under a NASA program to develop lunar delivery services. Fourteen companies are now under contract by NASA.

Astrobotic’s four-legged, 6-foot-tall (1.9-meter-tall) lander, named Peregrine after the fastest bird, a falcon, will carry 20 research packages to the moon for seven countries, including five for NASA and a shoebox-sized rover for Carnegie Mellon University. Peregrine will aim for the mid-latitudes’ Sinus Viscositatis, or Bay of Stickiness, named after the long-ago silica magma that formed the nearby Gruithuisen Domes.

Intuitive Machines’ six-legged, 14-foot-tall (4-meter-tall) lander, Nova-C, will target the moon’s south polar region, also carrying five experiments for NASA that will last about two weeks. The company is targeting 80 degrees south latitude for touchdown. That would be well within Antarctica on Earth, Altemus noted, and 10 degrees closer to the pole than India landed last summer. Scientists believe the south pole’s permanently shadowed craters hold billions of pounds (kilograms) of frozen water that could be used for drinking and making rocket fuel. That’s why the first moonwalkers in NASA’s Artemis program — named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology — will land there. NASA still has 2025 on the books for that launch, but the General Accountability Office suspects it will be closer to 2027.

Astrobotic will head to the south pole on its second flight, carrying NASA’s water-seeking Viper rover. And Intuitive Machines will return there on its second mission, delivering an ice drill for NASA.

Landing near the moon’s south pole is particularly dicey.

“It’s so rocky and craggy and full of craters at the south pole and mountainous, that it’s very difficult to find a lighted region to touch down safely,” Altemus said. “So you’ve got to be able to finesse that and just set it down right in the right spot.”

While Houston has long been associated with space, Pittsburgh is a newcomer. To commemorate the Steel City, Astrobotic’s lander will carry a Kennywood amusement park token, the winner of a public vote that beat out the Steelers’ Terrible Towel waved at football games, dirt from Moon Township’s Moon Park, and a Heinz pickle pin.

The lander is also carrying the ashes or DNA from 70 people, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Another 265 people will be represented on the rocket’s upper stage, which will circle the sun once separated from the lander. They include three original “Star Trek” cast members, as well as strands of hair from three U.S. presidents: George Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy. (culled from an informative AP article)

I was at Canaveral with its islands of aerospace outposts, SpaceX and Blue Origin, poking up toward the sky. The space machines are astounding; one can only be optimistic. And awed. Except for one thing. There is an atmosphere at this overwhelming scientific hideaway of another purpose, a fellow traveler on the rockets. In addition to the astounding astro-science engineering, there is the whiff of social engineering. Every encounter, every presentation, mentions the contribution of women to the program. And this is supported by the self-conscious name of the program: Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo. the feminine reflection of the earlier Apollo program.

Hopefully, this is just symbolic, benign and silly, like a Heinz pickle pin.