Notes

On this day:

1006
Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appeared in the constellation Lupus.
1789
On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.
1803
Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.
1945: World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.
1975
Fall of Saigon (or Liberation of Saigon from the Communist perspective): Communist forces gained control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh

***.

Notes

There is a hair-raising account of the captivity and death of a 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist, Viktoriia Roshchyna, by the Russians in The Guardian. 

Suffice it to say this young girl was tortured to death--just in case anyone forgets what's going on. Tortured to death.

***

During the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, the U.S. gunboat Panay was attacked and sunk by Japanese warplanes in Chinese waters. The American vessel, neutral in the Chinese-Japanese conflict, was escorting U.S. evacuees and three Standard Oil barges away from Nanking, the war-torn Chinese capital on the Yangtze River. After the Panay was sunk, the Japanese fighters machine-gunned lifeboats and survivors huddling on the shore of the Yangtze. Two U.S. sailors and a civilian passenger were killed and 11 personnel seriously wounded, setting off a major crisis in U.S.-Japanese relations.

Although the Panay‘s position had been reported to the Japanese as required, the neutral vessel was clearly marked, and the day was sunny and clear, the Japanese maintained that the attack was unintentional, and they agreed to pay $2 million in reparations. Two neutral British vessels were also attacked by the Japanese in the final days of the battle for Nanking.

It sounds like The Liberty in the Middle East. These war scenarios do get messy. 

Then, of course, Nanking fell. And things got worse.

Oh, well.

***

Sometimes a guy does something inexplicable and succeeds in convincing himself he's smart. Or favored by Fate.

On August 26, 2003, Pirate GM David Littlefield, for no obvious reason,  traded Brian Giles, a great player and a fan favorite, for Jason Bay, a journeyman minor leaguer who had been traded three times in the minors. The entire baseball world held Littlefield in low regard; this confirmed it. 

Bay was drafted by the Expos in Round 22. Bay hoped he might catch on as a fourth outfielder. Littlefield told Bay the Pirates had no third outfielder and he would be the left fielder. He went on to become the Pirates' best player. a good defensive player, a power hitter for average, and the Rookie of the Year. He was an All-Star twice. He had a notable career, cut short by his fearless tendency to run himself into walls and unconsciousness.

One might wonder if this strange accidental success hasn't haunted the Pirates since.

***

In the spring of 1938, unemployment in the building trades averaged more than 40%. Nationwide, one in five workers found themselves still jobless, or jobless yet again.

After the initial crash from a market high of 381 in 1929, the market stayed low for more than a generation, attaining its 1929 level only in the 1950s. Read that again.

Economists, especially economics professors, will readily blame the rough post-crash period on the Federal Reserve’s failure to supply sufficient liquidity – money.

But with a few exceptions, the economics trade neglects the obvious next question. What about the years that followed? Why did recovery not return after five years, or after seven? It was the duration that made the Depression great.

***

First, the labor market is no longer polarizing— employment in low- and middle-paid occupations has declined, while highly paid employment has grown. Second, employment growth has stalled in low-paid service jobs. Third, the share of employment in STEM jobs has increased by more than 50 percent since 2010, fueled by growth in software and computer-related occupations. Fourth, retail sales employment has declined by 25 percent in the last decade, likely because of technological improvements in online retail.

That is from a recent NBER working paper by David J. Deming, Christopher Ong, and Lawrence M. Summers.

***

As a categorical institution, government can deal with things that we categorically do not want, such as murder, or which we categorically do want, such as protection from military attacks by foreign countries. But decisions and actions requiring more finely detailed knowledge for making nuanced incremental adjustments are often better handled by decision-making processes with more intimate knowledge and involvement – and especially more compelling feedback from the actual consequences of the decisions made.--Sowell

Parker

On this day:

In 1913, Gideon Sundback of Hoboken patented the all-purpose zipper.
In 1661, the Chinese Ming dynasty occupied Taiwan.
In 1429, Joan of Arc led French forces to victory over English at Orleans.

.

***

Since 1980, the intra-year market has fallen 14.2% on average but recovered to end positively in 33 out of 44 years.

***

US foreign aid totalled $65 billion in 2023. Humanitarian assistance made up a large slice of the total. But significant funding also went to strengthening militaries in allied nations and helping governments phase out fossil fuels or contain the production of opioids that could end up in the U.S.

***

Parker

(The following should be taken with a grain of salt. This discusses litigation and, as such, involves lawyers. And it is culled from Tobias, who is an investor. Moreover, years ago, I bought a bit of Parker myself. Nonetheless, the story is interesting and provocative with enough innuendo to keep you up at night.) That said...

A jury unanimously awarded ParkerVision $173 million in damages against Qualcomm in 2013.

After all, they were shown internal emails from Qualcomm senior executives that said: “The truth is ParkerVision have(sic) stumbled on something revolutionary.” And this one to Qualcomm’s CEO at the time: “This is critical technology we must land.”

Rather than license PRKR’s technology — that ultimately came to reside in literally billions of cell phones — Qualcomm, in the jury’s unanimous view, stole it.

It took a decade to get the case in front of a jury. Giants like Qualcomm can afford legal talent who is really good at delaying.

So $173 million for past use of the intellectual property went to Parker, plus a royalty to be negotiated on all future use. The judge seemed fine with that.

And then six months later, out of the blue, the judge threw out the verdict.

What happened?

Recently, PRKR released what it says is the first of a four-episode “Against the Giants” video series.

According to “Episode 1” of “Against the Giants," Qualcomm visited ParkerVision’s website often. But a couple of days after Qualcomm’s CEO hosted an Obama fundraiser, there was a visit from a computer in the White House. And a few days later, the Obama-appointed judge threw out the verdict.

The relationship between the decision and the White House may be a coincidence. But the question of suppression and destruction of American quality technology and companies is a problem that threatens the very essence of American culture. Property is basic. Innovation and quality should be rewarded. The legal system should benefit the public, not stymie it. And power should never be allowed to shift the scales of justice.

The larger significance is that Qualcomm is not the only tech giant that squashes small inventors who cannot possibly afford decades of litigation to enforce their patents. Which, apart from being truly un-American and unfair, may affect our global competitiveness.  

Carthage and Phoenicia

JPMorgan warns of a recession in the U.S. after disclosing that it now expects real gross domestic product to contract under the weight of President Trump's tariffs.

***

For most of American history, the power and imperative to own your own actions and solutions – the concept of individual responsibility – was implicit in the idea of freedom.--Hward

***

"Within the past few years, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected," Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary.

***

Carthage and Phoenicia

By the sixth century BCE, Carthage, a Phoenician coastal colony in what is now Tunisia, had risen to dominate this region. These culturally Phoenician communities associated with or ruled by Carthage became known as "Punic" by the Romans. The Carthaginian empire left its mark in history, particularly well-known for the three large-scale "Punic Wars" with the rising Roman Republic, including the Carthaginian general Hannibal's surprise campaign to cross the Alps.

An international team of researchers has now presented a study on the genetic history of these ancient Mediterranean civilizations.
The work is published in the journal Nature.

The new study used ancient DNA to characterize Punic people's ancestry and look for genetic links between them and Levantine Phoenicians, with whom they share a common culture and language by sequencing and analyzing a large sample of genomes from human remains buried in 14 Phoenician and Punic archaeological sites spanning the Levant, North Africa, Iberia, and the Mediterranean islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Ibiza.

The researchers revealed an unexpected result. "We find surprisingly little direct genetic contribution from Levantine Phoenicians to western and central Mediterranean Punic populations," says lead author Harald Ringbauer, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

"This provides a new perspective on how Phoenician culture spread—not through large-scale mass migration, but through a dynamic process of cultural transmission and assimilation."

The study highlights that Punic sites were home to people with vastly different ancestry profiles. "We observe a genetic profile in the Punic world that was extraordinarily heterogeneous," says David Reich, a professor of Genetics and Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University who co-led the work.

"At each site, people were highly variable in their ancestry, with the largest genetic source being people similar to contemporary people of Sicily and the Aegean, and many people with significant North African-associated ancestry as well."

They even found second cousins who lived across the sea from each other.

This is fascinating stuff that raises a lot of eyebrows. And questions. Accuracy is one. Cultures are dynamic, graves are not.

Sunday/Thomas

Is opposition to Israel by definition anti-Semitic?

***

The number of applicants to the nation’s nearly 200 law schools is up 20.5% compared with last year.

***

The Department of Health and Human Services spent hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds on President Biden’s DEI initiatives, according to a recent report by a nonprofit government watchdog. Nonprofit.

***

Sunday/Thomas

Today's gospel is the "Doubting Thomas" gospel. It could be a short story. Unfortunately, it is an insight that has become a cliché, and for the wrong reason.

The Thomas of the gospels is not a fickle guy; he is a brave, committed man. When Christ wants to return to a town where they had previously tried to kill Him, Thomas, after losing the argument against going, announces he will go with Christ so they can die together. 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. ("Doubt" has its origin in "duo.") The other side of doubt is belief, the product of doubt. Doubt and belief are linked. Twins. But that is not true for all.

Solipsism is the position in metaphysics and epistemology that the mind is the only thing known to exist, and that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified. It is a skeptical hypothesis that leads to the belief that the entirety of reality, the external world, and other people are merely representations of the individual self, lacking independent existence, and might not even exist. It is not the same as skepticism (the epistemological position that one should refrain from making truth claims at all).
Some people make their living 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.

When 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. 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, isolating, and paralyzing as any heresy. It is the redoubt(!) 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

On this day:
1865, Union cavalry troopers cornered and shot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia.

1986, A nuclear reactor accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine), creating the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

***

Virginia Giuffre, a woman who accused the late Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew of sexual abuse when she was a teenager, died by suicide on Thursday, her family said. She was 41. Weeks before she died, Giuffre claimed she was hit by a school bus and only had days to live.

She and the Duke of York settled the case out of court for an estimated $12 million in 2022. Andrew denied any wrongdoing, but the royal’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, stripped him of his military titles as a result of the scandal.

***

India and Pakistan both control parts of Kashmir but claim it in full, and have fought three wars over the mountainous territory. All but one of the 26 tourists massacred in the attack in Kashmir on Tuesday were Indian citizens. New Delhi blamed Pakistan, downgraded ties, and suspended its participation in a crucial water-sharing treaty.

The enormous Indus River system, which supports hundreds of millions of livelihoods across Pakistan and northern India, originates in Tibet, flowing through China and Indian-controlled Kashmir before reaching Pakistan. The vast volume of water is a crucial resource for both countries, and the treaty governs how it is shared.

A Pakistan government statement said any attempt to stop or divert water belonging to Pakistan would be considered an act of war.

***

The first GLP-1 weight-loss pill is a step closer. Eli Lilly said its experimental pill met its goals in a pivotal study, helping diabetes patients lower blood sugar—and even reduce weight—bringing an oral version of the booming class of drugs closer to market. The results keep Lilly ahead of rivals like Pfizer, which pulled its experimental pill over side effects.

***

5% of United passengers check in at an airport kiosk, an all-time low, the airline said this week. The majority of passengers (85%) check in on the airline’s mobile app or online.

***

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the department's Global Engagement Center, which works to identify false information campaigns from Russia, China, and Iran, was shut down for restricting free speech in the U.S.. Read that again.

***

An American man identified as the son of a deputy director of the CIA was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2024 while fighting under contract for the Russian military, according to an investigation by independent Russian media.

***

SatStats

70% of tomatoes are imported from Mexico.

*

The Netherlands, which is a bit bigger than Maryland, has become the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Perhaps even more significant in the face of a warming planet: It is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology. The Dutch have pioneered cell-cultured meat, vertical farming, seed technology, and robotics in milking and harvesting — spearheading innovations that focus on decreased water usage as well as reduced carbon and methane emissions…

The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.

*

The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, was measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire

*

“According to one survey of Gen Z respondents by Soter Analytics, only 14 percent of respondents said they might consider a job in manufacturing.”

*

Forty percent of small business owners in March reported job openings they couldn’t fill, with larger shares in construction (56%), transportation (53%), and manufacturing (47%), according to last week’s National Federation of Independent Business survey. The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey of businesses tells a similar story. There are twice as many job openings in manufacturing than in the mid-2000s as a share of employment. Save for during the pandemic, America’s worker shortage is the worst in 50 years.

*

Where you live—what city, what country—has more impact on your well-being than any other factor. Where you live is one of the few things in your life you can choose and change.

*

Addiction kills more Americans than cancer or heart disease, but only 4% of people with substance use disorders currently receive medication.

*

87% of companies with revenues above $100m are private.

*

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a hypothesized type of highly autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) that would match or surpass human capabilities across most or all economically valuable cognitive work. 15k researchers are working on AGI, in America. The U.S. has more people working on AGI than the rest of the world combined.

*

As of 2019, Russian male life expectancy at age 15 looks to be solidly in the middle of the range for the UN’s official roster of least developed countries (LDCs)—the impoverished and fragile states designated as “the most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of the UN family.” If WHO calculations were correct, life expectancy for a young man in Russia was all but identical to that of his Haitian counterpart at that time—and practically half of the world’s LDCs in Figure 3 had higher life expectancies than Russia.

*

Wolves do not make good guard dogs because they are naturally afraid of the unfamiliar and will hide from visitors rather than bark at them.

***

Globally, women are having fewer children

In the United States, the 2022 fertility rate was 1.67 children per woman.

United States

Western and central Africa

South Asia

European Union

Latin America/ Caribbean

Middle East/ North Africa

East Asia/ Pacific

Eastern and southern Africa

Source: United Nations Population Division, via World BankCredit: NPR

Some Guy's List

NPR did a piece on the declining birth rate, which focused on some guys opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Nazis and European racists, early 20th Century Progressive eugenicists, and a couple cosplaying Amish who chose their kids' names (Industry Americus, Titan Invictus, Octavian George, Torsten Savage) in hopes of launching them toward impressive careers.
Well, just as long as NPR is looking at this birth problem seriously...

***

There seem to be growing numbers of people who feel that those who disagree with them are not merely mistaken but malign, not merely in error but in sin.--Sowell

***

There was a bomb threat on Shen Yun performance at the Kennedy Center recently.

***

On this day

  In 1953, the magazine Nature published an article by biologists Francis Crick and James Watson, describing the “double helix” of DNA. 

  In 1859, work began on the Suez Canal in Egypt.

***


Some Guy's List

From a guy named Kevin Bryan on Twitter/X. Don't know him, but these are glib, sometimes silly, and I disagree with many of them. But they are also fun.

A List:
1) Ukrainians are heroes who suffered a ton.
2) Putin obviously covets Georgia and the Baltics also.
3) EU not in talks because they basically have no hard power; France even lost the Sahel.
4) The far right European parties are bad.
5) Pretending parties that win state and EU elections, and are in govt in NL and AT and IT, aren’t legitimate will not end well.
6) And in fact EU & UK speech laws not on side of liberty.
7) (but EU food and kid culture is better!)
8) Europe’s demographic crisis is really severe; not sure what the solution is.
9) Engineer training esp in France, Italy, Switz is excellent.
10) That talent should produce better econ outcomes, so econ policy must be dreadful.
11) Trump clearly doesn’t value democracy.
12) Most of his actual actions are much milder than his words.
12) Would be a disaster if that changed.
13) Censorious right wing culture will cause backlash just like woke culture did (put another way, 90s civic culture was better!)
14) Decline in trust in universities, media, and public health was our own fault.
15) Broader ideological diversity would be a huge improvement.
16) “Smart people in private sector” are much more ideologically diverse.
16) Canada has resources and good demographics so future is strong.
17) But culture based on “we aren’t US” is a dead end.
18) CA attitude to US like Calif attitude towards Texas: many stereotypes, little knowledge, and getting crushed on growth.
19) Most Middle East problems easy to solve but populace even crazier than leaders.
20) With exception of Iran, who would be great ally of West based only on median “voter”.
21) Dubai isn’t somewhere I’d live, but economically it is most fascinating success of recent decades.
22) Future of India very bright – English, young, educated, democratic, globally focused, successful expats.
23) Bangladesh as well.
24) Pakistan has problems that are very hard to fix, though Hunza is prettiest place in the world.
25) China underrated: the growth is actually staggering and tech leapfrogging in many areas is clear.
26) Chinese universities getting very strong, many foreign students from dev world.
27) But society way more closed than when I worked there 20 yrs ago, HK stolen, Taiwan?
28) Korea and Japan are delightful, but what will happen to countries who lose 20% of population in a generation?
29) Vietnam and Indonesia are very interesting going forward, esp former, as important powers.
30) Australia as well: resources and culture.
31) The future is African: tautology based on demographics.
32) The Sahel can easily get much much worse.
33) As can Central Africa, largely because of Kagame.
34) Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Bénin as growth miracles seems possible, though.
35) Latin America is joyous and way underappreciated for cultural interest.
36) But highly polarized Presidential systems make it so hard to improve.
37) And the educational underperformance is a real barrier to growth.
38) US is clearly economic engine of world, and more so now than 10 years ago, and you are deluded to think otherwise.
39) Why? Energy costs and tech sector, esp AI, plus growing pop of high grit immigrants. Have to get these right.
40) Avg US govt quality is not good but generally it doesn’t try to do very much, which makes it less of a problem.
41) But it isn’t filled with fraud – it is almost all old age transfers and military and interest.
42) More federalism, weaker courts would be better (this is Canada’s secret – federal courts don’t matter).
43) More transfers to young would be better: preK, service opps, parental leave, guaranteed vacation.
44) That said, US policy directionally right, and Germany has more to learn economically from Texas than vice versa (let people build, keep energy cheap).
45) Still, institutions matter, and hard to rebuild once destroyed.
46) EU = no war in W Eur for 80 years = it is good.
47) NATO, UN, World Bank have flaws, but they are so cheap and global stability so rare historically that they are good.
48) Greenland in CoFA, free labor movement with Canada and US: both good, made harder by DT rhetoric.
49) Shame is useful to keep public servants and regular Joes on straight and narrow path.
50) But at the end of day, success more important than words. Strong countries and societies and global orders are not build on words & soft power, but on growing liberty & prosperity.

Huang and Computing

When the Assad regime fell, Israel took over the former U.N. buffer zone along Syria’s southern border.

***

China: Income taxes collected from individuals were 7.5 percent below expectations last year, the Finance Ministry said in its budget. Growth is still 5%.

***

WSJ on the famous Brennan interview with Rubio:

On “Face the Nation,” the network’s Margaret Brennan quizzed Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Vice President JD Vance’s speech in Munich, faulting Europe for political censorship. When Mr. Rubio rebuffed her complaint about “irritating our allies,” she invoked the reductio ad Hitlerum: She said Mr. Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.”

Ms. Brennan would have benefited from a fact-checker. Weimar Germany had laws limiting speech, but their application against the Nazis failed to prevent Hitler’s January 1933 rise to power. His regime suspended civil liberties less than a month later via the Reichstag Fire Decree. Free expression was a distant memory by the time the Nazis begin killing on an industrial scale.

On its own, Ms. Brennan’s comment reflects ordinary inconsistency—she wants to censor speech she finds disagreeable or dangerous.

***


Huang and Computing

We think of the progress of mankind, but it often seems less a surge than a pull. We are a people of the leveraged individual, when one man can disproportionately impact his fellows. The man who saved the fire of lightning, who designed the wheel and the axle, the stirrup--these were not necessarily evolutions. They were moments of individuals. As technology becomes more concentrated and pivotal, this tendency might become more subtle, but it will only grow as society seems more and more dependent upon the achievements of fewer and fewer people. And strangely, more and more people are less willing to reward these few people for their contributions.

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has to be considered one of the five most important and innovative CEOs in the world today. So when he speaks, it’s worth listening.

Huang sought to allay investor concerns about the AI boom at an event he dubbed “the Super Bowl of AI," saying the world would need 100 times more computing power for advanced AI than it considered necessary a year ago, as reported by Steven Rosenbush and Isabelle Bousquette.

Huang said the annual conference last year was described as the "Woodstock of AI." This year, it's been described as the "Super Bowl of AI. The only difference is, everybody wins at this Super Bowl," he said.

Here’s what else he said of interest in his two-hour presentation.

On data center buildout:

"I've said before that I expect data center buildout to reach $1 trillion, and I am fairly certain we're going to reach that very soon."

On the necessity for far greater computational needs:

“This last year, this is where almost the entire world got it wrong,” he said. Nvidia shares have been volatile since the January release of a model called R1 developed by Chinese startup DeepSeek, which said it had built sophisticated AI models that required less powerful Nvidia chips.

“The amount of computation needed is easily 100 times more than we thought we needed at this time last year.”

On the importance of managing energy costs:

“Energy is our most important commodity.”

Shen Yun

On this day in 1950, Chiang Kai-shek evacuated Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao Zedong and the communists.

***

Gunmen shot and killed at least 26 tourists on Tuesday at a resort in Indian-controlled Kashmir

***

Human judgment "imposes "an impenetrable ceiling on the AI agent's performance: the agent cannot discover better strategies underappreciated by the human rater, DeepMind scholars David Silver and Richard Sutton write in the paper, Welcome to the Era of Experience. Most studies do not allow a context for a problem, a history. That is to say, human thinking is holding the technology back.
Uh oh.

***

Who ever imagined there would be a Waste, Fraud, and Abuse lobby?

***

Shen Yun 

The Shen Yun dance is coming to Pittsburgh this month. As with all things China, it is not without controversy over its admitted religious-political content.

That criticism is state-based. China has been using its economic and diplomatic influence to pressure theaters and ministries around the world and disrupt Shen Yun performances. In 2016, the Chinese Embassy in South Korea threatened financial retribution against a hosting theater in Seoul, effectively forcing cancellation of a performance just days before it was scheduled.

The Shen Yun interpretation of traditional Chinese culture differs sharply from the official version sanctioned by the Communist Party. Its narrative episodes are inspired by Chinese history and literature, claiming a “true Chinese tradition” defined by Confucian morality as well as Buddhist and Daoist spiritual thoughts — ideas that developed over millennia, ideas denounced and suppressed after the 1949 Communist takeover and all but eradicated during the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.

Against this historical background, the Chinese communists’ ongoing persecution of Falun Gong may be seen as part of a larger campaign against religious faiths and traditional cultural values. The regime’s overbearing effort to censor the dance show may imply its deep-seated insecurity about its own professed legitimacy to embody Chinese civilization. Or it may be evidence of an overwhelming force trying to finish an annoying opponent off.

Shen Yun artists have bypassed communist intervention and take seriously the Chinese intellectual and cosmological foundations in their understanding of dance. The spiritual teachings of Falun Gong, to which the show’s creators adhere, include an essential unity between the material and the spiritual, which human beings should strive to embody. For the dancer, it is important to refine one’s moral character while improving one’s physical skills, so that virtuous thought may extend from the heart to the body in performing tales of heroism, kindness, and devotion.

This spiritual interpretation of Chinese culture has had a compelling global impact, and this inspiring vision of what China was and could be without the Communist Party must be deeply unsettling to the authoritarian state. The artificially conjoined ideas of “China” and the party are decoupled, undermining the regime’s insistent claim to be the sole legitimate guardian and spokesperson of Chinese civilization and culture. Like a lover, the state must be "the only one."

Art, from the vision of eternal punishment in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment to the Von Trapp family’s perilous escape from Nazi persecution in The Sound of Music, has never existed in a social vacuum; it has always aspired to greater universality than the politics of the moment. However, politics is increasingly claiming this universality. To view politics and religion as the sole ends of Shen Yun’s art rather than its context is to deny the vital human experience of hope and kindness, which many of its audiences, regardless of their political and religious orientations, already derive from it.

Trifler

On this day in 1889, the Oklahoma land rush officially starts at noon as thousands of Americans race for new, unclaimed land.

***

Will NIL payments to college athletes create tiers of quality like baseball has?

***

Coke makes the concentrate for its U.S. sodas mostly in Atlanta and Puerto Rico, while Pepsi’s is imported from Ireland.

***


Trifler

The word 'trifler' is a noun meaning 'one not to be believed or taken seriously.' Its origin is from Old French trufleor (liar, cheat). Its earliest documented use: 1382

The verb 'to trifle' is to dabble or dance around the issue, and a trifler does this with more flair than substance. It is much more definitive and aggressive than 'diffident.' The word also cleverly moonlights in metallurgy. 'Trifle' is a pewter alloy of medium hardness. A trifler can refer to one who works with trifle. Either way, triflers are never quite dealing in the essence.

An example of its usage: “The poet lives, and dies, and is immortal; but the eternal trifler of all complexions never dies. The eternal trifler comes and goes, sucks blood of living men, is filled and emptied with the surfeit of each changing fashion. He gorges and disgorges, and is never fed. There is no nurture in him, and he draws no nurture from the food he feeds on. There is no heart, no soul, no blood, no living faith in him: the eternal trifler simply swallows and remains.”
Thomas Wolfe; You Can’t Go Home Again; Harper & Row; 1940.

Wolfe sounds like he is describing a politician. 'There is no nurture in him.'

Lexington

The Pirates do not have a first baseman on their roster.

The pitcher they got rid of to Cleveland, Diaz, looked good against them.

They do not have a power hitter in any of the traditional power positions on the team.

The shortstop they developed in their farm system is playing center, a position he has never played. Ever.

Their shortstop, the prime infield defensive position, is mediocre at best.

Second base is played by a nice, older guy.

Catcher? Who knows what will happen?

My favorite game, and even I am having trouble watching them.

***

Should universities have more leeway under the First Amendment? Does their 'search for truth' demand latitude?

***

Lexington

I could not in good conscience write about politics during Easter. But the British engaged the American citizens at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, initiating a military conflict that would change the world. A secular event that has almost religious significance.
That was 250 years ago, and somebody of importance should have raised a fuss. But, unbelievably, the national emphasis was upon the 30th anniversary of the McVeigh Oklahoma City bombing.
We cannot rely on these national leaders to shepherd our national priorities and culture. Remember, last year, on Easter, President Biden declared it "National Transvisibility Day." No, preserving the basic historic and social fabric contributing to the national woof and warp falls upon us.
Concord Hymn

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

   And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

   Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

   Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

   We set today a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

   When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

   To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

   The shaft we raise to them and thee.

 

 

April 19, 1775
At about 5 a.m. on April 19, 1775, 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, marched into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation, the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying, and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun. 

The British moved to Concord, where they found more resistance, suffered heavier losses, and withdrew. They were attacked on their retreat through Lexington and were harassed with more losses all the way to Boston.

This set the stage for the horrific battle at Bunker Hill.

There are so many wonderful stories about this chain of events that led to the disruption of the great British Empire and the creation, haltingly, of a new world order. Every child should know them. It would help them define themselves in this shifting world. Certainly, astonishing individual achievement, sacrifice, and heroism played a part. In the opinion of many, alcohol--and accident--may have been involved. 

But so was history. The times of men--not princes, men--molded by the past since the days of hunter-gatherers, had crept silently along in the shadows of Sumeria, Egypt, the Middle East religious cauldron, India, Greece, Persia, Rome, and the philosophical movements of the West. History took those slumbering "embattled farmers," born and bred in the forge of the French and Indian War, and called them to their part.

In the face of such momentum, men and time, the unfortunate British had no chance.