Ritualized Mendacity

On this day:

1826
Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
1865
American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks – In Siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1873
The British steamer RMS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547.
1924
Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch”. However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes Mein Kampf.
1939
Generalísimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
1944
Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen.
1949
The Canadian government repeals Japanese Canadian internment after seven years.
1957
The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax on its current affairs programme Panorama.

***

“If you can detach yourself temperamentally from the crowd, you'll get very rich. You won't have to be very bright. It doesn't take brains. It takes temperament.”--Buffett

***

Newly released photos appeared to show the husband of former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem cross-dressing in private messages to several women.


***

“It was once believed that clones were identical to the original, but it has become clear through this study that mutations occur at a rate three times higher than in offspring born through natural mating.” That quote is one of the clearest summaries of why the study matters: genome sequencing showed that cloned mice were not preserving a perfect copy of the donor. Instead, the defects kept being passed forward, with no genetic reshuffling to help remove them.--project head, Wakayama

***

"We're not a rich country. We're a debtor nation," then-candidate Trump told The Washington Post in an interview on March 31, 2016 (a full transcript was published two days later). "We've got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt."

How long would it take to do that, asked the Post's Bob Woodward.

"Fairly quickly," Trump replied. When pressed for a more specific answer, Trump provided a shocking timeline. "Well, I would say over a period of eight years."

***

Ritualized Mendacity

April Fool's Day, once an opportunity for annoying dim-wits, has become a national Holy Day of Obligation. The silliest frauds are presented as accurate with the straightest of faces. Social lies are routine.

Just like daily life.

In our modern culture of unchallenged opportunism and mendacity, April Fool's Day has become more of a cautionary tale.

The lead singer of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is on record calling the white race “the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief in the modern world.” Despite this, the 1619 educational curriculum—much of which conveys basically the same point of view—is one of the more popular educational supplements in American schools. Major magazines and journals, at the level of Salon, quite regularly run articles with titles like “White Men Must Be Stopped–the Future of Mankind Depends on It.” Maybe we have become so tolerant, so non-judgmental, we will tolerate anything. 

As Sec. Mayorkas said, "The border is closed."

April Fools' Day has become a welcome day of benign jokes and foolishness amidst our days of serious lies, manipulation, and propaganda. There have been some real efforts made at its comic relief. In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour. In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
There is probably little to learn about humans through this. Most of us, simply by observing politics, know that some people will believe anything.

The origin of April Fools' Day is uncertain. The best explanation is the confusion caused by the change of the New Year from April First to January First.
Ancient cultures, including those of the Romans and Hindus, celebrated New Year's Day on or around April 1. It closely follows the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st). In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) to replace the old Julian Calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1.
It is said that some refused to accept the new calendar and became the object of ridicule at that time of year.

In a great story, Joseph Boskin, a professor of history at Boston University, explained that the practice began during the reign of Constantine, when a group of court jesters and fools told the Roman emperor that they could do a better job of running the empire. Constantine, amused, allowed a jester named Kugel to be king for one day. Kugel passed an edict calling for absurdity on that day, and the custom became an annual event.
"In a way," explained Prof. Boskin, "it was a very serious day. In those times, fools were really wise men. It was the role of jesters to put things in perspective with humor."
This explanation was brought to the public's attention in an Associated Press article printed by many newspapers in 1983. Wonderfully, Boskin had made the whole thing up. It took a couple of weeks for the AP to realize that they'd been victims of an April Fools' joke themselves.

So, enjoy your spaghetti or your left-handed whopper. You need the break. 

Tempest

On this day:

1146
Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492
Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1717
A sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1854
Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1994
Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995
Selena, an American singer, was murdered by her friend and employee of her boutiques, Yolanda Saldívar, who was embezzling money from the establishments. The event was named “Black Friday” by Hispanics.

***

“The worst enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge”--Hawking

***

America first, right after I call my broker: 

A broker for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted to make a ​big investment in major defense companies in the weeks ‌leading up to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

***

Bangorian Controversy: From John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world." Hoadly deduced, supposedly at the request of the king himself, that there is no biblical justification for any church government of any sort. He had not delegated his power, like temporal lawgivers during their absence, to any persons as his deputies; and that the church of England, as all other national churches, was merely a civil or human institution, established for the purpose of diffusing and perpetuating the knowledge and belief of Christianity.

***

NASA is targeting an April 1 launch for the historic Artemis II mission, with meteorologists currently tracking an 80% "Go" weather forecast at Kennedy Space Center.

***

13 starting pitchers across all of MLB were drafted out of high school, are still with the team that drafted them, and, according to FanGraphs' 2026 playing time projections, are projected to be one of their team's primary starting pitchers this season. The Pirates have four of them — Mitch Keller, Braxton Ashcraft, Bubba Chandler, and Jared Jones.

***


Tempest

The American court is a microcosm of the evolution of the American democracy. 

A debate over right and wrong, sometimes life and death, is moderated by a supervisor of uncertain--but undeniably unpredictable-- intelligence and knowledge, carried out between equally unpredictable individuals willing to debate either side of the conflict for money. This is resolved by the votes of twelve average citizens assigned this duty against their will.

A recent case is enlightening. Meta, a huge company that deals in complex technology and algorithmic predictability, was accused of luring children into an interactive computer program, habituating them to it, and distorting their personalities and judgment. They were accused of developing a product that encouraged people to like it and then changing how they think.

People selling a product with the hope that customers will like it? A technology company can predict how people's minds develop and work when no psychiatrist, or physician, or research scientist can? The complex ball of yarn that is nature and nurture has been untangled?
These complexities will be debated and decided by the same people on your bus?

Oh, brave new world!

Reflections in a Twisted Mirror

On this day:

1842
Anesthesia is used for the first time, in an operation by the American surgeon Dr. Crawford Long.
1855
Origins of the American Civil War: Bleeding Kansas – “Border Ruffians” from Missouri invade Kansas and force election of a pro-slavery legislature.
1856
The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War. (Included for irony.)
1867
Alaska is purchased from Russia for $7.2 million, about 2 cent/acre ($4.19/km²), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward.
1944
Allied bombing raid on Nuremberg. Along the English eastern coast 795 aircraft are dispatched, including 572 Lancasters, 214 Halifaxes and 9 Mosquitos. The bombers meet resistance from German fighters along the coasts of Belgium and the Netherlands. In total, 95 bombers are lost, making it the largest Bomber Command loss of World War II.
1981
President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.

***

Words, when written, crystallize history; their very structure gives permanence to the unchangeable past. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

***

Epstein had a lot of philanthropic interests. Or, maybe better said, interests in philanthropy.
By some estimates, philanthropy provides at least 20 percent of funding for science research at U.S. institutions. With little government oversight of this revenue stream, it's easy to imagine how someone like Jeffrey Epstein could use philanthropy to rehabilitate their reputation. 

Somehow, this potential problem is limited in discussions to reputation building rather than partisan influence and distortion.

***

A trailer for Worry #1:

https://tv.apple.com/us/clip/trailer/umc.cmc.4efghwf347j1ig5d80kdl8nnx?targetId=umc.cmc.4a45bulcd7e4urydi90xmfu86&targetType=Movie

***

Today is the anniversary of the Democrat "Bleeding Kansas" plan, a nice poetic reflection with the "Nullification" plan they did then and now.


***

Does "No Kings" also apply to other people? Does it also mean "No Shahs"?

***

Reflections in a Twisted Mirror

It is said that with the rampant mendacity in the last administration, the clear priority of power over representation, the incredible incompetence, and the willingness to maintain a shadow government--and deny it--the Democrat party is irreparably damaged.

But Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. For a woman with no discernible talents who is a representative of the Biden Regency--that's a lot of votes.

The Democrat party has survived slavery, the Civil War, the Wilson administration, Roosevelt, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, The Great Society, the national debt, and, now, nullification. Nullification!  How anyone who sees this, sees the Democrat undemocratic Super Delegates or the astonishing charade of the Biden Regency can take the Democrats seriously is a mystery.

The Democrat Party may not be good for democracy but democracy does not seem to understand that. Or, maybe, care.

Sunday/Palm Sunday

On this day:

1461
Wars of the Roses: Battle of Towton – Edward of York defeats Queen Margaret to become King Edward IV of England.
1847
Mexican-American War: United States forces led by General Winfield Scott take Veracruz after a siege.
1857
Sepoy Mangal Pandey of the 34th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry revolts against the British rule in India and inspires a long-drawn War of Independence of 1857 also known as the Sepoy Mutiny.
1879
Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Kambula: British forces defeat 20,000 Zulus.
1936
In Germany, Adolf Hitler receives 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany’s illegal reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters.
1945
World War II: Last day of V-1 flying bomb attacks on England.
1951
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
1973
Vietnam War: The last United States combat soldiers leave South Vietnam.
2004: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

***

Trade is not just about transactions. It’s about relationships and trust built and earned over time. This establishes that trading partners will play by agreed-upon rules and that market access is not a bargaining chip to be leveraged whenever one side, in this case Washington, needs a political victory.--Hebert

***

Indian Rebellion of 1857, a widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in 1857–59. The revolt began in Meerut with an uprising of Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Company. 

The pretext for revolt was the introduction of the new Enfield rifle. To load it, the sepoys had to bite off the ends of lubricated cartridges. A rumor spread among the sepoys that the grease used to lubricate the cartridges was a mixture of pig and cow lard; thus, to have oral contact with it was an insult to both Muslims and Hindus. There is no conclusive evidence that either of these materials was actually used on any of the cartridges in question. However, the perception that the cartridges were tainted added to the larger suspicion that the British were trying to undermine Indian traditional society.

***

No Kings Report: Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast.

***

Sunday/Palm Sunday

An Old Testament battle begins over succession to Saul, the first King of Israel. Solomon is David's choice over a false claimant. Solomon arrives in victory to Jerusalem riding on an ass. He then builds the new temple.

So, the bible endorses symbolism and poetry. The concrete world, not so much. 

Today is Palm Sunday, a long and difficult Gospel from Holy Thursday to Christ's burial, filled with drama, conflict, and ambiguity. It is so dramatic, so much a part of the Western world, it is hard to believe students are regularly deprived of it. 

That frustrating, "That is what you say." And this strange back-and-forth, which sounds bitterly ironic, even in Christ's mouth:
He said to them,
“But now one who has a money bag should take it,
and likewise a sack,
and one who does not have a sword
should sell his cloak and buy one.
For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me,
namely, He was counted among the wicked;
and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment.”
Then they said,
“Lord, look, there are two swords here.”
But he replied, “It is enough!”

The Gospel is oblique as Christ is passive throughout; the real actors are the humans. Humans fail on just about every level you can imagine. Christ's friends leave Him, the future head of the Church denies Him, the religious organization that He is a member of conspires against Him, and the State washes its hands of Him, unable to follow even its own laws. 

It's a pretty ugly picture. There are some obvious explanations. Christ is the only answer. Friends are fickle, and the world transient. Organizations can not be relied upon. They may all be true. But there seems to be very little faith in human beings or their constructs. Even the tried-and-true customs and institutions that we all think of as society's DNA fall apart.

It is a nightmare, a moral and social dystopia. Chaos of the spirit. The storm that comes later after Golgotha is only an exclamation point. 

What does come through in astonishing clarity is the unbelievable gentleness of the victim, gentle and forgiving. 

It is overwhelming.

SatStats (crime)

On this day:

193
Roman Emperor Pertinax is assassinated by Praetorian Guards, who then sell the throne in an auction to Didius Julianus.
1802
Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid known to man
1871
The Paris Commune is formally established in Paris.
1939
Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquers Madrid.
1941
World War II: Battle of Cape Matapan – in the Mediterranean Sea, British Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham leads the Royal Navy in the destruction of three major Italian heavy cruisers and two destroyers.
1969
The McGill français movement protest occurs, the second largest protest in Montreal’s history with 10,000 trade unionists, leftist activists, CEGEP students, and even some McGill students at McGill’s Roddick Gates. This led to the majority of the protesters getting arrested.
1979
Operators of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, fail to recognize that a relief valve in the primary coolant system has stuck open following an unexpected shutdown. As a result, enough coolant drains out of the system to allow the core to overheat and partially melt down.

***

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.--Voltaire

***

The Commune of Paris was an insurrection against the French government from March 18 to May 28, 1871, following France’s defeat in the Franco-German War, including the Siege of Paris by the Germans and the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852–70).

***

Previous research has suggested that dogs likely diverged from wolves more than 15,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic period.

Domesticated dogs were already widely distributed across western Eurasia by at least 14,300 years ago, according to a recent paper. Dogs were the only domesticated animal present in Europe before agriculture, the researchers said.

***

SatStats (crime)

In 2023, during the Biden administration, the FBI made unmarked and unprecedented revisions to murder data for the prior two decades. These changes increased annual murder estimates during prior presidencies by as much as 7% and decreased estimates during Biden’s presidency by as much as 5%.
As a result of the FBI’s 2023 revisions and other factors, the number of homicides recorded on death certificates that were not reported as murders by the FBI rose from a low of 16 killings in 2003 to an average of 3,711 killings per year during Biden’s presidency

*

If the U.S. murder rate remains at the same level as in 2023, one in every 200 people in the nation will ultimately be murdered.

*

In 1964, about 16% of recorded aggravated assaults with a firearm resulted in death. By 1999, this figure fell to about 5%. 

     Per a 2002 paper in the journal Homicide Studies: The “principal explanation” for this “downward trend in lethality” is improvements in medical technology and related medical support services.

*

In the United States, the portion of murders in which a suspect is identified and acted upon by the criminal justice system declined from 92% in 1960 to 58% in 2023.
From 1965 to 2022, roughly 337,601 murders were committed in the U.S. that were still unsolved as of 2022.

*

In 2023, the police chief of Washington DC reported that “the average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide.

*

Among suspects arrested for homicide during 2019 in Baltimore, Maryland:

     -81% had prior criminal records.
     -52% were previously arrested for violent crimes.
     -27% were on parole and probation.
     -They were previously arrested an average of eight times.

*

A Bureau of Justice Statistics study based on crime data from 1974 to 1985 found that:
     -42% of Americans will be the victim of a completed violent crime in the course of their lives.
     -83% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed violent crime.
     -52% of Americans will be the victim of an attempted or completed violent crime more than once.

The Science of Study

On this day:

1306
Robert the Bruce is crowned King of Scotland at Scone.
1814
War of 1812: In central Alabama, U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.
1836
Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre – Antonio López de Santa Anna orders the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas.
1915
Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
1964
The Good Friday Earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes South Central Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
1993
Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo.

***

“I have caused great calamities. I have depopulated provinces and kingdoms. But I did it for the love of Christ and His Holy Mother.”--Queen Isabella

***

In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain evicted as many as 2,000 people from Diego Garcia, so the U.S. military could build the base there.
The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have urged the U.K. to end its “colonial administration” of the islands and transfer sovereignty to Mauritius.
After long negotiations, the U.K. government struck a deal last year with Mauritius to hand over sovereignty of the islands. Britain would then lease back the Diego Garcia base for at least 99 years. But passage of the U.K.-Mauritius deal through Parliament has been put on hold until U.S. support can be regained.

***

The HBO Max series Harry Potter has an estimated budget of $100 million per episode.

***

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend was fought between the American Army under Andrew Jackson and the Red Stick faction of the Creeks who were aligned with the invading British (and the Iriquois organized around Tecumseh and his famous "Make war on their dead" speech). The Dreek War was savage on both sides. The Indian tribes, as a fifth column for invading forces, led to their harsh treatment later.

***

The Science of Study

Scientists are a group of people who believe that observation and experimentation leading to follow-up observation and experimentation, will lead to reproducible results and a more accurate reflection of reality. That is to say, scientists believe that there is a method that improves the accuracy of scientific research that removes bias. A consensus. A consensus we never hear from. (ibid)

One reason is that science is hard. It's hard to do well and is often hard to understand. The other reason is that science is judged unscientifically. Scientific results are seen as means to other, sometimes abstract, ends. Grants are applied for from third parties, often parties with an agenda. Political grease must be applied under the best of circumstances. And non-scientific positions demand their own narrative.

How often do you see studies with negative results reported?

Studies including unscientific motives are simple declarations at best, enchantments at worst.


 

Betting on America

On this day:

1830
The Book of Mormon is published in Palmyra, New York.
1917
World War I: First Battle of Gaza – British troops are halted after 17,000 Turks block their advance.
1971
East Pakistan declares its independence from Pakistan to form People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Liberation War begins.
1975
The Biological Weapons Convention comes into force.
1997
Thirty-nine bodies are found in the Heaven’s Gate cult suicides.
1998
Oued Bouaicha massacre in Algeria: 52 people are killed with axes and knives, 32 of them babies under the age of 2.

***

"The first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form."--Munger

***

OpenAI plans to build “an autonomous AI research intern”—a system that can take on a small number of specific research problems by itself—by September.

***

An interesting internet question: How does Ghostwriting fit with AI writing?

***

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), or Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), is a disarmament treaty that bans biological and toxin weapons by prohibiting their development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling, and use. Signed April 10, 1971, it became effective March 26, 1975.
Russia opened its Biopreparat bioweapons development program the following year.
Unlike the chemical or nuclear weapons regimes, the BWC lacks both a system to verify states' compliance with the treaty and a separate international organization to support the convention's effective implementation.

A fantasy. A simple collection of actors going to great dinners, drinking great wines, with conferences disguised as cooperation, debate disguised as principle, and timelines disguised as progress.  

Like Heinlin.

***

In a similar vein, Trump continues to report on negotiations with people who deny they are negotiating with him. Would they be like Harvey, the invisible rabbit? Or would Harvey be Trump?

***

Betting on America

Freedom, like free verse, requires leeway.

But there must be some deference paid to the system that permits that freedom, some compromise with freedom to allow the health of the social fabric permitting freedom to flourish. Freedom cannot feed off its nourishing parent until it is a lifeless husk. There are no beach monitors. There are not enough police patrols to guard every traffic light.

Freedom must restrain itself.

--On Monday, $580 million in oil futures flooded the market in a sudden spike — with no public news to explain it — roughly 16 minutes before Trump announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants.

--On the Friday before the war began, an unusual surge of more than 150 Polymarket accounts placed hundreds of bets predicting a U.S. strike on Iran by the next day, according to a New York Times analysis.

--On Jan. 2, a trader turned roughly $32,000 into more than $400,000 by betting on the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro before it was announced the next morning.

--Last April, a surge of bullish stock trades appeared minutes before Trump announced a dramatic 90-day pause on the "Liberation Day" tariffs that were roiling the market.

Shameless? The death of shame? The question is not who is an unpatriotic crook; the question is who is not?

Freedom has limits. In a successful free culture, those limits must be mutually agreed upon and self-imposed. But if those limits are ignored and abused, someone will impose them.

The cops will move in on the beach party. Some forms of poetry will be banned.

Consensus, Filth Parties, and Betting Against the Spread

On this day:1199
Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leading to his death on April 6.
1306
Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scotland.
1807
The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.
1811
Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.
1894
Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, departs Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C.
1911
In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers.
1931
The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.

***

Language is fossil poetry. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

***

Russia (the world’s largest supplier) has announced a one-month pause in ammonium nitrate fertiliser exports

***

Since her astonishing spontaneous combustion at the European Security meeting, AOC has been in a phase of quiescence. She knows her audience. 

The democracy forgets. Soon a consensus of American voters will say she never went to Europe.

***

Britain has become strangely concerned about Iran after it attacked Diego Garcia.

***

Coxey’s Army, officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, was a group of unemployed people who marched to Washington, D.C., in the depression year of 1894. Led by businessman Jacob S. Coxey, the group left Massillon, Ohio, on March 25, 1894, with about 100 men, accompanied by a large contingent of reporters, and arrived in Washington on May 1 with about 500. Coxey hoped to persuade Congress to authorize a vast program of public work programs. 

While ineffectual, it was the first significant popular protest march on Washington.

***


Consensus, Filth Parties, and Betting Against the Spread

The consensus elected Trump and Lincoln, nominated Goldwater (but not Harris), and picked Barrabas over Christ. It is the essence of the point-spread.

But in science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

In the 1700s, one woman in six died of puerperal fever after childbirth. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes and that he could cure them.

In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management.

In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the “pellagra germ.” The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called “Goldberger’s filth parties.” Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him

South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at 'continental drift' for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology—until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2 . Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. (from Crichton)

Consensus has many suspected fathers. Arrogance. It breaks the tie. Who determines the consensus extends the influence of the aristocratic gatekeeper. Uncertainty is paralyzing: no one wants to invest in windmills if opinion will change in five years and invalidate the reason you built them. Consensus is clarifying and allows the public debate to move on. It allows the investment to move on.

Scientists are a group of people who believe that observation, experimentation leading to repeated observation and experimentation, will lead to reproducible results and a more accurate reflection of reality. That is to say, all scientists believe that. A consensus. 

A consensus we never hear from.

Diego Garcia

On this day:

1603
James VI of Scotland also becomes James I of England.
1603
Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yozei, and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, Japan.
1765
American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
1832
In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.
1882
Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero is killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240000 oilbbl of petroleum after running aground.
1998
Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, aged 11 and 13 respectively, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.
2000
S&P 500 index reaches an intraday high of 1,552.87, a peak that, due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble, it will not reach again for another seven-and-a-half years.

***

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."--Thomas Jefferson

***

Prompt:

Can a parent limit a kid’s screen time simply by tweaking some of the settings on the smartphone? Are these services available?

GPT Thinking answer:

Yes. On both iPhone and Android, a parent can limit a kid’s screen time largely through built-in settings (no extra app required), and there are also optional third-party services.

***

Rainer Zitelmann, a German historian and sociologist, received a letter from Berlin police informing him he was under investigation for violating Germany's criminal code by using "symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations."

The post in question, which Zitelmann reshared, showed a side-by-side image of Adolf Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hitler's speech bubble read, "Give me Czechoslovakia and I won't attack anyone else!" and Putin's read, "Give me Ukraine, and I won't attack anyone else!" It was not the quote that put Zitelmann in trouble with the law, but Hitler's swastika armband.

Under Section 86a of the German criminal code, it is illegal to distribute Nazi symbols and related expressions.

***


In the Jonesboro massacre, Mitchell and Golden killed four students and one teacher and wounded nine students and one teacher. All 10 injured survived. The two shooters were convicted of murder, and both were sentenced under the juvenile statutes of Arkansas. 

They were both released back among the unsuspecting public at the age of 21.

***

Diego Garcia

Before it became a pseudonym for college kids in bars all over America, Diego Garcia was, and is, part of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. The United States has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa.

The four-decade conflict between the U.S. and Iran has centered around the Americans insisting that Iran is building a nuclear warfare program and Iran's insistence that they are not. The Americans fear that Iran will eventually attack its political and religious enemies with nukes, destroy the Middle East, destroy the world's petroleum industry, and make much of the Mediterranean uninhabitable for several millennia.

As proof of its good intentions, Iran has previously put a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers).

Iran has, however, developed a space program that, theoretically, prepares it for long-range missile flight. If they have not developed a nuclear weapon, Iran would be the only nation with a space program that hasn't.

U.S. officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, and this month, Iran fired several missiles at Diego Garcia. At about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran. Diego Garcia is well outside Iran's promised range of 2000Km. Other cities within that radius include Bonn, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, and New Delhi.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said that the attempt to hit Diego Garcia may have involved the improvised use of Iran's Simorgh space launch rocket, "which could offer greater range as a ballistic missile," though at the cost of reduced accuracy.

Mendacity, aggression, and mistrust with Extinction-Level-Weapons on an international level, controlled by suicidal lunatics and morons. 

So, how are reasonable men of good will supposed to live and raise their children in that kind of world? And what kind of responsibilities do the grownups in the room have?

  

The Democracy of Violence

On this day:

1708
James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth.
1775
American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech – “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” – at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia.
1801
Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael’s Castle.
1806
After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their “Corps of Discovery” begin their arduous journey home.
1956
Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan)
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador gives his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.
1994
Aeroflot Flight 593 crashes in Siberia when the pilot’s fifteen-year-old son accidentally disengages the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.

***

Several ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer rescue organization were set on fire outside a synagogue in a neighborhood home to London’s largest Jewish community early on Monday

***

New York City’s LaGuardia Airport was closed Monday after a passenger plane collided with an emergency vehicle on the runway, killing two pilots

***

The head of the International Energy Agency said on Monday that at least 40 energy assets across nine countries in the Middle East have been “severely or very severely” damaged since the Iran war began, raising fears of prolonged supply disruptions.

***

Gold prices resumed their slide on Monday after suffering the worst week in 15 years before paring some losses in late morning trade.
Silver, platinum, and palladium also plunged as investors retreated from precious metals amid renewed inflation fears.

***

Chicago’s tipped workers could have their hourly pay frozen at 76% of the city’s minimum wage, thanks to a City Council vote Wednesday that throws an economic bone to restaurants, but sets the stage for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s third veto.

***

James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of James 11, deposed by William in the Glorious Revolution, was the center of the Jacobite movement to restore him and Catholicism to the English throne. He made five attempts to invade the British Isles. His forces were defeated at the Boyne in Ireland, then finally and decisively at Culloden.

***

The Democracy of Violence

"God made all men, but Colt made them equal"--Samuel Colt

What started as a GPS-guided, piston-engine drone with basic inertial navigation has transformed into a platform integrating Starlink satellite connectivity, Nvidia Jetson Orin AI processors, 16-element CRPA anti-jamming antennas, and real-time video streaming. The discovery in February 2026 of a reconnaissance Geran-2 carrying a Raspberry Pi 5 microcomputer and a Windows 11 mini-PC made in China illustrates the improvised but surprisingly effective nature of Russia’s drone upgrade program — combining commercial off-the-shelf tech with military-grade components to build capability faster than Western sanctions can stop it.

A vast, unsanctionable buildout of technical destruction and death.

A new tech, cheap, with an aggressive advancement system, portable, low maintenance, satellite connected, often anonymous--this is a democratization of a murderous technology for all. Imagine this tech available to the rich drug cartels. Or a small international player with local interests. (Iran)

The raw scale of Shahed drone attacks in Ukraine in 2026 is enormous. Nearly 19,000 attack drones in a single winter campaign — from October 2025 through early March 2026 — represents an aerial bombardment campaign that has lasted, by CSIS’s reckoning, longer than the infamous London Blitz of World War II. The 810-drone single-night attack on September 6–7, 2025 set a new benchmark in drone warfare, and the cadence of attacks exceeding 500 drones per sortie across late August 2025 makes clear this was not a one-off. These figures reveal a deliberate Russian strategic posture: launch enough drones, often enough, to grind down Ukrainian air defenses, energy infrastructure, and civilian morale simultaneously.

A single Iranian drone can cost as little as $35,000 to produce, while intercepting it can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $4 million.

Ukrainian interceptor drones produced in 2025: 100,000 units

The overall interception rate is ~90%.

There are an astonishing number of sites devoted to this technology. Here are some stats in this diffuse information environment:

---Russia has scaled domestic production of the Geran/Shahed series to over 5,500 units per month at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone 

---Rather than a few thousand long-range drones, its total Shahed fleet is estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000 across all variants.

---Iran reportedly produces around 100 drones per month. This translates to approximately 3-4 drones per day.

---Shahed-136 loitering munitions cost just $20,000-$50,000 each. 

---Iran’s production facilities can manufacture up to 6,000 airframes annually,

---Iran outsourced Mohajer-6 production to Venezuela while fulfilling requests for advanced systems featuring 1,000 km range and GPS jamming capabilities. 

---The IRGC supplies Hezbollah and Syrian proxies despite Israeli strikes damaging manufacturing infrastructure.

---Tehran’s drone program generates revenue through strategic exports, with Russia becoming its primary customer since 2022.

---Modern drones now feature embedded GPS for stable positioning, Return to Home functionality, and Follow Me mode that enhances autonomous operations. These unmanned aerial vehicles enable surveillance and engagement operations while allowing Iran to reduce risk to military personnel during targeted strikes. 

---Advanced systems now integrate thermal imaging capabilities that enhance search and detection operations in challenging environments and low-visibility conditions.   

---The incorporation of 360-degree camera technology in some reconnaissance variants enables immersive real-time intelligence gathering for ground control stations. This rapid modernization timeline transformed dated assets into multi-domain strike platforms supporting sustained autonomous operations.

These changes have occurred in just a few years. They could end up in the basements of every neighborhood throughout the world--not just the West. They could put long-range destruction--or strategically focused attacks--in the hands of every nut case or hotblood or adventurer on the planet as we accelerate our return to tribalism.

The push into western Texas by the European farmers and explorers was stopped dead by the most sophisticated light cavalry in the world: the Comanche. When the Colt revolver was introduced into the stalled western expansion, the Comanche was gone.

 

 

 

Lazarus

On this day:1621
The Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony sign a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.1622
Jamestown massacre: Algonquian Indians kil
l 347 English settlers around Jamestown, Virginia, a third of the colony’s population.1765
The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act that introduces a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies.
1916
The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicates the throne and the Republic of China is restored.
1943
World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.
1984
Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.

***

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. -Henry van Dyke, poet (10 Nov 1852-1933)

***

The investigations and trials from the McMartin child abuse case took seven years and cost more than $15 million. It was, and currently remains, the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history. It developed its own vocabulary and terms on its way to being an industry.

***

This year’s Venice Biennale looks as polarised as ever, with the EU threatening to cut funds if the organisers go ahead with plans to approve a Russian pavilion, while over 200 artists want Israel barred.

***

Pakistan’s ICBM program is on track to go intercontinental (ie, reach the US).

***

Lazarus

Today's gospel is the raising of Lazarus. You would think that would be enough but Christ magnifies the event. On hearing Lazarus is ill Christ says ambiguously, 'This sickness will not end in death, but it is for God's glory so that through it the Son of God may be glorified.' Mary and Martha will be rewarded, but not just yet.

Back to Bethany.

Bethany was dangerous territory for Christ. "The disciples said, 'Rabbi, it is not long since the Jews were trying to stone you; are you going back there again?'"
And Thomas, just a great human guy: "Then Thomas -- known as the Twin -- said to the other disciples, 'Let us also go to die with him.'"

In it, Christ is upsettingly emotional. Seeing Christ cry is unnerving as the gospels never report He ever laughed. But His intensity points to one thing: death is the linchpin in all of life's discussions. This passage does not recoil from the ironic horror that Kazantzakis exploits later in The Last Temptation of Christ, where Lazarus follows Christ around as a living, decaying man.

SatStats

On this day:

1152
Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.
1556
In Oxford, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake.
1857
An earthquake in Tokyo, Japan kills over 100,000.
1933
Construction of Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, is completed.
1935
Shah Reza Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran, which means 'Land of the Aryans.'
1943
Wehrmacht officer Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through. Von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion.
1980
US President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.
1989
Sports Illustrated reports allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to baseball gambling.

***

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

***

The U.S. national debt crossed a new milestone Wednesday, surpassing $39 trillion, a record reached five months after the debt sailed past the $38 trillion mark.

***

Lisa Kudrow has a biology degree from Vassar and is worth about $130 million.

***

The U.S. Department of Agriculture runs a roughly $10 billion annual housing program for nonfarmers in nonagricultural communities.

***

The annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine allowed her to marry Henrry 11 of England and create the Plantagenet era. She was the mother of several future kings, including Richard the Lionheart and John, and her hand was everywhere in the political affairs of England and Europe. She was imprisoned by her husband for 16 years for her support of their sons' rebellion against him, and continued to be a power after his death.

SatStats

Arielle Kuperberg, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Maryland, handles a data set of more than 14,000 undergraduates across 44 colleges, including elite universities. She’s found a 33 percent increase in the number of people who are married in college since 2019. Kuperberg says, "My generation is more religious and socially conservative than our parents, so of course we’re marrying earlier. We’re definitely going to see this trend increasing.”

*

In the U.S., the average ransomware payment was $11.6 million.
In the U.K., £7.7 million, or about $10.3 million.
In the European Union, €8.4 million, or about $9.7 million.

*

Since Congress last balanced the budget in 2001, revenues have grown at a robust annual average rate of 3.9 percent, which was higher than the average inflation rate since 2001, 2.5 percent, the Cato Institute's Chris Edwards pointed out in 2024. But spending has grown at a much faster pace, 5.5 percent annually, which has led to today's large deficits.

*

52% of 1,905 tech decision-makers said their company’s average ransomware payment last year exceeded its annual cybersecurity budget

*

A study of 657 institutions by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (Nacubo) with Commonfund showed their endowment withdrawals rose 11 per cent year on year in the 12 months to June 2025 — the sharpest increase since 2010.

The surge came as endowments funded an average of 15.2 per cent of universities’ operating expenses last year, up from 10.9 per cent in 2023.

*

The population of monarch butterflies in Mexico increased 64% this winter, compared with the same period in 2025.

*

In the fall of 2020, enrollment in US public schools decreased by 1.1 million.

*

The US now imports more from Taiwan than from China.

*

In recent months, the Houston independent school district approved a closure of 12 schools; Florida’s Broward County public schools approved a consolidation of six schools; the Cleveland metropolitan school district approved a closure of 29 schools; and Atlanta public schools decided to close or repurpose 16 schools

*

Iran was once one of the key oil suppliers to the world. No longer. Its exports, constrained by sanctions, amount to less than 2 per cent of global supplies, most of which go to China at discounted prices.

A similar change has taken place in Venezuela. Once a star of world oil and one of the founding members of Opec, today it can hardly even be called a petrostate. It produces less oil than the US state of North Dakota and a quarter as much as neighbouring Brazil.

*

Over the past 50 years, the average American has gotten richer. In 1974, the median household income was $72,339 in 2024 dollars. In 2024, median household income was $83,730—an increase in real annual income of over $11,000. Moreover, money isn't being redistributed to the 1 percent, but from them: The top 1 percent of income earners paid 40 percent of federal income taxes in 2022, and the top 10 percent were responsible for 72 percent of this revenue.
One can only wonder what will happen when the 5% wealth tax forces the liquidation of the rich's holdings,

*

The U.S. power industry is embarking on an AI-driven expansion of the electric grid, a build-out that promises to be one of the most expensive since World War II.

*

This got funded:
Places with heavier rap exposure didn’t experience higher crime, lower educational attainment or weaker labor-market outcomes relative to trends elsewhere..

*

UK’s Triple Lock, which requires that UK pensions rise in line with whichever is highest: wages, inflation, or 2.5 percent.
The triple lock guarantees that pensioner incomes grow at the expense of everything else, and the mechanism bites hardest when the economy is weakest.

*

Cesar Chavez, the founder of the United Farm Workers, has been accused of sexually assaulting, abusing, and grooming women and girls as young as 12 during his peak influence in the 1960s and 70s. Nearly 50 schools, as well as roads, monuments, and murals, have been named after him. Erasing him will be expensive.

 

Another CO2 Opinion

On this day:
235
Maximinus Thrax is proclaimed emperor. He is the first foreigner to hold the Roman throne
1600
The Linköping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden.
1616
Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment.
1760
The “Great Fire” of Boston, Massachusetts, destroys 349 buildings.
1815
After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.
1916
Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.
1995
A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway kills 12 and wounds 1,300 persons.
2003
2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.

***

Are you looking at me?--electron (Chris)

***

The Linköping Bloodbath was a significant event in Swedish history that took place on March 20, 1600, during the early stages of the power struggle between the Protestant Duke Charles (later King Charles IX) and the supporters of his nephew, the Catholic King Sigismund III of Poland. The execution of five noblemen, Sigismund's supporters, in Linköping was not merely an act of retribution but a defining moment that solidified Charles’s control over Sweden and marked the end of resistance against his rule. This event was a consequence of the broader conflict between Protestant and Catholic forces in Sweden and had lasting implications for the nation’s political and religious landscape.

***

Hachette Book Group, one of the largest publishers in the United States, pulled a forthcoming horror novel on Thursday in a decision that followed widespread allegations online that the author, Mia Ballard, relied heavily on artificial intelligence to write the book.

***

Walmart’s AI-powered pricing:

The retail giant has secured two new patents that give computer algorithms a bigger role in how prices are set. In January, Walmart was granted a patent for a system that can ‘dynamically and automatically’ update prices online based on shifting market conditions.

***

Rafael Flores Jr., the key piece in the Bednar trade with the Yankees, is hitting just .083/.241/.125 over 13 games this spring.

***.

Another CO2 Opinion

Steven E. Koonin is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He and four other scientists were assigned by Energy Secretary Chris Wright to provide clearer insights into what’s known and not known about the changing climate. The following is culled from Koonin's article in the WSJ

"The resulting peer-reviewed report is entirely our work, free from political influence—a departure from previous assessments. It draws from United Nations and U.S. climate reports, peer-reviewed research, and primary observations to focus on important aspects of climate science that have been misrepresented to nonexperts.

Among the report’s key findings:

• Elevated carbon dioxide levels enhance plant growth, contributing to global greening and increased agricultural productivity.

• Complex climate models provide limited guidance on the climate’s response to rising carbon dioxide levels. Overly sensitive models, often using extreme scenarios, have exaggerated future warming projections and consequences.

• Data aggregated over the continental U.S. show no significant long-term trends in most extreme weather events. Claims of more frequent or intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and dryness in America aren’t supported by historical records.

• While global sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1900, aggregate U.S. tide-gauge data don’t show the long-term acceleration expected from a warming globe.

• Natural climate variability, data limitations, and model deficiencies complicate efforts to attribute specific climate changes or extreme events to human CO2 emissions.

• The use of the words “existential,” “crisis,” and “emergency” to describe the projected effects of human-caused warming on the U.S. economy finds scant support in the data.

• Overly aggressive policies aimed at reducing emissions could do more harm than good by hiking the cost of energy and degrading its reliability. Even the most ambitious reductions in U.S. emissions would have little direct effect on global emissions and an even smaller effect on climate trends.

Our work has attracted strong criticism, despite its grounding in established science. Almost 60,000 comments were submitted to the Federal Register during the month after its publication, and the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit to prevent the Energy Department or Environmental Protection Agency from using the report in decision-making. Most of these challenges have no scientific backing. Though scientists supporting the so-called consensus on climate change have organized several serious critiques, these at most add detail and nuance to our findings, without negating the report’s central points. They still merit response, which will form the next round in an overdue public debate on the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate policies must balance the risks of climate change against a response’s costs, efficacy, and collateral effects. Reports like ours may draw a lot of anger, but our work accurately portrays important aspects of climate science. Acknowledging the facts is essential for informed policy decisions."

Anger in response to a scientific opinion is the virtual touchstone of subjectivity that should invalidate it.

This is an opinion, not a declaration. Not an edict. Science has a Darwinian element where lasting concepts emerge not from conflict but from different visions of ignorance. Small steps usually rise and fall, are parsed and organized and synthesized, until people of great insight--or one genius--organize a conclusion. 

The genius will be the guy whose only motive is truth.

Erlich

On this day:
1687
Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, is murdered by his own men.
1863
The SS Georgiana, said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions, medicines and merchandise then valued at over $1,000,000.
1945
World War II: Adolf Hitler issues his “Nero Decree” ordering all industries, military installations, shops, transportation facilities and communications facilities in Germany to be destroyed.
1945
World War II: Off the coast of Japan, a dive bomber hits the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing 724 of her crew. Badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under her own power.
1965
The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000 and said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser, is discovered by then teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, exactly 102 years after its destruction.
1982
Falklands War: Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, precipitating war with the United Kingdom

***

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always.--Robin Williams

***

In the stare of the huge cold eyes of a $39 trillion debt, we risk a Hormuz closure that could ratchet all the world economies down. Then what?

***

Pierre Berton wrote of La Salle, "no other man had crammed so much adventure, so much excitement, so many triumphs, and so many heartbreaks into a single career. Though he died at the hands of some of his quarrelling followers in the mud of reeds of the Gulf of Mexico lowlands, he was essentially a man of the lakes, of Ontario and Erie, Huron and Michigan....

***

The private credit sector has been growing for years, and is now estimated to be a $3 trillion industry, according to Morgan Stanley. Two companies backed by private credit companies declared bankruptcy in September.

***

Seven new cases of meningitis in Kent have been confirmed, taking the total number of cases to 27, the UK Health Security Agency has said.

***

Two women said that Cesar Chavez sexually abused them as children and labor icon Dolores Huerta alleges he raped her during the height of the farmworker labor union movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

***

Erlich

Biologist and author Paul Ehrlich, the most influential Chicken Little of the last century, died at the age of 93 this week. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” launched decades of institutional panic in government, entertainment, and journalism.

Ehrlich’s core neo-Malthusian argument was that overpopulation would exhaust the supply of food and natural resources, leading to a cascade of catastrophes around the world. “The Population Bomb” opens with a bold prediction, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

“If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000,” Ehrlich prophesied during a speech in 1971. He also said that the U.S. would be rationing water by 1974, and food by 1980. That smog in L.A. and New York would cause some 200,000 deaths per year. That Americans born after World War II wouldn’t live past 50.

It’s difficult to exaggerate the grip Ehrlich and his followers had on elite opinion and the popular imagination. A founder of Zero Population Growth (now Population Connection), Ehrlich inspired the modern population control movement.

As Charles Mann chronicled in Smithsonian magazine, Ehrlich inspired global efforts to push abortion, birth control, and even sterilization by governments, the United Nations, and other international organizations and foundations. “The results were horrific,” Betsy Hartmann, author of “Reproductive Rights and Wrongs,” told Mann.

“Some population-control programs pressured women to use only certain officially mandated contraceptives,” Mann writes. “In Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Korea, and Taiwan, health workers’ salaries were, in a system that invited abuse, dictated by the number of IUDs they inserted into women. In the Philippines, birth-control pills were literally pitched out of helicopters hovering over remote villages. Millions of people were sterilized, often coercively, sometimes illegally, frequently in unsafe conditions, in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh.”

In the U.S., the Ehrlicheans talked about requiring licenses for babies and putting birth control in the (dwindling) water supply.

Earlier, I said it’s difficult to exaggerate the grip Ehrlich’s thesis “had” on elite opinion. The truth, however, is that the grip endures. The sub-headline of the New York Times’ obituary reads, “His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. But he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature.”

Premature?

England still exists. Life expectancy in the U.S. just set a record high of 79 (in Europe it’s 81.5). There is no country in the world with a life expectancy under 50. Air and water quality are much better today than they were in 1968. Global food production has exploded. Famine is rare, and almost always a product of war or the backward command-and-control economic thinking Ehrlich supported. And fertility rates are worrisomely declining throughout the developed world, and far beyond. Slightly more than half the world’s nations have sub-replacement birthrates. We have not run out of any resources and America has more forests than it did a century ago.

So, which predictions were “premature,” exactly?

There’s something about Malthusian dread that is simply too seductive to shake. For instance, a few years ago, I noticed something weird. On the 50th anniversary of “Soylent Green,” a dystopian, Ehrlichean film about overpopulation and food shortages, a number of writers opined how “prescient” the movie was. No less than the normally reasonable magazine, The Economist wrote, “It is impossible to watch the film today without weighing up how accurate its predictions turned out to be.” It’s an “eerie prophecy,” they declared.

Really? It’s “impossible to watch” a movie about mass state-sponsored euthanasia that turns human beings into high-protein crackers to fend off starvation — set in 2022! — without marveling at the accuracy of its predictions?

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is not that Ehrlich turned out to be so wildly wrong, but that he was so obviously wrong from the beginning. My old boss Ben Wattenberg battled Ehrlich throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His feud began with a 1970 article for the New Republic titled, “The Nonsense Explosion,” in which Wattenberg explained that even as Ehrlich was writing about soaring birthrates, birthrates were already declining.

Ehrlich’s defenders — and they are legion — argue that he was a true prophet in that prophets issue apocalyptic warnings that, if heeded, can be avoided. This is more nonsense. He said mass “die-offs” were unavoidable with even the best policies, and the anti-growth fads he supported largely made things worse.

Simply put, his pessimism was simply too big to fail. (From the LA Times)

There seems to be a great eagerness to flock to the philosophies of doom. Look at Freud's acceptance on the flimsiest of evidence, or the willingness of so many to murder their neighbors to fulfill a Marxian apocalypse-- despite no evidence at all and the failure of his French test case.

But while The Dire sells (look at the success of horrified stock letters), Jeremiah is not always believed. The American debt, national and personal, is an unfolding nightmare that is stared at with awe, but no energy. 

And Jeremiah's curse was not simply that he was ignored, he lived through his predictions.