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)

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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

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

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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..

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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.

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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.

Civility

On this day:

37
The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius’s will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
235
Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Mamaea are murdered by legionaries near Moguntiacum (modern Mainz). The Severan dynasty ends.
1229
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor declares himself King of Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade.
1241
Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków in the Battle of Chmielnik and plunder the city.
1314
Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.
1834
Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset, England are sentenced to be transported to Australia for forming a trade union.
1871
Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders evacuation of Paris.
1915
World War I: Massive naval attack in Battle of Gallipoli. Three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.
1922
In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience. He would serve only 2 years.

1942
The War Relocation Authority is established in the United States to take Japanese Americans into custody.
1962
The Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954.
1965
Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.
1968
Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
1990
In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

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What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.--Sowell

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We are asked to suffer at TSA by politicians for a greater cause they cannot articulate. When will they ask us for the sacrifices necessary to offset the problems of the national debt they created?

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This is an ad for AI DJs. If this is true, it is amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reR71FQExxo

***

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned on Tuesday. He wrote about his wife in his resignation letter. She was an NSA linguist killed in Syria.

On Jan. 16, 2019, Chief Kent was meeting with a source at a restaurant in Manbij, Syria, when a suicide bomber killed her and three other Americans.

Chief Kent was posthumously promoted to senior chief.

“She should have been out of Syria because Trump gave the order to get those guys out of there,” Mr. Kent said on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. “And then you have the administrative state dragging their heels and desperately trying to keep us in these conflicts.”

In his resignation letter, Mr. Kent cited what he said was Israel’s influence over the Trump administration’s policies.

***

From an article on Cesar Chavez:
"Insiders hinted the explosive allegations — the details of which have yet to be released — had been been a long time coming."

***

Your government at work.

On this day in 1937, a massive explosion caused the steel-framed school building in New London, in Rusk County, to collapse, killing a reported 298 people. It was the worst school disaster in United States history.
Of the 500 students in the building, only about 130 escaped serious injury. The explosion, which was heard four miles away, occurred when a manual-arts teacher turned on a sanding machine and inadvertently ignited a mixture of gas and air.
Three days after the explosion, inquiries were held to determine the cause of the disaster. Investigators learned that in January 1937, to save gas expenses of $300 a month, the school board and superintendent had authorized plumbers to tap a residue gas line of H. L. Hunt's Parade Gasoline Company. Apparently, gas had escaped from a faulty connection and accumulated beneath the building.


***

Civility

Imagine you patronize a local grocery where you notice the butcher regularly puts a finger on the scale. He distorts your purchase. And your relationship.

Trade is more than an exchange of goods. It goes beyond social conviviality. It creates — and is the result of — trust. It makes fair exchange possible, which ordinarily entails the risk of loss. That trust is built and reinforced over time, trade after trade, so that basic principles of fairness under mutually agreed-upon rules become assumed and expected. They don't have to be negotiated and renegotiated in an atmosphere of suspicion. A good relationship has developed through predictable honesty, and the trade is mutually beneficial. The trade is shared. And that fairness spreads.

Trade is not just civilized, it is civilizing.

Now, apply these observations to tariffs.....

The Middle East Minuet of Death

On this day:

180
Marcus Aurelius dies leaving Commodus the sole emperor of the Roman Empire.
624
Led by Muhammad, the Muslims of Medina defeat the Quraysh of Mecca in the Battle of Badr.
1776
American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts, ending the Siege of Boston, after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.
1780
American Revolution: George Washington grants the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence”
2008
Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer resigns after a scandal involving a high-end prostitute. Lieutenant Governor David Paterson becomes New York State governor.

***

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.--Lincoln

***

The Pens-Colorado game last night was terrific. Colorado is really big and fast.

***

There is some talk that Russia's Shahed drone with its self-guidance system can be jammed--or even taken over and pirated to be redirected against its original user--and Russia is turning to control them better by using Starlink.

***

Fernando Tatis Jr., Ketel Marte, Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Junior Caminero, and Manny Machado. That's part of the batting lineup of the Dominican World team.

***

Is there some sort of gene coupling in politicians, like fair skin and red hair? Do they all act with just a little bit of Spitzerism? And how do they know, like Stalwell, that the electorate will rarely hold them responsible for their bad judgment? Or compulsion?

***

The Middle East Minuet of Death

Is the "conventional weapons shield" of Iran's nuclear production that so demanded American interference a new concept? A new moniker, a new buzzphrase to capture the Press's imagination? Or is a shift afoot? Was the mother-of-all-bombing-raids inadequate? Or is there a true policy shift? Or, as it looks, did the Israelis unearth new information that made them decide to attack Iran, and did the U.S. tag along to give the appearance of calling the tune?

Certainly, the resulting Iranian response must have been a surprise to most. The international spiteful suicide bomber was felt to be the sole default setting of Israel; to have Iran unmask itself as willing to destroy as much of the world as it could in defeat was unexpected.

And why, while brandishing their indiscriminate, destructive threats, do they want to appear so thoughtful and precise?

The Other 51%

On this day:
597 BC
Babylonians captured Jerusalem, replaced Jehoiachin with Zedekiah as king.
37
Caligula became Roman Emperor after the death of his great uncle, Tiberius.
1244
Over 200 Cathars are burned after the Fall of Montségur
1521
Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines.

1621

Samoset, a Mohegan, visited the settlers of Plymouth Colony and greets them, “Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset.”

1861
Edward Clark became Governor of Texas, replacing Sam Houston, who has been evicted from the office for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.
1865
American Civil War: The Battle of Averasborough began as Confederate forces suffer irreplaceable casualties in the final months of the war.
1912
Lawrence Oates, an ill member of Robert Falcon Scott’s South Pole expedition, left the tent to die, saying: “I am just going outside and may be some time.”
1935
Adolf Hitler ordered Germany to rearm herself in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht.
1945
Ninety percent of Würzburg, Germany is destroyed in only 20 minutes by British bombers. 5,000 are killed.
1945
World War II: The Battle of Iwo Jima ended, but small pockets of Japanese resistance persisted.
1968
Vietnam War: In the My Lai massacre, between 350 and 500 Vietnamese villagers (men, women, and children) are killed by American troops.
1988
Halabja poison gas attack: The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10000 people.
1995
Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment is officially ratified in 1865.

***

"The point to remember is that what the government gives, it must first take away."--John S. Coleman, address to the Detroit Chamber of Commerce

***

After Columbus, the English came late to settle America with their successful colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. But traders and explorers sailed the coast. In 1524, the Florentine seaman and explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano mapped the entire eastern seaboard of North America and provided the first map of the region later known as New England.
The Mayflower landed off the coast of modern-day Massachusetts in November 1620. They were supposed to have landed in Virginia and were unprepared for the harsh New England winter, and with so many of them sick, building the settlement progressed slowly.
Samoset was the Abenaki Native American who first approached the English settlers of Plymouth Colony in friendship, introducing them to natives Squanto and Massasoit,   who would help save and sustain the colony.

***

Is capitalism failing most Americans? Median hourly wages (for men and women), annual earnings (for men and women), and family and household incomes are at all-time highs.

***

Cuba looks to be waking up. The Americans never forgave them for the Missile Crisis. Israel is devastating Lebanon with cluster bombs. Russia is getting resistance in the southeast.

Of 16,000 strikes in Iran, 9,000 have been Israeli.

***

The Other 51%

From the swamps to the savannah to the modern world, competition has driven advances, with its failures. The creation of a sense of place and its defense, first as individuals, then gangs, then clans, then larger. The common thread has been war, on some scale.

Reading about this Darwinism applied genetically, one usually thinks of males either in combat or in combat's more subtle forms of integrity, place, and achievement.

The evolution of males from hunter/defender to farmer, then corporate--trying to establish himself and his future with periodic forays into combat--might be understandable as a sliding analog development, as physical Darwinism becomes more social. These thoughts and images always seem to be one-sided, male-dominated generalizations. But what about women? It always seems as if the contributor of 50% of the genetic future is just along for the combative ride. 

Does the female bring the same edgy competition to the selective process and the future? What is her competitive advantage on the savannah, and how is it recognized, encouraged, and advanced? 

And when she arrives in the modern world of glass and towers, will the same male rewards of success, power, and influence that he brought from the savannah reward her? Does her law degree tickle some atavistic site in her analog slide into modernity?

Or has she always taken independent, unsupported steps into each new future? Has she always been a wide-eyed captive in every new world?

     

Sunday/Blind

On this day:
44 BC
Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.
1545
First meeting of the Council of Trent.
1781
American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse – Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.
1783
In an emotional speech in Newburgh, New York, George Washington asks his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea is successful and the threatened coup d'état never takes place.
1917
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke becomes Tsar.
1933
Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss keeps members of the National Council from convening, starting the Austrofascist dictatorship 

1952

In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in a 24 hour period, setting a new world record (March 15 through March 16).
1985
The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

***

"Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind." This is Washington, putting on his glasses and reading his response to the "Newburgh Conspiracy" raised in his officer corps against the American civil government.

***

The great problem in assessing recent years is not that Trump is a resurgence of the common man. Nor is his assumption of power greater than the government's assumption during the Biden Regency. Biden was non compos but someone--or many someones--thought they were competent to run the government without public approval or oversight, too. One is a governing blusterer, the other a governing, blustering shadow.

***

Researchers discover ketogenic diet prevents seizures by altering gut bacteria, stabilizing brain activity in epilepsy patients.

***

The nighttime habit that wrecks memory? Checking your phone and sleep fragmentation. Even brief awakenings and light exposure can impair the brain’s overnight memory consolidation.

***

This year, there will be over 9 billion--BILLION--trips from China.

***

This is not a war. And the border is closed.

Are these people any different, ever?

***

Sunday/Blind

Today was known as Lumen Christi, "The Light of Christ." It was accompanied by a ceremony of light-bearing and exchange.

Today's gospel is rich with metaphor, symbolism, and a hint of revolution, all delivered in a peculiar vaudevillian tone. It mixes light and dark, the physical and the immaterial, the visible and the invisible. In it, Christ encounters and heals a blind man on the Sabbath. First, He dismisses the old idea that the man's infirmities are due to his or his parents' sin. Then, the man presents himself to the priests, who are divided—some are amazed, others indignant that the healing was done on the Sabbath. Finally, Christ flips the lesson, suggesting that sin is a kind of blindness of the soul that hampers the spirit. Throughout, there is the revolutionary idea of human freedom and responsibility, and the danger of rigid social constructs—this was two thousand years ago.
The debate is funny, almost a parody of bureaucracy and decision-making. and eventually, the blind man's provenance is established by Christ's detractors.

And there's another provocative thing: After the blind man is cured, Christ seeks him out.



Going Blind by Rainer Maria Rilke

She sat just like the others at the table.
But on second glance, she seemed to hold her cup
a little differently as she picked it up.
She smiled once. It was almost painful.

And when they finished and it was time to stand
and slowly, as chance selected them, they left
and moved through many rooms (they talked and laughed),
I saw her. She was moving far behind

the others, absorbed, like someone who will soon
have to sing before a large assembly;
upon her eyes, which were radiant with joy,
light played as on the surface of a pool.

She followed slowly, taking a long time,
as though there were some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome,
she would be beyond all walking, and would fly.


On His Blindness by John Milton

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

SatStats

On this day:

44 BC
Casca, Cicero, and Cassius decided, in the night before the Assassination of Julius Caesar, that Mark Antony should stay alive.
1757
Admiral Sir John Byng is executed by firing squad aboard HMS Monarch for breach of the Articles of War.
1780
American Revolutionary War: Spanish forces capture Fort Charlotte in Mobile, Alabama, the last British frontier post capable of threatening New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana.
1942
Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.
1964
A jury in Dallas, Texas, finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy

***

Voltaire referred to Byng’s execution in his satirical novel Candide: “In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

***

"The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money," Trump said Thursday on his social media site.
It was only last month, in his State of the Union address, that Trump had bragged about gas prices at $2.30 a gallon, a figure that has since soared more than 50% to a national average of $3.60 a gallon, according to AAA.

It's wonderful to be in a country where both contradictory options are the greatest ever seen.

***

Modern economic growth in its global form has done more for workers and the environment than any army of government inspectors, regulators, customs officers, or IRS accountants. We Americans are rich not because of unions or anti-trust or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but because, on the whole, we have let capitalism work.--mccloskey

***



SatStats

Only 1% of Americans identify as vegans, according to Gallup, while the same poll showed that 3% consider themselves vegetarian. Vegetarian restaurants have had a hard time of it.

*

   Environment:

Contrary to the EPA 2009 predictions, there has been a decline in smog levels from 1980 to 2024.

There has been no trend in hurricane numbers or intensities since 1973. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds no change in global flooding.

There has been no trend in the EPA heat wave index since 1895, except for the 1930s.

Several studies show a decline in net mortality from heat and cold.

U.S. wildfires have declined sharply since 1926, and global wildfire acreage declined 24% between 1998 and 2015.

Global droughts have declined about 0.5% per decade since 1950.

Global per capita food production has increased 40% since 1980.

And the latest peer-reviewed research reports no acceleration globally in sea-level rise.

*

   Immigtation

15% of the population of Ireland entered the US between 1851 and 1860

9% of the population of Norway entered the US in the 1880s

6% of the population of Italy entered the US from about 1900-1910

*

Re: California's proposed 5% wealth tax: “Over 100,000 simulations with varying discount rates, wealth tax revenues, and lost income tax revenues associated with departures, we find that 71% of scenarios in which the Act is instituted yields a negative [net present value], signaling the Act would generate a net cost to the state of California,” the researchers wrote in a Thursday Substack post. The “average across these draws,” they say, “is –$24.7 billion.”

*

Iran is the size of Europe

*
 Argentines have more than $250 billion in dollars stashed at home, along with offshore accounts and safe-deposit boxes—some six times the reserves of the central bank.

But two years into Milei’s government, Argentines are easing their grip on their precious dollars.

Dollars held in the country’s banks by private-sector investors hit a record at the end of last year of nearly $37 billion, up 160% since Milei took office in December 2023, according to central-bank data.

*

People born in 1990 have double the risk of colon cancer and quadruple the risk of rectal cancer compared with people born in 1950

*

Germany’s population is projected to shrink by nearly 5 per cent within 25 years — a significantly steeper decline than previously forecast, according to an Ifo study.

*

In ten-generation world calibrations, Muslims become the largest tradition.

*

In 2025, roughly 60,000 new swimming pools were built in the U.S. That's down about 40% from 2022 and approximately half the peak seen during the Covid-era boom.

Lies and Policy

On this day:

624
Battle of Badr: a key battle between Muhammad’s army, the new followers of Islam, and the Quraish of Mecca. The Muslims won this battle, known as the turning point of Islam, which took place in the Hejaz region of western Arabia.
1781
William Herschel discovers Uranus.
1865
American Civil War: The Confederate States of America agree to the use of African American troops.
1881
Alexander II of Russia is killed near his palace when a bomb is thrown at him. (Gregorian date: it was March 1 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia.)
1921
Mongolia, under Baron Roman Ungern von Sternberg, declares its independence from China.
1938
Anschluss of Austria to the Third Reich.
1954
Battle of Điện Biên Phủ: Viet Minh forces attack the French.
1964
American Kitty Genovese is murdered, reportedly in view of neighbors who did nothing to help her, prompting research into the bystander effect.
1969
Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module.

***

“Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needs a “more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy”--Ursula von der Leyen

***

Not developing our own shale gas reserves has a huge opportunity cost.
It got a lot huger this week--Ridley

***

The Bank of England has confirmed Sir Winston Churchill will be scrapped from banknotes and replaced with images of wildlife.

***

Is trade across the borders of Ohio and Pennsylvania economically distinct from trade between Ohio and Alaska? France?

***

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has issued a sharp rebuke to the US government over its decision to temporarily lift sanctions on the sale of Russian oil in the wake of sharply rising energy prices, saying the decision was wrong.

***


Lies and Policy

Chris Coyne recently reviewed The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations. One snippet:

"Since Kissinger did not intend his transcripts to be public, the collection is a window both into him as a person and into the operations of the U.S. national security state. Four themes stand out.

The first is the sheer prevalence of systematic deception. For Kissinger, lies weren’t a strategic tool limited to selective uses in international statecraft. They appear to have been part of his personal makeup. Wells notes that he was “a habitual and easy liar.” Throughout the transcripts, he deceives his foreign counterparts, his colleagues, and the media."

The border is secure, the President is sharp as a tack, 1619, Anna Anderson is Princess Anastasia, “Russians Hungry But not Starving,” there would be no war if the Sudeten lands were turned over to Germany, the Chernobyl evacuation was precautionary and temporary,“ Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction,” American boys will not be asked to fight an Asian war...

We poor Americans are inundated by the free speech avalanche of self-serving mendacity

Lies are Procrustes' solution to stubborn truths. As with Kissinger, they have become part of our marrow.

Trade

On this day:

1994
The Church of England ordains its first female priests.
2009
Financier Bernard Madoff plead guilty in New York to scamming $18 billion, the largest in Wall Street history.
2011
A reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant melts and explodes and releases radioactivity into the atmosphere a day after Japan’s earthquake.

***


"If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation."--The Old Farmer's Almanac

***

Shumer says the Voter ID is actually an ICE conspiracy!

***

Whole Foods in New York has a 'holding pen' for wealthy shoplifters, according to a funny article in NR. 'For some, a little thieving is their way to “protest” corporate America. For others, it’s an expression of the economic anxiety that accompanies living in “an unaffordable city.” DeLigter deemed it “a form of collective nihilism.”'...'The biggest revelation here is that Whole Foods’ security guards seem to evince “glee” while doing their jobs. Who wouldn’t? The opportunity to impose consequences on people who appear to have avoided them deep into adulthood isn’t an opportunity that comes around every day.'

***

Trump says the Iran "excursion" will keep us out of war.

***

David Bossie was exposed for allegedly raking in $18.5 million for an unauthorized group called the Presidential Coalition, which reportedly fooled senior citizens into thinking they were helping Trump-aligned candidates.
A large chunk of the funds went to buy books he co-authored with Lewandowski, though the former campaign manager was not directly implicated.

***

The Brits are getting rid of non-royals on their banknotes in favor of animals.
The monarch has appeared on Bank of England notes since 1960, and will continue to do so in the future. Images of historical characters, starting with William Shakespeare, were first seen on the reverse side a decade later.
The current crop on circulating notes, in ascending order of note value, are Sir Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, JMW Turner and Alan Turing.
The Bank found itself mired in controversy owing to the absence of any women, apart from Queen Elizabeth II on notes in 2013. There has never been a historical figure who is black or from an ethnic minority background on the Bank's notes.

***

Trade

Trade is equal exchange. Both parties give up something they do not want as badly as what they receive. Trade is an agreement that makes both parties happy, not a "negotiation" where on party is at a disadvantage. Trade is a tie petween wqual partners.

Trade is not just about exchanging value; it's about building relationships and trust. Trust is earned and developed over time through agreed-upon rules and market access. Therefore, it goes beyond simple transactions, creating an environment of civil order—benign, dependable relationships. It's a social atmosphere of well-intended order—a symphony of quality and cooperation.

What can upset the order? First, government intervention. The violinist is the vice-president's niece and should have a larger role. How about a drum solo? The rules change; the discussion distorts. Patronage and favors intrude. And imagine the bribery! The trust and stable trading field developed and nurtured over the years will slowly dissolve.

And what if the trade is twisted to exploit some national preconception, some state advantage? So trade was just a bargaining chip? That would overturn the table of careful trade-building and fairness.

Tariffs.

 

Iran Musing

On this day:

241 BC
First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands – The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet, bringing the First Punic War to an end.
1629
Charles I of England dissolves the Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.
1762
French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
1804
Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.
1814
Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France.
1831
The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.
1848
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican-American War.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
1891
Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
1906
The Courrières mine disaster, Europe’s worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France.
1922
Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.
1945
The U.S. Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting firestorm kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.
1952
Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the “provisional president”.
1959
Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama’s palace to prevent his removal
1980
Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shoots and kills Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower
2006
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.

***“

"It does not sound crazy to a Silicon Valley executive that maybe they could be in charge instead of you,” AI alignment researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky warned politicians. “If they actually could control superintelligence, they’d discard you like used toilet paper.”
Great. Politicians as an abused group.

***

On 13–14 October 1761, one of the Calas sons, Marc-Antoine, was found dead on the ground floor of the family's home. Rumors had it that Jean Calas had killed his son because he intended to convert to Catholicism. When interrogated, the family initially claimed that Marc-Antoine had been killed by a murderer. Then they declared that they had found Marc-Antoine dead, hanged. Because suicide was considered a heinous crime against oneself, and the dead bodies of suicides were defiled, they had arranged for their son's suicide to look like a murder. The law thought the boy had been killed because of anti-Catholic fanaticism.trial/torture description is quite grim.
French philosopher Voltaire, after initial suspicions of anti-Catholic fanaticism were dispelled by his investigations, began a campaign to get Calas's sentence overturned, claiming that Marc-Antoine had committed suicide because of gambling debts and not being able to finish his university studies due to his denomination.

Voltaire's efforts were successful, and King Louis XV received the family and had the sentence annulled in 1764.

***

Two famous brothers who worked as real estate brokers have been convicted of drugging and raping dozens of women over the course of decades.
Tal Alexander, 39, and Oren Alexander, 38, rose to prominence from their sales of luxury real-estate properties in New York and Miami. Along with a third brother Alon, 38, a jury found all three guilty of sex trafficking by a jury in New York.

***

Is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen overreaching?

The diplomats who spoke to POLITICO argued that von der Leyen’s flurry of tweets and conversations with Gulf leaders did not formally represent EU foreign policy positions. Critics also voiced skepticism about what von der Leyen, who has no military means at her disposal and has no mandate to shape EU-wide foreign policy positions, could be offering Gulf states under missile and drone attack from Iran.

“What exactly is she promising when she says we will support them?” asked Loiseau. “Who is ‘we’? For now, the support is the Charles de Gaulle [French aircraft carrier], Rafale jets in Abu Dhabi, and defense agreements with some countries.”

“What we’re seeing is role-play with nothing behind it,” said Loiseau, who belongs to French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party. (Politico)

Ambition fills any vacuum.

***

Iran Musing

What was the impact of the B-2 bombing? Wasn't it supposed to make another attack unnecessary? What was the revelation that made this attack a next and necessary step? Have you ever heard of the "conventional-weapons-shield-of-nuclear-weapons thesis" the Americans used to justify it?

An unsubstantiated theory, i.e., out of whole cloth: Israel, for some reason (and their intel is very good), had decided to attack Iran again, and the Americans thought the appearance and power of the two together created a better public relations picture and gave them the appearance of control. America followed them in. (Warning: Made up.)

Iran had their own strange war moment. When it was clear they were getting clobbered, Iran began to attack everybody, old friends and foes alike.

There is a theory, the Sampson Theory, stating that Israel has no minor fight. Every struggle threatens their very existence. Any vulnerability was a step toward their eventual destruction. Every fight was a fight to the death. There would never be a compromise; there would never be a standing-eight count. They would never sue for peace.

And if it was clear that events had gone against them, that the tide was running in their enemy's favor, they, like Sampson, would pull the whole building down around their ears. They would put their 53 or so nukes in the air against every living target they could reach and turn the Middle East--and its oil--into a lifeless, useless husk of a place.

Perhaps that is what Iran planned too.

Procrustean Ideology

On this day:
141 BC
Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han Dynasty of China.
1566
David Rizzio, private secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, is murdered in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland.
1765
After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually committed suicide.
1796
Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.
1862
American Civil War: The USS Monitor and the CSS fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.
1916
Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against Columbus, New Mexico.
1945
The Bombing of Tokyo by the United States Army Air Forces began, one of the most destructive bombing raids in history.
1961
Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a human dummy nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.
1977
The Hanafi Muslim Siege: In a thirty-nine-hour standoff, armed Hanafi Muslims seize three Washington, D.C., buildings, killing two and taking 149 hostage.
2011
Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights.

***

We suffer from the growth that comes from suffering.--thomas and wang

***

AI update. Entrepreneurs are recreating dead and absent relatives for wedding videos and other occasions. Very popular in India

***

The US is the only major destination in the world to see a decline in international travellers in 2025. So far, 2026 is getting worse.

Foreign airlines are cutting the number of US-bound flights. Disney warns of “international visitation headwinds.”

***

Pancho Villa was an occasional revolutionary and politician who played himself in a Hollywood movie. He was assassinated by, presumably, his political opponents and is alleged to have said to his bodyguard as he died, "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

***

Procrustean Ideology

A new entrant on the Red Carpet of Big, Poorly-thought-out Ideas: The Center for American Progress, a prominent left-leaning think tank that often cultivates policy ideas the Democratic Party later adopts, proposed a two-year freeze on the prices of 24 food items, such as strawberries and ground beef.

Grocers would voluntarily agree to cap food prices in exchange for lower credit card transaction fees, according to the proposal, which was written by a group led by Jared Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein might have a peripheral thought process, but astonishingly, he is not a peripheral guy.  He chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers during Joe Biden’s presidency.

This notion would, in effect, force credit card companies to absorb the cost of subsidizing food purchases. A draft of the proposal stated that the Federal Reserve could require credit card companies to do so through its regulatory oversight, though that provision was apparently removed after questions from The Washington Post.

It is not clear how else the government might persuade credit card companies to foot the bill, nor how many grocers would agree. Nor is it clear how the unwavering economic law that price controls create shortages would be expressed, as a shortage of food or of credit.

One wonders how someone who thinks like this could become in any way influential. But calling yourself a "think tank" shields you from a lot of sensible scrutiny.

Sunday/The End of History

On this day:

1618
Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
1722
The Safavid Empire of Iran is defeated by an army from Afghanistan at The Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.
1736
Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.
1775
An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes “African Slavery in America”, the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.
1917
International Women’s Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (so named because it was February on the Julian calendar)
1920
The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.

***

Keplar's three laws state that:

--The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
--A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
--The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

***


More than 7,000 Middle East flights were cancelled between Saturday and Tuesday alone, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers in what aviation experts are calling the worst global travel disruption since Covid grounded the world.

Dubai International Airport, normally the world's busiest international hub with millions of passengers transiting annually, sits empty.

Private jet brokers report charging up to $350,000 for flights from Riyadh to Europe.

***

The Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case that AI-generated art does not qualify for copyright protection.

***

At 4:52 p.m. Wednesday, with eight minutes left before Montana’s candidate filing deadline closed, Kurt Alme walked into the Secretary of State’s office and filed for the United States Senate.

He had never run for office. He had no campaign. He had no publicly released platform. He had no announcement, no press conference, no town halls, no conversations with voters. What he had — the only thing he needed — was Steve Daines on the phone and Donald Trump at the ready on Truth Social.

That is how Montana’s next Republican nominee for U.S. Senate was chosen. Not by you. By them. (Just in case anybody out there thinks the Republicans chose differently than the party that chose Hilary and Kamala.)

***

Sunday/The End of History

Today's gospel contains the focused drama of a short story; it is a virtual advertisement for the quality of the writing in the New Testament.
In it, Christ meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well.

In this most social of places, she is alone, as is He. He asks her for a drink of water. And they talk. And something is wrong.

Just a few paragraphs, and there is so much going on. She is a Samaritan-- of Jewish heritage yet disdained by the Jews--at a well originally owned by a Jewish patriarch of the Old Testament. It is noon, the heat is at its height--why is she there at that time of day? And why alone?

She is uncomfortable with a Jew--and a man--asking her for water. She begins to spar a bit with Him as to how worship should be performed. Christ asks her to bring her husband; she says she has none, Christ agrees with her yet corrects her: She has had five and her current man is not her husband.

Now it is clear. The woman goes for water at the worst time of the day to avoid the criticism of the others; she is alone because she prefers it. She is an outcast among outcasts.

But Christ does not press her on her social circumstances. At the ancient Well, there is no history. There is no lecture, no scolding, no offer of forgiveness. And as we learn more of her, she learns more of Him.

The entire story--indeed her eventual conversion--is one of coming to knowledge, to understanding. And the transcendence of History.

SatStats

On this day:

321
Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis Invicti (sun-day) is the day of rest in the Empire.
1799
Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.
1850
Senator Daniel Webster gives his “Seventh of March” speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for an invention he calls the telephone
1912
Roald Amundsen announces that his expedition had reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
1936
World War II (Prelude to): In violation of the Locarno Pact and the Treaty of Versailles, Germany reoccupies the Rhineland.
1945
World War II: American troops seize the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen.

1989
Iran and the United Kingdom break diplomatic relations after a row over Salman Rushdie and his controversial novel.
2007
The British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected.

***

True capitalism is grounded in private property, competitive markets, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law. It treats individuals as decision-makers in their own lives — not subjects of top-down control. It decentralizes power, rewards value creation, and invites experimentation, allowing people to say “yes” to opportunity without asking permission from bureaucrats or politicians.--Ginn
Which is to say it is both an outgrowth and an expression of freedom.

***

NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji showed support for far-left organizations applauding Hamas' Oct. 7th attacks.

***

Berkshire was a net seller of stock in the fourth quarter, meaning it sold more stock than it purchased. The company has now been a net seller in 13 straight quarters, which suggests Buffett has struggled to find attractive investments in the current market environment.

***



SatStats

The most landed-on property in Monopoly is Illinois Avenue. When players exit jail, the most common dice rolls (especially six to eight) funnel them there.

*

Between now and 2036, the CBO projects $94.6 trillion in federal spending against $70.2 trillion in revenue, a decade-long deficit of $24.4 trillion. Outlays reached 23.1 percent of GDP in 2025, nearly two full percentage points above the 50-year average, meaning annual spending growth is outpacing the economy itself. Debt held by the public is projected to hit 101 percent of GDP this year, which will surpass the post-WWII record of 106 percent by 2030, and climb to 120 percent by 2036.

*

Last week, Citrini Research projected a “human intelligence displacement spiral” caused by AI within two years.
But a recent survey of 6,000 chief executives across four countries found that they expect AI to cut employment by just 0.7 percent over the next three years

*

Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension.(study)

*

As a percentage of total book pages, Adam Smith has the highest share at 6.69%, beating out Ricardo (5.22%), Mill (3.83%), and Marx (4.36%). Just over 32% of all textbooks allocated most of their pages to Adam Smith, followed by Marx with 18.6%, Mill with 13.95%, and Ricardo with 11.3%. While interesting as a history of economic thought project, such an exercise isn’t merely amusing pedantry; it can provide insight into the types of contributions, research questions, and methodologies that have had the most enduring impact in economics. It may also inform future authors of history of economic textbooks.

*

Self-reported AI use at work: Democrats are consistently more likely than Republicans to report frequent use.

*

The New York Central once ran forty-two daily passenger trains between Buffalo and Cleveland, with the 187-mile trip taking three hours. Today, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited covers the same 187 miles in three and a half hours, if it’s on time, which it often isn’t. And the New York–Montreal run took nine hours in 1940; today’s Adirondack takes over thirteen.

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Pensions cost the Brazilian government 10% of GDP. If no reforms are made by 2050, Brazil will spend more on pensions as a share of GDP than many richer and greyer countries… Though Brazil’s share of young people is similar to that in Chile or Mexico, its pension spending is already at Japan’s level. That is despite a modest reform in 2019 that introduced a minimum retirement age. The population is ageing rapidly. Without reform, its social-security deficit, or the shortfall between contributions and payments, is set to rise from 2% of GDP today to over 16% by 2060.

Brazil’s courts cost 1.3% of GDP —the second-most expensive in the world—mostly because of generous pensions. The typical soldier retires before turning 55 on a pension equivalent to their full salary.

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Multiple studies have either shown that smartphone and social media use among teens has minimal effects on their mental health or none at all. As a 2024 review published by an American Psychological Association journal put it: “There is no evidence that time spent on social media is correlated with adolescent mental health problems.”

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Across specifications, a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage increases robot adoption by roughly 8 percent relative to the mean. 

Is the minimum wage a Robot Employment Act?

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Men and lesbians are vastly overrepresented in stand-up comedy.