Great Kanto Earthquake

 

On this day:
1297
Battle of Stirling Bridge: Scots jointly led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray defeat the English.
1649
Siege of Drogheda ends: Oliver Cromwell’s English Parliamentarian troops take the town and execute its garrison
1708
Charles XII of Sweden stops his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War. The army is defeated nine months later in the Battle of Poltava, and the Swedish empire ceases to be a major power
1829
Surrender of the expedition led by Isidro Barradas at Tampico, sent by the Spanish crown in order to retake Mexico. This was the final consummation of Mexican independence.
1857
The Mountain Meadows Massacre: Mormon settlers and Paiutes massacre 120 pioneers at Mountain Meadows, Utah.
1921
Nahalal, the first moshav in Palestine, is settled as part of a Zionist plan to colonize Palestine and creating a Jewish state, later to be Israel.
1922
The British Mandate of Palestine begins.
1944
World War II: RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt and the following firestorm kill 11,500.
1978
U.S. President Jimmy Carter, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel meet at Camp David and agree on the Camp David Accords, a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt and a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
1997
14 Estonian soldiers die in the Kurkse tragedy, drowning in the Baltic Sea
2001
The September 11 attacks take place in the United States. Airplane hijackings result in the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York City, damage to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the crashing of a passenger airliner near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

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When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. -Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999)

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9/11: The notion that life is sacred, that highminded conflict can be limited to combatants, and that civilians are to be avoided is shown to be untrue. Indeed, the more innocents, the better.

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Kirk: The notion that our national problems need only a respectful engagement with your opponent, discussion, debate, and good-humored withdrawal to a neutral corner is shown to be untrue. Surprise and incoherent viciousness are leverage.

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Dinner at Lilith. Better decor. That dining car feel is gone. Still with the hurried atmosphere. Food: quirky choices indifferently done, especially at the price. Their second place is coming at the old Station.

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A Bahrain-based United States military installation has sustained severe damage during recent months of fighting with Iran, the acting secretary of the US Navy has said, prompting Washington to evaluate what to do with its headquarters in the Middle East.

“They blew the hell out of Bahrain,” Hung Cao said in an interview with The Epoch Times on Wednesday.

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From The Information Tusamani:

There is so much out there, some crazy, some dangerous, so much interesting. This is an experiment on provocative links. When I find one, I will include it. Just one. Not because I necessarily agree with it, but because I think it's interesting. Some of these might bother people — these first two probably will — and sometimes the sources are crazy, but I hope you think there is enough value in it. I'll try to avoid outright lies, but as you can see in this first one, sometimes the provenance is difficult. This is on Palantir's "Manifesto."

https://blog.pebblous.ai/story/palantir-technological-republic/en/

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Great Kanto Earthquake

At one minute before noon on Saturday, September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the Kanto area, including Tokyo and Yokohama. Its epicenter was in Sagami Bay, 50 miles southeast of Tokyo near the island of Oshima. The initial shaking lasted for about five minutes and was followed by a tsunami that washed people and houses out to sea. In some of the smaller inlets, the tsunami reached heights of up to 40 feet. Many were drowned, but the tsunami extinguished many fires that otherwise would have been uncontrollable.

Tokyo’s largest building, the twelve-story Asakusa Tower, split in two and collapsed. The earthquake knocked out the seismograph at the central weather bureau in Tokyo. The seismograph at Tokyo Imperial University, still functioning, recorded a series of 1,700 earthquakes and aftershocks that struck the Tokyo area over the following three days.

Fires followed the initial quake and did more damage than the quake itself. Since the city was built largely of wood, the fires burned out of control. Gas mains ruptured by the quake, and leaking oil from above-ground storage tanks added to the conflagration. A condition called a 'fire tornado' was soon created, with a wind of such velocity that it would lift a person off the ground. These crisscrossed the city and either burned people alive or suffocated them with dense fumes of carbon monoxide. More than 30,000 people were reportedly killed at a single location, a park on the east bank of the Sumida River, when a firestorm descended on refugees gathered there. Firefighting equipment was destroyed or could not be moved because of the rubble that blocked the roads. Water was not available to fight the fire because the water mains were ruptured by the quake. Bridges and narrow streets became deathtraps as fleeing people could neither go forward nor turn back. Hundreds of people who had attempted to cross one of the large bridges that spanned the Sumida River found themselves trapped and incinerated when walls of fire swept the bridge from both banks.

A party of 200 children on an excursion train trip were buried alive by a falling embankment. Hundreds of people tried to escape in small boats, only to be drowned by waves caused by aftershocks or to be burned to death in burning oil slicks. The liner Empress of Australia saved several thousand people by loading them aboard and heading out to sea to ride out the disaster.

The quake devastated 45,000 square miles. In Yokohama, Japan’s chief port, communications were completely destroyed, as was the Imperial University Library, which contained one of the world’s great collections of rare books, original documents, and priceless art objects.

The flexible Japanese wood-and-paper house withstood the shaking, but their heavy tile roofs often collapsed and trapped the occupants. For the most part, steel-framed and reinforced concrete buildings remained standing with only moderate damage, but altogether 60 percent of the buildings in Tokyo and 80 percent in Yokohama were flattened by the quake or destroyed by the fires that followed.

Aftershocks continued to shake the region following the quake. A soaking rain followed on the third day, which helped extinguish the fires that were still raging. Food shortages were rampant, and riots broke out, but there was no looting and little profiteering. Members of the Korean community were attacked as rumors accused them of setting fires and poisoning the wells. Several hundred were killed by vigilantes before the authorities could reestablish order.

A week after the quake, 25,000 people were still living in the open. One of the biggest problems was disposing of dead bodies, many still undiscovered in the rubble. When found, they would be piled up and cremated. The Sumida River was full of bloated and discolored corpses.

144,000 were killed. 144,000

Rebuilding costs were ruinous.

 

 

Gimme Shelter

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

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

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

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

Gimme Shelter

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

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

Barriers in Basics

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate

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Musgrove threw a one-hitter for seven innings against the Mets.

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After leaving the vice presidency in 2017, Biden’s wealth came in at $2.5 million. In the years since, it has grown to $9 million. Vice President Kamala Harris is worth about $5 million. Pelosi, $120 million.

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AFT president Randi Weingarten has gone to Ukraine "to assess the situation."

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Freiermuth has had 3 concussions in the last 12 months.

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Barriers in Basics

We are inundated with terrifying information about changes in the climate. Why we should think there is an interlocking relationship between local and systemic events is unclear but it has been stated by the government that there is no increase in floods, hurricanes, or fires in the U.S. over the last century nor has the changes in the Greenland ice sheet accelerated. Nonetheless, whenever there is a flood or storm we are encouraged to run outside and burn our car. 

One famous slow-motion crisis is in the Great Barrier Reef. Here's an update.

"For years we were told that this glorious coral reef off the coast of Queensland was being slowly strangled by mankind. The Guardian even published an obituary. It was literally titled ‘The Great Barrier Reef: an obituary’. ‘[The] seeds of the reef’s destruction are well embedded’, it declared. And we all know who was to blame for this ‘destruction’: marauding mankind. It’s always us. Shipping, the transformation of the reef into a tourist hotspot and, of course, Queensland’s evil coal industry have been on a ‘collision course’ with this natural wonder for decades, we were told. ‘Climate change is killing the Great Barrier Reef’ – that was the frank, scary verdict in 2017.

And now? The reef is fine. It’s in better nick than it has been for ages, in fact. The reef’s obituarists focused on the problem of ‘bleaching’. This is where the coral becomes stressed by warmer-than-average waters, responds by expelling the algae that live within it, and then becomes weak and sometimes dies. The coral turns a deathly white, hence the term ‘bleaching’. Huge swathes of the coral in this vast reef system, which stretches for a mind-boggling 1,400 miles, have been bleached in recent decades. And unless ‘climatic conditions are stabilised’, unless mankind reins in his Earth-warming, sea-heating antics, then the rest could be bleached too, we were told. Only that isn’t what has happened. At all. A new survey of the reef by the Australian Institute of Marine Science reports that coral cover on the reef has recovered spectacularly. In two-thirds of the reef, coral cover is at its highest level since records began, 36 years ago. From newspaper obituaries just a few years ago to good health in 2022 – this reef is the Lazarus of the natural world."--O'Neill

Accords

 

                                                           Accords

The Americans have rejoined the Paris Accords. Gaia moved.

Opposition to the Accords in the U.S. is misunderstood--or purposely mis-analyzed. It is a treaty purporting to address a debatable scientific climate thesis that is structured as a wish list, without any judicial or enforcement arm, and which excludes the major offenders of the thesis. As such, it is symbolic and dishonest, the perfect entity of politicians but not honorable men.

But that is not the objection by many in the U.S. Our world is glutted with symbolic insincerity. The objection in the U.S. is over how this Treaty was entered: it was signed by the President and, in this country, treaties are approved by the Senate. It is quite rigid. The Senate. Government is a collection of mutually agreed upon concepts, laws, and processes. None of those elements can be by-passed for "the common good," or the "betterment of veterans," or "the children" and have the structured government remain.

Running the government on two sets of intellectual books will fail.

Crichton on Environmentalism

Actually, the governments are not interested in eliminating monopolies; rather, they try to create conditions to enable producers to force monopoly prices on the market.--von Mises

Happy Earth Day, a creepy secular day after Easter.

An excellent dinner at Jeff and Amy's. Nice time.
The scene-setting in GoT is clever and suspenseful, but maddening.
Chris was more sore yesterday.
Ned has a plan for me and the writing project.
Christina bought Liz' brunch yesterday and Liz was going out to buy a stranger dinner. I'm not sure how it worked out--socialism always working out better with people you know.

Almost 100 students at the UK’s top universities have requested to change their gender on official records.

The British art historian Ernst Gombrich believed that, although human beings have a deep psychological attraction to order, perfect order in art is uninteresting. ‘However we analyse the difference between the regular and the irregular,’ he wrote in The Sense of Order (1979), ‘we must ultimately be able to account for the most basic fact of aesthetic experience, the fact that delight lies somewhere between boredom and confusion.’ Too much order, we lose interest. Too much disorder, and there’s nothing to be interested in. 

Among the Class of 2018, 69% of college students took out student loans, and they graduated with an average debt of $29,800, including both private and federal debt. Meanwhile, 14% of their parents took out an average of $35,600 in federal Parent PLUS loans. Americans owe over $1.56 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 45 million borrowers. That’s about $521 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt. 11.5% of student loans are 90 days or more delinquent or are in default.

Average monthly student loan payment (among those not in deferment): $393.What makes the statistics even more alarming is that only about 15 percent of student debt is private debt. Most of the money borrowed by students was borrowed from the deep pockets of the government.

There is a lot going on. Here are two astonishing climate videos that are out there with a common theme, children:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=432&v=d9uTH0iprVQ
and   https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=239&v=FWsM9-_zrKo

Even more than a quarter of a century from now, the Department of Energy forecasts that fossil fuels will still be the dominant energy source, providing 79 percent of our energy needs in 2050. So, despite former President Obama’s frequent dismissals of oil and fossil fuels as “energy sources of the past,” government forecasts tell a much different story of a hydrocarbon-based energy future where fossil fuels will serve as the dominant energy source to power our vehicles, heat and light our homes, and fuel the growing economy.

Further, Obama’s energy policies focused on forcing U.S. taxpayers to “invest” in politically favored “energy sources of the future” – renewables like solar and wind — instead of expanding production of oil, natural gas, and coal. But again, government data tell a much different story. Even after billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for renewable energy, all renewables together (including hydroelectric power, biomass, solar, and wind) last year provided only 11.4 percent of America’s energy, which was just slightly greater than the 9.3 percent share that renewables provided in 1949, nearly 70 years ago – that’s not a lot of progress for the politically popular but very expensive renewables.

When it comes to solar and wind, those two energy sources combined provided only 3.2 percent of America’s energy in 2017 – an almost insignificant amount, especially wind’s contribution of less than 0.8 percent, or just a little more than a rounding error in the overall energy picture. Even in 2050, all renewables together will provide only 14.9 percent of our nation’s energy – not that much higher than renewable’s 9.3 percent share of energy in 1949! (from Perry)

                        Crichton on Environmentalism

The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.  

We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we're told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.

As an example of this challenge, I want to talk today about environmentalism...... 

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths. There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don’t want to talk anybody out of them, as I don’t want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don’t want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can’t talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It’s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them. Am I exaggerating to make a point? I am afraid not. Because we know a lot more about the world than we did forty or fifty years ago. And what we know now is not so supportive of certain core environmental myths, yet the myths do not die.....

From REMARKS TO THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB

by Michael Crichton - San Francisco - September 15, 2003  

http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion.aspx

Rare Elements and Rare Logic

I don't have the passion. I'll follow the gorilla.--the fabulous Laura Linney in "Congo"


Chris gave a  presentation to the big bosses yesterday.
Mom could not get out of Charlottesville and stayed overnight. She'll get in today.
Murphy got in a fight yesterday with another Glen, a lady.
Watching GoT reruns.
Liz picked Va in her office pool.

“Some on Mueller's Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed.” This was a headline in the NYT. So someone anonymously leaks the second-hand rumor of “damaging” information, which in a court of law was not proof of criminality. And the NYT prints that second-hand rumor in a headline.

"Do racists care whether someone black is married or unmarried? If not, then why do married blacks escape poverty so much more often than other blacks, if racism is the main reason for black poverty?"--Sowell

Alan Turing, the British mathematician best known for his work on code-breaking and artificial intelligence, wanted to understand the underlying mechanism that produces natural patterns. He proposed that patterns such as spots form as a result of the interactions between two chemicals that spread throughout a system much like gas atoms in a box do, with one crucial difference. Instead of diffusing evenly like a gas, the chemicals, which Turing called “morphogens,” diffuse at different rates. One serves as an activator to express a unique characteristic, like a tiger’s stripe, and the other acts as an inhibitor, kicking in periodically to shut down the activator’s expression. This idea is making a comeback.


This was the most visited older post this last week:
http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2012/05/first-line-of-iliad.html



On this day in 1865 Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.


                                       Rare Elements and Rare Logic


The Japanese call rare earth elements “the seeds of technology.”  The U.S. Department of Energy calls them “technology metals.”  They are integral to everything from the miniaturization of electronics, to the enabling of green energy and medical technologies, to supporting a myriad of essential telecommunications and defense systems.  They have become irreplaceable to our world of technology owing to their unique magnetic, phosphorescent, and catalytic properties.

Rare earth elements are a set of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, specifically the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. Scandium and yttrium are considered rare earth elements since they tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides and exhibit similar chemical properties. 
  



While named rare earths, they are relatively abundant in the Earth's crust.  What is unusual--and difficult--is to find them in quantities significant enough to support economic mineral development.  

By 2000, China accounted for more than 95% of world rare earth production. 




According to the 2013 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the National Intelligence Office, rare earths are “essential to civilian and military technologies and to the 21st-century global economy, including green technologies (e.g., wind turbines and advanced battery systems) and advanced defense systems.”  


"Green technologies." 


So our efforts to move from fossil fuel, which we have so much of that we export it, to alternative energies would mean switching us from energy independence to complete dependence upon a nation and culture that sees us as their philosophical and economic enemy.


Does that sound reasonable to anyone?

CO2

The latest world climate report from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy finds that in 2017 America reduced its CO2 emissions by 0.5%, the most of all major countries. All major countries. This is particularly impressive in that this reduction occurred in a period of economic growth of 3%. Decreased pollution despite economic growth. No doubt everyone is thrilled. But they seem to be keeping their joy to themselves.

This was achieved in spite of the U.S.' never ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. Nor did we inflict ourselves with a carbon tax. Nor did we subject ourselves to a cap-and-trade emission suicide pact. And we pulled out of the symbolic Paris Climate Accord.

How could this possibly be done without the restrictions of foreign government managers and leaders, without the helpful intervention of various pressure groups and ideologues?

Natural gas, which is as plentiful underground in the U.S. as it is in the halls of Western governments.

Life and The Worst Possible Outcome (WPO)

"Folks in Nebraska, like folks all across the country, aren't going to say to themselves, 'We're going to take a few thousand jobs if it means our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health." So said Mr. Obama in Omaha recently as the government officially put on hold the Keystone XL project, a pipeline program that would send Canadian oil to the United States for refining. The Canadian Prime minister said that, absent the pipeline, the Canadian oil would be sent to Asia.

This is a significant moment in a number of ways. At least 20,00 good, high paying jobs, direct and indirect, hinged on the building of the pipeline. Oil from a friendly nation now goes elsewhere. One wag said this shows the administration is not friendly towards unions but is friendly only towards public sector unions.

But there is a bigger problem here that is consistent throughout our society. It appears in Marcellus shale, smallpox, Gulf of Mexico oil rigs, food production, nuclear power plants--it is the fear of "The Worst Possible Outcome." The WPO. Rather than a challenge to be met, problems to be overcome, difficulties to manage, our culture looks at a possible project and sees the WPO. Unless we can be assured the WPO will not occur, we stop cold.

This, of course, is contrary to all aspects of life except government. Who would get pregnant? Who would build a house or buy one? Who would cross a bridge, fly in a plane, drive through a tunnel? Indeed who would leave their house? If every decision was made through the lens of the WPO no one would do anything. We would live the risk less life of algae.