A Press Release

For almost six decades, international students have come to a University of Pittsburgh institute to improve their English and, in many cases, they would eventually teach the language to others.
Citing enrollment losses and financial pressures exacerbated by the pandemic, Arts and Sciences Dean Kathleen Blee has informed the institute and the linguistics department to which it belongs that the unit will cease operations as of June 30.
The institute is one of the nation’s oldest intensive English programs, officials said.

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In a survey, two-thirds (66%) said elected officials represent mostly the views and values of their big donors, not average Americans. Just 16% said they felt their elected officials represented their constituents. Another 18% said they weren’t sure.

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The roughly $2.8 trillion deficit in fiscal 2021, during which Biden was in office for more than eight months, was about $360 billion lower than the roughly $3.1 trillion deficit in fiscal 2020, Trump’s last full fiscal year in office.

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A Press Release

"The first Native American woman in space ventured out on a spacewalk Friday to prep the International Space Station for more solar panels.

NASA astronaut Nicole Mann emerged alongside Japan's Koichi Wakata, lugging an equipment bag. Their job was to install support struts and brackets for new solar panels launching this summer, part of a continuing effort by NASA to expand the space station's power grid.

Mann, a Marine colonel and test pilot, rocketed into orbit last fall with SpaceX, becoming the first Native American woman in space. She is a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California." (From Yahoo)

Wait. Nicole Mann earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy in 1999. Earned a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a specialty in Fluid Mechanics from Stanford University in 2001. She is a Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps and served as a test pilot in the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet. She deployed twice aboard aircraft carriers in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From her NASA page:
Mann was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in 1999. Following graduate school, she completed The Basic School (TBS) in Quantico, Virginia and reported to Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida, for flight training in 2001. She earned her wings of gold as a Naval Aviator in 2003 and reported to VFA-106 for fleet training in the F/A-18C. She began her operational flying career in 2004 with the Thunderbolts of VMFA-251 based out of Beaufort, South Carolina. During this assignment, she deployed twice with CVW-1 aboard the USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) and flew combat missions in support of Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM. Upon return from her second deployment, Mann reported to the United States Naval Test Pilot School, Class 135, at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. In June 2009, she began her Developmental Test tour at Air Test and Evaluation Squadron TWO THREE (VX-23) as an F/A-18 Test Pilot/Project Officer. While at VX-23, Mann executed a variety of flight tests, including loads envelope expansion, flying qualities, carrier suitability and ordnance separation in the F/A-18A-F. In the spring of 2011, Mann assumed duties as the VX-23 Operations Officer. In July 2012, Mann was assigned to PMA-281 as the Joint Mission Planning System - Expeditionary (JMPS-E) Integrated Product Team (IPT) Lead when she was selected as an astronaut candidate. She has accumulated more than 2,500 flight hours in 25 types of aircraft, 200 carrier arrestments and 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

NASA Experience:
Mann was selected in June 2013 as one of eight members of the 21st NASA astronaut class. Her astronaut candidate training included intensive instruction in International Space Station systems, spacewalks, Russian language training, robotics, physiological training, T-38 flight training, and water and wilderness survival training. She completed astronaut candidate training in July 2015. She has served as the T-38 Safety and Training Officer and as the Assistant to the Chief Astronaut for Exploration where she led the astronaut corps in the development of the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System, and Exploration Ground Systems for missions to the Moon. She launched to the International Space Station as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on October 5, 2022.

Awards/Honors:
Awarded two Air Medals, two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals, two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals and various unit commendations. Trident Scholar, Academic All-American (soccer), Distinguished Graduate - U.S. Naval Academy, Honor Graduate - U.S. Naval Test Pilot School Class 135, Leroy Grumman “Best Paper” Award - East Coast Society of Experimental Test Pilots Symposium, NASA 2015 Stephen D. Thorne Safety Award, 2017 Jerry Yeagley Award for Exceptional Personal Achievement and was inducted into the Academic All-American Hall of Fame.

And the lead in the story is that she is a Native American? Or is trivializing achievement the point?

PDF Version

People of the Wheel

                    People of the Wheel*

A strange reference popped up in an interview where politicians were praising one another, a reference to how well they did during "the Ebola threat" during the Obama administration. (This was in contradistinction to the government's current anti-viral performance.) It is probably not a good idea to bring Ebola up.

Ebola is a virus with several subset that, in humans, is savagely fatal, or up until recently has been. In some respects it has been managed well and the oft-maligned WHO can point to it with some pride; they have, in between great dinners, managed the outbreaks--if with some admittedly homicidal preventive techniques by the "host" countries.

But the history of Ebola research raises real concerns.

Ever since the Russian Biopreparate bio-weapons program, where researchers  developed weaponized microorganisms and new, lab-created illnesses, to kill people at random, the Americans have had labs devoted to counter these anti-human experiments. On several occasions, Ebola has been encountered outside of such labs by accident. The teaching case is Ebola Reston.

Reston's appearance in 1989 was the first-ever Ebola virus that emerged outside of Africa and was also the first known natural infection of Ebola virus in nonhuman primates. When it was first discovered among laboratory monkeys in the United States, the source was immediately traced back to the Philippines to a monkey breeding/export facility. The second outbreak was in 1992–93. The third episode in 1996 was the last known outbreak before Reston ebolavirus reemerged in pigs in 2008.

Nonhuman primates (NHPs)are used for preclinical research, disease modeling, drug development, experimental infections, and biological production and testing. M fascicularis is the only indigenous simian species in the Philippines; collection sites and quantities are government regulated. Regulated.

The original outbreak was first detected among imported NHPs in a quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia, USA. This outbreak was initially suspected to be simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF), another viral disease caused by an arterivirus, and indeed SHF virus was isolated from the animals. However, Ebola virus was also noted by electron microscopy and indirect fluorescent antibody assays in the cultures.

Remember, these are regulated breeding facilities and labs. And, of course, such an infection had never been seen before.

At the time, the virus was identified and its behavior was unknown. Unknown. There was an exposure to human handlers who knew they were exposed--and they went home. To their families.

It turned out that a small proportion the personnel in the lab had developed antibodies to the virus but, it appeared, this particular subset of the virus did not infect humans. (Despite the common natures of the subtypes, the Reston virus does not convey immunity to either Marburg or Zaire.)

Now, this news item from Fort Dietrich, Md.: In June, 2019, an inspection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found leaks and mechanical problems with the lab’s new chemical system to decontaminate wastewater. The institute was also working with Ebola and the agents known to cause the plague and Venezuelan equine encephalitis when high-level research was voluntarily halted. 

In 2009, research at the lab was suspended after the discovery that more than 9,200 vials, about one-eighth of its stock, wasn’t listed in the institute’s database.

Now, how good is the containment policy in Wuhan?

What are these people doing? And why do we have faith in any of them?

*In the original movie adaptation of the novel I Am Legend, The Last Man on Earth (1964), bacteriologic warfare destroys humanity except for a few humans and a group of crazed remnants bent on killing anyone loosely connected to science whom they call The People of the Wheel.

The South’s Over-Representation in the Army

The difference between an enemy and adversary is an adversary plays by established and mutually agreed upon rules.--anon

Another meal out, this one a Tessarro.

In the postseason, there were 252 pitches called strikes outside the zone and 195 called balls that were in the strike zone. That’s 447 missed calls out of 5,459 called balls and strikes, a missed-call rate of 8.2 percent. That’s better than the regular-season miss rate of 9.1 percent, but those are still hundreds of errant calls influencing game outcomes.

On a recent episode of bi'l waraqa wa'l qalam ("With Paper and Pen"), an Egyptian news program that airs on TenTV, its host, Nasha't al-Deyhi, said:

"Leaked information confirms that Turkey is a terrorist state; it supports terrorists — including with weapons. It supports terrorists with weapons. This time, however, not in Syria ... Today's leak confirms without doubt that Erdogan, his state, his government, and his party are transferring weapons from Turkey to — this is a shock, to where you may ask — to Nigeria; and to whom? — to the Boko Haram organization."

(From Don)

A history professor from Rutgers on the real root of our problems:  “the invention of agriculture.” Agriculture, she writes, led to longer work weeks, poor health, “environmental degradation,” and “income inequality. Hunter-gatherer life isn’t sounding so bad.” Think about that mindset for a minute.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters said: "Impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is. There is no law."

Interviews with opioid dealers in Philadelphia yielded these surprising results.  Most of the dealers didn’t know the ultimate origins of the products they sold, or were not informing on local wholesalers who might know. One dealer was more forthcoming and said he bought in bulk online from business to business websites based in China, which perhaps is where many of the dealers source their products.


                    The South’s Over-Representation in the Army

A study of an interesting phenomenon.

Free trade has gradually shifted the burden of military service onto the American South. While trade shocks generally lead to local increases in US Army enlistment, there are two different regional dynamics that concentrate this effect in the South. First, trade-related job losses are disproportionately concentrated in this region, where manufacturing jobs gradually migrated during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, the South’s “military tradition,” a relatively youthful population, and weak labor unions, combine to translate trade shocks into larger spikes in Army enlistment than the rest of the country. This paper uses county-level data from 1996–2010 to demonstrate the importance of meso-level, regional factors for understanding the location of trade shocks, as well as how communities adjust to such economic dislocations. We find that trade-related job losses account for roughly 7% of the South’s over-representation in the Army during our period of study.

This is from a study somewhere and I think is very shallow. You tend to measure what you are able to.

Kaliningrad

Any political entity that is separated from its main political entity is an "exclave." Any political entity that is entirely surrounded by another political entity is an "enclave." Vatican City is an enclave. Kaliningrad is an exclave.

Kaliningrad is getting some interest lately because it is an important military outpost--it gives the Russians a port on the Baltic Sea--and it is tucked in by the Baltic States between Poland and Lithuania. It appears in novels as a sort of nexus of history and ethnicity. Recently the Russians have been stepping up their arming of the area to confront, intimidate and generally upset Europe and NATO. This kind of belligerent risk-taking is apparently the function of the modern state. In 2013, Russia deployed short-range Iskander ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in the region, in what it said was a response to U.S. plans to deploy a ballistic missile defense system in Europe.

The city was founded by the Teutonic Knights in the Middle Ages as a fortress and trading center that was named Königsberg. It was part of Prussia and capital of East Prussia, which was physically severed from the rest of Germany following World War I. It continued as German until the second war when it was annexed by the Russians at the Potsdam Conference that divided Europe between the allied powers in 1945.

The Soviets renamed the seaport after a Bolshevik hero. The German population was expelled by Stalin, and it and the Baltic states were absorbed by the USSR. When the Baltics regained independence in 1991, Kaliningrad became an exclave again, as part of the Russian Federation.

It has a population of less than one million and is heavily forested. The city was severely damaged during World War II, both by British bombing raids and the Soviet assault to take the city. Much of its historic architecture was ruined, and the Soviets rebuilt much of the city in the classic communist style with concrete high-rises and industrial housing blocks. Some landmarks remain: The tomb of philosopher Immanuel Kant who lived most of his life in Königsberg is still at Königsberg Cathedral, and the magnificent stock exchange is now a cultural center.

Milo Minderbinder in the 21st Century

The military draft is gone. Now our wars are fought by pros, not amateurs, and only pros who want to. But there are other volunteers: Mercenaries or "Mercs."
Mercenary corporations have received $138 billion in contracts for Iraq alone, according to the Financial Times. And the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated in 2011 that fraud, waste, and abuse accounted for about $60 billion of the money spent in Iraq alone. (So maybe privatization does not always reduce waste.) There has even been the suggestion that Mercs are a kind of "war lobby" that campaigns in favor of conflict because they benefit from conflict.

Abstracting war from society is a bad idea. It allows the culture to wage war without consequence to itself. It also allows for deceptive high-mindedness. The army becomes a product, something that can be engineered, not for them but for their creators. Because the society is paying for its soldiers, it will assume the right that it can refine them to its wishes. So the culture will always try to have clean hands and will build limiting requirements into the conflict which the culture's soldiers will reluctantly obey but their opponents will not. 

Every society at war should make an effort to have some impact, at the very least, built into the homeland's daily life as a result.

Giving Peace a Chance

A lot has gone wrong in Iraq and Iran and more information is out that shows more went wrong than we thought.

Emma Sky is a British, Oxford-educated political analyst who served as a humanitarian worker in the Middle East for a decade before helping the US rebuild Iraq. Her new book, "The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq," is not kind to the Obama administration's handling of Iraq.
Somehow, from 2007 to 2010, Sky was the political adviser to U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno when he served as deputy American commander in Iraq and then the US-led mission's top commander. During Sky's time with Odierno, violence in the country plummeted after a U.S. troop surge and crucial Sunni tribal cooperation stabilized the country. Odierno "wanted U.S. engagement with Iraq to continue for years to come, but led by U.S. civilians, not the military," Sky wrote. He estimated 20,000 or so U.S. troops would be needed to stay in Iraq beyond 2011.
The Obama administration, however, eventually went along with the plan backed by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. That plan called for no U.S. troops beyond 2011 and relied on the continued support of the authoritarian Iran-backed regime of Nouri al-Maliki, then Iraq's prime minister. Maliki's new lease on life led him to steer Baghdad "toward a very pro-Iranian and sectarian agenda, which inevitably disillusioned and disenfranchised Sunni Arabs for a second time."
The rise of ISIS is partly a manifestation of this Sunni discontent.
"The Obama administration wanted to see an Iraqi government in place before the U.S. midterm elections in November," Sky said. "Biden believed the quickest way to form a government was to keep Maliki as prime minister and to cajole other Iraqis into accepting this." Despite the best efforts of Sky and her colleagues, she could not convince the administration otherwise.

"Biden was a nice man, but he simply had the wrong instincts on Iraq," Sky writes. "If only Obama had paid attention to Iraq ... But his only interest in Iraq was in ending the war."

Tim Arango, the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, told Reddit in September that "after 2011 the administration basically ignored the country. And when officials spoke about what was happening there they were often ignorant of the reality."

"In the Arabic media, there was confusion as to why the United States and Iran should both choose Maliki as prime minister, and this fueled conspiracy theories about a secret deal between those two countries," Sky noted. (Much from Yahoo)

Manning Up to Problems

There has been a debate over the minimum wage recently. But only 2.9% of workers in the United States make minimum wage. Over 50% of them are age 16 to 24. One wonders about our fascination and outrage over this small minority. Is it that we have solved the big problems? Are these relatively small groups symbolic of a larger problem we can not grasp? Do we gravitate to these smaller problems to exorcise our bigger demons? Or do we just trivialise our problems because we are not up to them?

Bradley Edward Manning was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 after Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from confidential databases and passed the material to WikiLeaks. Included were videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad air strike and the 2009 Granai air strike in Afghanistan, 250,000 United States diplomatic cables and 500,000 army reports. WikiLeaks or its media partners published the material between April and November 2010. Manning was ultimately charged with 22 offenses, including aiding the enemy (the most serious charge.)

After being held at Quantico, Virginia he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He pleaded guilty in February 2013 to 10 of the charges. On July 30, 2013 he was convicted of 17 of the original charges and amended versions of four others, but was acquitted of aiding the enemy. He was sentence to the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.

A number of disturbing questions come to mind here. How much of the nation's security was compromised? How could such an unreliable guy be in a position to do something like this? What is the position of a group like WikiLeaks? How does WikiLeaks get its authority, presumably its moral authority, to do stuff like this? Are there other entities that have self-appointed moral authority and how do they differ from religious fanatics?

The list could go on and on. But what was the Bradley Manning story line? He wants to be known as Chelsea and wants to have a sex change operation.

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (nee Bradley Edward Manning)

Security and Priorities

The basic questions raised by critics of the administration's handling of secret operatons will be revisited with the release of this new book on the assassination of bin Laden by a member of the SEAL team involved.

The questions are legitimate, strangely reminiscent of those raised when the NYT publicized the means the army was using to track bin Laden during the Bush administration. Obama announced his drone hit list, bin Laden's death and the U.S. involvement in the Stuxnet computer worm. The critics complain that the war on terror would have been advanced if only the government had remained silent; the targets would have been uninformed, more information would be available, and the American plans would be unclear and more difficult to escape.

But, like the NYT expose, the success of the plans was not the priority.

First things first.

Mormons and Other Fighters

So our free society that looks down our emancipated noses at those quaint religions with their quaint restrictions, our culture that sees little difference between liberty and libertine, our brave new world that prides itself on individual decision making without deference to some written or unwritten rule--this society that glorifies the free and unled individual when looking for lawmen, watchmen on the tower and general defenders of our inalienable rights to do what we please write restrictions that favor and select out Mormons to protect us.

It is a situation similar to the armed forces. Those in uniform are usually southern, church going Christian and I'll bet a lot are creationist. These people who would not last five minutes at a New York cocktail party, are the linchpin of the culture's defense.

Perhaps we are like Rome; twenty years in the army and you become a real citizen.

Aeschylus as a Military Man

In response to some cynicism re: Aeschylus' grave marker: "Aeschylus, the Athenian, Euphorion's son, is dead. This tomb in Gela's cornlands covers him. His glorious courage the hallowed field of Marathon could tell, and the longhaired Mede had knowledge of it"
A link to the underrated Edith Hamilton:
http://english.emory.edu/DRAMA/Aesch.html

Is a Good Military Man Hard to Find?

A discussion arose last night about the status of the military in the minds of Americans. From Washington to MacArthur it appears to be quite high. MacArthur even emerges from Korea with favor--even after being removed by Truman. Whatever happened, happened in the '60's, with its understandable opposition to a mindless war diffidently fought. And each event was meticulously dissected by an omnipresent and hostile press. The military, widely regarded around the world, began to slip from the American esteem; on campuses it became the enemy. Colleges, defended by these very soldiers, refused to allow the military to recruit on campus and this bizarre decision was accepted as reasonable and honorable. Recruitment for the war itself was reduced to a lottery, a matter not of duty but of luck.

Things seem changed. Now, when politicians discuss some military question, one waits for the military man to speak who you know will be bright and honest. The close watching press, "embedded" in the military side like a tick, shows the conflicts in a better light because the caliber of men is so high they cannot avoid it. No one approved of Rolling Stone's mishandling of General McCrystal recently and every pundit mourned his loss.

Historically the military man was usually the leader--or about to become him. When the Americans set the government up, some anxiety clearly existed over this possible problem of leader and army so that civilian control over the military--which worked so poorly in Vietnam--could protect the republic from the expression of military influence. There is no reason why this can not work. Several military leaders have become civilian leaders from Washington on. And the man's qualities will always be the great filter on his actions.

But actions count and conflict is a wonderful place to see the real man. (Perhaps a reason why violent sports are so popular in this country is our need to see real men.) Aeschylus, the greatest Greek playwright and one of the world's two best, wrote over 90 plays and was considered by his time to be the inventor of tragedy and an enhancer of Greek culture at a time when it had no rival. When he died there was no mention of his art on his gravestone; it said only "Marathon Warrior."