Gospel/Heaven's Gate

"How To Blow Up a Pipeline" is an effective film in more ways than one. Not only is it a tense, terse, small-budget heist-style thriller, more indebted to Reservoir Dogs than An Inconvenient Truth, it’s also a subtle—if entirely unintended—indictment of the climate movement’s violent fringe activists.--Sunderman (I know nothing about it)

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As part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s push for affordable housing, homebuyers with good credit will soon have to pay higher mortgage rates and fees to subsidize people with riskier credit ratings, according to a report by The Washington Times.

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Bay Area former County Health Officer Erica Pan said the COVID lockdown would be easy because Californians had DoorDash. When you get discouraged, you can always fall back on the deep insightfulness of our leadership.

Gospel/Heaven's Gate

Today's gospel is the provocative gate gospel where Christ talks about the sheep hearing the shepherd's voice and entering through the gate. There are a couple of questions here. 

First, the shepherd's voice is familiar to his sheep; how does that translate to humans? Is there a Socratic recognition of the truth or the holy? Is that innate? Is our tendency toward the good and holy?

Second, does this gospel suggest a personal relationship with the Divine?

A Homage to Costco

A new book, authored by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland is subtitled How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. One excerpt of the summary points:

Two-parent families are beneficial for children.

The class divide in marriage and family structure has exacerbated inequality and class gaps.

Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.

Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.

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Activists have used polar bears as an icon of climate apocalypse for decades, but the best data show that far from dying out, their numbers are growing. The official assessments from the leading scientists who study these animals—the Polar Bear Specialist Group within the International Union for Conservation of Nature—peg the global population today at 22,000 to 31,000. That’s higher than the 5,000 to 19,000 polar bears scientists estimated were around in the 1960s.

The main reason has nothing to do with climate. An international agreement enacted in 1976 limits polar-bear hunting, always the key threat to polar bears’ numbers. Polar bears survived through the last interglacial period, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, when it was significantly warmer than it is now.--Lomberg

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Some South Korean youth are so cut off from the world, the government is offering to pay them to “re-enter society.”

About 3.1% of Koreans aged 19 to 39 are “reclusive lonely young people,” defined as living in a “limited space, in a state of being disconnected from the outside for more than a certain period of time, and have noticeable difficulty in living a normal life,” according to the ministry’s report, citing the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.

A Homage to Costco

Venture into a Costco warehouse – a more diverse place than many a university or legislature – and you will see shoppers from all walks of life gathered together in the pursuit of consumer goods. Here, people of various faiths and backgrounds peruse the aisles, in search of the latest giant-screen television sets, buckets of ice cream, and rotisserie chickens, treating one another with respect, regardless of their beliefs. The only judgment passed is reserved for those who bump carts or try to skip the line. Upon departing this peaceful and lively consumer’s paradise, some may venture to their respective places of worship, while others linger and indulge in a beverage and a $1.50 hot dog with friends. One family may commemorate a milestone with a baptism, another might celebrate a traditional rite of passage, while still others head to the ballpark in the comfort of their spacious SUVs. And as this diverse tapestry of personal journeys is woven, everyone finds contentment.

--Tabarrok

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 

We're in Good Hands

Because maximum shareholder value is no longer management’s exclusive aim, managers will wrangle endlessly over which goals to pursue and how to trade them off against one another and against shareholder value. That’s bad for both investors and the economy.

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Sean Wilentz of Princeton notes, “the colonists had themselves taken decisive steps to end the Atlantic slave trade from 1769 to 1774. During that time, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island either outlawed the trade or imposed prohibitive duties on it. Measures to abolish the trade also won approval in Massachusetts, Delaware, New York, and Virginia, but were denied by royal officials.”

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Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research developed the world's first messenger mRNA-based single-dose vaccine that is 100 percent effective against a lethal bacteria.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, the study suggests that this paves the way for developing more vaccines for bacterial diseases, including diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The study, conducted on mice, demonstrated that all vaccinated animals were fully protected against the bacteria that causes the plague.

We're in Good Hands

China's ambitions in Southeast Asia, the growing appearance of lawlessness as a lifestyle, the astonishing growth of American debt, the decline of American education, an energy policy based upon self-harm--these are all random problems plucked from the forest of the issues facing what we call American leadership. So it's reassuring to see this insightful thought content from the Vice President, the proverbial one-heartbeat-away:

"So I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future."

Personal Responsibility

Hannah-Jones meets von Daniken
Hannah-Jones has been showered with the highest awards the American intelligentsia can bestow, including a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “genius grant,” an endowed chair in “Race and Journalism” at Howard University, and an entire Center for Journalism and Democracy at said school, which will fund her in producing a next generation of imitators of her approach to historical truth. These accolades are based entirely on the 1619 Project. Hannah-Jones, who was scarcely known before the publication of the project, has done little else since.--McLaughlin

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Capitalism’s edge was in putting many minds to work with the freedom to innovate, protected by the rule of law to protect personal and property rights, in place of a small group of planners.--Meltzer

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At the American Economic Association, there were roughly three times as many sessions featuring papers on each of race, gender, and climate as there were sessions on the topics of inflation or growth. For the conference as a whole, that means 13.2 percent of all sessions featured gender issues, 12.6 percent climate, 12.4 percent race, against just 4.4 percent for inflation and growth

Personal Responsibility

Leading artificial intelligence safety researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky has called for a cap on compute power, said GPU sales should be tracked, and believes we should be prepared to blow up rogue data centers. Rogue centers. In China?  Iran?

Yudkowsky, best known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence and research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), has written an article in Time Magazine claiming that humanity's future is in the balance.

"If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter," he said.

He added: "Shut down all the large GPU clusters (the large computer farms where the most powerful AIs are refined). Shut down all the large training runs. Put a ceiling on how much computing power anyone is allowed to use in training an AI system, and move it downward over the coming years to compensate for more efficient training algorithms. No exceptions for governments and militaries. Make immediate multinational agreements to prevent the prohibited activities from moving elsewhere.

"Track all GPUs sold. If intelligence says that a country outside the agreement is building a GPU cluster, be less scared of a shooting conflict between nations than of the moratorium being violated; be willing to destroy a rogue data center by airstrike."

He concluded: "We are not ready. We are not on track to be significantly readier in the foreseeable future. If we go ahead on this everyone will die, including children who did not choose this and did not do anything wrong."

It's nice to hear a renowned expert call for multinational agreements, an outburst of individual responsibility, bombing rogue computer farms anywhere or...we are all gonna die. So it goes when there is an endless cry over myriad extension events. And all we need are miracles.

Cleopatra as The Little Mermaid

Bed Bath and Beyond spent 9 billion dollars on stock buybacks, outsourced everything and when the supply chains slowed, had nothing.

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Satellites, as weapons, trump the American global geographic advantage.

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From Henry II (born 1133) until George I (born 1660), monarchs’ average lifespan was fifty years. But when including childhood mortality of royals, average life expectancy was hardly better than that of commoners tilling fields in Sussex—the high 20s to low 30s—with little to no improvement over these years. Roughly 60 percent of royal children died before the age of five—a rate worse than their subjects.

Cleopatra as The Little Mermaid

There is wisdom in the world's observations of this country. This is from Faisal Abbas' wonderfully titled "Queen Cleopatra is not the Little Mermaid"

The only issue is that Netflix labeled the series as a “docudrama”. This by default means viewers expect it to be as factually accurate as possible. Given that all we know of Cleopatra suggest she was of Macedonian-Greek origins, she would have more accurately been played by a white actress. (So, not even an Arab would have been the most accurate for the role).

This by the way is not my personal view, but it is the informed opinion of Dr. Zahi Hawass, a world’s leading expert on Egyptology. He recently penned a column for Arab News summarizing all the historic evidence that Cleopatra was, in fact, of European — not African — origin.
“Cleopatra was many things, and well deserving of having her story told to modern audiences, but one thing she most definitely was not was black,” he said.

The problem — at least from our perspective — seems to be an intentional attempt to drag a glorified, historical Egyptian icon into the muddy waters of current US divisions.

Director, Tina Gharavi, insinuated ..[the political nature]...in a column for Variety magazine two days ago confessing that the casting was indeed political.
“Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a black actress,” she wrote.
“The hunt was on to find the right performer to bring Cleopatra into the 21st century,” she added.

Excuse me? Cleopatra is believed to have reigned over Egypt between 51 BC and 30 BC — that is where she belongs. If you bring her into the 21st century, then it no longer is a docudrama, but a parody and you might as well have her wearing jeans and a pair of sneakers!

Sunday/Emmaus

 

Data: United Nations Population Fund; Chart: Rahul Mukherjee/Axios

The distribution of people across our planet is changing pretty dramatically, with populations booming in sub-Saharan Africa and shrinking in parts of Europe and East Asia, including China.




Sunday/Emmaus

Today's gospel is the brilliant Road to Emmaus gospel where two of Christ's apostles are discussing Christ's death on their way to the town of Emmaus. They are joined by Christ, whom they do not recognize. He joins the conversation, explains the life and death of Christ, particularly in the context of prophecy.

The travelers reach a point in the road where it seems the new man who joined them is going to go his own way. The men encourage him to continue with them to Emmaus. They eventually recognize him at the breaking of the bread at dinner.

This story is especially interesting in its connection to the Eucharist but what is fascinating is the journey of men, met by Christ whom they do not recognize and the moment where they, the travelers, must initiate the true development and enhancement of their understanding.

Without their positive efforts, Christ will move on alone.