Jimmy Kimmel vs Charlie Kirk

While Charlie Kirk may have been a well-known figure in his  particular arena, he didn't have access to the 1.04 million or more viewers that wise guy Jimmy Kimmel lured in nightly. The frat boys that once tuned in to Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and  Jimmy Fallon made it a point to end their pizza and beer-fueled pre-bed time with an economy sized dose of fraternity humor.

Those circumstances didn't seem to make the TV stars particularly effective in a political sense. Regurgitating jokes written earlier that afternoon might be funny in a post-modern sense but don't seem to have a serious effect on the audience. When is the last time someone attempted to turn off the lights forever on an over-paid bozo that needs a shave?

In a somewhat different circumstance, what if someone like the recently departed Robert Redford or Gene Hackman or David Lynch would have been the subject of criticism or humor on the basis of their perceived failings? 

Empowered Changemakers

 It's university admissions time. The flack people at Hamline University have apparently given up on convincing prospective students that attendance at their school will result in an increase in knowledge or the desired future income. But they can point out that becoming part of this particular student body will give them the tools to effect change. 

As is a familiar tactic in political campaigns, they know that everyone wants changes in something but enumerating examples will enthuse some and repel others. It's one of the most cynical of all propaganda techniques. Any high school graduate that takes the pseudo-message of this billboard seriously needs more than a liberal arts education.  

What Herbert Spencer Would Say

What Herbert Spencer Would Say About The Federal Reserve Reconstruction Fiasco

 

The restoration of two buildings used by the Federal Reserve Bank in Washington, D.C. has ballooned from an initial cost of $1.8 billion to $2.5 billion, according to the Financial Times. People in the media are so unsurprised by this that they attribute it to POTUS Trump's antipathy for the current head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.

A different viewpoint from the past doesn't address this situation directly but was expressed by a thinker unique in his time or any other, Herbert Spencer, (1820-1903) , who was very critical of the machinations of any form of government. His ideas about situations like the Federal Reserve  follow:

 

                               Herbert Spencer

 If people at large tolerate the extravagance, the stupidity, the carelessness, the obstructiveness, daily exemplified in the military, naval, and legal administrations, much more will they tolerate them when exemplified in departments which are neither so vitally important nor occupy so large a space in the public mind. The vices of officialism must exist throughout public organizations of every kind, 

 

 

                         

Said By Ike

 “Akin to, and largely responsible for, the sweeping changes in our industrial and military posture; has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution; research has become central; and it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted by, for, or at the direction of, the Federal government. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money, is ever present and gravely to be regarded. In holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific and technological elite.”
 

-President Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address

NASA To Refocus On Space

Sean Duffy, head of the US Dept. of Transportation and acting NASA Administrator said on Aug. 14 that NASA will "move aside" from climate and earth science and concentrate solely on space exploration. 

If the change in emphasis makes sense it should be extended to NASA in its entirety. The 2024 budget of the agency is $24.875 billion. A work force of over 18,000 professionals push the boundaries of science and technology to, as NASA proudly states, "contribute to various projects that aim to explore outer space and further human understanding of our universe."

Yeah, OK. Thanks to the billions of dollars spent in the effort all that there is to show for it are a few moon rocks and some artists' renderings of far away stars. While the accomplishment of going to the moon is perhaps something to produce pride in the simple minded, it hasn't produced any practical benefits for the proles that have involuntarily financed it. Further understanding of our universe, at least further than it goes now, isn't necessary for further human progress. We'll be just fine if we don't know a thing about black holes and stars 700 million light years away. If enough people care about whatever knowledge might be available, let them voluntarily pay for it.

 

ar.inspiredpencil.com      A Moon Rock 

 

700 Million Light Years From Earth

That would be 214.7 parsecs or 4,123 trillion miles, the distance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to an exploding supernova and an adjacent black hole somewhere in the depths of space described here. 

Nothing could possibly be more inconsequential or meaningless to the life of any human on earth, in the past, now, or in any version of the future. The idea that spending by national agencies based on tax receipts for space exploration without genuine democratic approval is wrong.  

 

Defense Dept. Eating Its Own Seed Corn

Frank Kendall, Secretary of the Air Force during several Democratic presidencies, is concerned that reductions in basic science funding to American universities will result in the US population speaking Mandarin in the near future, as he explains in an article for the Military Times.

Academic researchers apply for grants from federal agencies who then award them with funding. In some cases an agency might initiate research by an established program on a subject related to something that is already being studied.

What sort of basic research would be most effective in stemming the advance of the yellow horde waiting to spring their Red command economy on the innocent West? Supersonic aircraft, nuclear carriers and submarines, nuclear weapons, poisonous gases, mind control, robot soldiers,drones, communicable diseases, orbital weapons, Havana syndrome, etc. have already moved from the drawing board to reality. Can we even imagine weaponry of a more "advanced" dimension? In fact, since there are enough nuclear warheads and devices to carry them to targets in the possession of a number of countries, isn't a general war now believed to be national suicide?

It looks like there's a chance for diplomacy to settle some of the big arguments but the less civilized, especially in parts of Africa, are dedicated to the most primitive forms of violence. Is there a chance that enlightened and well-financed American academia could figure out a way to bring peace to a cruel world without blowing a lot of it up?  

 

  

Mermaid Problems

The Little Mermaid, a statue located in the harbor of Copenhagen, Denmark, has for over 100 years been a memorial to the Hans Christen Andersen fairy tale of the same name and the most seen tourist attraction of the city.

 

wikimediacommons The Little Mermaid

In 2006 a Danish restauranteur ordered his own carved larger granite version from a Chinese firm and installed it near the smaller original. After much criticism it was moved a few miles south to Drager Fort, a military installation in 2018, where the Big Mermaid, about 4 meters tall, continued to arouse negative reviews.

 

                The Big Mermaid 

Some critics regard the sculpture as pornographic and an insult to womanhood but that's a matter of opinion, odd in the free-thinking culture of Scandinavia. Does it really look so bad?   

MIT Astrophysicist Deplores Budget Cuts

In an interview with Spanish national on-line medium El Pais, MIT astrophysicist Claude Canizares criticizes the current attempts by the US administration to cut spending on scientific research. 

"[These cuts] will be devastating. First of all, in the workforce: the younger generations who are going to make scientific breakthroughs in the future are being denied the opportunity. And frankly, they’re losing their jobs. [Many young researchers] are going to leave [the U.S.].

[Our country] benefits tremendously from international participants who come to the U.S., get their graduate degrees and then stay on, becoming faculty members at our major universities. The number of [American] Nobel Prize winners who were born outside of the U.S. is very large. But now, [among our] postdoctoral scientists who are very promising, [many] are going back to Europe to pursue their careers because of the uncertainty."

In terms of astrophysics, international participants in that field are used to an American system that is basically a welfare program for stargazers. What they "discover" has no bearing on life on earth and contributes nothing to the average or even well-educated person now or in the foreseeable future.  Knowing, in the way that astrophysicists seem to know about things happening many thousands of light years away and eons into the past, can't possibly be configured into knowledge that will make things better at the present time or for future generations. 

If astrophysics graduate students leave the US for positions in Europe or the Orient, will there be a fountain of funding available for them? Will the Germans and Chinese gleefully ignore their own terrestrial problems in favor of concentrating on deep space? If the US decreases its contributions to space studies will other countries be willing or able to take up the slack?

It might be possible that if the search for meaning in the cosmos is really so important, the tech billionaires of the quantum age will engrave their names in history by financing the project. But their contribution to the post-digital world is gathering and using the money of others, not their own. 

In any event, space exploration and astrophysics isn't going to get any cheaper. The US has gone as far as it should in being the main financial force in the quixotic investigation of the universe. It's time to get back to earth.

Immigrant Legal Issues

 According to the AP in an article published on July 23:

 

 The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment says that all people born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to U.S. jurisdiction, are citizens.

Justice Department attorneys argue that the phrase “subject to United States jurisdiction” in the amendment means that citizenship isn’t automatically conferred to children based on their birth location alone.

The states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — argue that ignores the plain language of the Citizenship Clause as well as a landmark birthright citizenship case in 1898 where the Supreme Court found a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by virtue of his birth on American soil.

Trump’s order asserts that a child born in the U.S. is not a citizen if the mother does not have legal immigration status or is in the country legally but temporarily, and the father is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. At least nine lawsuits challenging the order have been filed around the U.S.

________________________________________________

In all of the hullabaloo over immigration and citizenship, no one ever seems to mention the requirements of the US Selective Service.  Males in the US between 18 and 26 years of age are required to register with the Selective Service System, just in case the federal government needs some involuntary cannon fodder. This is true not only for US citizens, but also for immigrants, documented and undocumented, residing in the US and its territories. This means that any undocumented alien in the age group that has not registered for the draft is a felon, subject to a fine of up to $250,000 or 5 years imprisonment or both. The last person indicted for this felony was Terry Kuelper, on January 23, 1986. The charge was later withdrawn before trial. Nine individuals have actually spent time behind bars for failure to register, the longest being for 6 months. As of today it will be 29 years since anyone has been prosecuted for failing to register with the Selective Service System.

The Selective Service is still in business, tasked with maintaining an information base of young men who might be needed in an unspecified emergency and with a multi-million dollar budget, and the law is still on the books but is being completely ignored. If there isn't going to be any enforcement, it should be erased and the agency terminated. One can only speculate on the number of foreign felons wandering about the country with no draft card but statistically there must be many. 

The International Court Of Justice Has Spoken

Thank goodness Reuters has its eye on the ball and is keeping track of the decisions of the International Court Of Justice at the Hague, Netherlands. Judge Yuji Iwasawa and 14 other members of the United Nations court have decided that  "Greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally caused by human activities which are not territorially limited."

Ten years ago 190 countries signed the Paris Agreement to take actions that would limit global temperature increases to 1.5 C. The signatures on the agreement don't seem to have meant much.

The finding is only a preliminary move and what follows isn't binding, ie. internal combustion automobiles won't be immediately banned and hydrocarbon power won't be replaced entirely by solar  panels and wind turbines. Countries that allow the continuation of green house production won't be invaded by electrically-powered UN tanks. They will, however, be frowned upon by the compliant nations, should there be any.

Advanced societies are dominated by mathematics and numbers. In the case of climate anxiety the figure 1.5C has been adopted as a line not to be crossed. Like the 6 foot social distance of the Covid paranoia, it's needed to have a number to legitimize the theory. Why not .75C or 3C? Furthermore, how is a temperature increase measured over the entire surface of the earth simultaneously? That really doesn't seem possible. Doesn't science, genuine science, include the quality of predictability? If a glass of pure water is placed in a freezer with a temperature of 0F we know that ice will be the result, always. While science and technology have allowed the prediction of weather into the near future there's been no success in doing so over the many decades that are involved in climate change. 

If the International Court of Justice wanted to achieve something of true value they would attempt to eliminate the barbaric practice of circumcision of infant boys.

Chapter 2. Chief Justice Iwasawa made a 2 hour speech indicating that a signatory failure to rein in fossil fuel production and subsidies could result in "full reparations to injured states in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction provided that the general conditions of the law of state responsibility are met." How exactly the injuries and reparations are determined isn't specified.

The fifteen justices are:

Yuji Iwasawa    President                           Japan

Julia Sebutinde   Vice President            Uganda

Peter Tomka                                         Slovakia

Ronny Abraham                                      France

Abdulgawi Yusuf                                    Somalia

Xue Hanqin                                               China

Dalveer Bhandari                                        India

Georg Nolte                                            Germany

Hilary Charlesworth                               Australia

Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant                 Brazil

Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo Verduzco      Mexico

Sarah Cleveland                                          USA

Bogdan Aurescu                                          Romania

Dire Tladi                                              South Africa

Mahmoud Daifallah Hmoud                          Jordan

Phillipe Gautier                                           Belgiuim

They will apparently decide if one country has released enough green-house gases to negatively affect another country and what the compensation for that will be.

The United States withdrew from compulsory ICJ jurisdiction in 1986.

 

 

 

A New Solar System

Infant star HOPS-315 is in the process of producing orbiting rocky planets similar to those surrounding the sun that shines on humans, according to astronomers from the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and others at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The newly discovered star is between 100,000 and 200,000 years old, just a baby in cosmic terms. Information gathered from this star in the neighborhood of Orion may help astronomers to determine how our own star and planets formed.

 

 Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al.

Once studies have come to scientific conclusions about this event astronomers will be able to _________? What will be the use of the information gathered? Will it somehow improve life on earth in ways yet to be understood? When it is known for sure that earth, Venus, Mars, etc. were formed in the same way will the investment made in astronomical research be put to use in any practical manner? Will analysis of something 420 parsecs (1369.67 light years) from the Atacama Large Millimeter-submillmeter Array in Chile actually modify any aspect of life for anyone but an astronomer in this corner of the cosmos? Can there be justification for the use of mandatory confiscation of taxes from the general public for research that has no bearing on their lives and never will.   

Rope As A Symbol Of Hate And Discrimination

A teapot tempest has blown through the storied halls of the University of Michigan University Hospital after an employee reported finding a piece of rope knotted in such a manner as to terrorize somebody. An investigation by University police determined that the knot was made as practice in the tying of one used in sport fishing, the "uni-knot".


It's interesting that people who seem to be unable to identify knots that have been in common use for ages should be able to determine that any particular knot has some cultural significance. In this case, and many others like it, a "noose" is deemed to be somehow threatening to particular ethnic minorities. In reality, a common method of execution of all shades of criminals by state authorities through the centuries has been by hanging. The knot used to form the noose used for this punishment is quite similar to the Uni Knot:


While hanging has gone out of style as a method of execution by state authorities, it's still a legal potentiality in both Delaware and Washington. The last such hanging took place in Delaware in 1996.

 

Billy Bailey, hung in 1996 for the robbery/murder of a Delaware couple in 1979.

The Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, authorized the mass hanging of 39 Sioux Indians in Mankato, Minnesota in 1862 in retribution for their part in a short-lived rebellion against the white invaders taking over their land.

 

The Omaha Platform 1892

 

Preamble To The “Omaha Platform” of the People’s Party, Presented By Ignatius Donnelly, July 4, 1892, Omaha, Nebraska.

PREAMBLE

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people.

Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise, and enslave industry. A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free men.

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the world; our annual agricultural productions

amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars' worth of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that if given power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation, in accordance with the terms of our platform.

We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.

While our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every proposition which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous, and temperate, we nevertheless regard these questions, important as they are, as secondary to the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not only our individual prosperity but the very existence of free institutions depend; and we ask all men to first help us to determine whether we are to have a republic to administer before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move forward until every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.

Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

The Ali Cosmic Microwave Background Polarisation Telescope

Eight years of effort on the Tibetan plateau have completed the construction of the Ali Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Telescope, a joint project of China, the US and 16 international research institutes, including Stanford University. It's located in the Ali prefecture of Tibet at an elevation of 17,220 ft. above sea level, which would put it number four in altitude to the highest peaks in Alaska. 

The apparatus is designed to detect "ripples in space time" from the dawn of the universe and to show how it all came about. What success in this endeavor would mean to the current or future population of planet Earth isn't explained.

Could discoveries made through use of this hugely expensive machinery make possible or necessary changes in life on earth? Would knowing for sure the details of the origins of the universe, should that even be possible, spur changes in the daily schedule of ordinary humans? Or is this an example of the profligacy academia enjoys in using advanced technology for employment and amusement?

The advanced telescopes are quite specialized in their design and use. Now under construction in the capital of astronomy, Chile, is the Giant Magellan Telescope, scheduled for completion in 2030. It will concentrate on nearer and more contemporary astronomical features.     

Copper Theft

The importance of copper, now and in the future, was mentioned here a few days ago. It's a significant element in all industrial activities, and particularly in the production of chips and ancillaries of GAI data centers. There's speculation that drought produced by climate change will decrease mining production and make copper expensive.

It turns out that drought isn't the only problem with copper. As it's value increases, as it has, criminal elements are stealing it, by the truckload. It's then resold to others in the salvage business who pass it along, at a profit, to refiners where it re-enters the commercial market. At some point this issue will be resolved by considering copper to be such a high-value item that it will be guarded when not installed, although thieves steal it from operating streetlights and out of buildings, as they have for years.

Economists make the point that in a disaster situation, such as a tornado destroying a part of the countryside, it only makes sense that the local price of gasoline would go up. This means that only the people that really need the petrol will then buy it, a kind of sensible economic rationing.

If this is actually true, it might in a larger sense, be the case that theft of copper is a more efficient method of distributing it than the usual process. More fingers will be in the copper pie but the total cost they share can never be more than the price of copper itself. The only losers will be the victims of the theft and those spending the money to guarantee its safety. It will also be a boon to mines and smelters in the US closed by the EPA that will return to operation if the copper is really needed.   

Surgery Robots

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have found through an actual experiment that robots could be used in surgery. A robot performed a flawless gall bladder removal on a patient guided only by AI input. The patient made no complaints, being a model of a human.

It's easy to accept that there's a real future for AI in medical diagnostics, since that aspect of medicine is already immersed in digital input. The point of the research must be that a. there aren't enough humans presently capable of surgery and unlikely to be more in the future; b. it's more cost effective to build surgery robots than educate humans in the field; c. a trained robot could work 24 hours per day seven days a week: c. the robot would demand no compensation for its work but it's likely that its owner would; d. being machinery the robots will be continuously technically improved and replaced by better robots.

Certainly there would be no more operations performed by surgeons with hangovers or the lingering effects of an argument with a housemate. But in reality is there an advantage in the outcomes? Will people survive surgery and live better lives if  their knees are replaced by machines? Will heart surgery become a routine affair with robotic surgeons? If something is possible does that mean it should be done?  

Drought And Copper

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, self-described as a "multinational professional services network" and one of the four largest international accounting firms, climate change indicated by drought will put at risk a third of global chip production by 2035. The copper mining process takes about 86 times as much water by weight to produce one unit of copper, says the accounting firm.

This overlooks the fact that practically all copper that has been put to use in the past is recycled and that substitutions for copper have been found in some industries.

Presently, only the copper mines in Chile, which produce 7% of the world's copper supply, are threatened by drought but the future could be grim for the production of chips needed for cell phones and other consumer products as well as AI data centers.

So what would this mean? In the case of the microscopic copper conductors used in AI data centers basic economics tells us that the price of the chips would increase and that some data centers wouldn't be able to function economically. Or that technology would come up with a work around. Or that droughts wouldn't increase by 2035.

The AI data center drum beat, and the AI concept itself, doesn't seem to have an indicated end point. How many data centers does the country and world really need to function efficiently? How much valuable raw materials like copper and electricity can be devoted to what amounts to an enormous digital filing system? 

While practically all Americans have a pocket-size computer that connects them to the internet, it seems to be a fact that the same is now true of AI, at least in its preliminary form. Will there be a choice necessary between copper as used for piping and copper used in AI chips and electricity pumped into data centers as opposed to  peoples' home lighting and washing machines? What's most important?    

A Fraud?

The fellows at the Issues & Insights website are speculating that the existential threat of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere isn't just a scientific error but rather a calculated lie by parties with political and financial interests in the fable, that it's about power and money. 

One doesn't need to be very intelligent or educated to realize that climate, over the long haul, definitely changes. Incredible changes have occurred in geologically relatively short periods of time when few if any humans were around to release CO2 and greenhouse gases into the sky. About 9000 years ago, the blink of an eye in the planet's history, much of  what's the northern US was covered in the mile-high sheet of a continental glacier. As the mantle of ice melted it left many signs of its former presence, glacial Lake Agassiz, for instance, its beaches and pot holes that are now part of the Red River Valley and its neighboring areas in North Dakota and Minnesota.

 

 North Dakota Mineral Resources 

The existence of glacial Lake Agassiz and its disappearance has been known and accepted by geologists since the early 19th century. It is just one of many examples of incontrovertible evidence of dramatic climate change over a short period of time with no contribution by humankind. Life went on.

This is no secret and those hoping to use climate change as a vehicle to power and wealth are even more aware of the truth than the typical person.   

Tibetan Education

The paywall-protected Wall Street Journal published a front page article on June 30, 2025 titled "China Uses Kids To Gut Tibetan Ways". It describes how the Chinese government has, through its educational system, tried, with mixed results to initiate Tibetan children into Chinese language and culture.

Tibet is an autonomous region of China, whatever that means, and during the past twenty years its students have been the focus of efforts to make them part of the Chinese communist system. This includes boarding schools, instruction by Mandarin-speaking teachers, of children at a very early age.

One Tibetan lamented that the children returned to their homes to visit "with a different way of thinking". 

"They are brainwashed by Chinese thoughts and propaganda," he said.

One could edit out the words "China" and "Chinese" in this article and replace them with "United States" and the story would still ring true. This is exactly what the US has done and continues to do  with the indigenous population of the continental US, Alaska, Hawaii and other slivers of its empire. Unlike the US example, the Chinese don't appear to have made a serious effort to exterminate the Tibetans. From the beginning, the American Puritan political regime worked to literally kill as many native Americans as possible. The children of those pushed off their homes to inhospitable backwaters of the continent were sent to boarding schools to assimilate them into the Yankee consumer capitalist culture. Where schools were established on the miserable reservations English was the language of instruction. Boarding schools enrolled children of many different tribes and languages, English was the only common language of instruction. 

In what may have been a temporary benefit, in bush Alaska no public schools were provided for natives or whites until the Molly Hooch court case required them.

The Wall Street Journal should be embarrassed by this article which ignores an identical and even worse situation in its own backyard.   

It's Sweltering!

Reuters, always concerned with the inevitable destruction of man on earth by growing heat tells us of the first round matches at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club being played in "sweltering" heat, "soaring above 30 C". The sweltering heat of 30C corresponds to a temperature measured in fahrenheit units as 86F. According to one weather service the temperature in London may even "soar" to 88F later today.

But this is London, UK, a very small spot in geographic terms and it's temperature at any given moment doesn't reflect that of other locations only a relatively small distance away.

While athletic activity at this temperature is likely to produce perspiration, it's certainly no form of torture or even great discomfort. Maybe the fact that it's slightly unusual for it to be this warm in the UK, surrounded as it is by the ocean allows for such comments. 

We should be quick to note that during the summer months few residents of the warmer temperate regions of the world take their vacations in places known to be less sweltering. For instance Chicagoans are unlikey to spend a month in Nome, Alaska, currently 47F. An Italian from Naples probably won't haul his family to Hammerfest, Norway where it's 55F at this moment. Or try Hobart, Tasmania, 37F right now. In fact, one reason that those locations are sparsely populated is that they are generally uncomfortable from a climate standpoint.

 US industrial development is taking place in the southern, warmer regions rather than the uncomfortable northern plains and Rocky Mountains. A temperature of 88F just isn't all that hot.  The Disney theme parks are both in the very southernmost parts of the country. There won't be a Disney Planet in Havre, MT.

Fort Lee, Virginia Gets Its Name Back

Fort Lee, Virginia, named after Confederate Genera Robert E. Lee, was briefly called Fort Gregg-Adams during the Biden administration but is now once again known as Fort Lee. The Lee in question was a member of the post War Between the States units formed of former slaves in 1866 for the express purpose of destroying the native Americans.

The honored individual, Pvt. Fitz Lee, received the Medal of Honor for heroism in action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

No record seems to have been kept of the number of native Americans killed defending their homes by Pvt. Lee and his "buffalo soldiers".  

A New Discovery For James Webb

It just keeps coming. The busiest telescope anywhere, the James Webb Space Telescope, has identified an exoplanet that has never been noticed before. Maybe that's because it's a relatively new planet,  about 6 million years old, but is only  110 light years away from earth , orbiting the star Antlia.

 "Webb opens a new window - in terms of mass and the distance of a planet to the star - of exoplanets that had not been accessible to observations so far. This is important to explore the diversity of exoplanetary systems and understand how they form and evolve," said astronomer Anne-Marie Lagrange of the French research agency CNRS and LIRA/Observatoire de Paris, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

How is it important to explore the diversity of exoplanetary systems and understand how they form and evolve? If the understanding actually occurs, then what? Studies that take place outside the solar system, or even in it, are academic exercises with no foreseeable utility for ordinary earthlings. The knowledge of an exoplanet has no bearing on anything on earth except the activities of researchers and manufacturers of their equipment. It's a hugely expensive and meaningless thing that's basically an extension of other smaller frauds that do affect the general population. Radon abatement, ozone depletion, and hydrocarbon elimination are prominent examples.

Knowledge that's been acquired by humans through the centuries is ignored in favor of the novelties of current academia. No one reads even 19th century thinking of philosphers and scientists like Herbert Spencer, Henri Bergson, Henry George and others. The findings of astro-physicists will do nothing to improve the life of anyone on earth now or in the future.

Furthermore, there are many things that we  don't understand here on earth. Our efforts, and money, should be directed at solving these problelms.   , opens new tab.

Trump and Names

Perhaps Americanos take President Trump a little too seriously. His verbal contortions don't seem to be quite statesman-like or even sensible at times.

An example is his changing the name of a large Atlantic bay from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. It doesn't seem to have caught on with the general population of either country or the world at large but.

Trump's grasp of world history is undetermined but he's missing something. The ayatollahs of Iran now control a piece of geography that was once one of the most powerful nations on earth. That was Persia, not called Iran until 1935. The locals like the name Iran better.

For 21 years, until his assassination in 465 BC, Xerxes I was the emperor of the  Achaemenid Empire, now known as Iran. In a 1880s fit of listing conformity the sleepy Midwestern city of Minneapolis needed a name beginning in X to fit into the names of streets like DuPont, Cofax and Humboldt, arranged alphabetically to make urban navigation easier. With few names beginning in X, Xerxes became the pick and remains so to this day. If there is life after death, perhaps Xerxes sits on a cloud and marvels that his name remains, thousands of years later, on a street on the other side of the world.

Rest assured that there is no Reagan Avenue in Tehran. So why hasn't the president ordered the name change of a street in Minneapolis to something more American? That may not be possible in a solidly Democratic neighborhood like the Athens of the Plains but it could well serve as another rallying point for him and his followers. And Xerxes was hardly an example of the  democratically-elected leader that inspires Minnesotans.

 

A Big Black Hole

Gaia BH-3 is the name given to the largest black hole to be found in our Milky Way galaxy, said to be about 33 times the size of our sun and 2000 light years away. The information enabling this discovery was obtained by European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope, launched in 2013 and in operation until earlier this year. 

The telescope analyzed the precise positions, speeds and trajectories of over 2 billion of the most visible stars and sent the figures to earth in four batches.

Now that the existence of this immense black hole is known, earthlings should be careful to avoid it.

 

 

Agence France-Presseanddpa

University Administrative Bloat

In a rare instance of commenting on serious financial issues the on-line publication of a major US research university has published an interesting article that basically outlines the reasons for high tuition fees.

The foremost of the reasons is a steady increase in the number of administrative positions created in the recent past and the increase in compensation awarded.

It mentions that increased enrollment has made for more student advising services and more emphasis on supporting student mental health. Are students examined for mental health problems before being accepted or is the university experience causing them?   

"There has been a shift away from paper forms and toward digital documents and accessibility screenings, This requires staff to handle processing and form development." Ergo, digital work is more labor intensive than composing and printing as it was done in the past. Who knew?

On the rare occasion when a major university administrator or professor is shown the door it's regarded as a calamity. Blue collar employees that maintain state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure are made redundtant every day and laid off.

It must be remembered that every dollar that goes to a university, be it from a state budget, government grant, tuition, patent award, etc. in the end goes to a human individual, an overpaid, decorative president for example.

Perhaps the argument could be made that compensation for university administrators should match that of similar business figures or the university people would run away to the commercial world. That doesn't seem to be a valid analysis. It's more likely that administrators look at dog-eat-dog capitalism as a stressful environment that makes their campus life look idyllic. The route seldom goes in the reverse direction. Universities inevitably get their admin people from somewhere else in the higher educational environment, not the business world. 

It's Actually Very Cold Now

 

 the Washington Post

Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection pointed out something that might interest people swimming in their own perspiration for a few days this week. According to a scientific study by reputable researchers, earth's climate is now as cool as it's been in 485 million years. Furthermore, mammals have never faced temperatures as cold as they are now. 

Climate Change Battle Ends In Victory

And all it took was some pink paint. The paint was smeared on a Pablo Picasso art work, L'hetaire, (1901) hanging in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. 

 

twitter.com 

Marcel, a young fellow agitated by the forest fires further west in Canada, believes that the recent abnormally warm temperatures in the area are an indication of a changing climate that governments aren't doing enough to remedy. Like others with a similar belief, he seems to think that defacing an obscure piece of art will arouse enough righteous indignation to spur action.

This is an example of a new development in western culture, that technology exists or can be found to solve any perceived problem.

Formerly, a very hot day was thought to be simply a weather extreme, to be temporarily endured until it cooled off, as it always has. The high temperature today in Regina, Sask. is predicted to be 62F with rain, actually kind of cool  for the area at this time of the year.

Now a secular religion seems to have been established that worships at the altar of academia/science and their government, media and business allies investigating things that aren't even real problems. The idea that the day-to-day climate of the entire planet can be determined with technological techniques is preposterous. In the many centuries that humans have wandered the earth they've not been able to induce peaceful behavior among their fellows, whom they understand fairly well and can circulate among at will. The birth of things like jet planes, satellites, microwave ovens, video streaming and cosmetic surgery gives urban barbarians the idea that something as complex as the earth's atmosphere can be modified just as the conditions in their bedrooms might be. A splash of pink paint could be all that's needed to set the thing in motion.

On the other hand, how many people are even aware of the existence of L"hetaire? How does defacing a hundred and twenty-four year old painting advance climate science? In fact, how many people will ever be aware of this juvenile act or remember it? Perhaps one of the gigantic artificial intelligence complexes will maintain a file of art defacement activity through the years.  

The Immigration Thing

Immigration has rapidly become the foremost issue of the era for western countries. Ostensibly, at least for now, immigrants are accepted/tolerated in the economically successful and advanced nations because they are fleeing poverty and undemocratic, failing authoritarian governments. 

Of course, it's not that simple. Like everything else, politics is a game of numbers. In the last federal election in the US, the numbers didn't work out in favor of the left, at least in part because of the candidates presented. One way to rectify this situation is to civilize millions of immigrants, believing that they are automatically going to follow the dictates of the left.

That tactic might work in the short term but it's a big gamble. Rather than encourage the third world dissatisfied to reshape their own political and economic circumstances, developed countries assist them in moving to the west. Foreign students in western universities don't return to their home countries and change the politics and economies. They either stay in the west or take positions at home where they don't upset the system.

It turns out that for the interested parties, it is easier to ignore the laws concerning the admission of non-citizens than to change those laws. Enforcement of the laws is considered draconian.

What is the position of the governments and populations of the countries supplying illegal immigrants? No one from the media ever discusses the subject. If millions of Americans were moving to India or Australia or even Canada there would be much US speculation about how to staunch the flow. If it's been the goal of the US to spread democracy and the capitalist free market world-wide, as was supposedly the case during the Cold War, the effort has been a failure in many ways.

Isn't it possible that a substantial invasion of immigrants with a different cultural background will change the Overton window of American politics? Won't there be individuals among them with political ambitions that will use the numbers of immigrants to affect US elections in their favor and change the culture of the country?         

Cosmic Dawn

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University are leading a study involving four microwave telescopes that are attempting to detect evidence of the "Big Bang" from 13 billion years ago. The telescopes are sited in the Chilean Andes but are capable of doing their job without being in space. The results have been encouraging, apparently.

The question remains, however, in what the usefulness might be of any possible information regarding an event thought to have occurred long before the earth even existed.   NASA, which operates on taxpayer funding, is paying for this research. It's difficult to see how this expense might benefit the man on the cul de sac. It seems that it might be more appropriate to invest in research that might enable highway paving to last more than two or three years before being ripped up and replaced.

 

 physics-astronomy.jhu.edu

The Un-elected Judge That Decides

 

aipla.org 

Susan Illston, Juris Doctor, Stanford Law School 1973 and an appointee  to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1995 has issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting President Trump from “reorganizing” or “reducing” staff at 22 executive branch agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (annual budget, $1.8 trillion), the Social Security Administration (annual budget, $1.5 trillion), the Department of Veterans Affairs (annual budget, $350 billion), and the Treasury Department (annual budget, $1.3 trillion} according to the Brownstone Institute in a recent article. All executive branch employees work for the head of the executive branch, which is the president of the country and the judicial branch has no say in the matter. No doubt there's a procedure to remedy this kind of judicial activision and we should be seeing it in operation soon. Maybe.

The Northvolt Fiasco

From Apollo News:  "More than one billion euros of subsidies and loans – 700 million euros from Germany alone – have now disappeared into thin air. Again, a project that was jazzed by politics, promising prestige and shown the voter's political competence, has failed crashing due to reality. The broad silence of the North Voltage case in politics fits into time: No one dares open criticism of the systemic failure of interventionism, certainly not on the Green Deal,EU-Europe should actually lead to a new era of clean production and free green energy."

The plan to build a Northvolt factory in northern Germany has not only been abandoned but the entire business, including its flagship facility in Sweden has gone into bankruptcy, leading to the unemployment of 2800.

The article is incorrect, however, in stating that the .7 billions of Euros "disappeared into thin air". That's not what ill spent money does. It has gone into the accounts of the highest levels of management, bankruptcy attorneys, suppliers of equipment, contractors hired to build infrastructure and so on. Certainly the principals involved in the project did not enjoy the financial success they might have if their dream had been realized but none of them will be begging on street corners either. Politicians don't worry about these kinds of failures since they don't have a personal interest in the huge sums involved. Subordinating business decisions to political visions is a recipe for financial disaster. 

 

Francesca Gino

Sure, it's of little interest to the toiling masses when a tenured academic is found to be a dishonest fraud. But in this case it's a major professor and researcher at prestigious Harvard Univ. with a million dollar salary. It took over four years to come to a conclusion but Francesca Gino was eventually fired for massaging her research data to reflect her conclusions.

 

current-affairs.org

No one could remember such an inglorius event ever occurring before  in the nearly spotless history of the oldest university in the US. 

Once again, academics that use mendacity to get grants are guilty of fraud, just as lying on a loan application or overstating the value of mortgaged property. If the grant money originated as federal funds it is a federal offense. The lady should be expecting, and others committing similar deeds, to spend some time in the big federal study hall, perhaps reading up on ethics. 

 

Authoritarian

As is usually the case, media mimics hear a word new to them and they all try to use it every day. The new word now is "authoritarian". 

CNN's Brian Stelter: "For the most part, you have California Democrats saying, hey, it's the Trump administration that's trying to be inflammatory here. Don't fall for it. I know some other senators as well. Democratic Senator Brian Schatz calling this, quote, "authoritarian madness,"....

According to the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary, synonyms for the adjective "authoritarian" are:

1.  of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority.

2.  of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.

In reality, the corporate state embodies blind submission to its authority and the many functionaries that exercise it. These range from a local patrolman telling a driver to move his illegally parked car to nine black-robed justices making a decision that affects citizens from Prudhoe Bay to Guam.

It's likely that there's no longer any novelty in describing a political or cultural adversary as a fascist, commie or Marxist. "Authoritarian" could easily describe the health inspector that decides if your new pizza parlor is satisfactory for the customers' safety, on what date you are permitted to catch fish in a certain location, the features that must be present on a bicycle before it can be commercially offered for sale. 

The primacy of authority is simply something that goes along with all governments.   

Government Agency Abolished

It's been mentioned here that the US State Department has financed an entity called the Global Engagement Center since 2016, ostensibly to combat the supposed proliferation of misinformation with a negative effect on US interests. A change in US politics and extensive criticism led the State Dept. to terminate the effort in Dec. 2024.

Allegations of censorship, particularly in the response to the Covid plague, were a major factor. The closing of a govt. agency is a rare event and this one seems to be significant. A government agency with even a peripheral focus on free speech flies in the face of democracy. It's efforts were concentrated on digital social media, dead tree communications no longer being an object of concern since they are now considered obsolete.

Governments in other nations, Germany for instance, fight "misinformation" in a much more draconian manner. Economic minister Robert Habeck was referred to as an idiot by a pensioner which ultimately led to large fine and a jail sentence.

 

Techno Issues

It's been mentioned before but depending on technocracy for solutions to serious problems brings along its own sets of problems. There's many examples that never see the light of day but the latest one, the impersonation of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on the phone, is going to need some repair. Her nemesis could have ordered a pizza with anchovies from some unsanitary ghetto parlor delivered to innocent congressional interns. Then what?

As people lean more and more on equipment and processes beyond their "complexity horizon" the chances for real disaster increase dramatically. Just ask the Hamas communications experts on how well their pager program worked out. No doubt  publicity has brought the auto-pen guys some badly needed overtime to meet the new demand. The latest rocket explosion is another "what went wrong?" moment. At some time in the very near future an unnecessary self-colliding car will squash a group of school children.

It's obvious that the never-ending evolution of mysterious and dangerous technology and behavior needs to be re-evaluated to see if the risks involved are really necessary.    

Rachel Hardeman

Rachel Hardeman, until recently the  the director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota, is a member of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2024. Unfortunately, in what's become a frequent development in academia world, she plagierized the work of a fellow researcher, Bridgette Davis, in a submittal for a grant from  the NIH. While Davis's article was written in 2019 she didn't realize until recently that the Hardeman work was almost a verbatim copy of her own. Hardeman has since resigned. 

Since Hardeman's departure the University of Minnesota has decided to close the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity.

What are the consequences for using fraud to apply for federal funds? Are academics ineligible for prosecution when lying to obtain research grants? How much effort do universities exert in guaranteeing the truth of applications for grants? Why isn't Hardeman out on bail right now? 

 

Apollo News Translation

By Max Roland

 A statue of Venus must be removed – it discriminates against women, says an equal opportunities officer. Institutionalized feminism has finally closed the great circle between Islamism, the Middle Ages, and "progressive" moral terror.

 "Nuditas criminalis" – criminal nudity. This is how the European Middle Ages largely viewed the sculptures of the ancient world. The Romans and Greeks celebrated human beauty, but in the "Dark Ages" it fell victim to ecclesiastical dogma.

Over hundreds of years, we have slowly but surely left such things behind us. From the Renaissance to the Neoclassical period, Europe not only revived the art and architectural styles of antiquity, but also gradually buried the religiously prudish narrow-mindedness of the Middle Ages. Or so it was thought. But this narrow-mindedness is making a comeback, albeit under different auspices.

Where the priest once stood, there now stands the equal opportunities officer – but the fury of a regressive prudishness remains essentially the same. The case of the "Venus de Medici" – an ancient statue that has become a political issue – demonstrates that modern regressive feminism and everything that is often summarized under a term like "woke madness" now seems like a fundamentalist, religious, medieval dogma.

A bronze replica of this Roman statue has now been removed from a federal office because an equal opportunities officer was bothered by the depiction of the naked Roman goddess of love. There were allegedly complaints. The statue may be incompatible with the Federal Equal Opportunities Act, according to a report by Bild (read more).heremore).

 There's nothing sexist about this statue, of course: The Venus de Medici is about as misogynistic as Michelangelo's David is misogynistic. No one would ever argue the latter—but the Venus becomes a political issue. A scandal.

Behind this lies an ideology that, like in the Middle Ages, places prudishness and moralism above all else. Its illogical dogmatism could almost be considered a religion. It calls itself "progressive," but it is anything but. It is, in fact, so regressive that, strictly speaking, such an equation does an injustice even to the historical Middle Ages.

When an "equal opportunities officer" suddenly acts the way a Saudi Arabian morality watchdog would, it's called a "full circle moment"—we as a society have regressed. Yet this is precisely the core of woke madness and regressive fundamentalist feminism: a yesterday's prudishness that could also fit into Taliban Afghanistan. They would have removed the Venus statue from one of their offices just as a federal equal opportunities officer did.

The mechanisms behind this are the same as in fundamentalist Islam—the immediate association of nudity, especially female nudity, with sexuality and sinfulness. This logic culminates in the hijab, the niqab, and the burqa. Modern feminism has long since reached the point of absurdly turning the headscarf, imposed on women, into a symbol of "empowerment."

The dogma is the same: Here, modern feminism and Islamism join hands. Strangely enough, they also join hands in the total sexualization of the female body. It no longer has anything to do with what we understand as Western values. This postmodern nihilism ends not in liberation and equality, but in the iconoclastic moral terror of a dark past.

Throughout history, those who toppled statues and banished works of art were never the torchbearers of freedom and progress, but rather their gravediggers. From the excesses of the Reformation to the National Socialist and Communist concept of art to Islamism, those who censored, removed, and outlawed art with virtue and dogma behind them were and are always the enemies of freedom and the thwarters, even the reversals, of progress.

 The Equal Opportunities Officer specifically responsible for this issue probably just wanted to prove she was working with her rebellion against the Venus statue—after all, she's one of dozens of Equal Opportunities Officers who have to do something all day. Instead of institutionalizing moral terrorism, these officials could be given more meaningful work. It would be desperately needed, given these excesses.

 

christianvonholst.de

Galaxy News

Who are the artists that provide the pictures used as illustrations for media articles about galactic activity taking place billions of years ago and a similar distance away? One must assume that their work is based on either visible versions acquired from telescope analysis or verbal descriptions provided by astronomers. If the source of the images are available to the astronomers to look at themselves and then pass them along  to artists, why not just use the initial images? 

theroyalheirpost

If you've taken the trouble to leave the couch on a cloudless night and gaze into the depths of the sky you'll see, just as every human in history has, an uncountable number of stars. In fact, you are seeing the very same stars that proto-humans once saw many thousands of years ago, in the same positions they are today. 

The modern proliferation of various telescopes has allowed researchers to assume a position corresponding to the astronomers of antiquity who used their familiarity with the cosmos to hold positions of importance in society that usually included a place in government and religion. Today's astronomers must be satisfied with a say in dispersal of research funding and a sinecure in a field where they are the ultimate authority of essentially useless information. 

Eleven NASA projects may not be funded

According to on-line NASA cheerleader Big Think the stupendous sums necessary to investigate various aspects of the universe millions of light years away may not be realized because of "unprecedented, ill-motivated budget cuts." They point out that NASA isn't just exploring space, it also  "includes Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics",  the mastery of which our current crop of urban barbarians needs to keep the balance low on their credit card accounts. Ill-motivated budget cuts are the same as lack of money or the realization that the money needed is better spent on other things.

 

 

                                    NASA

An example, PRAXyS, or the Polarimeter for Relativistic Astrophysical X-ray Sources, is a small explorer/mission of opportunity that uses an X-ray telescope to explore how space’s shape and curvature has been distorted by black holes and neutron stars, along with their associated nearby magnetic fields. It's important that the distortions caused by black holes, neutron stars and magnetic fields be analyzed, probably to determine their potential for war in space. Only people engaged in this research are even capable of a basic understanding of it which their income depends upon. The general public doesn't know if they're successful or not. Much of NASA is dealing with subjects closely akin to Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Whatever they discover will be of zero use to humans now or in the future.