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.