"On September 5, 1942, United States Navy Petty Officer First Class Charles Jackson French, of Omaha Nebraska, swam through the night for 6 - 8 hours pulling a raft of 15 wounded sailors with a rope around his stomach through shark-infested waters after the USS Gregory was hit pic.twitter.com/p4bdlUHxn0
— Jerry Whitney (@theharpoonman) April 24, 2021
Capitalism isn’t about money, it’s about liberty.
— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) April 26, 2021
Capitalism isn’t about greed, it’s about choice.
Capitalism isn’t wanting more, it’s having your own.
Capitalism isn’t hoarding up, it’s investing in.
Capitalism isn’t even a system, it’s people.
Memorial Day is the day when I weep the most. Not because I am a weepy person. But it is the day when such wonderful stories of courage and service and duty and love of country and love of fellow soldier all emerge. It is hard not to be moved.
I thought this year, and perhaps going forwards in the future, to provide individual remembrances from among family. Memorial Day should not be just in the abstract and conceptual. These are real people, real sacrifices, and real consequences to those left behind. It is easy for individual stories to get lost in the abstract of the holiday.
This year's Memorial Day post is for Lieutenant (jg) William (Billy) Robertson USNR, my aunt June's older brother.
Lt. Billy Robertson was the navigator on a PBY-5 Catalina flying boat, used for patrolling, anti-submarine, and rescues. Usually, a 7-10 person crew.
Click to enlarge.
Lt. Billy Robertson was in the Navy air force, stationed at RAF Pembroke Dock in southwestern Wales from June 1943 to his death on August 1, 1943. His squadron was there from June to December, 1943 before they were transferred to Morocco.
Their time at RAF Pembroke Dock was spent on Operation Seaslug. German submarines attacking the American East coast were based out of French ports and had to exit and return via the Bay of Biscay. Operation Seaslug was the deployment of PBY-5s to patrol the Bay of Biscay, making it increasingly unsafe for use by U-boat commanders.
As unsafe as it was for the German U-boats, the PBY-5 patrols were also dangerous in themselves.
Lt. Billy Robertson was on patrol with Lieutenant William P. Tanner commanding on August 1, 1943. Robertson was Navigator as well as Fire Control Officer when under attack. Having completed their outbound patrol, the PBY encountered eight German Junker 88s on the return flight towards RAF Pembroke Dock.
Under repeated crushing attack, the captain first sought escape in cloud cover. However, there was not enough cloud to hide in effectively and ultimately the captain had to crash-land the plane in the ocean. The pilot, co-pilot, and one of the waist gunners managed to escape the sinking craft. The other five crew members were killed during the encounter with the Germans or on the crash landing. Lt. Billy Robertson was wounded, believed mortally, at his fire control position in the waist of the plane.
Click to enlarge.
The three surviving crew members were able to retrieve an inflatable raft and survived 20 hours before being rescued by the HMS Bideford.
Five days after the crash, four days after their rescue, the three surviving crew members gave their after-action reports of their final flight.
Click to enlarge.
Uncle Billy Robertson left behind a grieving war widow and his own family. My Aunt June did not talk about Uncle Billy often but I recall her speaking of him. We lived in England for a period time and his memory was unusually near. During the war, he had been accorded a burial in East Anglia but all such interments were relocated after the war to Brookwood Cemetery in Woking, the town in which we coincidentally lived.
For most of my youth I only knew that he had died in WWII and was under the mistaken impression he was in the USAAF. It was only a couple of years ago, when doing genealogical research, that I came across the after action reports which clarified his service as a navigator in the USNR and his death over the Bay of Biscay.
Each individual death is a tragedy but its scope and meaning can only be understood in the context of events, family, and the emotional wound left behind for all those who loved the young man.
Memorial
by Mae Winkler Goodman
Still sleeps the unknown soldier
His long and dreamless sleep,
While loud with prayer we reaffirm
The faith he died to keep --
In graveyards without number,Upon the nameless stone,The heart stops to remember,Then goes ahead, alone . . .
Today we pause in tribute;
Tomorrow we will pass --
The grave marked only by the green
Memorial of grass!
Whales in the garden - Canada - pic.twitter.com/vpnIk1Tg0Y
— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) April 17, 2021
Covid-19 resulted in furloughs of a lot of low-wage workers in service occupations -- like restaurant servers. That raised U.S. average hourly earnings. As low-wage jobs return, it's likely that average earnings will go down. https://t.co/EL5RucaCkV via @atanzi @economics pic.twitter.com/nVxNRw1tyh
— Steve Matthews (@SteveMatthews12) April 23, 2021
I heard about this kerfuffle and thought I would check it out. There must be another side of the story.
Nope. Just another mainstream media journalist beclowning himself with obvious untruths. And the official fact checker no less.
New #FactChecker --> Greene’s ahistorical claim that the Nazis were socialists https://t.co/SXQDgXYTBb
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) May 29, 2021
I looked at his Twitter feed to see if he had any follow-up explanations. No. I scroll through the responding comments to see if the argument of facts might be there.
Not that I see. I would have to read his article to know what argument he is making but I can't because it is pay-walled.
I am going with the relatively uncontroversial argument that Nazi is the common abbreviation of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party).
Now any decent debater can muddy up the waters with definitional questions about where fascism bleeds into socialism and where socialism bleeds into communism.
But when you look at the National Socialist German Workers' Party platform, it seems pretty definitively a Socialist platform. Specifically:
7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.
9. All citizens shall have equal rights and duties.
10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good.
We demand therefore:
11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work.
The breaking of the slavery of interest
13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.
15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in the placing of State and municipal orders.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
19. We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law
20. The State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education (with the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement). The curricula of all educational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the school must be to give the pupil, beginning with the first sign of intelligence, a grasp of the notion of the State (through the study of civic affairs). We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.
21. The State must ensure that the nation’s health standards are raised by protecting mothers and infants, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and by the extensive support of clubs engaged in the physical training of youth.
So what might Kessler's argument be? Seems a hard argument to make.
I am guessing that he is trying to conflate National Socialism with Fascism, arguing that Nazi's are fascists and cannot therefore be Socialists. Perhaps he is also making an argument that Socialism and Communism are a continuum (as most Communists argue) and that therefore Nazi Germany being at war with Communists must preclude Nazi's from being National Socialists.
But there is that nagging issue of the party platform. Probably Kessler may be arguing that its original platform was unrepresentative of its actual platform in the later 1930s.
One of the problems with that whole line of argument is that Italy under Mussolini, a Nazi Germany ally, was accustomed to self-identifying both as fascist and socialist.
It is pretty thin gruel for a convincing argument. All four Axis enemies in World War II were totalitarian states. National Socialist in Germany, Fascists in Italy, Communists in Russia, and Nationalists in Japan. Germany, Italy, and Russia were all gradations of Socialist/Communist. None of them were committed to rule of law, equality before the law, individual freedoms, or the subservience of the state to the people.
Kessler seems to be splitting meaningless hairs trying to protect the left wing of the Democrat Party (the socialist wing) from being tarred with the National Socialist brush. Politically that makes sense. Factually and historically it does not.
Especially given the reemergence in the Democratic Party of the interest in and pursuance of racial group identity and blatant anti-semitism. Racial ideology and anti-semitism also being attributes of National Socialists in Germany, Fascists in Italy, and Communists in Russia.
There really doesn't seem to be much of a defense for Kessler trying to claim that the National Socialist German Workers' Party in Germany was not a socialist party. Which leaves us with the question: Why is it so important to Kessler to advance this untruth?
The brief epitaph on Virgil's tomb, composed by the poet himself:
— Gareth Harney (@OptimoPrincipi) April 24, 2021
"Mantua gave me life, Calabria death. I rest in Naples. I wrote of pastures, farms and heroes." pic.twitter.com/8MOHdBQ4xK
Social media encourages everyone to talk like a politician or an activist, making big, hyperbolic claims to gin up attention and energy among their base. It's a very bad habit.
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 26, 2021
I guess you all wanted to see a drone melt inside active crater. Well, it did, this morning! @DJIGlobal pic.twitter.com/VL1JEGNRCP
— Bjorn Steinbekk (@BSteinbekk) April 28, 2021
'We Must Stop Eating Beef To Fight Climate Change,' Says Scientist Who Looks Suspiciously Like Chick-Fil-A Cow In A Lab Coat https://t.co/yqZH25xQPJ
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 1, 2021
“Dems the real racists” is usually a dumb talking point.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) April 23, 2021
And yet: https://t.co/vjnl0ph74B
Calgary House, Isle of Mull by Anna Teasdale (1932-2020)
From Paying the price of free speech by Roger Kimball.
There are two central tenets of the woke philosophy. The first is feigned fragility. The second is angry intolerance. The union of fragility and intolerance has given us that curious and malevolent hybrid I have called the crybully, a delicate yet venomous species that thrives chiefly in lush, pampered environments.
The 18th-century German aphorist G.C. Lichtenberg observed, ‘Nowadays we everywhere seek to propagate wisdom: who knows whether in a couple of centuries there may not exist universities for restoring the old ignorance.’ Doubtless Lichtenberg thought he was being clever. How astonished he would have been to discover that he was a prophet, not a satirist.
Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. pic.twitter.com/cMM3Qaxupa
— Margaret Thatcher (@MrsMThatcher) April 23, 2021
Archive: "Stock markets didn’t crash because of the H3N2 pandemic in 1968. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening, or banning of crowds." @JeffreyATucker https://t.co/q8KR9dcPMr
— American Institute for Economic Research (@aier) April 19, 2021
C.S. Lewis called it 75 years ago...”The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils.” https://t.co/PyBD40Kfxp
— Jeremy Wayne Tate (@JeremyTate41) April 23, 2021
Our hope should not be that government steps in to fix Twitter. It should be that new tech comes in to replace it. Let Wokeness destroy this hellscape from the inside. https://t.co/jGIQTKLDLW
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) April 26, 2021
The ocean shines with moonlight as the International Space Station flies over Australia and across the Pacific Ocean at night. pic.twitter.com/RcuC7dMGLR
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) April 28, 2021
Bipedalism is pretty incredible. 📽️@calacademy https://t.co/tYX9DLKCVq pic.twitter.com/rMHOn7rMtA
— Paige Madison (@FossilHistory) April 28, 2021
"When it comes to time spent with children—a large class gap has emerged. In the 1970s, college-educated and non-educated families spent equal amounts of time with their children. But in the last 40 years, college-grad couples have opened up a wide lead" https://t.co/WU4kgguEvd pic.twitter.com/bIOftyepJk
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) April 22, 2021
Leaving the Lecture, Faculty Wives, 1936 by Anne Kutka McCosh (1902-1994)
During the Roman siege of Hatra in 198 the defenders threw clay pots filled with death-stalker scorpions down upon the attacking soldiers. The pots shattered on impact, panicking the Romans as the scorpions crawled over them. The Romans withdrew from the siege and never returned. pic.twitter.com/01UQpmqSDA
— Ancient History Hit (@HistoryHitRome) April 20, 2021
We selected for dogs who were better at manipulating our emotions. So, in a sense, we created gifted evolutionary liars when we created canis lupus familiaris. I’m happy we did. pic.twitter.com/a2SRa9rjBD
— Bo Winegard (@EPoe187) April 25, 2021
Last rays of sun on the Acropolis after the ⛈ pic.twitter.com/1ebkQBC5Az
— katy moukakou (@princessekateri) April 27, 2021
U-Haul Introduces Armored War Rigs For Californians Trying To Flee State's Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland https://t.co/zt58ei5gam
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 28, 2021
"[I]ntelligence contributes 48–90 times more than grit to educational success and 13 times more to job-market success. Conscientiousness also contributes to success more than grit but only twice as much." https://t.co/dqo9AS4kfR pic.twitter.com/0UlUZ9B7Aa
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) April 22, 2021
Just another research paper on AGW. From The temperature–CO2 climate connection: an epistemological reappraisal of ice-core messages by Pascal Richet. Just another idea in the marketplace of ideas. However, it is useful in using a long time scale which takes into account more solar cycle and planetary cycles than are usually accounted for in the more naive AGW models.
From the Abstract:
As simply based on fundamental logic and on the concepts of cause and effect, an epistemological examination of the geochemical analyses performed on the Vostok ice cores invalidates the marked greenhouse effect on past climate usually assigned to CO2 and CH4. In agreement with the determining role assigned to Milankovitch cycles, temperature has, instead, constantly remained the long-term controlling parameter during the past 423 kyr, which, in turn, determined both CO2 and CH4 concentrations, whose variations exerted, at most, a minor feedback on temperature itself. If not refuted, the demonstration indicates that the greenhouse effect of CO2 on 20th century and today's climate remains to be documented, as already concluded from other evidence. The epistemological weakness of current simulations originates from the fact that they do not rely on any independent evidence for the influence of greenhouse gases on climate over long enough periods of time. The validity of models will, in particular, not be demonstrated as long as at least the most important features of climate changes, namely the glacial–interglacial transitions and the differing durations of interglacial periods, remain unaccounted for. Similarly, the constant 7 kyr time lag between temperature and CO2 decreases following deglaciation is another important feature that needs to be understood. Considered in this light, the current climate debate should be considered as being the latest of the great controversies that have punctuated the march of the Earth sciences, although its markedly differs from the preceding ones by its most varied social, environmental, economical and political ramifications.
Basically, CO2 and CH4 are not major influencers of planetary temperatures. Planetary glacial–interglacial transitions drive temperature changes and CO2 presence. CO2 is not causal but more of an dependent variable.
Plausible.
The last sentence is dry and needs translation. My effort to render it into the vernacular:
The current climate debate should be considered as a contest of social, environmental, economical and political agendas rather than any change in the proficiency and confidence in Earth sciences.
The world's oldest living person was alive when the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk and when the first helicopter flew on Mars.
— Alex Knapp (@TheAlexKnapp) April 19, 2021
"Evolution has no interest in happiness per se: it is interested only in survival and reproduction, and it uses happiness and misery as mere goads. Evolution makes sure that no matter what we achieve, we remain dissatisfied, forever grasping for more." https://t.co/6eDrvnPZJv
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) April 25, 2021
One thousand sheep and one dog.
— Traditionalism revival (@trad_revival) April 27, 2021
This tweet is not about sheep and dogs. pic.twitter.com/DFkfmptqhx
The biggest problem in the modern USA is fatherlessness. The out-of-wedlock birth rate grew from ~nothing in 1938-1945 to 72% for Blacks, 60+% for many Latino and Native groups, and 35% for whites today.
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) April 22, 2021
Virtually every modern pathology which worries us predictably followed.
Italian landscape with umbrella pines, 1807 by Hendrik Voogd (Dutch painter, 1768-18390
Still life with a Plate of Onions, 1889 by Vincent van Gogh (1853 -1890)
From Social Security and Trends in Wealth Inequality by Sylvain Catherine, Max Miller, and Natasha Sarin. From the Abstract:
Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S. based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper revisits this conclusion by incorporating Social Security retirement benefits into measures of wealth inequality. We find that top wealth shares have not increased in the last three decades when Social Security is properly accounted for. This finding is robust to assumptions about how taxes and benefits may change in response to system financing concerns. When discounted at the risk-free rate, real Social Security wealth increased substantially from $4.8 trillion in 1989 to $41.3 trillion in 2016. When we adjust the discount rate for long-run macroeconomic risk, this increase remains sizable, growing from over $3.9 trillion in 1989 to $33.9 trillion in 2016. Consequently, by 2016, Social Security wealth represents 57% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution.
For more than a decade, perhaps two, it has been known that a good understanding of the economic conditions of the bottom 20% and even 40% of the income quintiles necessarily requires incorporation of government transfer programs. Income inequality is much lower when this is done. It also explains why absolute consumption levels are so much higher for the bottom two quintiles than if you look only at earned income.
It also creates some interesting insights such as the bottom two income quintiles, all income included, have household incomes and consumption rates near those of the middle class in 1960 or 1970 in real terms.
This paper is doing the same adjustment on the wealth side of things. I am not too surprised that there has been not too much increase in wealth inequality over the past three decades. The top quintile have done exceptionally well from asset valuation increases but Social Security has become increasingly generous, particularly when you take into account other age targeted programs such Medicare.
Studies such as this are heavily dependent on assumptions and I have not reviewed it in detail but the findings are not a surprise. Inequality is a desperate rallying cry on the left but it has far less meaning than it did in 1900 or 1950.
“There is something distinctive and recognizable in English civilization. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own.”
— English Radical History (@EnglishRadical) April 23, 2021
George Orwell, 1941. #StGeorgesDay 🏴 pic.twitter.com/ZuwRdcnjEo
I really want this secret agent codename, if it's still available pic.twitter.com/tApA8YlYrW
— Paul Davis (@carobmill) April 19, 2021
"Single parent families are the underlying driver pushing up the poverty rate...At the same time, top earners are not taking broader social responsibility by championing the values and parenting strategies underlying their own success." https://t.co/zrAUlNf7eV
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) April 25, 2021
This is the oak leaf butterfly hiding in plain sight, mimicking an unappetising dead leaf complete with the appearance of fungus-like or lichenous growths so common on dead leaves, and lines simulating very closely the midrib and lateral veins of a leaf.
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) April 27, 2021
pic.twitter.com/PRZyJHnwx0
1/n No, the NYT (and likely other outlets) didn't always do this (i.e., '[Name of person], who is white...') to the same extent that they have over the past decade or so. pic.twitter.com/wHB0hXs3r4
— Zach Goldberg (@ZachG932) April 22, 2021
Yesterday I posted The scientific process combined with free speech is a powerful weapon to improve knowledge and overturn authoritarian mistakes. One more member of the mainstream media, Matt Yglesias has joined the pivot with a critical broadside against the mainstream media narrative. From this morning, The media's lab leak fiasco. Even though it covers much of the same ground as yesterday's post, it is short enough to warrant a read due to a few additional insights.
As I believe I have said before, I spent the month of February 2020 intensely focused on covering the seemingly imminent victory of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party’s presidential primary. I dedicated approximately 0% of my journalistic energy to covering what was, in retrospect, the clearly more significant story of a novel coronavirus outbreak starting in Wuhan, China and clearly spreading to other parts of the world.
I was aware of the virus in much the way that I am aware of the National Hockey League, but I wasn’t paying attention to it as a journalist. The first piece I published on Covid on March 12 holds up pretty well I think, but it was way too late in terms of the kind of tough travel restrictions that, in retrospect, the country needed.
Yglesias and Taibbi (in yesterday's post) I have respect for as journalists owing to their Classical Liberal viewpoint. They are willing to make an argument and muster evidence for that argument. They are not afraid to engage in the marketplace of ideas and are willing to cede points when they are demonstrably wrong.
They are relatively free of the social justice/critical theory cant to which so many shallow minded journalists are subject. But they still suffer the other evil twin of media - political partisanship and rabid hatred of Republicans in general and Trump in particular.
My view is that both parties are pretty incompetent and corrupt (i.e. subject to special interests rather than the general good of all citizens. Republicans have the redeeming feature of being much more ideologically diverse which makes them less effective but more representative. Democrats are venal and seemingly constantly refining their venality.
Yglesias betrays this in his allusion to his being too late in affirming the importance of tough travel restrictions. Well . . . perhaps. But it is readily memorable that Trump was widely mocked and denigrated in the mainstream media for proactively imposing tough travel restrictions before most other countries. It was only later that they came to the reluctant conclusion that those Trump decision's were well reasoned and to some degree supported by the evidence.
Yglesias' whole article centers around the mainstream media's opposition to Senator Tom Cotton and some early statements he made, and illustrating how the mainstream media constantly distorted his statements to make it seem he was making easily rebuttable arguments which he was not in fact making.
It is an interesting read simply for that detailed postmortem of mainstream media failure. It was not that they were getting facts wrong. That happens in a fast news cycle. It was that they were picking positions based on their politics and ideologies and then sticking with those positions long after there was strong evidence that it was an indefensible position.
It has been a fiasco for the media. Yglesias asks a good question. Has the failure been consequential. He asks three specific questions:
A separate question that’s less clear to me is what follows from this in terms of policy. You can break this down into three questions:
Suppose the media had been more open to Cotton’s point back in February 2020 — what would we have done differently?
Suppose definitive evidence arises this Friday that the virus in some sense came from the Chinese lab — what would we do differently going forward?
Or suppose definitive vindication of the zoonotic origin theory emerges — what difference would that make?
I think in all three of these cases, the answer is basically that nothing would be different. This is not to apologize for the bad coverage but, if anything, to underscore how egregious it was to lean so heavily into the Tom Cotton Is Wrong narrative. The subsidiary premise of that narrative was always that Cotton was doing something extremely nefarious. But while Cotton does indeed have a lot of opinions I disagree with, it’s just not true that this lab leak idea is now or ever was very closely linked to any hot-button policy controversies.
To some degree I agree "that nothing would be different" in terms of public health policy.
But there is a different question to be asked which Yglesias does not.
Are there any negative consequences to the media's lab lek fiasco?
Here I think the answer is, Yes!
By restricting himself to the health consequences, Yglesias ignores one of the more important consequences - further erosion of trust in mainstream media.
The media was wrong and critical of Trump and Republicans not because of the facts but because of their political partisanship and ideological sympathies. Their critical reporting of Tom Cotton's position and deliberate misrepresentation of his argument was not only unprofessional and shameful. It put the mainstream media in the same narrative camp as the Chinese government.
The media is now acknowledging that the Chinese argument was insufficient and that Tom Cotton's argument had real merit. But it is not a good look to be in the same camp as repressive totalitarian regimes and then act repressively (deplatforming) and in an Orwellian and authoritarian fashion ("there is only one truth").
I am not arguing that journalists in the mainstream media are communists seeking to undermine America to benefit the Chines Communist Party. I am arguing that the loss of economic viability and the rapid decline of journalistic social status is driving journalists to behaviors which make them indistinguishable from CCP supporters and from mindless America critics.
Or in Yglesias' words:
There’s a question as to why that fake consensus emerged. But I think the more troubling question is: How did people let the original story of what Tom Cotton even said go so badly awry? Essentially Cotton said something that was then transformed into a fake claim of a Chinese bio-attack, then the fake claim was debunked, and then the debunking was applied to the real claim with little attention paid to ongoing disagreement among researchers.
Sure. But that is a narrow reading.
The broader reading is - Why does the mainstream media keep getting stories dramatically wrong and then defending the wrong narrative when new facts emerge. They lock themselves into partisan positions regardless of facts and then mindlessly fight their corner. Instead of providing a stream of facts and evidence to their readers so that readers can form their own opinions.
That is the negative consequence to this incident. Nothing to do with health policy per se, just an affirmation of partisanship, obliviousness to facts, unprofessionalism and indifference to loss of brand and trust among news consumers.
Nestled Amongst The Trees by Natasha Newton
This is known as one of medicine’s most incredible moments. In 1922, at the University of Toronto, scientists went to a hospital ward with children who were comatose and dying from diabetic keto-acidosis. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/7i6cKF5LwW
— Ciarán Bolger (@cbolgerr) April 17, 2021
Click for the htread.
Me in the 1990s: “How in the world did Hitler manage to manipulate an entire population?”
— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) April 24, 2021
Me in the 2020s: “Oh, okay.”
The amazing power of natural selection. https://t.co/iq1H0Fvx2p
— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) April 25, 2021
The beauty of MY infrastructure plan is that, as we build the infrastructure, we'll actually create demand for additional infrastructure spending... (1/3,771) pic.twitter.com/FcqIekKmki
— Rudy Havenstein, questioning mainstream narratives (@RudyHavenstein) February 25, 2020
"In 1980, the highest-earning men worked fewer hours than low-income men...Today, elite American men have transformed themselves into the world’s premier workaholics, toiling longer hours than poorer men in the US and rich men in similarly rich countries" https://t.co/8idoyOGJDC pic.twitter.com/YkMiKRzUCd
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) April 19, 2021
Its an old report from 2011 but an intriguing one. From Are Game Show Audiences Trustworthy? by Gwen Sharp.
In Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, Ori and Rom Brafman discuss a contestant on Qui Veut Gagner des Millions?, the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, who asks the audience for help with the question, “Which of these revolves around the Earth?” His options are the sun, the moon, Venus, and Mars. While it might be surprising that he doesn’t know, more shocking is the result of the audience poll — 56% say the sun.
How can we explain this? The easiest answer, and the video’s title, is that French people appear to be stupid, or were never informed about the Copernican Revolution. But the Brafmans have an explanation based on different cultural attitudes toward reality shows and, ultimately, ideas about fairness.
The general outlines of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? are the same regardless of country. But distinct cultural patterns have emerged in how audiences act when asked for help. In the U.S., contestants can count on the audience’s goodwill; regardless of the question asked, audiences appear to do their best to help contestants out and the Brafmans report that data shows the audience is right over 90% of the time. I must admit it had never occurred to me that audiences would do anything other than try to be helpful. Though I don’t watch game shows now, as a kid I regularly watched The Price Is Right, among others, with my family, and we always inherently rooted for the contestant, cringing if they seemed to make a bad choice and rejoicing if they won big. We truly wanted these complete strangers to win.
But not all national audiences are so cooperative. When the show was introduced in Russia, contestants quickly learned to be wary of asking the audience for help because Russian audiences frequently mislead them, intentionally giving the wrong answer. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the players or the questions they ask for help on.
Read the whole thing.
Harold Macmillan quoted by journalist Adam Raphael.
Harold Macmillan was once asked what the most troubling problem of his Prime Ministership was. ‘Events, my dear boy, events,’ was his reply.
Has this insight changed much in 2400 years? pic.twitter.com/WGBbWgu3pr
— Stephen R. C. Hicks (@SRCHicks) April 26, 2021
Our #ArtefactOfTheDay is the Praeneste fibula, or the "brooch of Palestrina".
— The Classical Compendium 🏛️ (@TheClassicalCo) April 18, 2021
This 7th century BCE fibula bears one of the oldest Latin inscriptions ever found. Written right to left, it reads:
"Manius made me for Numerius"#Classics #Roman #Latin #Archaeology #Gold #Italy pic.twitter.com/P1bzJ0qlPW
What are some widely or universally predicted catastrophes that did not happen?
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) April 23, 2021
So far, I have...
The "population bomb"
Peak Oil (Rounds 1, 2, 3)
Y2K
Global COOLING
"Club of Rome" projections
Western hetero AIDS epidemic
Frequent "acid" rain
Killer bees and the Great Migration
Disabled soldier visits little boy's home to show him that his disability can't hold him back pic.twitter.com/xQE2TUbWlX
— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) April 25, 2021
Uh-Oh: Wuhan Lab Changes Sign To '0 Days Since Accidentally Releasing A Virus'https://t.co/pzYTqzp74c
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 17, 2021
In 1978, 59% of 18-34 year olds were married.
— Michael Hendrix (@michael_hendrix) April 21, 2021
By 2020, 69% of 18-34 year olds had *never* been married.
Breton Village by Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
I love this #Roman leather mouse which was found at #Vindolanda last year - excavators at the site have suggested it might have been a child's toy (which would be a rare find for the site), or could have been used to play practical jokes #RomanArchaeology
— Dr Jo Ball (@DrJEBall) April 16, 2021
Photo: Vindolanda Trust pic.twitter.com/wgyvUHbU2R
Watching a whale documentary where a whale eats a stingray: hell yeah lunch time
— vineyille (Story Thing OUT NOW) (@vineyille) April 23, 2021
Watching a stingray documentary where a whale eats a stingray: you son of a bitch
Every year this mother duck hatches her eggs on the roof terrace on the fourth floor of an hospital in Utrecht.
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden_) April 25, 2021
But when the job is done, she needs some help from animal protection to get her ducklings towards the ditch.
Sound on! 😊
Via @ursulavanduin pic.twitter.com/yB01t98PBX
Best art meme of the year so far (h/t: Matthew Cobb) pic.twitter.com/cAAEsl4tK6
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 16, 2021
One-year breakup rate for couples who meet on dating apps: 16%. Meet thru friends & fam: 9%. Workplace: 6%. Church: 1%. #MakeYourMoveBook
— Jon Birger, author (@jonbirger1) April 21, 2021
Moonlit Coast by Ivan Fedorovich Choultsé (1877-1932)
Another example of hiding the signal.
/1. Yesterday at the ACS Data Users Conference, the Census Bureau described its plans to replace the American Community Survey (ACS) microdata with “fully synthetic” data over the next three years. pic.twitter.com/8btLxiA3iM
— Steven Ruggles (@HistDem) May 21, 2021
Click to read the thread. The Census Bureau are pretending that there is the potential of breach of confidentiality for respondents even though that has never occurred.
Social scientists are up in arms because the American Community Survey is a central and always revealing and informative mechanism for understanding reality and cause and effect. Take it away and we will know less.
Which seems to be the real plan.
For whatever reason, this
Click to enlarge.
put me in mind of the opening of Commentaries on the Gallic War by Julius Caesar:
All Gaul is divided into three parts.
There are three types of problems
Some of your problems can be solved - Focus, clarity, prioritization, creativity, and effort are required but they can be solved.
Some of your problems are your own fault - Those problems of your own making which cannot be solved because they represent a choice on your part.
Some of your problems are tragic - They occur for reasons beyond your control with a dangerous predictability. You may be able to mitigate the impact to a degree but you cannot avoid the consequences.
If the left is an incoherent shambles in the U.S., it’s partly because the visionaries lost their bearings on drugs, and only the myopic apparatchiks and feather-preening bourgeois liberals are left. (Salon 9/9/2009)
— CamillePagliaQuotes (@PagliaQuotes) April 23, 2021
From Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Bypassing the Genome
The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively. But it also did something more. Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths – by telling different stories. Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly. In 1789 the French population switched almost overnight from believing in the myth of the divine right of kings to believing in the myth of the sovereignty of the people. Consequently, ever since the Cognitive Revolution Homo sapiens has been able to revise its behaviour rapidly in accordance with changing needs. This opened a fast lane of cultural evolution, bypassing the traffic jams of genetic evolution. Speeding down this fast lane, Homo sapiens soon far outstripped all other human and animal species in its ability to cooperate.
The behaviour of other social animals is determined to a large extent by their genes. DNA is not an autocrat. Animal behaviour is also influenced by environmental factors and individual quirks. Nevertheless, in a given environment, animals of the same species will tend to behave in a similar way. Significant changes in social behaviour cannot occur, in general, without genetic mutations. For example, common chimpanzees have a genetic tendency to live in hierarchical groups headed by an alpha male. Members of a closely related chimpanzee species, bonobos, usually live in more egalitarian groups dominated by female alliances. Female common chimpanzees cannot take lessons from their bonobo relatives and stage a feminist revolution. Male chimps cannot gather in a constitutional assembly to abolish the office of alpha male and declare that from here on out all chimps are to be treated as equals. Such dramatic changes in behaviour would occur only if something changed in the chimpanzees’ DNA.
For similar reasons, archaic humans did not initiate any revolutions. As far as we can tell, changes in social patterns, the invention of new technologies and the settlement of alien habitats resulted from genetic mutations and environmental pressures more than from cultural initiatives. This is why it took humans hundreds of thousands of years to make these steps. Two million years ago, genetic mutations resulted in the appearance of a new human species called Homo erectus. Its emergence was accompanied by the development of a new stone tool technology, now recognised as a defining feature of this species. As long as Homo erectus did not undergo further genetic alterations, its stone tools remained roughly the same – for close to 2 million years!
In contrast, ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have been able to change their behaviour quickly, transmitting new behaviours to future generations without any need of genetic or environmental change. As a prime example, consider the repeated appearance of childless elites, such as the Catholic priesthood, Buddhist monastic orders and Chinese eunuch bureaucracies. The existence of such elites goes against the most fundamental principles of natural selection, since these dominant members of society willingly give up procreation. Whereas chimpanzee alpha males use their power to have sex with as many females as possible – and consequently sire a large proportion of their troop’s young – the Catholic alpha male abstains completely from sexual intercourse and childcare. This abstinence does not result from unique environmental conditions such as a severe lack of food or want of potential mates. Nor is it the result of some quirky genetic mutation. The Catholic Church has survived for centuries, not by passing on a ‘celibacy gene’ from one pope to the next, but by passing on the stories of the New Testament and of Catholic canon law.
In other words, while the behaviour patterns of archaic humans remained fixed for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens could transform their social structures, the nature of their interpersonal relations, their economic activities and a host of other behaviours within a decade or two. Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same.
This was the key to Sapiens’ success. In a one-on-one brawl, a Neanderthal would probably have beaten a Sapiens. But in a conflict of hundreds, Neanderthals wouldn’t stand a chance. Neanderthals could share information about the whereabouts of lions, but they probably could not tell – and revise – stories about tribal spirits. Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges.
While we can’t get inside a Neanderthal mind to understand how they thought, we have indirect evidence of the limits to their cognition compared with their Sapiens rivals. Archaeologists excavating 30,000-year-old Sapiens sites in the European heartland occasionally find there seashells from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. In all likelihood, these shells got to the continental interior through long-distance trade between different Sapiens bands. Neanderthal sites lack any evidence of such trade. Each group manufactured its own tools from local materials.
George Pólya on teaching John von Neumann pic.twitter.com/0DxKpAuQlP
— Fermat's Library (@fermatslibrary) April 19, 2021
Two things can be absolutely true. One, the chances of getting killed by the police if you are complying are exceedingly small. Two, fear about getting killed by police, especially among minorities, is quite real. I blame the media for consistently fear mongering about this.
— Bo Winegard (@EPoe187) April 22, 2021
Penguins look like they've got short necks. Not so much... #WorldPenguinDay pic.twitter.com/NQX4UQSBsE
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) April 25, 2021
OH.. you have the best Tweets ! Thanks for the laugh https://t.co/qcJiNOIkYe
— Lauren Terner Simon (@travelphish) April 24, 2021
"By and large, the jobless don’t spend their downtime socializing with friends or taking up new hobbies...men in particular devote most of their free time to watching television, browsing the Internet, and sleeping" https://t.co/J5IUbOAuQC pic.twitter.com/R0BCZKSeKO
— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) April 18, 2021
Over the Dnipro River 1954 by Tetyana Yablonska (Russian, 1917-2005)
Why are kids from Salt Lake City so much more likely to realize American Dream?@BrookingsInst: "Growing up in Salt Lake hugely increases chances of being married in adulthood. In fact, no other city comes close in terms of causal impact on marriage."👇🏽https://t.co/aqWETPAKgS pic.twitter.com/ChfKkMh1av
— Brad Wilcox (@WilcoxNMP) April 20, 2021
(1/3) Our #ArtefactOfTheDay is this stunning Roman ring, and it has an incredibly storied past!
— The Classical Compendium 🏛️ (@TheClassicalCo) April 15, 2021
The stone is made from polished cabochon, and depicts a triumphant eagle of Jupiter. Holding aloft a laurel wreath, it dates to the 1st century CE.#Classics #Roman #Archaeology #Art pic.twitter.com/L466DDmAf2
Click for the thread.
Real life hoverboard.
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) April 24, 2021
$20k. https://t.co/U96f2xEUGjpic.twitter.com/bKTrDaNQfv
The tiresome absurdity of the indulgences. I just posted a couple of days ago about the chattering institutional class trying to suppress the signal and increase the noise (SATs aren't the problem, you just don't like the reality they reveal). And here we are with another example.
From Does It Hurt Children to Measure Pandemic Learning Loss? by Dana Goldstein.
Research shows many young children have fallen behind in reading and math. But some educators are worried about stigmatizing an entire generation.
Again there is the naive ignoring of conflicts of interests. Education experts were among the most vocal advocates for keeping schools closed while parents were desperately advocating for reopening. Parents had science on their side. There is little evidence of schools as a significant vector of transmission and children have extraordinarily low mortality rates to Covid-19. Virtually zero.
Is it any surprise that education experts who brought on the giant learning loss from school closures might be worried about measuring pandemic learning loss? Of course they want to hide the signal. Their policy recommendations were not science-based, were self-serving, and had huge negative consequences on everyone else.
It has nothing to do with stigmatizing an entire generation. It has everything to do with revealing that the imperial education experts have no clothes.
The opening paragraphs are an astonishing illumination of class privilege and the prioritizing of emotional incontinence over data and reality.
Over the past year, Deprece Bonilla, a mother of five in Oakland, Calif., has gotten creative about helping her children thrive in a world largely mediated by screens.
She signed them up for online phonics tutoring and virtual martial arts lessons. If they are distracted inside the family’s duplex, she grabs snacks and goes with the children into the car, saying they cannot come out until their homework is done. She has sometimes spent three hours per day assisting with school assignments, even as she works from home for a local nonprofit organization.
It all sometimes feels like too much to bear. Still, when her fifth-grade son’s public-school teacher told her he was years behind in reading, she was in disbelief.
“That was very offensive to me,” she said. “I’m not putting in myself, my hard work, his hard work, for you to tell me that he’s at second-grade reading.”
Apparently the reality is that she worked hard but not effectively to provide an education while school was closed and now she finds it offensive that 1) her child is behind in reading, and presumably 2) she wasn't an effective parent teacher.
It is hard not to feel a knee-jerk, "suck it up buttercup" response. School closures were bad policy with negative consequences for children's learning. That is measured reality.
Being offended by that reality has no bearing on addressing the negative consequences of those bad policies.
Ms. Bonilla’s experience illustrates a roiling debate in education, about how and even whether to measure the academic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation’s children — and how to describe learning gaps without stigmatizing or discouraging students and families.
Studies continue to show that amid the school closures and economic and health hardships of the past year, many young children have missed out on mastering fundamental reading and math skills. The Biden administration has told most states that unlike in 2020, they should plan on testing students this year, in part to measure the “educational inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.”
Bad policies led to bad educational outcomes and the response is to consider not measuring those consequences? Utter madness.
If you cannot measure a problem, you are unlikely to understand how to solve it. This was articulated nearly 150 years ago by one of our foremost scientists in history.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
Lord Kelvin - Lecture on "Electrical Units of Measurement" (3 May 1883), published in Popular Lectures Vol. I, p. 73
This is frequently rendered as "If you cannot measure a problem, you cannot solve it" and attributed to either Peter Drucker or Lord Kelvin. But neither said it. They were more nuanced.
But the foundation for progress is an understanding of the status quo as measured. No measures, little understanding.
Which is what some of the education experts, who misled the nation, now want as national policy. Let's not measure the damage done by our bad policy recommendations.
So why would anyone oppose knowing how big is the gap that needs to be made up? The experts oppose to hide their lack of expertise. And then there are the ideologues who want to avoid measuring because of their strawman theories and negative prejudices against their fellow Americans.
But others are pushing back against the concept of “learning loss,” especially on behalf of the Black, Hispanic and low-income children who, research shows, have fallen further behind over the past year. They fear that a focus on what’s been lost could incite a moral panic that paints an entire generation as broken, and say that relatively simple, common-sense solutions can help students get back up to speed.
“This isn’t a lost generation,” said Kayla Patrick, a policy analyst at the Education Trust, a national advocacy group focused on low-income students and students of color. “They just need extra support — in many cases, the support they probably needed before the pandemic, like tutoring.”
The ideological blinders are too obvious. She believes Americans will act prejudicially against this one-year cohort because their education has been retrograded by the education establishment.
There is no evidence offered to support this ideological belief. And plenty to counter it. All it will take is an ambitious catch-up year to bring them back up to speed. There is plenty of data supporting how resilient children are in adapting to set-backs. The kids will be fine.
On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the education establishment is pretty bad at its role. Not teachers per se. Those vary as in any profession. But virtually no major education establishment initiative of the past fifty years has produced positive outcomes and certainly none which have produced beneficial outcomes in excess of their costs.
At this point the NYT article becomes a little incoherent. For example:
While there are deficits across demographic groups, the gaps were larger in schools that serve predominantly Black, Hispanic or low-income students.
Yes the NYT is a paid up advocate of critical race theory, but this isn't about race. It is about culture, family dysfunction, class, and poverty. The gaps are larger for those students from poor and single parent families, regardless of race. By focusing on race, we ignore the totality of the problem.
Then there is this "No Shit Sherlock" paragraph.
Debates about the extent of missed learning are more than academic. If remote school is actively harming children’s skill development, it becomes harder for teachers’ unions, school boards or administrators to argue that schools should remain shuttered as vaccines roll out across the nation, or should operate only on limited schedules.
This isn't about suffering kids. This is about urban ideologues favoring school closings which benefit teachers and inflict harm on parents and children. Measuring the lost learning should make it harder for self-serving political interests such as teachers unions from pursuing bad education policy such as keeping schools closed.
Goldstein apparently can't think straight.
Nationwide, about half of students attend schools that are currently offering daily, in-person learning. Federal data shows stark disparities. As of January, the majority of Black, Hispanic and Asian-American fourth graders were learning fully remotely, compared to a quarter of white fourth graders. And West Coast schools are lagging significantly behind in reopening.
I am completely willing to stipulate that "the majority of Black, Hispanic and Asian-American fourth graders were learning fully remotely" even though only a quarter of white students are doing so. But I am also willing wager good money that Black and Hispanic students have a much larger gap and that Asian-American students will have virtually no gap.
Goldstein is mixing two concepts without apparently understanding how they differ from one another. The percentage of students being educated remotely versus in-person is an input-measure. Education attainment gaps are an output measure. Even if everyone had the same input percentage, there are going to be different output results. Because mode of education is not the sole factor determining results - parental education attainment, family intactness, income, are all contributing factors.
In other words, family structure and poverty are likely far more determinative of differential education outcomes than are form of teaching (in--person versus remote). Goldstein mixes these issues together.
Goldstein's reporting is further marred by her over reliance on vague generalizations.
Some educators
Some students
Some research
Some experts
There is always "some"? But how many? A few, a plurality, 50:50, a majority, a super majority? "Some" tells us virtually nothing.
But ultimately, disregarding the almost incoherent reporting, the fundamental issue is that too many unaccountable government institutions, in this instance K-12 education, are deferring to institutional insiders embarrassed by the consequences of their self-serving policies.
Deferring in the sense of listening to arguments that the scope of the problem should be suppressed due to emotional fragility. Once again government and the chattering class seeking to suppress the Signal in favor of mere Noise.
Interestingly, the urban liberal readership of the New York Times is having nothing to do with this misleading reporting. In the comments, the overwhelming sense of the first couple of dozen most popular comments are along the lines of "What are you, stupid?"
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