“China’s Xi orders a stop to a spree of mass killings known as ‘revenge on society’ crimes”—AP 12/27/24 *

Now, why didn't our leaders think of that? 

If we haven’t heard it or mouthed it ourselves, we all know “If you kids don’t stop that right now…,” usually an empty threat made to kids horsing around or teasing one another in the backseat on the way to…anywhere. Well, now Papa Xi has voiced it in regard to mass killings or injurious knife attacks and car attacks. “I said stop it. And I mean it. I’m not going to say it again.”


Yeah. Wish someone in the US or Germany had said that before the recent attacks by gun and car (Magione in the US, Taleb A, a Saudi doctor, in Germany) by people disgruntled over grievances they associated with groups or businesses. It seems that China has experienced increasing numbers of such attacks. Thus, Xi’s order. And the grievances have been in response to incidents as diverse as divorce and investment losses.


Really, in these times we’re all  living in a car with a backseat overcrowded by rowdy kids. There’s little self control, little putting things in perspective. Consider the guy who drove his car into a crowd in Zhuhai, China, causing 35 casualties.


Remember the expression “going postal”? Here’s AI’s overview of the phrase’s  etymology: "Going postal" is an American slang phrase meaning to become extremely angry and violent, often in a workplace setting, and it originates from a series of incidents in the late 1980s where United States Postal Service (USPS) employees committed acts of mass murder against coworkers, managers, and even the public, leading to the association of extreme workplace rage with the postal service.


Of course, it wold be silly to say this is only a modern phenomenon. Innocent people have been victims since…


During the Han Dynasty (second century BC) Liu Pengli, a prince with no compunction, killed many people. Was he aggrieved by his insurance agent? Did the palace mailroom not deliver his mail on time? The point is that some people just have no regard for others, and they will use any personal disturbance as a trigger. They are self absorbed and indifferent to the suffering they cause by their ensuing actions.


Was Hitler responding to rejection by an art school?


I believe many of us want to stop needless suffering caused by disgruntled people. We just don’t know how to be more effective than the frustrated parent dealing with rowdy kids in the backseat. Having been worn down by repeated rowdiness, we take the easy way out of the predicament by gesturing “What do you expect me to do? I can’t be everywhere.” Or, “When your father (or mother) gets home tonight…”


The overriding fact of humanity is that we all have emotional responses to stimuli, but some of us just can’t or won’t control those emotions. Put kids in the backseat and they’ll find a way, if not on one trip, then on another, to frustrate the driver, to elicit a “If you kids don’t…” It happened; it happens; it will continue to happen because no generation learns from previous generations.


If Xi can stop by fiat the deaths and injuries suffered by victims of outraged narcissists, he’ll accomplish what humans have been trying to accomplish since the species arose. I won’t say “more power to him” because that’s precisely how dictators gain more dominance over their people. His message to his people has a dark shroud that might result in further societal disruptions. Like so many dictators, his solution lies in people spying on one another to preemptively thwart such tragic incidents.


It has never worked to prevent individuals from hurting others both known and unknown. It won’t work.


But its ineffectiveness doesn’t prevent us from saying it: “If you kids don’t stop…”




*https://nypost.com/2024/12/27/world-news/chinas-xi-orders-a-stop-to-a-spree-of-mass-killings-known-as-revenge-on-society-crimes/

It’s easy to be cynical,
Dismiss the Christmas miracle,
And claim to be empirical.


It’s easy to dismiss belief
That others cling to in their grief
Because they find it brings relief.


It’s easy to dismiss a faith
To claim that it can only scathe
A healthy psyche with a wraith.


It’s easy to explain away
The life within the Milky Way
And label faith “naivete.”


It’s easy to reject the claim
That Satan’s hubris is to blame
For all the human grief and shame.


It’s easier to say the brain
Prefers to know what is arcane.
“The cosmos is legerdemain.”


Some think that every atheist
Could teach old John Evangelist
To be a worldly analyst.


John had no doctoral degree
In physics or biology
His expertise? Theology.


We know he wrote what he had heard
About the Christ he calls the Word.
Was what he wrote by God conferred?


He seems quite sure of what he writes
As though it’s God Himself he cites,
The One who spoke to Israelites.


Would John be able to converse
With Einstein ‘bout the universe?
Recall that Al was very terse.


Could John argue with anyone
About the nature of the Son?
To scientists about the Sun?


Most scientists seem very sure.
They see no need to be demure.
In what they know they are secure.


But what if scientists delude
With info that they misconstrued?
Does science mask incertitude?


And when we ask them what they think,
“The Big Bang happened in a blink,
“And suns made argon and then zinc.”


It seems so easy just to say,
“Creation happened in a day;
“Inflation made what we survey.”


But then they argue who is right:
Eternal Cosmos and branes that fight?
A singularity? Who’s right?


And mysteries yet will abound
Just like the matter all around
They cannot see in vis’ble light…


They say Dark Matter’s everywhere.
Invisible, it has no glare.
Dark Energy is also there!


They can’t see either, but perceive
That neither is a make-believe.
And physicists do not deceive.


“But can they be deceived?” you ask
While citing Morley’s daunting task:
Take that belief and it unmask.


The aether they once said was there
An unseen substance like the air
They now reject and do forswear.


Yet unseen matter makes much sense?
And so they rise to its defense.
“It’s out there and it is immense.”


Pervading all the galaxies
In us and both our families;
“These dark things are not fantasies.”


“Is there a chance that this is faith?”
I asked before if it’s a wraith.
That all we see is just one-eighth?


“Dark things are there,” they do insist.
“But how?” we ask, but are dismissed.
“Just trust us that they coexist.”


“But is there little room for doubt?”
“We’ve looked both here and thereabout.”
“We see the Cosmos fast spread out.”


“Our evidence is indirect;
“The way stars move makes us suspect;
“That doppler shift is one effect.”


Some think neutrinos are the cause.
They can escape just like Danaus;
They move through us and never pause.


But thinking isn’t proving so.
Do Dark neutrinos on the go,
Make galaxies turn fast or slow?


“So, you have never touched or seen
“Dark Energy that lies between
“The galaxies; and yet you’re keen.”


And then there’s all that quantum stuff
The quarks of which you’re sure enough
To speak of them, but faith rebuff.


Are you so sure of what you know
The Vacuum makes a world outflow
Right now and also long ago?


So Something comes from Nothing now
Like milk exuded from gold cow?
“We simply want to know just how.


“But, hey, that is your current thought
“It was a vacuum, not God that wrought
“The world we know: The world from nought.”


The math is there for all to see
But too complex for some and me
The math that uses π and φ.


The Gospel tells a different tale
The son born of that meek female
Was there before both stars and whale.


And that’s the tale that John has told;
In his gospel, Christ's the mold
For all that’s young and all that’s old.


Whatever came to be, he wrote,
From dirt to low prokaryote,
Could not exist without his vote.


Is science more believable
Than virgin’s child conceivable?
Is truth in both achievable?


It’s simple just to say a child
Was born to woman undefiled
The young girl who was meek and mild.


It’s easy to dismiss events
That John Evangelist presents.
But think to what you give assents.


And as for me, I do lean toward
Creation by omniscient Lord,
The child that many have adored.


But that in no way limits me.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Both lie as possibility.


Because in making all that is
God made me want to catechise.
To ask if matter dark is His.


POSTSCRIPT: Sorry for any obscure references. Danaus comes from Greek mythology; he fled from Egypt. Dark Matter and Dark Energy make up most of the universe according to estimates. In quantum mechanics and string theory the vacuum produces virtual particles that come into and go out of existence. Up and Down Quarks, never seen, make protons and neutrons. Neutrinos don't readily react with matter; trillions of them went through you and the entire planet today. Galaxies don't seem to rotate according to Newtonian mechanics, leading some to suspect the existence of Dark Matter that exerts a gravitational influence. Think of Branes as bedsheet-universes that might collide like those sheets hung out to dry on a windy day. One interpretation of the Cosmic Microwave Background image (COBE's and WMAP's) is that a blotch on the lower right might be where a brane or other universe smacked into ours. John the Evangelist (not to be confused with John the Baptist) begins his Gospel with: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word (Logos) was God, and nothing was made that was not made through the Word." Essentially, that’s the root of being made in the image of God. All creation bears the stamp of God’s existence. Creation, according to St. Augustine was through Christ. Augustine, a Neoplatonist deep down, also argued that what God created was the possibility for forms to exist, thus laying the groundwork for an easy way to include evolution in creation.

I see that Christopher Nolan will release an IMAX film based on Homer’s Odyssey. Love the epic tale, can’t wait to see it on the big screen. I hope Nolan Does Scylla and Charybdis right. Those two encapsulate much of humanity’s lifestyle and social ecology. We humans often face degrees of dilemma, or Sophie’s Choice, though only rarely, thankfully, with the highest degree akin to the dilemma as portrayed in that eponymous film or the deadly choice posed by Scylla and Charybdis.


But in lesser degrees, we’re always passing through a Messina Strait, a narrow passageway between two bad choices. In its simplest, the choice lies between using a paper towel to dry dishes or a dish towel, the former to be purchased and thrown away, thus threatening a forest, the latter to be washed with detergents that then enter the environment as polluting wastewater and also to be placed in a dryer after washing, necessitating a draw on the power grid and the personal expense of kilowatts listed on the monthly electric bill. Sophie’s Choice? Scylla and Charybdis? To the smallest degree at least.


Our Daily Lives


Strange how the brain/mind works, isn’t it? In its intricate aggregation of 86 billion neuron cells with nearly 100 trillion connections, my brain mixed thoughts of Odysseus’ encounters with Scylla and Charybdis with daily life, a war and a senile President.  Oh! And throw in Odysseus’ exchange with Polyphemus, where he cleverly identified himself as Noman or No-Man or Nobody. So, as I was saying, my brain made a connection to everyday life and to choices between good and bad, good and good, and bad and bad, this last exemplified by Scylla and Charybdis and Sophie’s choice.


Our everyday experience is an ocean of such choices, mostly small with no tragic or long term consequences, but occasionally large and life-changing. Skipping a class on a single day is often inconsequential, but skipping multiple classes in a college semester can result in lower grades and even failure, changing the course of a life, say from being a medical doctor to being a middle school biology teacher. Or, inhaling that first line of cocaine might not mean much, but it might also mean a lifetime of addiction, a simple choice altering a life detrimentally.


And then there are the spur of the moment decisions that increase the degree of risk: Doing something unnecessary that jeopardizes life itself, like attempting to jump off a cruise ship, but landing instead on a lower deck—dead. That seems to be what happened on a Princess Cruise ship recently when woman jumped after an eight-day trip to the Caribbean. What was she thinking when she made the choice? Should I stay on board this giant ship for a last visit to the buffet or jump into Scylla to be swallowed by the ocean? Was it suicide or folly? * Whatever the motive, the consequence was immediate and deadly.


Putin as No-Odysseus


Two years ago Vladimir Putin put his country on a voyage through a narrow strait between the multi-headed Scylla of thousands of Ukrainian drones and missiles and the Charybdis of Ukrainian minefields, cluster bombs, and anti-ship missiles and sea drones. He made a choice that seems to have swallowed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russians sent into battle against the monster of modern warfare. And having made that choice that has decimated his army and war equipment and led to the exodus of more than one million young men as emigres, he continues to pilot his ship—or the ships the Ukrainians haven’t sunk— through that narrow strait of destruction and death.


That’s a between-a-rock-and-hard place decision that is affecting the Russian economy, Russian military prestige, and Russian lives. Odysseus was renowned for his wit and cleverness, both providing him with the skill to extricate himself from dangers. Putin seems to have neither as he continues to pilot his ship through perilous waters where even his borrowed North Korean soldiers are being lost to monsters of Ukrainian drones and Himars.


Nevertheless, Putin does have his Odysseus side. He’s killed off many of his detractors and rivals, though not in personal combat like Odysseus facing Penelope’s suitors, but by poisonings and strange coincidental falls from windows in multi-floor buildings. Putin can cleverly claim that nobody was responsible, but the deaths occurred undeniably.


Biden as No-Odysseus


Nothing in his term contrasts Biden and Odysseus more than the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The clever Odysseus conquered Troy with the ruse of the wooden horse. Biden had no clever plan to extricate America from Afghanistan to end the war, eschewing Trump’s threat to the Taliban—and to the Taliban leader’s very person and family—as a way to a peaceful withdrawal that retained an American presence and control of Bagram Air Base.


As of this writing, Biden is still in ostensible control of the ship of state, where he has allowed a many-headed Scylla to enter as masses of migrants numbering in the millions threatening to capsize local economies like NYC, which has had to spend billions of dollars on migrants devouring, Scylla-like, local resources. It’s a monster Biden chose to sail near, ignoring warnings by any and all Circes. Biden can claim that no one has been responsible--well maybe climate change-- and in fact, he would be right, because no one in his administration claims responsibility for the cartels' expansion, the drug deaths, the sex trafficking, the rapes, and murders by illegals. 


Almost at the end of his voyage, he feels free to jeopardize his remaining crew and passengers with last-minute decisions. Oh! Well. We know that soon he will return home to Delaware fast asleep, transported just like the sleeping Odysseus the Phaeacians returned to Ithaca after a nightmare time away from home.




*https://nypost.com/2024/12/23/us-news/princess-cruises-passenger-dies-after-trying-to-jump-overboard-near-florida/

“After the first death, there is no other.” —Dylan Thomas “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” **


If you think as Thomas did, that useless elegies
Do nothing for the dead, nor do apologies,
Then in this latest tragedy of motiveless malignity
Wrought by a man far from his native land
Who caused a death by his own hand
You’ll say what men like Biden mouth
“We welcome those who cross the South
“From lands of abject poverty,
“To homes now free on city property
“To reach this promise of great wealth;
“They cross the border with great stealth.
“There is no reason for you to fear.
“The millions whom we harbor here.
“They mean no harm; they come in peace;
“They put no pressure on police.
“And as for victims of their crime
“Our hearts and prayers do go out
“To friends and families; this we shout
“To sycophants who echo us
“It would not happen on a bus.
“It’s mere misfortune that she rode
‘The subway on that fateful day
“Where she met his most foul play.”


But unlike Thomas, the man from Wales,
I‘m here to voice some other tales.
It’s true, I’ll note, what he once said
No elegy revives the dead
No eulogy makes life renew.
What fire has done no words undo.
So, on the train a woman burned
Killed by a Guatemalan we have learned.
No platitudes will bring her back
From where she died upon the track.
The killer’s here because of Joe
And policies that wrought much woe.


Assume no comment from the Left
Who won’t acknowledge those bereft
By loss of goods or woman on a train
Caused by the rules they call “humane.”
And what of all who are complicit
In open borders and acts illicit
By saying nothing when people died
Just offered prayers as parents cried.
In two thousand twenty-four, 17,000 not less, but more
Have walked through Biden’s open door.
Not peaceful migrants, those who crossed
Had maimed and killed, and lives were lost.
But nothing changed the mind of Joe
Except his Hunter’s legal woe.


When Thomas wrote that comments don’t
Make right the wrong, and so I won’t
Abuse the memories of the dead
With hollow words that priests have said.
I will not kill her death as Dylan wrote
With some quite fatuous and banal quote.
The “mankind”of her tragic end
Cannot be raised by some words penned.
She lies with all who went before
And crossed the threshold of death’s door.


Dylan’s right in saying so
After the first no others go.
But one might ask when Morin *** died
And Riley **** followed by her side
How Joe could never comprehend
That what he did, did fate their end.
And so, today I eulogize,
To mourn. and Joe chastise.


That charred body deserves some say;
She should have lived another day.




*https://nypost.com/2024/12/23/us-news/sebastian-zapeta-calil-idd-as-illegal-migrant-accused-of-setting-woman-on-fire-riding-nyc-subway/


**https://poets.org/poem/refusal-mourn-death-fire-child-london


***https://abcnews.go.com/US/suspect-arrested-2023-murder-mother-5-killed-hiking/story?id=111157216


****https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laken_Riley
















:

I’m not quite sure what motivated me to watch several videos on YouTube that traced intractable liberal and snarky pundits as they went from joyous expectation that Harris would sweep to a crushing victory to their abject disillusion when she was definitively crushed in both electoral and popular votes. Maybe I watched because I have a foolish and petty vindictiveness I’m now admitting to because snarky and proud pundits with we-know-better-than-you attitudes and double standards just piss me off. (I'm sorry, did I just write "piss me off"? I meant to write "just make me a little hissy") Or maybe I watched as “low information voters” appeared to know more than the self-proclaimed elite liberal class of celebrities. Pompous and smirking, the liberals from England’s BBC through America’s PBS, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and NBC to Canada’s CBC all wore frowns at Election Night’s end because their inarticulate and incompetent candidate lost resoundingly after spending more than a billion bucks like a drunken Democrat congressman with tax revenue.


How the World Ends


Two poems come to mind when I think about Election Night videos. The first is Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice,” which begins:


        Some say the world will will end in fire,
        Some say in ice…


And the second is T. S. Elliot’s “The Hollow Men,” which ends:


        This is the way the world ends,
        Not with a bang but a whimper.


The images of a world ending in ice and of a world fading away, serve as points of departure for both the liberal punditry and the Biden Administration. Those pundits ended their nights—and much of their networks’ fan base—in a whimper of defeat made all the more destructive by their refusal to take any opposing thought seriously, so disdainful they were of any contrarian’s view or information. Deep into the election they refused to let reality displace illusion, just as they had let the Vice President’s ineptitude convince them she was the least worthy of candidates. It was their blind loyalty to ideology that allowed them to insist she had run a masterful campaign and that she had articulated the needs of the people. They might all have ears, but in paraphrase of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s line, “They could’t hear what she was saying in those now famous word salads.”


“Intractable.” as I termed them above, the pundits were left to say, “Well, this is the world we now live in, a world of Fascist-Nazi-Dictators controlled by Russia. How could so many have chosen this future?” To the end they held their talking points centered on “the threat to democracy” without acknowledging that the electorate had democratically spoken—in large numbers. And now, less than two weeks out, they retain their snarky attitudes with “Musk is the real President.” They truly are “THE HOLOW MEN.” They truly have a frozen perspective.


The Blazing Glory of the Biden Departure


What can one say about “the greatest President of our times,” the one Nancy Pelosi wants enshrined on Mt. Rushmore? His accomplishments are too numerous to mention, but here’s a short list:


        1.   A crush of millions of illegal aliens getting free stuff paid for by  American citizens
        2.   More  than 100,000 fentanyl deaths
        3.   Enriched Mexican drug cartels
        4.   Billions of dollars in military equipment left for the Taliban after the debacle of the chaotic withdrawal that cost 13                         American lives, numerous  Afghani allies’ lives, and the loss of freedom for Afghani women
        5.   Flourishing Iranian and Russian oil economies, and money for Iranian proxies to attack Israel and shipping in the Middle             East
       6.  Billions spent chasing a tenth of a degree in temperature with no guarantee of achieving that reduction, and a                              redistribution of wealth
        7.   Capitulation to every Far Left ideal
        8.   An obviously corrupt DOJ that pursued parents and Catholics as
        domestic terrorists, and that raided Trump’s home with armed agents that had permission to shoot to kill
        9,   Men in women’s sports and the death of Title IX
        10. Billions in loan relief
        11. Billions for recharging stations that were never built
        12. More than 10,000 union jobs lost in the Keystone Pipeline closure
        and the purchase of both Russian and Venezuelan oil
        13. EV mandates that threaten the car industry and the electric grid
        14. An Executive Branch without a fully functioning Executive


I suppose I could list more, but any list will fall short of recording the accomplishments of this transformational president. He has quietly left the world a safer place, Americans further enriched, illegals further enriched, also, women feeling safer…


I’ll miss his fiery speeches, his energy, his enlightening press conferences, and his…Hold on, I was thinking of his…giving his son an eleven-year pardon, saving himself from more inquiries into the rise in the Biden family’s wealth. Yeah, Scranton Joey will quietly fade a wealthy man. Get out the chisel. There’s still room on Mount Rushmore, especially for a hollow head.


I guess the Biden world is ending with a whimper of a senile and angry old man thrown out of office by an actor and a congresswoman.

About 30 year ago climate alarmists began building a snowman first called global warming and then termed climate change. Unlike other snowmen that melt with springtime warmth, the climate snowman has survived the very condition upon which it was built: warming. Did the climate “scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) place on their construction a magic hat like Frosty the Snowman’s?


Warmth That Has Been a Snow Job


If you read through the models that the climate change people promulgate, you’ll find 1) an unshakeable assumption that anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide cause global warming; 2) no model accurately predicts reality, and no model retrodicts it; and 3) no model as yet reveals that its authors know how to incorporate solar maximums and minimums or cloud effects to derive a prediction. You’ll also find that all the predictions of sea level rise, increased storm activity and intensity, and increased floods and droughts are virtually worthless in light of historical context and actual weather records. And, while you’re looking, note that forest fires and record high temperatures are events that alarmists cherry-pick to support a dire narrative. After all, if the world believes the narrative, it will continue to fund their research. The climate alarmists have been more than happy to attend climate conferences in exotic places on someone else’s dime.


And speaking of dimes, I’ll note for you that the thickness of two or three of those coins is guesstimated equivalent of twenty-first century yearly sea level rise, a rate of rise that is appreciably slower than the rapid rise following the global oceanic low stand of 18,000 years ago. * The oceans have been as much as 400+ feet lower than they are today, and they began their rapid rise long before humans burned fossil fuels. Not to belabor the point, but I would ask you to imagine standing on the shore and looking over the ocean for one year. Could you detect that three-dime rise? And if it were only a two-dime or one-dime rise?


If you look at the actual data, yo’ll realize that climate alarmists at the IPCC have built a snowman that defies the vicissitudes of weather in its ability to survive now some three decades of supposed “warming.”


It doesn’t matter to the duped people in the media or to the IPCC people that nothing they predicted has materialized. Thy can’t point to any weather phenomena as proof of their hypothesis. They can’t prove there’s an existential threat. The polar bears are doing just fine. The carbon in the atmosphere is making the world greener. The famous hockey stick graph has been debunked. Hottest day, driest drought, most extensive forest fire, melting sea ice, that rising sea, climate-driven migrations—all the talking points echoed by journalists or politicians without the mental wherewithal to research the data or see the disjunct between predictive models and actual conditions add up to a snowman wearing a magic hat that ensures survival and that costs untold billions of  dollars in taxpayer money.




* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

Apparently, some journalists who earned their undergraduate degrees under professors with liberal-to-far-Left mindsets and who grew up in the Age of Increased Plagiarism that coincided with an Age of Grade Inflation never learned the lesson of patience and hard work. I say this in light of the suits against ABC by President-Elect Trump and against CNN by Zachary Young and Nemex Enterprises Inc. Sloppy or possibly malicious reporting has gotten the two networks into legal trouble. ABC has reached an agreement that includes a reported payment of millions and an apology. * The CNN suit is still pending, currently awaiting CNN’s financial statement. **

Why didn't the networks carefully check their stories?


Did too Much Information Make Us Stupid?


With the rise of the Internet and sites like Wikipedia, millions have gained easy access to seemingly unlimited information about historical and current events. This plethora of information has engendered a mental laziness: Why memorize when a smart device can give you info in seconds? Why ferret out truth when “truths” both suspicious and undocumented are readily available? ABC seems to have chosen the lazy path to reporting.allowing George Stephenopoulos to make a false statement about Trump. CNN seems to have also made a false claim, one regarding a company that transferred Afghanis to safety.


Were both networks guilty of laziness or maliciousness prompted by political views? I suppose the motivation will remain partially or fully hidden unless some set of emails surfaces. The numerous attacks on Trump by a Left-leaning Press might, after the ABC concession, diminish in number if not in intensity (like the false claim that there are fewer but more intense hurricanes because of climate change).


The problem of mental laziness in journalism extends beyond TV cable news. Reporters for newspapers like the NY Times have also shown a disdain for the hard work good journalism requires. The Hunter Biden laptop story is an example. One might think that the paper had more than adequate resources to report on the veracity of the story as the NY Post did. Recall, also, that reporter Jayson Blair fabricated and plagiarized material for his stories in the NY Times.


Lazy? Or Malicious? The fast and furious rate of 24/7 news makes loose handling of information a common denominator across the spectrum of reporting services from independent internet podcasters to mainstream media pundits. And the instances of mirrored phrases and innuendos punctuate the ease with which falsehoods can spread across a network of reporters conjoined at their inner brains. Independence, a characteristic I assume is central to good reporting, lies buried in stories covered the same way and in the same language. Generally, reporters often repeat political party talking points—and that holds for reporters tied to Republicans as well as Democrats.


Detective Shows


Why do we like detective shows? Well, to answer that I’ll point out that there are two kinds of such shows. In the first kind like Columbo, we see the criminal at the beginning and then watch the famous detective discover the perpetrator’s identity. We’re omniscient but intrigued by the process of investigation because we empathize with Peter Falk’s lovable character. Yes, there’s really no mystery. In the second kind like City Homicide and Law and Order: SVU the shows begin with a crime without revealing the identity of the criminal. The show then progresses little by little as the detectives unravel relationships among victims and perpetrators.


If I turned on MSNBC or CNN during the past eight years, I would get a Columbo show. I knew from the outset where the story would eventually go: the perpetrator was from the beginning Donald Trump. There was no investigative process. Bang! Criminal…reiteration by every reporter…guilt. No detective work necessary. That’s the kind of “reporting” that led to abuses of truth-telling. The foreknown outcome dictates the nature of the reporting, the end justifying the means. Machiavelli would be proud.


Of course, there’s another way to serve as a news outlet: Simply ignore a story. Keep it out of the viewers’ minds. The widespread disruption and misuse of taxes caused by illegal immigration, by cartels sex trafficking, by fentanyl deaths, and by communities changed by the open-border policies were non-stories on Democrat-leaning news outlets. In other words. Reporting by not reporting, the laziest way to serve as a reporter.


Will Things Change?


The financial blow to Leftist networks caused by the Trump victory might initiate a change in news coverage, but let’s not hold our breath. Ideology is as difficult to give up as is laziness.
If we took an Aristotelian point of view, we might say that the natural propensity of a reporter is to take the easy way to a story. This isn’t an era with reporters imbued with the principles of hard work. Aristotle said that the natural state of an object was to be stationary. It’s that inertia that makes reporters lazy and willing to accept predetermined explanations or reports.


However, Aristotle knew that some impetus had to be applied for a stationary object to overcome its “natural stationary state.” For reporting, that impetus might be the threat of a lawsuit.




*https://nypost.com/2024/12/17/media/george-stephanopoulos-apoplectic-over-abc-news-settlement-with-trump/


**https://nypost.com/2024/12/16/media/cnn-accused-of-misleading-court-on-net-worth-for-high-profile-defamation-case/

Aren’t you a bit tired of this equity stuff? I am. Disequilibrium is the way of the world as far as I know. No sooner than the components of any system reach balance they begin their natural entropic journey toward disequilibrium. Eggs break or rot, and once broken or rotten, they don’t reestablish what they briefly were. Humans only briefly reach parity, and them only in limited ways, like minimum wage or salaries governed by unions. Yet, even in those instances of equality, there lie all the exceptions, like the guy who has an extra job, a professor who obtains grants or writes a best seller, or a teacher who coaches. Disequilibrium seems to me to be the way of the world from weather to finances.


Sometimes the Imbalances Are Large


Sometime in the 1950s, one of my younger cousins returned from his Little League game and , sweaty, walked into his kitchen, where my aunt asked him whether the team won or lost. It was a hot summer day, and my cousin who was probably about nine at the time stood at the sink filling a glass with water when she asked. He said, “We lost” and then, leaning over the sink, proceeded to spill the water over his head to cool off. Still curious, she asked for the score. “Forty-four to 10,” he said without much concern, showing in fact more concern for his method of cooling off than for the score.


Those were the days before equity raised its ugly head over competition. People kept score, and often winners ran up the score on losers, with football teams hitting 70 points against losers without a touchdown and high school basketball teams hitting the same against teams that couldn’t score 30.


And then the anti-competition movement infiltrated Little League games, commencing the Age of Participation Trophies. I want to say that occurred mostly in the Northeast because of its incipient liberalism, but it was apparently a movement on the West Coast as well in that other center of liberalism. The attempt to erase competition from sports was a precursor of today’s safe spaces in universities, grade inflation, and of public gatherings for scream therapy when a favored political candidate (usually a liberal one) loses an election, no better examples of which are viewable on YouTube since the 2024 election.


Equity in Professional Sports


Now, Sheila Johnson, owner of the Washington Mystics, complained on CNN that Time had named Caitlin Clark “Athlete of the Year.” * Her reasoning for the complaint? The league, and not an individual player should have been recognized. Johnson seems to miss the details of performance by the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year.


Having grown up in the Pittsburgh area, I am not a Philadelphia Eagles fan, but on this past Sunday, I was just as eager to watch Saquon Barkley’s performance as I was to see my home team do well (they lost). Barkley has already run for 1,688 yards this season. That’s against men both fast and monstrous who tried to stop him. His now famous backward jump during a game has ensured his place among legendary players, all of whom were labeled “legendary” because of their actual performances. Maybe another player is capable of executing that jump, but to date no NFL player appears to have done it. Barkley is a remarkable athlete, a quality I am ready to acknowledge because I want merit rewarded. I want those who excel to garner recognition, awards, and trophies. I want the world of sports to be pervaded by inequalities. I want championship games and champions. I want some students to get As on tests for which they prepared and other students to make Fs because they didn’t prepare.


As one who has played football, basketball, and baseball, I do not understand the equity movement in sports except to say that those pushing it probably never stepped onto the field or court. It’s there, where the game is played, that individuals rise or sink to a level above or below other players.


Good Sportsmanship?


I suppose that there is a place for a Harrison Bergeron limitation in a game. Bergeron is the fictional character created by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He’s extraordinarily gifted and talented, so the powers that be put him in “chains” and earphones with distracting noises to make him less extraordinary and even “ordinary.” The analog would be to make Saquon Barkley wear snowshoes during a game. That "place" for limitation? I can see a quarterback "taking a knee" as time runs out on an opponent rather than increasing the score in a runaway game. I can understand a baseball team not stealing second in the ninth inning when it leads the other team by eight runs, even though it is possible for a losing team to rally. 


What arguments can those who favor participation trophies make? Good sportsmanship? Compassion? Whatever they are they foil the nature of games, kill competition, and for the youngest participants, erase the nature of sports as an analog of or preparation for life.


Put the Caitlin Clarks, Michael Jordans, and Saquon Barkleys on the covers of magazines in recognition of their excellence. And shame those who refuse to put an actual model, Melania Trump, on the covers of magazines that featured Jill Biden or Michelle Obama, both of who appeared on fashion magazine covers. Yeah, liberals want to make all equal, and typically for them that means to ignore or denigrate those who are superior in some endeavor, talent, skill, or feature. That no magazines wanted to feature Melania Trump on their covers because the editors disagreed with her husband’s politics shows a weakness that others will exploit on the international stage every time liberals are in charge. Equity or imposed excellence won’t win a war, won’t make a vibrant economy, and won’t enable the country to weather the inevitable threats or storms of international competition.

The envious can ignore or downplay the accomplishments of Caitlin Clark, but that won't stop her from being a player with more skill than most other players. 


*https://nypost.com/2024/12/16/opinion/latest-caitlin-clark-controversy-plays-into-female-stereotypes/

Intro: Truth vs. THE Truth


This coming spring semester at Stanford, you will be able to sign up (if you have the prerequisite course or instructor’s permission) for PHI 182H: Truth. The catalog blurb reads, “Philosophical debates about the place in human lives and the value to human beings of truth and its pursuit. The nature and significance of truth-involving virtues such as accuracy, sincerity, and candor.”


Because it contains the words ACCURACY, SINCERITY, and CANDOR, the catalog blurb provides a point of departure for this blog on the crisis in truth America in general and science in particular face today: The verifiable accuracy of information.


You ought to sign up for that Stanford course, but hurry; registration is limited since discussion is the methodology. The lucky few will be able to talk to a philosopher (David Hills) about a subject that concerned not only the great ancient philosophers, but also the mundane and conflicted Governor of ancient Israel, Pontius Pilate, the guy who asked Jesus, “What is Truth?” Or did he ask, “What is THE truth?” There’s a difference.


“What is Truth?” can be asked in a vacuum. It needs no referent, no specifics. It’s a metaphysical question. “What is THE truth?” is the stuff of crime shows and science. “Where were you the night of the seventeenth when she was murdered? I want THE truth.” And in that context, the question demands real-world specifics and corroboration, say from one or more witnesses. In science, for example, those “witnesses are repeated falsifiable experiments in the tradition of Karl Popper’s dictum.


The difference between the two questions seems to me to be an encapsulation of Immanuel Kant’s rumination on analytic and synthetic judgment, which is a subject discussed in R. Lanier Anderson’s The Poverty of Conceptual Truth: Kant’s Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Limits of Metaphysics.* Pilate confronted a problem of everyday practical significance to the Hebrews on which he had to judge A truth: Was Jesus guilty of what his accusers said? The details were inherent in the problem. That other question about Truth itself, lent itself not to analytic, but to Kant’s definition of synthetic judgment.


Accuracy


If you are a regular visitor to this website, you know that I have written about the crisis in both science and the dissemination of information. Everything that we read or hear  nowadays seems to be tinged by biases of one kind or another. That forces us to question almost all we hear or read about human behavior and science. The problem of accuracy as a corollary of the problem of truth (THE truth) is exacerbated by willingness, nay, eagerness of the media to further particular agendas and narratives.  (Russia, Russia, Russia, for example, kids in cages, border agents whipping migrants, no Hunter Biden laptop, a fully functioning and energetic President Biden) with no regard for an analytic examination of a story for facts. One consequence of inaccuracy driven by propaganda is the destruction of lives, no better example of which was the travesty of false allegations of rape made by Crystal Mangum in 2006 against the Duke lacrosse team. The media ran with the story, essentially ruining lives in support of a liberal narrative. Now nearly two decades later, Mangum has publicly admitted she lied, but those young men, regardless of compensation by the University, had their life plans radically altered. As you know, once a story is broadcast, it becomes an underlying “truth.” No retraction has ever been adequate because Time’s arrow never reverses.


Has there ever been a time when biases played smaller roles in the dissemination of information? Probably, but that’s only because the dissemination was in fewer hands. Today, everyone is a potential disseminator.


Newtonian-like Thinking


One side of my brain believes in objectivity and Truth even as the other side recognizes the relative nature of reality and truths. The problem is that acquiring any truth is plagued by so many controllers with an agenda, as my recent blog on Laura Helmuth, the now former editor of Scientific American, documents. ** We’ll never know what articles Helmuth rejected not on the grounds of bad science, but rather on the grounds of perspectives that countered her beliefs.


The manipulation of science to further an ideological agenda has real and detrimental consequences that make truth elusive and illusive. Whereas it is necessary for editors and researchers to have some skin in the game to fulfill their roles, it is not necessary for them to jeopardize your skin by selective dissemination of information to protect a favored belief or perspective. For an inordinate number of publications readers now need need an SPF 100—no, not Sun Protection Factor, but Science Protection Factor. Otherwise, brains will be more than tinged; they will be singed. And I don’t have to tell many people that over the past 50 years we’ve all been burned by bad science repeated in defense of the status quo or an agenda.


Willing disseminators of flawed or biased studies then repeat their findings endlessly. That is how belief in climate change and in standing six feet apart to prevent the spread of disease worked their way into the public mind.


But it isn’t just popular science and knowledge that embodies this kind of intractable thinking. The so-called hard sciences, particularly physics, have also been subjected to biased selection. In theoretical physics string theory dominates, often to the exclusion of other theoretical frameworks, and certain physics research is deemed trivial in light of the “accepted” and espoused non trivial work.


What we all desire is some certainty, some demonstrable truth like Newton’s First and Second Laws.  By personal experiment we can confirm the latter that moving a large mass is more difficult than moving a small mass, and we can track a spacecraft’s unimpeded drift until it encounters a slowing force like the gravity of some celestial object. We can’t fudge; we can’t change the principle of inertia just by saying “It ain’t so.”


“Just the Facts, Ma’am”    


If I can guess correctly, you want from scientists something akin to comedian Stan Freberg’s parody of a line never spoken by Jack Webb in Dragnet: “Just the facts, ma’am.” You want to know that whatever science (and any media outlet) tells you is reliable information sans opinion: Whether this or that causes cancer, whether an asteroid will strike at 4:30 tomorrow morning, whether Vitamin D3 and zinc supplements will keep you safe from a resurgence of COVID, whether the laptop is Hunter Biden’s, and whether your seatbelts are worth wearing. “Just the facts, ma’am.” No beating round the bush, no fudging for a company selling tobacco or drugs, no lying about mild side effects when instances of death lie buried in the trial data, and no selection of scientific articles for a magazine based on a narrow ideology or popular belief.


In an affront to the parameters of methodology and truthfulness, some “scientists” nowadays aren’t above inventing or fudging data to support ideology, the status quo,  and self-aggrandizement. The practice manifests itself in inventing hoaxes outright or in manipulating in a Machiavellian way to achieve a desired goal. But hoaxing is, of course, neither a new phenomenon nor one limited to “science.” The difference today lies in that proliferation of disseminators I mentioned above.


One of the most famous examples is Charles Dawson’s manufactured Piltdown Man, the “missing link” he presented to the world in 1912. His fossil wasn’t definitively dismissed as a hoax until 1953, meaning that it remained as an evolutionary icon for 41 years. Imagine the chagrin of all those paleoanthropology professors who included it in their lectures and authors who wasted time writing articles on the mishmash of human and orangutan. More importantly, the staying power of the hoax demonstrates that much that is supposed to be “science” can become unshakeable dogma and theory in the minds of those whose most fundamental obligation is to ceaselessly question and attempt to falsify.


Can you think of anything today that has become unshakeable dogma instead of science? Can you say, “Climate change is an existential threat”?


And now we can add to scientific hoaxes and data manipulation the supposed objectively acquired poll numbers that showed Kamala Harris with anything from a reasonable to a commanding lead in the run-up to the election. Bias overwhelms us in almost all phases of our lives, making Truth even more elusive than it has always been. In fact, Truth has become illusive. And ACCEPTABLE TRUTHS are even dangerous.
Don’t believe me? Take the United States Navy’s concern about climate change. Here’s a press release concerning the Biden Administration’s Secretary of the Navy:


NEWPORT, R.I. – Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro delivered remarks at the Forum at Newport, a conference about national security and climate change co-hosted by the Naval War College and the Pell Center at Salve Regina University, Sept. 5.


Nothing like a New England University hosting a conference in which climate change figures prominently. The Navy? Isn’t its job to defend the nation against military threats? Isn’t the Navy in conjunction with the other military branches supposed to be dedicated to breaking things and killing people? What’s the Secretary’s concern? Rising seas? Don’t ships float? But with no evidence that rising seas are an actual verifiable problem for the Navy or that cyclones are getting stronger, Del Toro addressed the problem as a serious naval concern, and he threw in mention of forest fires and droughts as germane to naval operations. Forest fires? Do we have fleets of wooden ships? I thought the Monitor and Merrimack ushered in an age of metal boats. The constant repetition of global climate change has become a truth in a human endeavor in which it is irrelevant. Sailors must now devote some of their energy and resources to combatting something that no one can show to be an actual threat without fudging or exaggerating data.


Procrustean Beds


I’m certainly not the first to recognize that contemporary United States is a house furnished in Procrustean beds. Whatever doesn’t fit must be made to fit either by coercion or cancellation. Typically, a small but vocal minority who troll people with whom they disagree makes today’s real world as unpleasant intellectually for free thinkers as the mythological world inhabited by Procrustes was unpleasant physically for travelers passing by his iron bed on Mount Korydalle.


If this were Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, we might see signs in universities reading Die Gleichförmigkeit uber Alles, so powerful is the pressure to conform not just socially snd politically, but also intellectually. Yet, today’s pressure to conform is sometimes subtle and unspoken; it is a pervasive but silent nod among the self-chosen elect who run and hire and distribute grant money for ideas they harbor like family pets. “Hard to believe, but Old Floppsy’s been with us for twenty years. Yes, our pet tortoise might be with us, well, how long do turtles live?” Yes, string theory has been with us for seven decades? How long can a “theory” live without a practical application, you know, like Newton’s action-reaction sending a rocket to the moon?


String theory is a tortoise. A malicious one, something like an attack dog without mitigating training. It’s been in the forefront of many university physics departments that won’t hire physicists who aren’t working on it. Conform, or take your advanced degree in physics elsewhere. Somewhere less ethereal. Some place where physics and engineering meet in a badly lighted factory with smells of grease, oil, and flammable materials. For string theorists, truth lies in the proliferation of versions of the theory.


So, There’s a Corollary Problem?


Choosing what in “science” is worth exploring and supporting on the basis of accepted dogmatic truths is bad for science for another reason: When science is hampered by preconceived notions (Understand, it will never be freed from axioms), it will not produce unexpected results, and, worry worry worry, it won’t discover—much if anything at all, leaving us wondering, “What really is true?” “What is THE truth?” We might be well advised to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.”


*Oxford. 2015. Oxford University Press.


** “Shuck My Corn and Call Me Doofus” (11/15/24)

Two svelte-challenged guys, respectively nicknamed Chubs and Bulk, talk at the local bar.


Chubs: Barkeep, another draft, please. Hey, Bulk, did you see this in the news?


Bulk: What’s that?


Chubs: New way to measure your health and forget BMI.


Bulk: What’s BMI? Hey, I’ll have another draft, also. What’s the story?


Chubs: BMI stands for Body Mass Index; it’s supposed to be a measure of health. Mine’s 38; I checked. I’m guessing yours is in the forties.


Bulk: So, what should it be?


Chubs: You see Rail over there? That’s what a good BMI looks like, hardly any body fat. Anyway, now the new health measurement is called body roundness. Your waist should be less than half your height.


Bulk: And if it is greater?


Chubs: Heart problems. Walla! The late comedians John Candy, John Pinette, and Louie Anderson; I could throw in Chris Farley, but he was also a drug user. Round people, really round people are more likely to have heart problems as the short lives of those comics indicate.


Bulk: What’re you sayin’? I shouldn’t drink this beer? What about old Charley over there. He’s pushing 350 or more and he’s shorter than we are. He’s 76 with no signs he won’t make 77 or more.


Chubs: No, it’s a statistical thing. You can’t point to individuals because there are exceptions. Rounder means more likely, not definitely. I just know I’m making changes. Going to lose this gut.


Bulk: But you realize that diet science is always changing. Carbs, no carbs, certain carbs, all meat and no potatoes, celery, cereal, no cereal, rice, no starches. I can’t keep up. And then there are all those pills and injections. Geez, it’s a constant noise about weight and shape.


Chubs: I know. Makes me wonder whether we’ll ever know how to live longer. I mean, what’s so wrong with beer? Aren’t we all just too inactive? Take Rail over there. He’s always on the move, and he drinks beer, lots of beer. That’s lots of carbs, isn’t it? Maybe I can keep drinking beer if I move around more during the day.


Bulk: I’m not worrying about it because I heard stress is a cause of heart problems. Drinking beer is the least stressful activity I know short of sleeping. It’s liquid bread—uh, just realized that I’m not supposed to eat bread, or desserts, or snacks, or…

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/diet/weight-loss/body-roundness-index/