The Oil Must Flow

Imagine a closeup headshot of Princess Irulan, who solemnly intones the following.

In this time the most precious substance on the planet is oil. Oil powers our world, oil is a part of most products, oil is vital to civilized life. The airlines use oil, which gives them the ability to fly, that is, travel to any part of the world in a day.

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, much of the oil exists in only one region of the entire planet, a desolate, dry region, with vast deserts. Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people known as the Shia, who have long held a prophecy that a man would come - the twelfth imam - who would lead them to true freedom.

The region is plagued with eternal turmoil … and yet, the oil must flow. 

Hat tips to Frank Herbert and, more recently, to Stephen Green for the inspiration.

Another Option

Thinking about the Firefly renewal discussed yesterday. Animation is mentioned as the intended medium. I have another idea. 

How about feeding the 2002 images of the cast into an AI plus the scripts of the new episodes and have it create the imagery, with human oversight to catch and eliminate things like too many fingers or extra hands? Obviously pay the cast members for the use of their images, maybe even give them limited say-so (if desired) on what their characters are shown doing.

I have the feeling AI has reached the point where the above is doable, and production costs should be much less. The product should resemble the first season, not like a detailed set of drawings. 

The Orbán Loss

Writing for Brussels Signal, Henry Olsen dissects why Fidesz and Viktor Orbán lost the Hungarian presidency. Here is a key insight.

Fidesz wasn’t entrusted with government to enrich its friends and protect them from justice. It was elected to make Hungarians richer materially and spiritually.

Any Western European government that had experienced scandal and a stagnant economy would expect to be tossed on its rear come election time. That’s what happened to Britain’s Conservatives in 1997 and 2024, and that’s what happened to Viktor Orbán.

Indeed. 

Firefly Reincarnated

Screen Rant reports Firefly may have found new life as an animated series, set in the period between the TV series and the film Serenity. It supposedly will feature the same characters as the TV series. Perhaps the original cast will do the voices, SR isn't clear about this.

SR indicates the new project was first broached a couple of months ago. Joss Whedon will not be involved in the new effort, although he is said to be supportive.

I agree with the commenters that animation is less good than live action, but 'tis better than nothing.

Iran Update

Various sources report Vice President JD Vance went to Islamabad, Pakistan, to negotiate with Iran. He spent 21 hours doing so, and discovered they would not agree to stop pursuing nuclear weapons. He then left, saying Iran was not ready to meet US minimum demands.

Now President Trump reports the Navy will blockade all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off a main source of revenue for Iran. The supposed two week ceasefire is either off or sort-of-on, if the bombing of power generation and desalination plants begins, we know the answer is “off.” 

Twelve hours later ... Correction ... We are blockading all Iranian ports, not the Strait of Hormuz. So oil can flow, just not from Iran. Iran's facilities to ship oil remain undamaged, but unusable while we block their ports. Inability to raise foreign exchange may bring the government to heel and cause regime change. 

Can the Worm Turn?

New Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has floated an intriguing way to disincentivize blue cities' sanctuary policies which make the work of his immigration enforcement folk much more difficult. 

His idea: pull the immigration officials out of blue cities' international airports. The result of which would be airlines would have to quit international flights to those airports. Imagine how well this would go down with NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, or Los Angeles. These 'sanctuary cities' are "at war" with Homeland Security and he may be able to fight back. 

I'm imagining a few airports where international flights would be able to terminate and then those bound to sanctuary cities would have to take a connecting domestic flight to reach home. The resultant turmoil would be amazing, the howling unbelievable.

A series of court challenges would ensue, can cities which refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement demand immigrations services in spite of their rebellion? I know there are judges who will answer "yes." How about the Supremes?

Trump's problem is you can't fight everyone at once, although he is active on many fronts. Is this a battle he is willing to prioritize? If the idea goes nowhere, we'll know the answer is no.

Later … Another version of this would see reduced staffing at sanctuary city airports such that congestion and wait times to inprocess international pax become very tiresome. Harder to counter than a refusal of service. If resources reassigned to airports of cooperative cities such that passing thru is streamlined … thus rewarding cooperation … perhaps easier to pull off.

Saturday Snark

Trump Farside

So true.

My spirit animal.

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and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

⬆ An infant Elon, dreaming of the stars.

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The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Suggesting a New Path for Alzheimer’s Research

I’ve been thinking about the post below, and I’ll share those thought with you. First, what do we know? We know that older people who get flu shots are less likely to demonstrate Alzheimer’s. And we now know that those who get the stronger dosage are even less likely to get Alzheimer’s.

From this I reason as follows. What does a flu immunization do in your body? It stimulates antibodies to fight the viral influenza infection. More generally, it ‘gooses’ the immune system, wakes it up and gives it work to do. If the stronger vaccine does more of this, and if less Alzheimer’s is the result, then somehow the immune system also fights Alzheimer’s. I don’t believe we already knew this for sure.

Reasoning further, I speculate perhaps some infectious agent - at present unknown or causatively unrecognized - is involved in causing Alzheimer’s. And this “agent” - be it virus, microbe, or ?? - shares some aspects of its nature with the influenza virus such that antibodies against the one also are somewhat active against the other.

File the following speculation under “wild guess.” My hunch is that the culprit is some long-lingering virus similar to the chicken pox (varicella-zoster) virus that, in ways unsuspected, causes or accelerates Alzheimer’s years or decades after first infecting the host. It may be no coincidence that most Alzheimer’s cases manifest after the immune system becomes less active around age 65.

Weird Immunological Science

Strong relationship found between stronger flu vaccine and lower Alzheimer’s risk in seniors, SciTechDaily.com has the story. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Older adults who receive a higher dose of the influenza vaccine may have a significantly lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to those who receive the standard dose.

Compared to the standard-dose flu vaccine, which was associated with a 40% reduction in Alzheimer’s risk, the high-dose vaccine was linked to nearly a 55% reduction in risk among adults age 65 and older.

At this point nobody knows why this finding occurs. It could be that seniors who are still “with it” are even more likely to demand the higher dose, and that those who don’t get any flu shots are already “losing it.” 

Be clear, I don’t posit that as explaining the correlational findings. I merely point out the two things occur together and we have no explanation as to why. It is too soon to be claiming one thing causes the other, perhaps some third thing influences both.

On the other hand, if getting the stronger shot improves your chances of dodging Alzheimer’s why not do it? There is little downside.

Evolution at Work

RealClearScience brings us an interesting article with this intriguing title: “The Human Body Isn’t a Masterpiece of Design.” What follows is a the description of various bodily systems which are far from optimal but rather reflect adaptations that merely “get the job done,” more or less. Here is the key idea.

Evolution does not design structures from scratch. Rather, it modifies what already exists. As a result, many aspects of human anatomy are just “good enough” solutions – functional, but far from perfect. Some of the most familiar medical problems and ailments arise directly from these inherited constraints.

Problems so identified include the spine, the neck, our eyes, teeth and pelvis. and the adaptations continue. I am among the minority who develop no wisdom teeth. A further evolution? It amuses me to think so.

Happily Well-Adjusted

Writing for American Affairs Journal, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi does a very deep dive in the social science literature. He is looking at the persistent finding that liberals are more likely to be unhappy and less well-adjusted than conservatives. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

He documents that this finding occurs across many nations, cultures, and eras. We conservatives think liberals have mental difficulties, and in fact they do. Liberals think we conservatives are evil, but that conclusion is a result of their latent paranoia. See his conclusion.

The general pattern is clear: conservatives report significantly higher levels of happiness, meaning, and satisfaction in their lives as compared to liberals. Meanwhile, liberals are much more likely to exhibit anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychic distress.

Iran Blinked

At nearly the last moment Trump postponed for two weeks the destruction of Iran's infrastructure - power generation and desalination plants. The deal trades two weeks of ceasefire by all parties for two weeks of unhampered open sailing through the Strait of Hormuz

Negotiations toward a permanent settlement will continue during that fortnight. What remains unclear is whether Iran's government has retained enough control over its various decentralized units to command they cease firing and be obeyed. 

Iran has established a pattern of not living up to agreements they make. We will soon learn whether the recent punishment has ended that tendency.

It is my judgment that Trump's talk of destroying their civilization, and our demonstrated ability to do exactly that, may have gotten the leadership's attention. Perhaps martyrdom is not universally sought by Iranians after all.

Later … I’ll admit to being disappointed that Trump didn’t destroy Iran’s power generation and desalination plants. I remember the embassy staff being held hostage and all the other horrid stuff they and their proxies have done. Stuff that hasn't been properly avenged.

Space Toilets

The Artemis II crew is having problems with their toilet. Apparently this is no new thing. I'm remembering the problems Big Bang Theory's Howard Wolowitz had designing one ever so long ago. You'd think they'd have those issues managed by now.

Later ... I'm not the only one making this connection. Space.com remembers the Wolowitz crapper too.

A Spectacular Rescue

Much is being written about the rescue mission to extract the second officer - a WSO* - of an F-15 shot down over Iran. The pilot had already been rescued. 

In many ways the rescuers did successfully what an earlier group failed to accomplish when our embassy staff in Iran was being held hostage some 47 years ago. The mission Carter sent failed miserably, the one Trump sent succeeded spectacularly.

Credit where credit is due, SecWar Hegseth is racking up impressive wins. The contrast with Biden’s tail-between-legs pullout of Afghanistan is night and day. For the moment at least, the US military is a weapon you don’t want pointed at your country. 

*A WSO or Weapons Systems Officer isn’t the pilot, though he or she may fly parts of the mission. WSO combines roles of navigator and bombardier plus electronics warfare. Where you’ve seen the role is the first Top Gun film where Maverick’s other crew member Goose was a Wizzo (WSO) who dies in a bailout while in training. 

Saturday Snark (two days late)

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and its Comments section.

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The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Happy Easter

For our readers who celebrate Easter, I wish you a happy and spiritual day. I hope you are surrounded by loved ones, and share with them the traditional Easter feast. It is normally a joyous holiday.

Travel Blogging VIII

Home at last, both flights without incident, on time and efficient. TSA was again cheerful, I congratulated them on getting paid. 

Both flights today on a feeder airline - Sky West - that operates as Delta's surrogate hereabouts. The planes and gates say Delta but the personnel and planes belong to SW, headquartered in St. George. It flies nice Canadian and Brazilian narrow body commuter jets that seat 2 and 1 in first class and 2 and 2 in coach, I prefer them to Boeing 737s and the Airbus equivalents.

They provide flights to places which Delta otherwise might not bother to serve. If today was at all typical, they are carrying a lot of coach and first class pax.

A nice trip and a nice cluster of memories of traversing one of our great rivers. Our next adventure is the semi-annual relocation from one house to the other. That happens in just under 2 months. 

Seeing the Elephant

New York City is nobody’s idea of a conservative bastion. I believe we can be certain there is minimal racial bias in the NYPD’s statistics. I have for you a link to their data for 2024, the most recent available and very likely representative of recent years. 

Whites are the largest population group in NYC, followed by Hispanics followed by non-Hispanic Blacks. However whites are very underrepresented in gun crimes, including murder, shootings, etc. Ditto in sex crimes of various stripes. Blacks are over represented both as perps and as victims. Hispanics somewhat less so.

Someone who has further massaged the data claims the following:

There have been nearly 19,000 suspected shooters recorded in New York City since 2006. Only 1.5% were listed as White.

As a person who has been paying attention, I’d risk a guess you don’t find the above especially shocking. It is the elephant in the room nobody is supposed to mention or admit noticing.

Travel Blogging VII

We are tied up alongside in Clarkston, WA and have reached the end of our passage. We are at the south edge of the Palouse country of Eastern WA, and the other side of the river is Lewiston, ID. The terrain is gently rolling hills on which wheat is grown. The “coastal feeling” is gone, we’ve reached “big sky” country.

We will overnight here on the boat and fly out tomorrow morning. Some pax are taking jet boat trips to Hells Canyon but we’re just staying aboard. Tomorrow night we’ll be home in eastern Nevada, after changing planes in SLC.

We’ve already decided to take another trip with American Cruise Lines, the next one on the Tennessee rivers from Nashville to Chattanooga. It happens in mid-October. We hope to visit friends in the Knoxville area while there.