Travel Blogging II

Good morning from chilly, overcast Astoria, on the cool, damp north Pacific Coast. Something West Coast natives seldom admit: coastal skies are often overcast, or even foggy, in the morning. It often, but not always, “burns off” by noon or one pm.

When I lived in the Bay Area for several years, I would joke that every weather forecast would include the following. “Night and morning low clouds clearing locally inland in the afternoon, highs in the 50-60s, lows in the 40s.” That was the forecast something like 300 days a year.

It is a damp cold. A well-dressed gentleman in post-war San Francisco wore a topcoat over his suit and tie, and wasn’t too warm. Mark Twain joked the coldest day he ever experienced was a breezy summer (!) day in SF.

Astoria is at the mouth of the Columbia River, on the coast. Ocean-going ships sail upriver as far as Portland, which is a fair distance.

We’ve sailed down here and beginning tonight will commence sailing upstream to the juncture with the Snake River, which we will then take upstream to the neighboring cities of Lewiston ID and Clarkston WA, named for the famous explorers. We will follow their route home as far as Lewiston before disembarking and heading for our home.

Later … We took a bus tour of Astoria in the late morning, learned this area was settled by Scandinavians of all sorts, with emphasis on Finns. The guide joked who but Scandinavians would find a cloudy, cold place with million of conifers and lots of fish so entirely homelike. They looked around and said we know how to make this place work for us and stayed. Nordics predominate down this coast until nearly SF. From SF south the ethnicity of watermen switches to an Italian and Portuguese mix. 

When as a grad student I lived for 3 years in Eugene OR, I shared a house with a couple of other  B-school grad students. One of these - Olson from MN - thought the lack of snow was lovely; from CA, I hated the incessant drizzle. Same northwest weather - seen from two perspectives - reaching opposite conclusions. Life is like that.

Travel Blogging I

Greetings from Portland, Oregon. Weather here is atypically beautiful, flight here from St. George UT uneventful. TSA in St. George fully operational w/o aid of ICE, essentially zero wait time.

We overnight in an Embassy Suites and head out tomorrow a.m. early. We will begin with a visit to Multnomah Falls, followed by boarding our river boat, arriving in time for lunch. If we can post pix, they will appear at the other DrC’s blog.

Tomorrow afternoon we cruise west toward the coast, destination Astoria. That is a stretch of the Columbia I have not seen. Anticipation for an enjoyable week aboard is widely shared by pax we met at tonight’s cocktail party.

Update

We go traveling tomorrow and will be away from the desktop for over a week. Thus, the usual Friday Snark and Saturday Snark will be missing this weekend. With luck they may return next weekend. 

In the meantime - via the IPad - expect some “travel blogging” of our river cruise up the Columbia and Snake rivers. We’ve traveled with American Cruise Line before, on the Mississippi, and enjoyed that very much. We expect no less from the next week or so. We have fingers crossed about TSA delays on tomorrow’s flight to Portland.

Review: Young Sherlock

The DrsC recently semi-binge watched the first season of Young Sherlock on Amazon Prime Video streaming. Endeavoring to avoid spoilers for this fresh approach to the classic Conan Doyle character, let me say upfront we liked it and look forward to a second season.

The characters are interesting, multidimensional, and at least three hark back to the Doyle original. The Brits do this sort of historical stuff so well, it’s a joy to just take in the period costuming and scenery. In this telling, Holmes has a different sister, not Enola, but Beatrice. Both his parents have major roles in this first season. It isn’t perfect, but very nice nonetheless. 

Full disclosure: I am a lifelong Sherlockian, one of the first adult books I owned (and still have) is a well-thumbed, doorstop-sized Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. Jeremy Brett did my favorite TV version of the famously quirky adult Holmes.

More Good News

The International Olympic Committee has banned biological males from competing in women’s events in the Olympics. The ruling is effective with the 2028 summer games in Los Angeles. Politico has the story.

Score it as another battle won in the war against woke; this one on the international level no less.

Why Homelessness

At COTTonLINE we don’t often raise the topic of homelessness, because we are fortunate to live far from where it mostly occurs - in cities. Unlike urban folk, we don’t live with the squalor and hassle day in and day out.

Writing at City Journal, Heather Mac Donald gets quite specific about who is homeless, who makes a living off of ‘helping’ them, and what false ‘facts’ our society has to believe to let it persist. If the issue is relevant to you, her column debunks current programs, clarifies where we are, and condemns it.

Preserving public safety, keeping streets clean and passable, building and maintaining transportation infrastructure, safeguarding property—those functions are embarrassingly bourgeois and repressive in the eyes of every nonconservative politician and bureaucrat. Today, progressive governance prioritizes the antisocial, the deviant, and the alienated over the law-abiding majority, which is increasingly cast in the role of a revenue source rather than a constituency to be served.

As long as the “woke” control city governments and persist in protecting the right to public insanity and addiction, your only practical option is to avoid cities as much as possible.  

I did learn one useful acronym from Mac Donald’s column, it is MICAs,  a label for Mentally Ill, Chemical Abusers. Most of the homeless are exactly that and should be receiving involuntary inpatient treatment and housing, out of the public eye.

Madam Minister

If you had asked me 20 years ago if I would live to see the day an Arab nation had a woman as Minister of State, the equivalent of our SecState, my answer would have been an unequivocal "NO." I expect most educated Westerners would have said the same. We'd have been wrong, too.

The United Arab Emirates now has a woman as Minister of State, one Lana Nusseibeh. Fox News' Bret Baier interviewed her earlier this afternoon for his Special Report, which the DrsC were fortunate to watch. Red State also has a column about her visit with Baier.

Minister Nusseibeh was beyond impressive, she is well-informed, has excellent English, and is a forceful spokeswoman who speaks with authority and abundant good sense. Fox has YouTube video of her segment here. A web search reveals she is by birth a Palestinian, educated in the U.K. 

Obama Kicked the Can ...

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has read Peter Baker’s NYT column so you don’t have to fight their paywall. He relays Baker’s reporting of an interaction between President Obama and his director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair. Morrissey quotes Baker as follows.

“When it came my turn to speak at this meeting,” Mr. Blair recalled, “I said, ‘Mr. President, you really just have one decision to make. It’s really important, but it’s only a single one. Are you going to tolerate Iran having a nuclear weapon or not?’” If no, he said, then that would prompt certain espionage and military options. If yes, then it would require ways to contain and deter a nuclear-armed Iran.

Obama hated this contribution, and chewed out Blair. He later excluded Blair from subsequent meetings, and eventually fired him. 

Spineless Obama had a third way to deal with Iran which resulted in his JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action) in which Iran agreed to delay the development of nukes. It was "kick the can down the road," stall for time and leave the by-then-much-worse problem for a later president to solve. Trump is that "later president" and now is the time.

I've seen the claim Obama was our worst president, I am inclined to think that is a bit too negative. He might be among the worst five, which would also include Carter and Biden.

Detention Required Pending Deportation

Federal judges especially in Minnesota have been granting bail to persons picked up for deportation as illegal aliens. Politico reports the Eighth Circuit court just ruled against this loophole.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Wednesday that the administration had properly determined that federal law doesn’t only allow — but requires — ICE to detain the vast majority of people it is seeking to deport.

This is an excellent finding, one unlikely to be overturned, or even heard, by SCOTUS. This is a win for American citizens and legal immigrants.

It is vital that we undo much of the vileness Biden open borders created. Unlike administrative decisions which can be undone by the next president, legal precedents like this one tend to be long-lived. 

Also, people in detention are much more likely to accept voluntary deportation as a “get out of jail free card.” Every illegal alien we can send home is a message to others in that country that making the trip isn’t worth it. 

PopSci Goes There

A quick web search shows I’ve been writing about the problematic future of Artificial Intelligence for at least 10 years. Instapundit links to a Popular Science article tying AI to the "Butlerian jihad." 

That is a term from Frank Herbert’s doorstop novel Dune. In that future history, at some point in our not-too-distant future we concluded that thinking machines were a threat to human existence and banned them entirely, the jihad referring to the Luddite rebellion this required.

If intelligence is what makes people special, and we develop machines with intelligence, how do they not have human rights? Does turning off the power become 'murder' or merely 'anesthesia?' And do they have a say in whether or not power can be turned off? 

We are wading out into an unexplored swamp and we have no idea if we can survive the AI experience, or even profit from it. 

Spring Has Sprung

I allowed the Spring Equinox to pass yesterday without notice, my apologies. Spring is officially here. A couple of days ago I switched the HVAC system from heat to cool, where it will remain until early November. 

Of course on the Mojave we've been in shirtsleeve weather for some weeks, while 500+ miles north at our Wyoming home it won't be really spring for another month. A lot of places have had a tough winter, our NV place is truly a haven from all that. 

Days are noticeably longer now, I can fire up the BBQ grill w/o turning on outside lights. We've seen outdoor temps in the low 90s already, very comfortable with no humidity.

Choosing “Poorly”

I am twice a graduate of San Jose State University (B.S., M.S.), both milestones passed many decades ago. I enjoyed my years there, I do not like seeing it get this kind of negative publicity. 

Apparently its current leadership has decided the risible “men in women’s athletics” issue is the hill they’ve elected to die on. In the fabled words of the ancient Templar, they “chose poorly” (classical reference) 

Sadly they won’t get the instantaneous comeuppance he witnessed in “the Valley of the Crescent Moon,” more’s the pity. I do like SecEd McMahon’s funding threat, and I will not contribute to the alumni fund.

Back to Nomadic Herding

Yesterday afternoon President Trump posted the following on X. As Ukraine discovered, power plants are in known locations and hard to defend.

If Iran doesn't FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Iran probably has backup generators for hospitals and key government buildings, if fuel can be provided. 

Without electric power civilization disappears and society reverts to prior norms. Water and sewage don't move, refrigeration ends, heat comes from fire, or sunlight, most homes become little more than artificial caves. Gas stations can't pump fuel, traffic lights don't work, etc. Phones and tablets can't be charged.

Imagine digging a pit privy in your yard, if you have a yard. Carrying water from God-knows-where, cooking over an open fire, and scrounging for light after sunset. Apartment dwellers can't even do this much.

Interestingly, the rural poor will probably be more able to cope than more fortunate urbanites. They are accustomed to living around dung piles and have animals to kill and eat.

Mowing Iran's Grass

It is being reported in various locations that Iran launched an attack on the joint U.K./U.S. base at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean. They fired two intermediate range ballistic missiles at the base.

One failed in flight, another was attacked by an anti-air missile fired by a US Navy ship. Neither reached the target, which is 2400 miles from Iran. It was not previously known that Iran had operational weapons of this range.

Such weapons threaten many targets in Europe, Africa, and India. Combine these missiles with the crude nuke Iran could possibly cobble together and you've got a threat to much of the world. 

This certainly makes fools of those who claimed Iran was no threat. The threat is real, and it's in a region that produces martyrdom-seeking suicide bombers. Who's to say they won't try to revenge themselves on, for example, Rome and the Vatican, in addition to Tel Aviv?

You can't build ballistic missiles in a blacksmith shop. We need to keep bombing until their industrial capacity is destroyed. Instead of a ceasefire, we may need to go back periodically and "mow the grass*," - get rid of whatever they've rebuilt until they're ready to "play nice."

*An Israeli term of art for periodic attacks to keep an enemy weak, originally applied to Gaza.

Saturday Snark

IRBM attack on Diego Garcia leaves Kent looking dumb.

Dame Diana Rigg, of fond memory.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Priorities

People are fond of writing and saying "Diversity is our strength." Voices raising doubts about that assertion are not often heard. I propose to raise the issue.

In a heterogeneous society like ours, certainly diversity is a strength, in that it enables most of us to feel included. I question whether it should be our only, or even our most important strength.

I argue that if we were to pick our key strength, it should be that group of things variously labeled skill, merit, excellence, or superior ability. If most people selected for a particular job come from one subgroup, because they are best able to get it done, that is more important than diversity.

Diversity would suggest NBA teams should be roughly 60% white, 20% Hispanic, and 12% black. That isn't the case, a majority of the most able players are black and the teams reflect that. 

Hispanics are seriously underrepresented in basketball, while overrepresented in MLB. When the job is staffing the most capable team, we become color-blind and look for superior ability. Why is that wrong in other occupations?

Let's say you're a middle aged guy, slightly overweight with a sedentary occupation. You stand a good chance of needing open heart surgery sometime in the next decade or two. 

How excited are you to learn that today's medical schools are all about "diversity is our strength?" Believe it, they are. I find that a scary thought, perhaps you do as well. Wouldn't you rather med schools were ruthlessly meritocratic? I would. 

An argument can be made that diversity programs actually foster discrimination against graduates from groups known to be favored. The programs raise suspicions about their qualifications that wouldn't occur if discrimination in their favor was not government policy.

Trumpian Humor

Our President has a robust sense of humor, and a sharp tongue. The Daily Wire reports the following interaction.

A Japanese reporter asked President Trump,

Why didn't you tell us before you struck Iran?

President Trump replied,

Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?

Ouch! I'll bet that smarted.

Seeking Consequential Outcomes

I call your attention to a good column in the New York Post by Martin Gurri, a former CIA official who is not even a little anti-Trump. Gurri begins thus:

At the start of his second term, President Trump surveyed the slowly rotting swamp that was the post-Cold War landscape, and he did not like what he saw. 

He has determined to scour it clean of dangerous attachments, conditions, and — as we now know — regimes the president considers to be a legacy of past American weakness.

His ultimate objective? A world open for business that realistically reflects the preponderance of American economic and military power. 

Gurri follows with an itemization of the feckless responses of our supposed major allies. He concludes this way:

The decline of the democracies, no matter how artfully camouflaged, has brought about the opposite of peace. Cowardice and weakness are a poor place to search for rules. Entropy isn’t order.

And like it or not, for good or harm, Trump will bestride the world over the next three years seeking high-risk but consequential outcomes rather than polite fictions.

Hat tip to Sasha Stone for the link, she liked it as do I. 

Most: College No Longer Worth High Cost

Here comes a new poll by Issues & Insights. It finds that the public has soured on college education as the universal panacea for career success in our difficult environment, a role it has held since the late 1940s. They report:

The national online poll, taken Feb. 24 to Feb. 27, asked 1,456 adults: “Do you believe a four-year college degree is worth the cost for most Americans today, or not?”

The answer indicates serious erosion in how Americans view the value of higher education. Overall, of those responding, 59% selected “Not worth the cost,” while just 24% picked “Worth the cost.” Another 16% weren’t sure. The poll has a +/-3.0 percentage-point margin of error.

(By comparison, as recently as 2013, a Gallup Poll found that 70% of Americans believed college was worth the price.)

I'm thinking higher education has finally jumped the shark. It has gotten so expensive, so ideologically driven, and so impractical that its former luster is gone.

On a personal note, the DrsC were fortunate to hit the higher ed "sweet spot" of post-war growth and boom times. Also fortunate to retire before the momentum faded and the emphasis on merit was lost. 

We can take credit only for recognizing opportunity when it showed up, and jumping aboard. Most of the decline has occurred since we retired - which we did just a skosh early.