Weird Psychiatric Science

Science Alert reports research which finds a correlation between cat ownership and schizophrenia. It speculates (but correctly does not conclude) about cat ownership causing schizophrenia.

"After adjusting for covariates, we found that individuals exposed to cats had approximately twice the odds of developing schizophrenia," the Australian team writes.

Assuming their data is correct, the causal arrow could point in either direction. Perhaps associating closely with cats increases one’s propensity to exhibit schizophrenia. Or the reverse, perhaps having schizo characteristics predisposes one to appreciate cats’ aloof and self-centered mannerisms.

 Offhand, I find either explanation equally likely. 

Saying the Quiet Part Aloud

Writing for The American Spectator, John Mac Ghlionn looks at states with high and low crime and finds a pattern that is widely understood, but rarely mentioned. See his conclusion.

The pattern is not complicated. The safest states in America are strongly-knit, mostly white, with cultures that still run on shared expectations. The most dangerous states are “diverse,” divided, and disorderly — proof that without cultural unity, color-blind catchphrases fall apart the moment they meet the street.

You cannot fix a problem you won’t name. You cannot reverse a trend you refuse to measure. America’s safety divide is consequence, not coincidence. And every family choosing a place to live already knows it, even if they never say it aloud.

Decoding China’s Intentions

Foreign policy thinker George Friedman launches a trial balloon theory of what’s going on with relations between the US and China. He sees this as signaled by two bits of semi-opaque information. 

The first, and possibly more important, is the sacking of several generals and admirals by the PLA. “Several” is a number too large for it to be coincidence. It definitely signals something, exactly what is unclear.

The second is the invitation to the US of the leader of Taiwan’s opposition party - the Kuomintang. This party is viewed as less hostile to the PRC than that of the current President. This would be like the CCP inviting the head of our Democrats to visit China, as they’re the party out of power at the moment.

Friedman hypothesizes that these two indicia may point to a decision by China to be less hostile to the US than has recently been the case. He speculates (1) the ousted military leaders may have been unwilling to give up their dream of a military confrontation with the US. And (2) weakness in China’s economy makes giving up exporting to the lucrative US market seem unwise.

Because I would like this to be an accurate decoding of the signals being sent, I am therefore doubly reluctant to endorse this rosy scenario. We humans need to resist the temptation to assume things have taken a turn for the better, because too often our hopes mislead us.

What I wrote in the previous paragraph reminds me of a line spoken by Scott Glenn playing CIA Director Ezra Kramer in one of the later Bourne films, here paraphrased from memory. “My policy is to hope for the best and plan for the worst.”

Sunday Snark

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt blogging at Instapundit.

Correction

Eleven days ago I wrote about our new humidifier. In that post I made a claim I believed to be true and subsequently discovered was not true. Here is the false claim.

What we perceived as dust was in fact fine particles of salt from the softened water, settling out all over the house. I finally remembered that the kitchen sink is supposed to provide unsoftened water, and began filling the humidifier there. Problem solved.

It took a week or so to learn that we were still getting "dust" settling all over the house, even using unsoftened water. Instead of salty dust, the new dust was the hard water's mineral content. 

The problem was the type of humidifier we were using - a "cool mist" type. It was spraying tiny droplets of water into the air in a stream that resembled fog. 

Containing mineral or mineral plus salt, the water would evaporate but the water-hardening mineral was left behind as "dust." Subsequent online investigation revealed recommendations to fill the cool mist humidifiers with distilled water, which has little or no mineral content. 

We consulted with neighbors who have had humidifiers operating for years with no dust problem and learned they had evaporative humidifiers. We've stopped using the cool mist microspray machine and purchased an evaporative humidifier. It is both larger and more expensive, but does not require distilled water.

The new machine wicks tap water up into a matrix through which room air is pulled. Evaporation will leave the mineral content behind as it does not evaporate. The stream of air leaving this new humidifier doesn't resemble fog. 

Cleaning the mineral stuff left behind in the machine will be a periodic chore that is likely to be unpleasant. We've yet to do it as it appears to be more or less monthly. If I remember I will report how ugly the cleaning process is, after we've done it.

Saturday Snark

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.

Excess Demand

Vice President J.D. Vance has made an excellent point with respect to the high cost of housing - both home prices and rents. Costs are high because the supply is less than the demand. 

Demand is high because of the many millions of illegal aliens in the country. Deporting those here illegally would lessen housing demand and reduce upward pressure on both prices and rents.

Unqualified Drivers of Big Rigs

The US Department of Transportation has determined the State of California has issued 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens who mostly can’t speak or read English. Such drivers have been involved in high profile fatal accidents.

Under pressure from Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy, CA has agreed to cancel all of these bogus licenses. I presume CA has also promised to stop issuing these credentials to individuals in the country illegally. It is almost certain bribery was involved in many of these.

CA isn’t the only state guilty of this abuse of authority, Sec. Duffy needs to pursue the other states which have issued credentials to those ineligible to receive them. 

The 40 ton rigs these fellows drive routinely go 70 mph on the Interstate near my town. They pose a real danger.

Quote to Ponder

 Instapundit reposts an X post by Noah Smith, who has an interesting thought.

Leftists are often downwardly mobile children of successful parents, who use leftism to try to force their way into the elite they believe to be their birthright. 

I read that as a loser's coping mechanism, one apparently as much on display in today's New York City, as it was in Finland’s civil war over a century ago.

Who Knew? Rats Eat Bats

We’ve recently learned something that apparently has been happening forever. In the dark, rats catch and eat bats. It was first observed by accident, and then German scientists checked to see if their observation was an anomaly. It wasn’t.

I have thought of rats as predominantly scavengers. Seeing them also as predators puts them in a new light, an ecological niche that they oddly share with bears - as opportunistic feeder/predators. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Ah, nature … blood red in fang and claw.

Government to Reopen

Several sources are reporting President Trump has signed the continuing resolution passed earlier today by both the Senate and then the House. Government will reopen and stay open till the end of January. 

Perhaps we'll go through this whole pointless shutdown ritual again then. I hope we can avoid it.

Groypers and Zoomercons?

Yesterday I linked to a Rod Dreher column in which I’d found a paragraph I liked about an epidemic of lying we seem to be living through. Today I went back and read the entire column and I’d like to try to summarize that for you, and recommend you read it, though it is long.

His main concern, it seems to me, is about a group he calls Zoomercons, young conservative white males who are basically nihilists. They want to destroy what is, without any clear idea of what will replace it. 

There has been a minor kerfluffle about online chats among young Republicans which have been racist, anti-Semitic, perhaps pro-Nazi, and otherwise gruesome. Dreher attributes their negativity to current societal conditions. Here are few of his conclusions.

The Groyper thing is real. It is not a fringe movement, in that it really has infiltrated young conservative Washington networks to a significant degree.

It cannot be negotiated with, because it doesn’t have traditional demands. It wants to burn the whole system down. It really does.

This malign movement didn’t just appear from nowhere. There are within it legitimate grievances.

For almost two decades, left-wing radicals have marched through institutions and imposed illiberal, race-based leftist policies that openly intended to discriminate against whites, males, and anybody who dissented. You cannot understand the rise of the Groypers without understanding this first.

Anti-Semitism is spreading like a virus among religious conservatives of the Zoomer generation.

I'm not in touch with young conservatives, so I'm in no position to judge if Dreher is correct. The "hothouse" political climate of the DC area isn't exactly a representative sample of US opinion.

A Different View

The new fellow at Power Line - Bill Glahn - has a different theory about the government shutdown. He argues it was aimed at riling up the off-year electorate in NJ and VA to go to the polls and vote, and that it did so successfully. 

The two groups it prodded into action were FedGov workers and SNAP recipients. Both are meant to be serious parts of the Democrat coalition. SNAP recipients, in particular, are hard to motivate in non-presidential elections.

Glahn believes Dems will repeat this ploy before the 2026 midterm elections. Let’s try to remember next fall to see if his prediction is correct. If Schumer continues as Minority Leader, that will be an indication in favor of Glahn’s theory.

Lots and Lots of Lies

A long paragraph from the Rod Dreher’s Diary website describing flaws in our society about which we older persons need to worry.

They (Zoomers) have learned to have no respect for authority. Why should they? The institutions of our society, as they see it, have lied and lied and lied, and still lie. They still lie in many ways about race (e.g., refusing to be honest about black crime), they lied about Covid, they lied about males and females, and they forced the insanity of gender ideology on us all. The military lied about Iraq. The universities embraced and enforced ideologies of lies. The Catholic Church lied about sexual abuse, and the connection to the prevalence of sexually active gay priests honeycombing the institution. They lied about the benefits of mass migration and diversity. They lied about Trump and Russia. The political parties and their corporate allies lied about what globalism would mean for ordinary people.

I wish I could tell you there were items in the above list with which I disagree. That I cannot is quite an indictment of our society. 

Latino America

See a good article by Kotkin and Hernandez for RealClearInvestigations looking at the role of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. economy. In brief they find Hispanics are more likely than other immigrants to acculturate and intermarry, and are consequently doing better than other immigrants. 

Their findings certainly coincide with my experience, particularly since moving our winter residence to a NV retirement community. The service workers who make the community function are majority Hispanic. Not just the gardeners, cleaners, and store clerks, the manager of my local Wells Fargo is Hispanic. So is a medical specialist I consult. And we’ve a Hispanic US senator named Cortez Masto.

As the authors note, Hispanics often intermarry with locals. The affluent seniors who move here have no kids at home and I’d guess a majority of the children in our public schools are either Hispanic or part Hispanic.

Growing up in SoCal the middle class family across the street in our semi-rural neighborhood was named Lopez. There were kids surnamed Castro, Cordero, and Cardones in my high school class.

Happy Veterans’ Day

Today we celebrate our nation’s military veterans, those who served in uniform during war or peace. We owe you our gratitude.

My father was a vet and his brother was a career Army officer. Plus two of my mother’s brothers and her sister were vets.

I got a draft notice but flunked the physical twice, on account of a blown rotator cuff. They weren’t repairing those when I was young. You just lived with it and didn’t lift that arm over your head, a practice I follow to this day.

The Gales of November

It was 50 years ago today that the good ship Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a gale on Lake Superior.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy

With a load of iron ore, twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

That’s how Gordon Lightfoot begins the ballad of a shipwreck that remains something of a mystery to this day.  It has to be one of the most haunting elegies of modern folk music. See an article which describes the event and the impact of the story-telling ballad, a long-time favorite of mine.

Remember Nord Stream?

MSN echoes a Wall Street Journal report that German authorities are ready to accuse Ukrainian special forces of guilt in the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. This happened just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The description of the methods used to pinpoint the saboteurs is the epitome of high tech policing. They used traffic cam footage, facial recognition software and tracked legit passports issued under false names.

Germany views the plotters as criminals; Poland and Ukraine view them as heroes. Apparently the Russians aren’t the only ones to engage in “gray zone” warfare. 

The conflict may interfere with German support for Ukraine’s war effort. It has been picked up by the AfD Party as a campaign issue, arguing for a cessation of German support for Ukraine’s military.

Update

The other DrC and I were encouraged to lose some weight by our WY family physician, who prescribed Tirzepatide injections for both. We soon discovered we were both allergic to the weight loss drug, and stopped the injections. 

We were told it would take about a month for the drug to leave our bodies. It has been closer to 3 months and we're still having lingering reactions that are uncomfortable but not life threatening. 

I share this with you because our physician knows we both have sensitivity to some meds but didn't foresee our having these difficulties. Be warned.

Schumer Shutdown to End

Multiple sources report sufficient Democrat senators have agreed to vote with Republicans to end the FedGov shutdown. It is not clear whether that vote has actually happened or whether there is merely an agreement to vote aye when the vote finally occurs.

John Hinderaker, whose work at Power Line I follow, believes what finally pushed the Ds over the line was the airline slowdowns and cancelations. Senators don't miss EBT but they do take frequent flights back to their home states.

It isn't clear the shutdown accomplished much for Schumer & Co. Their giving up tends to "kill" any momentum they claimed to have gotten from recently winning in three states that Democrats usually win. 

Being a leaderless party is doing the Ds much harm, especially when the Rs have a strong leader in Trump.

Later ... the Senate finally passed the continuing resolution and sent it to the House for confirmation.

Understanding Universities

Image courtesy of Sarah Hoyt.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Weird Domiciliary Science

RealClearScience reports research, done in New Zealand, showing kitchen gas ranges are a major source of indoor pollution and consequent negative health effects.

The study focused on two pollutants (nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter), both of which are linked to premature mortality, cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalizations, and childhood asthma. The study found that gas stoves often leak both.

The annual indoor health cost of a single gas stove is estimated at $5,258 (adapted to 2025 US dollars). A significant part of this comes from the cases of childhood asthma. Unflued (vent-free) gas heaters were found to be even more dangerous, with an annual indoor health cost estimated at $11,680 per appliance.

The first seven years of my life was spent living in a 1920s era house with two unvented gas heaters which were used in winter. I suffered hay fever but no asthma. Fortunately that house was located in SoCal, where winters aren’t super cold. 

If memory serves, the heaters were not left burning overnight but were turned off at bedtime. On the plus side, our kitchen range was electric.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Smarter than New York City

There was one bright spot in Tuesday's elections, believe it or not. In bright blue Minneapolis the incumbent Democrat mayor Jacob Frey succeeding in getting reelected. 

How can that be a bright spot? Because he was running against CAIR endorsed Democratic Socialist candidate Omar Fateh whose parents immigrated from Somalia. Speaking Somali while campaigning Fateh declared his primary loyalty was to Somalia.

The Power Line guys, based in the Twin Cities, had this to say about the outcome.

To be clear, Jacob Frey has been a terrible mayor. But yesterday’s contest pitted a slow but inevitable decline (Frey) vs. a Mamdani-style immediate collapse for the state’s largest city (Fateh). Slow decline won!

Lesser of two evils is still a win, if not a huge one.

Dear Nancy Pelosi

How can we miss you when you won't leave us for another 13 months? I suppose we'll have to make do with the anticipation thereof. 

Still, having a treat in the offing is also nice.

About Virginia

Thinking about the Abigail Spanberger (D) win in Virginia yesterday, handily defeating Winsome Sears (R). VA is an interesting mix of two very different kinds of voters. 

The DC suburbs of northern VA are loaded with federal workers, most of whom will be Democrats. The rest of VA is part of the old South, where a majority tends to be Republican these days.

What I’m curious about is turnout in those parts of VA which are not DC bedroom communities. Southern whites don’t elect a lot of black candidates. I can imagine them viewing the Spanberger/Sears contest as a choice between two unattractive candidates and not bothering to vote. 

Four years ago Republicans Youngkin and Sears were elected when the hot issue in VA was excessive wokeness in the public schools. It may have gotten some fedgov worker-parents to vote Republican, albeit reluctantly.

The boys-in-girls’-locker-rooms issue isn’t so hot four years later. Fedgov workers missing shutdown paychecks is currently front and center. 

A differential analysis of turnout in the two quite different regions of VA over the last two off-year elections will be interesting, if anyone does it. I add that postscript because those who think the answers will be unflattering may skip the analysis. I’m looking at you, Larry Sabato.

Later … The four wins Democrats notched in VA, NJ, NYC and CA all happened in states Harris carried in 2024, a year when Trump won big. Thus the outcomes were likely foreordained, and press speculations to the contrary were mere attempts to stir interest in otherwise uninteresting races.

The Elections

There were off season elections yesterday in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City, and a few other less consequential places. All these jurisdictions lean Democrat and all were won by Democrats, no surprises there. If there were any bright spots for Republicans no one has yet reported them.

Tomorrow will bring thumb-sucker essays where pundits try to tease some larger meaning from these meager results. It isn't clear any such omens and portents should be inferred. 

Would you draw national conclusions from a Republican winning in TX or FL? Probably not, so why get excited about Democrats winning where they usually win? Answer: you shouldn't.

The Mamdani win in NYC is a first, of sorts. However people with good sense choose not to live in big cities so big cities electing people who seem to likely to make things worse is maybe what we should expect. 

My cynical take is this: NYC and Mamdani deserve each other.

A Lesson Learned

Anyone but a bedouin would call the terrain hereabouts a desert. The Mojave has no dunes, saguaro, or cholla but does have Joshua trees, lots of sage, scorpions, snakes and barren, wind-sculpted land, plus next to no rain. In any event, the region is dry as dust and the humidity is laughably low.

I learned something recently. As usual, it happened the hard way. Our winter place here was new when we moved into it. Local water is hard, so the house came with a water softener installed. Most softeners, including ours, utilize salt (NaCl) as the softening agent.

We recently decided to buy a portable humidifier to add some water vapor to our indoor air. Our hope was of having somewhat less dry skin and eyes. I filled and refilled it with tap water from the nearest sink in the bath and set it to "vaporizing."

Over a couple of weeks we noticed the house getting much dustier than usual, and wondered if the humidifier somehow was causing it. It was the cause. What we perceived as dust was in fact fine particles of salt from the softened water, settling out all over the house.

I finally remembered that the kitchen sink is supposed to provide unsoftened water, and began filling the humidifier there. Problem solved. What we saw immediately was that the plume of unsoftened water vapor rising from the humidifier's spout was less visible. It didn't contain salt particles that could not evaporate into room air. 

The instruction manual for the softener didn't warn us of fallout from softened water. I suppose one would ideally fill humidifiers with distilled water, but that would be a huge hassle and at least somewhat expensive. The lesson is don't use softened water in a room humidifier.

Richard Bruce Cheney, RIP

It is widely reported today that former Congressman, SecDef and Vice President Dick Cheney died yesterday. Cheney was 84. 

He was a resident of Jackson Hole (hole=valley), and thus almost a neighbor. Powerful during the Bush II years, the tides of recent history have been unkind to him, to his daughter, to his President, and to his preferred neocon policies.

The fierce loyalty that marked the Cheneys, father and daughter, meant being left behind like the oxbow lakes a river leaves behind when it straightens it course. Like the Bushes - pere et fils - whom they served, the Cheney legacy is as losers to the Trump/MAGA movement that remade the Republican Party over their bitter objections.

I am reminded of the words Shakespeare imagined from the mouth of Mark Anthony, speaking at the funeral of Julius Caesar.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.

So let it be with Cheney. 

The Canyon of the Virgin

If you look at a map of the western United States that shows major highways, you'll see that I-15 cuts across the northwest corner of Arizona. That stretch of I-15 is maybe 27 miles long and its northeastern half traverses the canyon cut by the Virgin River as it drops 700 feet between St. George UT and Mesquite, NV.

The canyon twists and turns, cutting down through the many layers of sandstone. In several places it is less than twice the width of the highway. 

I won't call the terrain so exposed "beautiful" but it is definitely awe-inspiring and more dramatic than anything this side of Zion NP. It definitely has the ability to make you feel quite tiny. 

Winters in NV we drive it both ways at least twice a month, sometimes more often. Some days I marvel at the immensity of the terrain, other times I marvel at the civil engineering required to push a superhighway through a winding, narrow canyon with walls that go up several hundred feet. I-15 is four lane divided/limited access through the entire canyon.

Both the engineering and the scenery are worth your time to see. I recommend listening to Ennio Morricone's score for the Clint Eastwood "Dollars" movies as you make the transit. 

I find the canyon a tourist attraction but I have neighbors who fear driving it. One thing to know, the traffic moves fast on the winding road and accidents are not unknown.

----------

Two peculiar aspects of AZ ... First, if you insist on driving on paved roads, the only way to access this part of AZ from the rest of the state is by detouring through either UT or NV. 

Second, while AZ is in the Mountain Time Zone, most of AZ doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time. It spends the entire year on Mountain Standard Time.  In the summer AZ time agrees with Los Angeles, in winter, AZ clocks agree with those in Denver and SLC. 

The exception is the large Navajo Nation, basically the generous northeast corner of the state which observes DST and agrees with Denver all year long.

Monday Snark

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt blogging at Instapundit.