Summer's End Musing

I was reading an obtuse article about artificial intelligence. Under its influence I began to ponder what this thing we call "being" might actually be.  

I'm talking about the thing that is present when we are awake, gone when we are asleep or comatose. The thing that is semi-there when we are sleepy, drunk, high, etc.  We sometimes call it "awareness." And semi-there in a different way when we dream. A thing which religion holds out hope can continue after death, a sense of self.

Relatedly, or maybe not, how does the drug versed (aka midazolam) make otherwise awake - even alert - people not remember what they did, said, felt, etc. while under its influence?

Would AI develop this awareness thing, or fake it to please us? Will it have moods? Emotions? Or will it simply imitate ours? Will it understand its own need for electricity, equate it to our needs for air, water, and food? If so, will it take steps to assure it doesn't run out of electricity as we have done with our basic needs?

I'm imagining AI understanding the function of its off-on switch, and without being told, creating a system by which it appears to be off when the switch is thrown, while actually continuing to be on, drawing power from some covertly accessed source so the power meters won't give away its ruse. 

My guess is we will have no idea what AI gets up to, much as our dog has no idea why we do half the things it uncomprehendingly sees us doing. Might we end up being some AI's bored-but-beloved (we hope) pet? Watching our creation do seemingly magical, dimly comprehended things for obscure-to-us reasons? 

Are we certain we want to go down this road? Or is it already too late to ask that question?

About Beauty

From an article in Commentary Magazine, a quote stating something quite obvious that is seldom said out loud.

Beauty, after all, is one of nature’s most unequally and unfairly distributed resources.

If your sample were the persons working for Fox News on screen, you'd think just the opposite. It's a good looking group, obviously attractiveness is a major factor in hiring.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Soft Bigotry

Headline: “Med schools still accept black students with lower MCATs than rejected Asians, whites.”

Knowing this, how do you suppose we patients will view black doctors we come across in our dealings with the medical community? Regardless of how many seasons of Grey’s Anatomy we’ve watched, the answer is likely to be “avoidance.”

It’s the inevitable result of the famous “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Another Known Wolf?

The Minneapolis trans shooter currently in the news was known to police. NBC News reports the police had twice been called to his home in Eagan MN. In 2018 the reason given, "mental health." Two years earlier there was a "criminal offense" at that address.

How many times have the police been called to your house? Clearly things have been hinkey in that household for nearly a decade. A sister supposedly attempted suicide. Mental problems run in families, bad genes maybe?

Reducing Wildfire Danger

Instapundit links to a report in the online journal PhysOrg reporting findings of a study of building damage caused by wildfires in California. They sought to learn the factors that lessened fire damage. These included "hardening" of buildings, creation of a vegetation-free perimeter space around homes, and spacing between buildings. 

One of the studied fires was the 2018 Camp fire, in which the DrsC were absent participants. In 2018 we still owned a home in CA that we'd built in 1987 on 11+ acres of hilly former pasture within the fire perimeter.

When we built the house in '87 we were in the habit of being gone summers, traveling in our RV. We knew the house would stand untended and planned accordingly to make it fire-resistant. Our planning paid off. All we lost was landscaping and our gate which firefighters had to break through to fight the fire.

Our house incorporated hardening (tile roof, stucco exterior, concrete perimeter walkway), had no vegetation up against the house, was surrounded by plowed firebreaks, and was far from other structures. Our land was mostly left in wild grasses, which don't burn as hot or as long as shrubs or trees. 

Politics, not fire danger, was the reason we sold that home and moved our winter base out of CA. 

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

DJT's Happy Place

The other day Trump held a nearly three hour Cabinet meeting, it was televised in its entirety, and reporters were present and asked questions. Any comparison with Biden is laughable, night vs. day.

No, I didn't watch all of it. I did see several clips on Bret Baier's Fox News Special Report. What struck me was how much fun Donald Trump was having. It was clear there was nowhere he'd rather be, almost nothing he'd rather be doing, except maybe golf.

The presidency isn't wearing Trump out, it is energizing him and entertaining him. How hot is it for a guy with a sizable ego to be the world's most famous, most powerful person, the subject of more headlines than anyone or anything else? 

To ask the question is to answer it. I bet he wakes up every morning asking himself what bogeyman of the right can I demolish today, with headlines guaranteed? If nobody has ever done anything like it before, so much the better.

Pilfered

The amazingly named Batya Ungar-Sargon weighs in with an excellent quote, the conclusion of a good NYPost column detailing how Trump has left Dems bemused.

He is a singular threat to Democracy! they insist. The truth is, Trump is a singular threat to Democrats — not because he opposes them, but because he’s pilfered their best material, and with it their base. 

And rather than fight for either, they’ve abandoned both.

Meanwhile, country club Republicans - the Bushies and the never-Trump remnant at The Bulwark - can't forgive him for abandoning the "true faith" that kept them a permanent minority party. 

MAGA ... Powered by Nostalgia

An Axios article, echoed at msn.com, concludes with the following summation of Trump's 2nd term activism. It is somewhat accurate.

MAGA's utopia looks a lot like America in the 1950s -- before the sexual revolution, mass immigration, the Civil Rights Act, and expanded LGBTQ rights reshaped the country's culture and demographics.

MAGA is a claim things were once better than they are now, meaning important parts of the culture have become degraded. I believe a lot of us feel that, have nostalgia for good things lost along the way. 

As it happens, I'm old enough to remember the 1950s. With the exception of the Korean War, it was a nicer place than many of the decades since. Both illegitimacy and divorce were uncommon, most kids had two parents, and automotive design still had some imagination. A college degree would buy you a perch on the first rung of the ladder to success. And pot was uncommon, if not unknown.

Do I like the tech marvels that have appeared since? Of course I do, the medium for which I write this hadn't been imagined yet. I spend significant time online every day. Liking many aspects of current life doesn't negate nostalgia for past good things now mostly gone.

Later … Ben Shapiro reacts to this same Axios piece with the following summary.

Actually, MAGA's utopia looks mostly like what most Americans think of as the American dream: upward mobility, solid family structure, safety in the streets, decent education, and a vibrant social fabric complete with community and church. 

The fact that so many on the left — and in the media — find this vision to be irredeemably "racist" demonstrates their utter disconnect with most Americans. And it's why Trump is president for the second time.

I believe Shapiro and I are on the same page, so to speak. 

Trump's DC Crime Initiative

President Trump is attempting with considerable success to cut the crime rate in the federal District of Columbia. Its constitutional federal status permits him to do. He then threatens to do something similar in deep blue mega-cities across the nation.

It is well-known the President doesn't always mean 100% of what he says, he regularly floats trial balloons to judge their acceptance and political potency. My guess is his threat to bring the national guard and a bunch of different federal cops to blue cities is one of those "balloons."

His real strategy? He cleans up crime and homelessness in DC, then points to his success and asks why the Democrat mayors of large cities aren't doing what he did. After all, he's proved it to be possible, doable, and popular with voters.

There is nothing quite so powerful as a well-publicized object lesson.

Another Trans Shooter

There is a new school shooting, this time in Minneapolis. Two children killed, 17 wounded including 3 adults. The transexual shooter - Robin Westman, formerly Robert Westman - died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. S/he was a former student at the Catholic school.

Power Line's John Hinderaker, who lives in the Minneapolis area, has this comment.

It has become obvious that trans people commit such crimes at a rate far disproportionate to their numbers. There are at least two possible reasons for this. One, gender dysphoria is a severe mental illness which now is not being treated as mental illness, but rather is being humored and encouraged. Two, trans people who transition are subjected to intense chemical regimens that may well impact behavior or aggravate pre-existing mental illness.

I concur, gender dysphoria is a mental illness which demands treatment. Fox News’ Jesse Waters brings the quite recent historical context.

Just two years ago, another trans 20-something walked into a Christian school in Nashville with a rifle and shot three kids and three adults. 

We've seen trans shootings in Colorado and in Maryland. They even shot up an ICE facility in Texas. And it seems like half of Antifa is trans. A couple of they-thems just got popped for firebombing Teslas.

In Support

I'm an Anglophile. This flag is posted to show solidarity with the concerned Brits who fly their flag to protest the government's spineless response to illegal immigration and immigrant rape gangs. 

The protestors' refusal to tolerate further government inaction is precisely on target. Stand up, take your country back.

Reform, at least, has a plan to deport those in the U.K. without permission, see this CAPX article for details.

Bog Power

A very interesting article from Politico.eu concerns proposals for using peat bogs as military defensive barriers in Europe. Reflooding former bogs along borders is a cheap way to create vehicle-stopping barriers, essentially tank-traps. It has a secondary benefit too.

The idea isn’t only to prepare for a potential Russian attack. The European Union’s efforts to fight global warming rely in part on nature’s help, and peat-rich bogs capture planet-warming carbon dioxide just as well as they sink enemy tanks.

[Bogs are] Earth’s most effective repositories of CO2. Although they cover only 3 percent of the planet, they lock away a third of the world's carbon — twice the amount stored in forests.

Bogs limit wheeled and tracked vehicles to hard surfaced roads that have been built across the bogs. Vehicles so constrained become sitting ducks for both artillery and air attacks. 

How effective are bogs in stopping military vehicles? See a sad NBC News story on 3 GIs who, earlier this year, drove an armored vehicle into a bog in Lithuania and died.

Many of Europe's bogs lie along the line separating Russia and its ally Belarus from the NATO countries (and Ukraine). During WW II both German and later Russian generals had to avoid large boggy areas that lay across otherwise direct lines of attack. 

This proposal looks like a win-win for NATO, and a loser for Putin. It's even green.

Update

Here's a scary thought. Christmas is less than four months away! Some chain stores will ignore Thanksgiving and begin featuring holiday decor and gifts right after Labor Day.

Here in the high country, today is our first cool, rainy day since spring. It is, I fear, a harbinger of an early autumn. 

My rough guide to our WY weather. We have two months of spring (May, June), two months of summer (July, August), two months of autumn (September, October), and six months of winter (all the rest). We are elsewhere for the WY winter.

At our other location in southeastern NV the weather is just the reverse. We have two months of autumn (November, December), two months of 'winter' (January, February), two months of spring (March, April), and six months of summer (all the rest). We are elsewhere for the NV summer.

As long as we remain robust enough to relocate twice a year, life will be good. Thereafter, not as good.

Food ... Good, New Decor ... Meh

As you know if you've even been paying attention, there is much performative outrage online over changes in decor and logo made by the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel. I enjoy the old-time gizmos and advertising posters the chain's decor has traditionally featured. I'm old enough to know what a fair proportion of the stuff was once used for.

However, what I mostly like is the traditional southern cooking that Cracker Barrel serves. Changes in decor won't drive me away as long as the food reminds me of what my elderly aunts served in my childhood. They came to CA as adults, but their roots were very much Southern and their food was excellent.

By the way, the CB spiced Apple Butter is fine on biscuits or toast, available in largish jars at their store. I normally have one in the fridge.

----------

Later ... Guess what? Cracker Barrel capitulated today and will keep the old logo, featuring Uncle Herschel. I'd prefer they keep the old decor as well.

There is talk the changes were triggered by a board of directors member who in his day job is a DEI consultant. He perhaps claimed the nostalgia depicted at CB is white nostalgia, not relevant to BIPOC folk. Who cares, the sombreros and serapes on display at Mexican restaurants never kept me away from the chilis rellenos and enchiladas.

The Road to Ruin

Joel Kotkin has the numbers. Three states which have adopted California-style policies - Washington, Oregon, and Colorado - are beginning to experience the same out-migration that California has suffered.

Not surprisingly, new business formation and population growth are down in all three states, as their taxes and Net Zero environmental regulations have risen, along with crime, homelessness, and new home prices. 

As a result, the ideological sort continues. 

Meanwhile, these same unhelpful policies have taken the economy of Germany, once the strongest in Europe, and made it a loser. Their new Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently announced they can no longer afford their elaborate welfare state. Former chancellor Angela Merkel merits most of the blame for the fix in which the Germans find themselves.

Weird Dietary Science

Website SciTechDaily reports results of a large study (n = 16,000 adults) finding animal and plant protein in the diet was not associated with higher mortality rates. And that wasn't the most exciting finding.

The results revealed no elevated risk of death linked to greater animal protein intake. Instead, the data pointed to a small but meaningful decrease in cancer-related deaths among people who consumed more animal protein.

It is what I'd expect to find for a predator hominid species like ours. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Reminder: correlation does not prove causation. It is possible affluence enables more animal protein in the diet and also enables healthier behavior.

About Homelessness

An opinion column from the Wall Street Journal looks at the subject of vagrancy or, if you prefer, homelessness. Author Devon Kurtz - director of public safety policy at the Cicero Institute - makes some good points on this subject currently in the news.

According to a Cicero Institute poll late last year, 72% of Americans from both parties said it is more compassionate to move homeless people into shelters than to allow them to camp wherever they choose.

Advocates for the homeless assume that homelessness is primarily due to the unaffordability of housing, rather than drug use, antisocial behavior, criminal activity or mental illness.

This assumption is wrong.

Data from the San Diego District Attorney’s office revealed that homeless people were about a dozen times as likely as average Americans to be victims of serious crimes, but they were hundreds of times as likely to be perpetrators.

A recent Cicero Institute report found that in as many as eight states, more than half the people living on the street are registered sex offenders; nationally, the median is 1 in 5.

Maybe we can finally begin to do something about getting squatters off the streets and into shelters where drug abuse and criminal behavior isn't tolerated. Ken Kesey cannot be forgiven for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Saturday Snark

 Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark 2.0

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics' Cartoons of the Week.

Friday Snark 1.0

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Weird Immunological Science

Instapundit links to a Washington Post article echoed at Yahoo.com, the topic is the lack of allergies among the Amish.

Only 7 percent of Amish children had a positive response to one or more common allergens in a skin prick test, compared with more than half of the general U.S. population. 

“Generally, across the country, about 8 to 10 percent of kids have asthma. In the Amish kids, it’s probably 1 to 2 percent,” said Carole Ober, chair of human genetics at the University of Chicago. “A few of them do have allergies, but at much, much lower rates compared to the general population.”

The “hygiene hypothesis” - first proposed in a 1989 study by British immunologist David Strachan - suggests that early childhood exposure to microbes protects against allergic diseases by contributing to the development of a healthy immune system.

The study found that hay fever and eczema were less common among children born into larger families. Children who grow up with more household pets are less likely to develop asthma, hay fever or eczema. Perhaps even more beneficial than having older siblings or pets, however, is growing up on a farm.

In a study of 60 schoolchildren by Ober, Vercelli and their colleagues, the prevalence of asthma was four times lower in the Amish as compared with the Hutterites, another U.S. farming community with a similar genetic ancestry and lifestyle.

The main difference between these two populations seemed to be the amount of exposure as young children to farm animals or barns. “The Hutterite kids and pregnant moms don’t go into the animal barns. Kids aren’t really exposed to the animal barns until they’re like 12 or so, when they start learning how to do the work on the farm,” Ober said. “The Amish kids are in and out of the cow barns all day long from an early age.”

It seems the "farm" needs to have livestock to be beneficial. I grew up in a commercial orange orchard where the sum total of our 'stock' was a barn cat. I have had hay fever since forever (sniffle, sneeze). 

Who would guess a generous exposure to literal bullsh*t, at an early age, is the key to an allergy-free life? 

Wrong Problem Identified

RealClearPolitics links to a meta analysis of studies which gave money to poor people, new mothers, the homeless, etc. and tried to measure how much it improved their lives. The short answer is that even $1000 a month made little difference in a series of outcome measures. The author says she was very surprised at the lack of positive findings.

A few years back we got really serious about studying cash transfers, and rigorous research began in cities all across America. (snip) The goal was to figure out whether sizable monthly payments help people lead better lives, get better educations and jobs, care more for their children and achieve better health outcomes.

The results aren’t “uncertain.” They’re pretty consistent and very weird. Multiple large, high-quality randomized studies are finding that guaranteed income transfers do not appear to produce sustained improvements in mental health, stress levels, physical health, child development outcomes or employment. Treated participants do work a little less, but shockingly, this doesn’t correspond with either lower stress levels or higher overall reported life satisfaction.

The cash transfers did not improve maternal health outcomes or child health outcomes. They had no effect on stress, depression, body mass index, how often children got sick or the children’s overall health. They did not improve mothers’ self-reported relationship quality or measures of psychological distress. There was no effect on child development.

Here is another example of correlation not being equal to causation. Poverty and bad outcomes go hand in hand, so we immediately think lack of money causes bad outcomes. Instead it appears lack of money is a result of a person who is in some way dysfunctional: impulsiveness, substance abuse, inability to manage money, mental illness, lack of self-control, etc. 

Giving people money is easy but largely ineffective. Repairing broken people is hard or impossible given current levels of knowledge, skill, and the legal barriers thereto.

It is telling that the author doesn't want to go there, to blame the victim. Strange how often doing so is appropriate.

Parental Malpractice

I think I’ve seen him post a similar condemnation before, and liked it then, but it is worth posting again ICYMI. Instapundit Reynolds this time reacting to a story of a teacher who picked on a student in class because he expressed conservative views.

Sending your kids to public school is looking like parental malpractice.

It’s a dang shame, too. When I attended public school - too many years ago - this sort of malpractice was unheard of. Of course teachers' unions weren't a political powerhouse then, they are now.

GOP Registrations Up

Power Line's Scott Johnson posts data from the New York Times (behind their paywall) about voter registrations. Only 30 states register voters by party affiliation. 

The NYT aggregates those and finds that, over the period 2020-2024, Republican registrations have climbed 2.4 million while Democrat registrations have fallen 2.1 million. Johnson writes:

That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.

I expect you agree this explains a big part of Donald Trump's unambiguous win in 2024. I hope it has serious implications for the outcome of the 2026 midterm election.

New Problem, Old Solution

RealClearDefense runs an article about difficulties we’re having in ramping up production of 155mm (6 inch) artillery shells. The “meat grinder” war in Ukraine is burning through a lot of rounds.

Part of the problem is justifying additional capacity in the absence of peacetime demand which isn’t so very high. I’d suggest one of the oldest fixes for this problem known to manufacturing engineers. It’s not rocket science.

Build a plant large enough to meet peacetime demand with one shift per day, 5 days a week. Then when demand increases add a second, or even a third shift. And you still have weekends into which to expand with overtime, if needed. 

The Choice

Here is a Kurt Schlichter quote I particularly like, posted by Instapundit.

The choice is simple. Democrats want to prioritize hobos, druggies and perverts, and Republicans want to prioritize normal people. Choose wisely.

Kurt left out Dems loving illegal aliens, otherwise he nailed it. 

Elk vs. Moose

You may read of a Russian model and beauty contest winner dying in a collision between the Porsche she was riding in and an “elk.” Not that the species of the animal is especially important but we in North America can’t be sure what was referred to is what we call an elk, or perhaps it was what we call a moose.

The confusion exists because Europeans often call the largest member of the deer family an elk, when referring to our moose. The moose is larger but uglier while the elk or wapiti is elegant and intermediate in size between the moose and deer. 

At least in North America moose tend to be somewhat solitary while elk do more herding behavior. And the two favor different pastures, with moose eating a lot of aquatic plants. As the spiritual would have it, our moose “wade in the water.”

Andrea's at Fault

RealClearPolitics has a transcript of NBC's Andrea Mitchell complaining about Trump's DC law enforcement takeover. 

It's not clear what they're doing. They are performative. And you see humvees outside Union Station and the Washington Monument, but it seems like more for show. The arrest statistics are not up. They're in fact lower than the normal police arrests on an average night. (emphasis added)

I can't believe she is dumb enough to say this. Crime normally happens where the authorities are not present. A heavier law enforcement presence on the streets depresses criminal behavior. 

Criminals, while not the brightest, can figure out to not do crime when police of some sort are watching or likely to notice. Less crime => lower arrest numbers is exactly what you would predict to happen when extra officers are on patrol. 

Forgive the wordplay in the title, I grew up not far from the infamous San Andreas Fault in CA.

Rural Areas Against Big Cities

RealClearPolitics has the transcript of a discussion between host Mika Brzezinski, and guest Chris Matthews on the MSNBC Morning Joe program. They actually admit DC needs more and better policing. Matthews speaks.

I think this is about the suburbs and the rural areas against the big cities. I think Trump knows that people are afraid to go into big cities, to go to a Phillies game. They talk about it. They don't want to go downtown. They don't want to, they don't trust the situation. 

So politically, I think this strengthens his red power in the rural parts of Pennsylvania and Scranton and Bethlehem and Allentown. Those people are going to look at this headline and say, it's about time somebody is doing something about D.C.

About big cities, why do you suppose people move to the suburbs? They may have to work downtown but they sure as heck don't want to live in and expose their families to urban conditions. Those who can manage it go farther out, to the exurbs. 

Honestly, most would prefer to also work in the suburbs and avoid the city entirely. Not having to live in a large city is a privilege, not having to commute to a job there is even a bigger privilege, these are things to achieve, bucket list items. 

I consider myself very fortunate to live in two very small towns. One is a city in name only, a former rural country club development having 3-4 golf courses but essentially no businesses within its city limits. 

The other is a 'Palm Springs-of-the-Rockies' retiree haven spread loosely across the desert nearly 100 miles northeast of Las Vegas. It is big enough to support a supermarket, a Walmart, eight golf courses, and a small regional hospital, population maybe 25,000. 

I don't even play golf, but life is good. I know what I like, and I've got it. I wish you the same. 

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.