2001, A Space Odyssey ... Revisited

When the DrsC were courting, too many decades ago, the film 2001, A Space Odyssey was released. We saw it in the theater then and liked it. Recently Turner Classic Movies reran it, we recorded it, and watched for a second time tonight.

Wow, talk about films that have aged poorly, 2001 takes the cake. The actually good special effects of the space ships and EVA, which won an Oscar in that pre-CGA era, are now ho-hum. Everybody does them, nobody notices.

So what's left is the story and the acting. The story could almost be written on a 3x5 card. The acting is workmanlike, gets the job done but nothing more. 

The 'apes' resembled nothing more than undergraduates in chimp suits, acting silly. Leaving the viewer with no idea what happened to the 3 (?) astronauts who survived the encounter with HAL is storytelling malpractice. The psychedelic finish is passé.

Finally, the entire film is an hour too long, I got bored waiting for something to happen. Very little of substance actually does happen, and more needs to.

Our recommendation, give this Thanksgiving gobbler a pass. It no longer works. 

Tonight reminds me of an L. P. Hartley quote, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." Our tastes have really changed ... a lot.

Answering the Question

Writing for The National Interest, long time Middle East reporter Hussain Abdul-Hussain notes that Saudi Arabia has been appeasing Iran in the face of Iranian attacks on Saudi targets. He argues it would be in the Saudis' interests to get closer to Israel than to Iran. 

Abdul-Hussain's article is entitled "Why is Saudi Arabia Appeasing Iran?" It isn't clear if that is his title or if it was retitled by the publication's editor, which sometimes happens. I raise the issue because the article never answers the question posed by its title. 

I propose to take an outsider's stab at answering it for him. I see three reasons why the Saudis might cut Iran some slack. 

The first reason is location. Iran and Saudi Arabia sit roughly 100 miles apart across the Persian Gulf (aka Arabian Gulf). They live in the same neighborhood.

The second reason is size. Both are big countries with Saudi Arabia somewhat larger. However, the current population estimate for Iran is 93 million, for Saudi Arabia is only 35 million.

Factors of location and relative population size figure into any potential military confrontation, including this one. The last factor is unique to the region. 

The third is the hadjj. Islam places an obligation on all believers - who are able - to visit the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Thus there will inevitably be many thousands of Iranians visiting those Saudi cities every year.

If you live next door to someone whose religion you mostly share, and that faith requires you to host many thousands of their visitors every year, you might not want to take a hostile stance toward that country. Doing so would vastly complicate Saudi security concerns.

For example, closing the Saudi borders to Iranians would be much more than an inconvenience. It might be viewed as interfering with Iranians' sacred duties. Saudis have to ask themselves "are we being the hosts Allah wants for his holy cities?" This stewardship factors into many Saudi considerations, foreign and domestic.

Why Dem. Socialists?

I have a theory about what is powering the anti-incumbent Democratic Socialist movement within the Democratic Party. I believe much of the blame rests on President Trump.

Not that he in any way favors what is happening. Rather the drive is powered by rank and file Democrats’ frustration with the inability of their incumbents to make much headway against Trump. 

Trump and his Congressional majority act. Incumbent Democrats can only complain and file lawsuits against these acts, most of which suits Trump wins at the SCOTUS level, if not before.

To rank and file Ds, this feels like the system is broken. Against which impotence they are rebelling by voting for radical candidates. The less-radical incumbents have failed and the self-serving DSA candidates tell them the problem is a lack of radicalism. 

The real issue is that Democrats haven’t found a leader with anything approaching the FDR-like combination of talent, energy, and hutzpah which Trump brings to politics. Democrats blame the system for their policy failures. They find the message of those who would effectively tear it down offers hope in an otherwise bleak political season.

Afterthought:  In the 1930s-40s, Republicans hated FDR every bit as much as Democrats today hate DJT. Eleanor Roosevelt was as unpopular as Michelle Obama. 

Good News

A new report from the Brookings Institution, as quoted by Fox News.

There was a significant drop-off in entries to the United States in 2025 relative to 2024 and an increase in enforcement activity leading to removals and voluntary departures.

We estimate that net migration was between –10,000 and –295,000 in 2025, the first time in at least half a century it has been negative. In our assessment, net migration is likely to be very low or negative in 2026 as well.

This map from the White House website.

President Trump, take a well-earned victory lap.

A Quote to Keep and Ponder

A. J. Christopher writing at PJ Media about Europeans' positive response to the America you and I know and love.

Everything our visitors love about America is everything the left hates about America.

Christopher makes an interesting point. Europeans who plan to see the US decide which cities they want to see. They do this because sightseeing in Europe mostly is its cities - cathedrals, palaces, museums, and monuments. They wrongly assume the US is similar.

The US isn't just (or even mostly) our cities. The US is our suburbs, our rural areas, our National Parks, and our wide-open, go anywhere you choose countryside. I find we don't do "city" especially well. We do suburb, exurb, and countryside better than most. Our cities are "low trust" areas, most of the rest is "high trust" and friendly. 

The DrsC have traveled all over the US and spent very little of that time in cities, except for professional meetings while still working. We'd advise European (and other) visitors to see the countryside and the state and national parks, our cities (except NOLA) are nothing special. Enjoy.

Blocking Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court today upheld birthright citizenship, unfortunately. A blogger with the X handle Northern Barbarian posts suggested Trumpian policy responses.

Apparently more border controls will be needed to thwart anchor baby tourism.

Pregnancy tests for all foreign women of birthing age seeking to enter the United States. OK.

Targeted deportations of foreign women of birthing age within US borders who lack resident alien status. OK.

Imagine the howls when these or other like steps are announced. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll posting at Instapundit for the link. 

Milestone

By one way of looking at it, today ends the first half of 2026, as the first six months end tonight at midnight. By another way of looking at it, noon on Thursday is the year's midpoint, as that's when we reach 182.5 days into a 365 day year.

However you slice it, the year is about half gone, shall we hope the next half is an improvement? I wouldn't place big bets on that proposition. 

Murphy's law suggests humanity's propensity for own-foot-shooting has not diminished. However wounded by our own misdeeds, we will stumble onward in search of better days. 

As the other DrC is fond of concluding, we're all in this mess together. And quoting economist J. M. Keynes, "In the long run, we're all dead" by which I believe he means "lets focus on the next few years."

Looking South

Sarah Anderson may be COTTonLINE's new favorite analyst of Latin America - everything south of the Rio Grande. I am not put off by her lack of an Hispanic name. 

Anderson follows the region closely, knows the players, and is realistic about the impact of criminal gangs and corruption. She is positive about Trump's "Donroe Doctrine" approach to the hemisphere.

Today her column for PJ Media quibbles a bit with some sweeping generalizations other commenters have made about recent elections in the region. I'm liking her approach.

Le Tour d'Horizon

The journal Foreign Affairs publishes a long analysis of the current state of the world. The level of detail will only appeal to aficionados with plenty of time. However, their introductory paragraph is almost poetic, and I share it with you.

At first glance, today’s strategic map seems familiar. A bloc of land-based powers, clustered around the center of Eurasia, is challenging a liberal, maritime order headed by an offshore superpower. China and Russia, reinforced by Iran and North Korea and ringed by autocracies from Belarus to Myanmar, now occupy the role that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and the Soviet Union each once held—continental empires seeking to dominate Eurasia and project power globally. The United States, like the United Kingdom before it, remains the only actor capable of anchoring a great arc of coastal and maritime countries across North America, Europe, and East Asia that hem in the Eurasian supercontinent. The rhythm of geopolitics repeats itself: an autocratic axis, emerging from the continental heartland, seeks to rupture rimland barriers that buffer the wider world.

Demonstrating once again that while history doesn't repeat itself exactly, patterns certainly recur.

Heads Up, CA

Fox News has a story about wealthy Californians moving next door to Nevada. As they characterize it, decamping from the Golden State to the Golden Nugget. 

Though not wealthy, the DrsC have been a part of that move. What we moved was our “winter quarters” as we’d already moved our legal “residence of record” to Wyoming 20+ years ago. 

Both NV and WY get along nicely without a state income tax. One of WY’s unofficial mottos is “Wyoming, the way America used to be.” And as far back as I can remember NV has been libertarian in practice, if not in label.

If the "haves" leave California, who will pay the taxes to support its superabundance of "have nots"? Don't expect the heartland to bail you out.

Listen up, Sacramento. Y'all are threatening to kill the golden goose with wealth taxes. Doing so isn't even in a progressive's best interest.

A Sad Tale

Yesterday I wrote about higher education's woes. I identified one of its problems as letting ideology interfere with the search for truth. 

Suppose for example research shows not all races have similar IQ profiles. That fact would certainly conflict with what many really, strongly want to be true, for the sake of human rights and fair treatment for all. 

Should it then be suppressed? Many today would answer "yes," suppress the truth because we don't like how it may be used. This is a problem for universities which are supposed to exist to find truth, however unpalatable it may turn out to be. BTW, this is no new problem, I'll tell you a true story.

As an undergrad I shared a 2 br. apt. with three other guys for a year. One of them - Bill - majored in psychology, and after graduation went on for a PhD in research psych at Berkeley. The story concerns Bill, who sadly died over 20 years ago, in his 60s.

While at UC Bill linked up with profs doing research on intelligence. They'd found that the age at which infants switch from being interested in bright colors to intriguing shapes covaries with subsequent IQ scores. Smarter kids switch from color to shape at younger ages than those less intelligent. 

They were excited that using this nonverbal relationship they could show that the distribution of infants making the switch did not vary by race. They wished to show the paper IQ tests were biased in favor of white and Asian kids and that the differences the tests found were "apparent but not real." 

The researchers were what we now call "woke." They wished to debunk IQ tests and find that all races were approximately equal in IQ. Bill was a research assistant and administered some of the tests, as well as helped crunch the data.

No matter how they massaged the numbers, white and Asian kids made the switch younger than brown and black kids, exactly what IQ tests on adults showed. Although the groups overlapped, Asian kids were smartest, followed by whites, followed by browns, followed by blacks. The color vs. shape tests were non-verbal, parental language skills were not a factor.

The researchers hated the results, didn't publish them, and because Bill had spent his time on research that was never published, he ended up working at a state home for the retarded instead of at a fine university. He had a professional job, was paid okay, but it was not what he trained for. 

Just before I retired one of Bill's own children graduated from my university and I saw Bill for the first time in maybe 25 years. He looked terrible, I believe he may have been terminally ill then though we didn't know it.

My point in telling this story is that suppression of unloved research findings isn't new, this happened when both he and I were in our 20s, and that's 60 or more years ago. Everyone involved, except the infant subjects, is now dead. 

The results should have been published, we need to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. When academia doesn't insist on accurate findings, regardless of how happy or angry they make us, society suffers, the academy suffers, and we make bad decisions based on faulty science.

Weird Anti-Addiction Science

Daily Wire reports new medical technology that - if proven safe, effective, and replicable - could be a game changer on a par with insulin for diabetes. Doctors in Israel claim to have cured a man's years-long addiction to opioids.

Using ultrasound waves aimed at his "nucleus accumbens — the brain’s pleasure and reward hub"- they "reset" his reward system. They report he also lost his desire for cigarettes and alcohol. This sounds almost too good to be true. 

Before we get too excited, I'll want to know if they so "turned off" his pleasure center that he no longer finds any pleasure in life. If he becomes suicidally depressed or limply apathetic, most would not find that an okay tradeoff.

Trump and Congress

Lame-duck Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), complaining about President Trump.

Sometimes he acts as if Congress was merely an appendage.

Me, imagining DJT's sarcastic response.

Indeed, Congress is like the vermiform appendix. Sometimes a pain and otherwise inert.

Dissolution

Power Line's John Hinderaker has often written that, in his view, the separation between progressive and conservative people, and thus Red and Blue states, will lead somehow to dissolution of our Union. Not necessarily to civil war, however.

Today he explores how the first few steps could likely occur. Think of it as a first draft of future history - kinda, sorta exploring how things can fall out. I found it plausible, see what you think.

Higher Ed Woes

The Atlantic, which is very progressive, has an article ruefully recognizing that higher education has a worsening image problem. Here are the opening 3 sentences.

Just 10 years ago, almost 60 percent of Americans said they had a lot of confidence in higher education. By last year, that number had fallen to 42 percent. Seventy percent of Americans told Pew last fall that higher education is moving in the wrong direction.

I read that with hope, but was disappointed by what followed. One positive comment I saw was this.

The pursuit of knowledge in certain fields in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been subordinated to achieving “social justice.”

[The authors] are particularly concerned by what they see as the widespread belief that objective evaluation of scholarship is impossible, and that therefore political criteria are as worthy as evidentiary ones.

So they've accepted they have problems. They haven't made nearly enough progress in identifying needed change. 

Admittedly, it is tough to look in the mirror, see self as a loser, identify shortfalls, and make change. Few of us are great at doing this. 

Inexorable market forces - declining enrollments - will weed out many schools which cannot manage the difficult task of self-repair. Academia's glory days are behind it, what lies ahead is refurbishing, downsizing, and ideological rebalancing.

Islamification an Issue?

The Daily Signal writes that a FL congressman polled his constituents and learned they view societal "islamification" as one of their major concerns. Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) said this.

I had to fight with my pollster, because no one ever asks about the rise of radical Islam in America, and I wanted it placed in my survey. It was one of the largest issues people rated. My constituents believe it concerned them more than the war in Iran, abortion, and more.

It is a question that should be raised. 

Update

Technically it has been "summer" since the 22nd of June. Locally, the weather is acting exactly like spring and will do so - if the meteorologists are correct - for the rest of the month. While much of the rest of the world is sweltering, we're wrapped in our duvets. No meals on the screen porch for a few days.

Our high today has been in the low 60s with overcast, wind, thunderstorms and significant pea-sized hail. Tonight the low should drop to near freezing, 35℉ is predicted. We've stayed in and napped off and on. 

This isn't peculiar, the local growing season is roughly 60 days. "Growing season" being defined as the number of days between the last freezing night of spring and the first freezing night of autumn. 

As a consequence, the main crop grown locally is hay and alfalfa, fodder for livestock. Much is baled, the rest eaten where it grows by grazing cattle, enjoying the summer pasture. Agriculture hereabouts is like Switzerland, albeit less picturesque.

When we started summering here 30+ years ago there was a working cheese factory and many dairies supplying it, mostly gone now, replaced by cow-calf operations. The younger son of friends is making a career for himself in the "other" AI - artificial insemination of cattle. He is still in high school, got his start in 4-H.

If like most folks you can't afford to summer in the Alps, here is a reasonable facsimile, scenery and weather-wise. Plus you know the local language.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Memes at Liberty.

Keeping Sweet Corn Sweet

If you are no longer young, you may be able to remember when the only true sweet corn on the cob was that picked the same day, meaning corn on the cob in supermarkets wasn't sweet. We'd look for roadside stands selling corn, and sometimes be lucky. And most ears of corn had a worm in the top we'd cut off before cooking.

Today, supermarket corn is often sweet and worm-free, and the credit belongs to a federal agency it's likely you've never heard of - the Agricultural Research Service, of USDA. Their scientists (and university plant geneticists working on grants they provided) bred corn that stays sweet for days after picking, and it is much more often insect free too. 

As a result, here in WY - over a mile high, with a too-short growing season - we can buy good sweet corn for several summer months in the supermarket. A favorite summer meal is a charbroiled boneless rib eye with an ear of corn, we'll eat that a lot all summer long.

----------

I spent two years with ARS on loan from the university back in the late-ish 1970s. Not for my ag. knowledge which was minimal, but for my work in management development. 

The task was turning ag. scientists into managers of ag. science, while not interfering too much with their current assignment doing ag. science. It was a good experience, and we won some kudos for our program.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Regional Public Universities

Colleges and universities are often in the news, particularly those with high profiles - elite schools. These however do not educate most of our college graduates, nor is life on the second tier of schools necessarily like that of those in the limelight. 

Washington Monthly has a column dealing with this group which it labels “regional public universities.”  The DrsC both graduated from CA RPUs, went on to elite schools for doctoral work, and then spent our work lives teaching at various RPUs.

The article reports results of a survey of students at RPUs and finds them to be as we experienced them. Within the RPU group, there are some variations. 

The RPU at which we both spent the preponderance of our higher ed. careers was located in rural northern CA. Unlike most such schools, its students mostly came from other parts of CA. They’d chosen not to attend other RPUs of our system much nearer home.

Far fewer of them were holding down locally scarce off-campus jobs which in turn meant their parents were more affluent. And fewer of them ended up staying the region after graduation as most jobs were elsewhere. 

Intriguingly, recruiters told us they preferred our graduates to those of RPUs in more urban areas. We privately speculated this was a reaction to the grads’ somewhat higher social class profile, though of course no one said this.

Barely Satire

Image courtesy of the Babylon Bee.

How Rape Gangs Were Enabled

Perhaps you’ve wondered how the rape gang phenomenon was covered up for so long in Britain. I have for you an explanation to consider.

An article from Breakpoint explains how elements of Islamic tradition and law supported or excused the behavior of Britain’s Pakistani rape gangs. It also looks at how elements of British culture - Critical Theory - caused those in power to ignore what was happening, or cover it up. 

Lack of Coverage Explained

Six days ago I wrote about the rape gang crisis in Britain. The legacy media here and in the UK have been boycotting the story, as it doesn't fit the "narrative" to which the left is committed. The AMAC website explains why.

The liberal media is attempting to bury the story because it utterly shatters the “progressive” worldview which holds that Christians and especially white people cannot be victims. It destroys the notion that non-white individuals can only be victims and never aggressors. And it crushes the liberal belief that multiculturalism is an inherent and universal good.

Truly, it does all of that. Notice that feminists, to their shame, have also ignored this epidemic of rape.

The Bottom Quintile

The following was posted at Instapundit by Ed Driscoll, variously attributed to a Bill Brindley or a 'Wanye' Burkett.  "Authorship unknown" is probably accurate.

Maybe the most important thing you learn by attending public school is that we are all at the mercy of the bottom quintile. The rules you follow in life will be based on the behavior of the bottom quintile, the taxes you pay are to support the bottom quintile, the greatest risks to your life and property will come from the bottom quintile, the dearth of comfortable public spaces is because you have to allow the bottom quintile to be there, our zoning laws are developed for fear of the bottom quintile.

The bottom quintile is the lowest 20%. There is much truth in this observation. 

A Fine Wisecrack

David Burge, who blogs as Iowahawk, cracking wise about the British PM stepping down. Sourced from Stephen Green blogging at Instapudit.

I assume the UK is like Chicago, no matter how awful the last guy was they'll manage to find somebody even worse.

Count on it. Ditto NYC, Seattle, LA, Philly, Boston, and Minneapolis ... it's a movement.

Barely Satire

Babylon Bee image courtesy of Instapundit.

Oops

Yesterday was Father’s Day and I forgot to note it. The DrsC’s fathers are long gone, but still remembered with fondness. 

Many are noting this year that fathers continue to be important players in family life; kids without resident dads are at a substantial disadvantage. Fewer people are marrying and having children, and that should concern us.

And so, a salute to Fathers. The patriarchy, for all its faults, got us this far. Will its replacement do as well? That appears unlikely.

Update

One of the annual milestones of our summers here in WY is when the mule deer first bring their spotted fawns into our backyard. Deer have been around since we arrived in late May, but no fawns.

This morning a doe brought her twin fawns into the backyard and the other DrC is excited. She may post pix at her blog, if any meet her high standards. The little ones have springs in their legs and are fun to watch.

We don’t feed the deer or make pets of them, that would do them no favors. On the other hand, we don’t pester them except inadvertently. 

Our ‘backyard is primarily forest understory and they’re welcome to eat whatever grows, it is their wild diet anyway. We coexist, mostly viewing them from the windows or from our large screened porch.

The porch acts as what hunters call “a blind.” We can see out through the mesh, the deer really can’t see in. Whenever the weather is warm enough, we eat lunch and supper out there, protected from the forest’s insect life. 

The porch has a dining table with chairs, a TV, and some cushioned patio chairs. It is the other DrC’s favorite lounge, whereas I tend to sit in my office at my desktop computer.

Perhaps an Accurate Climate Model

If you are interested in climate change and the impact of mankind thereupon, John Hinderaker at Power Line writes about a new model based on the 'recently' discovered Constructal Law of Thermodynamics. 

For those with a better physics background than I, here is the law.

For a flow system to persist in time it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to its currents.

And this explanation follows: 

In terms of the Earth’s climate as a whole, what this means is that the climate system is always working to maximize the flow of power from the tropics to the poles and from there out to space.

It is claimed that a model (see diagram) incorporating this law tracks recent temperature trends almost exactly. My gut sense is Gaia has many tricks up her sleeve. 

Ideological Toxic Waste

Instapundit, aka Glenn Reynolds, is a professor of law at U. Tennessee and a prolific columnist. Today his New York Post column unloads on the ideological bias in higher education, and he doesn't hold back.

One industry in America pumps out toxic waste day and night, but suffers no penalty for the damage it causes.

It operates at enormous public and private expense, sucking up hundreds of billions of dollars in government money.

Its toxic bilge poisons much of society, but those who complain about it are often dismissed as ignorant or bigoted.

Its product is largely free of state and federal regulation.

That industry is higher education.

And the toxic waste it emits isn’t chemical but intellectual sludge, in the form of racial bigotry, antisemitism and crude Marxism.

I've been retired for roughly 20 years, and it was less bad when I was still active. I wish I could say he is wrong. Alas, I cannot. 

One Voice or Two?

I've been wondering if "Iran" the country is able to speak with one voice these days. The New York Post has a story that suggests the answer is "not always."

Shortly after the MOU was signed the IRGC messaged the Strait was closed due to violations of the treaty, while the Foreign Ministry said the Strait was open.

The differing messages mirrored internal divisions in Iran over whether it should keep fighting the US or seek a truce — strife American and regional sources have cited as a significant reason why it took roughly two months of negotiations for finalize the MOU.

One presumes the Foreign Ministry has the interests of Iran at heart while the goals of the IRGC are pan-Shia Islamic and ideological/religious, viewing Iran as a current base-of-convenience, not as a homeland. 

Saturday Snark

But Keir will not go on.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Lazy Memes of Summer.