Minnesota is accepting suggestions for a new flag design. Gotta love the laser-eyed loon (F15).
Enormous mosaic floor in central Turkey keeps getting larger as more is uncovered; extraordinary.
The orcas off Spain are escalating, and have now sunk four sailboats.
A claim about the future of naval warfare: "The future of ocean warfare is vast numbers of merchant ships and fishing vessels armed with portable rockets and drone swarms. The warships will be important but as command control platforms monitoring merchant ships. Future warships will be sheep dogs." Lots of fringe military types think missiles and cheap drones have rendered big, expensive weapons obsolete.
The B-21 bomber has completed its first test flight. Among the reveals was that the first plane is nicknamed Cerberus.
Clay pot full of beads found at site in Jordan dated to 3,600 BC.
The New York legislature has passed a law to ban non-compete clauses, which I think is one of the simplest and easiest things we could do to make our economy more just. About half the states have banned them already. Now New York financial leaders have launched a frenzied effort to get governor Hochul to veto the bill. (NY Times) The evil capitalists never give up without a fight.
Tyler Cowen says more Palestinians should migrate to Latin America. Those countries already have significant Arab minorities (around 10 million in Brazil) without any particular issues. Heck, Palestinians are already a big part of the elite in Haiti. On the other hand, the migrants so far have been mainly Christian, so a major influx of Muslims might create a different dynamic.
Mass graves of headless victims found in China, dates to the Neolithic. Evidence for warfare in the Neolithic continues to mount, or any way some kind of intense violent conflict.
Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, who spent seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit, has just been elected to a seat on New York's city council. More at his his wikepedia page.
Speaking of second acts, Q-Anon Shaman Jacob Chansley plans to run for Congress. I guess he really liked the place last time he was there.
Since the Brexit vote in 2016, Britain has had five Prime Minsters; seven Foreign Secretaries; seven Home Secretaries; and nine Ministers of Education. All from the same party. Great job, Tories!
And in Trump land: "Spokesman denies that Trump rhetoric echoes that of dictators like Hitler and Mussolini and declares that those who say it does will find 'their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.'"
During the pandemic, Americans founded new businesses at a record pace, and that seems to be continuing. Part of the cause may be the $2 trillion the government showered on us; some people seem to have spent their share launching their own companies. Another part may be an increased devotion to working from home, controlling our own schedules, and so on. (NY Times, Kevin Drum, original paper)
Robin Hanson argues that the world will end up being ruled by the Amish and other high-fertility groups.
Major exhibit at the Met titled "Africa & Byzantium," highlighting the importance of, and connections between, Constantinople, north Africa, Egypt, and Ethiopia. (NY Times, Met)
No Ukrania links…. Hummm
ReplyDeleteMinnesota is accepting suggestions for a new flag design. Gotta love the laser-eyed loon (F15).
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to look into this right now, but I'm curious to see if this is a genuine gathering of submissions from the public, or if this is another 'show-trial' case like what happened with Utah recently, and the public submissions will be "narrowed down" to a small group that ~just so happens~ to include the pet design of the person who launched the initiative to change the flag in the first place, which will of course then ~just so happen~ to be selected as the final winner.
I must say, the process all sounds shockingly the same as it was in Utah - a small unelected committee is making all choices; the submission period for designs was only a single month; and once a design is chosen, the public can give "feedback", but never get to actually vote, and their feedback can be completely ignored. Remarkably undemocratic, and ripe for abuse.
Tyler Cowen says more Palestinians should migrate to Latin America.
ReplyDeleteThe bitter irony of someone with the name Cowen telling a people to abandon their ancestral homeland to avoid the abuses of a cruel, racist, imperialist foreign regime with an opposing religion.
Tell you what - since he seems to have forgotten the suffering of his own ancestors (how few generations it takes to forget!), I think the fair response is to say that once he and everyone he has ever loved have been subject to something a fraction as horrific as the Nakba, and he has personally been forced to leave behind his beloved home in America forever, THEN he can tell the Palestinians what they should do.
But first, he should probably educate himself on certain facts - like the fact that 47.3% of Palestineans are children, many of whom have no surviving family (all killed off by Israel); or that even for the adult population, poverty is so rampant that even if they wanted to flee to another continent, most don't have the means; and that's to say nothing of the fact that it's virtually impossible to leave Palestine anyway, even if you're among the richest - there are no flights, there are no boats, there is no infrastructure, there is no electricity, no water, no gas, nothing, AND they're surrounded and besieged by Israeli soldiers. (Also, HAMAS itself has been known to kill or arrest people who try to flee.)
And then there's the simple matter of who would even accept them. South American countries do still have immigration and customs controls, and do still want to see paperwork to verify identities, and do still want their immigrants to have certain valuable skills and the ability to speak the local language.
Palestinians fleeing their home wouldn't be "immigrants" - they'd be refugees. And poor regions like South America want to accept and deal with refugees EVEN LESS than us wealthy Westerners do - because they're even less well equipped to help them and provide for them.
The next time Cowen wants to speak, he should pull his head out of his ass first.
Robin Hanson argues that the world will end up being ruled by the Amish and other high-fertility groups.
ReplyDeleteRobin Hanson apprently doesn't understand how math works.
There are about 367,295 Amish in the US.
There are about 340,687,004 non-Amish in the US.
Putting $10 into a high interest yield bank account isn't going to produce more interest than putting $10,000 into a standard rate savings account.
By the same token, even if Amish families have ten children for every one child non-Amish families, have the fact that there are just so many more non-Amish families means that FAR more population growth occurs for the non-Amish.
And that's even before factoring in mortality rates and/or people choosing to leave the Amish way of life AFTER being born into it.
Edit - There are actually about 340,319,709 non-Amish in the US. For the other value, I neglected to subtract the number of Amish.
ReplyDeleteThe point still stands - if anything, it's even stronger, since being off by the entire population of the Amish barely made any difference in the math.
@Verloren
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia and his own blog, Cowen is of Irish ancestry.
My point, in case it is too subtle, is that I don't think his name means what you think it means.
ReplyDelete@David
ReplyDelete...what about the historical mistreatment of the Irish by the British, eventually culminating in a man-made famine that killed or displaced 25% of the Irish population, makes you think I don't know the origins of Cowen, a name derived from Old Gaelic "MacEoghain", used by both the Irish AND the Scots? (Another people historically mistreated by the British.)
...what else did you think I was invoking when I talked about "the abuses of a cruel, racist, imperialist foreign regime with an opposing religion" when considering the origins of "Cowen"?
Do you think that any Cowen's ancestors weren't bitterly angry and resentful and deeply heartbroken at the prospects of having to flee to America? Have you never heard any of the countless songs from that time period, many still quite well known today, lamenting their deep sorrow and grief and rage? Or the many writings about the difficulty of the trans-Atlantic voyage, and the hard lives of poverty, discrimination, and suffering they faced after arrival?
Oh, sure - Cowen himself is now doing well enough for himself, five to eight generations later. But his ancestors were victims of a cruel injustice, and few if any of those who actually had to flee Ireland never to see it again did so willingly or with joy. And none of them would have appreciated some pampered, affluent foreign observer utterly detached from their plight writing an out-of-touch polemic calling on them to simply abandon their ancestral homeland to the hated British and relocate to the other side of the world.
Cowen's ancestors would be ashamed of him calling for Palestinians to resign themselves to the cruel fate imposed on them by an evil, tyrannical foreign government which has focused it efforts on destroying them and their very culture.
Unlike with the Irish who had no choice but to suffer (as the British were the pre-eminent world power and the international community had little to no sympathy for the Irish nor ability to push for change), the Palestinians still have a good chance of escaping their tormentors. Israel is a small regional power, beholden to larger forces, and the modern international community has a great deal of sympathy for Palestine, as well as leverage available to employ to push Israel to a peaceful solution.
And yet here is Cowen, calling for history to be repeated - for "The Troubles" of Palestine to continue for generations to come - instead of using his own voice and his privilege to call for peace and justice here and now.
Hanson was not the first who made the similar point - that the fact that for liberals population shrinks (fertility goes down from very conservative to very liberal woman (who have below replacement rates), plus very liberal woman have children later) entails more conservative future.
ReplyDelete