Up From Facebook

RFK Jr says   "Many of us have come to the conclusion that [the] government actually lies to us." On that, I agree. Our government lied us into the Vietnam war and lied about the ending: Nixon took a deal in 1973 that he could have had in 1969. The Bush Administration lied us into the US invasion and military occupation of Iraq based on fake claims of WMDs and collaboration with al Qaeda that ended up spawning (a) an Iran-aligned government and (b) ISIL/Daesh. The Trump Administration lied us into the current war with Iran. And JFK Jr is lying about vaccines, autism and the virtue of red meat consumption. “We shouldn't be confused -- MAHA is not a public health strategy. If it were, it would not come alongside plans to underfund care or undermine confidence in science and proven treatments. Its goal would be to move every American toward evidence-based public health practices. “Rather, MAHA is a highly disciplined political and  omnichannel marketing strategy  seemingly d...

When our daughter was applying to colleges, she visited a bunch of college campuses but ended up applying to only two. One was Washington University in St. Louis, which was only a few blocks from where she grew up. The other was Colorado State University in Ft Collins, which she saw on her big college campus tour. Since my wife worked at Washington U, our daughter could have attended WU tuition-free. And Wash U’s tuition benefit extended to any college or university at half of the Wash U tuition, which was equal to or exceeded the tuition at any state university.  Friends of ours at the time said that surely, we would make her go to Wash U. When I asked why, they told me: “because Wash U is a great university.” Here’s the deal. When people talk about a “great university,” they’re usually referring to the research reputation of the university. And the top universities are research universities. Since research is always and everywhere a cost center, universities have to subsidize res...

A couple years back, I attended a town hall hosted by my House representative, Gabe Amo. During the Q&A, a gal who I judged to be in her 20s referred to the current economic situation as “hyperinflation.” That was nonsense, of course. Hyperinflation is defined by prices rising ofer 50% monthly.     Historic examples of hyperinflation include   Hungary in 1946 (41.9 quadrillion % monthly), Zimbabwe in 2008 (79.6 billion % monthly), Yugoslavia in 1994 and Weimar Germany in 1923, where currency became nearly worthless. I’m old enough to recall the double-digit inflation of the early 1980s, and I wouldn’t call that hyperinflation, let alone the inflation of the early Biden years. Where does this come from? In a think piece over at TPM, Josh Marshall takes a stab at this. “ I was reminded of this because in   the new episode of his Strength in Numbers podcast G. Elliott Morris proposes   that if you look at recent economic history through the different prism of “...

“Meg”: Look, the reason Chinese cars are affordable is that they are subsidized by the Chinese government. Heavily. Removing import restrictions on these cars would devastate the American car industry. We are talking hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. How about instead we have the American government subsidize affordable cars here, or return to requiring CAFE gas mileage standards which created all those options in 2012. Clifford Winston: If you want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions, charge them a vehicle-miles-travel tax. Some states are exploring the idea. Eissendad*: Actually if you "want people to drive more fuel efficient cars to help conserve gasoline and reduce emissions" shouldn't you charge a fuel tax? Charging "a vehicle-miles-travel tax" doesn't incentivize fuel efficiency it incentivizes driving fewer miles, something that is harder to do in rural America. Clifford Winston: A VMT tax has the...

Let’s start with some basics. Prior to uniting during fertilization, a human sperm and a human egg are both alive and human. That they are both human is undeniable, based on their sourcing. That they are alive can easily be demonstrated by autoclaving them and then testing whether they can still participate in fertilization (they can’t; autoclaving kills gametes). So in a real and meaningful sense, human life precedes fertilization. Indeed, there has been no point in the history of our species when human life began, since it is a continuum. Are you with me so far? So if by “human life,” you mean human diploid life, then does it begin when the sperm head (containing the paternal haploid complement) fuses with the oocyte (containing the maternal haploid complement)? Well, no, because it takes several hours for the two pro-nuclei to fuse. Then there’s the small matter of when the zygote implants in the uterus. Without implantation, the zygote is lost. Most human conceptuses are lost that ...

“ . . . nationalism in its early eighteenth-century stages was closely aligned with liberalism. Early liberals, seeking to establish a political foundation for their countries other than monarchy, appealed to sentiments of national unity built on language and culture. This early nationalism wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a political project built on aspirations for self-determination, a better life, and respect for other peoples.   “Such liberal nationalism is connected to collective aspirations for better things and healthy pride in one’s national history, both of which are closely connected to the capacity to feel shame. A person feels shame when he recognizes that he has failed to live up to his high standards and ideals, when he has failed to demonstrate the quality of character of which he is capable. A nation feels shame when its people recognize they have failed to live up to their principles, to the image of themselves as a noble people pursuing a better future. In bot...