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When I ran track for Oak Ridge High School in the spring of 1973., my best mile time was 4:54. The following summer, I was living on frat row and taking summer classes at UT-Knoxpatch. By the end of that summer, I got my time down to 4:28. My daughter can testify that when she was in high school, I beat her in a mile run. Soon after, I abandoned running for biking. I’m certain I couldn’t run a mile at any speed now. The record time for the mile was broken last weekend: “ If you represent your school, or your club in athletics, then perhaps you could be following in Josh Kerr's very speedy footsteps one day. “The Scottish athlete broke a 27-year-old world record at a Diamond League event at the London Stadium on Saturday.   “He ran one mile (1.6 kilometres) in a lightning-quick three minutes 42.66 seconds, breaking the previous record by half a second.” Ah, to be young again! https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/clyvg2q1np6o  

During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union supported proxy wars in which their client states did the dirty work. Of course, the USSR is no more, but proxy wars continue. While the current war in Iran began with joint strikes by the US and Israel, Israel now acknowledges that the US is its client. “ Israel’s   far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described the renewed   US   war on   Iran   as the ideal outcome for Israel, provided Israelis do not have to fight it themselves.   "Israel has no interest in joining the campaign - the current situation is the best for us," Smotrich said on Tuesday in comments carried by   Kan news .” *snip* “ Israel and the US started the war with coordinated attacks on Iran on 28 February, after Israel lobbied Washington into the conflict, prompting Tehran to retaliate against US military assets across the region. “ The war was renewed earlier this month with the US striking Iranian targets and Iran hitting ...

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, saying he would call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney about the issue.” For decades, Canada was unnecessarily invaded by carbon dioxide from US cars and electric power generation, the quality of which is dangerous and totally unacceptable. That invasion is far more egregious and consequential than forest fire smoke in Canada. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-moreno-sanction-canadian-officials-wildfires-climate-change_n_6a5a7953e4b0dbc765870247?origin=home-latest-news-unit

I’ve been reading and thinking about the idea of wealth taxes. In principle, it’s an idea I could support. Too much wealth is controlled by too few in America today.   The chief argument I see made against wealth taxes is that they’re impractical. In a literal sense, this is easily falsified. We already have some targeted wealth taxes. Most of us pay them. The most obvious wealth tax is real estate taxes. Homeowners pay them every year, and much of the money is used to fund local schools. The problem with real estate taxes is that they are highly regressive. For homeowners, property taxes are based on an assessment of the home’s value. But if you have a mortgage, you pay the full tax even though your equity in the house is less than the full value. And renters pay property taxes—your landlord passes their taxes on to you in your rent, even though you gain no equity through rent payments. You may also pay personal property taxes on, e.g., your car, which is also a wealth tax, since ...

I recently read a history and a biography that are both centered on the American Revolution. It reminded me that for the founding fathers, the ineluctable reality was that they were risking their lives for their beliefs.   Josh Marshall has a piece up at TPM about Trump’s effort to extort control over the 2026 elections, notwithstanding that the Constitution explicitly gives control of elections to state. He argues that state officials may face existential pressure from Trump to cede that control to him. “It is incumbent on those state officials not simply to “resist” but to refuse, to lean into the full power of their state sovereignty under the federal constitution. States have just as much authority to defend the integrity of the federal constitution and obedience to it as the White House or, for that matter, the Supreme Court. Not every question of what the U.S. Constitution means is up for genuine debate. This one, for example, is not. States are not only entitled to insist on...

I taught medical students for over 30 years. The bar to admission at Saint Louis University Medical School was pretty high for metrics like GPA and MCAT scores. But as a professor, I realized that crossing those bars was no guarantee of sound judgement.   Erica Schwartz, Trump’s CDC director nominee, wasn’t a SLUSOM grad*, but she is a case study supporting my contention that, in humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked. “As the hearing proceeded, I began to hear rumblings in my public health group chats. The hearing was not going well. Schwartz was failing to give straightforward answers to lay-ups. Clips began appearing on my social media feeds.  It was not good . Before long, it looked like a complete implosion.    “Schwartz would not give clear statements debunking links between vaccines and autism.  Ouch.   “She did not know that the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health is, for all practical purposes,  closed . (This i...