Thursday, August 22, 2019
Foreign holdings of US Treasury securities hit $6.636 trillion in June 2019, driving down yields
Nobody asks why US debt securities are so popular.
People like Jeffrey Snider of Alhambra know why, but nobody listens to him.
The logic of thorough-going materialism: Since humans are nothing but animals, we might as well eat each other
Now that all objections to organ transplantation as a form of cannibalism have been effectively silenced, we're going all the way.
As Ann Coulter likes to say, Our new country's going to be great!
Meanwhile benchmark revisions to the quick and dirty monthly Establishment Survey indicate 501,000 jobs have to be SUBTRACTED through March 2019
That is expected to bring down 2018 job creation to roughly 181,000 monthly instead of 223,000.
I say, so what? 223,000 monthly wasn't indicative of a jobs boom anyway.
Jobs numbers under Trump are like Trump Steaks, overcooked.
Jobless claims in today's report are lower in all three categories than a year ago
Not by much but they are, so no evidence of a reversal this week as seen previously, which would be concerning during the high season for jobs.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
That's funny, that's what Jesus said
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
-- Matthew 15:24
More climate BS: July 2019 hottest month ever recorded
If that were true we should at the very least have felt the residual effects of that even if local conditions were not record breaking, but we didn't.
Here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, maximum temperature in July 2019 never even reached the mean maximum, which is 94 degrees F. We had zero, zip, nada days at or above the mean max.
Contrast that with the hottest July on record here going back to before the year 1900: July 1921. Maximum temperature that month hit 100, which was the 9th highest maximum on record and one of the ten days that month when maximum temperature was at or above the mean max.
Average temperature was a record 79.7 in July 1921, with cooling degree days setting a record at 465. July 2019 didn't even come close to these records. Average temperature ranked 15th at 75.4, and cooling degree days ranked 14th at 332.
The July with the highest maximum temperature in Grand Rapids was July 1936, when a record 108 was recorded, one of nine days that month at or above the mean max of 94. That month ranked 5th for cooling degree days at 390, and 5th for average temperature at 77.3.
Apparently everyone has already forgotten July 2012, the second hottest July on record here in Grand Rapids. It ranked 2nd for cooling degree days at 449, 2nd for average temperature at 79.2, and second for maximum temperature at 104, with eleven days that July at or above the mean max of 94. But July 2019 couldn't hold a candle to July 2012 for hot conditions, yet somehow it was the hottest ever . . . everywhere else.
The fact of the matter is the hottest Julys in Grand Rapids are a phenomenon of the distant past, with nine of the top fourteen for cooling degree days occurring before World War II. July 2019 ranked merely 14th in that list.
Ten of the top fifteen for average temperature also occurred before World War II. July 2019 ranked merely 15th in that list.
For maximum temperature July 2019 ranked tied for something like 72nd position.
Hottest July evah. Give me a break!
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
The author of Bronze Age Mindset and its review by Michael Anton both seem to miss its thesis actually unfolding in our time
To paraphrase Woody Allen (whom, I hasten to add, BAP does not
quote), life wants what it wants. What does it want? At the upper
reaches, among the higher animals (BAP is relentlessly hierarchical),
what it wants is mastery of “owned space.” “Owned space” is the most
important concept introduced in Part One and the key to understanding
the rest of the “exhortation,” if not necessarily the rest of the book.
BAP argues that life, fundamentally, is a “struggle for space.” All life
seeks to develop its powers and master the surrounding matter and space
to the maximum extent possible. For the lower species, this simply
means mass reproduction and enlarging habitat. For the higher animals,
it means controlling terrain, dominating other species, dominating the
weaker specimens within your own species, getting first dibs on prey and
choice of mates, and so on. BAP sees no fundamental distinction between
living in harmony with nature and mastering nature. All animals seek to
master their environments to the extent that they can, and the nature
of man, or of man at his best—the highest man—is to seek to master
nature itself. Not in the Aristotelian sense of understanding the whole,
nor in the Baconian sense of “the relief of man’s estate” via
technology and plenty; more to assert and exert his own power. Indeed,
BAP posits an inner kinship between the genuine scientist and the
warrior; he calls the former “monsters of will.” ...
Early modernity actually offered the higher types vast opportunities to
explore and conquer new space. Thus bugdom is not caused or defined by
science and technology. To the contrary: science and tech at their best
can form a kind of frontier that allows for man’s higher motives to find
vent when and where space is constrained. For BAP, science in modern
times is, or should be, a manifestation of the will to conquer space.
Sheesh, ever heard of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic? The highest men are already there, diligently working to master heaven itself.
Stop the preening and get with the program.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Trend for precipitation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been much wetter since the 1960s
Mean annual precipitation up to 1960 had been 31.76 inches, but since then is 37.33 inches.
Marianne Williamson follower thinks her politics is inconsistent with her own stated religious beliefs
Though most of the local study group expressed support for Williamson and her ideas, political scientists are skeptical that she has much of a chance at the presidency and at least one student of the course has reservations.
“I do not agree with her politics,” said Jeff Stephens, 54, of Kingston in Ross County. “I hope people don’t come to our group or ‘A Course in Miracles’ hoping to find that agenda because it’s not political.”
Stephens feels that some of Williamson’s views don’t fit with the teachings of the course. For instance, her plan to pay restitution to the descendants of slaves is about going back to the past and correcting an error that happened decades ago, whereas the course teaches forgiveness and not living in the past, said Stephens, who has been studying the course for a few years.
“I don’t think she’s making a good representative (of the course) as I understand it,” he said. “She’s not telling people about the course, she’s talking politics.”
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