First it’s a weather surveillance balloon traversing the United States and a good chunk of Canada. Since then two additional flying things have been shot down over Alaska and Canada. Amazing what a o little embarrassment will do. I say “things” because details on what they actually were have not been released as of this writing. They seem to be smaller than the balloon and they’re flying but that’s all I know.

I think there are some things we really need to know. First, how long has this been going on? Weeks? Months? Years? Forever? Are we only learning about it now because some passenger on a commercial flight saw that balloon fluing above the flight he/she was one and took a picture of it with his or her smartphone?

And, related, has their frequency increased?

My speculation about it being a “probing attack” (with no actual attack) is looking less likely.

Update

There’s something I wanted to mention in this post but neglected to do so. A high altitude weather balloon can be purchased for on the order of $1,000. Let’s conjecture that the Chinese balloon cost ten times that. The Sidewinder missile used to take it down cost $400,000. Floating balloons over the U. S. could turn into a reasonably cheap, easy way to sap U. S. strength and inflate our costs. We should probably figure out a different way of dealing with them. We should probably take them down but we probably shouldn’t spend a $1 million per balloon.

In one of their “Five Facts” pieces at RealClearPolicy one of the organization “No Label’s” facts is this: 82% of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion of China. I find that distressing in the extreme. China is a country of 1.4 billion people that occupies an area of nearly 4 million square miles.

I think that any American should hold an unfavorable opinion of the Chinese Communist Party. The only way it could be 82% is if more than 10% of Americans claimed to have no opinion or refused to answer.

But China is so vast and so varied that it is otherwise difficult to make a true generalization about the country. The very thought makes my blood boil.

And such a thing is terribly dangerous. The United States and Russia each have the ability to destroy the world many times over with nuclear weapons. China is not far behind and gaining fast. That’s a true generalization.

Personally, I’ve like nearly all of the Chinese people I’ve met. For one thing I’ve found them funny.

Here’s a thought-provoking remark from the editors of the Sun-Times:

Residents in the West Side’s 60624 ZIP code wouldn’t be inflating the truth if they made that proclamation. It would be an understatement, particularly when it comes to the dangers young men face, a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health found.

The risk of men between the ages of 18 and 29 losing their lives in a shooting in this part of the city is higher than the death rate of U.S. soldiers who fought in Afghanistan or Iraq. Of the three other cities researched — Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles — only Philadelphia has neighborhoods where the chance of a deadly encounter was higher than in recent military action overseas.

Yet the death rate is worse in the 60624 ZIP code, which includes Garfield Park, as the Sun-Times’ Frank Main points out in his story on the study.

The solutions are obvious but somehow the editors never arrive at it. There need to be other social supports than criminal gangs for young men in those zip codes. And the gangs must be removed root and branch. The first requires social change and the second requires vigorous law enforcement.

Blaming it on “systemic racism” is a cop out.

There’s another issue which may or may not be distinctive to Chicago. The street gangs and political leaders are in cahoots. They may call them “community activists” but they’re street gangs. It’s like Sinn Fein and the IRA. What’s the difference? There is none. One is political and the other the armed wing of the Irish republican movement. But one hand washes the other.

I found this post by Alex Berenson a bit distressing. Here’s the gist:

Last month, three scientists pointed out flu shots barely work and couldn’t be approved based on the standards used for vaccines like measles:

“After more than 60 years of experience with influenza vaccines, very little improvement in vaccine prevention of infection has been noted… our best approved influenza vaccines would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases.” [emphasis added]

True. Several rigorous papers have proven that flu shots are placebos masquerading as public policy.

But the same scientists then compared our beloved and groundbreaking Covid vaccines to those pointless flu jabs:

As variant SARS-CoV-2 strains have emerged, deficiencies in these [Covid] vaccines reminiscent of influenza vaccines have become apparent.

Just who are these vicious anti-vax rebels?

Three researchers at the National Institutes for Health. Including one whose name may ring a bell: the now-retired Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.

Yet the Covid/flu shot comparison is only one of the article’s bombshells.

At its core, the piece raises the question of whether any vaccines can ever work well enough to matter against bugs like common coronaviruses, influenza, and RSV.

And that question hides an even more troubling one, one the authors do not ask: have our efforts to beat Sars-Cov-2 by driving our immune response in ways it was not designed to go caused dangers we are only beginning to understand?

I chose to be vaccinated—two primary courses and two boosters. I weighed the risks and benefits and decided it was the best choice for me. I don’t regret my choice but part of the reason for that may be that I did my homework and made my choice based on that. I have not gotten the additional booster because, once again, I evaluated the risks and benefits and decided that was the best course of action. I know several physicians around my age (not as healthy as I) who are doing the same thing.

Given that it appears to be the case that Sars-CoV-2 mutates sufficiently rapidly that we will never achieve “herd immunity” it seems to me that the risks and benefits are quite different from something like smallpox, polio, or measles. Additionally, at this point the long term risks of mRNA vaccines are unknown. We’ll know in due course.

I don’t believe the analogy with the flu vaccine is particularly good but even if it is, the effectiveness of the flu vaccine is extremely variable from year to year.

In some seasons (2010-2011) it was pretty effective. In others (2014-2015) it wasn’t very effective at all. I also find it worrisome that the trend in its efficacy appears to be going down. Is that because the efficacy of the vaccines is declining, our ability to find the right cocktail is declining, or just dumb luck?

Annual immunizations is a relatively recent phenomenon. It may be that it isn’t a particularly good practice. We’ll see.

I found this post at ARTNews by Francesca Aton fascinating. Apparently, an 1,800 year old shrine to Mithras has been found in Spain:

A sanctuary dedicated to the ancient god Mithras was uncovered by archaeologists excavating at the Villa del Mitra in Cabra, Spain. Remains of ritual banquets were found within the sanctuary.

Mithraism was a cult religion that became popular among the Roman Empire during the first century CE. Mithras was a Romanized form of the Iranian god of the sun and justice Mithra.

The Villa del Mitra, within the Roman city Licabrum, dates to the first century CE. The villa gets its name from a second century CE Mitra de Cabra sculpture, depicting Mithras sacrificing a bull (a symbol of death and resurrection), that was discovered in situ.

If you’re not familiar with the cult of Mithras, you should do a little research on it. It was spread throughout the Roman world via the legions. And, interestingly, Christianity stepped right into the gaps that the cult of Mithras had created. In a sense it’s with us today. The Holy Saturday rituals of the Catholic Church are just full of echoes of the cult of Mithras. The similarities between the New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus and the stories of the birth of Mithras are just too numerous and close to be coincidental.

For some that casts doubt on Christianity. It reminds me more of how the Jesuit missionaries to China in the 16th century rewrote the gospels, recasting the apostles as sages and highlighting the areas where Christianity resembled Confucianism or Taoism. They were exploiting ideas with which their audience was already familiar.

Since this is one of my hot button issues, it’s not surprising that Anthony King’s post at ChemWorld caught my attention:

Obesity is on the rise almost everywhere, with more overweight and obese than underweight people, globally. According to accepted wisdom, blame lies squarely with overeating and insufficient exercise. A small group of researchers is challenging such ingrained assumptions, however, and shining a spotlight on the role of chemicals in our expanding waistlines.

‘There are at least 50 chemicals, probably many more, that literally make us fatter,’ says Leonardo Trasande, an environmental health scientist at New York University in the US. An obesogen is a chemical that makes a living organism gain fat. Notable examples include bisphenol A, certain phthalates and most organophosphate flame retardants. They can push organisms to make new fat cells and/or encourage them to store more fat. Almost all of us often encounter such chemicals every day.

This may even help explain some discrepancies in data. Obesity rates have tripled since the 1970s, ticking up in the US from 30.5% in 2000 to 42.4% in 2018. ‘Over the past 20 years, calorie consumption is flat, or gone down slightly [in the US],’ according to Bruce Blumberg, a cell biologist at the University of California Irvine in the US. ‘But obesity has gone up.’ And it is not just humans. Body weights of animals such as dogs, cats, rodents and non-human primates – in research colonies and living feral – are also reported to be increasing. Blumberg and others are on a mission to persuade clinicians and others to take contributions to obesity from chemicals more seriously.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that behavior is a factor. It’s just not the only factor and the cited article is an example of how that may be true. Contrariwise, I also think that the campaign against “fat shaming” is perverse. Obesity amplifies a wide variety of health problems. Even if it’s harder for some people to keep their weight down than others that doesn’t indemnify them against that. Quite to the contrary it means that they need to work that much harder and that life isn’t fair.

At OilPrice.com Felicity Bradstock observes:

Rising material prices over the last few years have sent EV manufacturing costs soaring, in an already expensive and highly competitive industry. Lithium, nickel, and cobalt prices have all increased in recent years, as shortages have been seen, and core battery components have also been hard to source due to supply chain constraints. Mounting pressures from governments, looking to reduce their dependence on major mining powers, such as China, are further complicating the situation by making automakers look for domestic suppliers or at least diversify their imports.

The future of the electric battery remains uncertain. As governments encourage a rapid transition away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to EVs, no one is quite sure whether the battery manufacturing industry can keep up with the demand. A range of challenges continues to threaten output, with huge investments required to develop the mining operations and gigafactories needed to support battery production around the globe. Yet, progress remains slow considering the ambitious targets set out for EV production by governments worldwide.

Different people tell different stories. One story being told is one of enormously rapid technological advance and they attribute declining prices in batteries (and increasing capacity) to that. Another story is that battery production has been enormously subsidized, particularly by China. In that story the profits on the T-shirt or iPhone you bought are paying for the cheaper higher-capacity battery you see. There hasn’t been a major breakthrough in battery technology make it into production since the 1980s. Incremental technological and production improvements, yes, but no breakthrough technology. Maybe we’re due; maybe not.

In the meantime I hope someone can explain to me how demand rising faster than supply, slow improvements in technology and production, and shortages of labor and materials do not translate into higher prices.

The editors of Financial Times remark on the U. S. economy:

Financial markets are finding it hard to price in all these risks. Conflicting views mean asset prices will be particularly sensitive to new data and comments by Fed officials. For investors, the surprising jobs numbers highlight the risks of taking aggressive positions when uncertainty remains high — and of cherry-picking data to fit a narrative. Making sense of the US economy after recent shocks requires a degree of humility. The Fed, meanwhile, needs to remain steadfast in its aim to get inflation back down to target and ensure its communications are clear, at the same time remaining alive to financial stability risks as markets oscillate and reprice positions. Whether the landing for the US economy is soft or hard, there will be plenty of turbulence on the way there.

We cannot simultaneously have “soft landing” and a “hard landing”. We do not have “Schröodinger’s economy”. Scott Sumner’s observations about the Fed’s actions may be relevant. I take the liberty of a lengthy quote:

Monetary policy is about aggregate demand. Fiscal policy is about efficiency. The profession made a huge mistake in conflating the two policies.

PS. There are a few signs the economy might actually be speeding up:

Vacancies at US employers unexpectedly increased at the end of 2022, illustrating a solid appetite for labor that the Federal Reserve sees as one of the last hurdles to bring down inflation.

The number of available positions climbed to a five-month high of just over 11 million in December from 10.4 million a month earlier, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Wednesday. The increase was the largest since July 2021 and mostly reflected a jump in vacancies in accommodation and food services.

(While I’m doing my annoying “I told you so” routine, I might as well add that I ridiculed those who claimed two falling quarters of GDP meant we were in recession during early 2022. I don’t recall any previous recessions with record job openings.)

Tyler Cowen has a post discussing the possibility of the economy reheating, and has this to say:

Another possible pathway for these scenarios involves interest rates. During a normal disinflation, the Federal Reserve raises rates and keeps them high for a long period of time while the economy adjusts slowly — often passing through recession. But inflation has fallen more rapidly than expected, and so the market may expect the Fed to lower interest rates sooner than planned. And an expected cut in interest rates can encourage expansionary pressures just as much as an actual cut in interest rates.

It is a funny world in which slow inflation can cause faster inflation. It’s the logic of expectations that makes it possible, albeit far from certain.

Of course this would not be a case where low inflation is directly causing high inflation. Rather, if this happened it would be a case of the Fed looking at inflation when it should be looking at NGDP growth, and wrongly concluding that monetary restraint is no longer needed. Persistently excessive inflation is always and everywhere a monetary policy failure.

There is a rule of thumb which might be relevant. When your fudge factors are an order of magnitude larger than your measured results, check your assumptions. That’s presently the case with employment. As I’ve said before I use the “duck test” (if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck). That would lead us to suspect the BLS is overestimating employment. If total employment has been mediocre rather than what the BLS has been reporting, I would think a “hard landing” would be more likely.

At UnHerd Thomas Fazi makes some pretty strong assertions:

Western citizens deserve to be told what is going on in Ukraine — and what the stakes are. Perhaps the wildest claim being made is that “if we deliver all the weapons Ukraine needs, they can win”, as former Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen recently asserted. For Rasmussen, and other Western hawks, this includes retaking Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 and which it considers of the utmost strategic importance. Many Western allies still consider this an uncrossable red line. But for how long? Just last month, the New York Times reported that the Biden administration is warming up to the idea of backing a Ukrainian offensive on Crimea.

This strategy is based on the assumption that Russia will accept a military defeat and the loss of the territories it controls without resorting to the unthinkable — the use of nuclear weapons. But this is a massive assumption on which to gamble the future of humanity, especially coming from the very Western strategists who disastrously botched every major military forecast over the past 20 years, from Iraq to Afghanistan. The truth is that, from Russia’s perspective, it is fighting against what it perceives to be an existential threat in Ukraine, and there is no reason to believe that, with its back against the wall, it won’t go to extreme measures to guarantee its survival. As Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, put it: “The loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war. Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends.”

At this point I think the preponderance of the evidence says that we are at war with Russia. At the very least we are sleepwalking into war as has been said about the major European powers in the run-up to World War I. An appeal to liberal values is fatuous. You cannot reasonably appeal to values you do not in fact have. I don’t think our genuine interests are as great as the liberal interventionists seem to. They are either fools or knaves as Jonathan Swift put it.