On November 1, 1790, Edmund Burke published his Reflections on the Revolution in France, predicting that the French Revolution would end in disaster. Though many have disputed his premises and reasoning, few dispute his prophecy, which proved spot on.
Construction, transport, and other processes involved in making and maintaining a nuclear power plant emit carbon dioxide. But nuclear power itself does not emit carbon dioxide, which is supposed to be terrible for climate and planet. So, “What would prompt a country seeking to sharply reduce CO2 emissions to get rid of its largest source of carbon-free energy?”
Lambermont, a policy associate at the Institute for Energy Research, reviews the history of anti-nuclear sentiments, going back to the 1970s, and various news-driven decisions by the German government. A tsunami in Japan didn’t help, though safety measures were strengthened at the affected nuclear power plant.
Now we seem to be nearing the end of the line. German pubs host “demolition viewing parties” as the country self-destructively continues to destroy another nuclear power plant, specifically the part consisting of two giant cooling towers.
A controlled demolition caused 56,000 tons of concrete to collapse in seconds. The speed is misleading, for the job is far from finished. Further work dismantling the Bavaria-based plant is expected to continue until 2040. Of course, the useful life of the plant is already over.
It’s all part of the plan, the German government’s energy-transition plan called Energiewende. The energy has to become “renewable,” a word meaning — in effect — unreliable (wind, solar). Also, Germans must drastically reduce their consumption of energy.
Maybe they should call the plan Götterdämmerung — twilight of the gods or, in this case, of industrial civilization.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When the publisher steps out of his legitimate function as a packager and forwarder, he cures people by the millions of the habit of reading books, just as real schoolmarms make windrows of brats permanently allergic to literature by cracking them over the head with the worst of it.
Jack Woodford, The Loud Literary Lamas of New York (1950), p. 47.
As if to perform a Day of the Dead act, Josef Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s Tomb on October 31, 1961.
Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and other nations celebrate Halloween on October 31.
The word Halloween or Hallowe’en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin, meaning “hallowed evening” or “holy evening.” It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows’ Eve (the evening before All Hallows’ Day). In Scots, the word “eve” is “even,” and this is contracted to “e’en” or “een.” Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en shortened into Halloween.
It is one of those darker-themed celebrations, often conjuring up images of death and horror. Randall Carlson notes that this autumnal celebration is ancient and global, and speculates that it originates in ancient comet approaches that had terrifying and deadly results on the surface of the planet.
“They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me,” Taki Allen said of the police in about “eight cop cars” who surged to his location.
“They searched me, and they figured out I had nothing,” Allen recalled. “Then, they went over to where I was standing and found a bag of chips on the floor. I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun. . . .
“The first thing I was wondering was, was I about to die? Because they had a gun pointed at me.”
The school’s security system is “AI-powered.”
It “saw” a gun, not Doritos plus finger.
An alert went out before the security system’s finding had been confirmed. The alert was soon cancelled, but the school principal didn’t know this when she called the police, who in turn acted with leap-first/look-afterward brio.
We can’t blame AI. We cannot blame insensate artificial intelligence, so-called, any more than we can blame knives and guns for the way these inanimate objects “act.” The humans in this case bungled bigtime. They should reform.
Steps to take include never acting on the basis of unverified AI claims and never using drunken, hallucinogenic AI as one of your call-the-cops triggers to begin with.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as used by Alston Chase for the epigraph of Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America’s First National Park (1986).
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, was born on October 30, 1748.
On the same date two hundred twenty years later, American journalist, novelist and author Rose Wilder Lane died. Lane is perhaps best known, today, for her editorial work — some say “ghost writing” — of her mother’s Little House on the Prairie books for children. Her non-fiction The Discovery of Freedom was published in 1943, the same year as a similarly themed book, The God of the Machine, was published by her friend Isabel Paterson.
Most of the shutdown screaming blames President Donald Trump, but Trump’s a big advocate for the CR. Trouble is, it requires a 60 percent Yea vote in the Senate. All but three Democrats voting Nay ensure that the CR will continue to fail.
So, Sen. Paul’s continuing Nay vote isn’t the cause really; a switch on his part wouldn’t allow the bill to pass. The folks worried about losing their SNAP benefits (just about the only Americans not in government who’ve noticed the shutdown) shouldn’t blame anyone other than those nay-saying Democrats.
From the beginning, Paul has noted a different irony — his alignment with the bulk of Democrats in opposing the CR. He’s against its continuation of old spending expectations; Democrats, on the other hand, demand even more, especially securing the renewal of Obamacare subsidies.
While the CR failed a 13th time, yesterday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) said that lawmakers had set aside a USDA contingency fund “for exactly these kinds of purposes” — that is, to fund SNAP during the shutdown. The White House insists it lacks legal authorization for this, and, besides, November’s food subsidy requires $9 billion, and the fund falls short by four.
It appears that the tens of millions who may not get their EBT cards filled at the beginning of November remain unaware of what the battle is really about.
But they may be getting a clue: it’s not about them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On October 29, 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon as conqueror. His general policy of religious toleration would be extended to the exiled Hebrews, who were, not long after, allowed to return to their homeland.
On the same date in 1923 A.D., the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei . . . He’s making us all look good.”
But how does this redound to Trump’s, er, biglyness?
Well, Trump provided a bailout.
That’s the term used in the news for a $20 billion currency swap plus $20 billion private loan facility — that is, private funds directed by the negotiating agents at U.S. Treasury. This stabilized Argentina’s peso after a September crisis triggered by Milei’s party’s losses at Buenos Aires polls a month earlier.
Regardless, Liberty Advance’s current win defies recent polls showing a dip to around 40 percent, in part because of hardship from Milei’s “austerity” drive — slashed subsidies, fired public workers, deregulated industries.
It also defied North American expectations. Leading up to October 26, we heard little good news from the land named for the element silver: major U.S. outlets such as the New York Times and NPR, and British media including The Guardian, emphasized Argentina’s dire straits reveling in the “irony” or “failure” of Milei’s “libertarian experiment,” often with a strong whiff of schadenfreude toward “Trump-lite” policies.*
But Milei’s biggest successes should not be ignored: inflation has dropped from 211 percent to under 5 percent monthly. Another factor in his victory is how rural voters, lives improved by freer trade, outweighed disgruntled government workers, newly disemployed.
Mostly, though, I bet Argentines were fearful of a return to Peronism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Of course, Milei’s “shock therapy” and “austerity” (and other leftist bugaboos) were unmatched by anything Trump has done — if anything, Trump’s “Milei Lite.”
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