On this day in 1833, Denison Olmsted was alerted by his neighbors to something truly amazing, a night sky filled with shooting stars.
Not just a one or two or a dozen or a hundred: 72,000 or more per hour. Though recognizing where among the constellations meteors came from was ancient knowledge, it had not been recorded by modern-era scientists, at least in this case. What Olmsted noticed was that the meteors were coming from one point in the sky, the constellation Leo. This regular meteor event is now called the Leonid meteor stream.
In the morning, Olmsted wrote a brief report on the meteor storm for the New Haven Daily Herald newspaper, which elicited correspondence from around the country, thus beginning a social storm, in a sense: crowd-sourced science.
In February, Denmark’s farmers were worried “that plans to levy a carbon emission tax on farming” in the name of global weather control “would force them to reduce production and close farms.”
In the same month, farmers across Europe protested against assaults on their livelihood.
Meanwhile, a report by a government commission concluded that the carbon tax could cause Denmark’s agricultural production to decline by as much as a fifth. The central planners made clear that this was a price they were willing to pay in order to indulge their ideological-meteorological fantasy.
And also, not incidentally, in order to collect more tax dollars.
But the concern and the estimates of the severity of the blow on farmers — to be penalized for providing food, a requirement of survival — availed naught.
The carbon emissions tax is being enacted and will take effect in 2030. The levy will initially be something like $96 per cow, rising to $241 per cow in 2035.
Insane. But cows produce methane “through their burps and manure,” CNN reports. So what can tyrants do but tax farmers into oblivion?
The fantasists may claim success no matter what global climate turns out to be in years to come. Or they may claim that their measures haven’t yet fixed the global climate only because the rest of the world’s countries haven’t yet followed suit and appropriately penalized their farmers for farming.
Only when civilization is fully destroyed will we be able “save” it.
On November 12, 1905, Norwegians established, by referendum, a monarchy — not a republic. Exactly 14 years later, to the day, Austria became a republic.
It’s the kind of scandal that makes you wonder, briefly, whether somebody made it up.
But nobody made it up.
In the wake of Hurricane Milton, a sub-boss of the Federal Emergency Management Agency named Marn’i Washington told FEMA workers who had the job of assessing storm damage in Lake Placid, Florida, to skip any houses with Trump signs.
A Microsoft Teams memo outlining “best practices” for performing the work included injunctions like “not one goes anywhere alone” and “avoid homes advertising Trump.” No one can peruse the latter instruction and not know the kind of animus informing Washington’s memo.
Thanks to whistleblowers distressed by these orders, which were delivered both in writing and verbally, the Daily Wire obtained the revealing internal communications.
At least twenty Trump-advertising homes were passed over by FEMA workers who complied with the memo.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others have announced investigations of the incident.
Regarding what went down in this one Florida town, at least, there is currently no cover-up by FEMA. We don’t know whether similar orders were given to damage assessors in other hurricane-hit regions. But had there been, let’s hope that somebody would have spoken up.
A FEMA spokesman admitted that the agency is “deeply disturbed” by Washington’s actions. According to a Daily Wire update, the agency has now fired her.
“This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel,” says FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.
This is how to handle partisanship in federal bureaucracies.
What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. To be more than nominal, however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave’s actions — a control which is habitually for the benefit of the controller. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. The relation admits of sundry gradations. Remembering that originally the slave is a prisoner whose life is at the mercy of his captor, it suffices here to note that there is a harsh form of slavery in which, treated as an animal, he has to expend his entire effort for his owner’s advantage. Under a system less harsh, though occupied chiefly in working for his owner, he is allowed a short time in which to work for himself, and some ground on which to grow extra food. A further amelioration gives him power to sell the produce of his plot and keep the proceeds. Then we come to the still more moderated form which commonly arises where, having been a free man working on his own land, conquest turns him into what we distinguish as a serf; and he has to give to his owner each year a fixed amount of labour or produce, or both: retaining the rest himself. Finally, in some cases, as in Russia before serfdom was abolished, he is allowed to leave his owner’s estate and work or trade for himself elsewhere, under the condition that he shall pay an annual sum. What is it which, in these cases, leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit. If all the slave’s labour is for his owner the slavery is heavy, and if but little it is light. Take now a further step. Suppose an owner dies, and his estate with its slaves comes into the hands of trustees; or suppose the estate and everything on it to be bought by a company; is the condition of the slave any the better if the amount of his compulsory labour remains the same? Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before? The essential question is — How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.
Herbert Spencer, “The Coming Slavery,” The Contemporary Review (April 1884), p. 474. See also The Man versus the State (1884).
