Tag Archives: Featured Stories

Coronavirus dashboard for May 13: the virus will gradually become less lethal – because you can only die once, COVID-19 is still a pandemic and will gradually transition to an endemic. A year ago I thought that between nearly universal vaccinations and an increasing percentage of the population already infected, the virus would wane into a background nuisance by now. No more.  I am now thoroughly convinced that an unending series of variants...

The Malthusianism Of Benjamin Franklin And The Abortion Issue, Econospeak, Barkley Rosser Thomas Robert Malthus may well have been the least favorite economist of Karl Marx. Basically, Marx did not like him because he saw Malthus as blaming poverty on the poor themselves, their inevitable sinfulness that led them to constantly reproduce themselves excessively when things started to get better, thus leading to population pressing against the means...

In Texas a large portion of Plant ’22 has already happened. Central Texas corn emergence is already knee high, green, and waiting for the rains to continue this week. Other parts of the country have struggled to get seed in the ground either due to low soil temps, too much precipitation or no rain to speak of. This past week or so as rains and storms, some wreaking tornado havoc, have doused the land in various agriculturally important regions....

First the usual warning – I am both ignorant and intellectually arrogant.  It should be assumed that I don’t know what I am talking about. Stealth technology hides airplanes, drones, and cruise missiles from radar which uses high frequency radio waves.  It does not hide them from radar which uses radio waves of wavelength a meter or more – the thickness of the stealthy covering would have to be similar to that wavelength.  This means that an F-35...

Major Economic Confusion  Anybody confused by recent economic reports is not alone. The BEA has just reported a totally unexpected decline in real GDP for the first quarter of a 1.4% annual rate.  At the same time layoffs have reached a half century low and employment continues to rise.  How can we have an apparently beginning recession with the hottest job market in decades? Probably this has to do with the sources of the reported decline,...

Introduction to Bankruptcy Discharge for Student Loans I know the image on the right, my other right is small. To enlarge it, click on the picture. A plus sign may show up to make it even larger. I have been following the student loan crisis (and it is such) well over a decade. I have engaged certain politicians on the issue in public. I have worked with Alan Collinge at Student Loan Justice Org for well over a decade. He is in...

Just how dry have the ground conditions been? Dire. Fire sweeping towns from Austin to Los Angeles, dire. Rain? Forecast yes, but closer to the Powell Line. The Powell Line, as stated previously is where the dry plains and the wet prairie meet. An abundance and a desert. Too much and not enough. Floods and fire. We finally got rain today. Much needed as we have pumped 20,000 gallons and then some per month out of the aquifer supplying Dallas,...

Yesterday Emmanuel Macron was re-elected president of France solidly defeating Marine LePen by about 16%. This is a relief. I think a striking aspect of the election was the absence of Gaullist or Socialist candidate in the runoff. Instead there is a centrist vs a far rightist. This pattern is not confined to France and also not universal. One important point is that LePen made the runoff by defeating leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon by 1.5% in the...

Mortgage rates continue to rise; once the backlog in construction is cleared, this will likely kill housing No important economic news today (April 22), but an important negative trend in interest rates is continuing. Mortgage rates are now at 12 year highs. The weekly data from Freddy Mac’s weekly survey shows rates increased to 5.11% as of April 21: This is 2.46% above the low of 2.65% that was set at the end of 2020, and the...

SARS-CoV-2 transmission on planes – Katelyn Jetelina (substack.com) This substack article came to me by way of a commenter asking if I was interested in it. Of course, I am. It is a part of healthcare and covers a topic I believe is important to all of us. Stopping the transmission of Covid. Introduction On Monday, a Florida judge voided the U.S. mandate for public transit, which includes planes, trains, and buses. Several airlines...