Rosh Hashanah

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the first of the High Holy Days. To be more precise, Rosh Hashanah actually began yesterday evening, since the Jews traditionally begin a new day at sunset. This holiday takes place on the first two days of the month of Tishrei in the Hebrew calendar. Because the Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar, the dates wander a bit in our Gregorian calendar. This year it takes place on September 25-27. The New Year is celebrated for two days because of the difficulty of determining the precise day of the new moon.

Rosh Hashanah, which means “the head of the year”,  is not mentioned as such in the Bible. Instead, the day is called “Zikaron Teru’ah” a memorial of the blowing of horns in Leviticus 23:24, and “Yom Teru’ah” the day of blowing the horn in Numbers 23:9.

 23 The LORD spoke to Moses: 24 “Tell the Israelites, ‘In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you must have a complete rest, a memorial announced by loud horn blasts, a holy assembly. 25 You must not do any regular work, but you must present a gift to the LORD.’”  (Lev. 23:23-25)

1 “‘On the first day of the seventh month, you are to hold a holy assembly. You must not do your ordinary work, for it is a day of blowing trumpets for you. 2 You must offer a burnt offering as a sweet aroma to the LORD: one young bull, one ram, and seven lambs one year old without blemish.  3 “‘Their grain offering is to be of finely ground flour mixed with olive oil, three-tenths of an ephah for the bull, two-tenths of an ephah for the ram, 4 and one-tenth for each of the seven lambs,note 5 with one male goat for a purification offering to make an atonement for you; 6 this is in addition to the monthly burnt offering and its grain offering, and the daily burnt offering with its grain offering and their drink offerings as prescribed, as a sweet aroma, a sacrifice made by fire to the LORD. (Num 29:1-6)

I mentioned that the Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar. That is not quite correct. A fully lunar calendar would be based solely on the phases of the moon that would cycle through the year, as the Islamic Calendar does. Instead, the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar. The twelve months add up to 354 days, so to keep up with the seasons extra, intercalary months are added in a nineteen-year cycle. Seven intercalary months are added during the cycle so that a thirteenth month is added every two or three years. This means that the dates wander a bit compared to the Gregorian calendar but stay within the appropriate seasons.

Anyway, Shana Tova everyone.

Suppressing Science

Over the centuries, we have found that the best way to discover truths about the natural world is through the method of examination, observation, and experimentation known as science. The use of science over the last few centuries has allowed us to make discoveries about the universe and invent new technologies that have fundamentally changed the world we live in, for better or worse but mainly for the better.

Science only works, however, when the people practicing it engage in a relentless, even passionate pursuit of the truth, whatever the consequences. Scientists must honestly report the results of their observations and experiments, even if the results are not what they would like. They must be willing to acknowledge when an experiment disproves the theory they are trying to prove. In particular, for science to work, scientists must be able to work without fear of political or ideological interference.

This is why I find the article, And Yet it Moves, by Jukka Savolainen in City Journal.

Nature Human Behavior, one of the most prestigious journals for social science research, recently published an editorial titled “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans.” Though short, the article generated tremendous pushback among academics and intellectuals concerned about the spread of social-justice ideology into science. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker said the journal was “no longer a peer-reviewed scientific journal but an enforcer of a political creed,” while Greg Lukianoff, the CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, described the journal’s statement as “an epistemic catastrophe.” What did the editorial say?

In short, it took the position that scientific truth should defer to politics. The journal now considers it appropriate to suppress research that “undermines—or could reasonably be perceived to undermine—the rights and dignities” of people or groups, as well as “text or images that disparage a person or group on the basis of socially constructed human groupings.” Researchers are urged to “consider the potential implications of research on human groups defined on the basis of social characteristics” and “to contextualise their findings to minimize as much as possible potential misuse or risks of harm to the studied groups in the public sphere.” Anything that could be perceived as disparaging is now fair game for rejection or retraction.

The implications on scientific inquiry and truth-seeking are clear. As the journalist Jesse Singal observed, an empirically flawless study could be retracted under the guise of social justice. “What’s most alarming is that unless I’m missing something, research that is perfectly valid and well-executed could run afoul of these guidelines,” he wrote.

Mr. Savolainen points out that this kind of censorship has become increasingly common in the scientific community, especially in the social sciences. He gives two examples of studies that were attacked and suppressed because their results were at variance with politically correct orthodoxy. Such findings might “cause harm” to a particular group and therefore should not be published. Some things are more important than the truth.

The problem with this approach is that it is impossible to suppress the truth indefinitely. Sooner or later, the truth comes out. As the title of the article, what Galileo allegedly whispered to himself, suggests, the Catholic Church tried to suppress the knowledge that the Earth moves around the Sun. The Inquisition may have been able to intimidate Galileo into proclaiming the Earth does not move, but the Earth does move; what the Catholic Church did by silencing Galileo was to gain the undeserved reputation of being a body of ignoramuses. Scientific journals which try to quash inconvenient studies will acquire a similar reputation.

The motivation for these acts of censorship may be noble. The editors seem to be concerned that reporting facts that might reflect negatively on groups that have historically been oppressed, perhaps providing excuses for further oppression. Whether the motivation for concealing truths is or is not noble, it is still a bad idea. If the members of a particular group suffer from some social dysfunction, perhaps they commit crimes at a greater rate than the national average, or lag in educational attainments suppressing the studies that reveal such dysfunctions does not help anyone. We cannot resolve the problems that a particular group of people might have unless we know all of the relevant facts. Suppressing these facts only gives credence to the bigots who use this ‘suppressed knowledge’ to suggest that the marginalized people the censors imagine they are helping are inherently inferior.

When you value politically correct ideology more than the truth, you will never discover what the truth is. You cannot do science unless you are willing to pursue the truth where ever it may lead. You may use scientific terminology and perhaps some aspects of the scientific method, but you are not doing science. You are performing what the physicist Richard Feynman called cargo cult science. The people at Nature Human Behavior have decided to give up real science in favor of the cargo cult variety.

Twenty-One Years

It has been twenty years since the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and I still remember it as if it were yesterday.

On that Tuesday morning, I was at work, driving from Madison to North Vernon when I got a call from my wife. She asked me if I was listening to the radio. I was not. She told me to turn it on because something terrible was happening. I turned my car radio on and listened to the coverage of the attack.

I went about my duties at the stores in North Vernon in a sort of state of shock.  The North Vernon Walmart and Jay C played continuing news coverage of the day’s events instead of the usual soothing Musak. Not too many people were working or shopping in the stores. They were mostly just listening.

I had to go to Seymour for a meeting that afternoon. On the way, I noticed that some gas stations had raised the price of gasoline to a then unheard-of price of $5 per gallon. At the meeting, no one wanted to discuss the business at hand. Instead, we talked about the terrorist attack. It seemed certain to us all that more attacks were on the way and that this time we couldn’t just launch a few missiles, blow up some tents, and then move on. We were in for a long fight.

I don’t remember much about the rest of that day. I went home but I don’t remember much about it.

I was once in the World Trade Center. I was in New York with some friends as a sort of tourist and we took the elevator to the top floor of one of the twin towers. There was a gallery up there where you could look out over the city of New York. The day was foggy so I didn’t see anything. They had a gift shop in the center section of the floor. It sickens me to think that the people who worked there went to work one morning, and then had to choose between burning to death or jumping, Not to mention the tourists, who only wanted to look at the city.

It still sickens me to think about the people who were only doing their jobs having to lose their lives.

It sickens me, even more, to have an alleged president turn tail and run from the kind of terrorists who committed this atrocity, abandoning Americans in Afghanistan, or to have this so-called president declaring his fellow Americans a threat to the country while ignoring the external threats, probably because the traitor president is bought and paid for our enemies, but there it is.

The End of an Era

Queen Elizabeth II is dead.

Long live King Charles III

From the Washington Post.

Queen Elizabeth II, the seemingly eternal monarch who became a bright but inscrutable beacon of continuity in the United Kingdom during more than seven decades of rule, died Sept. 8 at Balmoral Castle, her estate in the Scottish Highlands. She was 96.

Her death, of undisclosed causes, was announced by Buckingham Palace.

In her reign, which began in February 1952 after the death of her father, King George VI, Elizabeth served as a constant and reassuring figure in Britain and on the world stage as she helped lead her country through a period of profound shifts in geopolitical power and national identity.

The designs of postage stamps and bank notes changed through the decades, but they all depicted the same, if aging, monarch. The British national anthem now shifts to “God Save the King,” but most Britons have only known the other version, for the queen.

It is the end of an era. Queen Elizabeth II is the only monarch most Britons, and most of us elsewhere, have ever known. Although as an American I live in a republic without any kings or queens, I am enough of an anglophile that I felt that she was my queen. I am sorry to see her go and I wish the best of luck to the new King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Trump for President 2024

When Donald Trump began his run for president back in 2015, I was a Trump skeptic. I did not think Trump was a serious candidate. I did not believe he had any chance of winning the Republican nomination, much less the general election. If Trump were nominated, I thought he would be a sure loser against Hilary Clinton. If by some miracle, Trump won, I was sure he would govern as a mushy moderate centrist. Trump’s political stands in the past gave me no confidence that he would turn out to be a conservative president.

Indiana doesn’t hold its primaries until May, and by that time. the once enormous Republican field had dwindled to just two candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. I voted for Ted Cruz. By that time, however, it was obvious that Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee for president, running against Hilary Clinton. Since I knew that Mrs. Clinton was as corrupt as her husband and a leftist ideologue, I resigned myself to voting for Trump as the lesser evil.

A strange thing happened in the campaign, however. The people who supported Donald Trump were really enthusiastic about their candidate. Trump generated more enthusiasm than any Republican candidate in recent memory, he was no Mitt Romney or Bob Dole. The people loved him. More importantly, the people who opposed Donald Trump seemed to really, really hate him. The Democrats have always announced the current Republican presidential candidate as the latest incarnation of Adolf Hitler, but this time they seemed to mean it. Even more interesting, many Republicans and conservative pundits expressed the opinion that Trump was unacceptable as a political candidate and would support Clinton as the lesser evil. It seemed to me that all the people I really hate really hated Donald Trump. That led me to believe that he must be doing something right. I began to paraphrase Matt Stone’s comment about liberals and conservatives saying that I hated Donald Trump, but I really fucking hated the people who hated Donald Trump.

Trump won the election, of course, and he exceeded my expectations. Trump turned out to be, in many ways, the most conservative president since Ronald Reagan himself. Trump appointed conservative justices who respected the constitution to the Supreme Court and made the entire judicial system more conservative. He encouraged manufacturers to return to the US, and the economy was booming, with record lows in unemployment for Blacks and Hispanics. Trump didn’t manage to build the wall on the southern border, but illegal immigration slowed to a trickle. Trump was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to initiate any new military actions, but he managed to promote peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. He was a successful president despite having both political parties and virtually the entire media against him. So, while I was a reluctant Trump voter in 2016, by 2020, I was an enthusiastic Trump supporter.

Naturally, our elites couldn’t have an outsider have a successful presidency, especially when the President’s Make America Great Again agenda proved so beneficial to the American people and so inimical to their own interests. They certainly couldn’t have him reelected for another four years. As the 202o election approached, they made every effort to ‘fortify’ the election to ensure Trump’s loss. The COVID pandemic provided a perfect pretext to destroy the economy with lockdowns and illegally change the electoral laws in key states, making fraud by mail-in votes much easier. Social media companies suppressed information about the criminal acts of the Biden family while spreading misinformation about Trump. Finally, on election night, they resorted to blatant cheating then Trump ‘lost’ the election.

By all indications, Donald Trump is planning to run again in 2024. I have had somewhat ambiguous feelings about this. Right now, Donald Trump is seventy-six years old. In 2024, he will be seventy-eight, the same age Joe Biden was when he entered the White House. While Trump does not show the obvious signs of dementia Biden has shown, I wonder if Trump will be too old for the j0b. In addition, there is no denying that Trump has been a polarizing figure. If half the country loves him, the other half certainly hates him with a passion. Maybe the Republicans should go with a younger, less obnoxious candidate. Maybe, they should nominate a candidate who supports Trump’s policies, but that lacks Trump’s offputting persona, someone like Ron DeSantis, perhaps.

I was leaning towards that position, but recent events have caused me to change my mind and support Donald Trump for 2024. First, there was the unprecedented raid on Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. Then the alleged President denounced the half of the country that supports Trump as ‘semi-Fascists’ and a threat to ‘our democracy. The elites who have spent the four years of Trump’s presidency hating him and everything he stands for still hate him and anyone who supports him. As Trump has said, “They don’t hate me. They hate you. I’m just in the way.”

In his first term, Trump had managed to expose the corruption and rottenness of many of our institutions. In his second term, he might be able to purge the putrefaction in the system. That is why they hate and fear him. That is why they hate and fear we the people. That is why Trump must be elected to a second term in 2024. That is why I have put aside all of my reservations and enthusiastically support Trump for president in 2024.