This delightful video might be called “Economics in One Lesson,” although that title is taken.

It starts with the speaker, Kate, searching for rocks in a creek and ends with a demonstration of turning them into cabochons.

Source: GlobalResearch.

The CDC says, “COVID-19 vaccines do not change or interact with your DNA in any way.”

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html

The writer says, “Not so fast,” and gives what appears to (uneducated) me to be a credible and informative explanation.

Just to be clear, I see the article as interesting in a purely academic sense. I don’t recommend seeking advice in it.

Source: The Wall Street Journal (behind paywall).

The writer finds grounds for CEO political activism in an unlikely place:

Economist Milton Friedman, in his 1970 essay on corporate social responsibility advised: “It may well be in the long‐run interest of a corporation that is a major employer in a small community to devote resources to providing amenities to that community or to improving its government. That may make it easier to attract desirable employees, it may reduce the wage bill or lessen losses from pilferage and sabotage or have other worthwhile effects.”

For those who do not subscribe, a data breach at a Christian crowdfunding site has lead to the disclosure that the head of the Norfolk Police Depart Internal Affairs unit sent money and words of support to the vigilante who traveled to Wisconsin with his assault weapon and ended up murdering two people.

The poor judgment and twisted values of a senior police official who would lend his support to the actions of a murderous vigilante are disqualifying of any police employment and doubly so in an area as sensitive as internal affairs. IMHO.

Maybe it is just me, but I find it instructive that a site styling itself as “Christian” would be funneling money to a killer. Shows how corrupted words can become.

Here is the original story in The Guardian.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/16/us-police-officers-public-officials-crowdfunding-website-data-breach

Source: Reason.

The writer justifies her skepticism with a few relevant observations. Most interesting to me is that the universe of infrastructure is divided between publicly-owned and privately-owned assets, with the latter being in better shape. This makes perfect sense in light of the incentives of the asset managers. You could almost make a rule: Public ownership of infrastructure is a poor investment.

Going off the grid for the next few days. No email, smartphone or internet. Just good wine, good, food, good bourbon, good company and a good time away from it all.

Y’all play nice in my absence.

And stay outta my yard, you danged whippersnappers.

The use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been paused because 6 women had blood clotting problems, one of them fatal. This was out of 7 million doses given so far.

The pause will result in avoidable deaths due to the delay in getting the population vaccinated.

An evidence based approach would take into account that women are well known to have more clotting problems than men and that the combination of smoking and oral contraceptives results in a much higher incidence of clotting problems.

There is no reason at all to pause the use of the J&J vaccine in men, as there have been no cases involving men.

There is very little justification for the pause in women, but if the very rare events are a concern, then continue the use of the J&J vaccine for men and give women Moderna or Pfizer while the issue is studied, especially if they have other risk factors like past clotting problems or they smoke or take hormones.

But it is idiocy to leave J&J vaccine on the shelf while people are still dying.

Climate Media vs Climate Science

Science has not supported an existential treat at any point, and the consensus is moving toward moderation more every day, yet the press and politicians are running with Doomsday

If you don’t have WSJ, this article is good reason to consider it.