I Guess MIT's Beaver is Next to Fall

 The NY Times has an article about the surprises from Mother Nature that the woke New York City dwellers discovered when moving to the country. 

Specifically:

...the unexpected challenge of rural living was summed up in a single word: beavers. ... was enchanted by baby beavers swimming in the brook on his four-acre property in the town of Saugerties, N.Y., where he and his partner... have been sheltering since March 2020. “I quickly learned that they’re horrible, nasty creatures that wreak havoc and destruction,” said ... the head of a Manhattan public relations firm who still maintains a home in Harlem. The beavers dammed the brook in three places, creating a swamp behind the house, and built a den that is “the size of a small van.”

Now these are no Robert E Lee statues or the like but beavers. Common ordinary beavers. I have one on my MIT class ring.

But in today's world the NYC dweller declares these persona non grata, or animalia non grata. Frankly what did this character expect, the Four Seasons lounge, The Penninsula rooftop! But no, he calls them horrible. I wonder what they thought of him?

I suspect the cohorts in Cambridge will now seek to burn down all the beaver symbols. Beavers dam streams, they have a purpose. They create space for other creatures, whereas humans from NYC seem to just want to push them all out and then bemoan global worming stuff! Pity...

NJ 2022 02 25

 Well here we go. All we can now get is the county. NJ has stopped data, the CDC did so weeks ago, but somehow the county continues. 

The county and town have dropped to low levels.

The doubling time is well above any previous value

The town prevalence is de minimus

And almost all towns have doubling greater than 200.

Will Ukraine become Afghanistan REDUX for Russia

 I remember vividly the Russian tanks leaving Afghanistan at night as a defeated world power. It was more denigrating than the Biden escape last August. Massive losses to a band of locals but armed with Stinger missiles against helicopters and tanks.

Ukraine has leaky borders with NATO and other countries and the attack is emboldening the Ukrainians as nothing else can. Thus Putin in his grand arrogance, some say insane visions, has grossly failed to see this. The US had this in Vietnam and hopefully has remembered that locals even poorly armed, can blend in and destroy a major army.

This will potentially become such a swamp for Putin, especially when losses start to mount. He has claimed no Russian losses but viewing Russian tanks destroyed by UK provided anti-tank weapons leads one to wonder. If Ukrainians are ready to fight, then weapons for such a war are readily available. 

The biggest risk is the insanity of nuclear weapons, but then we may have a homicidal maniac in the Kremlin.

Variants

 In a recent paper the authors provide an excellent summary of the COVID variants. This is a baseline for understanding the spike protein variability and is worth keeping ready at hand.

Black Death (1348)

 Yersinia pestis is the pathogen causing the plague. In 1340 there plague took almost half of Europe's population. Unlike COVID, it was transmitted not by person to person but by flea to person. Thus if one bathed daily, wore clean clothing, slept in a clean bed, etc then  one was left harmless. No matter how many died about you. Think Boccaccio.

Now in an article in Nature some 21st century intellect notes:

Historians estimate that the wave of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s killed about half of the people in Europe, at a time when most lived in rural areas. To investigate the Black Death’s true toll, Alessia Masi at the Sapienza University of Rome and her colleagues analysed ancient pollen from 261 lakes and wetlands across Europe. By assessing the varieties of pollen, the researchers determined whether fields and pastures had been abandoned after the plague and eventually replaced by forests. Levels of pollen from species common in agricultural lands were much lower in Scandinavia, France, western Germany, Greece and central Italy between 1350 and 1450 than during the previous 100 years. This suggests high mortality rates. But in other regions, including Ireland and much of eastern Europe, agricultural activities were stable and even expanded, suggesting that populations there were growing.

The answer is simple. Take Prague. Almost no plague. The plague came in on rats which carried the fleas which carries the pathogen. Thus if one got infected in Venice and was on their way to Prague, they died well before ever reaching there. Also Prague, like Warsaw and other cities inside Europe were protected by distance. This has been known since 1349! So what is new here folks? Now Ireland, well few ports and the English had managed to disperse the Irish after the slaughter by Edward I. Yes the English did the Irish a favor. Kept them away from the coast!

DEFCON 2?

 In 1983 there was a movie called "War Games". It introduced the concept of DEFCON, or defense condition. It related to nuclear war. Recall that the only way to win is not to play! One suspects we are reaching DEFCON2, with Putin threatening all out nuclear war the DoD may very well have all forces on full alert. DEFCON1 is all out destruction.

The man must be insane to make such threats, it shows a malignant lack of understanding that there is no win in such a situation. Global warming will be taken care of in a global nuclear cloud. The only things remaining are my ginkgos, descendants from the Hiroshima blast. 

The last time we faced this was with Kennedy and Cuba. Biden is no Kennedy and the current team in DC is no WW II survivors. In addition Russia has massive nuclear capacity, not to mention the US. 

Hopefully some Russians can see the light and remedy the situation before a total calamity.

Well This is Some Mess

 Mr Putin has just put his foot in it. He reminds me of the old joke about some rather limited mental faculty individual that sees a mess on the street and thinks he better investigate before stepping in it. He smells it, feels it, tastes it and then says it is a good thing he did not step in it. Well Putin did all three and then stepped in it. 

RT states the new Putin Doctrine:

It seems like Russia has entered a new era of its foreign policy – a ‘constructive destruction’, let’s call it, of the previous model of relations with the West. Parts of this new way of thinking have been seen over the last 15 years – starting with Vladimir Putin’s famous Munich speech in 2007 – but much is only just becoming clear now. At the same time, lackluster efforts to integrate into the western system, while maintaining a doggedly defensive attitude, has remained the general trend in Russia’s politics and rhetoric. Constructive destruction is not aggressive. Russia maintains it isn’t going to attack anyone or blow them up. It simply doesn’t need to. The outside world provides Russia with more and more geopolitical opportunities for medium-term development as it is. With one big exception. NATO’s expansion and formal or informal inclusion of Ukraine poses a risk to the country’s security that Moscow simply won’t accept.

Now in some strange way Sputnik states:

 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia has started a military operation in Ukraine in order to clear the country of Nazis.

If memory serves me correctly the action of Putin is what Hitler did to the Czechs in the Sudetenland. 

Also Putin is allegedly threatening nuclear attack. If correct he has lost his mind, and has really stepped in it. In the 70s when dealing with the Soviets on the CTBT negotiations it was clear that many had understood the terror of the use of nuclear weapons. Putin may be too young or naive or just plane insane to grasp the problem.

Notwithstanding, one hopes our woke military will raise the alert level to just under outright war. With the potential of an insane leader with a nuclear button one cannot take the chance.  

Not a Typical American

I first entered the new Russia in 1995 in what was now Saint Petersburg. My first recollection was after we landed on Finnair that there were hundreds of gutted Aeroflot aircraft stored along the taxi way to the terminal. My wife and I were there on a tour. I still had a slight amount of Russian and unlike our fellow tourists who stayed in the Europa Western Hotel we stayed in an old Intourist, KGB controlled, hotel. Modest, communal, controlled. Our fellow guests were from everywhere including multiple Iranian mullahs.

It was a wonderful trip to the “new” Russia. Our first observation was a wedding and then in a wonderful Orthodox Church a funeral. Religion was back in Russia, and based on a few observations it was back in force. You see Saint Petersburg was Putin territory and he had been baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church.

A brief word on the Orthodox Church. It believes it is the sole descendent of the original Church with the Western version, Roman Catholicism, destroyed by multiple schisms and especially the Avignon papacy. They believe as William of Ockham that the Pope then, John XXII was a heretic and thus broke the line to Peter. Not to mention the multiple “Popes” that followed, simultaneously. 

Putin uses the Orthodox Church as Lenin used the Communist Party, and in a sense Putin was right and Lenin totally missed the point.

So what drove Putin? Yes the collapse of the old Soviet state but worse the religious war in the Balkans. The US supported the Muslim side against the Orthodox side, and to him it was a religious war where the US was the infidel and the oppressor of those of the true faith.

Now on to Ukraine. Despite the historical revisionism of Putin, Ukraine was always a distinct region. For example it was part of Poland, Lithuania and so forth. Western Ukraine uses a wealth of Polish words and the East uses Russian. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is western as compared to Putin’s true belief in the supremacy or Russian Orthodoxy.

Then go to the Ukrainian elections and the direct visible and invasive interference of US diplomats pushing for their choice, rewarding Ukrainians to vote for a candidate whose interest was that of the US. It makes the fable of Trump and Russians pale in comparison. US State Department senior persons walking the streets of Ukraine enticing Ukrainians to vote in the interest of the US.

Now the Russian remember Napoleon and Hitler, the burning of Moscow. Tanks from the Germans still dot Moscow as a permanent to reminder to anyone who goes along the main routes into the city. So far but no more, Putin sees these every day and it means that there shall be no NATO puppet on his doorstep. 

Thus history and religion are drivers of this Russian action.

Now personally I remember a meeting I had with a banker and one of my Russian partners, a “former” general. I took the Moscow Metro during rush hour to eventually get to the building, an older Soviet style building on the outskirts of Moscow. I walked a few blocks, using my best Cyrillic to navigate and walked into the building. My banker arrived by limo. After some negotiations my Russian colleagues and I had a conversation and the general said I did not look like a typical American. I asked why. He said I took the metro and walked, did not use the limo service, and my Russian, poor, stilted and accent was at least a recognition of the Russia they loved. I was like a good Russian peasant, walking and involved in the interest of my partners.

I knew and respected Russia, I knew the history, the struggles, the fears and the ambitions.

Russia should be a western ally, not an adversary. Russia wants security based upon centuries of invasion. The US does not understand that. Russian now respects its religion, the Orthodox Church, which we cannot understand. The arrogance of western diplomats and even corporate players is sensed by the Russians. My first book was translated into Russian and it referred to the Russians whose insight it built upon. The Russians appreciated that. Yet I do suspect that my FSB files is larger than my FBI file.

So how do we view the current Ukrainian mess. First in many ways the US actions over the past thirty years instigate much of what we see today. Second, in my opinion and in my experience the current State Department principals bring a level of ignorance and arrogance that just further amplifies the problem. Third, in a rather strange sense, this may be a religions conflict, Russian Orthodoxy and its underlying cultural norms against western wokeisms. Perhaps Putin feels that God is on his side?

An Old Joke

 In the 70s when I was in DC and working on nuclear disarmament issues, the inside joke was that if the Soviets wanted to bring Washington to its knees all they had to do is drop some Ford Pintos on exits to the Beltway. That was almost 50 years ago! The beltway has just gotten worse. I'd rather commute into Boston than DC and frankly NYC is a cake walk. Lots of alternate paths.

Now along comes the US truckers. The Hill notes:

A truck convoy organizer says that his group has plans to shut down the Capital Beltway in the D.C. region this week. Bob Bolus, who owns a Scranton-based tow truck and truck parts business, said in a Sunday interview that there are plans to block off the Beltway, a local Fox News station reported. "I'll give you an analogy of that of a giant boa constrictor," Bolus said to Fox5. "That basically squeezes you, chokes you and it swallows you, and that's what we're going to do D.C."

Well if you want to generate abject hatred then try this plan. It will backfire so fast. You see there are hundreds of thousands who commute to work, besides the elite politicos. They have spent the last two years in demented isolation and now some "truckers" are going to take their lives a step up on the scale of torment.  

It helps to know who you are trying to reach. Not the single mother in Arlington who must commute to Silver Springs to feed her children! Think again guys. If you can.

Pandemic Over?

 New Jersey has stopped updating their infections. I guess that is how we find out it is over. Or just another lackless Government employee!

Equity? Not in New Jersey

 A year ago the Gov set forth mandates as to who was to be vaccinated first. Not the old and infirmed but the prisons and criminals therein. The old and infirmed were sent to LTC homes where tens of thousands died, and are still dying, and the Prisoners and their Care Takers got the right to go to the front of the line. A recent data shows that after getting to the front of the line, a year later only 41% got vaccinated. 

Thus the Gov allowed tens of thousands of old folks to die while those he was trying to protect as "vulnerable" outright rejected his noblesse.

This is what happens when we invent "equity" metrics. They not only do not work but they grossly harm the unprotected.

NJ 2022 02 12

 Another week and numbers are low but again they are getting more meaningless by the day.

FED Balance Sheet

 Things just get worse by the day. The FED has a Treasury bloated BS along with a bloat of old Mortgage Securities left over from the last bust. 

Below is the breakout by percent as of yesterday.

All elements are below but they are dominated by Treasuries

One can see this below. If they had passed the recent funding it would have exploded even more.

In simple terms here is the problem and risks.

1. The debt has interest. On near $6 trillion and interests at say 3% that is a $180 billion a year! 

2. Now if the FED raises interest to combat inflation to say 6% then we get to $360 billion per year!

3. But that means raising more money to pay for it and it becomes a death spiral.

4. Now add the China problem of taking the dollar out of play. That eliminates many buyers, raises the rates, and puts massive pressure on the US economy.

Now I am just a dumb engineer but I understand systems and stability quite well. This is a grossly unstable system.

Yield Curves

 I thought it would be useful to see the Treasury yield curves. 

First the spread of 3 month to 10 year. It is somewhat normalized after the inversion in mid 2019. 

which one can see better below

However! The yield curve is so low given inflation that one is truly troubled. The FED seems to be trying its best to keep interest on Debt low but this is pushing inflation even higher and the death spiral with increased spending will result in a massive explosion of interest rates next year.

Remember the Carter fiscal disaster resulted in 18.5% mortgage interest rates. I had one when I moved from DC to NY. That will crush the economy for several years or worse depending who is in power. There is no Reagan on the horizon.

Nothing is Necessarily What It Appears to Be!

The recent removal of a prominent Government Official brings, to mind, my experience in Washington in the 1970s and advice I gave to a colleague’s friend who had a high level appointment at a later time. Namely, that DC is a viper pit. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of GS15s whose sole job is to stab such appointees in the back, figuratively that is, most of the time. Namely, they are on the Government payroll and their sole function is to seek out and destroy some political appointees. They are quite good at it and, like the Mafia, it is never personal, just business. Now their “business” may just be de rigueur or it may be at the behest of some erstwhile benefactor. Kind of like Florence in the Renaissance.

 My personal tour in DC was down that path where I unbenowingly angered some major player via the unbeknownst discovery of some facts which if made public may have significantly burdened his efforts. I had used my resources to uncover a what I perceived to be small issue in one of my business units and I unknowingly uncovered had discovered a major issue. Fortunately for me, my team that obtained the goods on my adversary were retired British Intel agents[1] and stored the goods in the British Embassy for good keeping.

 Why was I targeted? It appears that I and my retired British Intel colleagues had unknowingly stumbled across something we should not have. I shall leave the details to later history but it was a bit of a sticky wicket. I only discovered what I had done and the potential risk when I was invited to a lunch meeting at a restaurant in McLean. It was there that I was informed of the complexity of the problem, some of what I had stumbled onto, and why, as a result of my British colleagues, I was getting a pass. The intrigues of Washington!

 Thus, I was safe. This was how I got a job in New York, secure and well away from the viper’s nest of political intrigue. I was just a mid-level character in a high-level game so I could be shuffled out of the game and safe as long as my “package” was not discoverable. In fact, it may very well, still this day, be in some secure safe in some obscure British facility where it may stay for eternity, happy and unopened. (Think the Arc of the Covenant and Indiana Jones but with a British bent). The Brits are great for that sort of thing. Unknowingly I had my “back protector” to keep me safe from the “back stabbers” working for their “benefactors”

 At a later time I had a colleague whose spouse obtained a high-level position in an Administration. This person was warned by me regarding the back stabbers. This person thought I was insane, I later found out. I also told them they needed a “back protector” to insure they did not terminally encounter the “back stabbers”. Needless to say, my recommendation was not adhered to and eighteen months later they were out on their back! Back Stabbers that is! It was at a later dinner that I was told that, after the fact, I had been the only one to tell them the truth, and it was a pity that they did not take my advice.

 One must ask why my colleague’s spouse engaged the wrath of the “back stabbers”? Many times, they just do it as a matter of course in their limited existence. Yet many more times they are directed by “benefactors” for reasons which are well beyond what one would normally suspect. In this case I could conjure some reasons but that would take the tale a bit afar. Suffice it to say that “benefactors” have reasons to send forth the “back stabbers”. If one is not protected then the target, the person, is neutralized promptly with all due force ensuring two things. First, that they never return. Second, that the public “reason” for the neutralization is both reasonable and co-opted by the press. After all, the “press” is merely an agent of the “benefactors”.

 All of this then gets to the issue of why a recent high-level resignation occurred. Besides the child like moans of the “everyone gets a trophy” generation, the same group who firmly believe that any idea each and every one of them has demands equal merit to the ideas of any and all highly accomplished older professionals. The “back stabbers” in this recent case, created a well-orchestrated termination. The gang was assembled, the psych profile on their target well understood, and the “evidence” deliberately and well-tuned to meet the level of belief.

 To support the attack, the press was enlisted and the argument of alleged mistreatment of a “wimpy” staff leaked, lacking any details. Namely the target was deemed just a “nasty” person, not that the complainers were possibly just over compensating for their own gross incompetence.

 Let us consider some logic about the case I have been hypothesizing about. We know the facts. Great person, high level position, well know personality and achievements. However, in a potentially politically sensitive position and with access to information and the like which could make certain “benefactors” uncomfortable. The target had not yet acted nor most likely did the target even suspect anything. The “benefactors” were just being careful.

 Thus, send in the “back stabbers”. We can conjecture:

 First, someone or someone group of “benefactors” wanted the target out of there because of what the target may have seen, discovered, or about to discover.

 Second, from the start the “benefactors” had a fully developed psych profile of the target and the target’s staff

 Third the target’s staff is comprised of a group of self praising elitists who believe that whatever they think is right and the best idea. However, in this collection of self-congratulatory elitists were the “back stabbers”. The “back stabbers” were primed to act upon requests from the “benefactors”. This would be easy since the staff in general was highly motivate able as classic Millennials.

 Fourth, as we very well know every Government agency has GS15 “back stabbers” and the target clearly did not hire the target’s back protector. Perhaps the failure was due to the target’s own ego, perhaps the target thought they have some invincibility.

 Fifth, the “benefactor”, seeking the target’s removal, knew the target’s weak points and set up situations where they could be implemented, documented, communicated, and made public.

 Sixth, the “back stabbers” recorded, promoted, prodded the useless ego driven Government employees to get the target to exert themself in a well understood psych profile manner that resulted in a compromising set of circumstances.

 Seventh in coordination with their White House Staff buddies, also “back stabbers”, they attacked.

 Eighth, the “target” never knew what hit!

 Ninth the “benefactors” win again. But the major question is what did they do and why? That is the real problem. What was target about to stumble on, a vulnerable “benefactor”, Chinese connections, money gatherings?

 Tenth, the “benefactors” also must have something on the target that makes the target even  apologize as the target leaves. Moreover the “benefactors” make the debasement so significant and potentially long lasting as a permanent reminder of what could be worse if they ever even tried to recall events. The approach is one of total destruction and yet presenting a possible future even more devastating. Oftentimes, this is done in conjunction with the “press” who are aligned with the interests of the “benefactors”.

 Connect the dots, it is akin to Three Days of the Condor[2]! Of course this is all just speculation.

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[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/178346268X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Days_of_the_Condor

 

NJ 2022 02 05

 It is decreasing but deaths are still high. As usual we now question all the data.

Second Anniversary

 Two years ago today I declared COVID a pandemic. That was more than a month before the rest of the powers that be and well before the Jesuitical Sophist. It was five days after the NEJM noted the outbreak in China. As I write this the Olympics are opening in China, devoid of crowds but demonstrating what a true autocrat can do.