U.S. and Texas: It is too Dangerous to Vacation in Mexico

Texas Travel Advisory regarding Mexico:. See also here for similar U.S. warnings.

The Texas Department of Public Safety warned Americans to skip spring break vacations in Mexico, noting that ongoing violence poses a significant safety threat.

The warning —which adds to State Department advisories not to travel to large swathes of the country — comes in the wake of the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico earlier this month. There's a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory for Tamaulipas, the Mexican state the Americans were in when they were kidnapped.

In the meantime, here are the numbers of murders over the past year in various American cities:

Portland Oregon: 93 Philadelphia: 516 San Antonio: 231 Saint Louis: 200 Memphis: 288 New Orleans: 280 Chicago: 697 Houston: 435 Washington DC: 203 Kansas City: 167

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Leonard Nimoy’s 1978 Warning: The Imminent Ice Age

Things looked icy and bleak in 1978. But then it didn't happen, like so many other things that have been predicted. What is the lesson we can learn from this failure? When we make predictions regarding complex adaptive systems, perhaps we need more humility. Perhaps we shouldn't act like we are sure of things when we aren't.

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Michael Shellenberger’s Concern with Nihilism

Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Michael Shellenberger. The first third of the interview has been released. I highly recommend watching/listening/reading it. Shellenberger once identified as a liberal, but now he declares himself an independent, taking good ideas wherever he finds them and rejecting bad ideas. I agree with much of what he has to say in this part of the interview. Here is an excerpt from the interview where Shellenberger argues that a big part of our problem is nihilism:

Michael: I'm really interested in defending the pillars of civilization and the pillars of civilization are, as I see it, cheap, abundant energy, law and order, and meritocracy. My first book, Apocalypse Never, addresses the attack on abundant and cheap energy. San Fransicko describes the attack on law and order and meritocracy. You start attacking those pillars of civilization and you just don't have a civilization left anymore

Tucker: Can you repeat those?

Michael: Cheap energy, law and order, and meritocracy. All three are under attack in a really systematic way. This is why I find myself as somebody that's traditionally been on the left and is now independent. I see what conservatives are doing and the role of conservatives as important. They have the role of defending civilization. The role of the left has always been to demand change and push for change. And in some cases, I support that. But, right now, you see that the left has gone so far that even more moderate liberals have been radicalized and are undermining the bases of our civilization.

Tucker: But the alternative to civilization — and I've seen glimpses of it a couple of times — is so horrifying. It’s the total domination of the week by the strong. A 15-year-old with an automatic rifle can rape, can do whatever he wants, and you have no power. We spent millennia trying to build an alternative to that and we now have it. Why would you ever want to revert to the 15-year-old with the automatic weapon being in charge?

Michael: That's maybe the most important question of our time. And it's not an academic question.

Tucker: It’s a very practical question! And there are parts of the world where there's no civilization. I have personally seen them so I know. You can just buy a plane ticket and go there if you're interested. Why would anybody want that?

Michael: That is a huge question. I think one question is, “Do the people who are undermining civilization really want that? Do they know what they want?” To some extent, I think they do. But where all of my work has led me, and this is where my third book is going, is that what we're dealing with — and it's a bit of jargon, but I can't figure out how else to say it — a crisis of nihilism, meaning that as people stop believing in traditional religion, as people stop believing in God, they start to adopt new religions.

Nihilism has two meanings that are related. The first is that life has no purpose or value. We're just like animals. We're born, we reproduce, and we die. There's no point to any of it. And so it doesn't really matter what you do. You're not going to be judged at the end of your life to determine whether you go to heaven or hell. So that's the first nihilism. But then this turns people toward a kind of will-to-power. It turns into a desire to feel powerful, which itself is just a kind of hedonism when you get right down to it.... And it’s not just from the radical activists. We see it among elite media basically saying, “Unless we go back to pre-industrial energy sources, we're going to end up in a climate apocalypse.” They've constructed a new apocalyptic religion out of nihilism. I think that is what's driving this crisis of civilization. It’s a crisis of nihilism that arguably began a couple of hundred years ago....

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The Good Intentions of Innumerate Environmentalists

Well-intended innumerate people should not be in charge of government. Michael Schellenberger employs some down-to-earth math to show how pie-in-the-sky and how dangerous some well-meaning environmentalists are. Follow the full thread down to see how a lot of save-the-earth rhetoric is detached from reality because it is detached from the need for more nuclear power.

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Aphorism 9: Talk is so Cheap, it is Often Nothing at All

I was discussing a social issue with a neighbor more than 10 years ago. I said something like "that really bothers me" or "I really care about that." He stopped me and said something like this:

"If you really cared about it, you would be doing something about it."

That stopped me in my tracks because the only thing I was doing was ranting. I think of this often when I hear the choruses of virtue signalers. They are almost everywhere. For instance, among those who Identify as Democrats, I constantly hear that the environment "is the most important issue" and that "it is an emergency situation" and that "no other issue comes close in importance."

This is what I hear, constantly, from Democrats whose life style is indistinguishable from the life style of the average Republican. They drive similar gas-guzzling vehicles. They go on gas-guzzling vacations. They live in fuel guzzling houses. They live far from their places of work. They don't car pool or (in my city) use mass transit or bike to work. They revel in getting take-out food and coffee sold by businesses that use single-use paper, plastic and foam wrappings. I'm still doing my research, but I found one 2013 study that concluded that Democrats generate only 5% less fossil fuel than Republicans per capita. They claim that this is an emergency situation but they don't act like it is an emergency situation. If you asked the average Democrat to turn their thermostat down 5 degrees in the winter and put on a sweater, they will look at you like you are insane.

Apparently, that gives them the right to claim that they "care" and that Republicans don't "care" about the environment.

The environment is merely one example of many. We are surrounded by virtue-signaling virtuosos of both political parties. But at least they all "care."

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