Freedom and Communism
Here’s a meme a reader sent me that shows a near-complete misunderstanding of world politics.
First, there are no countries on Earth that even remotely resemble communism, i.e., Karl Marx’s concept of a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state. There are, of course, a huge number of authoritarian regimes, but again, they have no characteristics that are in any way communist.
Further, freedom exists on a gradient scale. The United States ranks 15th in the world freedom rankings, which are calculated annually, based on freedom of speech, freedom of religion, individual economic choice, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, violence and crimes, freedom of movement, and women’s rights. Currently, the freest countries are New Zealand and Switzerland, and Venezuela and North Korea are at the bottom.
It’s good to see that the news media has amped up its coverage of climate change, and that all but the QAnon-style lunatic fringe understands that human activity is the cause of the problem. That should mean that our civilization is just one short step away from meaningful action to turn this around, right?
If 
As global temperature readings keep coming in, it’s useful, on occasion, to use a bit of math to determine the probability that what we are calling climate change is actually happening at random. In statistics, we call this the “null hypothesis,” i.e., that there is no (null) difference between two different sets of data. If we are to make a statement based on data, it means that we must reject the null hypothesis within a certain level of confidence. 
At left we see one of the great numbers of ways in which Norway (and countries like it) does things better than we do in the United States. In every single one of these differences there is a common thread: the government of Norway functions to improve the lives of the Norwegian people. The U.S. government functions to make rich people richer.
Sometimes sad events in our lives have a strange way of providing humor. Take the American Medical Association’s revocation of Rand Paul’s license to practice medicine.
My wife and I were just discussing the bullish nature of today’s stock market, during which I explained that the terrifying new report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no bearing on the price of equities. That’s because human suffering doesn’t enter into the equation in the first place, and, even if it did, long-term anything is irrelevant to the market. Global warming is ruining the planet over the next 50 years, not the next few months, and is therefore totally meaningless in evaluating the Dow or the S&P 500.
An old teacher of mine writes, “This guy thinks a mask makes him look stupid.” Now that’s funny.
Since the release of the terrifying new IPCC report a few days ago, lots of people have been talking about the prognosis for humankind on this planet, wondering what if anything can be done to avert catastrophe. As suggested in the cartoon here, making real progress in climate change mitigation requires people of different nationalities to come together and work as a team, even though there is identically zero precedent for anything remotely resembling this in human history. 
According to Bloomberg, the terrifying new IPCC report on climate change has caused scientists to re-assert the need for 
