NOW CAN WE CALL IT A RECESSION? U.S. trade deficit shrinks 21% to 26-month low as imports tumble.

WOKE CAPITALISM AT WHARTON:

Cast as a milestone in what the New York Times recently termed an “anticapitalist” march through America’s elite business schools, Wharton’s move parallels the advance of what critics call “woke capitalism” in boardrooms, already illustrated in the vast majority of major U.S. companies touting their ESG bona fides in regulatory filings, and every Fortune 100 company having adopted a DEI program.

“Stakeholder” capitalism, ESG, etc. are all just ways for management to avoid accountability. If your job is maximizing shareholder returns, you can be judged a failure or success. If your job is instead a mishmash of buzzwords and conflicting goals, you cannot. Like the political class’s love of transnational institutions — no pesky electorate to account to — it’s all about maximizing their freedom to do as they please, at the expense of the lesser classes.

UGH: Police Release Chilling Details About Idaho Quadruple Murder.

MIKE KERRIGAN: God and Math at Dinner: My son explains why some infinities are bigger than others.

In “Orthodoxy,” his masterpiece of Christian apologetics, G.K. Chesterton observed something interesting about bards and rationalists: “The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

I shared this observation with my eldest son, Joe, early in his college career, when he told me he’d declared math as a major. Chesterton’s warning wasn’t against using logic, only embracing it to the exclusion of all else. The topic came up again recently over dinner when Joe, now a senior, explained something counterintuitive to his old man.

He said that between integers—say, 1 and 2—there are infinitely many real numbers, like 1.1 and 1.265. Such thinking scared me straight into law school at his age, yet somehow I grasped it now, if only conceptually. “Like the Incarnation,” I offered. An instance of the Creator, while remaining fully God and fully man, entering into his creation: the infinite bounded by the finite.

“I suppose,” Joe answered, checking my catechism against his set theory. Then he said something even trippier. Although whole numbers can be listed out to infinity, the hypothetical list of real numbers is necessarily larger than the hypothetical list of whole numbers. Not all infinities are equal.

Infinity and infinity-plus? Had that notion entered my mind in college, I’d have reclined in darkness with a cold compress on my head. I didn’t get the underlying math but, thinking I understood the broader concept, parried with another analogy: “Like higher and lower degrees of heavenly perfection.”

Long ago I’d accepted how a shotgun shack in heaven’s outermost borough was good enough for a sinner like me. Joe concurred, and when he did, I was relieved. To Chesterton, the madman “is not the man who has lost his reason” but “the man who has lost everything except his reason.” Our conversation assured me that Joe had ample stores of wonder. He was simply seeing God in the math, as I see the math in God.

It was a delightful dinner between a father and his son. And when the check came, perhaps proud of the numerical proficiency I’d shown, Joe graciously let me pay.

I’ve never known a mathematician offer to split up a restaurant check.

FROM JASON FUESTING:  By Dawn’s Early Light (Echoes of Liberty Book 1) .

#CommissionEarned

Eric Friedrich was supervising the last ice harvesting shift for his ship’s shot-up environmental systems when they detected an anomalous ice comet drifting by. Investigating the icy tomb, Eric finds a ship that couldn’t exist–a relic from a nation the Protectorate killed billions to erase from history… And will kill even more to keep secret. When his world explodes, Eric must make allies in the unlikeliest places, and seize even the slimmest chance of survival while unraveling a conspiracy that shattered planets and set off interstellar war!

“PAUL EHRLICH IS WRONG” IS A GREAT HEADLINE THAT COULD BE PRINTED ANY DAY OF THE WEEK:   Serially Wrong Paul Ehrlich Is Wrong, Again. We Are Not on The Brink of a 6th Mass Extinction Event.

THE REVOLVING* DOOR BETWEEN LEFT LEANING MEMBERS OF THE UNIPARTY AND MEDIA GIGS HAS TO STOP:  Adam Kinzinger Scores Gig at CNN.
*Why, yes, I did misspell revolting.

ALL OF THIS WOULD BE CURED IF SHE ONLY HAD A BRAIN: Justice Sotomayor Has The Sadz Over Direction Of Court.

We have to stop shoving people into positions of responsibility based on their degree of tan, or their last name. It’s nonsense. There’s only one measure, and that’s competence. All else is dross.

WHEN YOU STOP PEOPLE HAVING A SAY IN THE NORMAL WAY, STRANGE REBELLIONS ERUPT:  McCarthy Loses 11 Rounds of Speaker House Votes, Adjourned Until Tomorrow.

This is not the strangest. Nor the last.

ADAM SCHIFF, WHOSE SMUG FACE IS AN AFFRONT TO ANY RIGHT THINKING HUMAN BEING HAS OTHER ISSUES:  Latest ‘Twitter Files’ Reveal ‘Struggle’ With Public Agencies, and Adam Schiff’s Push to Censor Journalist.

HOW LONG WILL CIVILIZATION TOLERATE THE TANTRUMS OF THE SPOILED CHILDREN OF THE RICH?  Berlin: German Climate Militants Block Berlin’s Highway System, Bring Jackhammers To Tear Up The Road.

WE NEEDED PROOF?  Biden Proves He Knows Nothing About the Border or Immigration in a Rambling Speech.

WAS HE PLANING TO? SHE ASKS WITH MORBID CURIOSITY:  Man Charged in Federal Court for Allegedly Possessing Enough Fentanyl to Kill Entire Population of San Francisco.

I mean, that’s an oddly specific quantification to make.

WHO DO YOU THINK INSTALLED HIS SERENE MAJESTY ZHOU BAI-DEN OVER US?  Chinese Communist Party Aggression against America.

HEY NOW. NO ONE TOLD ME IT WAS OPPOSITE DAY! Nancy Pelosi calls House Democrats ‘The greatest collection of intellect, integrity, and imagination assembled.

I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS:  America Would Be A Better Place If We Taught The Truth About Slavery.

Though I think they confused 1860 for 1960 for Portugal. Slavery has been illegal since the nineteenth century. Unless they mean tribesmen enslaving tribesmen and that’s still going on in Africa now.

IT’S EASY TO CONDEMN THE PAST FOR SINS YOU PERSONALLY NEVER COMMITTED:  Infection.

THIS SLAVERY OBSESSION IS FUNNY FOR PEOPLE WHO THINK CHINA IS A MODEL TO FOLLOW:  Who Will Free the Enslavers?

ALSO GOOD:  Cornell confirms its plan to punish students for disrupting Coulter speech.

GOOD:  Virginia AG to investigate school withholding awards.

REPORT: Written deal for McCarthy emerges.

OPEN THREAD: Make me proud.

SPACE LAW: Bootcamp to help space startups clear regulatory hurdles.

SCIENCE HAS BEEN BUREAUCRATIZED, AND BUREAUCRACIES AREN’T INNOVATIVE: Innovation in Science Is on The Decline And We’re Not Sure Why.

Just look at how much biomedical research was controlled by the same man — Anthony Fauci — for decades.

THIS SEEMS CORRECT: Criticism by Public University Professor Isn’t “Under Color of Law,” Can’t Be Unconstitutional Retaliation.