Random Thoughts

* The notion that there are many languages that basically have completely parallel languages called registers like Javanese, Aboriginal Australian languages with mother-in-law languages, and historical Korean (which has now devolved into elaborate levels of politeness) is fascinating. I've read a lot about how dialects develop, but not how registers evolve.

* The notion of an Operation Track and Release in anti-submarine warfare, where spies, special forces, and drones would attach a small camouflaged tracker to submarines while not doing anything else is intriguing. If you know where a submarine is, it isn't very hard to disable it with a torpedo or an anti-submarine missile, but finding them is hard. If one knew where a large share of an opposition's submarines were from trackers, one could strike them all in the space of an afternoon without warning with a very modest number of aircraft.

* The AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, or JAGM, which is the successor to the Hellfire missile and intended to be useable in existing Hellfire missile launchers and has a JAGM-MR version which will extend the range of this missile from 5 miles to 10 miles. It can be launched from small ground force patrol vehicles, small or medium sized boats and ships, or helicopters.

* "Camero-Tech, a firm based in Israel, has created a next-generation portable, high-performance imaging device that can actually "see" through walls. Called the Xaver 1000"

* Yesterday, there was a Chinese New Year's celebration massacre near Los Angeles at which ten people were killed and ten more people were injured. The middle aged Asian American perpetrator apparently killed himself as he was being apprehended the next day - when will we wake up and decide that the Second Amendment is an outdated suicide pact?

* I'm looking forward to the return of supersonic commercial flights in the near future.

* The absurd massive construction projects in the oil rich countries of the Persian Gulf that are suddenly everywhere while dazzling are also disgusting. See, e.g., the $500 billion megacity planned in Saudi Arabia that wants to host winter games entirely with artificial snow, and a moon shaped building in Dubai.

* The number of tech workers who have been laid off in the last few months is greater than the number of active duty military personnel in the entire U.S. Marine Corps. "Nearly 200,000 tech employees have been laid off since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job cuts in the sector. Four of the largest tech companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft — have announced a total of more than 50,000 job cuts in recent months." A long boom preceded this mass layoff: "In 2011, the tech sector began a hiring boom that would last a decade. It added an average of more than 100,000 jobs annually, and by 2021, it had recouped all the jobs it lost when the dot-com bubble burst."

* If you want an example of how to be a horrible parent of a teenager, the facts of this recent Colorado Court of Appeals decision affirming a trial court decision to that effect can guide you. Any parent who thinks parenting is about parental rights instead of the best interests of your child is not a good parent.

¶ 2 L.D. is the sole living parent of A.D., one of her three children. A.D. was sixteen at the time of the guardianship proceeding. Although L.D. and A.D. once shared a healthy relationship, it deteriorated dramatically during the summer and fall of 2021. This deterioration gave rise to Petitioners’ request for — and the district court’s grant of — an unlimited guardianship over A.D. We turn to that history now.

¶ 3 In June 2021, A.D.’s car was vandalized while parked in front of the family home. A.D. and his mother had a heated argument about why it happened and who was responsible for cleaning it. Upset by this conversation, A.D. went to stay at his girlfriend’s house. Although he soon returned home, A.D. ran away from home five more times following disagreements with L.D.

¶ 4 In early July 2021, L.D. gave A.D. an ultimatum: he could (1) go to military school, (2) attend therapeutic boarding school, or (3) abide by her house rules. A.D. ran away again that night, but this 2 time he spent over a month away from home, staying with his girlfriend, couch surfing at friends’ homes, or sleeping in public parks.

¶ 5 On August 7, 2021, A.D. was taken to the emergency room after appearing to overdose while partying with friends at a park. The hospital made a mandatory report to the Department of Human Services (DHS). Once A.D. was stable, L.D. and V.T. (L.D.’s longtime colleague and family friend) met with a DHS representative to discuss next steps. L.D. agreed that, given the hostility between A.D. and herself, and between A.D. and his two siblings (who both lived with L.D.), it was in his best interest to stay with Petitioners.

¶ 6 On September 8, 2021, A.D. drove Petitioners’ car to L.D.’s house for his first night back since early July. When he arrived, L.D. became extremely upset that he had driven there. In her mind, A.D.’s operation of a car — and Petitioners’ facilitation of it — violated their agreement that he not drive until certain conditions were met. The next morning, without notice to Petitioners or her son, L.D. called the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and withdrew her permission for A.D.’s driver’s license. The DMV revoked his license the next day.

¶ 7 A.D. became enraged when he learned that his mother had revoked her consent and subsequently sent a series of angry texts to her. L.D. then blocked A.D.’s number, thus preventing A.D.’s calls or texts from coming through to L.D.’s phone (though texts came through on her computer).

¶ 8 On September 24, 2021, DHS facilitated an “adults only” meeting with L.D., Petitioners, and DHS representatives. That meeting resulted in three shared priorities: (1) Petitioners were to provide regular updates about A.D. to L.D., who would, in turn, communicate with Petitioners before making decisions affecting A.D.; (2) A.D.’s license would be reauthorized within thirty days once to-be-defined conditions were met; and (3) A.D. would be allowed to be on the high school wrestling team, which all parties agreed was good for him.

¶ 9 Over the next month, Petitioners regularly emailed L.D. updates on A.D. L.D. provided few, if any, responses to these updates. Petitioners also sent L.D. a proposed plan for A.D. to get his license back, but L.D. did not respond.

¶ 10 On October 20, 2021, Petitioners filed their petition for appointment as A.D.’s guardians. L.D. objected to the petition, sought dismissal of the action, and requested attorney fees.

¶ 11 On November 8, 2021, Petitioners requested that the court appoint a guardian ad litem (GAL) to represent A.D.’s interests. Over L.D.’s objection, the court appointed a GAL pursuant to section 15-14-115, C.R.S. 2022, after concluding that, owing to their disagreement over the guardianship, the parties could not represent A.D.’s best interest in the guardianship proceedings. The GAL represented A.D.’s best interest throughout the litigation, and the court also instructed the GAL to provide a report about whether L.D. was “unable to exercise her parental rights.”

¶ 12 On November 14, 2021, before Petitioners filed their reply, L.D. — without consulting Petitioners or A.D. — revoked her permission for A.D. to wrestle the day before the first day of practice. Why she took this sudden action is unclear: L.D. testified it was because A.D. was not maintaining passing grades, while another witness testified that she wanted “leverage” over him to participate in family therapy. Regardless, A.D. was devastated by the timing and nature of this action.

¶ 13 While these motions were pending, Petitioners continued to care for A.D. Petitioners asked L.D. for permission to talk to A.D.’s teachers, coaches, and doctors about how to better care for him. Yet from August to early December 2021, L.D. refused to grant Petitioners permission to engage with these individuals. She ignored or outright refused to allow such communications until December 8, 2021, when, after repeated requests from a DHS representative, she allowed Petitioners to attend — but not participate in — a meeting with A.D.’s teachers.

¶ 14 L.D. also resisted Petitioners’ requests for financial support for A.D.’s care. To her credit, L.D. provided A.D. with $25 per week for groceries. These funds came from A.D.’s $1,800 monthly survivorship benefit, which was established following the death of A.D.’s father when A.D. was three. Petitioners knew the benefit existed and requested more financial support. L.D. did not respond to these requests.

¶ 15 Except for the text exchange between L.D. and A.D. following the revocation of L.D.’s consent for A.D.’s license, L.D. and A.D. never communicated directly. Instead, all such communications went through Petitioners or DHS.

¶ 16 Consistent with section 15-14-205(1), C.R.S. 2022, the district court conducted a hearing on Petitioners’ guardianship motion. The hearing spanned two days, with both sides calling numerous witnesses.

¶ 17 In a written order, the court granted Petitioners an unlimited guardianship over A.D. In so doing, the court concluded that Petitioners had proved by clear and convincing evidence that L.D. was, consistent with section 15-14-204(2)(c), “unwilling or unable” to care for A.D. and that the guardianship was in A.D.’s best interest notwithstanding his mother’s opposition to it.

* The Great Salt Lake will dry up in five years: "The Great Salt Lake, plagued by excessive water use and a worsening climate crisis, has dropped to record-low levels two years in a row. The lake is now 19 feet below its natural average level and has entered “uncharted territory” after losing 73% of its water and exposing 60% of its lakebed[.]"

* This amphibious bus would make sense for national guard units in places where flooding is a likely risk:

* The reel I'm linking to illustrates visually the absurdity of the concept of going to battle in an RV which is basically what the blue sea navy of the United States does.

* Fake storage devices at absurdly low prices are a problem at Amazon.com.

* I wonder what human engineered variants of wild mustard (which is the source of many common vegetables) were attempted but rejected.

* The best head of government in the world, New Zealand’s leader Jacinda Ardern, isn't running for re-election.

* Wise words:

* Vanilla is apparently a New World crop:

* The Convair F2Y Sea Dart was a supersonic jet fighter than could land and take off from the sea.

Republicans Really Dislike Education

 

The Marine Corps' Amphibious Ship Fleet

The latest DOD report on what amphibious ships the Marine Corps needs is classified. But, the Marine Corps' wish list is public:

Marine Corps officials have said their service needs a minimum of 31 amphibious ships: 10 big-deck amphibious assault ships and 21 amphibious transport dock ships. Congress agreed, and set that minimum number in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. It also required that the Marine commandant be consulted “on major decisions directly concerning Marine Corps aviation or amphibious force structure and capability.”

Marine officials have also said they need 35 of the future light amphibious warships, or LAWs. The LAW is key to the service’s Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept, and they would move the new Marine Littoral Regiments around the Pacific to counter or deny Chinese military activities, Gen. Eric Smith, the Corps’ assistant commandant, said at last year’s Sea Air Space conference.

The LAW is intended to complement the larger LHA and LPD amphibs, to be a more efficient way to transport Marines around the first island chain, Smith said.

But some argue that the comparatively slow and lightly armed LAWs would be so unsuited for combat that they throw the entire EABO concept into question.

The need for a modern day D-Day style amphibious assault is basically nil. 

But the military does need some way to transport soldiers and their gear to distant conflicts, and it could potentially need to use ships as a base of operations where there are no U.S. military bases (something more likely to come up in Latin America or Africa than in the western Pacific Ocean).

A Jobs Program To Prevent Gun Violence

A study has concluded that investing a lot of money in "at risk" young men pays off handsomely. 

Gun violence is the most pressing public safety problem in American cities. We report results from a randomized controlled trial (N = 2,456) of a community-researcher partnership—the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative (READI Chicago)— which provided 18 months of a supported job alongside cognitive behavioral therapy and other social supports. Algorithmic and human referral methods identified men with strikingly high scope for gun violence reduction: for every 100 people in the control group, there were over 11 shooting and homicide victimizations during the 20-month outcome period. Take-up and retention rates were comparable to programs for people facing far lower mortality risk. There is no statistically significant change in an index combining three measures of serious violence, the study’s primary outcome. But one component, shooting and homicide arrests, shows a suggestive decline of 64 percent (p = 0.15). Because shootings are so costly, READI generates social savings between $174,000 and $858,000 per participant, implying a benefit-cost ratio between 3.8 and 18.8 to 1. Moreover, participants referred by outreach workers—a pre-specified subgroup—show enormous declines in both arrests and victimizations for shootings and homicides that remain statistically significant even after multiple testing adjustments. These declines are concentrated among outreach referrals with high predicted risk, suggesting that human and algorithmic targeting may work better together.

Via SocArXiv. 

A New Medium Range Artillery Missile

Ukraine is the new sandbox and the latest military toy is the ground launched small diameter bomb. 

Essentially, it is a guided missile launched from existing U.S. made multiple rocket launcher systems cobbled together from existing weapons parts, with a much longer range than current artillery missiles of 80 miles, and a still considerable warhead payload. It would be accurate enough to hit a target the size of a single tank or a residential one car garage.

[T]he ground-launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) combines a 250-pound aircraft bomb with a GPS seeker, wings, and a rocket motor. . . . Boeing and Sweden’s Saab develop the ground-launched Small Diameter Bomb. Each GLSDB round is a combination of two systems: the rocket motor from the M26 artillery rocket and the air-launched 250-pound GBU-39/B SDB with its pop-out wing set.

The M26 is one of the rockets that can be launched from the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and derivatives, as well as the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). . . .

The weapon system, which has a maximum range of 150 kilometers, could effectively blanket the Ukrainian region taken since February 2022 and some areas of northern Crimea from the front line.

From here. 

China's Population Is Shrinking

In China, births dropped 10% from 2021 to 2022, and 19.45% from 2020 to 2022. 

China's Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (which is roughly speaking the number of children per lifetime per woman of a statistically average women sampling across the lifespan in a single year) in 2022 was about 1.05, which is half of the replacement rate.

Some of this is no doubt due to China's zero tolerance policy resulting in epic COVID lockdowns. It isn't clear how indicative the last two years will be of long term fertility trends in China.

The National Bureau of Statistics [in China] on Tuesday announced a decline of 850,000 people to a new total population of 1.4118 billion — the first such decline in 60 years. The birthrate reached its lowest level on record at 6.77 per 1,000 people, down from 7.52 in 2021.

From the Washington Post.

China’s fertility level has continuously declined over the past decades. The total fertility rate (TFR) decreased from 5.81 in 1970 to 2.75 in 1979. In the 1980s, the TFR fluctuated above the replacement level. Since the 1990s, the fertility rate has declined to below the replacement level. The 2010 and 2020 censuses yielded TFRs of 1.18 and 1.30, respectively. 

China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported the annual births of 10.62 million for 2021, a sharp decline of 11.50 percent compared to the 12 million births enumerated in China’s 2020 census. While China’s registered birth rates are widely considered to be underestimated owing to child underreporting, it is generally recognized that China’s fertility has decreased to very low levels since the 1990s. As with other countries that have experienced population transitions, China’s fertility decreased to the replacement level and continued to decrease to extremely low levels, rather than being sustained at the replacement level as expected. Following the TFR of 1.3 in 2020 census, the decline in births in 2021 indicated that the fertility level decreased further.

From the journal Population Health Metrics.

The Demography Of Northern Ireland's First Century

Northern Ireland has becoming more Catholic and less opposed to union with the Republic of Ireland over the last century. 

In part, this is because Catholics had more children than Protestants for a long period of time, although this distinction has slowed to almost nothing, and was counterbalanced before that by emigration from Northern Ireland. 

In part, this is because the Irish Catholic identity has been more stable than the Irish Protestant identity which has trended towards secularism and an Irish identity.

While there are more Catholics than Protestants in Ireland, however, neither is a majority because a significant number of Northern Irish people, 17.4% (disproportionately from Protestant backgrounds), are not religious. About 46% of the non-religious people in Northern Ireland in 2021 were raised that way, while the rest were overwhelmingly raised either Protestant (in most cases) or Catholic (in a much smaller percentage of cases).

In contrast, in the United States, large numbers of people raised both as white Protestants and as white Catholics now identify as having "no religion" consistent with the maxim that a religion that protects a threatened culture thrives relative to a religion that is associated with an establishment culture.

Northern Ireland’s boundaries were drawn up with the explicit aim of creating a two-to-one Protestant majority. At the 1926 census, the first after the war ended, Catholics made up only 35.5% of the province’s population. . . . until relatively recently both groups were largely insulated from other demographic shocks like intermarriage and immigration. (As recently as 2001, Northern Ireland was >99% white, one of the highest proportions in the world; the number today is still very high, at just under 97%.) . . . The Protestant majority was relatively stable for the first forty years or so of Northern Irish history, because a higher Catholic birth rate was offset by higher rates of Catholic emigration; 60% of Northern Irish emigrants before the Troubles were Catholic. However, entering into the 1960s, Catholic emigration fell, and the balance of population began to shift: by 1971, the Catholic population had grown to about 40%. . . . As the Troubles rolled on, Catholic Northerners continued to have more children than their Protestant counterparts. And with a minor baby boom after the peace agreement in 1998, the shift in the province’s demographics has continued apace, especially as the Protestant population has declined in absolute terms. Despite their traditional dominance of Northern Irish politics, since the 2017 election unionist parties (largely supported by Protestants) have been a minority in the Northern Ireland Assembly; and a century after the establishment of Northern Ireland as a Protestant state, the 2021 census showed Catholics outnumbering Protestants for the first time. With Sinn Féin today the largest party in the Assembly . . . many are already suggesting that a united Ireland is now inevitable. . . . While Northern Catholics emigrated much more than Northern Protestants, the disparity is not so stark when we compare them with Southern Catholics, who were also leaving Ireland in droves before the 1960s (at a rate much higher than the small number of Southern Protestants). Northern Catholic emigration was part of a broader history of high levels of Irish Catholic emigration north and south, both before and after the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921; discrimination certainly did not encourage Catholic population growth, but it wasn’t the main driver of emigration. Likewise, the idea that Northern Catholic emigration slowed in the 1960s because of an imposition of welfare and minimal equality from London is hard to square with Southern emigration also declining in the late 1950s and early 1960s. . . . 

The decline in Catholic fertility has tempered the change in demographics: between 2011 and 2021, the Catholic or Catholic background share of the Northern Irish population increased by only 0.6 percentage points (from 45.1% to 45.7%). And indeed, the share of the vote given to Irish nationalist parties in Northern Ireland Assembly elections did not increase significantly over this period (it was just over 41% in 2011, and about 40% in 2022). . . . 

[T]he Alliance Party (a social liberal party which is officially neutral on a united Ireland) more than doubled its seat count in 2022 to become the third-largest party, winning 13.5% of the vote—up from 7.7% in 2011, and only 3.7% back in 2003. This has largely been driven by the affluent and by young people, groups of voters who increasingly feel disconnected from the traditional political and religious categories. Increasingly, people have begun to feel that their political goals and projects can’t be captured by either political tradition, unionism or Irish nationalism. This change is not happening symmetrically, however: the rise of the ‘others’ has eaten much more into the Protestant population than the Catholic one. Unionism is on the decline politically, with unionist parties receiving 40% of the vote in 2022 compared to nearly 47% in 2011, due in no small part to the success of the Alliance Party in affluent Protestant areas. Indeed, Alliance is much stronger east of the River Bann (a traditional dividing line between Catholic-heavy and Protestant-heavy regions), and has struggled with candidate quality in Catholic-heavy areas. And, especially in response to Brexit, more people (especially young people) from a Protestant background are identifying themselves as ‘Irish’ as well as (or instead of) ‘British’ or ‘Northern Irish’. Some of this is being driven by secularisation, which is happening in a lopsided manner in Northern Ireland. Of those who said they had no religion in 2011, a majority identified as British, and over two-thirds identified either as British or Northern Irish; only 14% thought of themselves as Irish compared to 28.4% of the general population, which suggests that those from a Protestant background are secularising more quickly than their Catholic counterparts. Or at least, secularisation in Catholic communities had less of an impact on cultural identity and political beliefs.

From here. A final footnote in the source states:

Note: this essay was written before the crosstabulations were released for the 2021 census; you can find more up-to-date data here.

The top line religion result for Northern Ireland in 2021 is as follows:

Also notably, Irish just became an official language of Northern Ireland once the relevant provision come into force, with the passage of the "Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022" on December 6, 2022.

Quote Of The Day

January in Nashville ushers in two forces for chaos: erratic weather and irrational legislators. Both are massively disruptive. Neither is surprising anymore.

From a New York Times Op-Ed piece.

U.S. Hypersonic Missiles

The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy plan to field jointly developed hypersonic missiles in 2023:

The large eight-ton, three-foot diameter hypersonic missile is expected to travel in excess of Mach 5 (3,836.35 mph) or faster and have a range of about 1,725 miles. . . . The Army has selected the first unit to field the hypersonic missiles but hasn’t released that information. The Navy is planning on fielding the weapons on the three Zumwalt-class stealthy destroyers and on 20 Virginia-class attack submarines. . . . The missile is being developed under the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) capabilities program[.]

This would allow a strike on a ship in the Taiwan straight from Guam that would take half an hour to arrive at its target.

Russia and China both have similar missiles.

Evidence Of Hereditary IQ In Norway

We study a decade of achievement gaps for fifth-, eighth-, and 10th-grade students in Norway using administrative population data. Norway is a wealthy and egalitarian country with a homogeneous educational system, yet achievement gaps between students at the 90th and 10th percentiles of parental income and between students whose parents have at least a master and at most a high school degree are found to be large (0.55–0.93 and 0.70–0.99 SD), equivalent to about 2 to 2.5 years of schooling, and increasing by grade level. Achievement gaps by parental income, but not by parental education, increased over the time period, underscoring the different ways these two socioeconomic status components relate to achievement and the potential for policy to alter gaps.

From here.

This is not a surprising result. 

The evidence that IQ is a well defined real quantity that is heavily hereditary is well established. And, while IQ isn't necessary a great measure of everything that is important, it is absolutely an excellent indicator of a person's capacity for academic achievement in ordinary schoolwork.

This is, however, a particularly "clean" result, because Norway's wealth and egalitarianism remove many of the environmental confounds to definitively establishing the validity of hereditary IQ as real in other countries.

Also, the data set is huge:

We use data from national registries covering the entire Norwegian population of fifth, eighth, and 10th graders from 2007 to 2018 (cohort birth years 1991–2008) and their parents/guardians. The data allow us to examine (a) changes in gaps over time (i.e., between-cohorts comparisons for, e.g., fifth grade) and (b) within-cohorts achievement patterns across grades (i.e., how a cohort performs in fifth, eighth, and 10th grades). The total sample used in the analyses includes 1,103,081 children/adolescents. Data are obtained from Statistics Norway and include the education, income, and population registries, linked by anonymized personal identification numbers.

Honestly, the most surprising thing about the effect measured is how small it is. 

There are about 2.5 standard deviations of in IQ between the 10th percentile and the 90th percentile, so even with 50% regression to the mean, you'd expect a 1.25 standard deviation gap in achievement (although both income and education are imperfect indirect indicators of IQ).

The discussion section of the paper also adds useful analysis and comparisons:

There are three main findings in our study. 

First, even in a fairly egalitarian country with a homogeneous educational system, achievement gaps by both parental income and parental education are large, equivalent to about 2 to 2.5 years of schooling. 

Second, the gaps are increasing with student grade level, increasing by about 10 percentage points from fifth grade to eighth grade, with a similar increase to 10th grade. This increase is consistent with OECD (2018), which found large and growing gaps for Norway from age 10 to ages 25 to 29. 

Third, for income gaps, but not for education gaps, there has been an increase in gaps over time, equivalent to about 3 to 4 months of schooling. When we decompose the change for income, we observe that achievement remains high and stable for the 90th percentile and that achievement is decreasing over time for the 10th percentile. 

How do the gaps we observe for Norway compare to the United States and other countries? 

Such comparisons, as noted previously, are not straightforward but give us some idea of how the magnitude of our estimates compare to the magnitude in estimates in studies that are somewhat comparable. Our estimates are consistent with, but in general smaller than, those reported from the United States. For example, Reardon (2011b) reported income gaps that increase from about 0.75 SD in 1940 to about 1.25 SD in 2000, and Reardon and Portilla (2016) reported income achievement gaps for kindergarteners (ages 5–6) above 0.99, substantially above gaps for our lowest grade level. 

In an international comparison, Chmielewski and Reardon (2016) found the income achievement gap in Norway to be 0.75 of a standard deviation in the PIRLS 2001 data, compared with 1.25 of a standard deviation in the United States, using same-age data from the ECLS-K. 

Our estimates for achievement gaps by parental education are also slightly smaller than those reported from the United States. Using the Reardon (2011b) 90/10 estimation method, more appropriate for comparisons, we found gaps ranging from 0.86 to 1.15 SD (Appendix A, Figure A2, available on the journal website). Reardon (2011a) found achievement gaps by parental education in the United States to be stable over time largely above 1 SD, with some signs of a slight increase in the end of the period. 

While not directly comparable, the socioeconomic (SES) achievement gaps reported by Chmielewski (2019) for the United States are estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.2 for the period 1950 to 2000, whereas trends for other countries are largely above 1.0. Hanushek et al. (2020), measuring the difference between average performance above the 75th and below the 25th percentiles, found that gaps in the United States increased from .84 to .91 from 1961 to 2001. Similar estimates for our data, using parental education as our gap measure, yield gaps in the range of .51 and .87, again, largely lower than the U.S. estimates and in line with Broer et al. (2019) and OECD (2018), which showed that Norway has large gaps but that they are relatively smaller than those for the United States.

Despite smaller absolute achievement gaps in Norway compared to those found in the United States, it is notable that the gaps we observe in Norway are disturbingly large, given the sociopolitical context in which they have arisen. If income disparities (being about twice as large in the United States compared to Norway; OECD, 2021) relate to income achievement gaps, the relative difference in achievement gaps between the two countries is smaller than what one might expect. This is particularly evident if we compare the education, social security, and health-care system in Norway with those of the United States, expected to reduce inequality. From a developmental perspective, however, even in a more egalitarian society, there may be strong associations between student achievement and the resources that families have available to their children, whether measured by parent income or education.

The difference in the achievement gaps between Norway and the U.S. provide a rough means of estimating the extent to which environmental factors in the U.S. led to achievement gaps not arising from hereditary IQ. This excess achievement gap is on the order of half of a standard deviation, or about 7-8 IQ points.

Imagined Threats

[F]earmongers cited a cavalcade of deadly threats against which America, apparently helpless despite possessing the world’s largest military, must further arm itself. 

Washington’s enemies?

Russia, which might launch its army across the Bering Strait once it finishes off Ukraine. 

China, set for a maritime invasion of the West Coast after conquering Taiwan. 

North Korea, ready to launch a nuclear first strike after conquering the South. 

And Iran, poised to confront America once it annihilates Israel, Saudi Arabia, and its other enemies. 

Then there are omnipresent terrorists, ready to infiltrate the U.S. and seize control of cities and states. 

Heck, maybe Americans should double or treble military outlays.

From the 1945 blog. 

The Game Plan

 

This is the basic game plan of the Democratic party, but despite its simplicity and facile inevitability, it isn't as infallible as it seems.

What Would Happen If China Tried To Invade Taiwan?

A series of war game analyses from a think tank known as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), concludes that Taiwan with help from the U.S. and Japan would successfully repel a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in a conventional war, but at high costs to all involved.

“The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Such losses would damage the US global position for many years,” the report said. In most scenarios, the US Navy lost two aircraft carriers and 10 to 20 large surface combatants. Approximately 3,200 US troops would be killed in three weeks of combat, nearly half of what the US lost in two decades of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war,” it said. The report estimated China would suffer about 10,000 troops killed and lose 155 combat aircraft and 138 major ships.

“While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services,” the report. The island’s army would suffer about 3,500 casualties, and all 26 destroyers and frigates in its navy will be sunk, the report said.

Japan is likely to lose more than 100 combat aircraft and 26 warships while US military bases on its home territory come under Chinese attack, the report found.

Via CNN. 

This narrow military analysis, however, doesn't begin to address how the diplomatic, political, and economic dimensions of such a conflict would influence its outcome. (This link also states that: "In the CSIS game, the U.S. lost 200 aircraft, 20 warships, and two aircraft carriers.").

The total toll predicted is about 200 major warships, about 500 aircraft, close to 20,000 people dead, and tens of thousands of Chinese POWs in Taiwan.

Excluding submarines, China has 86 warships in the aircraft carrier/cruiser/destroyer/frigate class. The United States has 124 and would lose 22. Japan has 49 and would lose more than half of them. Taiwan has 26 and would lose them all.

Basically, almost every warship involved in the conflict would be sunk in the course of a three week long war.

A Best Case Scenario In The Ukraine War

What is the best possible outcome for the Ukraine War (for the U.S. and Western Europe, not necessarily Ukraine)?

1. Russia withdraws militarily from its foreign involves in Syria, the Caucasus, and Central Asia to use those military resources in Ukraine.

2. Russia loses all the ground it it gained in 2022 in Ukraine with further great losses of military equipment and skilled soldiers. This leaves it incapable of mounting a significant conventional war in the next five to ten years, because it lacks the industrial capacity to replace the military equipment and military expertise it lost in the war.

3. Selective Ukrainian strikes in the interior of Russia cause it to withdraw remaining military resources from the European theater.

4. A complete defeat in the Ukraine War leads to the breakup of the Russian federation, reducing its population by at least 20 million people, and reducing its access to land and resources by much more. It also leads to the removal of Vladimir Putin from power.

5. As a result of Russia's denial of natural gas to Western Europe, Western Europe rapidly shifts to a more energy efficient and a less fossil fuel dependent economy, and also finds alternative sources of natural gas. These reforms permanently undermine Russia's oil and gas industry going forward.

6. After the war, Ukraine joins NATO and the EU.

7. Disaggregated after the collapse of the Russian Federation, some of the newly independent former Russian states reform much more quickly and are emulated by the laggard former Russian states seeking to catch up with their peers.

8. Post-federal Russia abandons its efforts to maintain a blue sea navy with a global reach. 

9. Post-federal Russia also ends conscription and moves to a smaller all volunteer military (since its smaller size can't support as large a force) having concluded that conscripts are militarily ineffectual and that conscription is too socially disruptive leading to brain drain and domestic dissent.

10. The U.S. military learning lessons from the Ukraine War divests itself of most of its main battle tanks to allies who still want them, and reduces the size of its blue sea surface combatant navy.

11. Conservatives in America who took a pro-Russian stance are deeply discredited and lose all clout in defense and foreign policy circles.

12. Russia gives up much of its nuclear arsenal, which it turns out was outdated to the point where it would be doubtful it would work anyway, in exchange for economic aid and the dismantling of economic sanctions.

Democracy Takes A Shared Understanding

The failure of the new Republican majority to elect a speaker of the House with majority support is a good reminder and wakeup call.

While we usually think of politics as a partisan contest between two competing world views, this isn't necessarily so. There is no guarantee that the people we elected can find majority support to do even the bare minimum of adopting budgets and appointing enough people to senior government posts to allow the status quo for the government to continue to function.

Usually, there is a lowest common denominator agenda which can be passed, but there is no guarantee of that. 

If a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and the President can't agree right down to every word and comma in appropriations bills, every year or so, much of the government shuts down, the U.S. becomes at risk of defaulting on its debt for the first time in U.S. history, and we have a crisis. During times when the House, the Senate, and the Presidency are not all controlled by the same political party, which has not been uncommon in recent history, moreover, the bare minimum agenda needs bipartisan support.

If the House can't choose a speaker, the majority vote needed in the House never even happens.

But there is no guarantee that there is any possible budget that can secure the necessary approval from the House, Senate and President. There doesn't have to be a lowest common denominator. And, if there isn't, our democratic system of government is at risk. Sooner or later, a strongman will intervene and cast it aside out of dire necessity. To some extent, that is what the twenty Republicans standing in the way of Kevin McCarthy's election to be speaker of the House want.

The problem with having insurrectionists within your own caucus is that they care nothing for the party, much less the country. They looked at the last three losing elections and now feel liberated to do their worst. All the anti-McCarthy members come from deep-red districts that voted for Trump by double digits. They have nothing personally to lose by acting out their darkest political fantasies. They didn't come to Congress to do anything but wreck the place and if that means taking their own party down with it, they couldn't care less.

U.S. Church Membership Down

The trend was already underway pre-pandemic, with a 30% decline in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and the chart below doesn't even reflect the further decline that has occurred post-pandemic. 

As of March 2022, church attendance was still down about 25% from pre-pandemic levels, even though 97% of churches have returned to in person worship, although church attendance is only a leading indicator of church membership. A different survey finds a 45% decline in church attendance from pre-pandemic levels as of December 2022.

Beyond Tanks To Tank Destroyers and Anti-Personnel Fighting Vehicles

Tank Destroyers Are Better At A Tank's Primary Missions Than Tanks

The main offensive role of a main battle tank is to engage other tanks and hardened targets. The problem with this is that main battle tanks aren't particularly good at this mission.

It has been clear for a long time that no amount of passive armor is sufficient to prevent a tank from being incapacitated by another tank's anti-tank round, by a solid hit from an artillery shell, or an anti-tank missile fired by an infantry soldier, by a "tank destroyer", by a helicopter, by a close air support fixed wing aircraft, or by a drone. Tanks can also be incapacitated by land mines such as "improvised explosive devices" (IEDs), or close up attacks on vulnerable systems by infantry with armor piercing heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, recoilless rifles (a.k.a. bazookas), or by setting fire to flammable materials carried outside the tank's armor.

The trouble is that a tank's main gun, while its direct fire shells can destroy another tank if it hits, has a range shorter than an anti-tank missile or artillery round. It has no stealth capacity whatsoever either. So, tanks are vulnerable to being destroyed by enemy fire before their opponent is within range of its main gun.

Unsurprisingly, in almost every armed conflict since at least the 1991 Gulf War, most tanks incapacitated in battle have been taken down by something other than another tank. 

In the 1991 Gulf War, perhaps a quarter of all incapacitated tanks were taken down by other tanks. A roughly equal number of tanks were incapacitated by Bradley M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicles with anti-tank missiles, with the balance destroyed by dismounted infantry with anti-tank weapons, by helicopter gunships, and by fixed wing aircraft like the A-10 Warthog.

In the current Ukraine War in which Russia has lost more than half of the tanks it started with, and Ukraine has also lost many of its tanks, probably far less than 10% of all tanks incapacitated were taken down by other tanks. There have been some isolated instances of tank v. tank duels, but they have been notable exceptions rather than the rule.

At a minimum, due to the fact that an anti-tank missile has a greater range than a round from a tank's main gun, an armored vehicle armed with anti-tank missiles, which is called a "tank destroyer", usually has the advantage over a tank, even though a tank destroyer is typically smaller, less heavily armored, and less expensive than a main battle tank. Similarly, an anti-tank missile can generally destroy any hardened target that a shell from a tank's main gun can destroy.

But, a tank destroyer is typically much lighter and less expensive than a tank because missile launching systems are much lighter than tank turrets and related tank shell delivery systems. Rather than being heavily armored, it relies upon firing its missiles from outside the range of the tanks it is striking.

Admittedly, anti-tank missiles are much more expensive than tank shells (perhaps $30,000 v. $1,500 each), mostly because of the cost of their guidance systems, which in turn, is mostly due to the intellectual property compensation that goes into that cost that will go away when the soon to expire patents on the guidance system technologies expires. But guided missiles are typically one shot or at most two shots, for each kill, and in war there is an immense premium in terms of the value of a system for one that is the best solution.

One could also create a less expensive set of missiles similar to anti-tank missiles with a less sophisticated guidance system for use against non-moving hardened targets to reduce the cost disparity in those circumstances between tank shells and missiles.

Generally speaking, anti-tank missile systems also have far lower fixed costs than tanks do, which makes up for the higher cost of the missiles themselves unless a very large large number of them are fired in anger against adversaries in actual wars.

The concept of a "tank destroyer" can also be generalized to missile tanks optimized instead for air defense roles, for anti-surface ship roles, or for longer than artillery range, non-line of sight guided missiles like those used by the HIMARS multiple rocket launcher system.

A pure "tank destroyer" or "missile tank" (with wheels rather than tracks for the reasons discussed below) should be possible to deliver to the battlefield with a C-130 transport aircraft.

It wouldn't be hard to keep a missile tank using the JTLV as a foundation which runs about 12 tons unmodified, under the 19 ton weight limit to allow it to be transported by a C-130. And, a JTLV still has significant armor protection that is adequate against ordinary small arms rounds and shrapnel from artillery that is not a direct hit.

A JTLV with Short Range Air Defense Missiles.

Another decent fit to the wheeled missile tank concept is the U.S. Army's Stryker SHORAD platform, equipped with four Stinger and two AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles, a 30 mm M230 chain gun, a 7.62 M240 machine gun, and a 360-degree search radar system. The first vehicles were delivered in 2021, and a total of 144 vehicles will be deployed by 2025. 

The anti-tank guided missile Stryker variant also fits the wheeled missile tank concept.

Anti-Personnel Fighting Vehicles

 

Other problems with tanks in modern warfare were discovered in the Soviet–Afghan War and subsequent Soviet and Russian Federation military engagements:

Combat experience during the lengthy [Soviet-Afghan] war revealed that infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) . . . cannot fully deal with infantry, despite [their] high gun elevation. Although main battle tanks (MBTs) possessed a high amount of firepower, the limited elevation and depression angles of the main gun made them easy targets in mountainous and urban terrain. . . . It was evident that a new vehicle concept was needed. The main requirements for this new machine were to possess large firepower, high angles of elevation and depression, and a protection equivalent to that of an MBT. An additional requirement that was meant to supplement the latter was enhanced protection from close-range hand-held RPGs.

The need for such a vehicle became even more evident during the First Chechen War. When using conventional armor during urban engagements, Russian forces suffered heavy losses in manpower and equipment, including the destruction of an entire mechanized brigade during the first battle of Grozny. While these losses cannot be entirely blamed on technology, it became clear that a dedicated anti-personnel fighting vehicle would provide valuable assistance in an urban environment. Self-propelled anti-aircraft guns were used as a temporary solution in Chechnya. However, these vehicles weren't well-armored and didn't possess the obstacle-clearing capabilities of an MBT.

The U.S. shared these concerns and didn't use its heavy M1 Abrams main battle tanks in mountainous Kosovo, and found its MBTs to be less than optimal in the urban warfare of the Iraq War. The U.S. also learned in Vietnam that tanks are ill suited to jungle warfare.

But, while a tank is not particular good at incapacitating other tanks and armored vehicles compared to almost all of the other alternatives, something quite like a tank can be very effective against infantry units. 

No amount of armor that it is feasible to put on a tank can prevent the tank from being incapacitated by an anti-armor tank round or an anti-tank missile or a direct hit from an artillery shell. But, the armor on a tank makes it virtually invulnerable to military grade small arms up to heavy machine guns usually used by infantry.

The Russian variant on the tank concept to fill the anti-personnel niche, especially in urban and mountainous terrain where main battle tanks are less effective was the following 53 short ton vehicle with crew of five:

The BMPT "Terminator" (Tank Support Fighting Vehicle) . . . an armored fighting vehicle (AFV), designed . . . for supporting tanks and other AFVs in urban areas. The BMPT is unofficially named the "Terminator" by the manufacturers. It is heavily armed and armored to survive in urban combat. The AFV is armed with four 9M120 Ataka missile launchers, two 30 mm 2A42 autocannons, two AG-17D grenade launchers, and one coaxial 7.62 mm PKTM machine gun. The BMPT is built on the chassis of the widely used T-72 main battle tank.

The next generation "terminator" is similar in concept, but incorporates the chassis, hulls, and components of the T-14 Armata tank, the latest and greatest Russian tank design, rather than the outdated T-72 main battle tank which was superseded by the T-80 and T-90 series main battle tanks before the development of the T-14 Armata. The next generation terminator will also have an automatic and remotely operated gun turret and "in the future may have integrated air defense systems and be fully unmanned."

The BMPT has anti-tank missiles that give it the capabilities of a "tank destroyer" that can also be used against armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, and heavily fortified targets, just like a tank's main gun shell, but with greater range and accuracy.

But, the BMPT also has two auto cannons, two grenade launchers, and a machine gun to allow it to engage five different infantry targets at a time (with the cannons and grenade launchers capable of injuring or killing multiple targeted soldiers with a single round), over a much greater range of motion than a tank's main gun, while leaving the five person crew safe from the small arms fire that infantry would usually have at their disposal.

It isn't hard to develop the concept of an anti-personnel fighting vehicle (APFV) even further to fill this niche:

* Give the APFV a small drone of its own to do reconnaissance for it and identify threats and to possibly carry an integrated sniper rifle class weapon to take out scouts and sentinels without alerting an opponent to the APFV's location. The drone could also be used as a secure communications link when the APFV's location can't get a strong enough signal to use its comms at full capacity.

* Give it a system to automatically echolocate the source of unfriendly fire directed at it and aim its weapons accordingly faster than a human operator could identify and respond to its source.

* Give it state of the art night vision, thermal sensors, and telescopic sensors.

* Make its bottom hull "V" shaped to reduce the effect of land mines and IEDs on it.

* Give it integrated variants on existing MANPADS that it can use to defend itself against helicopters, drones, cruise missiles, and low flying aircraft.

* Give it "soft" active defenses like guidance system scramblers and laser dazzlers and flares and smoke grenades to screw up guided missiles and drones that are either remotely controlled or rely upon visual or infrared cameras for guidance.

* Give it "hard" active defenses to destroy incoming tank and artillery shells and anti-tank missiles. This could be with projectiles or lasers. Proof of concept for the laser approach can be found in this experimental U.S. Army weapons system:

Stryker Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser (MEHEL): The Army is integrating a directed energy weapon onto the M1131 Fire Support Vehicle version to defend against Group 1 and 2 UAVs (up to 55 lb (25 kg)-class) for mobile forces as the first-ever integration of an Army laser weapon onto a combat vehicle. In an April 2016 test, a 2 kW laser fired from the Stryker shot down 21 drone targets; the vehicle also has an electronic warfare jamming system to scramble drone command signals. A 5 kW version could be operational in 2017, with plans to increase power to 18 kW by 2018. As of January 2022, the next threshold goal was a 300 kW laser sufficient to take down helicopters.

* Replace the tracks with wheels. Wheeled vehicles are faster, more fuel efficient (reducing their vulnerable logistics train), and eliminate the need to deliver tracked vehicles to the theater of battle by train or wheeled tank carriers, both of which are highly vulnerable to attack. If possible, develop wheels that can run flat. In practice, tanks almost never go places that wheeled vehicles designed for off road use can't go anyway.

* Replace the transmission, gears, and diesel engine with redundant electric motors, state of the art vehicle batteries, and a diesel generator to keep the batteries topped up when an electrical grid source to plug it in isn't available. This is more fuel efficient (reducing the vulnerable logistics train), it allows the APFV to operate in "silent mode" that also generates less heat for thermal sensors to detect when running on batteries alone. And, this allows it to be used as a field power generator for other electrical power needs of the military unit of which it is a part, if needed. And, electric motors and a simple single gear diesel generator requires much less maintenance than a conventional tank's engine, gears and transmission.

These innovations may add some weight, but since it is already too heavy to go by anything more than one per C-17 or two per C-5, it has a fair amount of leeway to gain weight without impairing its deployability. Another 20 tons of weight relative to the BMPT wouldn't be a serious problem.

One could also imagine an M2 Bradley without space devoted to carrying infantry passengers to demonstrate the viability of the concept, even with somewhat lighter armor than a main battle tank which would still be adequate for its mission.

The key underlying concept is that in war, you don't want to fight fair fights between opponents of roughly equal capabilities. 

A tank makes sense in the niche of fighting infantry with small arms but no anti-tank weapons, in which it is a nearly invincible opponent with immense firepower.

But a conventional tank is not an optimal solution, in contrast, in the niche of fighting other comparable tanks.

Republicans Can't Agree On Their House Speaker

In six votes conducted over two days so far, the Republicans in the U.S. House have failed to secure a majority backing for a Speaker of the House, which they must to commence any other business. 

The Republicans only have 222 seats in the House and need 218 to elect a speaker, but about 20 far right conservatives in the GOP caucus refuse to support Kevin McCarthy, who is backed by the rest of the GOP caucus.

The last time a Speaker wasn't confirmed on a first vote was in 1923. All of the other times were before the U.S. Civil War. The longest struggle to elect a Speaker of the House was in 1856, which took 133 rounds of voting (the longest ever) stretching over two months.

The tally for the first ballot in the speaker vote was 203 for McCarthy, with 19 Republicans voting for other candidates. 

The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. 

In the third round of voting, there were 202 votes for McCarthy and 20 votes for Jordan, with Rep. Byron Donalds joining the 19 GOP lawmakers who had voted against McCarthy in the first two rounds. . . .  

In the fourth round of voting, 20 Republicans voting together for Donalds as the group switched their collective support from Jordan to Donalds. Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted present, lowering McCarthy’s threshold to 217. . . .

The final tally for the fifth vote was again 201 votes for McCarthy, 20 for Donalds and one present vote.

The final tally for the sixth vote was the same: 201 for McCarthy, 20 for Donalds and one present vote.

From CNN. 

The House has adjourned until noon on Thursday.

Good Timing For A Warm European Winter

Europeans, cut off from Russian natural gas supplies, were expecting a bitter winter, and energy prices are high there. 

But, in a stroke of good fortune, this year's winter is setting records as one of the warmest European winters in recent history, easing the burden on natural gas supplies to supply heat.

A Blast From The Past

Something the Dog said, "I am more liberal than conservative, and I have a strong interest in both constitutional rights and our formal political system." Nothing is wrong with either of these things, and this is really a considerable feat given the diarist's status as:

Just a humble (well sort of) talking dog who is lucky enough to have an owner who will type for him.

I assure you that, in contrast, my cat does not give a fig about politics or the United States Constitution, not even cat's rights. The main political issues in my cat's political life are "inside for now" v. "outside for now," and "sleepy" v. "hungry" v. "catnip."

- From a blog post I wrote on September 4, 2009.

My cat died at the age of 14 and a half years, about six weeks after that post.

Quote Of The Day

Parent the child you have. As a parent of a child with special needs, this is my mantra. But this is also true of any child. Stop trying to make your child quieter, louder, more outgoing, more interested in things their sibling likes and appreciate the unique and individual small person you’ve been given.

— Sue Lanigan, East Aurora, N.Y. via the New York Times.

Migration Between U.S. States

 

Will blue state migration to red states change the politics of the red states that  receive them?

This could be enough to tip North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona.

The migration is greatest to Texas and Florida, but neither seems on the verge of pivoting. Florida seems to be less blue than it was a couple of decades ago.

The Purpose Of Writing

 

The issue isn't confined to liberal academics either. Senior military officials and large corporate bureaucracies do the same things.