Monthly Archives: November 2025

Galactic Emptiness

27 November 2025 By in Philosophy, Physics, Science, Space Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I like the quiet.

From the dark, an enigmatic mass of rock and gas streaks inward. Discovered by the ATLAS telescope in Chile on 1 July 2025, it moves at 58 km/s (~130,000 mi/hr), a billion-year exile from some forgotten, possibly exploded star, catalogued as 3I/Atlas. The press immediately fact-checks then shrieks alien mothership. Harvard’s Avi Loeb suggests it could be artificial, citing its size, speed: “non-gravitational acceleration”, and a “leading glow” ahead of the nucleus. Social media lights up with mothership memes, AI-generated images, and recycled Oumuamua panic.

Remaining skeptical but trying to retain objectivity, I ask; is it anything other than a traveler of ice and dust obeying celestial mechanics? And it is very difficult to come up with any answer other than, no.

NASA’s flagship infrared observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spectra show amorphous water ice sublimating 10,000 km from the nucleus. The Hubble telescope resolves a 13,000-km coma (tail), later stretching to 18,000 km that is rich in radiation forged organics: tholins, and fine dust.

The “leading glow” is sunlight scattering off ice grains ejected forward by outgassing. The “non-gravitational acceleration” is gas jets, not engines. Loeb swings and misses again: ‘Oumuamua in 2017, IM1 in 2014, now this. Three strikes. The boy who cried alien is beginning to resemble the lead character in an Aesop Fable.

Not that I’m keeping score…well I am…sort of. Since Area 51 seeped into public lore, alien conspiracies have multiplied beyond count, but I still haven’t shaken E.T.’s or Stitches’ hand. No green neighbors have moved next door, no embarrassing probes, just the Milky Way in all its immense, ancient glory remaining quiet. A 13.6-billion-year-old galaxy 100,000 light-years across, 100–400 billion stars, likely most with host planets, and us, alone on a blue dot warmed by a middle-aged G2V star, 4.6 billion years old, quietly fusing hydrogen in the Orion Spur, between the galaxy’s Sagittarius and Perseus spiral arms.

No one knocking. But still, I like the quiet.

An immense galaxy of staggering possibilities, where the mind fails to comprehend the vastness of space and physics provides few answers.  The Drake Equation, a probabilistic 7 term formula used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy yields an answer of less than one (0.04 to be exact) which is less than the current empirical answer of 1, which is us on the blue dot.

For the show me crowd here’s the Drake Equation N = R* × f_p × n_e × f_l × f_i × f_c × L and inserting 2025 consensus for the parameters: Two stars born each year. Nearly all with planets. One in five with Earth‑like worlds. One in ten with life. One in a hundred with intelligence. One in ten with radio. A thousand years of signal. And the sum is: less than one.

For the true optimist let’s bump up N to 100.  Not really a loud party but enough noise that someone should have called the police by now.

No sirens. I like the quiet.

But now add von Neumann self-replicating probes traveling at relativistic speeds, one advanced civilization could explore the galaxy in 240 ship-years (5,400 Earth years). A civilization lasting 1 million years could do this 3000 times over. Yet we see zero Dyson swarms, zero waste heat, zero signals. Conclusion: Either N = 0, or every civilization dies before it advances to the point it is seen by others. That leaves us with a galaxy in a permanent civilizational nursery state, or existing civilizations have all died off before we had the ability to look for them, or we are alone and always have been.

Maybe then, but not now. Or here but sleeping in the nursery. I like the quiet.

But then I remember Isaac Asimov’s seven‑novel Foundation saga. The Galactic Empire crumbles. Hari Seldon’s psychohistory predicts collapse and rebirth. The Second Foundation manipulates from the shadows. Gaia emerges as a planet‑wide mind. Robots reveal they kept it going: Daneel Olivaw, 20,000 years old, guiding humanity. And the final page (Foundation and Earth, 1986) exposes the beginning: Everything traces back to Earth. A radioactive cradle that forced primates to evolve repair genes, curiosity, and restlessness. We are radiation’s children. We didn’t find aliens. We are the aliens.

We are the cradle. We are the travelers. I still like the quiet.

Domaine Cabirau Maury Sec ‘Second Effort’ 2021

24 November 2025 By in Red Wine, Wine Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Red Blend Other from Languedoc-Roussillon, France

62% Grenache, 38% Syrah

Purchase Price: $14.00

Jeb Dunnuck 94, Rober Parker 90-93, ElsBob 92

ABV 14.5%

An opaque ruby colored wine, medium-full bodied, with powerful aromas of black fruit and pepper. Red berries on the palate with a wonderful long balanced finish.

An excellent fine wine at a ridiculous price. Current pricing ranges from $22-28.

Trivia: In the 12th century, Languedoc became the epicenter of the Cathar movement: a dualist Christian sect deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. Their beliefs challenged ecclesiastical authority and rejected materialism outright.

The Cathars held that a benevolent God created the invisible, eternal realm of spirit, while a malevolent demiurge, often equated with Satan, crafted the physical world. In contrast, Gnostic traditions dating back to Plato portrayed the demiurge not as evil, but as ignorant: a blind artisan who shaped the material realm without awareness of the higher divine source. For the Cathars, however, the true God was pure and transcendent, wholly uninvolved in the corrupt domain of matter. The physical world, including human bodies, was a prison of suffering, designed to entrap divine sparks of life: fallen souls of lost virtue, anchored in flesh.

For the Cathars, the goal was not to purify Earth but to escape it: to transcend flesh and return to its spiritual source. Their sole sacrament, the Consolamentum, was a spiritual baptism liberating the soul from the material world, often performed at death’s door. Readings from the Gospel of John, with emphasis on light and spirit, were central to this rite.

Their beliefs echo Socrates in the 5th century BC, who taught that man’s highest task was to keep his soul bright and shiny. Death, for Socrates, was not an end but a door to a new beginning in a higher realm of destiny for the safe-guarded virtuous soul.

The Cathar movement was ultimately extinguished, beginning with Pope Innocent III’s Albigensian Crusade in the 13th century and continuing through the Medieval Inquisition into the mid-14th century. Through the efforts to stamp out the sect it is estimated that between 200,000 and 1 million adherents were killed by hanging, burning, or other brutish methods. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1944 to describe Nazi atrocities, recognized in the Cathar extinction a grim precedent: a spiritual lineage extinguished by fear that invisible truths might reshape visible order.

Centuries later, Deists such as American Revolutionary figures Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin embraced a belief in a benevolent Creator who did not intervene in human affairs. Like the Cathars and Socrates, they emphasized spiritual virtue over dogma, without dualist cosmology. The American Founders vision of divinity was rational, moral, and benevolent, interested in virtue, yet non-interfering in the affairs of man.

The Long Way

19 November 2025 By in Novel, Philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

By 1881, literature was shifting, Realism’s clarity giving way to Modernism’s psychological fog. Henry James pioneered the transformation, publishing what many hailed as his masterpiece and others found nearly unreadable. He moved from the crisp windows of Daisy Miller and Washington Square, where social dilemmas are transparent, into the labyrinth of The Portrait of a Lady, a slow, meandering narrative that tested patience to the point of exasperation. James stretched his scenes into long psychological dramas, shadowed by melancholy, lingering on minutiae rather than decisive events. To admirers, this was a profound exploration of consciousness, to detractors, a soporific feast of abstraction.

Where James’s Portrait is a punishing fugue of memory and angst, a darkness at the edge of noon, Proust’s Swann’s Way (1913) offers a sensual slow dance of lush detail, playful childhood games, and adult desire. In Combray, the family had two ways to take their walks: the short way and the long way. The short way was familiar, contained, offering scenery but little transformation. The long way was expansive, expressive, full of detours and revelations. In Swann in Love, the same pattern unfolds: the first half is Swann’s descent into desire, the short way of immediacy; the second half is his struggle to free himself, the long way of disillusionment and reflection. For Proust, the long way is where life’s lessons are held. Meaning is not found in shortcuts but in detours, delays, and the endurance of memory. The long way is the design of his art: winding detours that illuminate the search for lost time.

Wilde enters here as counterpoint. Where Proust lingers in digressive glow, Wilde sharpens language into bite. His wit distills the same metaphysical concerns: beauty, desire, memory, decay, into crystalline aphorisms. Wilde’s sentences are daggers wrapped in velvet, each polished to a point. If Proust is the cathedral of memory, Wilde is the mirror that cuts as it reflects. The Picture of Dorian Gray dramatizes the peril of desire and the corruption of beauty; themes Proust refracts through memory and longing. But Wilde compresses the ineffable into epigram: glow against bite, long way against short.

Cinema, now, becomes the continuance of these styles. Wilde’s paradox and Proust’s memory echo in films as diverse as Spectre (2015), No Time to Die (2021), and Gosford Park (2001). In Spectre, Madeleine Swann, a psychologist whose very name invokes Madeleine tea cakes and Swann’s Way, probes Bond’s past like Proust probing consciousness, turning trauma into narrative. In No Time to Die, desire and mortality entwine, echoing Proust’s meditation that “life has taken us round it, led us beyond it.” And in Gosford Park, Sir William McCordle brushing crumbs from a breast, Swann brushing flowers from a bosom, gestures lifted from Proust’s sensual triggers, collapse time into desire, while Altman’s upstairs-downstairs satire mirrors Wilde’s social wit. These films remind us that both the glow and the bite, the long way and the short, remain inexhaustible. The short as overture, the long as movement. One as a flash of life, the other as the light of experience.

James stretches narrative into labyrinthine difficulty. Proust redeems patience with memory’s illumination. Wilde polishes language into paradoxical brilliance. Chaplin, in Modern Times (1936), adds another metaphor: the gears of industry grinding human life into repetition. Yet even here, the Tramp and the Gamin walk off together, the long way, not the shortcut; suggesting resilience and hope. Between them, Modernism oscillates: fog and clarity, glow and bite, labyrinth and mirror, machine and memory. Meaning is elusive but never absent. It waits in the folds of memory, in the flash of wit, in the shadows of desire, in the detours of the long way, ready to be revealed.

Through memory’s fragments, along the winding road of joy and grace, we taste again the sweetness of love, the timelessness of innocence, and life’s inexhaustible richness.

Graphic: Marcel Proust, Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Bieler Pere et Fils La Jassine Cotes du Rhone Villages Rouge 2022

17 November 2025 By in Red Wine, Wine Tags: , Leave a comment

Rhone Red Blends from Cotes du Rhone Villages, Rhone, France

Grenache 60%, Syrah 40%

Purchase Price $14.99

James Suckling 90, ElsBob 91

ABV 14.5%

A medium purple with tawny rim and slightly opaque. A medium-full bodied wine with aromas plums, chocolate, and a whiff of tobacco. On the palate the tannins are easy and very well balanced with the acidity. A very nice finish. We enjoyed this with soft cheese and hard salami. Delicious.

An excellent fine wine at a very comfortable price. Current prices range from about $15-18.

Trivia: The Côtes du Rhône Villages appellation was officially established in 1967 to recognize superior-quality wines from select villages in the southern Rhone Valley. These wines rank above standard Cotes du Rhone but below Cotes du Rhone Crus (such as Chateauneuf-du-Pape).

The idea of distinguishing higher-quality Rhone valley wines began circulating in the 1950s. By 1953, five communes: Cairanne, Gigondas, Chusclan, Laudun, and Saint-Maurice-sur-Eygues were identified for their exemplary potential. Wineries could append their village name to the label if they met strict production standards, minimum alcohol levels of 12.5%, and grape composition of at least 50% Grenache, and 20% Syrah.

Today, 21 villages are allowed to include their name on the label, while others use the generic “Côtes du Rhône Villages” designation. Bieler Pere et Fils chose not to list their village, but their La Jassine Cotes du Rhone Villages Rouge 2022 originates from Valreas, located in the northern reaches of the Southern Rhone Valley.

On the label is rooster or classic French coq: a symbol of traditional farming, terroir authenticity and rural pride.

Monroe Doctrine

15 November 2025 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In 1823, President James Monroe issued what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, warning European powers against further colonization or interference in the New World. Though never codified into law or treaty, the doctrine became a guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy, invoked and reinterpreted by successive administrations to assert American influence in the hemisphere. Theodore Roosevelt expanded it, Barack Obama’s administration declared it obsolete, and Donald Trump revived its assertive tone. Its malleability is hailed by some as its strength, denounced by others as its greatest flaw.

The Monroe Doctrine became a symbolic fence around the Western Hemisphere, a firewall against nineteenth‑century imperial powers. Over the next two centuries, it evolved through corollaries, confrontations, and periods of dormancy. Today, in the shadow of Chinese expansion, mainly through its Belt and Road Initiative, Latin American states are drawn to twenty‑first‑century infrastructure with age‑old colonialism lurking in the background. But the Chinese buying influence in the hemisphere is aimed directly at the United States, seeking to erode its traditional dominance and reshape regional loyalties.

The Monroe Doctrine was intended to thwart enemies, potential and real, at the gate. With the exception of Cuba, it largely succeeded through the twentieth century. The 21st century now poses a test of whether the doctrine still has teeth.

If conflict with China is fated, then the United States must first secure its own backyard. The Western Hemisphere cannot be a distraction or a liability, a source of angst and trouble. Before turning its full strategic gaze toward the Middle Kingdom, the U.S. must seal the gates of the New World.

The Monroe Doctrine was written mainly by President Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. It aimed to support Latin American independence movements from Spain and Portugal, while discouraging Russian influence in the Pacific Northwest and preventing the Holy Alliance: Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France, from restoring monarchs in the Americas. But the doctrine was not all sword: the United States also pledged not to interfere in Europe’s internal affairs or its colonies.

In the early 1800s, the United States lacked the ability to enforce such a bargain militarily. Britain, however, was more than willing to use its naval fleet to guarantee access to New World markets and discourage competition.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt invoked and expanded the doctrine, effectively making the United States the policeman of the Western Hemisphere. During the Cold War, it was used to counter Soviet influence in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada.

By the 1970s the South American drug trade was declared a national security threat and the War on Drugs began with Colombia the epicenter of hostilities. In 1981, U.S. Congress amended the Posse Comitatus Act to allow military involvement in domestic drug enforcement, extending to Latin America. President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 National Security Decision Directive 221 declared drug trafficking a U.S. national security threat, authorizing military operations abroad, including in Colombia.

After the Cold War, the doctrine faded from explicit policy. In November 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry declared at the Organization of American States that “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” framing a shift toward partnership and mutual respect with Latin America rather than unilateral dominance. By 2020 Colombia’s coca production had hit a new high.

Today, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, port construction and acquisitions, telecom infrastructure, and rare earth diplomacy have carved influence into Latin America and the Caribbean. In this context, the Monroe Doctrine was not asleep but, in a coma, its toes occasionally twitching.

Re-invigorating the Monroe Doctrine is not about making true allies and friends but removing vulnerabilities. The goal is not to bring these nations into the fold but to remove them from Beijing’s orbit.

By mid-2025 official statements claim that ~10% of the U.S. Navy is deployed to counter drug threats, ostensibly from Venezuela and Columbia. But fleet positioning hints at a different story. Most assets are stationed near Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guantánamo Bay, closer to Cuba than Caracas. Surveillance flights, submarine patrols, and chokepoint monitoring center on the Florida Straits, Windward Passage, and Yucatán Channel.

This may suggest strategic misdirection. Venezuela is the declared theater, but Cuba is the operational keystone. The U.S. may be deflecting attention from its true concern: Chinese or Russian entrenchment in Cuba and the northern Caribbean.

The Monroe Doctrine began as a warning to monarchs across the Atlantic. In the late twentieth century, it morphed into a war on drugs. Today it reappears as a repurposed drug war, flickering as a warning to Beijing across the Pacific. Whether it awakens as policy or remains sleight of hand, its enduring role is to remind the world that the Western Hemisphere is not a theater for distraction but a stage the United States will guard against intrusion. In the twenty‑first century, its test is not whether it can inspire allies, but whether it can deny adversaries a foothold in America’s backyard.

Graphic: Monroe Doctrine by Victor Gillam, 1896. Public Domain.

Beginnings

13 November 2025 By in Physics, Science, Space Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

A recent ScienceDaily write‑up titled “Scientists just found the hidden cosmic fingerprints of dark matter” suggests a breakthrough in the elusive substance that binds galaxies together. In reality, the study reports that Lyman‑Alpha emitters are a transient phenomenon, interesting, but nowhere near the revolutionary advance implied by the headline.

For readers uninitiated in cosmology and astrophysics, that’s a lot of jargon at once. So let’s bring it down a notch with some plain definitions.

Dark matter is the invisible mass that holds galaxies together through gravity. Without it, galaxies would fly apart. We infer its existence only because galaxies behave as they do. It makes up about 27% of the universe’s total energy density. By comparison, ordinary matter, the stuff we can see and measure, accounts for a measly 5%. Dark energy, the mysterious driver of cosmic acceleration, contributes about 68%. But that’s a story for another day.

Lyman‑Alpha emitters (LAEs) are distant, generally low‑mass galaxies that shine in Lyman‑alpha radiation: ultraviolet light produced when a hydrogen electron drops from the second energy level to the ground state (n=2 → n=1). Because this light is strongly redshifted by cosmic expansion, LAEs act as beacons of the early universe. Observing the ones implied in the opening science press headline means looking back to a time when the cosmos was less than a billion years old.

Scientists examine the clustering of LAEs across three epochs, each marking a milestone in cosmic evolution, a page from the manuscript of creation. At a redshift of 6, when the universe was about 0.9 to 1.0 billion years old, roughly 12.8 billion years ago, the first galaxies and stars were re‑ionizing neutral hydrogen, lifting the primordial fog and making the universe transparent. This period is known as the Epoch of Reionization.

The next epoch, at a redshift of 5.7 (about 100 million years later, or 12.7 billion years ago), is called the Late Reionization / Transition Epoch. Here, scientists measure how quickly the fog of neutral hydrogen dissipated and how galaxies began to cluster. Clustering serves as a proxy for the gravitational wells of dark matter, which drew in and anchored ordinary matter.

Finally, at a redshift of 3, around 11.8 billion years ago, the Post‑Reionization Epoch reveals a more mature universe with large‑scale structures taking shape. LAEs in this era trace galaxy clustering and help infer the masses of the dark matter halos they inhabit. These halos are vast, spherical envelopes of unseen matter surrounding galaxies and clusters.

With this groundwork, we return to the science press claim that researchers have found the “fingerprints” of dark matter itself. In truth, the fingerprints show no loops or swirls, no identification of what dark matter is or how it is distributed, only confirmation of what is already established. Without dark matter, galaxies would not exist. It is, in essence, a Cartesian maxim: I gather, therefore I am. Nothing more. Nothing less.

There was, however, a genuine insight. Lyman‑alpha emitters are transient, short‑lived luminous phases in galaxies that trace the framework of dark matter. The clustering function does not reveal dark matter’s nature; it just shows how rarely baryonic light, the real stuff of frogs, men, and cybertrucks aligns with gravitational tugs.

This raises a deeper question: why does dark matter clump at all, instead of remaining uniform across the cosmos? The answer lies in gravitational instability. Minute quantum fluctuations in the infant universe were stretched to cosmic scales by inflation, imprinting faint density variations, ripples in spacetime itself (if time exists is another a question for a different day). Cold, non‑interacting dark matter streamed into these wells, not merely seeking density but becoming it, deepening the imprints and laying the invisible scaffolding upon which galaxies and clusters would later rise. In turn, the growing clumps reinforced the very variations that seeded them, a feedback loop that sculpted the universe’s large‑scale structure. Quantum fractures first, dark matter responding.

And yet another knot: where did dark matter come from? If it does not interact, how could it be born from interaction? Perhaps it is not a product of the Big Bang at all. Did it exist outside the Bang, or was it a transformation from an earlier state?

Unto the spirit of dark energy, the expansive gust that stretches spacetime, accelerating the universe’s drift into an ever‑expanding horizon. If dark matter is transformation, is dark energy its continuation, or merely a phase toward dissolution?

Together they form a cosmic tension: cohesion and dispersal, gathering and vanishing. The Big Bang may not be the beginning, but only the first visible flare in a manuscript already dictated eons before the dawn.

In this reframing, baryonic matter: atoms, stars, flesh, machines, is a late arrival. Bone, blood, and silicone are ritual sparks, flaring briefly in the gravitational wells carved by dark matter and stretched by dark energy. We are not the fathers of the universe, but the children of a violent past.

Dark matter is the glue. Dark energy erases the image. We are but the punctuation; marks in a manuscript whose lines were written long before our arrival.

Source: …Fingerprints of Dark Matter, Science Daily, Sept. 2025. ODIN: Clustering Analysis… by Herrera et al, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2025. Graphic: Lyman-Alpha Galaxy Up Close Illustration by M. Wiss, 2009. Public Domain

Michel de Montaigne Bergerac 2019

11 November 2025 By in Philosophy, Red Wine, Wine Tags: Leave a comment

Bordeaux Red Blends from Southwest, France

Merlot 60%, Cabernet Franc 20%, Cabernet Sauvignon 20%

Purchase Price $16.99

Wine Enthusiast 90, Wilfred Wong 90, ElsBob 90

ABV 14%

A clear ruby to purple wine in color. A medium to full bodied wine with aromas of red and black fruits and spice. On the palate plums and cherries predominant with oak derivatives. The tannins are meaty and balanced with crisp acidity. A beautiful finish that will compliment most beef dishes.

An excellent fine wine at a very attractive price. Current prices range from $13.50-18.00.

Trivia:  Michel de Montaigne was likely the most influential philosopher of the 16th-century French Renaissance. A dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, a cantankerous crank whose motto Que sais-je? (“What do I know?”) enshrined his worldview; much like Socrates, who also claimed to know nothing. Montaigne questioned everything and taught that doubt was the only path to wisdom.

But he carried it too far: intellectually thin and logically obtuse. He believed that customs and morals were cultural artifacts, lacking any universal tether. Truth, for Montaigne, was a matter of perspective; malleable, contingent, shaped by accepted practice. One man’s cannibal was another man’s epicurean.

To anchor this relativism, he wrote: “We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.” A long-winded version of c’est la vie (“that’s life”), or more precisely, à chacun son goût (“to each his own”).

Experience was his shrine, but it lacked a foundation. No base of knowledge to anchor belief. A man easily swayed by his own prejudices and lack of a black and white moral code.

His philosophy of go-along-to-get-along, born of tolerance and introspection, risked becoming a prescription for annihilation, not of others, but of moral clarity and oneself. A path to accepting everything and believing nothing. A philosophy polished so smooth it reflects everything and reveals nothing.

BLS or BS Employment Statistics

9 November 2025 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Every first Friday of the month markets gather like sinful parishioners awaiting Pavlov’s bell, the gospel according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The numbers descend from the mount, etched in holy government letterhead. Jobs added, jobs lost, unemployment rate up, unemployment rate down, labor force swelling or shrinking. And the market screams, up or down, as if the deity of statistics has spoken to the profits of capitalism.

Expectations unmet? The elevator drops. Expectations exceeded? Euphoria ascends. Every stinking first Friday the ritual repeats. Buyers and sellers beware.

The markets, seasoned by countless cycles of god-awful truth and revision, know the numbers are suspect. Model-based, massaged and provisional, destined for downward revisions not once, not twice, but likely thrice. And everyone knows this. Logic says to remain circumspect. Religion says yell hallelujah.

But they react like Charlie Brown charging towards Lucy’s planted football, full of conviction and hope that this time it’s real. No, it’s a con of smoke and mirrors, a ritual sealed with a wink and nod from Lucy. A trust not earned.

For Charlie Brown, it’s not just a kick, but a ritual of belief. A sprint to a promise of truth and redemption. This first Friday, the numbers will be true. This time the markets aren’t the chump. But then the revisions put you flat on your back in the muddy turf.

This isn’t market ignorance, just the willful need to believe. To believe in a clear signal in a noisy world. Maybe this Lucy keeps her word. Maybe this time the BLS can count timecards.

The U.S. labor market is a statistical mirage and the BLS is the magician. A clumsy one at that. Given the scale of the U.S. labor force the BLS sample is statistical noise superimposed on a trendline, and the trend itself shaped by the unreliable Birth-Death Model.

The Birth-Death Model estimates job creation from new businesses (births) and closed businesses (deaths) that aren’t captured in their monthly survey sample. The BLS’s Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey covers about 122,000 businesses each month, but it can’t track firms that just opened or shut down. Since new firms don’t immediately appear in the sample, and closed firms may linger as ghosts in the data, the BLS uses a statistical model to estimate their net effect on employment.

The model has two main components. Imputed deaths are estimated from trends for similar firms. For example, if 3 out 4 newly created restaurants fail annually, the model adjusts employment accordingly. The other component forecasts net job changes using historical data from the Quarterly Census Employment and Wages (QCEW).

The model’s assumptions presume that today’s labor market mirrors yesterday’s. It somewhat works in stable times but thoroughly breaks down when the sharp kinks of recessions and recoveries are introduced into the system. Also, business owners fail to report their failures, quickly—go figure. BLS just finds it is too much work to keep track of them all. A brief detour, if you’ll indulge it, is worth mentioning here. I was standing in line at the local US Post Office and a customer in front of me, after much back-and-forth discussion, showed a photo of a misdelivered package to the postal clerk. The clerk lit up in cheerful vindication. “Oh that wasn’t us. We don’t have time to take pictures of our deliveries.” The BLS operates with similar blind spots. Ghosts in the data, and no time to chase them.

Now back to our regularly scheduled harangue. All the BLS assumptions in their Birth-Death Model leads to inevitable revisions. The model is the altar. The CES survey, is the smoke, wafting over a ritualized trend.

In practice, this means employment is overstated during downturns and understated during booms with the actual numbers taking another 3-12 months to correct. By then, the market had moved on. The altar cleared. The smoke dispersed. And the ghosts remain.

But there is hope, but only for the patient.

ADP, Automatic Data Processing, offers a monthly employment snapshot that often outpaces the BLS. Released each Wednesday before the government’s numbers, the ADP National Employment Report draws from payroll data covering 26 million workers. No government jobs. No statistical smoke. Just raw payrolls. It consistently lands closer to the QCEW gold standard, though still misses the mark, just not as wildly as the BLS.

Between March 2024 and March 2025, QCEW, the altar of actual payroll filings, reported a net gain of 675,000 jobs. BLS, guided by surveys and the Birth-Death Model, claimed 1.79 million. ADP, closer but still adrift, reported 1.69 million.

Together, ADP and BLS conjure the headlines that move markets. But their numbers are unreliable. Why bother? A million-job error in a labor force of 167 million is less than 1%. A rounding error. A statistical ghost.

Ghosts in the data. Smoke in the temple. Floating through the firmament. By the time the truth arrives the markets have moved on.

Building Confidence, Living Boldly: A Practical and Playful Guide to Becoming Your Best Self

8 November 2025 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

(Note: The following is a guest post by Emilia Ross. She is a life coach who specializes in helping individuals navigate their personal and professional lives. Visit her site at Schedule-Life.com)

Confidence isn’t a personality trait — it’s a skill you can build. Whether you’re chasing a promotion, learning to dance, or just trying to quiet that inner critic, confidence grows from small wins compounded daily.
You don’t need to reinvent yourself. You just need to strengthen what’s already there — the habits, people, and moments that make you feel most alive.

The Takeaway
Confidence = habits + people + purpose.
Start small, speak kindly to yourself, set micro-goals, and spend more time around those who remind you who you are — not who you’re not.


How Confidence Works
Confidence grows from three layers of daily practice:

LayerWhat It MeansQuick Actions
MindTraining your thoughts to support, not sabotage you.Practice three minutes of gratitude journaling daily.
BodyMoving and nourishing yourself so your mind believes you’re capable.Go for a 20-minute walk or stretch after work.
CommunitySurrounding yourself with people who lift you.Schedule one call a week with someone positive.


FAQ – Confidence Myths Busted
Q1. Is confidence something you’re born with?
–No. It’s learned through repetition and reflection, like a muscle you strengthen over time.
Q2. What if I constantly compare myself to others?
–That’s normal. Shift from comparison to curiosity: what can you learn from them?
Q3. How do I stay confident when I fail?
–See mistakes as feedback, not failure. Every confident person has a “failure résumé.”

Step-by-Step Checklist: How to Boost Your Confidence

  1. Set one daily micro-goal.
    –Example: “Speak up once in today’s meeting.”
  2. Do something uncomfortable — on purpose.
    –Confidence grows when comfort zones shrink.
  3. Keep a “proof list.”
    –Record moments when you acted bravely or made progress.
  4. Declutter your digital world.
    –Unfollow accounts that drain you. Follow those that educate or inspire.
  5. Revisit your wins weekly.
    –Confidence thrives on reflection, not randomness

Make Connection Your Secret Weapon
Confidence isn’t built in isolation — it’s nurtured through connection. Invite friends over for a dinner, a movie night, or a simple get-together to celebrate everyday life. Spending time with people who make you laugh, listen, and care reminds you that you’re already enough.
To make your gathering special, use a free invitation maker to stand out. You can customize templates, adjust fonts, add images, and design something that perfectly matches your style. It’s easy, creative, and adds a personal touch to your confidence practice.

Helpful Tools and Resources
Here are some tools and platforms that can support your confidence journey:


Product Spotlight: The Momentum Journal
Sometimes structure helps. The Momentum Journal offers a clean, minimalist layout for tracking daily progress, gratitude, and personal wins. It’s designed to help you see your growth — a simple but powerful confidence booster. 

Seven Fast Habits for Everyday Confidence

  1. Smile at strangers.
  2. Speak slowly; it signals calm assurance.
  3. Wear something that makes you feel strong.
  4. Do one thing you’ve been avoiding.
  5. Compliment others sincerely.
  6. Stand or sit tall; posture changes perception.
  7. Celebrate small wins like big ones.

Confidence isn’t the absence of fear — it’s the courage to move forward despite it. Start small, stay consistent, and surround yourself with people and tools that help you grow. Your best life isn’t waiting for a perfect moment; it’s unfolding right now, one intentional, brave step at a time.

Zenato Alanera Rosso 2020

4 November 2025 By in Red Wine, Wine Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Red Blends Other from Veneto, Italy

Corvina 70%, Rondinella 10%, Corvinone 10%, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon 10%

Purchase Price: $15.99

Wine Enthusiast 90, ElsBob 91

ABV 13.5%

A medium garnet with a tawny rim in color. A medium-bodied wine with aromas of cherries and coffee. On the palate a touch of sweetness and plums, easy tannins and an acidity that provides a refreshing finish.

An excellent table wine at very nice price. Current price is about $17.00.

Trivia: Veneto wine region of northeastern Italy stretches from the canals of Venice to the Alpine foothills. Viticulture here dates to Roman times, with early vineyards tended by local tribes. During the height of the Venetian Republic, paralleling the fortunes of Florentine Renaissance, Veneto became a hub for wine blending and trade, shipping its product throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Byzantine and Ottoman Territories, Northern Europe, and along the Silk Road all the way to Mongolia. This hemispheric reach not only spread winemaking techniques but elevated the reputation of Veneto wines.

At the end of Republic in the 1797 winemaking was in a slow, constant decline. The erosion of trade routes, driven by the Republic’s ossified and hidebound bureaucracy and maritime collapse, decimated the region’s commercial infrastructure. Recovery began in the late 18th and into the 19th century, not as a revival of trans-national trade but as a scientific and agrarian rebirth. Improved farming techniques and increased vineyard plantings were initially focused on local consumption. Today, Veneto is Italy’s top wine-producing region, accounting for roughly 25% of the country’s output and over 35% of its exports. Prosecco and Pinot Grigio occupy the region’s power positions in volume, anchoring its global presence.