New Orleans: A Brief Visit; Rekindled Affection 

K and I flew in from LA after visiting some of the grandkids to celebrate our anniversary and take another look at a city we’ve always enjoyed.

We hadn’t been here in 12 years. In that time, the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, then pounded again by several other hurricanes, and then economically strangled by the COVID shutdown. Not to mention the usual political corruption and bureaucratic incompetence. New Orleans has a reputation for being dangerous, although, like most cities of its size, most of the crime takes place in drug-dominated neighborhoods. As a tourist, as long as you don’t wander into an obviously bad neighborhood, drunk and alone, at night, the Crescent City is safe and welcoming.

The city’s economic poverty is evident in the degenerate state of the roads and sidewalks and the condition of its public buildings. But that is more than offset by its rich social and cultural history, which is still very much present in the diversity of its architecture, customs, cuisine, and populations. A visitor can see the footprints of the American, Spanish, and French colonizers, the African slaves and freemen, the Creoles and the Cajuns. Not to mention the many other cultures that immigrated into the city over the last 150 years and became part of its local color and heritage. I love New Orleans for all of that.

Another reason I love New Orleans is the food and drink. As far as food is concerned, New Orleans reminds me most of Rome. Its restaurants favor common, vernacular cuisine. And, like Rome, you don’t need a guidebook to locate a good restaurant. They are ubiquitous. If the joint looks interesting and reasonably clean, it’s pretty much guaranteed to serve a good meal.

There was a time in my life when an evening in New Orleans was about drinking on Bourbon Street until I could barely walk home. This week, K and I were glad to discover that the city is replete with interesting and even elegant bars and lounges that serve up all sorts of fun and tasty specialty cocktails that are not meant to knock you off your barstool. And the wine lists are not just extensive and well curated, the prices are generally very good.

New Orleans is the heart of southern jazz and plenty of other forms of American music, too. On any given night, there are literally hundreds of places you can go to listen to great music, not to mention the street corners where buskers play for change.

And finally, New Orleans has this tradition of not taking itself too seriously. It’s about “Where is the party today?” And that Mardi Gras impulse manifests itself every day in the French Quarter where it is no longer possible to distinguish oneself by sporting a handlebar mustache along with eye shadow and a tutu. “Relax,” the city says. “We’ve got you covered.”

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I suppose it’s because, in coming here this time, I’ve been reminded of how much I love this city. And in case you’ve never been here or, like me, it’s been a dozen or more years, to encourage you to check it out.

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Gun Control: I Said I’d Get Back to You

As promised, I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week researching the question I asked on Tuesday: Do gun control policies reduce gun-related deaths?

What I discovered is that most of what one is likely to read about the gun control issue is influenced by political leaning and based on unproven theories, anecdotal evidence, and correlative (i.e., non-scientific) studies.

A study conducted by the Rand Corporation reviewed most of the research published between 1995 and 2020. In the introduction to the report, the authors acknowledged that “a lot of what is out there are cross-sectional studies – observational research that basically just compares gun violence statistics at one point in time in a state that has a specific law to those in a state that doesn’t. That type of study is prone to mixing up correlation and causation,” they said.

In fact, they found only one set of laws that were conclusive: laws that restricted child access to guns. These significantly and incontestably reduce firearm suicide, unintentional self-injuries and death, and homicides among young people.

However, they also said that, despite the flaws among the studies and the biases among the conclusions, there was more evidence than not that gun control laws work. Except for drug-related murders and accidental killings, gun control laws do reduce gun-related deaths. Not greatly, but to a degree. That’s what they think.

What I think… 

Considering that gun control is such a powerful political issue, I expect that future studies will continue to be flawed by biased intent and/or unmerited conclusions. (A Democrat will tell you that the US has more gun-related deaths than any developed country. A Republican will tell you that if you control for just one factor – population – the US is not even in the top 10.)

To know for sure whether gun control laws reduce gun-related deaths, we need more randomized studies controlled by every factor that might count, including age, wealth, location, race, religion, and culture. Since that won’t happen any time soon, I’m going to have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And I suppose that means that I’ll continue my interactions with people, but assume that they are packing heat. As to whether I will… I’m not going to say.

Interesting 

* The US has more registered guns (393 million) than any other country in the world, with an average of 1.2 per person.

* Gun-related deaths in the US rose from 34,000 in 2012 to 48,000 in 2022.

* Gun-related killings by type: Suicide 58%; Homicide 39%; Accidental 2%; and Police Shooting 1.2%.

* According to Pew research, most Americans on both sides of the aisle agree on two questions about gun control. 85% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats believe that people with a mental illness should not be allowed to purchase guns. 70% of Republicans and 92% of Democrats support background checks for private and gun show sales. However, when it comes to expanding concealed carry rights, banning assault weapons, and tracking gun sales though a federal database, Democrats are strongly supportive, while Republicans are strongly negative.

One of the minor debates stemming from this issue is the question of whether “guns kill people” or “people kill people.” Here is an example of someone expressing the former position.

And here is a comic response.

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Americans Are Working Less

In one of the news feeds I read, an essay titled “Working hardly or hardly working” caught my eye. According to the author, burnout among American workers is “running rampant.” The reason? “The average American works 400 more hours a year than Germans do.” The good news, he says, is that “the trend is changing…. A University of Maryland study shows average US workweeks dipping 30+ minutes since 2019.”

Some key figures:

* High-earning young men were at the top of this trend. Their average reduction is the highest at 1.5 hours.

* Self-proclaimed workaholics are down, too. From 55 hours a week to 52.

The rise in virtual employees since the pandemic shutdown is obviously another important factor.

“The trend’s stickiness is hard to estimate,” the author says, “but it’s great news for the nation’s collective mental health as long as it lasts.”

True. Unless you believe that productive work is the cornerstone of wealth building, and that an essential component of mental health and happiness is working purposefully. (Which should include one’s job, since that takes up the largest share of one’s work time.)

Are Housing Prices Out of Whack? 

Housing prices have risen 40% since 2020. They peaked last autumn and have edged down since then, but only by a total of 5%. They are still, by long-term historical standards, very high. In 1971, as Bill Bonner points out in a recent edition of Bonner Private Research, it took the average American about 36 hours of labor each month to pay an average mortgage on an average house. Now, the figure is 110 hours.

“Things that are out of whack have a way of getting back into whack,” Bonner says. “Economists call it ‘regression to the mean’…. It’s one of the most powerful forces in finance…. A recession in [today’s] housing market would make it a lot easier for people to keep a roof over their heads.”

Bill’s been mostly right about real estate prices since I’ve been reading him. (About 30 years.) And I’m inclined to agree with him on this. If you are looking to sell, do it soon. If you are looking to buy, you might do better to wait.

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Do you remember Taki? The publisher of Taki’s Magazine? I’ve linked to him before. There are plenty of reasons to subscribe to his digital posts, including the diversity of opinions you’ll find there. But for me, the best reason is the fun of reading about his amazing life, past and present.

Here’s an example, but caveat emptor. Reading Taki may result in feelings of jealousy or self-denigration, as if you’ve done nothing interesting with your life.

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The COVID Response: What We got Wrong.

The News You Didn’t See

Why Didn’t You Hear About This? 

This should have been breakthrough news. But you never heard about it because you get your news from the mainstream media.

At a congressional hearing on March 9, Dr. Redfield, the ex-director of the CDC, under oath, admitted that Fauci and the CDC knew that gain of function research was being conducted at the Wuhan lab. Not only that, but that the US government – including the DOD – knew about details of the leak that should have made it obvious to them that the lab-leak theory was not a conspiracy but a high probability.

Okay. Now you know. And by tomorrow, you can forget about it. Because if you mention it to anyone, they won’t believe you. And even if they do, they won’t care.

Click here.

On Top of It All, Wuhan Double-Charged Us! 

On CBS recently, Diane Cutler, a former federal investigator assigned to the story, admitted that the US was supporting the Wuhan lab. She added: “What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds. It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research.”

From Meryl Nass:

“CBS News is here to tell us that not only did we fund the labs that were doing the COVID research that probably screwed up and released the virus that killed millions, but we got double-charged for it! The debate about COVID’s origins has zoomed past the pesky China issue and settled into a place we can all agree upon and enjoy: complaining about getting overcharged.”

Click here.

The School That Couldn’t Quit 

Nobody wears masks anymore in Florida. I mean nobody. In New Orleans, the mask-wearers are about one in 100. But during my long weekend in LA last week, that ratio seemed to be considerably higher. Maybe one in ten. And about the same percentage of stores and restaurants still require their employees to mask up. A few even ask customers to do it.

It makes me wonder: Is this a measure of something? And if so, what? Fear of dying? Political preference? Virtue signaling?

Interesting: There is a school in upstate New York that has taken this post-pandemic masking thing to a new level by mandating that their students wear masks outside!

Click here.

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The conservancy that my family and I are developing in West Delray Beach, FL, has one of the largest and best-curated palm tree collections in the world, as well as a growing collection of outdoor sculptures, a traditionally styled Japanese tea house, a stock of African cycads, and dozens of other exotic plants and trees.

Here’s one of the cycads:

Mombasa Cycad

Binomial name: Encephalartos hildebrandtii

Cycads are ancient plants that existed long before dinosaurs. The Mombasa Cycad is a large, tough plant with leaves that can reach 10 feet in length. All cycads are dioecious, meaning a plant is either male or female. In the female Mombasa, the cone and seeds are very pale, almost white. In the male, they are yellow. From the photo, it looks like this one is a male.

For more information about Paradise Palms, click here.

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