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Monday Miscellany, 10/21/24

Monday Miscellany, 10/21/24

Last updated on: October 21, 2024 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 10/21/24 2024-10-18T17:38:25-04:00 Gene Veith

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FBI’s revised 2022 stats show violent crime was up, not down as reported; “one of the biggest failures in food history”; and SpaceX vs. NASA.

FBI’s Revised 2022 Stats Show Violent Crime Was Up, Not Down as Reported

A big Republican issue is crime, as many Americans disturbed by mass shop-lifting and unsafe neighborhoods blame Democratic defund the police initiatives and District Attorneys who refuse to prosecute certain crimes in the name of criminal justice reform.

But Democrats are answering back, “actually, the crime rates are down!” FBI reports showed that the number of violent crimes in 2022 dropped 2.1%. And statistics for 2023 show an even greater drop from the previous year of 3.5%.

This has prompted triumphal crowing from the media, as in *Time’Magazine’*s headline Kamala Harris Handed Law and Order Win as Murders Plunge.

But the FBI has revised those 2022 numbers. Instead of crime dropping 2.1%, it actually rose by 4.5%!

That’s what John R. Lott, Jr., of RealClearInvestigations dug out and reported on in his article Stealth Edit: FBI Quietly Revises Violent Crime Stats. According to the FBI’s updated data, there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021, amounting to 1,699 additional murders, 7,780 more rapes, 33,459 more robberies, and 37,091 more aggravated assaults. (For the two data sets, go here.)

The FBI did not issue a correction in a press release. And in its 2023 numbers recently released, it used the old unrevised figures to calculate its 3.5% drop. Actually, using the updated numbers, it would amount to only a 1.6% drop. But Lott asks if we can trust those preliminary numbers any more than we can trust those for 2022.

Moreover, Lott notes that only 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes are reported, the only kind the FBI makes an effort to tally. According to the 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, which asks 250,000 Americans about their experience of crime, including whether they reported the crime, reported violent crime was up 4.1%, not down 3.5% as the FBI report claimed. And the NCVS found that including crimes not reported, total violent crime rose 55.4% since President Biden took office.

If you see any corrections of those earlier sun-shiny media stories or any “I-was-wrongs” from progressive politicians, let us know!

“One of the Biggest Failures in Food History”

Remember the hype about lab grown meat? Instead of raising animals for food, we would be able to take a few cells, grow them in a lab, and manufacture actual meat. This would do away with the environmental damage of livestock farms and satisfy vegetarians’ qualms against killing animals, while still satisfying the human craving for meat. What could go wrong?

Well, in the words of food consultant Julian Mellentin, “It’s going to go down as one of the biggest failures in food history. Business schools will be presenting lessons on lab-grown meat.”

Andrew Orlowski explains what happened in his article for the London Telegraph entitled Lab-grown meat is proving to be a grotesque misadventure. He writes,

Since the first lab-grown burger was demonstrated more than a decade ago, billions of pounds have been thrown at the technology. It involves extracting cells derived from animal fetuses and cultivating the cells in sterile bioreactors, a process that takes a lot of energy and expense. The resulting slurry is then stretched and shaped to resemble animal tissue, although the backers – who include Bill Gates and Richard Branson – understandably prefer the euphemism “cultivated meat”.

Both vegans and non-vegans are turned off by the use of animal fetuses. A major problem, though, is expense.

The economics were always stacked against meat bioreactors. The process requires pharmaceutical industry-level lab conditions, very expensive nutrients – which amount to about two thirds of the cost – specialised labour and long timescales. Optimistically, producers would be doing well to hit $63 (£48) per kilo wholesale as a break-even price, one study found. That made the output not remotely competitive with premium meat products.

That’s $63 for 2.2 pounds of “cultivated meat,” coming to $28.33 per pound. But the biggest problem is consumer disgust. “Even the test marketing has stopped, because nobody wanted the product – it’s just too weird,” says Mellentin. “People are very reluctant to put a technology into their bodies.”

As for the promised environmental benefits, it turns out that generating meat in a lab generates four to twenty-five times as much CO2 emissions than livestock farming!

The major corporations experimenting with the production of lab grown meat have shut down or mostly shut down their operations. But advocates still have some hope. Mellentin suggests, “The only markets that it can aim for now are as a high-end product – almost as a novelty – on the coasts of the United States, and possibly Singapore and London.” Present it as a luxury item and the cool people on the East and West coasts will eat it!

That might well work. Another strategy is to get the government to fund it. That might work also. Orlowski says that the UK government has listed lab-grown meat as one of the “game-changing technologies” its Regulatory Innovation Office would like to pursue.

Meanwhile, the U.S. seems to be acting as expected. Last summer Scientific American excitedly reported that “Cultured meat, grown from real animal cells, will soon be available in restaurants in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.”

And this summer, a news site for ranchers ran an article with the headline, Lab meat for soldiers: Up to $500M earmarked by Department of Defense for cell cultured meat research, development. Our woke Pentagon is spending $500 million in hopes of feeding lab grown meat to our soldiers! That should help recruiting.

SpaceX vs. NASA

Elon Musk’s SpaceX just launched what is described by News for Kids with its lucid explanations as “the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.” What Musk calls the “Super Heavy Booster Rocket” is 20 stories tall! It blasted SpaceX’s unmanned “Starship” spacecraft into space.

But what was significant about this launch is what happened next. The old Space Shuttles were put into orbit by a much smaller but big-for-the-time booster rocket, and while the Space Shuttles could glide back to earth and be reused, the expensive rocket, once its fuel was burned up, just fell into the ocean.

But Musk and his engineers devised a way to catch the falling skyscraper with the help of a small supplemental engine, plus giant mechanical hands they are calling “Mechazilla” built into the launch tower. And it worked! See for yourself in this 1 minute 15 second video:

What this means is a totally reusable launch system! That will reduce the cost of space travel enormously. The rocket won’t even need to be transported back to the launch tower.

Economist Christopher Phelan contrasted what NASA spends on its rockets with what Musk’s private-industry SpaceX is accomplishing:

NASA’s SLS system has cost $24 billion so far, and they are hoping for a $2 billion per launch operating cost. SpaceX has spent $5 billion dollars on Starship so far, and will be able to reuse everything. Right now launch cost is probably about $100 million. They are hoping to get it down to under $10 million. $10 million vs. $2 billion.

Nellie Bowles in the Free Press writes about this and adds a painful twist of the knife. As SpaceX is accomplishing this technological feat, NASA is bragging about how their new space suits are being designed by the fashionista icon Prada.

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