The Only Currency

Time is the only currency you spend without knowing the balance.  Use it wisely.

-- Nicholas John

No One Wished

No one wished events would prove libertarians wrong more than libertarians themselves.

-- Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor in chief of Reason, writing in the New York Times, "Libertarians Tried to Warn You About Trump" (9 February 2026)

Move Against Vaccines

US regulators will not review Moderna's request to license a new, potentially more effective flu shot -- even though the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) previously gave the green light to the project -- in a decision that could have implications for all new and updated vaccines in the US.

It's the latest move by the Trump administration against vaccines.  Officials in January decided to stop fully recommending one-third of routine childhood vaccines, including flu vaccines.

"This is likely to discourage industry from investing in future influenza vaccines, and makes working with the US FDA uncertain and problematic," said Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Law San Francisco.  "They are refusing to review a new vaccine with a more flexible technology, while creating a real risk we will not have traditional vaccines for next year."

-- Melody Schreiber, "FDA declines to review Moderna application for new flu vaccine" in The Guardian (10 February 2026)

RIP World Factbook

One of CIA's oldest and most recognizable intelligence publications, The World Factbook, has sunset.  The World Factbook served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe.  Let's take a quick look into the history of The World Factbook.  

Over many decades, The World Factbook evolved from a classified to unclassified, hardcopy to electronic product that added new categories, and even new global entities.  The original classified publication, titled The National Basic Intelligence Factbook, launched in 1962.  The first unclassified companion version was issued in 1971.  A decade later it was renamed The World Factbook.  In 1997, The World Factbook went digital and debuted to a worldwide audience on CIA.gov, where it garnered millions of views each year.

-- Article at cia.gov announcing, but not explaining, the abrupt termination of the CIA World Factbook (4 February 2026); I'll miss it

How Hard It Is

The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant encumbrance. ...  How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!

-- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), American humorist, novelist, writer, and lecturer, autobiographical dictation, (2 December 1906).  Published in Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2 (University of California Press, 2013)

Struck By Lightning

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, Poetry and the Age (1953) "Reflections on Wallace Stevens", p. 134; conclusion

Here Are The Maps

We read our mail and counted up our missions  -- 
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school  -- 
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.

-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965), American poet, novelist, critic, and essayist, Losses (1948) "Losses," lines 21-28