In news that should shock no one, the forecasters at the Global Carbon Project estimate that carbon emissions increased yet again in 2019:

Needless to say, we are supposed to be cutting carbon emissions if we want to have any chance of preventing the planet from incinerating by the time our grandchildren are grown. But we don’t have the self-discipline to even stabilize emissions, let alone cut them.

It’s hard to find any good news in all this, but I won’t let you say I didn’t try. Here is per-capita carbon emissions for the six largest economic areas:

With the exception of India, which is starting from a very small base, per-capita emissions have mostly stabilized or declined over the past decade. This is largely because we use less energy to accomplish the same tasks, and that really is good news. It’s nowhere near good enough news, mind you, but at least it’s something that’s moving in the right direction.

Jack Kurtz/ZUMA

As a proud employee of a 501(c)3, I have to be a little careful about expressing my personal support for political candidates. But now that Kamala Harris is out, I can say a bit more about her.

Initially, I was tentatively in her camp. I’ve seen her in Senate hearings and she’s very impressive. She has considerable political experience. She’s plenty liberal, but knows how to play nice when she has to, unlike folks like Bernie Sanders. She obviously had an inside track on both the black vote and the women’s vote. I knew perfectly well that she had done some things as California attorney general that would hurt her in a Democratic primary, but everyone with experience has at least a few issues like this. Overall, she seemed like a good, serious contender.

Then came the Biden moment in the first debate. “You also worked … to oppose busing,” she said to Biden, who was standing right across from her. “And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

Now, this was something of a cheap shot, but I was OK with that. Like they say, politics ain’t beanbag, and I was actually pleased to see that Harris was willing to be a little mean. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is not going to beat Trump in November. But things went downhill from there.

What Harris should have done is taken the poll bump and the fundraising bump and then smoothed things over. The very next day she should have said something a little conciliatory. “I understand it was different times, and I don’t really hold this against Joe even though I would have done something different.” This would have accomplished a couple of things. First, it would have taken the issue off the table and reduced the inevitable rain of media fact checks, which were never going to make her look good. Second, it would have allowed Harris to get off of busing, which is not a popular topic even now, and move on to other subjects.

Instead, she treated her mini-victory in the debate as a template. The fact checks came in and Harris was wobbly responding to them. But because it had worked, she seemingly started looking around for other trivial little things that she could toss out to get a bit of a media bounce. It made her seem unserious, the captive of a media strategy instead of a candidate with real policy chops. And that’s what she needed. She should have used her moment in the spotlight to get some attention for well-thought-out policy ideas that positioned her where she naturally belongs: clearly progressive, but not trying to out-left Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. That never really happened, and she eventually seemed like a one-hit wonder continually casting about for a second hit.

So I became increasingly disenchanted with her. If you’re going to triangulate, you have do it like you mean it. She didn’t, and the man behind the curtain was a little too obvious.

This is not the conventional story about Harris, by the way. Jamilah King summarizes that for us today, saying that Harris “ultimately could not reconcile the nearly two decades she spent in law enforcement with a rapidly changing political landscape on criminal justice issues that’s driven by the progressive base’s desire for systemic change.” That may well be the case, and I don’t know how many people had reactions similar to mine. But I’ll bet at least a few did.

This is a Nuttall’s woodpecker outside the Orange County Zoo, where a bunch of them routinely flock. At least, I think that’s what it is based on the discussion of woodpeckers inside the nearby nature center. But I’m sure we’ll get positive ID in comments . . .

UPDATE: It’s an acorn woodpecker.

In the last election cycle I thought Scott Walker was the money candidate. He dropped out before the first primary. This cycle I thought Kamala Harris had a pretty good chance of becoming President Harris. Now she’s out before the first primary.

Moral of the story: Never listen to me.

Hooray! The new PISA scores are out and I have them exclusively. That is, I have them exclusively unless there’s someone else who also wants them. Here are the worldwide scores in reading:

Personally, I have learned to ignore the four Asian “countries” that are always at the top. These are all large cities where they cherry-pick who’s going to take the test, and I have no confidence that it’s any kind of random sample.

That said, the United States ranks 9th out of the remaining 75 countries that took the test. That seems pretty good to me. Better than Denmark, better than Germany, better than Italy, better than Britain, and better than France.

As it happens, we did kinda poorly on the math exam, but that’s OK. We’ll be the ones reading cue cards and keeping all the overseas scientists entertained as they build the robots that will eventually save us from global doom. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.

I regaled my weekend audience with the results of my attempt to learn how to do panoramic photos using Photoshop. In a nutshell, you can take several pictures from left to right and then stitch them together horizontally or you can take several pictures from bottom to top and stitch them together vertically. But then I wondered: can I take a grid of pictures and stitch them together both horizontally and vertically? Just how smart is Photoshop, anyway?

Pretty smart! I tried it out today with a 2×6 grid of our new kitchen remodel and Photoshop breezed through it:

The red area is the best I could do with a single shot using the 24mm setting on my camera, and a wall prevented me from moving backward. The only two ways to show the whole kitchen are (a) purchasing a pro camera body and a $3,000 prime 12mm wide-angle lens or (b) using Photoshop. I think my choice was pretty obvious.

Panoramic stitching works best with, you know, panoramas. That is, scenes that are fairly distant, so that the distortion isn’t too bad to begin with and can be corrected fairly easily. Interior scenes are a whole different thing, and there’s really no way to avoid distortion entirely when objects are so close. You can see it in this picture in various places because I had to pick and choose which distortions to try and correct. I’m sure a pro could do better, but it’s not possible to correct everything. Also, I probably should have taken the picture in the morning to get truer, less ruddy lighting.

Anyway . . . green lower cabinets and cream upper cabinets. Some kind of engineered quartz stuff for the countertop, which is white with light gray flecks. New flooring throughout the entire house, a light brownish-gray that has coloring similar to old reclaimed wood. And a bunch of new appliances. Marian managed the whole operation, and my main contribution was the suggestion of green for the lower cabinets.

You love it, don’t you? You better. All negative comments will be ruthlessly deleted.

President Trump suddenly announced new steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil and Argentina today, which he blamed on the “massive devaluation of their currencies.” Vox’s Jen Kirby calls Trump’s reasoning “confusing,” which is very charitable indeed. Both the real and the peso are freely traded, which means they get weaker or stronger depending on their countries’ respective economic conditions, not because their governments have devalued anything. Both currencies have indeed weakened, but that’s because they’re both in pretty bad economic shape:

So why did Trump announce the tariffs? There’s no telling why Trump does anything, but my guess is that it’s mostly for domestic political consumption. Tariffs have fallen out of the news lately and the China talks appear to be going poorly. So he picked a couple of countries that compete with our farmers and announced tariffs. It makes him look tough and that’s all he really cares about.

This is just a guess, but a pretty good one, I suspect.

My M-protein number is down a bit this month, which means the cancer is being kept well under control:

Since we started back on the Evil Dex, my M-protein level has dropped significantly and stayed there for several months running. This is good news! But . . .

It’s also annoying. As you may recall, I quit the dex early this year and my number increased. Sadly, this meant I needed to start back up, but my doctor wanted to add Pomalyst to the mix when I did so. I know nothing about chemo treatment, but I was raised to believe in apple pie, the American flag, and changing only one variable at a time so you don’t get confused about which things are having which effect. My doctor argued strongly for the Pomalyst, however, and I caved in.

Last week I had an office visit and reported that (a) my fatigue was getting much worse, and (b) I had noticed in the past month or so that my breathing was getting very shallow. Hmmm. The fatigue is basically a side effect of the dex, but Pomalyst can make it worse. And Pomalyst also causes shortness of breath in 36 percent of patients. Hmmm. The problem, my doctor said, is that we don’t know for sure what’s causing this since I started up both the dex and the Pomalyst at the same time.

You will be proud of me for not reaching out and throttling him. Anyway, he agreed that we should stop the Pomalyst for a few months and see what happens. We should have done this back in June, but better late than never, I suppose. The first half of 2020 will tell the story.

Robin Givhan, the Washington Post’s fashion critic, has some harsh words for Melania Trump’s outerware:

First lady Melania Trump unveiled this year’s White House Christmas decorations in a gauzy video in which she strolls through the public rooms marveling at their holiday luster….For her tour, Mrs. Trump wears all white: a dress with a simple jewel neckline, white stiletto-heeled pumps and a white coat. The coat is draped over her shoulders as she strolls through the White House.

The coat looks ridiculous. But more than a silly fashion folly, the coat is a distraction….As Trump gazes pleasantly at all that her staff and a host of volunteers have accomplished, her attire suggests that she’s casually passing through and has little affinity for the occasion. She’s not getting comfortable, so why should you?

I would never argue with Givhan over fashion, about which I know nothing unless my sister educates me, but can I suggest that this isn’t really a fashion question to begin with? Take a look at the video:

The reason it looks like Melania is casually passing through and has little affinity for the occasion is because Melania is casually passing through and has little affinity for the occasion. She could be wearing bib overalls and a MAGA hat and she’d look the same way. During the entire video, she displays virtually no enthusiasm for anything other than periodically straightening something that the lazy servants apparently didn’t get quite right. I’m not sure whose idea it was for that to be the theme of the video, but it does her no favors.

And one more thing: what cowards the Trumps are! Nowhere in the video does it say Merry Christmas. It simply says nothing at all.

As winter comes storming in, let’s take a moment to remember that spring and summer are not too far off. Someday it will be warm again.