More brilliance from Washington

President Biden is going to require federal workers to travel via rail and electric vehicles, which leaves me sort of torn.  I'm bummed because it means he's going to unilaterally increase the cost of government and our taxes, but on the bright side, maybe it means the government won't be able to do as much.

Seriously, what he's really said is to rent electrics only when they are cost competitive, which means of course "never".  A seemingly bright spot, however, is that it appears that they'll be required to use rail for trips of less than 250 miles.  Since most of the country is nowhere near an Amtrak line, does that mean that people won't have to hear the nine more terrifying words in the English language:

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.

Natch, I'm guessing that there's a way around that one, too.  So congratulations to President Biden on yet another meaningless executive order that will do nothing to help the environment or improve how goverment works.

And I need to say it; we miss you, Ronald Reagan.

Somehow it reminds me of Anne Frank

Harvard University has apparently asked campus rabbis to hide their menorahs to avoid embarrassment if on-campus supporters of Hamas Nazis should decide to destroy them.  Pro tip for the geniuses on the Charles River; if Jews on campus are forced to act like Anne Frank's family, you're doing it wrong.

Side note is that I'm not hearing reports of things like this in states like Texas and Florida.  Wonder why that is.

Two Updates: First, it appears that two Ivy League college presidents who were not able to figure out that the mass murder and gang rape of innocents was wrong....did so with the guidance of an elite law firm.  In other hilarious (and sad) news, the head of the NAA(L)CP, Derrick Johnson, is arguing that it is somehow "racist" to hold Hahvid President Gay to account for her plagiarism and anti-Semitic comments.

Honestly, it boggles the mind how supposedly "educated" and "elite" people have so much trouble figuring out that whether gang rape and murder of innocents is wrong is not a matter of "context".  If they don't clue in, they will hopefully learn the hard way that whether the taxpayer funds their institutions is put into the "context" of tolerating vile anti-Semitic slurs at their institutions.

A great way to help the environment

This column by Powerline suggests to me that there is a great way of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions; allow greater production of fossil fuels in the U.S. and enact a 10% revenue tariff.  How does this work?

Simple.  If you look at the graphs and do a little bit of arithmetic, you'll see that the Chinese release about 3x the greenhouse gases per dollar of GDP than does the United States, and a great part of this is because it's still profitable for them to use very inefficient ways of producing energy--and this is not entirely because of their dependence on coal, because using coal in itself only releases 70% more greenhouse gases than using natural gas.

Drilling in the U.S. reduces our own production costs, and that reduces any advantages that shoddy Chinese goods have over those domestically produced.  More importantly, you've got the principle seen with the 1991 increase on wine taxes; all of a sudden, it became unprofitable to produce "bum wines" (and wine coolers), and the wine industry in the U.S. began to target wine for quality instead of quantity.  

The same thing goes with other products, and I suspect that a lot of the factories that currently make shoddy products are among them.  You can't keep fueling your factory with coal if you don't have sales to buy the coal, after all. 

Looks like the solution for our future is....really....a lot of the policies of the past.

More news regarding Ukraine

A U.S. intelligence assessment suggests that Russia has lost up to 87% of the ground infantry forces they possessed, up to 315,000 men, as casualties (fatalities or serious injuries).   In other words, the Russian army is on the ropes, and a good infusion of minesweeping equipment, aircraft, and long range artillery will likely push their war effort in Ukraine off a cliff, and we have yet another place where Ukrainian estimates of Russian losses are actually pretty close--or perhaps even a bit lower than the reality.

Given that Russia causes call kinds of mayhem through their clients in the Wagner Group in Africa and Syria, through Belarus, through the "Transnistria" region in Moldova, through Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthi in the Middle East, and of course with the "little green men" and their clients in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and more, I can think of few better investments for our country than to push their war effort over the edge.  Hopefully it causes Russia to take one more casualty, Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin.  Putin delenda est!

Here's my question

After a 108-14 thrashing by North Dakota State, fans are wondering...really...about the loser's stand on homosexuality?  Really?  

My take is simpler; North Dakota State is a Division 1 school, and Oak Hills is a Bible college with an enrollment of 100 students.  Who on earth thought that this was going to be a good game?  I realize that there is a perceived need to play something like 30 games each season, and you've got to line up some patsies if you want to get to the NIT or NCAA tournament, but seriously?  Does no one at NDSU have a conscience and realize that playing kids off the JV teams at their high schools is a great way of getting people hurt?

In other brillance, people are putting charging coils into roadbeds with the goal of charging electric golf carts cars.  Now as an electrical engineer who used to belong to the IEEE, I remember that some IEEE societies have annual issues on the state of science regarding low level electromagnetic fields, especially those from cell phones and power transmission lines.  So I'm not exactly sure why anyone thinks this is a good idea; I am personally a skeptic about the likelihood of cancers being induced by low level non-ionizing radiation, but it just seems to be begging for trouble to do this.

 

Hideous acts from the DOJ

The DOJ is suing the state of Tennesssee for making it a felony to be a prostitute while HIV positive, arguing somehow that being HIV positive is just a disability (which I guess it is), and not a lethal threat to those who might have sex with an HIV positive prostitute.  They are actually arguing that  you need to do a complicated study to prove that HIV can be a death sentence, something I've known...oh, about since I was studying geometry in high school.

Meanwhile, the CDC reports that annual HIV infections are about 32000 in the U.S., and annual deaths with HIV are about 20,000.  Interestingly, I did not see clear indications of what proportion of those deaths were significantly, or primarily, from HIV, but it's still pretty likely that for a lot of those who contract it, HIV is indeed a death sentence. I would guess that COVID hit those with immune weaknesses pretty hard, to put it mildly.

More and more, when I see the antics of our public servants, an old line from a movie whose name I forget comes to mind:  "I don't like you because you're trying to get me killed."  

Well said

Hats off to John Schroeder's column on Hugh Hewitt's website about how universities are horribly failing their athletes.  I've personally been horrified as I've seen that too many former football and basketball players are given "Cadillac tastes" with the adulation of students and fans, along with training tables and the like, and then proceed to have a "Chevy budget" because their degrees, if any, really don't qualify them for a good paying job.

And for what it's worth, this hits minorities hardest, as I remember seeing that at some schools, white football players graduate about 80% of the time, while black players graduate 50% of the time.  I don't believe that schools are doing minority athletes any favors with this system.

Time to get colleges out of the pro sports business, and back into the education business.

A mathematical confession from Moscow

Russian dictator and thug Vladimir Putin has ordered that the size of the Russian army be increased by 170,000 men, following  an earlier boost of 137,000 men.  Now the thing that is very striking is that the boosts ordered are about the same as Ukrainian estimates of Russian casualties (currently about 330,000), and it's not clear whether this increased recruitment/conscription even includes those "soldiers" "recruited" from Russian prisons.

I've always viewed the Ukrainian estimates of Russian losses to be, shall we say, probably a bit embellished, but with this inadvertent confession by the former KGB officer, I'm starting to think that it's startlingly accurate or maybe even a bit conservative.  And in that light, it's worth noting that the number of Russian casualties is rapidly getting to be about twice the size of the original invasion force, and is closing in on the number of casualties the U.S. experienced during all of World War Two, where we spearheaded the defeat of three world powers.  The only war where the U.S. clearly experienced worse casualties is now....the Civil War.

I'm praying that soon, thinking Russians realize the extent of this disaster and add one more person to the casualty list, and then withdraw from a place they never should have been in the first place.

A bit of math of interest

I've posted before about how I'm pretty sure that Planned Infanticide and other abortion providers can't possibly pay the bills with abortion,  but just out of curiosity, I took a look at what Planned Infanticide's total revenue was in 2022, which was about $1.3 billion, approximately half of which came from goverment sources, and a good portion of the rest was "charitable" donations.

For comparison's sake, in 2020, Planned Parenthood performed about 345000 abortions, as well as about a million other procedures like breast exams and pap smears.  Now Planned Parenthood itself notes that the actual cost of their other visits is $115-135, so we can assume that something like $150 million to $200 million of the total is the actual cost of their other services.

Which means that the cost of abortions committed by Planned Infanticide is about $1.05 billion divided by those 345,000 abortions, or about $3000 per abortion.  Now part of this is overhead--they've become rather infamous in many circles as their old strip mall/storefront clinics are replaced by rather palatial abortion centers--but it does point out here that abortion is not quite the "low cost option" that "helps the poor" in the way that abortion advocates would like to claim.

Rather, it's a practice that can only continue with massive subsidies, so if we end those subsidies, abortion will end in most places.  

They say that...

...Biden's birthday cake was dropped on the White House by the Enola Gay.  Or at least it looks like it was. 

Thoughts on the upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

They haven't stepped in it this well since they hired a drunk as Santa in 1947.   Sad to say, Edmund Gwenn and Maureen O'Hara are no longer available to bail them out.

Thoughts about a game I hardly care about anymore

I used to love watching football, but over the years, I've grown rather cold for a variety of reasons.   You've got Dr. Bennett Omalu's discovery of CTE in the brains of deceased football players, various concepts in the "Cialis" commercials, and then you've got the general Macchiavellian nature of the sport at the college and pro levels, seeming to concentrate on how freakish the players can be, how grotesque their tattoos, how abundant their sexual conquests, and the like.

And the target of my ire today is going to be (naturally) the University of Michigan, which is now embroiled in a cheating scandal where a supporter funded an employee's trips to buy plush 50 yard seats and steal the opposing teams' signals.

Now part of me says "you know, if football players had a little bit of intelligence, one could swap out the signals and totally throw the Michigan defense off", but we are, alas, still living in a world where D1 college football programs are allowed to create "general studies" programs to keep mentally deficient players on the roster while giving them little in terms of marketable skills.  It's not like you can change things up and confuse the opposition easily in the way that the Ivy League representative often confuses the #1 and #2 seeds they meet in the NCAA baskeball tournament, as Princeton did to Georgetown in 1989.

And hence it is a big deal that Michigan is stealing signs, and the question is, then, what ought to be done about it.  What we know is that information regarding the practice appeared on several coaches' computer files, which suggests it was coordinated from the top.  Only one coach, the linebackers coach, has been fired so far.

That much is appropriate; defensive plays are sent in to the interior linebackers, so the person most guilty would be the linebackers coach.  That noted, who else ought to have noticed?  My take is that every coach watching tape each Sunday and Monday ought to have noticed that the Michigan defense is in a nearly perfect position a lot more often than their opponents, and not all of that can be attributed to brilliant defensive schemes.  In the same way, I'd expect all of the skill players (basically everybody but the linemen, and probably even them) to figure out the same thing.  Even those who do not clue in that something was "off" would probably have heard "did you hear what we just did to Ohio State with their signals...?" and the like.

I don't know exactly what the solution ought to be, but what I'd suggest is simple; Michigan gives up all of its wins since Connor Stalions started making his trips to the stadia of opponents, and Jim Harbaugh becomes the second Big Ten/14/16/whatever coach in the state of Michigan to lose his job this year.

Addendum: given that I had hopes that Harbaugh would follow up on his experience at Stanford by reining in abuses like "General Studies" at Michigan, I am obviously very disappointed at the clear resurrection of his mercenary spirit.

Musings on the world situation

If Russia is so intent on de-Nazifying countries--one might assume this means "punishing countries that willfully attack Jews in pogroms"--maybe...they ought to re-consider their partnership with Iran (which funded the October 7 atrocities)?

Just sayin'.

So "proud" of my alma mater

As my readers well know, it's been hard for me to be a Michigan State Spartan over the past few years, with the Nassar case and the firing of the football coach for sexually harassing an advocate for ending sexual misconduct (I am not making this up), and this article here  doesn't make it any better.  The general gist of the study is that if one spends about $400 more on welfare spending or $700 more on public school spending per student, graduation rates will go up 1%.

Fair enough, but it doesn't explain why a lot of suburban and rural school districts have excellent graduation rates despite low funding, and of course if you've got a 30% gap between your district and other, better districts, that amounts to $12000 to $21000 more in per student funding annually.  More or less, to get one more graduate, we are talking about an investment of something like half a million to a million bucks.  Suffice it to say that the ROI is pretty bad.

Also of note is that "graduation" in an urban district like Chicago or Baltimore doesn't mean what it does in other districts, as about 80% or more of Chicago Public graduates....do not read or perform mathematics at grade level.   So the ROI is likely, believe it or not, even worse, as these schools which are "juicing" their graduation rates are simply doing the oldest trick in the book; social promotion.

Unfortunately, employers are going to catch on, and the end result is going to be that they're going to do what a former employer of mine did with aspiring electronic interconnect assemblers; give them a reading test before hiring, and the young people of the big cities would be, despite massive public investments in their development, basically unemployable.

This is especially sad given that there is a time-honored way of improving student performance; take steps to promote ordinary nuclear families, including a father and a mother.  Yes, it doesn't play well with the progressive left, but it is one of very few things that sociologists have ever learned--and is apparently something that the College of Education at my alma mater has yet to learn.  Of course, intact families don't get huge funding for NEA and AFT members, which is probably the real aim of the study.  I'm guessing the researchers went in knowing full well what correlation they were going to find, and the real reasons for it.

True

The newspaper of record notes that pretty much any man's day would brighten with a fly-by by an A-10 Warthog.   Well, I have only watched the A-10 on YouTube, but I do remember what a thrill it was when I walked outside and saw a B-17 flying right over my home.  

Read the article carefully

This article from CNN claims that moderate reductions in salt will have a major effect on blood pressure, working "as well as blood pressure meds".  Reality? Well, they took a standard American diet's intake of sodium (about 4000mg), added a teaspoon's worth of salt to the mix (2300mg), and then the next week,  cut sodium intake to 500mg (about as low as you can go without going into sodium deficiency, ahem).

End result?  Blood pressure readings dropped by about 8 mm of Hg.  To draw a comparison, my very low dose (5mg) of licinopril drops my blood pressure by about twice that, and my wife is taking a dose about 10x higher.  Typical diagnoses for high blood pressure are in the 160/110 range and up, and the target blood pressure is 120/80.  

Don't get me wrong; I'll take an 8mm or even 1mm reduction in blood pressure with reasonable measures, but this isn't going to let anyone drop their blood pressure meds, and may even be somewhat hazardous.  When you drop your intake of a vital nutrient (sodium is one of those things that keeps your heart beating) to the absolute minimum, you're getting into the realm where small errors can make a huge difference in your health.

Chalk this one up to an adage I like: Nobody gets their PhD, tenure, or big promotion in research by retaining the null hypothesis.  Read the article and look for the actual numbers, not the claims by the editor who wrote the headline.

Update: even more interesting is the lead investigator's claim that it's the first study to show that people already on blood pressure medication can further drop blood pressure by dropping sodium. I know from experience that cardiologists have been recommending patients with high blood pressure drop sodium for at least the past 40 years, and I suspect that I'd see the same going back at least 60 years if I look carefully at 1960s era insurance company ads in National Geographic.  If the claim is true, it's long past time for this study to have been done.

Annals of the practice of sado-masichism

The Fendi company has come out with a mens' high heel.  Check it out. So for just $1450, you too can break your ankles while looking like a total doofus even before you stand up.

(as ladies subjected to stilettos say "hee hee" or "about darned time...")

The old proverb comes to mind; "A fool and his money are soon parted."

Thoughts on "Net Zero Carbon Emissions"

It is getting popular, it seems for companies to announce that in a certain amount of time, they will achieve "net zero carbon emissions."  Let's get a notion of what this means; everybody exhales carbon dioxide, and every building and factory in the world is built with materials that require the use of carbon fuels to get to market.  Every company in the world uses electricity, and hence for a company to achieve "net zero", one must go much further than to simply get one's electricity from solar or wind (impossible at peak demand hours, mind you) while getting LEED certification for their buildings.

No, you've got to somehow compensate for the carbon emitted to build your buildings, make the windmills and solar panels, and the like, and the key idea for that is called "carbon credits".  On one hand, some "carbon credits" are issued to people who fund things like electric cars and windmills, but....the problem with that is that even if these reduce carbon emissions, it still takes carbon emissions to make them.  You can't make steel without using coal, to put it mildly.

That leaves a second level of carbon credits, which more or less amounts to paying people who live in the rainforest not to use a part of the land they inhabit.  Now at best, the land that is so "sequestered" is simply land they weren't going to use anyways, so the net result is zero.  At worst, however, it's land they were, or were planning to, use for supporting themselves, and a key principle arises.

Nobody signs on to let their children starve.

So when one plot of land is "sequestered", they simply go to another, generally one where it's not as advantageous to plant.  In other words, they're going to clear cut more land than they would have cleared to begin with, making the "carbon credit" actually carbon emission positive.

Ouch.  So how does one fix this?  One investigates how one may actually sequester carbon in the soil, in buildings, and elsewhere.  There are plans to inject carbon dioxide into the ground, but....that's incredibly dangerous if it should escape.  Lower tech options are better.

One big way to do this is to consider how "Mother Nature" might help us.  What would happen if cornfields were returned to pasture and alfalfa, where broadleafs like alfalfa have root systems that are up to 30' deep?  What would happen if we stopped using corn for fuel to allow this--and some of those fields were returned to forest? 

Along the same lines, if carbon emissions are really a huge issue, we need to consider not just how to "eliminate" them, but how to reduce them.  Maybe stop paying people to divorce their spouses through child support, alimony, and welfare programs.  Maybe consider prohibiting governments from making buildings from heat-porous masonry.  Lots of good ideas come to mind--none of them involving carbon credits or solar panels.

How do you get there?

The murders and rapes perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 are in many ways horrific even to those who remember the Holocaust, and the question is "how do you find people willing to do this?"  One apparent answer may be potent amphetamines.

And that raises the question of whether one can test for use of these, say for those who might have perpetrated such atrocities.  Answer; maybe.  You can test for amphetamines in hair up to 90 days.  Word is still out about whether one can differentiate the drug alleged here from other amphetamines in hair samples, and how strongly its use correlates with the October 7 and other attacks.

But that said, I do think hair samples from people in Gaza, especially young males, would be appropriate.

Interesting things from the world

Senator Fetterman, on the Colbert show, apparently argued that the nation's best and brightest were not being sent to Washington.   True, Senator, but you of all people probably shouldn't be making that argument, as the voters of Pennsylvania will hopefully catch on at some point, leaving you to do a job more suited to your abilities, say one involving a blue vest.

Students protesting Israel's retaliation against Hamas terrorists hide their identities.  Pro tip, kids; if you have to hide your face to avoid censure for a position you're taking, think twice about what side you're on.  Pro tip #2; the Hamas side's argument really works better in the original German, and it's no accident that Mein Kampf is a popular book in the Gaza Strip.  

Senator Bernie Sanders is arguing that Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip is a violation of international law because they are cutting off food, water, and electricity to the area.  I guess by that logic, Operation Overlord (the invasion of Normandy) was a war crime against Nazi Germany.  Sorry, Bernie, not buyin' it, and you of all people ought to know the difference here.

More thoughts on the Duluth model

"Control" is the hallmark of an abuser, and the government wants to tell us what appliances, cars, homes, schools, and a lot more we can have or use.  

Just sayin'.  

Always look on the bright side of life

On the light side, don't tell me I never said anything nice about homeless people.

And in other alphabet community news, it turns out (surprise to me at least) that hormones administered to transgender patients--testosterone for FTM and estrogen for MTF--greatly increase the risk of heart disease.  I anticipated that testosterone would increase heart disease risk among those born female, but had thought that estrogen protected its bearer from the same.  Evidently, though, each biological sex has its own set point and design, and disrupting that design has deleterious effects.  Go figure.

An end game in mental health?

A meta-analysis of  166 studies of the emotional and psychological impact of "shouting and screaming" comes to the conclusion that "childhood verbal abuse" can be as bad as sexual or physical abuse, and argues for a separate classification for "CVA" as exemplified by "criticism, name-calling, ridiculing, scolding, and picking on" children.

Now as I look at the list, what I see is, by and large, the same thing I've seen with regards to studies of physical discipline of children; truly abusive behaviors are mixed with non-abusive, non-injurious behaviors, and the results are mixed, as if a spanking is the same thing as being punched or kicked senseless.  

And as a parent, knowing that "folly is bound up in the heart of a child", and knowing how Proverbs is in some ways a book length criticism/scolding of these habits, I have to wonder exactly what the "researchers" think parents can do.  Unless one is fortunate enough to be the Virgin Mary, one's children will always have sin bound up in their hearts, and thus no sane parent would abstain totally from criticism and scolding.

For that matter, I remember my mother's response when I took a road trip without enough sleep; she called me a "fool", and she was right.  Was she wrong to remind me in vivid language that the consequences of tired driving can be lethal to myself and others?

The more I see, the more I think that mental health in our country (world?) is being led by people with complete tunnel vision, who cannot view the secondary consequences of actions.  Almost any parent will be able to tell you about kids who did not get negative feedback from their parents--and the destruction that followed.

Out of their minds

The recent attack on the Ukrainian town of Hroza, about twenty miles west of the front lines, with an Iskander ballistic missile (range about 500km/300 miles), suggests to me that either the Russian missiles are incapable of hitting targets accurately, or some Russian general decided to waste a precious and expensive SRBM on a civilian target only 20 miles from the front lines--indicating that Russia no longer has adequate longer range artillery for hitting mid-range targets.

Hitting a target that seems almost all civilian--Hroza is a town of 300 people that is not even on a major roadway or rail line--is not a good look for Russia.  Doing so with a missile that costs an estimated three million dollars suggests that Russia is desperate to make some impact, and does not have the proper weapons for the job.

It's not a gimme that Ukraine will win, but it does appear clear that Russia is running out of key items, and a gentle "nudge" like some ATACMS and F-16s will push their war off the cliff.

Update: Russian spokesmen are claiming now that Russia does not target civilian targets.  I guess all those bombed out apartment buildings, grain storage units, hospitals, schools, and the like were figments of my imagination, then?  One has to wonder precisely how one destroys one's soul to be able to spout off such bulls**t with a straight face.  Putin delenda est!

Another episode in brilliance...

...from those great examples of how to live your life; influences of course.  Apparently, along with the general aging of the population, there is now a shortage of laxatives because, apparently, a number of influencers (defined as "people who look good in spandex but don't know from Shinola") are endorsing laxatives as a great way to lose weight and, perhaps, look good in spandex yourself.

So more or less, people are fighting "bloat" by not drinking water, and then fighting constipation by using laxatives, and we wonder why so many "influencers" and people influenced by them are so sick.  It would be a blessed thing if Wilford Brimley ("Quaker Oats; it's the right thing to do") somehow got a following.  He probably didn't look good in spandex, but unlike a lot of influencers, he lived to age 85.

What's at stake in Ukraine

A new Russian history textbook claims that the re-unification of Germany in 1989 was the "colonization" and "annexation" of  Russian territory.

In other words, Russia's aims don't stop with the Donbass, Crimea, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, and Poland.  They want a return to the Warsaw Pact and....dare I say it?...Communism.

The nastiest, most lethal political system in history is staging a comeback.  Let's not screw this one up.

Depths of depravity, or stupidity?

A California doctor specializing in LGBTQ infectious diseases--read "things like 'human immunodeficiency virus'"--has been indicted for various types of sexual assault of his patients.  Ironically, his clinic biography states that he "fell in love with all of infectious diseases.".

Well, given what he did, that sounds about right.  

Maybe it's growing on me

I've been one who's cheered against the Washington Redskins Football Team Corrupt Bureaucrats Swamp Critters "Commanders" for a while, but recently, the name is growing on me, as apparently President Biden's dog "Commander" has bitten a Secret Service agent for the 11th time. So apparently the DC Football Team is named after an aggressive dog, possibly along the lines of Old Yeller after the wolf bit him.

I can go with that.

Seriously, if I were President Biden, I'd ask myself exactly how much I wanted to tick off the Secret Service before I got rid of my dog.  We might joke that the only thing keeping Biden alive is the prospect of a President Harris.

Some interesting SAT data

Page 3 of  this document shows the relationship between six year graduation rates, SAT scores, and high school grade point average.  More or less, I'd dare suggest that if a student doesn't have at least a 3.0 high school GPA and 1000 points on the SAT (20 on the ACT), they really have no business at a four year college.  

As I see colleges with graduation rates well below 50% dropping the ACT and SAT for admission, it strikes me that what they're doing with their marginal students is to take their tuition money and give them nothing in return--more or less stealing the assets of vulnerable young people.  They need to be reminded that community college used to be how the four year schools used to address marginal students--"get your general education at community college, and talk to us when you've passed those classes with a minimum of a 3.0 GPA", and all that.

But I guess it's somehow "racist" to not steal the assets of vulnerable black people.  Sigh.

Call me torn

I'd probably better wait a bit to see how the renewed maps shake out, but this Supreme Court decision (or non-decision?)  requiring Alabama to rewrite Congressional district maps so that there are two majority black districts bothers me a touch.  I understand the history of discrimination in the state, but something rankles about a demand to create two safe districts this way.  The flip side, I guess, is that it tends to be used to put Democrats in supermajority districts, so it's not that bad of news for the GOP, except for the fact that currently, the lines are drawn (in a somewhat gerrymandered fashion) that gives the Democrats one supermajority district, the GOP one barely majority district, and the GOP five supermajority districts.  So the GOP stands to lose a seat from this.

Might be interesting to see how one would draw two majority black districts without totally gerrymandering the state, I think.  So I'm torn between the historic discrimination against blacks in Alabama and the reality that when you're trying to cobble together a "ringer" district or two, you're almost guaranteed to get a nasty gerrymander along the lines of what the Democrats have done around Chicago.

The old newsroom lives on?

Well, unfortunately not as much the part about unbiased reporting, attention to detail, and the like, but David Brooks of the New York Times admitted that one factor of the old time newsroom lived on when he complained about a $78 bill (he apparently left no tip) for a meal he had at the airport. Apparently that bill included only $12 in food and had $66 in drinks, meaning that the old stereotype about the hard-drinking newsroom is still in force.  Same lesson as we learned when it was Jayson Blair, from the same newspaper.

In short, many journalists today seem to be retaining the worst characteristics of old time journalism, while ignoring the best, in such a way that I dare suggest that Mr. Brooks might be in a position to repeat the mistakes of my great uncle, whose career was derailed by alcoholism.  

Let's learn the right lessons, journalists.  Even if we weren't talking about something that's physically addictive in excess, four shots of whiskey is about 20-25% of daily caloric requirements without appreciable nutritional value.  It's not something that'll keep one pounding the streets for tips.

Great moments in the Senate

A while back, when I was part of a search committee for a new youth pastor, one candidate noted that he did not wear ties because he claimed they gave him headaches because of the "squeeze" on the neck.  My response--perhaps not quite charitable enough--was to note that if I had $200 and a couple of hours at a good men's wear store, I'd have him cheerfully wearing ties with a shirt that actually fit his neck.  If you get your "dress shirts" at Target or Wal-Mart, no such luck--they don't size the shirts that way.  Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Fast forward to today, and the Senate has adapted dress codes so that hoodies (and apparently bikinis for Senator Collins) will be allowed, and my response is about the same.  Good quality men's wear, especially of the custom type that Senators (especially 6'8" Senators like Fetterman) wear, is actually quite comfortable.  

So what's really going on?  My thought is that due to his stroke, Fetterman is no longer capable of tying a tie (there ARE clip-on ties, Senator!) or buttoning his shirt.  Hence he wears clothes that he can simply pull on.  Voters, take notice.  This isn't just an act where this Harvard graduate claims to be a "man of the people".  It's a confession of his disability, a disability that impacts his ability to serve in the Senate.  

Good doggie

 Police dog bites escaped murderer on the face.  

How not to do it

For about the past seven years--since Rachael Denhollander went public with her allegations against Larry Nassar--let's just say I have not been the proudest Spartan out there.  My Michigan State gear has been largely unused, and the latest news--that State's football coach is now suspended without pay for sexual harassment of a rape survivor who now works to bring better practices with regards to sexual assault--does not make this any better.

Or, rather, I am waiting to see how much grosser it gets, because I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone would find satisfaction in the alleged acts (which the coach has now largely confessed to), or why it would take as long as it has to investigate this, or precisely what changed now--more than a month after the initial report was written, and the coach had confessed.

Hypocrisy is the homage....

....that vice pays to virtue.  Today's example of LaRochefoucauld's dictim is Chicago area teachers' union president Stacy Davis Gates, who, while calling advocates for private schools and vouchers "racist", has apparently enrolled her own child in a local Catholic school.  

Now there is a degree where I agree with Ms. Gates, which is that since "he who pays the piper calls the tune", I think that any plan to have school vouchers paid for with tax dollars is dangerous because it opens the door to increased state control of private schools--though I'm sure that a great part of Ms. Gates' reasoning is that it takes funding away from public schools and the teachers' union.  I also agree that some--though certainly not all--people who have sent their children to private schools in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education did so for (at least in part) racist reasons, and finally, I agree with Ms. Gates that if you're subjected to Chicago Public Schools, it makes a lot of sense to send your child to private school.  

One funny part of the matter is that the reason Ms. Gates gave for sending her son to Catholic school is to play soccer because there aren't enough resources at the public schools.  So out of curiosity, I looked up some Chicago area high schools, and every one I saw either had its own athletic fields (often with artificial turf, which ain't cheap), or was close to a park that did.  Combine that with the fact that, apart from cross country, soccer is about the cheapest sport out there, and I conclude that....Ms. Gates' problem is that she and her fellow teachers are not very creative or money savvy.

Word to the wise

An influencer is, by and large, a person who looks good in tight-fitting clothes, not necessarily someone you want to emulate, as the tragic death of Larissa Borges shows.  Now obviously I don't know whether her death was due to a congenital heart defect, drugs, or something else, but at the end of the day, an "influencer" is someone who looks good in online pictures, not an expert.  

(and in the same light, I am someone who looks nerdy online, not an expert.....)

One side note; I'm not a pathologist or coroner, but one thing I notice in the pictures is that she had very little abdominal fat for a woman, which indicates she was taking some pretty extraordinary measures for her appearance.  Sad to say, I'd have to suggest "pay close attention to her lab results."

Who was having a worse time?

While my son was getting his braces tightened, I was in the lobby where "Judge Judy" was showing.  Suffice it to say that I am not quite sure why any sane person would agree to air differences with another person before a TV judge who seems to have, shall we say, a rather acidic disposition.  Even seeing glimpses of it was incredibly painful, and a vivid example of why most courtrooms do not allow cameras.

With due respect to my son, I think I was having a far worse time...

Unbiased science

This article, linked here by WorldNetDaily,  suggests that suppressing contrary narratives is a common way of getting published.  As I've known for decades, when you talk about consensus, you are simultaneously not talking about science.

Not quite sure this is a good thing

Apparently there is an "anti-woke" beer called "Ultra Right" out there that is in response to the fiasco with Dylan Mulvaney endorsing Bud Light, and while I'm happy to see Anheuser-Busch take it in the shorts for offending their customer base, I am not quite so sure that the conservative movement will benefit in the long run from becoming a major, or even a minor, manufacturer of bad beer.  

Yes, right

Presidential spokes-woman Karine Jean-Pierre is arguing that President Biden is so vigorous, she and other White House staffers are having trouble keeping up with him.  OK, most likely, that statement is "genuine frontier gibberish", but part of me wants to say "Agreed.  Now if you cannot keep up with a senile old man who routinely trips on the stairs, would you do us all a favor and find employment more suitable to your abilities, like wearing a blue vest at the entrance to Wal-Mart?"

Trans rights, or Megan's Listers' opportunity

A judge in Wyoming recently ruled that a lawsuit against a sorority that had admitted a biological male could not proceed, and now it's coming out that....the male's Tinder account indicates he's interested in women, and he's accused of more or less being a peeping Tom.

I think these womens' best opportunity now is to resign their affiliation with the sorority with a continued warning that the admission of biological males does open the door to biological males....who have no interest in actually "transitioning", but want to be there for other purposes.  If I were the legal counsel for the sorority, I'd be raising **** about the matter for liability.  Yes, it's no fun when you're likely to get sued by people for "rejecting trans rights", but to put things in perspective, the portion of the population that is trans (1/300 by the highest estimates I've seen) is quite a bit less than the portion of males who are, or should be, on Megan's List (~1.7 million of 120 million adult males, or ~1:70).

On M-F trans people in women's sports

An Oberlin College Lacrosse coach has spoken up against "trans" men in women's sports, and not surprisingly, has reaped the whirlwind.  The thing that is most shocking here is that lacrosse is not like swimming, track and field, cross country, or other sports where contact between athletes is rare and inconsequential, but is rather one of those sports, like basketball, soccer,and hockey, where contact between a larger and stronger male athlete and a biologically female athlete is common and can be quite injurious.  When your competitors are coming at you 10% faster than you're used to, when they weigh 20% more and are 10% taller, and when the ball is coming at you 25% faster, bad things happen.

It's really the same reason we don't let Little League teams play major league baseball.  It's about fairness first, yes, but equally importantly, it's about safety.

h/t a heroine of mine, Riley Gaines.

A bit more on Title IX investigations

This article examines the questions of whether Title IX investigations are, or are not, legal proceedings where the accused ought to enjoy certain legal protections, and the clear thing here is that many advocates are playing it both ways--they are not legal proceedings when it would give rights to the accused, but they are legal proceedings when it would allow accusers to pursue further redress of grievances.  So it is, more or less, a quasi-legal game of "Calvinball", where one party changes the rules to his benefit, generally when his pet tiger Hobbes starts winning the game.

More importantly, in my view, is the question of what the result is of a Title IX-induced expulsion, and my best guess is that in most cases, the university to which one might transfer would deny admission, at least for a time, to such a student.  So in a very real way, a Title IX expulsion is going to follow a person around in the same way that a criminal conviction will.  The person will be pushed out of any number of career paths--career paths that tend to pay better than those that do not require a college degree.

And in my view, that means that when a student is accused of some sexual mispropriety, legal rights need to apply.  Yes, it will make the process much more expensive and difficult, but quite frankly, that is a feature, not a bug, of the system.

The state of transition therapies

According to the New York Times and National Review, one hospital performing "gender affirming care" (more accurately, "sex denying care") is finding that there was a pattern of rushing patients into hormone therapies and worse, that 16 patients had "de-transitioned", and that the ER was recording an average of one "transgender" patient per day showing up in a crisis situation.

Now if we believe the "official" notion that only 2% of the transgender reconsider, that would indicate about 800 patients, and count me skeptical of that.  So what we have here is:

• Far more than 2% of patients are reconsidering and detransitioning
• The lack of mental health care for the patients is resulting in ER crises or worse
• Mental health professionals at St. Louis Children's Hospital/Washington University Transgender Center are doing a horrible job of observing and addressing real mental health issues.

The conclusions I draw are that the state of Missouri needs to lengthen the statute of limitations for civil suits for hasty transition procedures to 30 years at least, and then to get a serious investigation into this hospital that ought to result, ahem, in the end of a number of careers in mental health.  Let's not forget; body parts in a specimen/biohazard bag do not reattach, and they do not grow back.  I am not ready to end transitioning altogether as a legal practice, but it seriously needs to be reined in.

A point of honor

In an area close to my heart--my wife and I both graduated from Michigan State in East Lansing, and my wife grew up in Charlotte--a federal district court has ruled that the city of East Lansing was wrong to exclude an orchard near Charlotte from the city farmers' market, and this after an apparent series of court losses on the way there.

It strikes me here that while the city council members have the 1st Amendment right to ignore the 1st Amendment, as public servants, they're pledged to honor it, and the fact that they've wasted many thousands of dollars of public funds on a series of lawsuits that any competent lawyer would tell them was futile ought to lead to their resignation and a commitment to repay those legal fees as they can.  

Of course, any city that drags a farmer and his family through seven years of lawsuits to infringe on their religious rights probably doesn't have much honor to begin with, but one can always dream.

Public service announcement

Nutritionally speaking, dark chocolate has some things going for it.  For a ton of calories--600 calories per 100g--you get about 16% of your RDA for protein, 3-12% of many of your key vitamins, and (!!) pretty much your RDA for iron, copper, magnesium, and manganese.  You also get a third of your RDA (in keeping with the calories, really) of phosphorus and zink, and 7-15% of the RDA for potassium, selenium, and calcium.  Plus, the fats in dark chocolate are mostly unsaturated.

God is good, isn't He?

I might start shopping at Target after all

The newspaper of record says that they're doing a "straight white male pride" collection.   The major thing that stops me from shopping there again is that I own that very grill, that very kind of mayonaisse, several hatchets and flannel shirts, and yes, that specific kind of New Balance shoes.  All I'm missing is the C&W album.

Never mind.  I don't trust Target to carry that kind of stuff without ruining it.

A justifiable RICO investigation?

As I read the latest indictment of former President Trump and Ben Shapiro's column on the same, it strikes me that the accusations and the justification for a prosecution are about the same.  The accusation is about trying to win an election through unfair means, and as it uses a legal theory that is novel (to put it mildly), the accusation itself is....an attempt to win an election through unfair means.

I won't be holding my breath on the counter-prosecution to start, but it would be really amusing if it happened.  And justified.

Watch out for spandex?

Now to be fair, this is not a peer reviewed article that clearly links various additives put into polyester with clear harms to human health, but apparently a lot of workout clothes--especially those for women--are showing up with a lot of endocrine disrupters like bisphenol-A, PFAS, and the like.

The hypothesis is that even small doses do enough "endocrine disruption" to do things like cause (or worsen) endometriosis, reduce sperm counts, and cause other reproductive issues.  So apparently a lot of workout clothes are not just tacky, but also might be harmful to current and future generations.

The irony is that the mantra for my kids in cross country is "cotton kills" due to its ability to absorb water, but in reality, the opposite might be closer to the truth.  Pray that I will not become too smug in my love of natural fiber clothing!

Not just inconvenient, but possibly deadly

Imagine you're on a lonely Minnesota or North Dakota highway in your Tesla when it's 20 below, and you find out the hard way that your batteries won't get you to the next town.  Multiple lawsuits now allege that Tesla's range calculation algorithm is giving needlessly rosy estimates of available range until battery capacity is well below 50%.

Now I am not an expert on how to calculate the available charge in a battery, but it strikes me that this is very similar to the age old problem of a gas guage not working well--except you're starting, when it's 20 below, with 150 miles of range instead of 300 or 500.  The government's desire to replace our real car fleet with electrics seems to be running aground on the hard shores of chemistry and physics.

That's a pretty high error rate

The linked article from National Review is a good summary of where the American Academy of Pediatrics is going regarding transgender care, and one of the kickers is that current rates of de-transition are 10-30%.  

Writing as a guy who's worked in statistics and quality for a quarter century, suffice it to say that if I had a process with that rate of Type 1/alpha error, we'd be having daily meetings to get the problem fixed.  And in this case, for those whose bodies have been damaged by hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery, there is no fix.

Doctors, remember that line from Hippocrates; "First, do no harm."  And legislatures, let's remove the statute of limitations for civil actions against those who hastily transition people.  It's a lifelong effect, so it should be a lifelong liability on the part of those doing the procedures.

Missing the point a bit

The University of Michigan has announced that they will have two new scoreboards at the "Big House" that are "120% larger" than the previous ones.  Silly me, I thought that if I wanted to watch a game on TV, I could stay home, eat my own food, and save a bundle of money.  Yes, in a stadium as big as Ann Arbor's, the players "are smaller" due to the sheer size of the edifice--you can be something like 500 feet from the action on the field--but if being super close to the action is your cup of tea, maybe consider a game on a smaller court like tennis, hockey, or basketball?

Unsung heroes vs. "we've got this"

As I contemplete the tragedy that is (was?) the COVID epidemic, I am reminded of, several years ago, some unsung heroes when Ebola came to visit in Liberia, especially inasmuch as the Firestone plantation (where much of the world's natural rubber is grown) is concerned.

Now the heroes of which I write today didn't take heroic measures to combat Ebola.  They didn't come up with new therapies to combat it, didn't derive spectacular models to figure out what was going to happen mathematically, and they didn't invent new medicines.  What they did was far more profound and powerful.

Who were they?  They were the staffs of the chief hospitals that Ed Garcia, then the chief manager of the Firestone Plantation, contacted when he realized that workers were coming down with arguably one of the scariest infectious diseases out there.

What did they do?  Simple; they told Firestone/Bridgestone that they had no clue whatsoever what to do, forcing them to set up their own hospital--isolated from the healthy--and to use the best equipment they had--hazmat suits--to reduce the biohazard.  They still lost a number of people to that horrible disease, but the epidemic was stopped.

Contrast that with the U.S. model with COVID, where hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes more or less said "we've got this"--and in doing so, destroyed any pretense of a quarantine, exposing millions to the disease who were extremely vulnerable to it.  

If we had instead followed the Firestone example, we would have set up separate clinics where sufferers would have gone until they were very sure that they were no longer infectious. They would have replaced face masks with real hazmat gear, would have implemented laminar (clean room) flow to reduce viral load in the air, and would have had intensive opportunity for figuring out which antiviral therapies (yes, ivermectin and the like) were most effective.

So if you're in a case where you've been asked to do something you're not quite sure you can do, don't be afraid to say "that's beyond my ability right now."  Liberian medical authorities did exactly that, and their country is largely Ebola-free as a result.  Hail to these heroes!

This leaves some questions

An 87 year old doctor has run over a protester at the abortion clinic where he works (or owns).  This leads to a number of questions for me, including:

• Why is an 87 year old still practicing?  I commented earlier on how abortion cannot pay the bills, and a doctor still practicing at age 87 seems to be consistent with that.
• Or is this particular individual just so happy to be committing prenatal infanticide, he doesn't want to give it up?  It's better for him than world travel, spoiling the great-grandchildren, and the like?
• Or have the ladies figured out that a man who destroys what makes women, women, for a living isn't their cup of tea?  Warren Hern once bemoaned that fact.
• And if I were a client, and realized my doctor was 87, I don't believe I'd trust him to remove a hangnail, let alone perform any surgery.  Vision, hand strength, and reflexes matter in that business.
• Why on earth is the accused's name being withheld?  This isn't a sexual assault case.
• Finally, I wonder whether this was intentional, or just....an 87 year old driver who shouldn't be behind the wheel anymore, let alone performing medical procedures.

Now granted, my grandmothers lived until ages 96 and 101.   One grandfather until almost 89.  I know about people who are capable long past age 65, but still...

Public service announcement; the low bar squat.

Various media outlets have covered the tragic death of "fitness influencer" Justin Vicky, who apparently died of a broken neck after failing to come up in a high bar squat.  Unfortunately, the articles state that the squat is somehow uniquely dangerous, and reality is that it does not have to be.

You see, there are two main kinds of back squat; most novice lifters gravitate towards putting the bar on top of the trapezius/shoulders in a "high bar squat", and that's what Mr. Vicky did.  However, an awful lot of elite powerlifters favor what is called the "low bar squat", where the bar is actually placed on the back of the scapulae, just beneath a ridge of bone called the "spine".  In this article about championship powerlifting, notice that every.single.lifter is using the low bar squat.

There's a reason for that; if the bar is placed on the scapulae, instead of on top of the shoulders, there can be no major stress on the neck because the bar never goes on the neck in the first place.  That's what killed Mr. Vicky, who was clearly using a high bar technique.  Another thing that contributed to Mr. Vicky's death is that he had neither a cage nor adequate spotters to protect him.  Either one would have saved his life.

Side note; according to Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strength, the lift that is most likely to be injurious or lethal is actually the bench press, for the obvious reason that the bar can actually fall onto one's chest or neck.  Again, it won't kill you to use a bit of a "cage" that will catch the bar before your chest or neck is crushed, or to have good spotters to help you out of trouble.

Pure artistic genius?

I just visited an online exhibit for Hunter Biden's artwork, and somehow I am reminded of the Andy Griffith "Otis the Artist" episode.  As I look at Biden's artwork, it is an attempt at modern art, and appears technically at least semi-competent (on a par with what I've seen in university student art galleries), but as far as I can tell, it completely lacks meaning.

And as such, it's no surprise to find that at least one of the buyers of his art has landed a plum position due to the approval of Hunter's dad.  It's time for Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate this. Or, rather, long past time.

More great moments with electric vehicles

Another cargo ship has apparently been set on fire by an electric car in its hold.   Don't you want one in your garage?  

Yeah, me either.  I am guessing that what's at hand here is salt air and fully charged Lithium-ion batteries causing a short, discharging an immense amount of energy in a short amount of time.  Given that I live in an area where salt is put on the roads to remove snow and ice, I'm not terribly fond of the idea of putting such a vehicle in the same building where my loved ones live and sleep.

If you'd told me as a young pup--having just learned that half a cup of gasoline is equivalent to a stick of dynamite in explosive power--that I'd be choosing to have two fuel bombs in my garage to avoid having rechargeable batteries there--I'd have thought you were nuts.  But here we are.

Um, maybe....

Fox has an article today suggesting--OK, original source is a tabloid, so keep that in mind--that the recent split of Sofia Vergara and soon-to-be ex-husband Joe Manganiello has to do with his desire for children, a desire not shared by Ms. Vergara.  OK, fair enough, but what strikes me is that if it's a super important thing to have children....maybe marrying a woman who was already 43 wasn't the brightest idea?

In moments of similar genius, another couple features a woman who "froze her eggs" to allow pregnancy in her mid forties--as her 58 year old husband (with whom she does not live) does not want children.  Again, if it's that important to have children, maybe....get married a bit earlier to someone who won't be 80 by the time the kid graduates from college?

It seems that all too often today, we're willing to forget little basics like "biology".  We need to learn that salaries and relationships are negotiable, but fertility and life expectancy are not.

More silliness

The Biden administration wants to effectively mandate heat pump water heaters.  The trouble with this is twofold.  First, the power added efficiency of the power plants that fuel them is about 35%, so they're really not much more efficient than natural gas.  Second, heat pumps don't work well below 20F.  Might not be an issue in Florida, but north of the Mason-Dixon, that's a problem, especially since the desireability of a hot shower goes up exponentially as the mercury drops.  

Tell me why you should go to jail

Thankfully, they've apologized, but it's still telling that a BBC reporter actually asked a question about what the Moroccan women's football team does with regards to any homosexual players they might have.  You would figure that an international reporter familiar with Moroccan law would know better than to ask such a question basically amounting to "tell me why you should go to jail", but apparently that level of thinking escapes today's journalists, who apparently have not even attained the education of a college dropout (Ernie Pyle) or teaching certificate holder (my great uncle, Kenneth Dixon).

Invest in laxatives?

A new study has correlated dementia onset with the frequency of bowel movements.  Now granted, there's a lot between "frequency of bowel movements" and clearly actionable therapies and lifestyle changes, but it is yet another hint that a bit of fiber will do you good.

On the trans movement and beauty pageants

I must confess that at a certain level, I am somewhat ambivalent about the current trend of transsexual beauty pageant winners.  Yes, I giggle when Miss Universe Netherlands is compared to the winner of the Kentucky Derby, and somehow I remember the scary part of Carlo Collodi's masterpiece in such cases, but all in all, who wins beauty pageants really doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me.  More or less, Def Leppard's song Photograph, and Van Halen's song I'll Wait, come to mind at the prospect of watching dozens of women strut across the stage in various forms of attire, singing Veggie Tales' song Puppies for the talent competition.  I think I've got a book to read....

But that noted, a quick comparison to athletics comes to mind.   I've got four objections to men in women's athletics, including innate male advantages that go beyond just testosterone, the likelihood that "Megan's List" members would find themselves in the dressing rooms, injuries due to competition, and finally the reality that spectators are paying to watch women compete, and won't show up if a large portion of the competitors aren't....feminine.

All in all, though, male features don't help much in a beauty pageant, injuries are rare, and non-participants really can't get into the dressing rooms, so we're really down to "will people watch?".  And although some "trans" contestants do pretty well imitating femininity, Marvin Gaye's song comes to mind.  There really ain't nothing like the real thing, and if one wanted to kill off pageants altogether, it's hard to come up with a more effective method than filling the stage with imitations of femininity.  It'll be interesting to see what happens with Miss Universe TV ratings as spots are filled by people who are not women.  

My guess is that it would make New Coke, the Bug Light fiasco, and Target's Pride fiasco look positively mild in comparison.  

Verdict: true

The newspaper of record reports that the Hollywood strike has entered its third month, enabling America to realize that there's really not much worthwhile coming out of there.  On my part, I must confess that I really didn't even know that the writers were on strike.  

Hopefully the writers are using their time off to brush up on "plot" and "character development", and thus reduce Hollyweird's dependence on special effects and gratuitous immodesty/nudity.  But I am probably dreaming, and I'll just have to do what I've been doing for years; watch old movies after consulting IMDB.

Yup

The Manhattan Institute has released a report noting exactly what I've been saying for about a decade; the economic and environmental impacts of electric cars are overstated to even negative.  There are a lot of great ways of protecting the environment, starting with encouraging two parent families (where only one works) and getting people to purchase newer, more efficient vehicles.  Cutting transit wouldn't hurt, either, as its average passenger miles per gallon resembles little so much as every rider in a Suburban.  

But electric cars?  Nice gimmick and spectacular acceleration due to a flat torque curve, but not practical anywhere with long gaps between charging stations, for long drives, or for use in winter north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Plus, no chance of the fun and joy of a manual transmission with an electric.  Blah.

Trying to figure this one out

Judge Karin Immergut in Oregon--a Trump appointee believe it or not--has upheld Oregon's ban on large capacity magazines because, she says, "they are not commonly used on self-defense."

This comes as news to me, because a lot of the most popular self-defense pistols, like many Glocks, not to mention AR platform rifles which sell in the millions, have 15 to 30 round magazines.  So to argue that the millions of carry permit holders and people with AR platform rifles don't have these..."for self-defense".....just boggles the mind.

Hope for the political process?

A political event for Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. degenerated into "screaming and polemic farting.".  Yes, sounds disgusting, and it is, but it strikes me that this could be a big step up for politics in our country, a partial return to the dignity that our governmental processes used to have.  And in that light, I believe I've got video of the meeting itself:

What is masculinity, and what is femininity?

In my earlier post regarding the trans debate and the likelihood that doctors might make tragically wrong decisions, I received the following comment from Hearthie:

I like your thoughts in general, but I blame it on a list of factors:

1.  It is historically true that some percentage of girls freaks out completely and wants to refuse to become women during puberty.  Old fiction is rife with this as a trope.  These girls usually grow up to be strong-minded women with families - not lesbians.  They just didn't want the changes (and the responsibilities) that womanhood brings.  So, that's normal.

2.  But since we've redefined womanhood as about as deep and lipstick and heels, now we think you can put it on or off like a shirt.  It's a performance, not a reality.

3.  Which rot got solidly set in when we decided that "male" was the way to be in society.  When feminism said "we don't want to be strong women with brains, we want to be men in heels, so uh....we think women could really just be men in heels.

Now--just as it was with the original post--it's certainly more complicated than that, but it strikes me that this is almost certainly part of the issue.  If you're not stereotypically male or female--heels and lipstick for women, bulging muscles and chugging beer for men--then you're probably far more likely to confuse "I'm a person who doesn't fit in with the dominant stereotypes" with "I was born with the wrong body parts".  Many are noting these days that autistic people are far more likely to show up in the ranks of "trans" people, and it's not hard to notice that autistic people are...people who do not fit the dominant stereotypes.

Read Hearthie's full comment for more.  If there is something to this, we can affirm, again, that today's mental health establishment can do a lot better than it is currently doing for gender dysphoria. As the Hippocratic oath begins, 

First, do no harm.

Almost the right move?

A Florida sheriff, faced with a spate of deaths because parents didn't get their children out of the water during stormy "double red flag"  (beach closed to swimming) conditions, is assessing $500 fines on bereaved parents who have lost their children to drowning.

OK, I get the motivation, but it strikes me that the bereaved parents have (I hope) already lost something too precious to them for words, so the extra $500 fine seems like a bit of "piling on".  That noted, I would be entirely in favor of fining non-bereaved parents when they fail to get their children out of the water, or adults who fail to vacate.  Lifeguards do, after all, occasionally get injured or killed rescuing foolish swimmers, and EMTs note that it's traumatic to pull a needlessly dead body out of the water.  (an EMT friend of mine went on disability because of PTSD this way)

And I don't know exactly what's going on--perhaps it has something to do with hyperbolic responses to COVID--but it troubles me that many people seem to have no grasp of likely consequences today.  The notion "rescue workers aren't putting these signs up for their health" seems to escape too many people today.

Is the dementia getting worse?

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0  (6-3, oops) that Biden's student loan forgiveness plan was un-Constitutional, he responds by blaming Republicans.  Say what?  I seem to remember that Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown-Jackson were all appointed by Democrats.  I seem to remember that the Supreme Court is theoretically apolitical.

So either Biden is playing politics, or his dementia is getting far worse.  OK, most likely is that it's just politics, but you can never be too sure...Mr. President, I'm going to help you out here.  Your executive order was ruled un-Constitutional because....it's un-Constitutional, period.  Take a hint.

An experience relevant to the "trans" debate

While walking the dogs this morning, I realized that an experience I'd had when I was about thirteen might be relevant to the debate over whether minors ought to be allowed to take "transition" drugs and have "transition" surgeries.  

You see, I was having trouble coping--my parents' marriage was blowing up at the time--and thus they decided to take me to the local mental health group to see what they could do.  So we went, and I got interviewed about life goals, and I had a lot of fun having "quarter staff" battles with another young man--we used vinyl covered foam, not sticks of oak or yew, by the way--and then one day, the counselor had a revelation that he shared with me and my parents.

My difficulty was obviously that I was feeling guilty about, ahem, "self-pleasuring", and once I overcame that guilt, my psychological problems would be greatly eased.  Now the fun thing there was that not only was I not performing that particular act, but the counselor also used the technical term, which I didn't understand in the least.  But I smiled and nodded and we went on with life.

It was a mistake on his part, and I to this day do not know whether he ever clued in that a real issue was simply that my parents weren't getting along, and probably also that, as an introvert, I probably show some signs of being on or adjacent to the autistic spectrum.  It could be that he knew darned well what the real issues were, but social rules prevented him from saying that straight up, so he did the next best thing.

But that noted, in the early 1980s, "self-pleasuring guilt" was a very popular theme in mental health, and hence when a counselor couldn't figure out what else was wrong in talk therapy, that diagnosis was used a disproportionate amount of the time.

Fast forward to today, and the popular diagnosis is "gender dysphoria".  So I contemplate the fact that as a somewhat socially maladroit teenager who might be placed "on the spectrum", the "diagnosis du jour" today could well have had some disastrous results.

This is the same kind of thing that I discussed back in 2015 with regards to the use of antidepressants, where a growing body of evidence was indicating that they were being over-prescribed, with, again, disastrous results.  It's hard to see one's own weaknesses, but that's part of the gig when you're getting the big bucks in medicine, I think.

Sad news, or great news.

....but it's been coming for a while.  National Geographic Magazine has laid off its staff writers, which of course means that the eminent yellow magazine is going to have more than a little bit of trouble going forward.

Or perhaps, it can go back to what it used to be.  I'm a collector of old National Geographics, going all the way back into the 1920s, and there was an amateur, "clubby" feel about the magazine--and in doing so, what was found was that these amateurs--generally university graduates from the upper classes--would get into places that a lot of professionals could not.  They also had the knack for taking complex issues and writing about them in such a way that readers didn't necessarily know their biases--really the same way a lot of journalists used to do in general.

And then in the late 1990s, I noticed that this mood was gone.  Replacing this was a general mood "we are going to tell you what to believe", really the same kind of thing that plagues journalism everywhere, the reason that Newsweak sold for $1 (and a bargain at a few bucks less) a while back.

So I was at first sad at this news, but if they play their cards right--re-accessing the wealth of supporters they had a century ago and more--they might be more than readable again.

Oh, this is just too good

Senator John Tester--D- Montana--had his staff request that pictures of the Senator going to the bathroom be kept from the public.  The best part of it is that Tester was using--I am not making this up--a pea field for the purpose.

Well, I guess it would be, wouldn't it?

A sacrifice I'm willing to make

Apparently, Russia is accusing Ukraine of using U.S. mosquitoes to attack their soldiers.  I'm sure that I'm speaking for a lot of my  neighbors and fellow citizens when I say that I'd be glad if we could send a huge portion of 'em to fight Putin.

Paging George Orwell.....

It appears that Johns Hopkins University, in their LGBTQ... documentation, is referring to "women" as "non-men".  Um, yes, women are not men, but I believe George Orwell said something to us about how it was "doubleplusungood" to replace perfectly good words via "Newspeak".

Progressives; again, 1984 was a warning, not a policy recommendation!

Total brilliance....

Somehow I am not surprised that the new Miss San Francisco is transgender, but one thing that I wonder about is how the contestant gets around the old rules that you couldn't have plastic surgery and compete.

Just sayin'.  

It used to be that beauty pageants would set boys' hearts a-fluttering, dreaming of what they might some day wake up next to.  These days, they're going to need to wonder, per Meghan Trainor's All About the Bass, whether that <redacted> is real.

Well said, Elon

I'm not a huge fan of his cars, but Elon Musk gets it exactly right regarding the indictment of Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.  When it's Hilliary Clinton or Joe Biden, there are no grand juries convened, no searches, no subpoenas, or any such thing.  When it's Trump, no holds are barred.

I don't excuse Trump for what he did, as apparently he more or less admitted that he was retaining documents and daring the DOJ/etc., to obtain them.  But the simple fact is that, by storing documents on an unsecured server and behind a Corvette, Hilliary and Slow Joe posed the risk of much more damage to national security than Trump did by having secured documents in Mar-a-Lago.  If the DOJ can't equitably enforce the law, maybe they need to be replaced by someone who will.

Well, yes

I have to wonder if it's not some kind of setup, but Fox tells us about a progressive woman who wants a man to pay for the first date, open doors, and the like, and is willing to care for and provide for his wife, and is somehow surprised that most men she meets that meets that description are politically conservative.

Yes, it's generally a package deal, and perhaps we ought to ask ourselves why progressive men too often do not want to show these courtesies.  Maybe....for all their progressive virtue-signaling, these men are all about taking advantage of the women they "date" or "hook up" with.

And pray for this woman, as her praise of AA suggests that she's had a rough go of it in life.  Perhaps....at the hands, in part, of some of those "progressive" men.

Paging Sir Walter Scott

Cambridge's department of Anglo-Saxon history decides there is no such thing.  Somehow I'm betting that they're not giving up their tenured positions and ivory tower offices after having confessed to academic fraud for the duration of their academic careers.

Real efficiency of electric trucks

The all-electric F150 has an overall realistic range of 278 miles, which decreases to 210 miles with a 1400 lb load.  Given that it has a 170kW-H battery that most likely weighs in over a ton of weight, what we're saying is that the vehicle is really, really badly designed.

To draw a picture, burning a kG of coal releases about 22MJ of energy, sufficient with 35% efficiency to generate about two kW-H of energy.  It's about 60% carbon, so what we've got is about 1.2kG of carbon dioxide emitted per kW-H, or about 200kG of carbon dioxide emitted per charge.

In contrast, my 1997 GMC (5.7 l V-8, 5 speed manual) has gotten 15mpg with about the same load, which means in that same 210 miles, I'd burn 14 gallons of gasoline and produce 120kG of carbon dioxide.  Even a one ton pickup will, at ~10mpg, burn only 21 gallons and produce only 180kG of carbon dioxide.

Yes, you read it here.  My 26 year old truck with 265,000 miles is more efficient than an electric F150 in terms of carbon emissions as the truck will typically be charged--with coal.  The numbers are better with natural gas generation--about 100kG of carbon dioxide per charge--but even that ignores the ~60,000 lbs of carbon dioxide emissions to make the battery (my estimate).  

Put the electric F150 against a gas powered F150 from today, and the numbers are not even close.  Or, for that matter, against my 2014 GMC Acadia under the same load.  And so I've got to wonder; is the EPA even working these numbers to figure out how bad of an environmental disaster we have on our hands with electric vehicles?

Too true

From the newspaper of record, apparently some Lululemon staffers have been fired for refusing to help criminals loot their store, and executives note that all their products are overpriced crap, nothing worth dying for.

OK, apparently the real reason is that store staffers actually confronted the thieves, and executives are taking the stance that they don't want to be sued because their workers are being killed, so I actually somewhat understand.  But that said, it's a sad world where management fires people because they object to the store being looted.

It's an even sadder world when the guys robbing Lulemon are....male, and apparently were intimidated by a woman in pink tights telling them to get out.  Perhaps part of the sentence for them (they've been caught) is to show the video to the whole prison when they're incarcerated?

And maybe they can wear some of the the tights they stole as their prison uniform--odds are some of them were orange or striped, no?  Hopefully these are from a batch that didn't have such thin fabric that everything underneath is visible.

Happy Pride Month!

You might be surprised that I wrote that, but I am just figuring that in our society today, we ought to do a better job celebrating the seven deadly sins.  So OK, June is Pride Month, so obviously February will be Lust Month, December will be Greed Month, January will be Envy Month (at the envy for other people's Christmas presents), November will be Gluttony Month, July will be Sloth Month, and April (home of Tax Day) will be wrath month.

Not quite sure why everybody would want to celebrate the seven deadly sins, but somehow it seems appropriate in our culture today.

OK, good start....

....but I would dare suggest that a professor who vandalizes student displays and then threatens reporters with a machete ought to be not simply fired, but also prosecuted.  Or is threatening someone with a deadly weapon not a crime in Gotham City anymore?

Kudos to the reporter, by the way, for how he kept his cool.  I don't know that I could have done the same in that situation, and I have to admit that I wondered "does this kind of thing happen so often in New York City that he's gotten used to it?".  I must also note that, as a possible juror, I'd not be willing to convict someone who beat the living snot out of someone who waved a machete at his neck.

What this blog really is

According to Google Bard, this humble blog is a nonexistent bakery with a nonexistent owner and nonexistent, but enthusiastic, reviews from presumably nonexistent customers.

 Bike Bubba's Boulangerie is a bakery in San Francisco, California that specializes in sourdough bread. The bakery was founded in 2012 by Bubba Baker, a former professional cyclist. Baker's passion for cycling and baking led him to open the bakery, which is located in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Bike Bubba's Boulangerie uses traditional methods to make its sourdough bread. The bread is fermented for 24 hours, which gives it its signature sour flavor. The bakery also uses locally-sourced ingredients, whenever possible.

In addition to sourdough bread, Bike Bubba's Boulangerie also offers a variety of other baked goods, including pastries, cookies, and cakes. The bakery also has a coffee bar, where customers can enjoy a cup of coffee with their pastries.

Bike Bubba's Boulangerie is a popular spot for both locals and tourists. The bakery is known for its delicious bread and friendly service. If you're looking for a great place to get a cup of coffee and a pastry, Bike Bubba's Boulangerie is the perfect spot.

Here are some reviews from Google Maps:

• "This place is amazing! The bread is so fresh and delicious, and the service is always friendly. I highly recommend it!" - Sarah J.
• "I love Bike Bubba's! The sourdough bread is my favorite, and the pastries are always so good. I also love that they use locally-sourced ingredients." - John D.
• "This is my new favorite bakery! The bread is incredible, and the coffee is great too. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a delicious and affordable breakfast or lunch option." - Jessica S.

OK, I enjoy making sourdough bread, and I do slow rise in the fridge, and I even paid for my vegetables one summer by selling it at the local farmer's market, but suffice it to say that I think AI needs a little bit of work.

A look at the FBI

....and let's just say the old lady needs a serious makeover.  The news is that two whistleblowers had their security clearances revoked after revealing  politicization of FBI investigations, and the FBI's response is....more or less that their security clearances were revoked not because they talked to Congress (an act protected by law), but rather because one "refused to participate in the execution of a court authorized, search and arrest of a criminal subject", and because another "espoused alternative theories" about the January 6 investigations.

In other words, the FBI's defense of their actions....corroborates the testimony of the whistleblowers.  More or less, they weren't going along with the preferred narrative, so the FBI shunted them off to the side.

One indication...

.....of how the war in Ukraine is going for Russia is the massive show of armaments in the Moscow Victory Day parade; a single WWII era T-34 was the representative of Russian armored forces. 

No word yet on when that tank is going to be sent to the front, or whether it will be hit with a Javelin, or whether Ukraine will request vintage Bazookas to confront this tank in a historically appropriate way.  Either way, it seems that there is something to the Russian casualty numbers being reported by Ukraine.

Putin delenda est!

How some are using the transfer portal

And this hits home, because I got my master's degree in Boulder.  "Neon Deon" Sanders has pushed 18 players into the transfer portal  because they didn't fit his model for football, and while I understand that to a degree--I was cut from the track team at MSU because I wasn't good enough--it also strikes me that I didn't have to leave Michigan State because I was no longer running, and I didn't have to re-do key classes to get my degree like these guys likely will.

Given the trouble most former college football players have--having learned Cadillac tastes while the degrees they got (if any) gave them a decidedly Chevrolet budget, all while nursing lingering injuries from the game--there is something here that is just appalling.  

It's not the only way it can be used--I've seen a number of players from Michigan use the transfer portal as a way to get graduate degrees at other schools while freeing up roster/scholarship spots at Michigan for more gifted athletes--but I think there's a point where we need to start asking coaches like "Neon Deon" what his team is primarily there for.  

Pro tip; it doesn't happen at Folsom Field.  Go Big Red!