The Russian re-Sovietization plan appears to be working too well

I am one who sees the recent history of Russia as, more or less, Vladimir Putin's project to re-Sovietize Russia and (if he can get away with it) the entire region.  Particular points of interest are Putin's description of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 as a "catastrophe", his utter lack of remorse for his assistance of the Stasi in East Germany, the incredible prevalence of drug use in Russian Olympic teams, the apparent murder of dissidents and journalists with KGB methods (plutonium, Novichok, throwing from windows), and of course an expansionistic foreign policy that seeks to force neighboring nations into submission with tactics that can only be charitably described as "terroristic."   

And now, another couple of points of reference are that Russian winter crops (rye, winter wheat, etc..) are failing, just like in Soviet days, and also significantly, the Russian rate of AIDS deaths greatly exceeds that of the United States.

The latter bit may seem counterintiutive, but Mr. Putin is not in reality the traditionalist he makes himself out to be, and calls for a higher birth rate appear to be made outside the bounds of marriage.  More or less, "if you're a patriot, get those eggs fertilized by whatever means necessary", and the ugly reality is that this is a very effective way to spread disease.  It is, more or less, the same thing that the old Soviets called for in the 1920s and 1930s as formerly robust birth rates in the more prosperous Tsarist era gave way to Soviet depression.

On a side note, I would suggest that the barbarism of Russian (and formerly, Soviet) armed forces may have a lot to do with the fact that divorce rates (and the rate of absentee fathers) were sky-high.

And hopefully our government leaders will recognize the real significance of what is going on here.  It may well be that Putin will exhaust the demographics of Russia before he can get very far, but that's not something that I want to be counting on.

Update: Putin is now blaming Russian consumers and farmers for high food prices.  Apparently the five year plan to have enough meat and butter is not working out, just like the good old Soviet days.  

A lost opportunity

I am not the world's biggest fan of Meghan Trainor, though I must confess that I do in fact appreciate her love of doing more complex lyrics and harmonies than is typical in contemporary music, but it saddens me to hear of her plastic surgery troubles--apparently a face that will not move well after too much Botox, a planned breast surgery, and who knows what else?  

It reminds me of one of the songs that made her famous, All About That Bass, her natural and beautiful smile, and her insistence that her decidedly non-size-2 body was indeed beautiful.  And while I had reservations about the song's obvious feminism and "body positivity",  the overall notion that a woman could be a little bigger and still be seen as beautiful is well taken, and it's sad to see that, in a way, Ms. Trainor has "fallen off the wagon."

And so I pray for her to come back on that wagon with all of us other imperfectly beautiful people.  Plenty of room and fellowship for us all.

Maybe a second career change is in order

When "The View" lawyers forced former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin to publicly retract things she had said because they were libelous, it was par for the course for journalists, but we could at least rejoice that she was no longer a prosecutor.  Now, she's claimed, apparently, that President-elect Trump never discussed the price of eggs as a reason to vote against Biden surrogate Kamala Harris. 

So we might note that, libel being a very real issue among journalists, that Hostin ought to be pursuing yet another set of opportunities.  Precisely what profession would be amenable to Hostin's disdain for the truth escapes me, though, so perhaps we ought to appeal to Hostin's Catholicism and remind her of Exodus 20:16.  As Thomas Sowell notes, each person is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own set of facts, and Hostin desperately needs to learn this.

That noted, a "Catholicism" that allows one to support Kamala Harris and abortion on demand--not to mention being a serial fabricator who ranks up with the worst stereotypes of President-elect Trump, but in reality--might not be the firmest bulwark for the truth.

Which leads me to a very sobering reality; Hostin previously got awards for her work prosecuting child sex crimes.  While I commend those who do so ethically, as it's a tremendously difficult and traumatic thing to do, Hostin's current situation as a fabulist par excellence suggests that a good look at her cases by a group like the Innocence Project might be wise.

Time to fire some federal bureaucrats

A Fox News article says that many federal bureaucrats are experiencing "PTSD" due to the return of Donald Trump to the White House.   Apparently those same highly skilled, highly paid federal employees are unclear on the concept that PTSD refers to post traumatic stress disorder, meaning that they cannot be experiencing PTSD due to things which have not occurred yet.

Yeah, I'm thinking that their level of thinking suggests they should "leave to pursue new opportunities".  

Um, what?

The New Zealand Navy apparently does not know what led to the sinking of their research ship on a coral reef, but they are sure it's not the captain's fault. 

You know, that's perilously close, in my view, to flat out admitting that the captain was steering the ship and ignored the charts that clearly said that at low tide, there was no chance that ship was going to make it across that particular reef, along with "ignoring the $100 depth finder that pretty much every fisherman in Minnesota owns that would have told her it was getting really shallow."  And it's also very close to admitting "Well, her navigation scores weren't up to par, but we gave her the nod because, like Karine Jean-Pierre, she's a homosexual female."

Honestly, would it kill people in New Zealand to say "we're going to hold off on assigning, or denying, blame until the investigation is complete."?  What they're saying by doing otherwise is really incriminating.

More on trans athletes and DSD

One of the key questions regarding the participation of trans and "intersex" athletes, the latter being predominantly 5-alpha reductase 2 deficiency, in women's sport is the question of what happens to the sport overall.  

A key issue here is that if you map out athletic performance by sex, what we'll find is that it takes far fewer "two sigma" athletes to find a "three sigma" athlete or "four sigma athlete" than it does to find a "five sigma" or "six sigma" athlete among a population of four sigma athletes.  To use a current example, if Olympic boxing does not reinstate sex testing--the famous "cheek swab" endorsed by Olympic athletes like Nancy Hogshead--national sports authorities are going to seek out trans and DSD males (XY) and make them into Olympic "womens'" boxers and such.

If--as is the case--a top high school male athlete (2 sigma) performs at about the same level as a top female Olympic athlete (say 3.6 sigma), we would have to find only about 17 top male high school athletes to find a D1 male athlete ability (3 sigma), and only about 100 top male high school athletes to get an athlete with Olympic male abilities.

The upshot of this is that as national sports authorities realize they can win by sorting through trans and DSD males to find top "female" Olympians, it won't likely take long before they find someone who's performing like a top college athlete (sort through 850 people) or Olympian (sort through 5000 people) among the DSD and trans males.  

Put bluntly, it doesn't take sorting through that many DSD or trans athletes to find someone who will box not like Imane Khelif versus Angela Carini, but rather Sugar Ray Leonard.  

A lesson for life

        In reading the book of Jeremiah, specifically chapters 27-29 this morning, I noticed that one could almost boil down his message to "You can do this the easy way, or you can do it the hard way, but the outcome will be your exile in Babylon."  It strikes me as applicable in any number of areas; there are times when you can do things the easy way, or the hard way, but the end result--aside from the trouble of going through the process--will be about the same.

On Harris and the filibuster

Further cementing her position as a "lawyer where nobody can quite figure out how she passed the bar", Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed an end of the filibuster "just for abortion rights."  She figures she can get 50 Senators plus a Vice President to vote for a federal law protecting abortion.

Beyond the reality that ending the filibuster in any number of areas increases the temptation to do so in others--making things easy is a genuine temptation for any legislator--you have the reality that the reversal of Roe is a return of abortion law to the states, and hence a federal law that would override state laws prohibiting certain aspects of abortion would run into the exact same Constitutional issue that led to the overturning of Roe.  It is the 10th Amendment, noting that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved by the states.

Really, by the logic Harris uses, the federal government could produce a law that would legalize all murder.  Hopefully we have jurists who are ethical and smart enough to stand against these stands of Harris that ought to have kept her off the bar. 

Say what?

Gun control groups, including the Brady Center, Giffords, and others, are apparently making the claim  in a Supreme Court case involving the state of Tennessee that somehow, making children transgender will reduce gun violence.

This, in a case involving the state that had Audrey Hale, transgender youth, shoot up an elementary school--and four months prior to the law taking effect?   Seems there is a wee little problem with their logic, to put it mildly.  Tennessee did indeed have a school shooting by someone who considered herself transgender in a time when reassignment procedures were legal in Tennessee.  (OK, she was 28, too, so she still had access to these procedures if she'd wanted them...)

I guess there probably is some reality to the notion that if you castrate a lot of boys, sooner or later you're bound to drop testosterone in one boy that will decide not to shoot up his school because of reduced aggression, but with about 40 school shootings per year, you're talking about castrating 50,000 young men for every school shooting prevented.  Seems like just a bit of overkill!

Plus, those who watch the "trans mafia" realize that some pretty vicious aggression from trans advocates is quite routine.  I'm not quite sure we can assume--as our ancestors in the 19th century did--that removal of male attributes will reduce male aggression.

More on the stinky weasels

Apparently Wolverine cheater-in-chief Connor "Did I really promise not to lie, cheat or steal at Navy?" Stallions has produced a documentary telling "his side" of the story, in which he's not apologetic at all, and just as the NCAA has served a notice of level 1 allegations with a side dish of "repeat offender" for their recruiting violations.

If I were a born Buckeye who became a Spartan by the grace of God (which I am) who wanted to get the Wolverines banned from football altogether for a few years, I don't know what I would do differently.  

Now let's do some math

With regards to the suspected condition of Caster Semenya and other Olympic athletes whose...crotches appear female, but their athletic performance appears to be male...one of the likely causes is something called "5 alpha reductase 2 deficiency".    Interestingly, the list of "intersex" conditions does not list a prevalence, but the other comments about it being a recessive genetic trait, and actual names given to the condition in the Dominican Republic, Turkey, and Papua New Guinea suggest that what's going on is good old fashioned inbreeding--cue "Dueling Banjos", I guess.  

And knowing a touch about what leads to inbreeding--poverty and social isolation--one would infer that as sports opportunities (and wealth) increase, the conditions for this syndrome will decrease.  So for the sake of young people being born, the world's increasing wealth is a boon.

But if we assume that about one in one hundred thousand live births has this, we would infer that worldwide, there are about 40,000 people with this condition, of which about 5000 are of the ages that would translate to Olympic athletic opportunities.  If we assume that 90% of those afflicted never get a chance to participate, we find that maybe 500 would be athletes, of which maybe 2% (two sigma) would be at the level of "good high school male".  This seems to correspond reasonably well with the few athletes that are clearly "male presenting sort of as female".

The thing that scares me, though, is the thought that some people with this disorder would find themselves at the three sigma (0.135%, D1 athlete) or four sigma (Olympic men's level, 0.003%) ability level, and in any sport that involves contact or combat, the size and strength disparity would go from "dangerous" to "lethal"--think Imane Khalif being replaced by Canelo Alvarez.

As far as I can tell, there is a marginal chance of an occasional D1 level athlete, but the Olympic man presenting as sort of female will be a black swan event unless there is a large mutation that greatly increases the number of people with this disorder, or something like that.  

So I would infer that the big hazard in Olympic sport is not intersex conditions, but rather "trans" athletes using the maximum allowance available for available testosterone.  That said, I still think it's time to bring back the cheek swab and take drug testing seriously.  Crazier things have happened than an XY 5 alpha reductase 2 deficient Canelo Alvarez, after all, and we shouldn't be expecting women athletes to die because we're unwilling to act on the fact that XY is, statistically speaking, bigger and stronger than XX.

Now there's some progress

Former Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh has been banned from NCAA coaching for four years,  and his attorney is reduced to insulting the NCAA instead of addressing the allegations.  This is really bad news for the stinky weasel football program.  For comparison's sake, when Michigan basketball boosters were found to have wrongly made large loans to Michigan players, the program was required to vacate all of its wins in which those players participated, but head coach Steve Fisher (who ought to have noticed his star players were living large and asked some questions) was not penalized.  Yes, I personally think that was a mistake.  Players shouldn't need to have monastic vows of poverty, but when they're spending thousands on tattoos, strippers, and the like, I'd have to argue that that NIL money is getting out of hand and preventing them from doing what they're there to do--"study".

I'm hoping that Michigan gets to give up all of its wins--and again, that "national championship"--along with five scholarships for the next five years.  And, again, that the NCAA follows the NFL and finally allows signals to be sent in via radio to the QB and middle linebacker.

Stretch goal is what Harbaugh himself noted in 2007 when he was coaching Stanford; admit that too many college athletes are taking cream puff courses to maintain eligibility, and remind coaches and athletes alike that they are primarily there to learn, not play sportsball.  It's long past time to end creampuff coursework for athletes.

Time to take some data

I saw the coverage of the women's boxing fight between Imane Khelif and Janjaem Suwannapheng, and most of the coverage on the starboard side was more or less "why are they allowing this man to beat this woman?"  I took a look at some of the pictures, and while Suwannapheng is a little bit more feminine-looking than Khelif is, and I understand that "secondary feminine characteristics" can be somewhat more subtle in southeast asian women than among others, I still have to say.....I'm not quite sure what a swab DNA test would find.

More or less, it's already extremely unlikely that those with 5-alpha reductase 2 deficiency would, absent performance advantages due to male genetics, score the three top spots in the 2016 800 meter race, or two of 72 women's spots in the boxing competition in 2024.  If it's three or more of those 72 spots in boxing, the odds go from minute to infinitessimal, and we have to wonder what happens to women's sport if we don't fence it off with the cheek swab test they used until 2000.

It's less significant than allowing trans athletes in--that simultaneously allows perverts in to the locker rooms, and exposes women to the effects of full male strength--but if the difference between those with this intersex condition and elite women is even 2% in speed and somewhat more in brute strength, we are talking about lost medals for XX women in all events, and needless injuries or worse in contact and combat sports.

On those boxers in the Olympics

 A lot has been made, really, of the two "women's" boxers in the Olympics who appear to have XY chromosomes as manifested by their testosterone levels, as well as the 2016 Olympic women's 800 meters race, where all three medal winners had XY chromosomes, but presented externally as female.  Wikipedia actually keeps a list of "intersex" conditions and "intersex" Olympic athletes.  There are, interestingly, a fair number of them--I count 15.

So what do we make of this, statistically speaking?  All in all, intersex conditions seem to affect about one in 5000 people, so fifteen people in the Olympics (or banned from them) in the past 88 years seems to be about right--there are probably about 50-70,000 individuals who have competed in at least one Olympic Games since 1976.

But that noted, if one walks through the list of intersex conditions, only a handful are the kind we're interested in; XY presenting externally sort of as female and with male levels of testosterone.   If you've got one of the others, you're not going to the Olympics, and that's because you're going to be like me; just not that good in your sport.

The condition most likely is "5a Reductase 2 deficiency" and it's worth noting that the prevalence of this is unknown, and that its origins, genetically, seem to be a range of conditions as well.  All in all, though, a certain portion of those with this family of disorders seem to have athletic strength and speed about 0.15 standard deviations greater than that of XX women, and about 0.85 standard deviations below that of males.  The advantage may be somewhat greater vs. women, however, as there simply aren't that many of them.  You're simply looking at a different portion of the distribution--there simply aren't that many people (thankfully) with this condition.

It's not a "trans" issue per se, and since it's "intersex", the sexual assault issues of "trans" and more importantly "fake trans" athletes in the locker room are not there.  What does exist, however, is basic unfairness in competition--the best of these athletes appear to be on the level of good high school boys--and arguably a physical hazard in contact sports, especially combat sports like boxing.  

What to do about it?  The current approach since 2000 seems to be to wait until it's abundantly clear that there is a blatant unfairness or physical hazard.  That's merely irritating with track & field, but dangerous to lethal in combat sports.

You're stuck, really, with either administering a sex test (swab for DNA in the cheek), or if one really wants to get some data, let's take some of these athletes to the weight room and compare bench press, squat, and dead lift with the ladies in their weight classes, and then to a medical lab where their bone density and skull thickness can be compared.

My bet is that the differences are not as big as that between unambiguously developed males and females, but it'll be statistically significant anyways.  And the end result would be what we had prior to 2000; if you scored "XY" in your swab test, you competed as a male or not at all.

And the net is drawn in a bit?

Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore, the former offensive coordinator, was apparently in on the arrangement with Connor Stallions to procure opposing teams' offensive signals, indicating that it is almost certain that the defensive coordinators must have been in on the scheme, as well as former coach Jim Harbaugh.  

Was it effective?  Well, the Wolverines went from a 68% win percentage (perhaps a touch above 70% if the abyssmal 2020 season is neglected) to a 92.5% win percentage in those years, building a defensive juggernaut that persisted despite....a change in defensive coordinators in 2022.  So yes, it was effective, gaining them wins against Ohio State and others that they probably would not otherwise have obtained, and recruits that they would not otherwise have gotten.  

I don't know that it's worthy of the 1987 Southern Methodist two season ban, but I do think it's worthy of the penalty Michigan received for their recruiting violations for the "Fab Five"; a vacation of all wins those seasons.  

And really, it's long past time to allow quarterbacks to have a radio in their helmet to receive signals so this sort of thing is no longer possible.  

One final note is that it's appalling that Connor Stallions is a Naval Academy grad, and apparently his memory of the honor code--We will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those among us who do.-- has gotten a little bit rusty.  Naval Academy leadership might want to take note and ask if something is going seriously wrong with their students' ethics.

That's what I thought...

 "Pro-Palestinian" protesters of Israel apparently changed "Heil Hitler" and gave the Nazi salute in the Olympics.  OK, I guess they're telling us who they actually are in the same way their compatriots in Hamas did on October 7, but I'd have thought that Nazis might prefer to, you know, keep that quiet.

That noted, it does not appear that the "Heil Hitler" spectators were ejected.  And if an endorsement of one of history's worst genocides doesn't serve to justify ejection, I don't know what does.  I'm very sure that if some clowns decided to wear their bedsheets to a game here in the U.S., they'd be shown the door, so I'm not quite sure why endorsement of far worse atrocities than anything the KKK ever did would get a free pass.

Put differently, if you want Islamic radicals to join the civilized world, you need to subject them to the rules of the civilized world.  That starts with walking them right out when they start chanting Nazi slogans.

I'm sure soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will be duly impressed

Apparently, a couple of the reasons for not having an officer on top of the building from where Trump was shot  are that it was "too dangerous" to have him on a sloped roof (as roofers scratch their heads, doing that for a living), and then when that was laughed out of the public forum as ludicrous, apparently whistleblowers claimed that someone was up there, but came down because it was too hot.

The temperature in Butler, PA maxed out at 83F.  I'm pretty sure that our soldiers who served in Iraq, where the mercury routinely hits above 110F, will be playing a song of compassion for the poor guy on the world's smallest violin.  Granted, a white roof will reflect heat, but dealing with uncomfortable heat is part of the job, and small town police officers deal with much higher temperatures while providing security around the beer tent at every county fair in the lower 48.

So either the culture of the Secret Service has significantly changed from "will take a bullet for the President" to "don't make me sweat for the President", or they're still lying, and actually were working to endanger a former President.  I'm guessing a little bit of both, because people who will still take a bullet for that role probably aren't going to back down on the truth.  

It's a scary time for our country. 

Brilliance from the Windy City

According to Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, culpability for horrendous murder rates in Chicago lies with.....President Nixon, who of course died about 30 years ago in 1994.  Although I suppose some of Nixon's policies might have something to do with crime rates today, I'd dare suggest that governmental actions of the past 50 years, starting with Chicago's longtime discrimination against gun rights and continuing to poor policing, might have a bit more to do with it.

Perhaps even more amusingly, Johnson extols the record of Lyndon Johnson, who during his first 20 years as a lawmaker (1937-1957) opposed every civil rights bill brought to his attention, enacted the "Great Society" laws that to this day are the bane of poor people of all races, and who of course got the country deeply into the Vietnam War, prematurely ending the lives of about 7000 black soldiers and maiming tens of thousands more.

Nixon, on the other hand, was a staunch supporter of civil rights throughout his career.  One might wonder whether certain portions of the progressive left are in fact trying to injure those they claim to be trying to help.

Charge your electric car? Maybe not.

            A new study indicates that an average of 20% of electric vehicle chargers will be non-operational at any given time.  Now as someone who's worked in electronics reliability for the past 25 years or so, I've got a few thoughts on this.  First of all, as you might guess, a 20% offline rate means that necessary margin is not built into the product.  It is analogous to the failure rate of race cars, really, and is something you would never accept for your Camry or Golf Sportwagen (my car).  This is especially bad when one realizes that a charger is not exactly a complicated piece of equipment; it's a heavy duty DC power supply with a meter, a microprocessor, a screen, and a few buttons.  The meter on your home, combined with the transformer on the pole or in the green box nearby, serves much the same function, just with alternating current.

So what is going on with electric car chargers?  Really, the same thing that I noticed 12 years back with CFL lightbulbs (rest in the toxic waste dump), that because getting the product out there was so politically important and urgent, they didn't do the correct reliability engineering or testing.  Then combine that with the fact that they're often in the worst possible setting, like a garage without ventilation, or worse yet in the sun with no active cooling for the transformer and power supply.  I'm guessing the inner components may be getting hot enough to "leave skin behind" if you were unlucky enough to touch them, and suffice it to say this kills electronics reliability.  The old engineer's adage was that 5C increase in temperature halved the life of any device, and we're talking probably five to ten times that amount.

In other words, electric car chargers are a lot like older Ferraris, looking very sleek and fashionable, but really bound to spend a lot more time at the repair shop than actually doing their job.  It's yet another reason to get government out of the business of deciding what we drive.

Pure genious from the World Anti-Doping Administration

WADA, which manages anti-doping efforts for the IOC worldwide, has just admitted, apparently, that about 23 Chinese Olympic swimmers (3/4 of the team) tested positive for "low levels" of trimetazidine, an angina medication which also changes the way the body uses glucose and fat for fuel.  Now WADA has apparently bought the explanation that it was "contamination" (doesn't everybody occasionally get angina medications in their groceries?), but if I approach this from a statistical point of view, when I see everybody having similar low levels of a drug that has a half life in the body of about eight hours, my best guess is that all of the team was given a much higher dose of the drug a few days earlier.  On purpose.

Worth noting as well is that this is not something, given different food preferences, that can be explained by "oopsie, something fell into the fried rice in the cafeteria."  So what do we have here?  In my view, what we have is a partial resurrection of the Communist bloc flouting of IOC doping rules.  

A huge threat from North Korea?

Evidently North Korea and Russia have signed a mutual defense pact, and the Soviets Russians are now apparently threatening to arm the North Koreans if South Korea provides weapons to Ukraine.   I'm sure that the South Koreans are quaking in their boots as they consider all those T-34s and Mosin-Nagants that will augment the vaunted North Korean artillery--fed by shells that, when sent to Ukraine to be used by Russia, quickly got a reputation for actually destroying the artillery pieces into which they were fed.

Yes, Mr. Putin, you may have nukes which may or may not work.  But you've been proving to the world that otherwise, your country is a paper bear.  

Putin delenda est!

We need "loser pays" and a lot of disbarments

 Take a look at this excellent column regarding the case of Jack Phillips, the Colorado cake baker who has been repeatedly sued and prosecuted by the state despite Supreme Court rulings establishing that, yes, First Amendment protections apply to the messages created by cake decorators.

More or less, the state appears to be ignoring the Supreme Court for a simple purpose; to make the process so painful that their policies will be implemented simply out of fear of losing one's livelihood one billable hour at a time.  The response needs to be swift and emphatic; if a prosecutor or plaintiff's lawyer ignores Supreme Court precedent and proceeds to lose again at the Supreme Court or other federal court, they lose their law license and are liable for damages to the defendant.  In the same way, state court jurists whose decisions are found to contradict Supreme Court precedent, and then proceed to lose again at the federal level under the same precedent, need to lose their law licenses and pensions.

Put simply; "the process is the punishment" needs to be severely punished.

Mergers out of control

 Boeing has admitted that they have retaliated against whistleblowers, making a Babylon Bee article about the same no longer completely satire, but partially reality.  Ugly reality is that when a company achieves majority position in their field, they do have the power to tell workers "Well, if you don't like it, you can be a greeter at Wal-Mart", and that is a powerful disincentive to tell the truth about what's going on.  It is also worth noting that if you are in the business of large airliners, you have Boeing and Airbus, and that's about it.  "We can suck as bad as our one competitor, take it or leave it.", more or less.

Hope for Alzheimer's patients...?

Dean Ornish of UCSF appears to have come up with a free way of improving the outcomes of Alzheimer's patients; more or less a sound diet, exercise, and interaction with loved ones.  To paraphrase Dave Ramsey,  "It's beans and rice time", and make sure you take a walk with loved ones afterwards.

Given that I'm going to visit my father-in-law this weekend, who's just had a stroke, this sounds about right to me.  As I've suspected--and been taught--for decades, there is a lot that one can do for your health that doesn't necessarily involve a doctor--and is very often delicious, too!  Just skip the "Hurricane" when you have your red beans & rice.  

And in Hockey....

There is apparently a women's professional hockey league, and apparently, the #1 draft pick for Minnesota's team, Britta Curl, is in trouble for having stated in public that "transwomen" (men cosmetically altered to sort of look female) don't belong in the sport.

Now I understand the desire of "transwomen" to be accepted as female, but the fact remains that hockey is a contact sport (although the women's game does not allow checking, I'm told), and males (XY) are 25% heavier, 10-12% faster, 8% taller, and up to 80% stronger than females (XX).  So in this case, it's not just a case of unfair competition, but of people likely getting seriously hurt.

And on the off chance that Miss Curl is reading, welcome to Minnesota, and we desperately need sane people here, especially in the Twin Cities.  Praying for you to do well! 

On women's fashions

Viewing the mess that is womens' fashion these days, this column by Laura Hollis really hits home.  The killer quote from Ms. Hollis mother is apt:

Designers used to love women, and it showed.  Today's styles make it look as if they hate us.

Along the same lines, I've joked for years that it's long past time to take women's fashion back from designers who....are not women, and are not attracted to women.  Given that the vast majority of women are not the size 0-4 that most runway models are, shouldn't what we see in the fashion magazines reflect their actual bodies?

New wave diplomacy?

If reports be trusted, the latest in North Korean diplomacy, or perhaps low scale warfare, appears to be "littering".   I would suggest that the response to this new wave of diplomacy ought to be derisive mockery, starting with wondering how a starving country like North Korea actually got enough trash and balloons to send south to South Korea.  Maybe they bought it from Russia in trade for defective munitions that destroyed Russian artillery pieces in Ukraine.

Yup, derisive mockery it is.

But can she skate?

With all the cheap fouls being committed against Caitlin Clark lately, her team is seriously considering putting an enforcer on the court.  Humorous to think, first of all, that not only has Miss Clark elevated the level of play in the WNBA (at least when she's not being flagrantly fouled) and sold far more tickets than the WNBA has previously been able to sell, but she's apparently already turning it into the NHL.  

With a bit of luck, WNBA fans could be treated to this soon:

Another sign of white supremacy

 If I were black, I'd be telling Mrs. Bubba to give me some "white supremacy".  Seriously, the perpetrator of this idea is, apparently, University of California Santa Barbera professor Sabrina Strings, and she notes that she has had a series of "bad relationships".  

My pro tip for her and others who have had a a series of bad relationships; look in the mirror.  You get a mulligan for one or two, but at a certain point, you've got to say "I'm looking for love in all the wrong places."  Yes, I'm saying Ms. Strings needs to give "three chords and the truth" a try.

A bit of perspective

A bit of thinking about Alvin Bragg's case suggests some very sobering thoughts about it.  For starters, the team of 15 people worked for a couple of years on it, and ordinarily, those prosecutors would have tried about 100 cases....apiece.  In some cities, prosecutors get up to 1000 cases per year.  Conclusion?  There are most likely thousands of violent criminals walking the streets of New York who are out there because the DA chose to pursue a misdemeanor paperwork violation.  So if you've recently been mugged or worse by a New York thug, you have, in part, Alvin Bragg to blame.

Also very interesting is the case of Matthew Colangelo, who left his job as acting associate attorney general to join Bragg's team in 2022, and who has been instrumental in....according to the article....coordinating cases against President Trump to keep him off the campaign trail. 

Now there is little chance of this getting--rightfully--to a prosecution of Colangelo, Bragg, and others, but as one would infer from the burst of legally tenuous prosecutions at this time, there is a concerted effort to keep Trump off the campaign trail, and it strikes me that if a payoff to Stormy Daniels amounts to an illegal campaign contribution, so does leaving the DOJ to join a legally tenuous investigation in New York City.  Colangelo's case is especially problematic because as a rule, leaving the DOJ to join Alvin Bragg's staff is a serious drop in pay, prestige, and career possibilities--unless there is, of course, a big payoff that has been promised to him.

In short, we have here clear indication of illegal campaign contributions, quid pro quo arrangements that amount to bribery, and RICO violations--all likely bound up in the person of Matthew Colangelo.  Now with the current DOJ, charges are not even remotely likely, but just to place things in perspective.

Great achievements in parenting!

Or perhaps, a great failure. I have taught both of my sons to tie a tie without bringing them to tears.  

On that conviction

The most interesting, and kind of entertaining, thing about this is the response of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.   OK, Trump pardoned him, so maybe this is payback, and Blago doesn't really address specifics, so I'll leave it at that; interesting, but not dispositive.  I remember his trial in 2009, however, and the most interesting thing about it was that the Chicago Tribune broke the case wide open.....late enough in the investigation for Blago to be impeached and removed from office, but not late enough that bids for Barack Obama's Senate seat would implicate the big hitters in Chicago politics for a generation, crippling the Democratic Party statewide.  

But regarding the Trump trial and conviction, here are my thoughts:

• When a candidate for prosecutor tells you he (she) will make convicting a particular political opponent a priority, believe them and vote against them.  They will be releasing rapists and murderers to put politicians in prison.
• When a candidate for prosecutor tells you he (she) will make convicting political opponents a priority, just get down to it and file disbarment papers.  It's not acceptable behavior for a politician.
• When a prosecutor files a case without a clear statement of a crime, tell him to go back to the office and come up with one first.  Second time, disbar him.
• If a judge signs off on an indictment without a clear statement of the crime to be tried, disbar him and remove him from the bench.
• If a prosecutor hires 15 lawyers to try a misdemeanor case while downgrading sexual assault and attempted murder cases to misdemeanors, fire him.  And disbar all of them.  
• If a judge silences expert opinions on the presumed law to be used against a defendant, remove him from the bench and disbar him.  
• If a judge, in the jury instructions, allows the defendant to be convicted with differing votes on which laws were violated, remove him from the bench and disbar him.

OK, the list can go on and on, but you get the gist.  My take here is that when a judge allows a prosecutor to prosecute a person without the crime clearly named, he is depriving the defendant of the right to an effective defense, weakening his right to counsel, and a lot more.  Hopefully this will be overturned promptly with a harsh rebuke to "Judge" Mecham and "Prosecutor" Bragg.

Really, overall, I don't think that the legal establishment quite understands the harm that is done when legal rights are not honored.  Yes, if you can afford it, you can appeal it to the Supreme Court, but for 99.9% of us, that's really not an option, and even if you can afford it, you might want to do something else with your time and money.  

Now this is interesting

Diplomats are aghast at the apparent fact that an Israeli "hit" on a place where terrorist leaders were said to be hiding ended up igniting at least a fuel tank, and maybe an ammunition depot.  Now given that refugees do not cook with diesel fuel or gasoline, and are not supposed to be combatants, why, pray tell, was there at least a large fuel tank in the vicinity?  It is also worth noting that a good portion of the injuries spoken of in the published reports are by shrapnel.  So unless the hit was by a couple of cluster bombs instead of small 17kg bombs, as the Israelis claim, we are looking at yet another war crime by Hamas that is getting a lot of their own people killed.

I do not know what you do with people who will do this to their own flesh and blood. 

Update: it turns out that the bombs used had 16-17kG of explosive, but were about 250 lbs overall, but recordings from the site do indicate that an ammunition dump was accidentally hit, decimating the refugee camp.  So once again, "distrust, verify, distrust some more" is the proper response to breathless Hamas reports from the region.

Great genius from the ICC

WIth regards to the ICC's allegations that Israel is "using starvation as a weapon of war", it turns out that the Israelis have allowed 500,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza since the war began in October.

We might joke that, given up to 500 pounds of food aid per man, woman, and child in Gaza being available, that the Israelis are not using starvation, but rather obesity and gout as weapons of war against Hamas.  It is the same war that the supermarket and Mrs. Bubba's cooking wage on me, but I'm not sending Mrs. Bubba to Den Haag for obvious reasons.

Keep waging war on me, Hy-Vee and Mrs. Bubba!  Burp.

Seriously, this is one big reason that I don't want the United Nations anywhere near the administration of justice.  You get the brothers of pedophiles like Karim Khan coming out with ludicrous indictments like this for political reasons.

Great moments in progressive thought

The latest tirade against Clarence Thomas by the New York Times is, apparently, that he's too close to his wife.  Now one would think after President Trump's embarrassments, not to mention L'Affaire Lewinsky and a host of other truly scandalous behavior by politicians, that commentators would start to think that it is a good thing when a public figure is devoted to his wife, but apparently not.  

I guess, given my relationship with Mrs. Bubba, I will be seen as completely incapable of assuming any position of prominence by the progressive left.  That noted, given my stances politically, I kind of knew that already.  My hunch here is that this is yet another one of those selective stances by progressives.  It's bad if a conservative is close to his wife (because they might make a lot of babies in addition to laws progressives don't like), but it might be tolerated in a fellow progressive.

More on the Bragg/Trump/Merchan trial

Apparently one of the top experts on federal election law, a law upon which Alvin Bragg's prosecution persecution of former President Trump lies, was denied the opportunity to speak openly on the complexities of that law in the trial under the logic that only the judge gets to instruct the jury on the intricacies of the law.  This is, in my view, one of the chief weaknesses of our current trial system; if a judge decides to "neglect" to explain the law accurately, as is exactly the allegation against Merchan, then the judge can swing a verdict in favor of one party or the other.  If lawyers and expert witnesses are not allowed to comment on the law, one also must wonder precisely why defendants are afforded the right to representation.

Suffice it to say that the more I see, the more I realize that "Judge" Merchan and Alvin Bragg's entire team need to be disbarred.  Again, I'm not a huge fan if President Trump, but they're gleefully railroading a man when Bragg's predecessor, the FEC, and the DOJ all declined to prosecute.  That should mean something.

Good news for Friday

Check out this report where a mugger decided to attack the wrong couple, and paid dearly for it.  

For those about to rock, we salute you!

Something which has always amused me...

....is how radical Islamists, most of whom are of Arabic descent, choose to decry Jews as the "brothers of apes and pigs."  To which those who take Genesis 12:3 seriously might respond "Now remind me, precisely who was the brother of Isaac?".  Not quite sure why an Arab would make that argument, to put it mildly, as even the Qu'ran establishes this pretty clearly.

Also on the darkly amusing side, Gregg Jarrett of Fox News has noted, along with Bob Costello, that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's testimony in the current criminal case contradicts his testimony at Trump's trial for falsifying business records.  One might infer that Cohen's testimony in both cases ought to be thrown out in toto, which is of course exactly what I'd suggest given Cohen's 2018 conviction for perjury.

Really, is this all that complicated?  We know that Cohen is a liar, so anyone thinking of building a case off his testimony can move on and do something productive instead.

Awesome

Apparently, the Social Security trust fund runs out in 2035, and I will, Lord willing, hit 67 in 2036.  So on the off chance that someone on either side of the aisle will actually give up demagoguery and listen to reason, here are some realities.

• There is no such thing as a foolproof lockbox that will preserve the value of Social Security funds.
• There is no such thing as a politician or bureaucrat who can be trusted to fill out proxy forms for the benefit of investors.
• If there isn't a sufficient economy to pay benefits, neither can the government tax the non-existent economy (via taxes or borrowing) to pay them.
• If the government tries, it risks a hyperinflation like that which ravaged the Weimar Republik in Germany and brought the Nazis to power.
• The best thing you can do is take reasonable steps to create an economy that grows, and enable people to take care of themselves.

As I've noted before, the chief flaw of Socialist Insecurity and Mediscare is that it tells people that the government will pick up the tab for their retirement, and hence the traditional ways of dealing with the years where one will be unable to work as one once did are degraded--having children, developing family and neighborhood relationships, and the like.  So what do we do?

• Reduce COLA formula by 1%.  Yes, it's painful for those on fixed incomes without outside sources of income, but it's easier to plan for this than for a 17% (or more) drop in 2035.
• Tax reform.   If indeed the cost of compliance with the tax code is hundreds of billions of dollars, we can save a LOT by going to smarter ways of taxation and improve our ability to take care of ourselves.  I'd suggest starting with a 10% revenue tariff (doubled for nations that don't respect IP rights) and a $30/ton of carbon tax for fossil fuels, and an accompanying drop in income taxes.
• Retirement reform and reform of tax-privileged accounts.  Instead of HSA, FSA, IRA (Roth and standard), college savings accounts, and more, why not allow people to merge these accounts and use them multiple ways?  Then eliminate RMDs and make it fully heritable.  If you save well, you get to take care of the next generation.

All in all, government needs to realize that they are not the solution here, and the main thing they can do is get out of the way.

No, thanks

Just saw an article noting that a chef had decided use "Aztec culinary tradition" to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  Since the major Aztec culinary tradition I'm aware if is ritual cannibalism after human sacrifice, no, thanks!

(seriously, a good portion of modern Mexican cuisine derives in part from the more respectable parts of Aztec cooking, like the use of chilies and chocolate, but sorry...could not resist...)

Let's get the disbarment courts going

I am not a huge fan of former President Trump, nor do I endorse his character, but if indeed Alvin Bragg's case against President Trump does not actually describe the crime of which he's accused, and if indeed Bragg's calling "Stormy Daniels" to the stand has nothing to do with whether this crime might have occurred, we need to get the disbarment courts going for Bragg, his team of 15 attorneys prosecuting the case, and of course the judge who should have spotted these obvious flaws and stopped this whole charade.  

The reality here is that the "crime"--misrepresenting spending on hush money--is a misdemeanor, with the statute of limitations expired for over five years, but the damage done to Trump and the public (who are paying Bragg and his staff of course) amounts to many felonies.   Bragg, his staff, and Judge Merchan should all really be imprisoned for what they've done, especially Bragg, but realistically speaking, the best we can hope for is that they all be disbarred.

And when, Lord willing, the disbarment train stops in New York, it needs to head south to Georgia for Fani Willis and her team.  There are very real reasons to put politicians on trial--I can think of some fairly obvious sale of influence by our current President--but when prosecutors have "creative new ideas" on how to prosecute unpopular politicians, they are generally weaponizing the courts, and need to be removed for life from the legal profession.

Worst possible, except for all the other things

British actor, an atheist, makes the claim that the Bible is one of the "worst books ever".   Well, worst ever, except for being the wellspring of the thinking that made Western Europe and North America some of the most humane culture out there, instead of leaving Mr. Cox to paint himself blue and throw innocent kids on a bone-fire, I guess.  And except for the--ahem--institutionalized atheism that generated the world's worst genocides in the 20th Century.  

Great moments in environmental research and regulation

If you read this article carefully,  you'll probably notice what I'm noticing; the studies that prove that gas stove use causes unsafe levels of nitrogen oxides in home air does not mention something that most kitchens in the country have; a ventilation fan to the outside. 

It strikes me as very interesting that the researchers miss something I've had in every home that I've owned, save one that didn't even have natural gas service to the building.  It's almost like they're starting the so-called "research" with the end goal in mind, that of eliminating good cooking from the country.

Great moments in cultural awareness

Apparently, the "lost & found" page for the pro-Hamas, pro-Nazi demonstrators at Columbia includes an entry where the owners of Heinrich the Piglet lament the loss of his suicide vest.

So apparently the neo-Nazis at Columbia see nothing amiss with naming a piglet "Heinrich" (nice German name) and making a hog an emblem for jihad.  With friends like these, the only worse enemies Hamas could have are the IDF and Mossad.

And really, when thinking about this, it strikes me that if those who chant "from the river to the sea" need to be reminded that what they're cheering for is the destruction of a mostly Jewish nation of ten million people.  

Note to those who do this; just put on your swastika armbands already and start chanting "Sieg Heil".  Wave around your copies of Mein Kampf while you sing the Horst Wessel Lied.  Want to be a....words not suitable for this blog....then have at it, but be honest about who you really are.

If, on the other hand, you're a sane person, raise a cold one to the brothers of Pi Kappa Psi at UNC and their Greek brothers and sisters who stepped in and protected the U.S. flag from the Nazis.  Maybe even contribute to the party they're planning, as it should be a lot of fun.

And of course, pray that some of them get better taste than "White Claw", but that's a side note.

Expectations and the "trans rights" movement

It strikes me that one thing the "trans rights" movement does not grasp is the relative nature of "unclothed encounters" between people.  

To draw a picture, when two men or two women encounter one another in a fully or partially unclothed state, they have, assuming a rate of homosexuality of 3% or less, very low odds (0.09%, one in a thousand or so) that both of them will be looking at something they are sexually attracted to in a state which suggests that sexual relations could happen.

However, when two people of the opposite sex encounter one another in a fully or partially unclothed state, the odds are 99.9% that at least one of the two people in that encounter are attracted to the sex they're looking at.  Add more people, and of course the odds become virtually certain.

Now with due "respect" to rude jokes about appearance, what this means is this; when people of the opposite expose more than a certain amount of skin, a degree of sexual tension is inevitable.   It is, at its core, what's going on when actresses and musicians of modest ability but spectacular beauty put that beauty on display; the attempt is being made to divert the rational mind and engage the hormones.  It works.

And so when I consider the reality of "trans women" entering womens' only spaces, it's obvious that this sexual tension is being created, and the relevant question is whether or not they are aware of this tension, and if they are, whether or not they care.  At a certain level, we would suggest that people are intentionally breaching womens' only spaces in a way that is....much like "flashing"....a level of sexual assault.

Inside and outside of sports, it's time to make it stop.

What is wrong with Russia?

A Russian Iskander missile, accurate to within 30 meters and loaded with a cluster bomb,  hits a building used as a school, killing at least five people.  Double bonus is that the owner has been historically pro-Russian, so one wonders what he did to tick off Putin.

But to the point, you have to wonder what on earth is wrong with people who would launch a cluster bomb at a school.  This is why military academies have a fair amount of coursework regarding war crimes...well, at least in the civilized world.  Maybe that's not the case in Russia.

Paging Disraeli, or Twain, or....

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" comes to mind as I contemplate this study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.  Why?  Well, I presume the underlying data are accurate, but notice how the data are presented; as  a percentage of total murders, not as a raw number.  

So as a public service, here are the raw numbers.  Approximately 1700 women were murdered by intimate partners in 2021, and approximately 960 1080 men were victims of the same crime-approximately 36% 39% of the total.  For comparison, in 2017, the numbers were approximately 1500 women murdered (13% higher) by intimate partners, and about 700 men were murdered by intimate partners (about 37% 50% higher).  (corrections due to my initial math error)

For comparison's sake, overall population grew by only 2% in this period in our country, so we would infer that the "Violence Against Women Act" is doing a great job of ensuring violence against women--and men.

So why the misleading way of presenting the data?  My hunch is that there is a cultural imperative in the BJS to present domestic violence in the same way the Duluth Model does; as an almost exclusively male phenomenon.  But when we look at the actual data, we see that unless the LGBTQ+ community is doing a huge proportion of intimate partner violence (and we'd need to review some Supreme Court cases, ahem), we must infer that both sexes are likely to commit this particular crime, and our approach is simply not working.

Let's start by taking a look at the actual data a bit more closely.  What portion of the deaths are of spouses?  What portion involve adultery? What portion are unmarried couples?  What portion are of prostitutes and johns?  What portion are "couples for one night"?  

Sometimes, we need to take our blinders off and look at data.

More on the Title IX debacle

   ...from the National Review editorial board. As I noted yesterday, it's not just an attack on women's sports, but on women and men in general, really anyone connected even tangentially with any school receiving federal funding.

A side note here is that this is a big reason why home educators really shouldn't want school vouchers; what the government funds, it controls.  "He who pays the piper calls the tune" and all that.  

Side note from the side note; if indeed social workers are working with the schools to transition children without their parents' knowledge or consent, five will get you ten that they're going to be trying to do this with kids who aren't even in the public schools soon.  Really, as government bureaucrats try to redefine "sex" on behalf of the LGBTQ+++ community, nobody's rights are safe.  

That is, for what it's worth, also what wiser people were saying when Obergefgell vs. Hodges was being decided; that there were clear implications where the protection of same sex mirage by the government would have tremendous implications for the reach of the 1st Amendment.  

Think you're safe? Try again

One of the most important things to remember about the Title IX guidance that has recently become notorious (H/T Riley Gaines) for what it appears to do to college and high school sports is that it's not primarily directed at athletic programs, but at schools in general.

That means that when your daughters go to the bathroom or enter a locker room, the Department of "Education" will in effect be there to make sure that they may be sharing that space with a "trans" person who was born male.  When your daughters get assigned dormitory rooms, they may be assigned with one or more people who have a Y chromosome.  When your daughters go to gym class, they will need to play whatever games are available with whatever men decide they are "trans" in their school.  Oops, sorry your daughter got boxed out by someone 50 lbs heavier and twice as strong in that basketball game and got a concussion!

And when this happens, the guidance more or less says that unless the "trans" person actually sexually harasses others or actually assaults them, they have no recourse.  Keep in mind as well that the category of "indecent exposure" does not count if they're in a bathroom or locker room.

If they object to this on their own behalf, or on behalf of a friend, it is extremely likely that they will become the subject of a Title IX investigation.  What's worth noting as well in this regard is that the Department of "Education" also has decreed that certain protections of the accused--the right to counsel, the right to cross examine witnesses, the right to a trial by jury, the "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for conviction--are not applicable, but the consequences of being expelled from a high school or college can be a lifelong penalty.  

Hopefully the courts will slap this down so hard it makes heads spin at the "DoED", but I don't believe we can just wait on this and depend on them to do the right thing.  Send a note to the President and your legislators and explain why this move is totally contrary to the goal of the 1972 legislation that created Title IX, to create opportunities for women and to protect them from poor treatment and discrimination.

Brilliance from the regulatory state

The new Title IX guidance for colleges and high schools goes, apparently, to about 1500 pages, close to the length of "Obamacare", and a third the length of HIPAA.  So while some are appalled (rightly) that it apparently grants biological males (people with XY chromosomes, for those out there in Rio Linda) access to womens' bathrooms and locker rooms, I'm appalled at the fact that it apparently takes the DoED 1500 pages to discuss a concept that is expressed in only 37 words in the actual law:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Yes, it's appalling that in the "minds" of people trying to "educate" us, "sex" is equivalent to "gender identity", and hopefully the courts will slap them into next week.  It's not as if the common view of "sex" when Title IX was passed by Congress and signed by President Nixon includes "gender identity", after all.  This is another great reason why we want not only jurists, but also bureaucrats, to be legal originalists, remembering what the people who wrote the law were thinking.

Regarding the actual objections, yes, I do think women have a right to determine which males may be allowed to see them naked, as well as which males they are willing to see naked--and vice versa. I guess that makes me a reactionary.

Update: another risk of allowing "trans" men onto womens' teams, and into womens' locker rooms, is that it will destroy mens' sports too.  The trick is that per Title IX, spots in womens' sports need to be proportional to their student population, with an adjustment for the football team.  So if women quit en masse because they don't want to be injured, or because they don't want to see penises in their locker room, or because they don't want to be seen naked by just any male, then those same colleges and universities need to cut mens' sports, too.

We might end up, really, with just football as a sport, which is ironic because football players have, I believe, about the highest rate of sexual assault of athletes overall.  Some win for women!

The horrors of Tavistock

Although I am not a terribly big fan of Harry Potter, I am indebted to J.K. Rowling for her linking on her Twitter feed to the Cass report on the horrors of National Health Service juvenile transition therapies.  More or less, it demonstrates that the science behind juvenile transition therapies is inconclusive at best, and one of the big reasons for that many so-called "doctors" are administering therapies without doing any good tests/assays for gender dysphoria.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Certain "doctors" in the National Health Service are, in effect, saying "Sure, I'll adminster puberty blockers and hormones, or even cut off your breasts or nuts, without figuring out if you've actually got this condition."

I can only imagine that in other areas.  I can imagine someone coming in for blood pressure medications, blood sugar medications, cholesterol medications, colonoscopies, or even open heart surgery, and....the doctors giving that to them without even bringing out a blood pressure cuff, reviewing a patient's medical history, or other diagnostic tools?  Seriously?  Any good medical center would pull that doctor aside and say "knock it off, or we're firing you and going after your medical license."  Or they'd just go directly to the firing and professional discipline stage, as they ought to have known better.

Which is, really, my solution for "doctors" using the "affirmative" model for gender transition therapies.  If we can't simply evict them from the medical profession for life, let's at least make the statute of limitations for criminal and civil cases in this area at least 30 years.

(and yes, this is a bit personal with me, as at least one relative of mine is considering some of these therapies)

If we don't choose to hold these so-called "doctors" accountable by force of law, the sad reality is that the fourth box of freedom will eventually be used by their victims....the cartridge box.  And suffice it to say that if called for a jury for someone who killed the "doctors" who mutilated him, I'd be hard pressed to find reasons to convict.

A final note is that I found this bit of beautiful wisdom by Mrs. Rowling, one I think is worthy of none less than Winston Churchill or Samuel Clemens, when a commenter claimed there was no reality to biological sex.  Put this woman in Parliament, if she'll consent to stand.  I am also personally very glad that all six of my children "chose" to gestate in Mrs. Bubba's womb, too, for obvious reasons.

Yep. I'm still amazed all three of our kids chose to gestate inside me, because I thought it was 50/50 they'd come to term inside one of Neil's testicles. By coincidence, my father never gave birth out of his balls, either. Random luck or ancestral curse? I doubt we'll ever know.

I'm inspired by our leadership

President Biden has apparently claimed that his uncle, an aviator in the Army Air Force in World War Two, was killed and eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.   Now the real story is that the plane crashed into the ocean off the coast, and three crewmen didn't survive that crash, but the wag in me thinks it would really be fun to get into TOTUS ("Teleprompter Of The United States") and see if Biden will claim that his uncle crash-landed in the Avocado Jungle of Death.

(but can Biden actually pronounce "Avocado"?.....)

The horrors of working from home....

On a call at work, my coworker's search history showed up...."cheeseburger soup with Velveeta".   So be very careful what's on your browsing history when you're on meetings!  It could show that your taste buds were shot off in the war.

On the dangers of co-sleeping?

The CDC has published a report on the dangers of infant co-sleeping, noting that between 2/3 and 3/4 of infant "SIDS" deaths occur when the infant is sleeping in an adult bed or with an adult.  Interestingly, though, these numbers are far less than the 4-7000 deaths annually that were stated when my first children were young, and then I decided to take a look and see what percentage of parents sleep with their infant children.

The answer?  81% of infants below 3 months of age, and 63% of infants up to 6 months of age.  In other words, infant co-sleeping deaths are roughly proportional to the rate of infants sharing beds with their parents, and there does not appear to be a significant relative risk to co-sleeping.

It's also remarkable how much SIDS deaths have dropped in the past few decades, from around 7000 annually to 1500 or less.  I'm guessing a huge portion of this is because infants are sleeping on their backs or sides instead of on their stomachs, as used to be customary.  

It doesn't mean we don't need to be careful--there is still a lot of bedding that doesn't need to be there with a child, and certainly it doesn't mean that it's OK to come to bed with a child while intoxicated--but it does mean that we've made tremendous progress, and we're at a point where the things we're looking for are far more subtle than they used to be.

Right

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares points out that for electric vehicles to be environmentally friendly, the weight of  the battery needs to drop by about half.  The problem with that is that we're already using the lightest metal (lithium) for the battery, and the other major component of a lithium ion battery is nickel or cobalt.  If you look at a periodic table of the elements, you will see that there are no lighter transition metals than nickel and cobalt.

In other words, batteries are rapidly approaching a dead end in terms of energy per weight, and that imposes a dead end for electrics.  

Which really isn't that sad.  When you correct mpg-e values by the efficiency of a power plant--typically an upper bound of about 35%--the 94mpg-e for a Tesla becomes about 31-32mpg, which is only marginally better than a Chevy Malibu or similar midsize car.  Moreover, the Malibu is a hefty 700 lbs lighter than the Tesla Model 3, refuels in five minutes, retails for $15000 less, and battery replacements cost hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.

There are great ways to help the environment, but electric cars are not among them.  The cost in terms of rare earth mining (and accompanying implicit subsidy of Communist China), particulate contamination, heating to be able to charge them north of the Mason-Dixon, and more is far too high.

They have a choice

I've said for years that obstetricians have a choice; they can practice medicine, or they can perform abortions, but not both.  My--and my family's--stance becomes crystal clear as this horror story from the Czech Republic comes to light; a woman came for a basic appointment, and her baby was aborted against her will.   

If a physician has "muscle memory" that will allow him to do things like abortion or transition surgeries, I don't want him anywhere near anyone in my family, period.  Hats off to Catholic and other hospitals who have steadfastly said "not here, buster."

Yes, the Cold War is back....

How so?  There is increasing evidence that the "Havana Syndrome" reported by U.S. and other diplomats working on Russian issues may be orchestrated by the Russian GRU.  Really, this is worse than a lot of things done during the Cold War, as the Soviets would spy on U.S. diplomats, but generally would not attack them physically.

Say what?

If you want a great reason to enact revenue tariffs to rein in the abuses of international shipping, the sad case of the collision of the container ship Dali ought to give you a good one.  It appears that the ship had been having major electrical issues for a while, but the owners decided to go to sea anyways.   

Interestingly, the ship has redundant power generation capacity with four diesel generators and a bow thruster, so what apparently went on is that whatever electronics control those generators had difficulties.  Redundant, but not redundant enough, and it suggests that ship safety needs to go a step closer to what we're trying to do with airliner safety--but maybe failing there with Boeing these days, of course.  

(sad to say, we have some suggestion that the intestinal fortitude of some regulators and inspectors needs an upgrade as well....from personal experience doing quality and reliability work, it can be hard to be the guy saying "no" to people who are several pay grades above you)

On the light side, I'd suggest sending the Dali to the Kerch strait and see if it can do the same trick again.  Slava Ukraini!

Good luck with that

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says that if "his conditions are met", he'll stop illegal immigration.  Those conditions?  Amnesty for illegals here, $20 billion in annual subsidies, and an end to sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba.  Of course, left unsaid is that if ten or twenty million illegals get green cards, that's going to put the demand to leave Mexico through the roof.  Lopez Obrador can more more stop illegal immigration to the U.S. than he can control the cartels that are destroying his country, if even he wants to.

My counter-proposal would be continued sanctions against the countries that have stolen billions of dollars in assets from U.S. citizens and companies, no annual subsidies, and a 5% revenue tariff on all goods coming from Mexico, with the funds obtained to be used to install and maintain a robust border wall and drug interdiction, along with robust punishment of the coyotes who are driving the illegal immigrant and drug trades while raping countless thousands of illegal immigrants in the process.

Let's check it out

After a terrorist attack in Moscow, it was somewhat natural at this point to suspect someone from Ukraine, but of course, the accused gets to talk back, and boy howdy,  does Mykhailo Podolyak, speaker for President Zelensky, lay it out.  If his sources are correct, basically every security system was turned off to allow this to happen.

One thing Mr. Podolyak didn't mention; the building had sprinklers, but went up in flames as if the pipes were filled with oil.  As with so much out of Moscow, I smell a rat here.  Hopefully the Russian people catch on to the particular rat I'm thinking about and stomp him.

This one should get some "corrective action"

In Livonia, Michigan, a 12 year old boy ordered a "virgin daiquiri", but was served the alcoholic version instead.  Despite the fact that the young man only drank part of it, he apparently woke up with a splitting hangover.  How so?  Well, the daiquiri is one of many sweetened drinks with a typical alcohol content below 20% that does not "burn" as it goes down.  

I can see a couple of corrective actions here, one for the family, and a few for the restaurant.  For the family, it's probably a good idea to not order the "virgin" type of drink, because somebody back in the bar is going to eventually get confused and include the booze.

For the restaurant, there are two major corrective actions.  First of all, give the drink another name so the wait-staff doesn't confuse it with the alcoholic version, and second, take a very close look at how strong the bartenders are making them.  To get to the level of excessive drinking that would cause a hangover, a 75-100 lb boy of that age would need 3-4 shots of rum in the drink.  Given that the lad didn't drink the whole thing, that means most likely 5 shots of rum  (or more) was in the drink, which is over twice the strength of a standard daiquiri.

And that means that the "Outhouse Steakback" was squandering a fair amount of money on extra rum (at least if it wasn't total rotgut stuff), and was also risking having patrons hitting the roads with a couple of sheets to the wind.  Four to five drinks gets a 210 lb man (like myself) to the legal limit for driving, and....let's be honest....the daiquiri is very often a woman's drink.  A woman of 140 lbs is going to be at about twice the legal limit with that dose of alcohol.

I'm all for the responsible use of alcohol, but quite frankly, this isn't it.  Hopefully the family and the restaurant learn their lessons before someone gets seriously hurt.  Getting to know lawyers (and the police) on a professional basis is no fun.

Happy Spring

My second daughter made sure that she sang this song when she was visiting Honduras, and saw a large flock of the winged vermin in a church square, much to the horror of her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend's father, when told, noted that he had thought he was usually the weird one in the room....

Happy Spring!

 

Side note; this podcast/videocast says a lot of things about how young women are all too often "aging like milk."  If you've got teen daughters, they might be blessed by this.  I've personally seen some putting way too much effort into their appearance this way.

A thought on "trans rights"

As a former competitive runner, the things that occurred to me first regarding "trans" competitors in women's sport are:

• That larger, stronger men will take opportunities and podium places away from women.  Only about 2-3% of the performance differences between men and women are due to testosterone; about 10-30% difference remains.
• That larger, stronger men will injure female competitors due to size & strength.
• That people who are not trans at all will use the "opened" locker rooms to harass and violate female competitors.
• That spectators will not buy tickets to, in effect, watch "men in drag".  Part of the attraction of women's sports is that it is a woman doing the sport, after all.

Expending on the third point, it strikes me that when MTF trans people in various stages of transition are allowed into women's locker rooms--or FTM trans people in men's locker rooms--what is implicitly being told to the "cisgender" residents of those locker rooms is that they no longer have a right to decide which naked individuals of the opposite gender they might see, and that they also no longer have a right to decide which individuals of the opposite gender might see them naked.

Put differently, "trans" activists are in effect telling us that if the perpetrator is trans, "flashing" or being a "peeping tom" is no longer a crime if the crime occurs in a bathroom or locker room.  One might wonder whether every flasher or peeping tom whose name is rightly on Megan's List ought to have his crime downgraded to "mere" indecent exposure if this precedent holds.

Makes sense to me

As I contemplate the firing of head basketball coach Juwan Howard at that school in Ann Arbor, I am compelled to remember the inauspicious way he started his tenure; by suggesting that the school re-hang banners that were taken down because the school had been forced to vacate all of its wins because their athletes were taking payments from boosters.

Hail to the Cheaters, I guess.  But more seriously, Howard's tenure at Michigan was a mess, and he threw away a golden chance to rebuild their basketball program.  The alumni network and support of fans at Michigan has few rivals in the NCAA, and hence it really takes some doing to end up 8-24.  

A Dying Nation?

Apparently, the number of disabled males in Russia has risen by over half a million men, including 290 thousand men of age 18-30.  Now part of this could be ordinary industrial accidents, and part of it could be young men deliberately injuring themselves to avoid military service, but all in all, it indicates that (yikes) Ukrainian estimates of dead and maimed Russian soldiers are somewhat conservative.  

Definition of beauty

 The lovely lady above is Faye Schulman, a Jewish member of the Resistance against the Nazis during World War Two.  She apparently survived the war (with a bullet wound) and had a loving family with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Want to learn more?  See here. 

I love the camoflage of the fur coat she's wearing, and am personally curious about how she apparently got hold of a Thompson submachine gun.  Might have been a cast-off from the Red Army, which didn't like them much.

Definition of Chutzpah

Christine Blasey Ford, having seen all of her eyewitnesses deny her version of events, and having been found to have lied about a fear of flying under oath, and having been found to have lied about why her house has two front doors, writes a book in which she claims that Justice Brett Kavanaugh is not an honest person.  

Although obviously Anita Hill got away with about the same thing regarding Justice Thomas, I would still hesitate to accuse one of the nation's most eminent lawyers of such things when my own accusations against them had been thoroughly thrashed on national TV.  It would seem to be a quick way to end up on the left side of the courtroom in a civil or criminal libel action.

An insider speaks up

Now as a Spartan, I should either hate Nick Saban because he took his talents away from East Lansing, or perhaps I should note that the man could really have been successful if he'd stayed, but this interview by CNN is something I really like to see.  More or less, though Saban can be said to have benefited from a lot of the power politics of college football, he enunciates a traditional view of college athletics and sportsball, that it's not just about winning games, but also about developing young men into functional adults.

Lots of work to do there to achieve that, as the current system seems to be weighted on the side of big money programs more than it ever has been.  We won't be able to go back to true amateurism, and haven't been there in my lifetime, really, but we can hopefully get away from a system that all too often sends young men and women out into the world without a meaningful degree, but with Cadillac tastes and horrendously sinful habits from the experience of college sportsball.  

Sad, but true

The newspaper of record notes that it is hard for Hamas fighters to abstain from raping infidels during Ramadan.   OK, this is technically a joke, but after last October 7, they all deserve it richly, and it reminds me of something I learned about T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. "Lawrence of Arabia") after watching the epic movie; one of the things he noticed and experienced is that both Ottoman and Arab men were prone to homosexual activity, just as American soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan noticed a century later....

I hate to say it, but I'm seeing a pattern here.

A modest proposal for dealing with "trans" athletes in women's sports

The sad reality is that it would still take up a roster spot that ought to be held by a woman, but the NHL tradition of the "enforcer" comes to mind when contemplating "trans-women" participating in womens' soccer, basketball, hockey, and the like.  The "enforcer", ideally a starting safety for the football team or a power forward, would stay on the JV team unless the varsity team was playing against a team with a trans player, and would only take the pitch/court when a "trans" player was out there.  His only job would be to stymie and isolate the trans player so that the girls could actually play.  

And yes, if the trans person hurt one of the ladies, the enforcer might be called upon to commit a couple of hard fouls or hard picks.  

Some study on "trans" issues

I do not have the time to go through all the footnotes and track down all of the references this paper refers to, but it's a very interesting summary of the state of transgender "medicine".  One interesting thing I learned is that a lot of the "innovators" in this area have some very troubling connections, including the fact that after performing an early sex reassignment surgery, Dr. Erwin Gohrbandt did pioneering, and criminal, hypothermia work.

In Dachau.

All in all, the sense I get from reading this is that first of all, those "doctors" engaged in this enterprise are not paying nearly enough attention to the likelihood that "trans" identity is merely a symptom of deeper underlying mental health problems.  Going a bit more broadly, I'm not sure that a  lot of mental health practicioners understand this, either. 

Other observations; the document has a fair number of reports from transition "doctors" of detransitioning, which indicates that the real numbers for regret are probably a lot higher than advocates of transition surgeries would like to admit.  The document also has a fair amount of evidence that these "doctors" are doing some "interesting" things to get things paid for by insurance (i.e. insurance fraud), that many practicioners are rubber stamping requests for surgery on minors, that many practicioners are fudging required wait times, and a lot more.

Looks like my comments about the state of psychology were, if anything, very optimistic and over-gracious to a broader scope of medical professionals, and they need to grasp a very basic principle;body parts in the specimen bag do not grow back, and they do not reattach.  So you want to make for darned sure that it's the right path before you amputate.

Imbecilical moments in marketing

Doritos, apparently having learned nothing from the Dylan Mulvaney/Bug Light fiasco, has hired (and gratefully fired) a trans "influencer" who has admitted in public to tendencies of pedophilia.  And who, quite frankly, has a serious case of the uglies by any (male or female) standard.

Weird me, I'd thought that it's better to do marketing with people whose lives one might like to emulate, and I would at least hope that the proportion of hideously ugly pedophiles who are willing to admit that in public is small.  

The bright side of this is that hopefully Doritos is helping traditional Spanish food culture by showing their product to be morally, as well as nutritionally, bankrupt.

A dish for Festa Della Donna; Chili Verde

    In preparation for the Festa Della Donna, I made some carne asada with a dollop of chili verde last weekend.  Let's just say it wasn't a good weekend for weight loss, and both recipes are courtesy of a coworker of mine from Sonora state.  ("Il Dioses de la carne")

The carne asada was straightforward; take chuck steak sliced 1/2-3/4" thick, marinate with salt & pepper and lime juice for about a day prior to cooking.  Grill over a smoky mesquite fire until it's done to your taste, allow to rest 10 minutes, slice, and serve.

The chili verde also involves the grill.  Take 2-4 medium tomatillos, 2 jalapeno or serrano peppers (remove seeds unless you're a glutton for punishment), half an onion, and half a bulb of garlic.  Throw vegetables on a grill, grill until lightly charred, and then blend them together with half a tsp of salt.  Enjoy the burn on your lips and in your eyes.

On the light side, with two four daughters now married, we realized that if we help our sons-in-law celebrate Festa Della Donna correctly, we could soon be celebrating Festa Della Nonna (grandmother's festival).

Festa Della Donna

Or, as it's called far less elegantly in English, "International Women's Day".  Now I'm going to say something you might not have expected; despite the apparent feminism of the day, I'm thinking that this March 8, we'd do well to celebrate it.  Let's buy the ladies in our life a mimosa (either the flower or the drink or both, really), cheer for womens' sports (Will Thomas, you're not invited), and celebrate real femininity.

And guys, don't worry about the imbalance--Pi Day and Festa Bistecca e Pompino (again using Italian for obvious reasons) are coming up on the 14th.  Or maybe, just maybe, celebrating real feminity is a way to encourage the belle donne in our lives to celebrate real masculinity.

Great commentary on "America First" and isolationism

Jay Nordlinger notes that, as ssensible people have known for centuries, sometimes the world doesn't leave you alone, and foreign policy must go beyond a mere assertion of short term interests of a country. All the more true as more and more nations have the ability to lob a ballistic missile to the opposite end of the planet.

Which is why I donated $51.80 to Ukrainian relief in honor of Ksenia Karolina, a Russian-American ballerina imprisoned by Putin for donating that amount to Razom.  Suggest that you do the same.  Every bit of help to make Ukraine liveable and prosperous is another nail in Putin's coffin.  May he reside there soon.

More great moments in injustice

The city of Houston has apparently suspended 260,000 criminal cases in the past eight years because  of a lack of personnel.  Scary thing in the first regard is that this is only 10% of criminal cases in Houston in this time, meaning that about 300,000 crimes occur annually there, and scarier yet that these cases are "suspended", meaning that whichever victims (say up to thirty thousand families) are involved do not get justice, and also scary because innocent men and women still have the axe of justice hanging over their head, because the case is not dismissed, but rather suspended.

But you can always find Officer Friendly doing traffic patrol.  Priorities, I guess.