Thursday, November 30, 2017

There Must Be A Real Lack of Joy in Many Bicoastal Homes Tonight

Outraged Garrison Keillor fans deluged Minnesota Public Radio Thursday with complaints about the firing of the humorist over alleged workplace misconduct.
Some say they will no longer support MPR, one of the nation's largest public radio operations, which depends heavily on financial contributions.
MPR said Wednesday it was cutting ties with Keillor, creator and former host of the popular public radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," over an allegation of workplace misconduct. The network did not give details, but Keillor told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he had put his hand on a woman's bare back while trying to console her.
I confess this seems a bit lacking in harassment unless there is more to the story.  I have never understood the leftist enthusiasm for A Prairie Home Companion.  It sounds like a leftist's well-intentioned misunderstanding of flyover country.

The Equatorial Platform

It was incredibly cold last night, but clear., so I dragged Big Bertha out.  The whole assembly rolled pretty easily (still need to apply final surface layer when it gets above 50 degrees again to even out the surface).  The Moon was my target,  and that is a mistake.  It does not move at the same rate as the stars in right ascension,  and it moves in declination as well.   I think it was taking,  but the real test will be on some extrasolar objects,  some night when I get started earlier in the evening when our is only freezing.   To my pleasure,  one of my wife's cools weather suggestions worked very well.  Wellingtons hold in heat very well,  because they have no mesh and go over the pants.

Monday through Thursday next week are supposed to be clear although cold.

Again: A Black Man Accused of a Crime, So It Is Racism

http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article187248028.html South Carolina State reports Rep. Clyburn is claiming that accusations against Rep. Conyers is because his accusers are white,  comparing it took Susan Smith's attempt to blame a black man for murdering get children.  When will we get past the,  "Is it because I am black?" Excuse making?

The Sign I Am Waiting to See

Our eggs and sausages are sautéed in Red Bull.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Proofreaders?

The proofs of Lock, Stock, and Barrel are in my inbox.  I need several people to look it over for typos. Interested?  It is about three hundred pages.  I still need to go through and update page references and index it, but I need fresh eyes to look for typos, and only typos.  Bad sentences or structural problems are too late to fix.  Perhaps just a few chapters to spread the load?  And yes, you will get a copy when it prints.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Ban Electric Drills and Aluminum Next

11/24/17 AP:
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A gun control group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords asked two web hosting companies on Friday to shut down websites selling parts and machines that help make untraceable homemade firearms known as “ghost guns.”
The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence asked the providers that host GhostGunner.net and GhostGuns.com to disable the websites for violating the hosting companies’ terms of service.
The sites sell kits, components and machines that help create homemade semi-automatic weapons. It’s legal to build a gun in a home or a workshop, and advances in 3-D printing and milling have made it easier to do so. The kits can be purchased legally for a few hundred dollars without the kind of background check required for traditional gun purchases.
Hat tip to Shall Not Be Questioned.

Our Moral Superiors Speak

A week after CBS host Charlie Rose was outed as an alleged serial sex harasser, one of the network’s former associate directors says she was told by a boss that she would have to sleep with coworkers to get anywhere in the company.
“I was in a state of shock,” said Erin Gee, 44, who worked for CBS for 17 years and recently filed a Manhattan federal suit alleging rampant sex discrimination at the network.
Gee said one of the most offensive incidents occurred in 2011, when she was talking with her boss at “CBS Evening News,” Robert Klug, about a workplace dispute.
Klug, now 58, said “she should ‘have sex’ with [the] video editor who had been difficult to work with to ‘break the ice,’ ” according to court papers.
Just an allegation right now, but if Roy Moore should not be elected because of allegations, CBS should stop reporting news.

Mirror Cell

Traditional mirror cells hold the mirror in place with clips that are flat metal with a 90 degree bend. One part is held to the outside of the cell where the hole for the screw can be far from the edge of the clip.  Attaching on the front face of the cell gives limited room for the screw hole.  I think I have been successful, even though the hole is. 151" diameter,  .090" from the edge of the clip.  I still need to assemble and make sure that it all works.  My clips are a bit longer than I want (blocking light and adding reflections, even once painted flat black) so I will mill them to length tomorrow.  My wife thinks working to hard on these things is part of my voice issues when I lecture,  and I think she is right.  Monday is so nothing day.

The mirror cell is about .37" too deep,  so I can either pad the bottom with double sided foam tape or turn the outer tube by that much.  I am getting tired of the work involved;  so I think I will go with the foam tape.

So Glad British Gun Control is Working


Offences involving firearms
 Offences involving firearms7 increased by 27% (to 6,696) in year ending June 2017 compared with the previous year (5,269 offences). This was driven largely by a 25% increase in offences involving handguns (up to 2,791 from 2,224) and partly by an 18% increase in offences involving imitation weapons such as BB guns8 (up to 1,721 from 1,457), a 53% increase in offences involving shotguns (up to 652 from 427) and a 47% increase in offences involving unidentified firearms (up to 933 from 635). The latest rise continues an upward trend seen in firearms offences in the last few years, however, offences are still 31% below a decade ago (in the year ending March 2007; Figure 11).
Over the last year, over two-thirds (32 of the 439) of police forces recorded a rise in offences involving firearms. The force that showed the largest volume increase was the Metropolitan Police (accounting for almost 50% of the increase in England and Wales).

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Thundercat Has Thundershirt

Our vet recommended this as a last step before Prozac.   (You do not want to see our cat in the mass murder headlines.)  Ie is called a Thundershirt.  It calms pets down from thunder and  unpleasant fellow pets.  To my surprise.  He tolerates it,  and seems to be calmer.  Our is the same color as he is,  so it does not show up well.

Gun Control Advocates Want to Imagine Gun Culture is Dying

Post-Trump, background checks have certainly fallen, but 11/25/17 USA Today:
WASHINGTON — The FBI was flooded Friday with more than 200,000 background check requests for gun purchases, setting a new single day record, the bureau reported Saturday.
In all, the FBI fielded 203,086 requests on Black Friday, up from the previous single-day highs of 185,713 last year and 185,345 in 2015. The two previous records also were recorded on Black Friday.

Friday, November 24, 2017

"Clothes Make the Man. Naked People Have Little or No Impact on Society."

Or so Mark Twain is alleged to have said.  But Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) seems to have missed the memo.  11/23/17 Detroit Free Press:
WASHINGTON — A lawyer who formerly worked for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, and later ran an ethics watchdog group in the nation’s capital confirmed for the Free Press on Thursday that Conyers verbally abused her, criticized her appearance and once showed up to a meeting in his underwear.


Why Keeping Islamic Extremists Out of America is Not "Islamophobia"

At least 235 people have been killed after a gun and bomb terror attack at a packed mosque in Egypt's North Sinai province today. 
Another 130 people are reported to have been injured, making it the worst terror attack in the country's modern history.
The terrorists reportedly detonated a bomb in the mosque's creche before firing on fleeing worshippers while blocking escape routes with burnt-out cars. 
Egypt's military has begun conducting air strikes around the area of North Sinai, security sources and eyewitnesses said....

The suspected Islamic State attack took place at the Al-Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, near El-Arish, during Friday prayers. Extremist Sunni jihadists have previously targeted Sufis - a mystical Islamic sect - for deviating from orthodoxy. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5114095/Dozens-feared-dead-bomb-gun-attack.html#ixzz4zOavp7Vj Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Progressives insist many Muslims are moderate and sensible.  True; I have worked with some.  But how long before the crazies start murdering Muslims here for being insufficiently crazy?

Black Friday: Whose Stupid Idea Was This?

US shoppers’ lust for Black Friday bargains this year has reached absurd new levels, evidenced by a viral joke that morphed into a disturbing new trend to help shoppers beat Wal-Mart and other big box store crowds by disguising themselves as temporary holiday employees. It started when Twitter user @OverlyLiked announcing he would be selling his Walmart vest for $100.
“I’m selling this Walmart vest for $100,” he wrote. “Use it to skip the line during Black Friday. You can even walk in, grab what you want, and walk out."
The violence and incivility show how much Christmas is a cultural identifier in America, not a religious belief.  Some stores in the Boise area were starting Black Friday at 6:00 PM on Thursday.  What a nice demand to put on your employees. :-)  This is why I do not shop on Black Friday: every customer is providing a corporation with an excuse to mistreat its employees.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Progressive Fake News

11/21/17 Newsweek explaining how to have a "woke" Thanksgiving (to annoy your "deplorable" family):
1. Center the struggles facing Native American communities.
It’s common knowledge that the history behind Thanksgiving dinner that we learn in grade school is a myth: The pilgrims in Massachusetts were far from friendly to the Wampanoag, and the entire premise of a “friendly dinner” between the two stems from President Abraham Lincoln, who after the Civil War offered a lovely—but mostly false—story of comradery among foes.
Of course, like nearly all progressive claims, it is false.  Here is the only contemporary account of what became the current holiday from Mourt's Relation Or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth (1865), p. 133:
If Lincoln gave such a story, I can't find it in books.google.com.  Of course, being progressives and Newsweek, they do not even know how to spell "camaraderie."  And Lincoln was assassinated within days of the Appomattox surrender, but I don't expect progressives to know this, either.


Strange Notion of "Right Way"

WALLER COUNTY, Texas- A woman in the Brookshire area is accused of sending explosives to three government leaders in 2016.
According to the six-count indictment, 46-year-old Julia Poff mailed explosives to Governor Greg Abbott, President Barack Obama and Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Carolyn Colvin on Oct. 12, 2016.
Other court documents say Gov. Abbott opened the package, but it failed to explode because he didn't open it right. If opened correctly, documents say "it could've caused severe burns and death."
She was allegedly upset with Gov. Abbott for not receiving support from her ex-husband.[emphasis added]
I think he did open it the right way.

Finally! A Democrat Calls Out the Clintons

11/22/17 CNN:
As a wave of stories unfold about sexual harassment and assault by men in power, a senior Democratic leader says her party should reflect on how it handled such charges when they were leveled against former President Bill Clinton.
"Not only did people look the other way, but they went after the women who came forward and accused him," says Kathleen Sebelius, the former secretary of Health and Human Services and Kansas governor. "And so it doubled down on not only bad behavior but abusive behavior. And then people attacked the victims."
Sebelius extended her criticism to Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton White House for what she called a strategy of dismissing and besmirching the women who stepped forward—a pattern she said is being repeated today by alleged perpetrators of sexual assault—saying that the criticism of the former first lady and Secretary of State was "absolutely" fair. Sebelius noted that the Clinton Administration's response was being imitated, adding that "you can watch that same pattern repeat, It needs to end. It needs to be over."
She distinguishes Sen. Franken from others because Franken has apologized, while others have denied the claims, with no apparent awareness that some of those accused might be innocent. 

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken

My boss called me into her office Monday morning.  There had been rumors floating around that something big was coming.   My first thought was a layoff.   In government service this is not common.   I mean, if the government is doing it, whatever “it” is, it must be something so critical that we cannot live without it, right? 

Our operation was hardly typical of government service.   Is time travel and historical research in the ordinary realm of common or needed governmental services?  And of course, being in a black projects budget made us so invisible that the ordinary pressure groups that protect agencies did not apply.  Indeed, the group most affected by what we did, historians (if they knew) would have regarded us as trouble.  Our research could not be published in the professional journals: who was going to be persuaded by an interview with Cotton Mather, when (and especially when) we had an audio recording of it? 

For the most part, we salted the past with documents that provided evidence to correct what was missing or had been misinterpreted.  This was not really inside the charter that CIA had created for the Historical Integrity Verification Project, but it made some of the professional historians who worked for us feel better about the hefty paychecks they received.  I was pleased as well; my work as a Time Detective had turned what had been a boring GE class at University of Iowa into a fascinating hobby; I was actually willingly reading the books and professional journals now, not just when told to prepare for a mission.   I enjoyed physics class in college because we put our knowledge to hands on experience with air hockey table experiments.  Hands-on works for history, too.

“Nick, you have doubtless heard the coffee pot chatter about a new phase of the project. You are going on a mission as part of it.”

I was thrilled that whatever it was, I was important enough, or skilled enough to be part of it.  But I kept my mouth shut to avoid sounding arrogant. Jane recognized by my silence that I was waiting for her to spill the beans.

“As you know, we have long been fearful of breaking the past. Even a minor change, a lost locket, an extra deposit in a colonial outhouse, might cause some subtle but potentially critical change in our present.  The Company originally funded our work in the hope of making such minor changes to effect positive results in our time without destructive side effects.” 

She paused, and I interjected, “Prevent Communism without destroying too much of the positive results of modern history.   Without the Cold War, modern electronics would not exist and the space program would likely have never developed.”

“Precisely.  We seem to have figured out how to determine the consequences experimentally.  What changes will happen to the future if my car stalls on the railroad tracks this evening?”

“With or without the speeding locomotive coming down the tracks?  With or without an ambulance standing by?  With or without a busy ER?  And was that ER upgraded to a Trauma Level 1 facility ten years ago because the local state legislator put this piece of necessary pork in an appropriations bill?  And what bribe, or pretty and easy lobbyist persuaded him to do so?””

She held up her hand.  “Okay. you have been reading Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity. I get that.  You know the enormous number of forks in the path of history--like looking 20 moves ahead in a chess game with 10,000 pieces and 2000 locations on the board.

“It turns out that every fork produces a separate temporal result—parallel universes if you like.  We have figured out how to examine those parallel universes.  Some have surprising results, not too far from the dead butterfly causing primates to not be the dominant sentient species.”

I was briefly floored by the prospect of all the possible forks and therefore the number of parallel universes.  “How many have they found?”

Jane smiled and went to the whiteboard.  Don’t think of them as truly parallel universes.  She drew a circle labeled A at the top of the board, then two lines below it, each leading to another circle, followed by more circles with lines.  “A-left is the result of one choice.  A-left-left is another choice in A-left.  A-right-left and A-right-right are often very similar.  In A-right-left, his name is Abraham Lincoln; in A-right-right, his name is Ezekiel Lincoln.  In some cases, we cannot identify what is actually different; the difference is there, but we either do not know what to look for, or the change is too subtle.  Perhaps someone has blue eyes, not brown.  In other cases, the differences have no measureable effect; Johnny still marries Suzie, but they meet at a disco instead of a high school dance.”

“So history can be self-healing.  Interesting.  How do you determine what’s different?”

“I don’t know if you noticed that new building across the street,” and Jane gestured through her window.  “The neutrino measurement system examines each fork and stores all the information it can gather.  The storage requirements are huge.  Now we can’t store every forked universe, so we only store the ones that have easily identified differences.”

“So how far out do we go?  Or do our changes not alter anything beyond the Earth.”

“Pretty obviously, the Space Age dramatically transforms the problem.  We are terrified of the number of forks (nearly all irrelevant to Earth) caused by Voyager’s pass by of Jupiter in the 1970s.  Every little dust collision makes a tiny fork in the future, at least at that distance from the Sun.  We limit our probing to Earth for that reason.”  Jane loved to spin these sort of hypotheticals (or at least I assumed that they were hypotheticals) to show how smart she was.  And it worked; I was in awe of the number of forks that hitting 500 dust particles that far away must have caused.

“So, what’s my task?”

“We have identified an event in 1698 that could cause a fork.  We want to change that event, and see how it expresses itself on our fork compared to the fork not taken.”  She sounded and looked dubious.

“So why the concerned expression?”

“You are going to prevent the death of a little girl, Patience Williams.”

My curiosity was now fully piqued.  “I would think that you would be overjoyed to save someone’s life, especially a child.”  I knew Jane had three children.

“It’s hard to see this as a negative, but messing with history, even in a controlled experiment still seems risky.”

I asked, with some concern for this little girl, “Can we reverse the experiment if needed?”

“Sure.  We analyze the experiment in its own branch, created by sending one of the physicists to Hawaii for two weeks before the first fork experiment.  It makes a minor branch, with no other significant effects.”

“The horror—two weeks paid vacation when it is snowing here.  So what do I do?”

“Patience Williams gets lost in the forest outside Salem Village in November, 1697.  She never comes back.  We have recently located her remains.  Our examination of her remains indicates death was natural causes, likely hypothermia.  You need to lead her back to town.  Try not to allow public adoration to swell your head or become too widespread.  That adds too many possible branches.”

“Do I know where to find her?”

“We’ll drop you a few hundred feet from where we found her remains.  She may be in a bad state by that point, although the weather was not that cold.  Keep her warm, and return her to her home.”

The next day, I entered what all of us had by this point come to call ‘the Time Machine.’  I put on my dark glasses, passed through the flash of light interface and fell to the ground.  I turned in all directions in the gathering gloom and saw a little girl of about six walking through the forest.  I saw her trip over a log, followed by a scream.  I reached her and saw her holding her badly bruised knee. 

“Sir, it hurts,” she sobbed.

“Let me help you find your way home.” I picked her up and was immediately struck by the smell.  This late in the year, bathing became less frequent because of the problem of heating bath water.  She wasn’t very heavy and it felt good to carry this sweet little girl back to Salem Village.  I knew from previous missions which was the Williams farm.  I knocked on the door and handed Patience to her mother.  “She fell in the forest and hurt her knee.”

The mother took Patience, and asked, “And who may I thank for helping Patience?  You are not from around here.”

“Ryan, Goodwife.  I am a traveler on the way to Salem Town.  I was walking through the forest and heard her scream.  If we do not look out for each other, how can we call ourselves children of Christ?”

“Would you care to join us for dinner?”

“No, thank you.  I still have some distance to travel this afternoon.”

A few minutes later, I was back in the laboratory.  Jane motioned me towards her office.

“Did we learn anything?”

Jane looked ready to cry.  “Yes, she needed to die in the forest.”

“What?”  I was incredulous that the death of this little girl played some important role in history.  Worse, while I have no children, I still found a soft spot for little Patience.  The prospect of her freezing to death in the forest was quite upsetting.

Jane saw my anger and quickly tried to defuse it.  “Let me show you what we recovered in the control branch.  On the screen of her computer I saw a video of a funeral sermon being delivered by Rev. Parris.

“Why little Patience died is another of those mysteries that Almighty God burdens us with.  There must be some purpose for this tragedy, even if we cannot immediately understand it.  We pray for wisdom in handling our grief at this tragic loss.”

Next, she showed an image from the Boston Gazette, dated April 4, 1720.  The headline reported the execution of Patience Williams for poisoning men in the tavern where she worked.

My head was now spinning.  “So I only saved her from freezing to death so she could be hung two decades later?”

Jane became increasingly uncomfortable.  “It took a while to figure out in the control branch, although it was instantaneous in our branch.  We just looked in the storage vault for their report.”

As I have previously related, one of our researchers had transferred antiques to the present by burying them in a chest in the forest, then retrieved them in the present day.  This has since become our method of relaying information from past to present.  Time travel forward, very slowly.  It appears that the vault is present in the control branch as well, providing a parallel universes communications channel.

Jane again looked pained.  “Patience was terribly abused a year after you saved her by a traveler passing through town, perhaps a sailor.  Like many children, she said nothing, and just buried the hurt inside.  She drifted into Boston as a young adult, and became a barmaid in a harbor tavern.  She started poisoning customers, largely sailors, which is why we suspect a sailor was her attacker.  Ben Franklin stopped in for a beer as a very young man and passed away.  Imagine the impact that had on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Revolutionary War American diplomacy.  So the control branch passed a no-go message to our branch before you left.  An hour ago, you did not go back and save Patience in the forest.  Your memory of this persists, as does mine, but the parallel universe where Patience murders Ben Franklin is gone.”

I cringed at the memory of little inadequately bathed, cold Patience and wanted to cry.  “Could we go back and off this monster who destroyed Patience’s innocence?  I would gladly use some vacation hours to do so.”  Now I was really mad.

“We thought about that, but that sailor has a complex, poorly understood connection to some of the Green Mountain Boys in Vermont after passing through Salem Village.  We might be able to figure it out if we could see and travel to 1690s Vermont.  But we can’t.  No one is happy about this, you know.  But Rev. Parris might be right.  Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Less Travelled’ comes to mind:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Brain Dump: Early 1960s

In 1962, my family lived in Chula Vista, a suburb of San Diego nestled against the Mexican border.  (The last time I visited, I noticed the Jack-in-the-Box ordering box for drivethru had the Spanish in larger letters than the English.)  We lived in an apartment on Woodlawn Avenue, apparently 544, according to online maps and my reconstruction from memory, immediately north of the elementary school (maybe junior high) my sister Marilyn attended, which is now Mueller Charter School.  Not immediately adjacent, but very close was the I-5 freeway.  I have a vivid memory of helping my mother and Marilyn put up some silly poster covered in matchbooks as part of her pursuit of some student body government post.  (Was she matchless?  I do not remember.)  It was cold.

Travel was fairly rare for us.  We were definitely not well off.  Complicating the matter was that my father was sought by the FBI, and so he generally worked away from home.  The FBI would sometimes enter without warrant or probable cause to search for my father and threaten my mother that her kids would be taken away.  Finding my father on these accidental "interstate flight to avoid prosecution" charges could not have been a high priority task, because we drove to San Pedro almost every weekend to visit him.

My father worked at Todd Shipyards as a welder repairing ships.  He rented what in retrospect was a very odd house on top of a hill which seems may still exist on an unaccountably unbuilt hill.  It wasn't very big and it was ancient, even in 1962, but big enough for him to live in while working graveyard and swing shift, repairing I believe both commercial and Navy ships.  There were spectacular views from front and back of the house and lots of black widow spiders that caused my mother to put the fear of God into me.

We started driving north when my mother got off work.  I have no strong memories of the car except one bad one.  I have this odd impression that we arrived at my father's place in the wee hours of the morning.  Roads were slow at the time; the Interstates were far from complete, and state highways were often stop-and-go through every little town.  I do know that when we arrived, the smell from the kitchen was overwhelming.  My father always had a pot roast ready with onions, carrots, and potatoes.  Even at 5, this was an overwhelmingly good smell and flavor experience!

Cars, even new cars, which we never had, had no seatbelts.  I can remember standing up in the middle of the bench seat next to my mother.  It was quite common to make "car beds," collections of blankets that provide something that would help kids fall asleep.  Perhaps they provided some padding for minor crashes.

The only strong memory I have is a blackout, then waking up hours later in the bed of my Uncle Lloyd's pickup.  A drunken Marine from Camp Pendleton had rear-ended up, destroying the car.  My siblings have no memory of me being hurt, but for many years, I had a night terror, in which I was lying in the back seat of that car, and suddenly something monstrous raises its terrifying face to the window.  (If you have never experienced a night terror, good for you.  They make nightmares seem pretty pleasant.)

The weekends with my father were wonderful.  I always loved my father immensely; he was kind to me in a way that my mother simply could not manage.  There was a grape arbor over the walkway to the house and it was a lovely place where we often ate dinner outside on Sunday afternoon.  There were not enough beds, so we were often camped out on blankets all over the house.  Amazing how much easier it is fall asleep at that age.  I have several very positive memories of learning there.  Marilyn drilled me on my multiplication tables.  I was not in first grade yet.  My brother taught me to read so young, that I have no memory of not reading.  I always assumed that I learned at 3 1/2.  My sister Susan's memory is that I was 2.  I know that by first grade I was reading, learning, and memorizing from my brother's high school chemistry textbook.  This was a great advantage.  I went from child care to first grade at St. John's Elementary School, skipping kindergarten.

Returns to Chula Vista were disheartening.  I have memories of arriving in north San Diego to a very hard to miss Flying A gasoline station sign.


There will be more.

One other trip to San Pedro memory.  For some reason, our mother put Marilyn and I on a bus to San Pedro.  A Greyhound for the long trip to San Pedro.  We then rode a city bus to the base of the hill on which our father lived.  While that may sound like a crazy thing to do, in the early 1960s, it did not seem so.  By the end of the city bus trip, there were guys making either  catcalls or inappropriate remarks to my sister who would have been 12 or 13.  The bus driver told them to knock it off and they did.

How Small is My County

The county-wide newspaper The Idaho World has this headline today:
Volunteer Fire Department Saves Parrot!
The body explains it was actually a macaw.

It's been an exciting week in Boise County!

Odd Technical Question for You Deer Hunters

Coming home a couple night ago, there was a woman in a Jeep who had just hit a deer.  She told me it was bleeding from the eyes.  It wandered off road.  This being Idaho, she sounded absolutely ashamed to not have a gun.  (Tourist?)  From 15 yards, I could see the left hindquarter had a 5" x 2" skin opening with bloody flesh exposed.  Probably an animal in need a mercy shot. 

I normally keep in my car a Firestar loaded with 124 grain JHPs.  This being Idaho, I worry very little about criminal attack, but an injured animal does concern me.  A deer already anchored by the ultimate major caliber, a motor vehicle (go ahead, calculate the grains and foot-pounds) is simple: A head shot would be sufficient.  Heck, even a .22 LR might be enough to enough to put it out of its misery.  But what would a 9mm JHP do in a torso shot at 15 yards.  Anything at all?  Or just increase its agony?

I hate to see animals suffer.

Navigation Systems of 1954

Road & Track unearthed this 1954 Chevrolet "how-to" for vacationing by car.



It wasn't quite this bad on my first vacation car trips: to the Seattle World's Fair in 1962; to Yosemite sometime in the mid-1960s; to New Mexico in 1964?

There Must Be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth in Democrat Circles Right Now

Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore holds a 10-point lead over his Democratic opponent, according to a new poll.
The Emerson College survey found that Moore has the support of 55 percent of the Alabama voters polled, compared to 45 percent for the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones.
The poll was conducted from Nov. 9 to Nov. 11, after The Washington Post published its report in which a woman accused Moore of initiating sexual contact with her in 1979, when she was 14 and he was 32.
The poll does show improvement for Jones from the last survey conducted in September. That survey gave Moore a 22-point advantage.
The poll also found that President Trump has a positive approval rating in Alabama, with 58 percent approving and 36 percent disapproving of him.
I have been skeptical of these accusations because Moore has been a divisive figure in Alabama politics for decades and none of these claims appeared until after the Republican primary.  Before the primary, it  might have put a RINO up against a Democrat.  Afterwards, it would seem to make the Democrat a shoe-in.  It appears that Alabamians are not buying the claims.  I rather doubt that they would support him if they believed them to be true.

Sen. Franken Better Pay Attention

Just 22 percent of Minnesotans in a new survey say Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) should stay in office.
A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll finds in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against Franken, only 22 percent of Minnesotans think he should remain in his post, compared to 33 percent who say he should resign.
Another 36 percent think he should wait to see what comes from a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his behavior.
I'm guessing a big fraction of that 22% are guys you would not want your daughter, sister, or wife to work for.

How Can You Tell a Member of Congress is Progressive?

The number of accusers.  11/21/17 BuzzFeedNews:
Another former staff member to Michigan Rep. John Conyers alleged that she endured persistent sexual harassment by the congressman, according to court documents.
A former scheduler in the Conyers' office attempted to file a sealed lawsuit against him this February in the US District Court for the District of Columbia that alleges she suffered unwanted touching by the Democrat “repeatedly and daily.” She abandoned the lawsuit the next month, after the court denied her motion to seal the complaint.
The woman was not involved in the 2015 sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal complaint that Conyers settled in 2015, which was revealed Monday by BuzzFeed News, and is now under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
The lawsuit centered on behavior that took place later, from 2015 to 2016, but involves similar allegations. The woman said that shortly after she started to work for Conyers he began to make sexual advances in the form of inappropriate comments and touching.

Monday, November 20, 2017

Charles Manson Dead

If there was ever an argument for the death penalty, only Charles Ng tops Manson for it.  I was on a backpacking trip through the Sierras with my oldest sister and cousin the weekend of the murders at Sharon Tate's house.  Of course, he was sentenced to death, and saved by a California Supreme Court that voided all existing death sentences. 

That Carolyn and Michael didn't leave their whiny 12 year old relative in the forest showed enormous self-control.  In retrospect, this was one of the best experiences of my life and one that I wish that I had repeated a few years later when a 20 pound pack would not have been such a burden.  As an adult it would have been wonderful.  Today, I do not have the stamina or adequate joints for it.

The barbarism of Manson and his successful brainwashing of what Manson later accurately characterized as the "throwaways" of middle class society, was well examined in prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's Helter-Skelter.

I Had No Idea Using the Word "Tranny" Called for Police Activity

The University of Minnesota-Morris has threatened a student radio show with cancellation after one of the hosts used the word “tranny” on-air, with campus officials offering several shifting reasons for pulling the show from the airwaves. The College Fix has obtained exclusive video of the moment when the students were pulled from the air during the middle of their show.
“Deplorable Radio” is a weekly show on KUMM hosted by students Brandon Albrecht and Tayler Lehmann. Albrecht told The College Fix in an email that the programming is “a mix of politics, music, and some random musings about current events locally and around the world.”

Sunday, November 19, 2017

M1911 Full Length Recoil Spring Guide Rod

WIlson Combat sells one for $30.  Experience with it?  My current M1911 works flawlessly, but comments suggest that it improves tightness of fit (thus accuracy) and smoother functioning.

All Cultures Are Equally Valid

Especially the more traditional.   Newsweek reports that local Madagascar tradition of exhuming family dead,  redress ing them,  then dancing worth them,  may be spreading bubonic plague. http://www.newsweek.com/dancing-dead-plague-madagascar-693513

No Easy Way to Summarize This Article

Except state legislatures need to look at how public funds are being misspent.  11/16/17 College Fix:
White inventor of ‘white fragility’ tells University of Texas: Whites must stop becoming teachers

Obamacare Death Rattle

11/16/17 New York Times (of all places):
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Consumers here at first did not believe the health insurance premiums they saw when they went shopping for coverage this month on HealthCare.gov. Only five plans were available, and for a family of four with parents in their mid-30s, the cheapest plan went typically for more than $2,400 a month, nearly $30,000 a year.
With the deadline for a decision less than a month away, consumers are desperately weighing their options, dismayed at the choices they have under the Affordable Care Act and convinced that political forces in Washington are toying with their health and well-being.
Of course it is Trump's fault.  He has only been in office since January and already stuff that has been building for at least a year is his fault.

Defending Al Franken AND Roy Moore

HotAir presents a Facebook posting by a Democrat running for governor of Ohio where he claims that he is defending Franken "on behalf of all heterosexual males," then boasts of sex with "50 very attractive females."  Unless he is boasting of rape, he clearly does not understand the complaint about Franken.  Worst of all, this idiot is a current Ohio Supreme Court justice.

Marvelous comment at Instapundit:
Anyone in public office who has a Faceplant account needs to have their head examined.

Incoming!

A recent meteor strike caught on an auroa webcam:

Friday, November 17, 2017

Nice Clear Sky

To try out the equatorial platform,  and it is below freezing.  Will I build up the courage to try this?  Or watch Men in Black?

It's Not a Tax Cut Bill

The limiting of mortgage interest deduction to $500,000 mortgages, is clearly a "soak the rich" bill.  Republicans need to call it that.

More Signs of the Evil of Trump

11/17/17 The Hill:
Thirteen states this year have seen their unemployment rates drop to the lowest levels ever recorded since the federal government began keeping track of state-level data more than four decades ago.

Eight years after the bottom of the worst recession in modern history, the states seeing economic booms range from the bluest of the blue, like Hawaii and California, to the deepest shades of red, like Idaho and Texas.

In October, the unemployment rates in Alabama, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Washington all met or beat their lowest rates ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), according to the agency’s monthly report issued Friday.

California, Colorado, Idaho, North Dakota and Oregon also hit new lows earlier this year. 
I wonder how much is the boom, and how much is the decline in illegals making jobs available.

Barbie in a Hijab

I used to wonder if I missed something recently.  Remember when Barbie was an antifeminist toy because of her impossible dimensions?  11/13/17 CNN Money reports on the new hijab wearing Barbie.

Telescopes

I am rebuilding my 3" f/4.5 reflector, mostly to make it something to be proud of.   I am not changing the mirror, just building a proper mirror cell (which holds and collimates the mirror) and the spider (which holds the diagonal mirror).  These are usually held in place by three or four legs (hence the term "spider." 

The mirror cell is complete, except it needs to be painted flat black.

The spider is a surprisingly complicated assembly because the mirror has to be adjustable (3 points of positioning) and ideally has some ability to make fine adjustments it up and down the tube and rotate within the tube for precise alignment.  A really fancy spider would hold the diagonal mirror (which actually a 45 degree elliptical) by the edges only, but that was more work to design than makes sense here.  Instead, I will double-sided sticky foam the mirror to a 45 degree piece of aluminum.  The collimation screws allow for minor errors on angle or variations in foam tape thickness to be adjusted after the fact, but I wanted the holder to be pretty close to perfect.  I cut it on a chop saw to approximate 45 degrees, then put it in a chuck on a tilting table to get a perfect 45 degree angle.



Cops, Eh?

I am watching a series called Under Arrest which is rather like Cops, but filmed in Canada.  Not anywhere near as good a theme song: "Bad Boys" is just awesome.

A few interesting aspects:

1. The bad boys are surprisingly similar to the U.S. in spite of Canada's blindingly pasty population: blacks and Hispanics.  There are a few more First Nations people than in Cops.  Of course, racism is the usual complaint, even in cases where the police could not tell the driver's race when the lights went on.

2. The evidence that drugs and alcohol are bad for you are even more obvious.

3. Canadian police have many of the same limitations such as their version of a Miranda warning but some surprising differences: an officer points his gun into driver's window and threatens to shoot him if he doesn't exit the vehicle; lots of use of those racist chokeholds.

UPDATE:  I think showing a few episodes of this show in high schools would be a powerful tool against excessive drinking and alcoholism.  If you still want to get drunk after watching a shirtless guy threaten to beat up an armed police officer, you are too stupid for reasoning.

Al Franken Admits Groping, Makes Himself the Victim

11/17/17 Daily Mail:
The radio host groped and forcibly kissed by now-Senator Al Franken during a 2006 USO show says the now-infamous photo of the Democrat's hands on her breasts while she slept wasn't meant as a joke: It was an 'in your face' parting shot after nearly two weeks of being 'belittled and humiliated.'
Former Playboy model LeeAnn Tweeden said Friday on 'Good Morning America' that she 'had to endure being with him for almost two weeks' after 'he stuck his tongue in my mouth' as Franken mocked her with one passive-aggressive gesture after another.
In some cases, she said, Franken would draw devil horns and tails on her glossy photos while she was trying to autograph them. 
'So at the end when I got that picture, it was like the final parting shot of the, "Ha, ha, she's going to see this when she gets home" that I couldn't, you know, see him face-to-face to confront him.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5092825/Al-Franken-accuser-Grope-photo-face-insult.html#ixzz4yhtSJ8zx
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
The article explains that he has been a voice in the Senate for women against sexual harassment.  Yup; progressive projection.

Will he resign?  Don't be silly.

Tehama County Shooter Made Own AR-15s


The arsenal that police said Kevin Janson Neal used during Tuesday's deadly rampage in northern California included two AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles with multi-round magazines that he assembled himself, police told NBC News on Thursday.
One of the high-powered rifles was found outside the grade school in rural Rancho Tehama Reserve that Neal riddled with bullets, police said. The other lethal weapon was found at the spot where Neal was killed in a gun battle with officers.
Experts say Neal apparently exploited a legal loophole that enabled him to get around California’s tough gun laws by ordering the parts for a weapon that is illegal in that state — and putting it together at home.

It says nothing about the lower receiver, which obviously he did not order mail order.

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Will the Decent People in Hollywood Please Come Out of the Closet?

Daily Mail shows a 1986 police report involving Sylvester Stallone and bodyguard raping a 16 year old. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5081605/Sylvester-Stallone-accused-forcing-teen-threesome.html

We Don't Want Sexual Harassers in the Senate!

790 KABC:
Senator Al Franken Kissed and Groped Me Without My Consent, And There’s Nothing Funny About It
By Leeann Tweeden
In December of 2006, I embarked on my ninth USO Tour to entertain our troops, my eighth to the Middle East since the 9/11 attacks. My father served in Vietnam and my then-boyfriend (and now husband, Chris) is a pilot in the Air Force, so bringing a ‘little piece of home’ to servicemembers stationed far away from their families was both my passion and my privilege.
Also on the trip were country music artists Darryl Worley, Mark Wills, Keni Thomas, and some cheerleaders from the Dallas Cowboys. The headliner was comedian and now-senator, Al Franken.
But he's a Democrat.... so, okay. 

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Please, I Do Not Want to be a Juror on This Case

A New Jersey attorney nude from the waist down save for a pair of high heels strutted into a stranger’s Rutherford home and announced “I’m here,” police said.
Justin Christodoro, 39, of Hackensack, subsequently was arrested in neighboring Lyndhurst on Saturday after a resident returned home to find an unknown car with an unconscious man inside parked in his driveway, NorthJersey.com reports.
Thanks to SmallDeadAnimals for that word picture I want to erase.

Unsympathetic Defendants Often Make Bad Case Law

Here's a case where it did not.  Comm. of Penn. v. Ford (Penn.Sup.Ct. 2016):
Appellant claims the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress the firearm seized from his home. He also argues that the trial court erred in finding the evidence sufficient to sustain his conviction for possession of a firearm with an altered manufacturer’s number, because the manufacturer’s number was merely obscured by corrosion, not by human hands.
Ford was a prohibited person (not lawful to possess gun).  Rust is not a crime.

I Think We Just Got Lucky on This One

Police in Northern California on Wednesday arrested a “violent psychopath” accused of murder who had escaped a Hawaiian psychiatric hospital earlier this week....

Saito was acquitted of a gruesome 1979 murder of Sandra Yamashiro by reason of insanity and committed to Hawaii State Hospital in 1981. Saito randomly chose the victim, shot her in the face and fatally stabbed her, authorities said. Her body was later found in her car at the mall....

It was not immediately clear how Saito was able to leave the facility in Kaneohe, a Honolulu suburb. Hawaii State Hospital Administrator William May said officials are fully cooperating with law enforcement and appropriate steps would be taken if Saito received help from someone inside the facility.
Saito has repeatedly attempted to get released from the state hospital, a move vehemently opposed by prosecutors.
In 2002, prosecutors questioned why Saito was granted unescorted leave from the facility, according to Hawaii News Now. "He is a psychopathic predator whose mental condition continues to represent a serious danger to the community," deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Albert said at the time.
In 1993, a court denied Saito’s request for conditional release, saying he continued to suffer from sexual sadism and necrophilia.

Another No Surprise Mass Murder

11/15/17 CNN:
Neal's sister told CNN's Sara Sidner that he had struggled with mental health issues for at least 20 years.
"My mom spent a great deal of her time and nearly all her energy trying so hard to placate him," said Sheridan Orr, who was with her distraught mother in North Carolina.
Neal's mental state began a steep decline about a year ago, said Orr, adding the family had tried to get him help.
Fortunately, California has very strict gun control laws, so this clearly did not happen.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Another Mass Murder

Tehama County,  Cal.  A neighbor is quoted that the shooter had been making threats to him and others and that something needs to be done in cases like this.  Like call 911 and prosecute?

When Cleaning Your AR-15

I went shooting Sunday with guys from church.  Remember you need to really clean it thoroughly to get all the evil spirits out of it.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Mental Illness No Longer a Bar to Military Service

11/13/17 USA Today reports that the military is no longer rejecting recruits with mental illness problems.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/11/12/army-lifts-ban-recruits-history-self-mutilation-other-mental-health-issues/853131001/  Not like military service and its demands could be a problem.

A reader jogged my memory.  PTSD and bipolar disorder are comorbid.
The purpose of this study was to identify subjects with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) consequent to hallucinations and delusions and the experiences related to psychosis in schizophrenic and bipolar subjects. Schizophrenic and bipolar subjects were given questionnaires in order to evaluate PTSD incidence and symptoms. Subjects with classical types of trauma were excluded. Depression and stress scales were also answered. About one-third of schizophrenic subjects and one-half of bipolar subjects met PTSD criteria on the Penn PTSD Inventory.

Reality is Also Optional

http://www.wtsp.com/mobile/article/news/transracial-man-born-white-feels-like-he-is-filipino/491290902 reports on the emerging transracial movement.  Born the wrong race?  Change your identity.

Not a Strong Sign of Intelligence or Planning

https://pjmedia.com/trending/shock-more-than-half-of-california-pregnancies-unintended/ reports that more than 1/2 of California pregnancies were unplanned.  If you cannot figure out how to handle this sort of thing,  is there reason to expect better decision making at election time.

Gun Cleaning

I went shooting yesterday with some guys from church.  I had forgotten how much I love the M1911A1.  Wonderful pointing, accurate enough and when those big bullets hit milk jugs, they fly.

I had planned to sight in the 3x-9x40 scope on the AR-15, but that's hard to do when shivering.  Late spring, maybe.

Cleaned both guns this morning.  During field stripping, I failed to hold the recoil spring plug, and it launched across the garage.  When trying to reassemble, I found myself wondering how I had forgotten the "fun" involved.  At least when the recoil spring launched, the extra weight gave me a slower moving target to look for with less range to search.

What was so hard?  The Browning Hi-Power reassembles slightly differently, and I was doing it wrong.  It has been some years since I cleaned the M1911A1.

As much as I love it, I won't be using it instead my Browning as a carry gun if I go to...  Wait a minute, the only place that I have been recently that both recognizes my many carry permits and is that scary is Hartford, Conn.

Progressive Support for Racism

11/11/17 New York Times:
Can My Children Be Friends With White People?
Donald Trump’s election has made it clear that I will teach my boys the lesson generations old, one that I for the most part nearly escaped. I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust. Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people.
Remember that the real goal is to justify race war, when the left next gets control of the federal government, and provokes Civil War II.  Fortunately, black people read that rag about as much as white people.  Outside the bubble, this will have little effect.

George Takei Now Blames Russians

for the sexual assault claims.

And Saying It in the Vatican Just Completes the Picture

[Gov. Brown] was still talking about the need for a fundamental shift in lifestyle when he said at the Vatican that confronting climate change will require “a transformation of the relationship of human beings to all the mysterious network of things.”
“It’s not just a light rinse,” Brown said. “We need a total, I might say, brainwashing. We need to wash our brains out and see a very different kind of world.”
The quote is from 11/11/17 Politico. 

The Party of Racism

11/10/17 WTNH:
Pair of 20-year-olds believed youngest black Republicans elected to Connecticut public office
Low level offices, but this is where most politicians start.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Equatorial Platform Mounted

It has taken longer than I expected but Crossbow Platforms has provided exemplary post-sales support.  I probably made some poor assumptions about what would be required to attach this.
Now, I just need some clear skies.  What?  May?


Roy Moore Allegations

I had the same reaction as many others: Moore has been a loud voice in Alabama politics for decades and just two weeks before the election, these allegations of child sexual abuse appear?  Talk about convenient.  I would love to see how much money the RNC has spent on this project.  11/11/17 BizPac Review reports:
Color plenty of Alabama voters more than a little skeptical.
So many, in fact, that when a Birmingham news outlet searched high and low for just one voter who believed Corfman’s allegations, they came up empty in the end.
Perhaps the Democrats could have some of their high credibility faces come in to help their candidate?  Kevin Spacey, or Harvey Weinstein, or George Takei?   Best of all, Bill Clinton.

Now, Moore may have skeletons in his closet.  There are more than a few things that I did before I became a Christian that I would not want on billboards, but in the absence of anything stronger than what has been presented so far, I smell Democratic Party projection, and perhaps even Republican Party tricks.  Many Congressional Republicans really want a properly corrupted Republican President or at least a Democrat as an alternative to Trump.

Fortunately, his opponent is running this ad reminding black voters what his party used to stand for:

One-tap Boost

I found this app on my phone and it seems to be mostly an ad server which is annoying.   I would like to remove it from my phone,  but it does not show in the Application Manager.  Because this was apparently installed by some other app,  I am reluctant to trust any of the free virus removers unless I know it works.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Homophobic Attack on Inclusive Church

Did you even have to ask? 5/3/17 WTHR:
BEAN BLOSSOM, Ind. (WTHR) - A Brown County church vandalized with Donald Trump graffiti shortly after the 2016 election wasn't targeted by pro-Trump political activists, but a member of their own congregation, according to police.
People suspected the KKK or some other hate group was responsible for the graffiti. The arrest of the church organist, was a surprise - and a relief.
The Brown County prosecuting attorney's office issued a statement Wednesday saying they had charged 26-year-old George Nathaniel Stang of Bloomington with institutional criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. Stang was the man who originally claimed to have found the graffiti, and works as the organist at St. David's Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom....
Detectives immediately suspected the crime was committed by someone familiar with the church. They said cell phone records put Stang in the area Saturday night.
According to court records, when confronted with the evidence, the 26-year-old gay man confessed.
Investigators say Stang admitted to painting the "Heil Trump" and "Fag Church" graffiti himself because he wanted to "mobilize a movement after being disappointed in and fearful of the outcome of the national election." He insisted his actions were not motivated by anti-Christian or anti-gay sentiments.

This is Going to Create Problems for the Evolutionists

5/9/17 Phys.org:
Fossil evidence of early life has been discovered by UNSW scientists in 3.48 billion year old hot spring deposits in the Pilbara of Western Australia - pushing back by 3 billion years the earliest known existence of inhabited terrestrial hot springs on Earth.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-oldest-evidence-life-billion-year-old-australian.html#jCp
The Late Heavy Bombardment took place "approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years (Ga) ago"  which kept the Earth at oven temperatures.  So we went from baking temperature to life capable of leaving fossils in 320 million years?  The young Earthers refuse to admit an old planet, hoping to deny enough time for evolution.  At some point, the random process explanation is going to run out of time.

Later in the article:
In September 2016, Professor Kranendonk was part of an international team that found what is possibly the oldest evidence of life on earth - 3.7 billion year old fossil stromatolites in Greenland deposits that were laid down in a shallow sea.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-oldest-evidence-life-billion-year-old-australian.html#jCp
So, now 100 million years from oven bake to life that leaves fossils?

It's Spring in Horseshoe Bend

This panorama is from outside my bedroom door on the back porch.
Also available here if you want to zoom in.

Experiment

I have my Blogger app pointed to the old blog.  I was wondering why I was not seeing these posts when I go into Blogger on my PC.  Trying to see if this goes to right place.

Suggestibilty

Last night I was in pain in my upper left back.   At first,  I wondered if this might be a heart attack.   It was actually strain from putting this picture up.

The Great Warning

I have mentioned Brian Fagan's The Great Warming previously and his too easy acceptance of the Hockey Stick.  The deeper I get into his book,  the more impressed I get with it.  Anyone who accepts the warmist claims after reading this book is not paying attention.  His descriptions of the part the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age play in Arctic,  American Southwest,  European,  and African cultures are stupendous in their detail.   The parallels to recent climate changes and effects are impossible to miss.  
One aspect of the book that is at first surprising and increasingly pleasurable to me,  is his description of a particular year and how the locals deal with life.  Some textbook my son used in elementary school had a regular sidebar called "A Moment in Time" built in a very similar style,  showing how a single person would have lived or experienced the time.   Fagan is an anthropologist,  and it shows in these often amazingly emotionally affecting vignettes.