Good Intentions Are Not Enough

 10/7/20 New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The blighted house at 1826 Reynes St. in the Lower 9th Ward has a date with the bulldozer.

On Sept. 30, the city posted a “Notice of Emergency Demolition” on the sagging structure. The canary-yellow document declares that the vacant building is “in imminent danger of collapse and/or threat to life,” decreeing that the property will be torn down at the owner’s expense, at a cost of $7,085.

The owner of the house is Make It Right, the non-profit development company founded by Hollywood leading man Brad Pitt in 2008.

The Lower 9th Ward neighborhood surrounding the soon-to-be demolished house was largely wiped out by the flood that accompanied Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Soon after, Pitt established Make It Right, which was meant to provide affordable homes to displaced residents.

 Unlike the 1950s low income housing projects destroyed by the residents, these appear to be the result of bad materials and bad design work.  Kudos to Brad Pitt for good intentions and spending money to help poor people, but good intentions are not enough.  You have to have professionals involved to make some things work.

Hat tip to SmallDeadAnimals.

Low Profile Focuser

This is what I have so far.  It is a tight fit of the tube in the base.  The thumbscrew is perhaps not strictly needed, but it makes less likely to fall out.  I have ordered a 1 25" helical focuser that goes into the tube.  The tube you see provides coarse adjustment.   The helical focuser provides very fine focus.  I can also use this in the 5" refractor and the 8" reflector,  both of which have only coarse focusers.  Big Bertha has a dual speed focuser, very nice for the perfect focus.

reparations for slavery

10/8/20 City Journal makes several points that I have repeatedly made about slavery reparation.  

1. Not every black American is descended from slaves.   Some are descended from black slaveowners.  

2. Are descendants of blacks free before the Civil War eligible for the same payments as those freed by the Civil War?

3. Should blacks never held in American slavery (descendants of Jamaicans or recent African immigrants) deserve compensation?

4. Reparations to those interned by Democrat FDR were only to the actual internees, not their descendants. By that standard,  only former slaves deserve reparations.   (Total cost: $0.) 

5. Should Americans whose ancestors arrived after the abolition of slavery have to pay through taxes for reparations when their families never held slaves?

6. Should those of us whose ancestors died in the Civil War on the Union side be compensated for the loss of loved ones?  Yes, my g-g-g-mother received a pension,  but I doubt it matched the loss of his earnings.  He moved up rapidly in wealth from the 1850 to 1860 census.

7. Should descendants of black slaveowners be eligible for reparations?

Questions 1-3 and 7 would yield very complex calculations depending on a black person's ancestors.   The records of slavery are very poor, so figuring out who fits in what category would be impossible. 

Finally, any compensation to individuals based on their race (as opposed to their having been held in slavery) would clearly violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

 

As my wife reminded me, there is at least an equally valid claim against the descendants of the West Africans who sold those slaves to Europeans. 

Hat tip to SmallDeadAnimals.

Cuties

 I have not seen it.  Its notoriety is pretty substantial.  10/7/20 Fox News:

Netflix has been indicted on a criminal charge that alleges the streaming giant promotes “lewd visual material” of a child.

The lawsuit centers on the release of the French film “Cuties” that has been mired by controversy since its release last month.

A Tyler County, Texas grand jury moved to return an indictment against Netflix on Sept. 23, Fox News confirmed on Tuesday via court documents.

The complaint alleges Netflix “knowingly” promoted visual material which “depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age at the time the visual material was created, which appeals to the prurient interest in sex, and has no serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”...

The media giant doubled down on Tuesday. "Cuties is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children,” a spokesperson for Netflix told Fox News. “This charge is without merit and we stand by the film."

Yes, if you made a film that showed child molesters raping children, you could call it that, but it would not change its prurient appeal.  Wasn't that Guccione's argument for his movie of Caligula, serious history with unsimulated sex scenes?

 

Probably Mostly of Interest to Idahoans

Ammon Bundy is a bit of a disruptive anarchist, whose followers have disrupted a number of public meetings with his opposition to mandatory masking ordinances.  But this 10/6/20 Boise channel 2 story is substantially at variance with what sophisticates here in Boise were saying a few days back.

Appearing Tuesday afternoon on the Nate Shelman show on 670 KBOI, He explained that he didn't push his way into the stadium. When they told him at the gate that he couldn't come in without a mask, "I said, 'hey, I'm going to go down here along the fence and I'm going to watch the game there. My family went down there and that was it"

Almost. Though they were by themselves, far away from the field, Bundy said school administrators sought him out. "I chose not to make a scene ... Why don't they just leave me alone?" Bundy said.

In a video Ammon Bundy posted on his Facebook page, a coach from Emmett High can be seen on the other side of the fence pleading with Bundy to leave:,,,

However, the Caldwell School District later posted on its website that the game was called because of a threat against the school made in a 911 call. I asked a spokesperson for the district about the nature of the threat. She said she did not know.

Arizona Voters

 You probably know fellow Arizonians considering voting for Mark Kelley for U.S. Senate because he isn't a Republican (boo! hiss!) and he has not taken a public stand supporting gun bans.  Keep in mind that he attempted a strawman purchase some years back.  3/13/13 Breitbart News:

Kelly, a gun regulation advocate and husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has explained that he bought an AR-15 rifle last week because he wanted to show how “easy” it was to buy an “assault weapon.” ...

Kelly may have completed the background check process for the pistol he bought, but not for the AR-15. On March 12, after Breitbart News contacted Diamondback Police Supply, the store where Kelly bought the weapons, the store’s owner Douglas MacKinlay provided the following statement to the media: 

On March 5, 2013 Mr. Mark Kelly purchased a Sig Sauer 45 caliber pistol and a Sig Sauer M400 5.56 AR style rifle from my company, Diamondback Police Supply Co. in Tucson, AZ. The rifle, having been purchased in trade from another customer, cannot be released to Mr. Kelly or any other customer for a minimum of 20 days in accordance with local ordinances. Mr. Kelly did not ask for any modifications to the rifle, nor are we making any. Once the hold period is up, Mr. Kelly must then show proper identification, complete the Federal Firearms Transfer Record (Form 4473) and successfully complete the NICS background check prior to his taking physical possession of the firearm. [emphasis added]

The “local ordinances” that apply to the Sig Sauer M400 5.56mm AR-style rifle required that the AR-15 be placed on hold for 20 days because it was second-hand. If Kelly’s goal was to show how easy the background check system really is, why didn’t he buy a new “assault rifle” so he could take possession of it immediately, thereby allowing him to finish the background check on day he originally walked into the store–March 5?

When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Kelly on Monday what it was like going into a gun store and “buying an AR-15.” Kelly said that for such a “deadly” weapon, “especially with the high capacity magazines, it’s a pretty easy thing to do, even with the background check.” 

He went on to say: “public access to these [weapons] is too easy, as I demonstrated the other day.”

Yet Kelly has not completed the process of taking possession of the AR-15.

Kelly has openly stated that his plan from the beginning was to buy such a firearm and hand it over to the police (even though, as Breitbart News reported, under pending legislation the police would likely have to sell the AR-15 rather than destroying it, returning it to the streets).

 

 

I Have No Interest in Pinterest

 But seeing how the left has turned what should be a juvenile activity into a crybully activity is hard to miss.  From NotTheBee:

If you search for "culturally insensitive" costumes on Pinterest you'll be greeted with a link to a page where you'll be given a nice little lecture on cultural appropriation. It's so dumb, I don't even want to quote it. So here it is.

Pinterest is obviously saving the world here; and you can help. If you see anything on the site that is culturally insensitive—such as a prisoner costume, which may be offensive to criminals, or a "Joy Behar wearing black face" costume, which may be offensive to Joy Behar—you can report it to Pinterest, and they'll look into it. Thank goodness!

And here is Pinterest's self-righteous recursive backslap.  Hey lefties.  I declare POCs using calculus, interchangeable parts, computers, software, all electricity that isn't static, antibiotics, and aircraft to be "cultural appropriation" and therefore nasty and doubleplusungood.  Ditto for concentration camps, although I doubt the that will stop the left from operating them.