The End of the Romans

As usual, a fascinating PBS Secrets of the Dead documentary "The End of the Romans." It explores the role that climate change played in the collapse of the Roman Empire.  If you have taken my Western Civ class you know that the Roman Climatic Optimum was a very warm period that roughly coincides with the high point of classical civilization.  The cooling that ends it causes central Asian nomads to play bumper cars with other tribes, sending the Goths pleading for Roman protection in the 4th century AD.  

This documentary uses dendochronology and ice cores to demonstrate that the Roman Climatic Optimum was real.  They also examine the role that the two big plagues (one of them bubonic) play in the fall of the Empire and the really unexpected volcanic disasters starting in 536, when an Icelandic volcano made the Sun as bright as the Moon for 18 months.  No, this was not good for crops.  Then there were several other eruptions elsewhere over the next decade that just kept the hits coming.

Anyway, well worth watching on Amazon Prime.  I wonder how many of the self-satisfied PBS watchers saw this and scratched their heads about the climate change.

We Met A Recent California Refugee

Asian gal from S.F.  She moved here because even on a six-figure income she was never going to buy a house; she felt unsafe out and about: her landlord decided to raise her rent because she was working as a dog watcher, and he wanted some of the profit; and someone tried to steal her catalytic converter.  She is also pleàsed to be in a pro-gun state and best of all, not need to carry.

How to Upset Your Likely Allies

5/26/23 ABC News:

"Two members of a climate activist group were arrested and charged Friday for allegedly defacing an art exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., during a protest last month.

"Timothy Martin of North Carolina, and Joanna Smith of New York, both 53, surrendered to authorities after they were indicted on conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and injury to a National Gallery of Art exhibit, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia."

I am not particularly an art aficionado, although seeing Vermeer's View of Delft is on my bucket list, but the most likely allies of these sort of eco-fanatics are people who spend a lot of time in art galleries and opera houses.  

So, the theory is that there is not enough awareness of climate change and the crisis requires dramatic acts like this to get people to turn on CNN, PBS, and  all other mainstream media and find out about it.

Yes, vandalize great art to get your natural allies aware of the most loudly proclaimed theory of the last 39 years other than LGBTQWTF. 

These children are both 53!  I guess the trust fund has not gone to zero yet.

Looking to Move to North Idaho

This place is turning into San Jose without the crime.  Traffic jams, long waits for restaurants and medical care, summer heat and brushfire smoke.

I saw this house and it is very attractive.  My wife and I want to live in a forest with dark skies and the illusion that there are miles to the nearest people.  To my pleasure, while winters are just as cold and snowy as Boise, summers are milder, seldom above mid-80s, perhaps because of lower elevation.  Property taxes are lower along with house prices.

Lysenko Won

A very disturbing article from Quilette about how the prominent astronomer Geoff Marcy (the guy who played a major part in exoplanet discovery techniques) has now been declared "unclean" and articles on which is a co-author are being pulled back and declared unfit for citation.

Even his actions back in the 2000s might in retrospect seem a bad idea, the merits of his work are not in question.

When science becomes beholden to the baying of the SJWs, science is in danger of becoming a religion.  Western Civilization is committing sepuku.

We Look Forward to Greater Idaho

 Greater Idaho:

The Wallowa County Clerk notified Greater Idaho volunteers this morning that the Greater Idaho measure has clinched a win. It has 8 more Yes votes than No votes and there are only 7 incomplete ballots left to be cured by voters, according to a statement at the movement’s website, greateridaho.org.

Professional Portland political operatives broke the law to try to hide who they were and how much money they were spending, but they still lost. Trying to associate normal rural Oregonians like the Greater Idaho movement with scary extremist groups did not work. The election results in Wallowa County this year were 1% more favorable than in the same County in 2020 despite the movement being outspent by social justice warriors this time.

Wallowa County only has two percent of the population of eastern Oregon, and its beautiful mountain views draw an unusually large percentage of upper-income residents from the Willamette Valley, who may have been less supportive of joining Idaho.

But in eastern Oregon overall, Greater Idaho ballot measures have now averaged 60% in favor since the first election 6 election cycles ago. The group has won 12 out of the 12 counties that have voted on such a measure.

If Portlandia releases them, Lesser Oregon will be free to make transphobia a crime; tax people who never owned slaves to pay reparations to people who were never slaves; give away fentanyl and heroin; tax incomes above $10,000 per year; replace every policeman with an "unarmed peace ambassador"; and make gun ownership a felony.  I think they would also lose a member of the U.S. House and Idaho get another. 

How to Start a Revolution

5/6/23 Daily Mail:

"A Denver councilwoman has sparked fierce debate after suggesting that white-owned businesses pay additional tax, which would be given in reparations to the owners of minority-owned businesses."

Of course, contrary to the 14th Amendment.  Giving it to minority-owned businesses means redistributing to minorities with enough ambition to have started and run a business.  

This could never survive Supreme Court review.  Unless the Democrats were allowed to add six more justices.

She whines about white nationalists.  She is certainly going to make white nationalists more popular with angry people tired of being told that people who never owned slaves and received no benefit from slavery, since all the wealth slavery created was destroyed in the Civil War, now must pay money to people who were never slaves.  She includes brown people as well.  Hispanics were never slaves in America.  If course some blacks in America have ancestors that were never slaves.