Clearly a Big Market for This Degree

7/16/26 Campus Reform:

Northeastern Illinois gender studies major enrolls just 4 students

I wonder what it costs taxpayers to fund a no-demand major.

Shipping Boxes

The next time you buy something expensive that comes in a custom box, save that box! We are trying to pack some expensive, oddly-shaped items: HP LaserJet, Canon PRO-300. If you put them in a box that is wide enough, it is likely so tall that any weight on top will crush the box down.  You do not want anything heavy in the box on top of the printer.  If you put anything soft on top of the printer, it needs to be compressible enough to absorb weight without transferring it to the printer. 

Monitors, at least are standard sizes and shapes. Boxes for them are surprisingly expensive, especially when you get the 33" monsters that I have on my desk.  The 65" TV seems to not be a common moving box size.

We have historically discarded these boxes because of storage space.  Next time, I will find space. 

Don't Judge Someone by "Their Worst Day"

 7/15/26 KTSP:

Gov. Tim Walz is defending his vote to pardon a man convicted of molesting a 10-year-old child more than 20 years ago.

Last week, the Trump administration deported Tou Lue Vang despite a pardon approved by Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson in their role on the Board of Pardons...

Walz questioned whether Vang’s removal improved outcomes in Minnesota.

“I guess the question I would as is, did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?” Walz said.

I think Walz just had his "worst day." 

Vang defended his multi year molestation of a 10-year-old as part of his culture.  

The Butcher's Tale

By Helmut Walser Smith. This is what historians call "post hole history." To say that is a very deep dive is an understatement. The sources are interrogations, court transcripts, and census records associated with Konitz, a small town in what was then German East Prussia. 

The crime was horrendous: an 18-year-old boy was suffocated or strangled and then dismembered expertly and wrapped and tied as though he was coming from a butcher. Bad enough, but rapidly this turned in the popular imagination of the town into a Jewish sacrifice of a Christian for blood to make matzohs. Antisemitic journalists soon arrived to throw liquid oxygen on a gasoline fire. 

This book examines not only the crime itself but how the assumptions of the locals spun this positively medieval blood libel into a widely believed story. While some local prosecutors pursued the blood libel idea, responsible aristocrats and bureaucrats recognized it as an absurd claim and provided troops to protect Konitz's Jewish community when local police were overwhelmed by numbers. Amazingly enough, it did not turn into a pogrom.

He examines in detail the underlying questions of how neighbors turn against neighbors and why the blood libel persisted into remarkably recent times in Europe, in spite of strong papal opposition.  Much of this discussion is not spectacularly interesting to me, but as detective story, it works well. 

Fortunately, Democrats are looking for other ways to demonize the Jews; blood libel is even too much for MSNOW.

New Jersey Assault Weapon & >10 Round Magazine Ban Overturned by 3rd Circuit

3rd Circuit heard an appeal by New Jersey to a district court ruling that the Second Amendment protects AR-15s but not LCMs (magazines greater than ten rounds). To my shock and pleasure they broadened the ruling to protect all the militia appropriate firearms as well as the LCMs. And yes, this is a case on which i worked. 

My Wife Was Skeptical of the View From Our Yard

 So I asked Google Earth:

Pool in New House