A student turned in a paper that cited The Puritan Moment: The Influence of Protestant Thought on Early American Political Culture (Oxford University Press, 1998). Worldcat.org cannot find it in any library worldwide; books.google.com has not heard of it; a general Google search does not find it. There is a similarly titled book: William Hunt, The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County (Oxford University Press, 1983).
Friday, May 8, 2026
"Manifest Destiny": Historians Usually Credit John L. O'Sullivan With This Phrase
In 1845, John L. O'Sullivan (1813-1895), editor of the Democratic Review, referred in his magazine to America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." student moved it to 1839 because of a secondary source.
Because I knew this was wrong, I went searching for where O'Sullivan first used this phrase. Indeed, it was 1845.
But extending my search range to earlier years, I found that he was not the first American to use that phrase, and in that general sense.
"Hard-Right": What Does That Mean?
LONDON — Early results Friday from nationwide elections in Britain suggested a historic drubbing for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and sweeping gains for hard-right Reform U.K., led by Trump ally Nigel Farage.... [emphasis added]
Labour losses and Reform gains were no surprise; polls had long telegraphed the direction of travel just two years after Starmer led Labour to power in a 2024 landslide. However, with votes still being counted, the scale of Labour’s losses appeared epic.
Reform won hundreds of local council seats in working-class areas in England’s north, wiping the ruling party out in places like Hartlepool that were once solid Labour turf.
Farage called it “a truly historic shift in British politics” and that Labour was being “wiped out by Reform in many of their traditional areas.”
Reform is hostile to Labour's enthusiasm for making Britain more multicultural by allowing largescale immigration from the Third World. The Pakistani child rape gangs, short-lived NHS support for incestuous marriages, are all perfectly good reasons for the support Reform enjoys. Deporting illegal immigrants, having police go after violent criminals instead of prosecuting Britons using antisocial media, rebuilding British military power (whose weakness was shown recently by their inability to get a ship to Cyprus in a timely manner), backing away from net zero.
Hard-right. What is happening is that much as Democrats abandoned blue collar and middle-class Americans for the far more trendy LGBTWTF, illegal immigrant, and millionaire segments (to the benefit of Republicans generally and Trump specifically), Labour abandoned their traditional base.
Thursday, May 7, 2026
Why Do So Many People Distrust Public Education?
A group of Canadian schoolchildren were forced to flee a theater performance about Indigenous rights after a drag queen began gyrating and 'putting their boobs in kids faces.'
Campbell Collegiate students in Saskatchewan were pulled out midway through a performance at the Globe Theatre this week after the 'production reached levels of maturity beyond expectations,' according to teachers.
I guess that i should be pleased that the teachers realized that indigenous rights claims mattered less than sexual depravity. Admittedly, it is Saskatchewan a fairly conservative part of Canada
Well Pump Installation Under Way
So looking forward to a shower.
It took less time thsn expected so less than $5000.
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Things to Know About Well Pumps
I was thrilled that Burgess Pump & Well had a technician at my house in an hour. After troubleshooting the segment from the pump controller to the well it seemed clear the problem was down the well. He lifted the well pump and motor out in 20 foot sections. Pull 20 feet up unscrew that section pull up another 20 feet.
The well is 250 feet deep. The pump was at 120 feet. The pump part was okay. The motor was toast. Whoever put in the well cheaped out to get a lower bid. The pump was rated for 3 horsepower; the motor was 1 1/2 horsepower. The extra load of running the motor at too high a load burned it up a few months out of warranty.
Anyway, the cost of replacing it is about $5200. At least when we list it, "New well pump under warranty." American Home Shield will cover $1500 of it. I expect authorization tomorrow and new pump same day or next. I am getting tired of not showering, doing dishes, laundry, and turning flushing into a complex reloading process.
AI May Destroy Teaching But It Is Going to Revolutionize Many Fields
If you walk into an emergency room (ER) in 10 years, you’ll encounter a new type of caregiver: an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to get you a diagnosis faster and help your care team make more informed decisions. While you sit in the waiting room, you’ll be hooked up to a blood pressure cuff that’s constantly and autonomously monitored. All the while, an AI agent will be listening in while you and your doctor talk about your symptoms, ready to flag any mistakes your physician makes or suggest next steps.
This vision of AI-assisted emergency health care may soon be reality. In a new study, researchers show that a type of AI known as a large language model (LLM) often outperformed physicians at diagnosing complex and potentially life-threatening conditions, including decreased blood flow to the heart, even in the fast-moving stages of real ER care when information is limited, they report today in Science. In early ER cases, the model identified the correct or a very close diagnosis in about 67% of cases, compared with roughly 50% to 55% for physicians. And the technology is only getting better.
“Evaluating AI in medicine demands both depth and breadth across different clinical tasks and settings,” and these authors were able to incorporate both in this study, says Shreya Johri, a computer scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who was uninvolved with the new research. Still, she notes, wide adoption of these AI systems in health care will hinge on knowing the contexts in which they’re most reliable.
Fine with me as long as the LLMs are not filled with antiracism crap which denies that there are genuine physiological differences, at least at the means between races.
Faster, no exhausted ER doctors at the end of a long shift, less fear of lawsuits. For some specialty medical care, shorter wait times and larger supply.
This is also an earlier version of OpenAI. Everything is getting better and faster.
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