Mini-House Hybridization With Motor Home

Screw Organizers

I have a couple of those plastic multi-drawer screw and small parts organizers.  Unfortunately, when you pick it up for moving, screws, nut, etc. often fall out the back because there is a bit of space between back frame and drawers.  I want one where I can tape the drawers in place when moving.  Does anyone know of one that is like this?  Livinbox is a Taiwanese made brand that SEEMS like it might be a tight enough fit. I have asked the question on Amazon.  Does anyone have experience.

A Whole Wheat Loaf

The first one came out misshapen and dense.  Whole wheat is Course 2.  I had it at Course 1.  This came out pretty and tasty.

I have also concluded that calcium propionate should replace 1/4 of the salt, not 1/3.  At 1/3, the flavor is not quite right.

How Self-Disciplined Are Middle Class People?

Watching YouTube video about SE Portland residents upset about homeless encampment in their subdivision.  That none of these homeless people defecating on their lawns and intimidating them in their driveways and none of these people wake up shot to death shows how strongly middle class values are surviving.  I suspect in the wealthy progressive neighborhoods ( if police allowed this) the results would be ugly 

Any Idea Why Mass Murder Increased?

5/26/23 NBC News:

"Marijuana linked to mental health risks in young adults, growing evidence shows

New research, involving millions of people worldwide over decades, adds to worries that heavy use of high-potency cannabis could exacerbate the mental health crisis in the U.S."

We Needed An Office Chair

We went to Staples.

Made in Vietnam.  I am beginning to see a pattern of relatively simple manufactured goods coming from Vietnam not China.  Buy from your enemy's enemies.

Fatigue is Getting Worse

I am going to try and get my appointment with the surgeon moved up from the 8th.  Fatigue is becoming more severe.  

If TECAB or MIDCAB (minimally invasive direct coronary arteries bypass) are not available or the wait for one of the places out of area is more than a few weeks, cuttinf the sternum is the only way.  I do not want to be this fatigued for months on end, and the increased risk of the LAD or circumflex arteries occluding to infarction is not something to have.  CABG in an emergency setting is way worse than planned 

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.

Finally Spring

It is in the 70s.  Beautiful.  If it would stay this way through the next few months.

Is This AI Failure?

I quoted an article from a newspaper about the consequences of Germany legalizing prostitution. Blogger pulled it for violating their illegal activities policy.  This is years old.  Was someone not reading carefully and complained, or does Blogger have an AI that is not too bright?

Speaking Truth to Ignorance

Does No One Play Call of Duty?

 5/22/23 KSL:

LAKES OF THE FOUR SEASONS, Ind. — One man is dead and his two children are hospitalized after a hand grenade exploded in an Indiana home Saturday afternoon.

According to the Lake County Sheriff's Office, sometime before 6:30 p.m. the family was at a home in the 3400 block of West Lakeshore Drive where they were going through a grandfather's belongings. They found a hand grenade, someone pulled the pin on the device and it detonated.

I am not from which war grandfather brought this, but this a bit more dangerous than your souvenir MP40.

Fortunately we have laws prohibiting this.

This is Curious and Perhaps Troubling

5/21/23 CBS News:

Amid growing concerns of security risks to members of Congress, more than 50 senators have been issued satellite phones for emergency communication, people familiar with the measures told CBS News. The devices are part of a series of new security measures being offered to senators by the Senate Sergeant at Arms, who took over shortly after the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The satellite phone technology has been offered to all 100 senators. CBS News has learned at least 50 have accepted the phones, which Senate administrative staff recommend senators keep in close proximity during their travels. 

In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last month, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson said satellite communication is being deployed "to ensure a redundant and secure means of communication during a disruptive event."  

Gibson said the phones are a security backstop in the case of an emergency that "takes out communications" in part of America. Federal funding will pay for the satellite airtime needed to utilize the phone devices.

Is this fear of nuclear attack taking out cell phone towers?  Is it fear of Russian or Chinese cyberattack on our cellphone system?  Is this a Carrington Event?  I find it hard to imagine free range Capitol tourists taking out the phone network.  (How many people would need to livestream their activities to overwhelm the current system?)

What is Troubling is not the Lunacy But the Police Response

5/22/23 Idaho Tribune:

“All Trump Supporters Will Die” — Disturbed Left-Wing Extremist Says He Will Give “Transphobic People The Death Penalty,” Makes Terroristic Threats — Fear Of Leftist Violence Grows In North Idaho

The rest of the article describes how this guy wanted to use a gun range, expressed those sentiments, and was told to leave.  Also redacted police reports confirming this Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and President of the National Association for Mental Illness Coeur d=Alene chapter was making such threats and had a gun and:

Richman has mental health issues, bipolar disorder, and a history of violent crime.

According to the Press, Richman was sent to the hospital on April 25th, 2013 “because he has bipolar disorder and he was going through what they called a ‘manic episode.’“ After being discharged 2 hours later, Richman set fire to a construction company’s trailer on the campus of Kootenai Health destroying one trailer and damaged another. Then, Richman “pulled a knife on a Coeur d’Alene police officer who responded to the fire, kicking the officer in the knee” while he was being arrested.

Police decided he was not an imminent threat and declined to hospitalize him.

Young People Are Not As Far Left As Many Assume

5/19/23 Newsweek:

Millennials are most likely among U.S. adults to support the expression "go woke, go broke," an exclusive poll for Newsweek has found, despite wokeness typically being associated with their own age group.

Shockingly good news.  There may be hope for America after all.

Admission From Columbia Journalism Review

 Winter 2019:

It may be time for journalists to acknowledge that they write from a set of values, not simply from a disinterested effort at truth. This will not be easy.

Even if we can agree that trust in government and trust in the media were too high before Nixon, it might still be that trust today has sunk too low. Has a healthy skepticism become a civically disabling cynicism? That is what Donald Trump feeds on: engendering such distrust in the media that around 40 percent of Americans seem to accept almost everything he says, even in the face of incontrovertible reporting to the contrary, as a kind of thumb in the eye of the so-called coastal elites. 

 

Recent Victory in N.J.

 Koons v. PLATKIN (D.N.J. 2023):

In conclusion, the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not a `second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.'" Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2156 (quoting McDonald, 561 U.S. at 780). That does not mean, however, that the right is "unlimited." Heller, 554 U.S. at 626. The Constitution leaves the States "some measures" to combat handgun violence. Id. at 636. But what the Second Amendment prohibits the States from doing, and what the State of New Jersey has done here with much of Chapter 131, is to "prevent[] law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms." Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2156. That is plainly unconstitutional.

Bruen required the State to bring its firearm laws in compliance with the Second Amendment. Chapter 131 was the State's response, but it went too far, becoming the kind of law that Founding Father Thomas Jefferson would have warned against since it "disarm[s] only those who are not inclined or determined to commit crimes [and] worsen[s] the plight of the assaulted, but improve[s] those of the assailants."^[81]

The decision cites Clayton E. Cramer & David B. Kopel, "Shall issue": The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, 62 Tenn. L. Rev. 679, 709 (1995) and Cramer, 16 J. on Firearms & Pub. Pol'y at 16-17. 

Do LGBTWTFs Really Outnumber Catholics?

5/22/23 Outkick:

"After “much thoughtful feedback from Los Angeles’ diverse communities” the Dodgers have decided to re-invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to its 10th annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night. They also issued an apology to the drag group, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and their friends and families."

If you do not know who the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are, lucky you.  Imagine all the worst aspects of drag insulting women with nasty stereotypes and then go Catholic.

I am guessing that for every Southern California Catholic who looks forward to gay weddings, there are about 10,000 named Hernandez who are going to say, "Futbol" instead.

Spend some time watching National Socialist propaganda about Jews and ask yourself, "How are you going to respond when your neighbors start getting arrested and sent by boxcar to central Nevada?"

This horrifying scenario gets more and more plausible every day.  But the Jews were not armed.  If you do not have a rifle, get one now.  An AR-15 is a good choice but even a bolt-action center-fire rifle with a scope would be better than standing idly by while Antifa drags people off to "re-education camps" that mostly produce ash for organic farming.

I Was Discussing the Madness With My Wife and Bang

There are characteristics and behaviors that we generally associate with boys or girls.  Boys who like to pretend to cook or paint pictures used to be considered sissies.  Reading too.  That made me something of an outcast.

There were tomboys: girls quite happy to climb trees, play football (at least flag football), explore the universe with chemistry kits or telescopes, build things.

A certain number of these atypical traits was not really a problem.  We did not regard a few atypical interests as indicating that there was something wrong with you.

Suddenly, if you do not conform perfectly to those stereotypical notions of being a boy or a girl, you must be stuck in the wrong body.

Wait a minute.  I thought the goal was to get past the narrow definitions of sexual roles.  Boys cannot be interested in art or dancing without being told that they are in the wrong body?  A girl who likes to work with Dad in the shop making stuff is obviously in the wrong body?

The Women's Movement was hijacked by doctors trying to make money by confusing kids and their parents.

All In for the Angry Parents Vote

5/1/23 USA Today:

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed into law a measure making child rape subject to the death penalty, defying a United States Supreme Court ruling.

"In Florida, we stand for the protection of children," DeSantis said at a Monday press conference in Brevard County. "We think that in the worst of the worst cases the only appropriate punishment is the ultimate punishment."

This is contrary to Kennedy v. Louisiana, which held the death penalty for raping children was unconstitutional.  I suspect a more originalist Court might reconsider that position now.  Rape (of an adult woman or man) was a capital offense in colonial America and stayed that way until mid-19th century in some states.  

Reading Kennedy v. Louisiana was a stomach turning experience.  The stepfather tried to blame the stepdaughter's rape on some black boys.  He called a disaster restoration company to clean up the crime scene telling them that his daughter had become a little lady they day.  That statement alone should have given him prison time.

Open-heart Surgery

There seems to be agreement that most patients have little or no pain by three months post-op, although there is something called CPOP that can result in long-term pain.  Use of heart-lung machines seem to increase post-op pain.  Oddly, the older you are, the less pain but the higher the mortality rate.

Mortality rates are apparently higher for open-heart than minimally invasive surgery.  Longer pre-op hospitalization more than three days seems to reduce mortality.  High creatine levels indicating kidney problems are correlated with increased mortality.

If my surgeon is unwilling to refer me to a TECAB procedure, open-heart sounds unpleasant but tolerable.  Apparently the more stuff they do while "under the hood" (in my case double bypass and aortic valve replacement) the higher the risk.  The 2013 aortic valve replacement was bad.  Slightly higher mortality to avoid going through recovery twice seems worth it.  Meeting Jesus early does not appeal to me, because I have a number of RKBA cases that need my assistance, but if that happens you guys are going to have to do your best without me.

That Problem I Was Having With Books Not Appearing in Kindle

It appears that buying a Kindle edition in the Amazon Android app does not work.  Never a chance to swipe or click buy.  I bought it on my PC and boom!  There it was in my Kindle.

The book is Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot (actually the trilogy of which this is the first book). I watched a movie version of it made I think in the 1960s starring a very young Doug McClure.  You remember him right?

It seemed very derivative of the Lost World.  Several of his books' plots are shamelessly stolen from Wells or Verne.  But hey, Wells' The Sleeper Awakes is pretty well stolen from Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards (1884).

Anyway, a pretty good film.  The special effects are as good as you expect from that era.  There is a surprising plot twist at the end.

.

The first two chapters are exciting and well -written.a

Lysenkoism

5/17/23 Reuters:

May 17 (Reuters) - Three Russian academics who have worked on hypersonic missile technology face "very serious accusations", the Kremlin said on Wednesday, in a treason investigation that has spread alarm through Russia's scientific community.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was aware of an open letter from Siberian scientists in defence of the men, but that the case was a matter for the security services.

In the letter, published on Monday, colleagues of Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk and Valery Zvegintsev protested their innocence and said the prosecutions threatened to inflict grave damage on Russian science....

President Vladimir Putin has boasted that Russia is the global leader in hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at speeds of up to Mach 10 (12,250 kph) to evade enemy air defences. On Tuesday, Ukraine said it had managed to destroy six of the weapons in a single night, although Russia disputed this.

Obviously, the failure of the much ballyhooed hypersonic missile must be treason.  When politics takes precdence over science in a totalitarian state, science loses and eventually so does the state.  Orwell's 1984 imagines a future with technology only slightly more advanced than his own era because science and technology work on absolute truths, like 2+2=4, and in a society where there are no absolute truths, science will advance very slowly.  1984 (1984) did a great job of portraying this barely beyond 1948 technological status.

I Helped With Research on This Case

5/16/13 NJ com. Copy and paste not working but federal judge enjoined enforcement of New Jersey treating nearly the whole state as a sensitive zone where what will soon be a sea of concealed carry license may not carry.

Totally Endoscopic Coronary Artery Bypass (TECAB)

This is a robotic procedure for doing bypass without breaking the sternum.  The question is whether this can be done in conjunction with the endoscopic aortic valve replacement.  Doing them as two separate procedures might be worse than just having the sternum broken.

I Survived Angiogram

Aortic valve will need surgical replacement and two arteries need bypass.  This is going to be awful.

The doctor who did the angiogram indicated it will involve cutting me open and then wiring the sternum back together.  This sounds absolutely awful.

I am home.  It will be some weeks before surgery so everything I need to do for the cause needs to be done first.

"Pretend you have a broken wrist for a few days."

A Genuine Crisis Actor!

 5/15/23 Fox News:

Awitness to the Allen, Texas, mall shooting who has called for gun control in the aftermath of the tragedy has had his account disputed by Texas police, who say he has spread "misinformation" in multiple media interviews.

Steven Spainhouer, who has identified himself as a former Army officer, gave multiple media outlets a dramatic account of the Texas mall shooting earlier this month, saying he showed up at the mall before police and first responders to begin administering aid to shooting victims.

According to CBS News, Spainhouer said he arrived at the scene after receiving a call from his son about hearing gunfire on the property. When he arrived, the former officer said he gave first aid and performed CPR on shooting victims, including one girl who "had no face" and a young boy covered "head to toe" in blood who was hiding under the body of his dead mother.

However, Spainhouer's dramatic retelling of the events has been disputed by the Allen Police Department, who released a statement on Friday claiming that he was not a "credible" witness.

"Allen Police Department wants to inform the public of discrepancies with statements made by a witness to several media outlets. Following the shooting at Allen Premium Outlets, Mr. Steven Spainhouer of McKinney, Texas gave multiple public accounts of his actions," the police statement said. "Inconsistencies between these public accounts and investigative facts led Allen Police Department to conduct a follow-up interview. During this interview, detectives determined that Mr. Spainhouer is not a credible incident witness."

I Think Someone Missed the Point of Opposing Abortion

5/12/23 USA Today:

"A 22-year-old man was arrested and charged with murder after police say he got angry at his girlfriend for having an abortion out of state and fatally shot her in a Dallas parking lot this week."

Tragedy and stupidity all rolled together.

Color Me Unsurprised

4/5/23 The Economist:

"Prisha mosley was 17 when she was first given testosterone in a clinic in North Carolina, after she had declared to her parents that she was a boy. She had struggled through her teen years with anorexia and depression after a sexual assault. Luka Hein had both breasts removed as a 16-year-old in Nebraska. Chloe Cole, in California, was a year younger when she had her double mastectomy. She had been on testosterone and puberty-blocking drugs since 13, also after a sexual assault."

Teenaged girls victims of rape decide they want to be boys.  Is anyone even slightly surprised?  Tragedy, compounded by greedy medical professionals (and I use that word loosely) who saw a chance to make some money, created more tragedy.  States that are banning this abuse of minors are showing great courage going up against corporate seppuku such as Bud Lite 

Top Gun: Maverick

The critics hated it for its militaristic patriotism.  I feared an uninspired sequel.  My speech therapist recommended it.  My wife and I watched it this evening and really enjoyed it.  Amazingly enough, not one gay character and no drag queen sailors.

The opening sequence with the hypersonic stealth fighter was really impressive.  I can see why the Chinese wanted to know if there was Skunk Works assistance.

There is romance but not at steamy level that Hot Shots parodied so well with the eggs frying on the actress' belly.

Never Offend With Style When You Can Offend With Substance

JustTheNews:

"a tenured history professor for the "serious misconduct" of handing out chocolate, he claims.

"The composition of the chocolate wasn't the problem for Madera Community College, David Richardson told Just the News. It was the gender pronouns on the wrappers: "He/Him" for chocolate bars with nuts and "She/Her" for the "nutless" version, reflecting the human sexual binary."

Oh yes, he's gay.  He also got in trouble for an email to a trans colleague where he described his pronouns as "do, re, mi."

Unnecessarily provocative I would say but suspension for a fairly subtle "hostile workplace" violation distributing chocolate shows how broken the whole trans thing has become, along with the institutions doing things that are positively the stupidest expression of progressive "thought."

One of the Many Down Sides of Aging

Your toenails get too thick for traditional toenail clippers.  Perhaps it is just me but they get more rounded as well.  You cannot get enough of the nail between the blades.  My wife has started using a electric device intended for callous removal.  It is slow.  Does anyone have any recommendations?.

The good news is that I seem to have broken below 200 pounds and staying there.  I am 25 pounds below where I started dieting a couple years ago. Pizzas stay away!

Surprise: Reefer Madness

5/10/23 UPI:

"Up to 30% of schizophrenia cases among men aged 21 to 30 are related to heavy and problematic use of marijuana, according to the findings.

"The researchers also found a tripled overall risk of schizophrenia linked to cannabis use in young men compared to women: Around 15% of cases of schizophrenia in men aged 16 to 49 might have been avoided in 2021 by preventing cannabis use, in contrast to just 4% among women in that age range."

But it's natural.  Do you wonder about the increase in mass murders?

Another Victory

Fraser v. BATF (E.D.Va. 2023) rules that 18-21 year olds can buy handguns.  Long decision that largely boils down to "old enough to vote, old enough to buy a handgun."

Another Bruen victory.

Thanks Widener's

If you need some ammo, consider Widener's, who keep my AR-15 fed 

I Have Asked This Question Before...

 But perhaps a new reader knows the answer.  In Windows 10 you could select a directory on one PC and share it with Everyone on your LAN.  Windows 11 improved this to make it too complex for my little brain to handle.

I am on my wife's PC, and I select the Documents folder.  Then I say Properties->Sharing->Share. It asks what users to add.  There are no choices.  How do I tell it that I am who is supposed to have access?  Where is this magic list of users located?

Today's Obscure Word: Flageolet

I was able to get Samuel Pepys' diary on my Kindle app and I am reading it.  He was a minor public official during the end of the Protectorate and the Restoration.  He provides a lively account of life in that time.

Today he mentions playing his Flageolet, a type of wind instrument.

Will I remember this word in a year?  Maybe.  I picked up some words from T E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom so maybe.  "The horse staled all over the hired help," so I got him a carrot.

A Beautiful Spring Day

Boise can get unpleasantly hot in summer but a spring or fall day is awesome 

Today's Surgeon Visit

The bad news is that if it is the valve failing, they cannot do it trans catheter.  The horse valve already in there is too long for a new valve to work. That means three months of painful recovery from cutting my chest open again.

The good news is that it might be an artery beginning to occlude or one of the existing stents having problems, not the valve. I am scheduled for an angiogram next Tuesday.  

The surgeon gave me the encouraging words that there is a 1 in 1000 risk of a bad result.  That was the odds on the 2014 angioplasty that caused my stroke.  Color me a little unenthused about my chances.

Do you know a rising American History specialist to take over for me?

Do You Have Editing Privileges on Wikipedia?

There is a list of vehicle mass murders on Wikipedia.  It is not very complete.  I can supply a list of newspaper accounts with URLs if you can add them to the article.  Some are very mass casualty events.

Also mass stabbings and mass blunt object murders. And poison mass murders.  Japan has a sarin gas incident.

Yes, I could do this myself but I am a bit busy doing declarations.

Lauren del Valle, Ray Sanchez and Eric Levenson, Terror suspect accused of killing 8 people on NYC bike path still believes in ISIS, defense attorney says, CNN, January 9, 2023.

Toronto is the most recent of many deliberate attacks involving vehicles, USA Today, Apr. 23, 2018 (10 dead in Toronto attack, 14 dead in Barcelona, Spain, 8 on London Bridge, 12 in Berlin, Germany) (10 dead); Nice attack: Trial for Bastille Day massacre which killed 86 begins, BBC, Sep. 5, 2022 (86 dead); Australian who rammed and killed six pedestrians jailed for life, Reuters, Feb. 21, 2019 (6 dead); Alex Johnson, A Short History of Vehicles Being Used as Deadly Weapons, NBC News, Jul. 15, 2016 (8 dead).

For those willing to do the mass stabbings entry:

Jason Van Rassel, Police officer's son charged in city's worst mass murder, Calgary [Alberta] Herald, Apr. 17, 2014 (5 dead); Jonathan Pearlman, Eight Children Murdered In Mass Stabbing In Australia, [U.K.] Telegraph, Dec. 19, 2014 (8 dead); Robert Foyle Hunwick, Why Does China Have So Many School Stabbings?, New Republic, Nov. 2, 2018 (summarizing 14 knife mass murders in two incidents); David Mercer, Canada mass stabbing: Trudeau urges public to 'be careful' over two men suspected of killing 10 people, Sky News, Sep. 5, 2022 (10 dead).

Arson:

A Decade On, Childers Remembers Hostel Fire Tragedy, Brisbane [Australia] Times, Jun. 23, 2010 (15 dead); Candace Sutton, Man Who Murdered 11 People in Nursing Home Fire 'Frothed At The Mouth' From Drugs And 'Put Nails In Tyres And Poured Paint' Over Boss's Car, Inquest Hears, [U.K.] Daily Mail, Sep. 8, 2014. (11 dead).

Explosives:

Andrew Higgins and Kimiko De Freytas-Tamura, In Brussels Bombing Plot, a Trail of Dots Not Connected, New York Times, March 26, 2016 (33 dead); Sylvia Hui, Bomber’s brother gets 55 years for Manchester concert attack, Associated Press, Aug. 20, 2020 (22 dead)

Blunt objects:

Jamelle Wells, Robert Xie Trial: Lin Family 'Murdered With Hammer Bought From $2 Shop, ABC [Australia], May 12, 2014 (5 dead)

"I suspect these foreign firearms mass murders are already there:

Gunman’s Rampage in France Leaves 14 Dead, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 13, 1989; Teen-Age Gunman Kills Himself and 12 Others in France, New York Times, Sep. 25, 1995; Nick Caistor, Profile of a Teenage Killer, BBC News, Apr. 28, 2002; 18 Dead in German School Shooting, BBC News, Apr. 26, 2002; Brazil School Shooting: Twelfth Child Dies, SkyNews, Apr. 8, 2011; James Graff, Politics Under the Gun, Time, Mar. 31, 2002 (8 dead; 18 wounded in France); Safety Council To Investigate Gun Laws, DutchNews.nl, Apr. 12, 2011, http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2011/04/safety_council_to_investigate.php, last accessed May 21, 2011; Schutter was al eerder suicidaal, NOS Nieuws. Apr. 10, 2011, http://nos.nl/artikel/232127-schutter-was-al-eerder-suicidaal.html, last accessed May 21, 2011.

Thanks to al that are prepared to chase these down.  Wikipedia leans left but when something appears there it has credibility to the journalists