Work That I Am Doing...

Of which I am rather proud. You doubtless know that misdemeanor domestic violence is a lifetime firearms disqualifier.  Why is a misdemeanor lumped in with felonies?

From the cases that I have read in which my work has been cited in defense of those disqualifiers, it appears that:

1. A lot of domestic violence incidents that should have been prosecuted as felonies over the years were charged as misdemeanors in some states because that was sort of okay in local mores.

2. Felony charges sometimes get plea-bargained down to misdemeanors or a jury decides that it really was not that serious.  I understand that judges here in Idaho sometimes encourage spouses to drop charges because "he won't be able to go hunting." My reaction is "Boohoo!  Maybe he needed to think about that before punching his wife in the face.  Or maybe he lacks the self-control appropriate to possession of a firearm."

However, attorney friends have related cases where someone who got a little too handsy at a fraternity party 20 years before who pleaded no contest because it was just a fine have since discovered that the Lautenberg Amendment applies even to old convictions for which the defendant could not have forseen such serious consequences.

Also, a lot of actions that are really pretty minor on the violence scale: shoving your spouse out of the way, throwing a plastic cup, can be turned into a domestic violence misdemeanor.

My late brother-in-law had an argument with his mentally unstable second wife. His claim was that he was defending himself from a violent attack.  (While I never saw him in a particularly favorable light, she was crazy and I found his claim credible, or at least plausible.) Police of course, hauled him away and charged him.  There is a strong bias towards the idea that domestic violence is almost always male on female.

The case on which I am working involves someone with a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.  While this is only a ten year disqualifier under state law, it is lifetime under federal law.  Reading the account to which he pleaded nolo contendre does not cover him with glory nor does it make him sound particularly violent or scary.

So I have been researching battery laws. They have a far more interesting history than I expected.  Under English law at the time of the Revolution and in many of the colonies, battery was usually dealt with by civil suit not criminal prosecutions because the legal definition of battery involved any unwanted touching, even of your clothes.  Violence or injury were not required.

I spent some time gathering sentences for battery from the colonial period. To my surprise, lots of cases were visible online.

For 1866, just before the 14th Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment against the states, I found often very complete records of sentences by state or city.

These sentences were fascinating.  Sentences were never as severe as the state law allowed.  In a number of cases, the sentence was a fine of six cents!  Even in 1866, this was not even a slap on the wrist, more like a tap on the wrist.

And again, battery was often resolved through civil suits.  Battery by itself was not considered terribly serious, unlike extramarital sex or running a gaming house.

Domestic violence had theoretically severe penalties under Massachusetts and Plymouth Colony laws.  There were very few cases.  One case had the husband put in the stocks.  

It does not appear that domestic violence was ignored.  One of the Plymouth cases came to the attention of the authorities because the neighbors were concerned for the husband's life.  This was resolved by a night in jail, the husband pleading for her release, her promise to mend her ways and a threat of more serious punishment if she went back to her old ways.

I think the courts need to come up with a way to distinguish relatively minor disputes (flying plastic cup, holding the door closed) from incidents that show an extraordinary level of violence or abuse.  Certainly by the standards imposed by Bruen, battery was not a sufficiently severe crime in 1791 or 1868 to justify a lifetime firearms disqualifier.

Worse, this defendant's felony charge seems intended to force a guilty plea to misdemeanor parading.

FBI Has a Hard Job

7/28/23 NBC News:

"A federal judge ordered three of the four men convicted of plotting to carry out acts of terrorism in New York to be released from prison. The judge called the men's convictions an "FBI orchestrated conspiracy." NBC News’ Ellison Barber shares the latest."

Now, it is entirely possible that the FBI entrapped some terrorist-wannabes, but as with the Gov. Whitmer kidnapping plot, the FBI might have created something out of nothing.  During the antiwar movement of the 1960s, there were always questions about how much the FBI was catching and how much they were creating.  As a friend active at the time put it: "You could always tell who the FBI agent was.  He was the guy that thought burning down the ROTC building was a really cool idea."

This problem of agent-provocateurs is not new.  Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent (1907) explores this longstanding technique of intelligence services.  It appears that attempts to defeat the Chartist movement in Britain in the 1830s involved such agents working for the British government.

Oppenheimer

It really impressed me.  It avoids simple good and evil narratives.  Oppenheimer was an academic in a time when ideas that were mainstream Democrat in 1936 were dangerously suspicious a few years later.  Having an adulterous affair with a Communist and being married to an ex-Communist, then getting caught lying about what he reported of those contacts and when eventually bit him.  But in the meantime, he led a project that saved millions of lives American and Japanese.  The cheap leftist propaganda about the decision are not presented, just a man with misgivings about the results who also that it would lead to a world where full scale warfare would be unimaginable.

Fine acting, good casting of actors who look like the real people (Gen. Groves excellent, President Truman not so good).  No preaching about the evils of America.  Well worth seeing.

Oh yes, because some of Oppenheimer's problems stem from adultery there are a number of naked breasts.

Last Night's Discoveries

When I laid out the telescope pad I planned it around the idea that the shed would on the south side of the pad blocking light from my neighbor's garage which really was not that bad.  The downside is that the optical axis of a Dobsonian is quite low; the mirror is almost at ground level.  This means you need an unobstructed horizon to get the whole sky.  The shed pretty blocks the southern sky.

Last night, the gibbous Moon pretty well washed out the deep sky objects I wanted to see but it was also behind the shed so I could not do the long video exposures that I was hoping to use to get sharper images.

In retrospect I should have planned for this by having an area east of the shed available to roll the Dobsonian on to.  Perhaps when the money comes in from the current projects, I will have someone pour me a bit more concrete to get my southern exposure.

In the meantime: the scope was not moving easily in altitude.  The bearing surfaces need regular waxing to move smoothly.  While searching for my box of candles, I found the box was stuck to the shelf.  Yes the heat of the shed had melted them inside the bottom a little seemed to have soaked through the box so I had to pry it off with my knife.

The other annoyance is that the tubes that form the half-Surrier truss are aluminum and the entire assembly is not as stiff as should be.  The tubing is 1.006" OD with a .05" wall and 53" length.  I think the fix is to replace these six aluminum tubes with carbon fiber composite tubes.  This not should be much stiffer, it will reduce weight at the front of the scope allowing to remove some of the clunky counterweights at the rear.   Not that weight is an issue.  They just look dumb.

The only issue besides cost is that the aluminum tubes are held to the mounting knobs by steel screws.  Carbon fiber and steel have an unfortunate corrosion problem over time.  Just look up their electronegativities.  I might need to use aluminum screws instead.

I'm Melting! I'm Melting!

I hope you remember the Wicked Witch of the West (or was it if the East) from Wizard of Oz.  Anyway. 7/28/23 CNN reports on more evidence of global warming with no awareness that if this person was buried 37 years ago and is just reappearing, we are likely getting back to where the ice was 37 years ago.

"BerlinCNN — 

The remains of a German mountain climber who went missing 37 years ago while hiking along a glacier near Switzerland’s iconic Matterhorn have been recovered, as melting glaciers lead to the re-emergence of bodies and objects thought to be long lost.

Climbers hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt on July 12 discovered human remains and several pieces of equipment, police in the Valais canton said in a statement Thursday.

“DNA analysis enabled the identification of a mountain climber who had been missing since 1986,” police said in a statement. “In September 1986, a German climber, who was 38 at the time, had been reported missing after not returning from a hike.”

"Glaciologist Lindsey Nicholson at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, told CNN Friday that shrinking glaciers due to climate change have led to the discovery of bodies of climbers who disappeared.

“As the glaciers retreat, any material – including people who have fallen into or onto them and have been buried by subsequent snow – will emerge. All glaciers are melting very fast and receding across the European Alps,” Nicholson said."

This has happened before.  Otzi the Ice Man reappeared after thousands of years under the ice.  Bodies buried during World War I in the Italian Alps reappeared.  My book about climate change gives other examples of what had been human settlement now reappearing from under the ice.  Hint: those places were not under glaciers thousands of years ago, or there would not be bodies or human artifacts appearing now.

Look, it is getting hotter.  But blaming a return to Bronze Age and Neolithic temperatures on the Industrial Revolution misses the important question what oil reserves did Bronze Age man exploit back then.

I see a bright future for polar regions.

Fortunately Stupid People Do Not Realize That Police See Social Media

7/29/23 NBC News:

"Ryan Scott Bradford, 34, of the Reseda neighborhood of Los Angeles, is prohibited from having guns or ammunition because he is a convicted felon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said Friday.

"Police raided his home Thursday after he called for the mass murder of Jews in online comments and said that he was able to make guns at home using a 3D printer, the prosecutor’s office said."

Hey, I am really stupid.  Do a records check to see if I have a felony conviction.  Ask a judge for a search warrant.  How bad good this be?

Mennonites? Swedes? Danes?

7/29/23 ABC News:

"5 injured in shooting at community outreach event in Seattle: Police

"Dozens of rounds were fired in the incident, which broke out in a parking lot."

Be glad that the primary practitioners of the unskilled art of mass shootings are not very skilled.

You Will Read Every Book in This Library!

Okay, I am making a joke of something that seems pretty darn Fahrenheit 451. 7/28/23 Yahoo News: 

"Largest School District in Texas Eliminates Libraries, Converts Them to Disciplinary Centers"

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm."

7/27/23 NBC News:

"Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials....

"According to court documents, city officials inspected the location at 850 I St. on March 3 for building violations and found various chemicals being stored. On March 16, an inspection by county public health officials allegedly turned up medical devices thought to have been developed on-site, such as Covid and pregnancy tests.

"Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus," court documents said. "Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material."

Chinese company that is not being very forthcoming about what they were doing.

Public Health Professors Lacking Agenda

7/27/23 Daily Mail:

"For the study, published today in JAMA Network Open, researchers extracted data from the Gun Violence Archive — a database of mass shooting incidents across the US run by a nonprofit group.

"The researchers did not say why Washington D.C. — the nation's capital — was top of the list.

"The district has some of the strictest gun control laws in the Itnation — with open carrying banned and thorough background checks necessary before purchasing a weapon.

"It also has a lower gun ownership rate than other states, with estimates suggesting 36 percent of residents have a gun — compared to the national average of 39 percent.

"In second place was Louisiana, which has lax gun control laws and a high ownership rate of 52 percent. 

"Illinois, which has tight gun control laws and low gun ownership, came IN third on the list. ...

"The state also does not PERMIT open carry and has one of the lowest ownership rates in the country at 22 percent."

The Incredibly Offensive Florida Standards

From the Florida Department of Education web site.

"Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural 

work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, 

transportation). 

Benchmark Clarifications: 

Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be 

applied for their personal benefit."

By the way, I speak as an expert here (I teach American History at a community college).  This is a spectacular teaching standard.  If Florida teachers teach to this, their students will be profoundly better educated than most modern elites.

Low-Trust Societies

7/25/23 Christian Science Monitor article about Seattle is collapsing into mass shoplifting problem the other Democrat cities are having.

I was thinking about this the other day when buying groceries at the self-checkout line.

The gal at the end of the six scanners cannot watch everyone that carefully.  If you tried to go through with a shopping cart of food without paying for its contents, it would be obvious.  If you put a couple high value items in your cart and just put them in your bag without scanning them, she would not likely notice.  

This is a high-trust society where the essential honesty of most people means you mostly have security tags on clothes for teenagers and others who still lack a fully formed ethical system.  (Let's not discuss my shoplifting of candy from Patton's Pharmacy at Lincoln and Montana Blvd. in Santa Monica in 4th grade during the mad rush after school got out.)

Low-Trust societies cannot operate like civilized societies.  Over time, businesses either need to go to a "hand over the money and I will hand you the merchandise" model or go out of business.  When they do, the resulting food and retail desert will be the fault of "systemic racism."

Most black people are not criminals, but Democrats are in charge of a city, it is usually a black majority or close.  

It is not middle class people making these places into hellholes. It is privileged white people who do not understand that low-trust societies require police and serious punishment for theft to keep retail operating and safe streets.  Once this collapse reaches a certain point, even middle-class people will start carrying guns without licenses and vigilantes will start dealing with shoplifters, vehicle burglars, carjackers, and porch pirates (or at least those accused of such).  That will be ugly.

Backing Up Windows Applications

My Lenovo is starting to act a bit odd.  Lenovo technical support said I should reinstall Windows and sent me a CD.  Of course, reinstall means reinstalling all my applications afterwards, which is a bit of a chore.

Windows has a way of backing up apps but not applications.  There are programs out there that will do the application backup and restore but searching for it has been frustrating because all the search strings I use match backup and restore of files and Windows app backup.  Have you seen such programs?

It appears this is it.  No.  I bought the lifetime updates version and it charged me twice.  When I tried to backup my applications, it said I needed to upgrade to the Pro version.

PCMover seems to be the right solution.  Of course, now that I am transferring the applications to an archive, everything is working just fine.

Weirdly, the odd screen flashing and lockups are not happening now that I am getting ready to make it regret its misbehavior.

A few hours later and all the weirdness is gone.

Warnings We Do Not Have in America

I bought a bottle of Coke and did not notice it was imported from Mexico. This is very popular here because they use cane sugar not high fructose corn syrup like in America.  I cannot taste the difference.  I notice two labels we do not have on the American product.

i know no Spanish but the cognates are clear enough: excessive calories and excessive sugar.  Or are those plurals?

I would hope everyone knows this without labels but we seem to be raising a generation that will not be qualified to live in Mom's basement.

Most People Get Beyond Burglary at That Age

McDonald County Sheriff's Office Facebook page.

I did not realize Facebook will not allow copy of text.  Summary: couple returns home and finds burglar, 62, in their home barricaded in room.  The burglar shoots at them.  Husband and wife return fire.  Both shots hit him.  They disarm him and hold him for police.

62?  Burglary is usually a teen to young immature adult crime.  A few more years and he can collect Social Security (unless he is in prison).

What I Said

7/21/23 Daily Hodl:

"$78,000,000,000 Exits US Banking System in One Week As JPMorgan CEO Issues Alert on Deposit Flight...

"The deposit exodus follows a two-week period of relative stability in the system as big banks invest significant levels of cash to third party intermediaries to bring in new deposits.

"Banks are feeling the pressure to compete with higher yielding money market accounts."

From what the stock market is doing, I suspect a lot of that money is going into equities.

This Was a Crime?

 I am creating a spreadsheet of "assault & battery" sentences from 1866 New York State.  There are sentences of 6 cents; a lot of $25; some jail and prison sentences.  A crime that startled me: "Winning at cards": $50 fine.  Perhaps a euphemism for cheating?

Environmentalists Want to Eliminate Hydropower

7/22/23 Moscow Daily News:

"Conservation groups intend to ask judge to breach Snake River dams

Coalition says breaching is needed to prevent extinction of sockeye salmon that spawn in Idaho, files notice of its intention to sue Army Corps of Engineers"

"Hydroelectric turbines at the dams produce about 1,000 average megawatts of electricity."

Hydroelectricity is the most pollution free electricity source once you get past construction and even photovoltaic is likely no better 

I Thought I Would Have to Assemble This List Myself

U.S. made telescopes.  A variety of components come from elsewhere.  The New Moon telescopes are not on the list.  They are apparently American-made with a Canadian mirror.

These are high-end telescopes and priced accordingly.

Why Are They Catholic Universities?

7/23/23 Campus Reform:

"A Catholic Connecticut university is teaching students that supposed societal problems of "fatphobia" and "transphobia" are actually rooted in racism and perpetuated by social institutions like religion.

"The seminar, titled “Racism’s Intersectional Impact on Agency & Liberation” is part of Sacred Heart University's “Continuing Conversations in Antiracism” workshop series, which seeks to tie racism to various forms of oppression and perceived oppression."

As a person who is still technically overweight, I think I can speak safety that "fatophobia" is health-related, not a phobia at all.  This continuing attempt to turn every destructive deviation from the norm, even norms based on scientific evidence is quite disturbing.

Healthcare costs are influenced by obesity.  Socialists will, if they get their way, have to confront this or bankrupt the society.  (Never mind, I forgot that is the goal.)

Does the Catholic Church have any influence on these "Catholic" universities?

Today's Small Disappointment

I got on the treadmill this morning and 2.4 mph was all I could do for about 15 minutes.  I looked it up: stents take several weeks to complete the process and fatigue will persist until that process completes.

"Help me... I'm Melting!"

Wizard of Oz for you kids.  From the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

"Schaefer’s team analyzed bedrock collected near Summit from the very bottom of an ice core hole. By measuring radioactive isotopes, Shaefer could estimate how long the bedrock was exposed at or near the surface and then buried by the ice sheet. When cosmic rays pummel Earth’s surface, they interact with the nucleus of surrounding atoms, expelling protons and neutrons from that atom and creating new particles. These so-called nuclides do not naturally occur in Greenland’s bedrock. And being radioactive, they act as nature’s clock, letting scientists infer how long the surface was ice free.  

The results show that the Greenland Ice Sheet was ice free for at least 280,000 years, over the last 1.4 million years. Bierman and Schaefer’s studies do not necessarily contradict each other. The sediment below Summit was not fully eroded either during the ice sheet’s retreat or its return. "

This is consistent with other work on cosmigenic isotopes that support the solar activity influences weather here on Earth to the amazement of those who never leave the ivory tower.

Glock Switch

If you not been paying attention this is an auto sear for Glock pistols.  They are 3D printed in lots of pretty colors.  Or you can buy them from what I suspect from the Chinglish on the web site, the PRC.  They even show the dimensions.  It was brilliant design work by whoever figured this out.

If I was Glock I would change the design right now or I think the machine gun definition the National Firearms Act could include all existing Glocks.  

I have talked to several lawyers with expertise in NFA law (yes, I know them well.  Are you surprised?)

Apparently the text is clear that the Glock meets the definition of machine gun because of this.  The courts have surprisingly pushed back on BATF attempts to use auto sear availability as a way to treat AR-15s as machine guns. The Biden Administration actually refused to argue that AR-15s are machine guns under this theory.  I think they know what the reaction would be if 25 million Americans were told they were about to become felons.

I Am Not a Country/Western Guy

 More pop: Carpenters, Byrds, Beatles, Al Stewart.  But this song and the left's attempts to portray it as racist or fascist really freezes my cheese.

There is nothing identifying that the bad guys are black.  The song is aimed at robbers and rioters burning out sections of big cities that will be food deserts in ten years because of this.  The Left has chosen to identify blacks as criminals and rioters.  Racism is a real problem because progressives have chosen to identify blacks as criminals.

Bread

I decided to get some of the French flour reputedly not a problem for the gluten-sensitive.

I made a load yesterday and my wife confirmed no gas, tummy upset or bloating. 

It was just wonderful bread.  Worth eating without butter.  I could almost imagine being a medieval peasant.  Of course they would have had brown bread and no Internet so ...

It was a bit too crumbly to slice well.  The breadmaker's recipe for white bread had no eggs.  I should have added them anyway for that reason.

This Should Have Been Obvious

I have been struggling with this Losmandy G811G mount which is smarter than me about aligning on true north which is just slightly off Polaris.  I did a little more digging this morning.

I bought the optional Polar Alignment Scope with the mount.  I found it difficult to use mostly because you need to be sitting down on the ground to use it.  It sits in the polar axis and there is an illuminated reticle that lets you adjust the mount in azimuth and the angle of the polar axis until you are exactly on north.

Until I get the shorter ScopeRollers on it, the eyepiece end is a little high for sitting and a little low for kneeling.  

One of the tips that I just read about is to put you planetarium program on your phone at the eyepiece of the polar alignment scope and get Polaris lined up, then adjust azimuth and polar axis angle until you are roughly aligned.  This may be good enough for goto but it certainly gets you close enough to use the polar alignment scope without screaming.

The control unit also has a polar alignment feature that uses a series of star gotos to figure out a solution.  I need to read it again.

Curious Side Effect of Possible Federal Default?

The scale of the growing interest payments for the Federal Government is a source of some concern.  I suspect that concern about imminent default, even on just interest payments, would cause what is sometimes called a "flight to quality," in which you sell bonds that are not considered of high quality and buy bonds likely to not default.  This means the value of the bonds you sell will drop not just for you but all bondholders.  This has the counterintuitive effect of driving up interest rates, aggravating the U.S. Government's problems. 

Evidence: bond values have fallen 13% for the year.

What you do buy?  I suspect municipal bonds of states run by adults, like Idaho.  

I also wonder if the current runup in stock prices is because of this.  My IRA has risen 24% this year.

Bearings

According to Hoyt has an interesting post about ball bearings and why they are important.  Also why there are so many dead windmills around the country.  At the core is that machinery (you know, that icky stuff you do not learn about taking Humor in Lesbian Literature (yes, a real class my wife's English department offered at Sonoma State University) is something about which our elites are joyfully ignorant 

The Rush is Slowing

 I am almost done with Hawaii's sensitive places law.  City of Columbus wants to depose me for Ohio v. City of Columbus in the next week or two.  I am thinking of raising rate for expert declarations so that I am not so busy.

I Am So Glad About the Heart Surgery

Not only am I not so winded by physical exercise but I am able to work longer on expert declarations without exhaustion. The brain needs a lot of oxygen!

I was up to 2:00 AM last night preparing a rebuttal for the N.J. assault weapons ban suit and much of today writing a rebuttal for the Hawaii sensitive places (pretty much off all of Hawaii) suit.

How many more of these will buy me a Corvette Convertible?  Probably more than I will get but it is a nice fantasy.

A Real Problem Sinks into DIE

7/13/23 The Hill:

"Amid a cascade of devastating reports showing classroom test scores plummeting nationwide, U.S. students have also hit a record low in their leisure time: Casual reading has collapsed. 

"Only 14 percent of students say they read for fun every day, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report released recently, down 3 percentage points from 2020 and 13 since 2012. The report indicates 31 percent of students never or hardly ever read for fun."

All fine as far as it goes but:

"Miah Daughtery, the vice president of academic advocacy focused on literacy at NWEA, a nonprofit research organization, points to tracking by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center that shows a lack of diversity in published authors.

“If we take a look at it from a publishing perspective, the books that are even being published reflect a really small percentage of what’s available to students that reflect the balance of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, then you layer on top of that disorder that national conversation and rhetoric and I would even say insistence on book challenges and bans,” Daughtery said. “So all of those things together are not creating strong conditions that would consistently encourage independent reading.”

So white kids will not read Up From Slavery?  Can we get past this irrational focus on race?

In Recovery Room

Started at 10:00, all done about 11:15.  I was awake enough to watch the screen as he installed the stents in the circumflex and LAD arteries.  Another artery was too small for a stent so he used a balloon to enlarge it.

I feel good.  I have not done any cardiovascular exercise but I have confidence that getting two 80% occluded arteries opened up has to be a win.

I am supposed to be here four to six hours before release.

And not to do anything requiring judgment or using power tools until the Fentanyl wears off about noon Friday.

Splint to remind not to lift more than ten pounds so the clot on the artery stays in place.

Rhonda says I have more color in my face, smiling, and speaking more clearly.  Oxygen is wonderful stuff!

Blueberry Gluten Free

A little more sugar next time.

Heart Repair Thursday

 They are going to vaporize the scar tissue in the LAD and circumflex arteries and stent.  The surgeon who wanted to do open-heart surgery now agrees that we should see if this alleviates my symptoms before getting out the chainsaw.

More Schizophrenia Research

7/7/23 Science Alert:

"There's a window of time in our lives we've all passed through yet still know so little about: early gestation. Now researchers have found a pair of genetic deletions associated with schizophrenia that likely occur in that formative period."

The inherited genetic basis is still established, but this might explain the 20% that is not germline based and which is resistant to ordinary pharmaceutical treatment.

I Am Not Sure if You Will Need a Gun Lawyer, But Along With All My Gun Lawyer Friends

 There is this guy.

Big Solar Flares

7/5/23 Fox News reports on two big solar flares headed our way likely to produce impressive aurorae.

In case you were wondering increased solar activity increases the area around the Sun that blocks cosmic rays.  Cosmic rays increase cloud cover and rain. This is a secondary effect of increased solar output, which is well known by astrophysicists but ignored by climate "scientists."

The relationship between cosmic rays and climate history can be measured because cosmic rays create a few exotic isotopes that do not happen otherwise such as Be-10.  Cosmic rays only penetrate about a foot into the ground so you can measure historical cosmic ray volume 

Ignorance of History: Another Progressive Victory

7/5/23 Insider:

"The tourist who defaced the nearly 2,000-year-old Colosseum in Rome says he wasn't aware of the monument's age"

Interesophageal Echocardiogram

Good news.  The cardiologist that did it said it is not too bad.  I suspect this means the surgeon with an open-heart jones will have no excuse to open me up and we can go back to the Space Invaders in my arteries plan.

122/82

Blood pressure yesterday at the ENT.

Rebranding?

I was driving home from a follow-up visit to an ENT about my slightly less distressing globus problem.  (Some medication, sleeping on a wedge pillow, and not drinking carbonated beverages or eating spicy food (my life is over.)

Ahead of me was a van of the sorry often used to deliver stuff to retain stores.  The brand names said it was Anheuser-Busch.   The back of the van listed a beer unknown to me: Busch Lite.  I rather doubt this will fool anyone.

Gee, I Wonder Why This Guy Thinks the USA is in Decline?

And why he cannot pay back his student loans?

6/30/23 Newsweek:

"Some student loan borrowers encouraged others to default on their loans "en masse" following the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel President Joe Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan, but one expert told Newsweek why that may not be a good idea.

"Okay, thing I can actually talk about: Mass default on student loan debt would be a really effective message and f*** you to this country from the folks most impacted by our constant slide backwards. Just don't pay it. Hit the bricks. En masse," Twitter user Derek Van Dyke wrote."

What he does not know, apparently, is that Sen. Joe Biden (D-MBNA) is why you cannot go bankrupt to discharge student loan debt.  I suppose if Derek wants to go homeless his strategy might work.

Do you suppose the constant slide backwards might have something to do with a generation of kids getting degrees that lead to no job higher than barista and encouraging widespread default on debts?

I took out a student loan in 1974 when I started at USC.  (It was $1000, about all that you could take out at the time.). After I dropped out, I completely forgot about the debt.  (No, really, I was more focused on a lunatic cross dresser threatening my life because I was sleeping with his roommate/girlfriend/extortion partner.)

When I received the reminder a year or two later, I just paid it off.  I was able to get a job after dropping out of college.

That this guy thinks he can just stop making payments without destroying whatever credit score he already has (can they create a new sub-200 FICO score for flakes like this?). Does he honestly not know that even a barista can get his wages attached?

Pizzagate Was Obviously Crazy, Right?

6/20/23 ABC News story that is too horrifying to summarize. And these are the people who think Christians want to keep women in subjugation.

I Wish I Could Work 40 Hour Days

I have more work to do writing expert declarations then there are hours in a day.  I keep thinking back to my days working for startups when only the need for sleep sent me home.

Does Anyone Make a Battery Powered Minichainsaw Outside China?

Why You Should Never Skip Your Monthly Issue of Parasitology

From 5/25/23 LiveScience:

"2,500-year-old poop from Jerusalem toilets contain oldest evidence of dysentery parasite"

Careful What You Wish For

6/29/23 Fox News:

"Sparks fly at California's final reparations task force meeting: 'Now's the time for a divorce!'

"'What do you get in divorce? You get half the money, half the land, alimony, child support, attorney fees, and everything else!' one attendee said"

There are more than a few Americans ready to say.  Okay, move out.  Or just stay in the black zones.

This will not work as well as the hotheads think.

Wisdom From My Wife

 I have watched the church lose its moral power over the decades.  I never expected my parents to act as Christians should, because once I became born-again, I could see that they had not made a personal profession, so I didn't expect them to act in a certain way. But the little church up the street that I attended as a new Christian were filled with people who were imperfect, to be sure, but they modeled that the Christian life could be led, even if it meant personal sacrifice.  They worried about their witness to others; I, too, was concerned about anything that would compromise my witness. 

Not everyone there was kind, but enough of the people, my pastor included, showed me that living the Christian life was possible, because they were trying hard to do so. This had a profound impact on me as a young Christian. 

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live," is a powerful quote by Pope John Paul II.  So, given what has happened to the American family, it is no surprise what is now happening in our churches, schools and the country itself. Having lost our moral center, we are chasing every fad, every idea, every whim of a few and applying to the whole, creating division, darkness and deception as a result.