Sunday, Puppy Sunday

We have found a great dog park here in Florida, and I take Wolfgang first thing in the morning when it's still cool.  He gets to play with the other pups, but then takes a lot of the day to recover from the heat.  It's not like Maryland, where mornings would be high sixty or low seventy degrees - it's low to mid eighties even early.

There's a good walk in some nearby woods but I think it will be autumn before I start taking him on regular nature walks like you see in the picture above.  I'm not complaining about the heat but I do think that Wolfgang will  be a little more energetic once we're past summer.

Brett Young - In Case You Didn't Know

There aren't many things that can make me sound like a grumpy old codger faster than listening to the new country music.  I'm not a fan.  Blast it all - those dang kids are back on my lawn ...

But The Queen Of The World is the Angel of my Better Nature, and she pointed out this song.  You see, she loves it, and that made me want to listen to it.  It reminds me a lot of the Allison Kraus version of "When You Say Nothing At All".  And suddenly I find that those dang kids only went onto my lawn to mow the grass.  They even bagged the clippings.

Brett Young was an up and coming College baseball pitcher when an injury put that career track on hold.  With time unexpectedly on his hands he took up songwriting.  This was from his first album in 2017, and it went triple platinum.  Clearly, The Queen Of The World and I were not the only fans.

Yeah, the new country music isn't often very good, but when it's good it's very good indeed.

In Case You Didn't Know (Songwriters: Brett Young, Trent Tomlinson, Tyler Reeve, Kyle Schlienger)

I can't count the times
I almost said what's on my mind
But I didn't

Just the other day
I wrote down all the things I'd say
But I couldn't
I just couldn't

Baby I know that you've been wondering
Mmm, so here goes nothing

In case you didn't know
Baby I'm crazy bout you
And I would be lying if I said
That I could live this life without you
Even though I don't tell you all the time
You had my heart a long long time ago
In case you didn't know

The way you look tonight
That second glass of wine
That did it, mmm

There was something bout that kiss
Girl it did me in
Got me thinking
I'm thinking

All of the things that I've been feeling
Mmm, it's time you hear em

In case you didn't know
Baby I'm crazy bout you
And I would be lying if I said
That I could live this life without you
Even though I don't tell you all the time
You had my heart a long long time ago
In case you didn't know

You've got all of me
I belong to you
Yeah, you're my everything

In case you didn't know
I'm crazy bout you
I would be lying if I said
That I could live this life without you
Even though I don't tell you all the time
You had my heart a long long time ago
Yeah, you had my heart a long long time ago, mmm
In case you didn't know, know, know
In case you didn't know

It's time to short commercial real estate

One result of the Kung Flu is that companies are learning that their employees are able to work effectively from home, via video conference and messaging/collaboration applications.  We're beginning to see the implications of this for commercial office space:

Fujitsu is to permanently shutter one half of its office real estate in Japan and will ask 80,000 locals to work from home permanently as it redefines work culture internally in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Under the auspices of the Work Life Shift campaign, Fujitsu is to study data of how employees use offices, with a view of giving them more tools and options to work from home, at hubs or be more mobile.

“For employees in Japan, this latest initiative will mark the end of the conventional notion of commuting to and from offices, while simultaneously granting them a higher degree of autonomy based on the principle of trust,” Fujitsu said today.

File this under "Well, duh!"

Fujitsu is fixin' to save a boatload on office rent.  That savings will go 100% to the bottom line.  Probably their employees will be happier, too - the Tokyo subway system is famously crowded, and not having to do 90 minutes each way on that will be a nice bonus for Fujitsu's employees.  It will be a financial bonus, too, since they won't have to buy subway tickets.  It's sure as shootin' Fujitsu won't be the only company that decides to do this.

The losers will be the companies that rent office space.  And the subway system.

Obligatory disclaimer: I work for a company that makes video meeting apps.  It's interesting, having done this for a decade; it's gone from "we're living in the future" to "well duh, everyone wants this".

I got nothing

For someone who posts things as wordy as I do, it's kind of strange that I find that I have nothing to say.

Lots of great blogs on the blogroll, though.

Quote of the Day, Iconoclast edition

The Czar of Muscovy points out something that I think is almost certainly true:

In other words, the people who destroy statues—even back to the ancient days in Egypt or Babylonia—do so to erase their link to the badness. Today, the liberal rioters are trying to erase their party’s involvement with racism by eliminating all the Democrats who supported it. Once you erase the past, you’re free to rewrite it with yourself as the hero. You see that today, with most Americans thinking Republicans were slaveholders, supported the Klan, wrote in Jim Crow laws, and enforced segregation in the South. By doing this slowly, Democrats have completely made up a new history that turns themselves from villains to the heroes.

The word iconoclast is very old, dating back to late antiquity and the eastern portion of the Roman Empire.  It didn't fall in 476 when the last western Emperor was deposed, but remained a going concern for another 1,000 years.  Sure, it was Greek speaking, and Christian (rather than worshiping the old pagan pantheon), but it was Roman in institution and law and they thought of themselves as Roman.

But when Islam united the desert Arabs in the 640s AD, the Romans came within a hair's breadth of losing everything.  Remember, they had been the biggest kids on the block for over 800 years, and then within 10 years or so had lost the richest 75% of their remaining empire to what they could only look at as desert barbarians.  How did this happen?

Their answer was the God Almighty had removed His favor from the Empire due to their sins.  Looking around for a handy sin, they landed on the icons.  Here's an example of one:

This is the oldest surviving icon of Christ Pantokrator (almighty) from St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai.  It dates to the 500s AD, and is only the best known example of widespread icons popularizing christian saints and parables.  To most of us in the west, it's entirely unremarkable (albeit a little exotic).  Here's a western equivalent:

This is Michelangelo's Pieta, in St. Peter's cathedral in Rome.  The only other renaissance art work that comes close in importance (or fame) is Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.  Like I said, this sort of thing is to be seen in nearly every church in the world.

But the ancient Romans, looking around for a handy sin to blame, decided this was idolatry.  You see, they said that people were worshiping these "graven images" in violation of the 4th Commandment.  And so Emperor Leo III more or less outlawed them around 730 AD.

Of course, it wasn't about the Commandment.  That was just the excuse - the Romans were looking for a reason why the Lord had removed His favor from the Empire.  Identifying the statues (and icons) as "The Problem" allowed the Emperor to see who would line up on his side and who would not.  Those who lined up were rewarded; those who didn't were punished.  Bishop Euthymius of Sardis refused to line up and was whipped to death at Christmas of 826 AD on the orders of Emperor Michael II.

And so back to the Czar of Muscovy's comment: Today, the liberal rioters are trying to erase their party’s involvement with racism by eliminating all the Democrats who supported it.  Those statues are Graven Images and an offense to the eye.  How else to explain the pulling down of the statues of Frederick Douglas or Abraham Lincoln?  Because they were Republicans, and their opponents - the supporters of slavery - were Democrats.

Remember, the Romans were looking for an explanation for how they had lost 90% of their empire (first the western half to German barbarians, then 75% of what was left to the Arabs).  People had a gut feel that something had gone terribly wrong, and what used to be a powerhouse was now only hanging on by the skin of its teeth.

Today's Democrats are in the same position, looking for an explanation for how they lost Congress (other than a couple of brief restorations in 2006-2010 and again in 2018).  From 1930 on, they mostly owned the Capitol building.  They also lost the White House, and things look like a Republican landslide is a'comin' in November.  The Democrats have gone - like the Romans of old - from being the biggest Badasses around to being the whipping boy of Donald Trump, George W Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Ronald Reagan.  That's decades of losses - and like the old Roman provinces of Syria and Egypt - the losses include States that were the most productive and useful to the Party.  I mean, Wisconsin voting Republican?  WTF?  Obama was supposed to have turned all this around and established a generation of Democratic rule, but instead the Democratic Party has been decimated across the nation.

And so something has to go - not to explain how this all happened, but to show who's on The Team and who's not.  Line up, get with the program, or pay.

Of course, it didn't help the Romans get their provinces back, and pulling down statues of Ulysses Grant won't help the Democrats keep Minnesota from voting Republican.  On the contrary.  But nobody ever said that Man was a rational animal.  Man is a rationalizing animal coming up with "Just So" stories to explain the Voice of the Thunder or the loss of union votes.  But as Milton wrote, some would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.

The Re-Elect Donald Trump 2020 campaign looks on at the modern iconoclasts, and thanks them for their support.

Wikiwander

Via Chris Lynch, a 4,000 year civilization may have been found off the coast of Cuba.  I've believed for some time that the oldest cities are under the sea.

But the discovery off Cuba was from the same team that discovered the wreck of the U.S.S. Maine, scuttled after being raised from Havana harbor.  That led to El Wik, which led to Harvey Armor:

Harvey armor used a single plate of steel, but re-introduced the benefits of compound armor. The front surface was converted to high carbon steel by "cementing". In this process, the steel plate would be covered with charcoal and heated to approximately 1200 degrees Celsius for two to three weeks. The process increased the carbon content at the face to around 1 percent; the carbon content decreasing gradually from this level with distance into the plate, reaching the original proportion (approximately 0.1–0.2 percent) at a depth of around an inch. After cementing, the plate was chilled first in an oil bath, then in a water bath, before being annealed to toughen the back of the plate. The water bath was later replaced with jets of water to prevent the formation of a layer of steam which would insulate the steel from the cooling effect of the water. The process was further improved by low temperature forging of the plate before the final heat treatment.

I hadn't known that case hardening wasn't just used on nice revolvers but on battleship plate armor as well.

Congratulations to Glen Filthie

The odometer over at his blog just rolled over one million.  Congrats on your (first) megaview!

Aaron Tippin - Where The Stars And Stripes And The Eagle Fly

I posted this more than ten years back.  With the anti-American nonsense going around, it's still relevant - maybe more relevant than it was then.  

Happy Birthday, America.  It's time to take our country back

Originally posted July 4, 2009.

Aaron Tippin - Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly

It's no secret that Country Music has a deep patriotic streak. Some people interpret this as jingoistic and even racist.

Some people don't know what they're talking about sometimes.

A different way to look at this is that a deep love of country can be precisely like a deep love of family: you may not like everything your family does, but you love them anyway.

Aaron Tippin is a Working Man's country singer, with songs like Working Man's PhD and You've Got to Stand For Something. His songs reflect his blue collar background - when he first moved to Nashville as a songwriter, he paid his bills by working nights at the Aluminum plant.

He wrote Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly immediately after 9/11. Not only did it go to the top of the country charts, it peaked at #40 on the Billboard Hot 100. Simple music score, direct lyrics speaking love of country. Not a bad thing for this July 4th celebration.

Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly (Songwriters: Kenny Beard, Casey Beathard, Aaron Tippin)

Well if you ask me where I come from
Here's what I tell everyone
I was born by God's dear grace
In an extraordinary place
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly

It's a big ol' land with countless dreams
Happiness ain't out of reach
Hard work pays off the way it should
Yeah, I've seen enough to know that we've got it good
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly

There's a lady that stands in a harbor
For what we believe
And there's a bell that still echoes
The price that it cost to be free

I pledge allegiance to this flag
And if that bothers you, well that's too bad
But if you got pride and you're proud you do
Hey, we could use some more like me and you
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly

Yes there's a lady that stands in a harbor
For what we believe
And there's a bell that still echoes
The price that it cost to be free

No, it ain't the only place on earth
But it's the only place that I prefer
To love my wife and raise my kids
Hey, the same way that my daddy did
Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly

Where the stars and stripes and the eagle fly

Happy birthday to The Queen Of The World

If y'all want to shoot off some fireworks in celebration, why that would be just fine.

Oxford Uni Boffins find drug effective against serious WuFlu cases

This sounds very promising:

In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, about 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who were not. 

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. 

For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."

Lead researcher Prof Martin Landray said the findings suggested one life could be saved for:

• every eight patients on a ventilator
• every 20-25 treated with oxygen

"There is a clear, clear benefit," he said.

"The treatment is up to 10 days of dexamethasone and it costs about £5 per patient. 

"So essentially it costs £35 to save a life. 

"This is a drug that is globally available."

When appropriate, hospital patients should now be given it without delay, Prof Landray said.

But people should not go out and buy it to take at home. 

Dexamethasone does not appear to help people with milder symptoms of coronavirus who do not need help with their breathing.

6000 patients in the trial is a good sample size.

Happy Canada Day!

To our readers to the North, let me pass on our best wishes to America's greatest friend.

The problem isn't the Democrats, and the solution isn't the Republicans

There's a reason I call the GOP the "Stupid Party".  For example, they keep trying to destroy the Internet economy:

On Tuesday, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced yet another bill attempting to poke holes in data encryption, called the Lawful Access To Encrypted Data Act. This bill follows previous US efforts to weaken encryption, including March's proposed EARN IT Act and demands made by US Attorney General William Barr in his 2019 keynote address at the International Conference on Cyber Security.

Sigh.  Here we go again.  I posted about this when Barr first flapped his gums last year:

There are very few things that make me distrust our Law Enforcement community more than the persistent proposal that we destroy encryption.  The mathematics of cryptography is subtle and really easy to screw up in unpredictable ways.   It's impossible to predict, but it's entirely possible that a backdoor that lets the Government read your email could also let them write emails.  The Russians and the Chinese would have a field day with this once the secret inevitably leaks - allowing them to forge incriminating emails about politicians to undermine trust in our political system or forge bogus financial transactions to wreak havoc with the economy.  Among other things.

Quite frankly, this is a glaring example of why the Swamp needs to be drained.

Security guru Robert Graham wrote about this at the same time:

The tl;dr version of this blog post is this:

• Their claims of mounting crime are unsubstantiated, based on emotional anecdotes rather than statistics. We live in a Golden Age of Surveillance where, if any balancing is to be done in the privacy vs. security tradeoff, it should be in favor of more privacy.
• But we aren't talking about tradeoff with privacy, but other rights. In particular, it's every much as important to protect the rights of political dissidents to keep some communications private (encryption) as it is to allow them to make other communications public (free speech). In addition, there is no solution to their "going dark" problem that doesn't restrict the freedom to run arbitrary software of the user's choice on their computers/phones.
• Thirdly, there is the problem of technical feasibility. We don't know how to make backdoors available for law enforcement access that doesn't enormously reduce security for users.

That last point is what I was talking about.  This is Congress saying that "Pi should equal 3 because reasons".  Yeah, well I want a unicorn that pees 87 octane into my tank - and I really want a Congress that isn't filled to the brim with fools.

Think about what this will do - security will be weakened in hard to anticipate ways.  How will this enable Internet-based financial fraud?  How will it make it easier for Bad Guys to, say, get into your Internet bank account? How will this enable Nation State Actors to forge seemingly legitimate "evidence" of scandal against sitting Congress critters?

You ask the folks who proposed this bill and you get a blank-eyed stare.  Dumb, uncomprehending stares from dumb, uncomprehending people.

This sums it up well:

"This is a full-frontal assault on encryption and on Americans' privacy and security, just when the shift to living much of our lives online from home means we can least afford it," said Riana Pfefferkorn, associate director of surveillance and cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, in an email to The Register.

"The bill unambiguously contains the long-dreaded backdoor mandate for devices and online services alike, from cloud storage to email to apps, such as end-to-end encrypted messaging apps."

So how good a job does the Fed.Gov do keeping cyber secrets?  Remember Edward Snowden?  Remember how the CIA's elite cyber hacking force couldn't protect its own Top Secret hacking tools?  Oh, and the Police don't do any better:

Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files from police departments across the United States were leaked online last week. The collection, dubbed “BlueLeaks” and made searchable online, stems from a security breach at a Texas web design and hosting company that maintains a number of state law enforcement data-sharing portals.

So the Organs Of The State want the ability to decrypt anything, any time, anywhere.  They don't even stop to think that the secret mechanisms that they will require to do so will be public knowledge in about ten seconds.  They have absolutely no idea what the impact to the Internet economy will be.

Philosopher Kings.

Never mind that in today's Cancel Culture this doesn't remotely pass the Jews In The Attic test.

Like I said, Eric Holder never proposed this.  Bob Barr did.

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot.  Then imagine that I am also a Congressman.  But alas, I repeat myself.

- Mark Twain

Rodgers and Hammerstein - Oklahoma!

Richard Rogers was born on this day in 1902.  He went on to write an amazing body of work (with Lorenz Hart and then Oscar Hammerstein): Carousel, South Pacific, The King And I, The Sound Of Music, and (of course) his first collaboration with Hammerstein, Oklahoma!  Here is an abbreviated list of his songs:

With Hart:

Blue Moon

Isn't It Romantic?

My Funny Valentine

The Lady Is A Tramp 

With Hammerstein:

Oh What A Beautiful Morning

You'll Never Walk Alone

Some Enchanted Evening

Bali Hai

My Favorite Things

Getting To Know You

He also wrote twelve themes that Robert Russell Bennet used for the score to Victory At Sea.  Astonishingly, he only won one Oscar and two Grammy, although he regularly cleaned up at the Tonys.

Looking at this musical legacy it's plausible to call him the greatest American composer of all time.

The Queen Of The World is a Kentucky Girl but lived for years in Oklahoma.  Since Rodgers never wrote a song called Kentucky! today's song choice was easy.

Hank Williams, Jr. - Red, White & Pink Slip Blues

The Media tells us that the Wuhan Coronavirus is back.  Here in Sunny Florida, the bars are all shut, restaurants are down to 25% capacity, and you have to wear a facemask when you're indoors at a business.  It seems a surprising overreaction by the up-until-now sensible Governor.  I say "overreaction" because official figures from CDC show that it is a stunning overreaction.  While all you hear from the media is that cases are way up, here's what you have likely never seen reported - deaths across the USA are way, way down:

This isn't me saying that the latest lockdown is an overreaction, it's CDC.  The nation's top medical experts.  Look at the far right hand side of that graph - and then think on the fact that better testing shows that the virus is way less lethal than we've been told:

Nearly all the studies find between 10 and 100 times the number of total infections as reported infections, with the average somewhere around 20 to 25 times.

In other words, while the CDC reports 2.34 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, the actual number of infected and recovered people may be closer to 50 million. (CDC Director Robert Redfield told journalists Thursday that the number of cases may be 10 times higher than the earlier 2.34 million.)

Thus, the death rate, which would be 5.2 percent based on that 2.34 million figure, is actually more like one-20th as high — or 0.26 percent.

And the bulk of the cases are in nursing homes and prisons.  It's been made way, way worse by grotesquely incompetent government reaction (New York Governor Cuomo is personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths because he ordered nursing homes to take in infected patients; he's not the only governor with blood on his hands for this).  It's a truism that there's no problem that government can't make worse.  

In other words, it's a bad flu season, made worse by wretched governance and a hysterical media that is intentionally trying to scare people to whip up ratings.  The Queen Of The World says that they're also trying to hurt Trump and help the Democrats by scaring people and tanking the economy.

What's not shown by the media is the cost of the lockdown.  Waiters and waitresses who had started to go back to work are now getting pink slips.  Tens of millions are still unemployed.  And for what?  A bad flu season.  These are our neighbors.  Their lives, hopes, and dreams have value, just like ours.

At this point if you don't have steam coming out of your ears, you have no heart.  Hank, Jr. has a heart, and sings about what the unemployed are going through.

Red, White, and Pink Slip Blues (Songwriters: Mark Stephen Jones, Bud Tower)

I used to love this town,
and this neighborhood,
the streets were safe,
the schools were good,
the mill was humming 24/7,
I was foreman on the line 3 to 11
but 18 months and 2 days ago
the mill closed down
and moved to Mexico

I paid my bills, I paid my dues
and I paid my share of taxes too
now I can't buy my baby shoes
I got these red, white, & pink slip blues

I hide the pickup truck in Ricky Brown's garage
(over on the next block)
cause there's a repo man to dodge
I slip out the back door
Lord I never thought I'd live to see this day
we're gonna need that truck
when they come to take the house away

I paid my bills, I paid my dues
I paid my share of taxes too
now I can't even buy my little baby shoes
I got these red, white, & damn pink slip blues

You know I love my country
and I'm not wandering away
but there's a lot of us
that feel like we've been stranded here out in the rain

I paid my bills, I paid my dues
I paid my share of taxes too
now I can't buy my kids no shoes
I got these red, white, pink slip blues

Is anybody listening
Hey politicians we're talking to you
(Is anybody listening)
Are you gonna help us pull on through

Yeah, I'm pretty steamed about all this.  Hey politicians, we're talking to you.

Hat tip to reader Richard in a comment to another song on the same subject.

UPDATE 28 June 2020 10:03: Al Fin weighs in on the subject, saying the same things (although less musically).  Cases don't count; deaths do.

12 years of blogging

12 years ago today I put up my first post.  It wasn't very good, but you have to start somewhere.

13,615 posts later, here we are.  I couldn't have made it this far without you, Gentle Reader, or your over 50,000 (!) comments.  It's quite a community we have.

I'd also like to thank co-blogger and Brother-From-Another-Mother ASM826 for keeping the lights on around here.  I almost gave up, back 5 or 6 years ago, and he pretty much single handedly saved this blog.

I'd also like to thank co-blogger and Sister-From-Another-Mister Brigid.  She doesn't post here a lot, but she sure classes the place up when she does.

Twelve years ago I wasn't sure what to expect at the start of the trail that brought us here.  I am very grateful to all y'all who have walked it with me.

Quote of the Day: Explaining the Virus edition

I've written a number of times about Mencious Moldbug, most notably here.  He was instrumental in laying the philosophical foundations for the Dark Enlightenment, the most significant ideological framework that I've seen in my lifetime.  But he really blew it on the Kung Flu.  This I think sums up the political response to the virus:

Moldbug would have seen clearly that the N-COVID-19 narrative, lockdowns and restrictions, and subsequent Antifa/BLM riots that broke open the lockdowns, were all a manifestation of a High & Low versus Middle dynamic, where the elites use the underclass against middle Americans who represent the only real threat to their rule. It is not an accident that the public closure directives fell entirely on small businesses, churches and volunteer civic society. In contrast, the Washington Post owning Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is bigger than ever.

I think that this is spot on, and is actually an indictment of Republican Governors who bought into the hype.  A few didn't, but most let themselves be stampeded into harming their base.  The Democrat Governors who are still keeping up the lockdowns are doing so knowing that they are hurting a Republican constituency, so there's no expectation that they will want to ease up.  But the GOP crowd should have known better.  This is why I call them the "Stupid Party".

Go read the whole thing.  Some of us were skeptical about the panic from the start.  Others should have been.

They called the Communist takeover, 70 years ago

Looking at the upheaval and rioting in the streets - and the pulling down the statues of Washington,  Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt (so much for Mt. Rushmore), it's amazing just how prescient this comic book from the 1950s was about how Marxists would take over the country.

Is This Tomorrow was a full length (50 page) comic book from the 1950s, describing how a Communist takeover of America might happen.  It's quite interesting reading, as a time capsule of the intellectual wars of the day.  Sure, the details are very 1950s (the current race/class war is pretty different but hard to ignore) but the grand sweep of the strategy was all laid out way back then.

Sadly, the line Wolverines!!!1!! is not to be found in its pages.

Blogroll update

Man, it's been a long time since I've done this.

D.C. Traitors discusses politics from a, well, D.C. Traitor point of view.  You don't need to wonder where they're coming from.

Chuck Pergiel has been blogging for almost 20 years (!!!).  He's commented here before, and is always thought provoking.  You'll learn a lot over there - I have.

Locomotive Breath 1901 has a bunch of fun stuff.

Long time commenter LindaG has a blog.  Her house got heavily damaged by a tornado a while back and there's a GoFundMe for her.  It's within around $500 of the goal, so if you can stop by and donate I'd be very grateful indeed.

Welcome to the blogroll, folks!  And to our readers, check out some of the folks listed there.  It's quite a community.

Dad's last Father's Day

I put this post up ten years ago on Father's Day.  It was Dad's last, and while we still had hope we knew that there wasn't much hope left.  He sure liked this post, though, maybe because of that.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.  I sure miss you.  And happy Father's Day to my Father-In-Law Bob.  I'm sorry we won't be coming to see you in Arlington as often now.

Originally posted June 20, 2010.

Acadia Mountain

Maine's Acadia National Park contains all sorts of natural wonders, not least of which is the only fjord on the east coast of this land. It's a proper fjord, carved by the ice sheets and partially flooded by the rising seas at the end of the last glaciation. Called Some's Sound, it's deep, and surrounded by steep mountains on each side. Acadia Mountain is perhaps the steepest of these.

Father's Day 1975 saw Dad, me, and my older brother climbing that mountain. It's only about 900 feet tall, but the climb is pretty vigorous. You go up the landward side, and there's not a lot to see other than trees, and the occasional glimpse of trees on neighboring mountains. Other than the exercise, there's not a lot of reason to make the ascent.

Until you get to the summit, when suddenly you see the Sound laid out before you, in all its glory.
It looks like that the other direction, too. If you have a camera that can take panorama pictures, this is the place to take one. The contrast from deep forest to best-view-in-the-world happens in about five minutes, and makes this a memorable hike.

Father's Day made it a memorable hike, too. The three of us went on that hike at least three Father's Days. The panorama of the memory is something to see, too, but you'll have to take my word on that.

We couldn't recreate this today; Older Brother and I are scattered to the four winds, Mom and Dad are in New Mexico, and he's not well. But in a sense it doesn't matter, because these memories of times together are still fresh.

Happy Father's Day to all dads, especially Dad and Older Brother. You're good men, and good fathers, and I'm glad to have these memories.

Dimitri Tiomkin - Suite for The Old Man And The Sea

I have an odd view of Hemingway - sort of a hope for the best but prepare for the worst sort of thing.  His prose is brilliant, his characterization is memorable, but his stories sometime are infuriating*.

But Old Man And The Sea is Papa at his best, and a great story for Father's Day.  An old man and a boy, fishing - but more than fishing: striving and failing and striving again; victory and defeat, teaching and learning what is is to be a man.

The 1958 film was interesting.  Hemingway loved it, perhaps because the script followed his novel so closely.  He even liked Spenser Tracy in the lead role (for which he was nominated for Best Actor); given how much Hemingway disliked Tracy personally, this was quite an accomplishment.  The filming budged kept ballooning, because they kept trying (and failing) to catch a marlin.  They never did, and so the film had to cut between Tracy and pictures of a fish.  But it was not just any fish, it was the world record marlin caught off Peru. 

The music by Dimitri Tiomkin won the Oscar for best score, one of four he received in his career (out of a total of 22 nominations).  He was a prolific composer, writing scores for 57 films in the decade before this one.  This made him the highest paid composer in Hollywood.

* It's said that the unexpected, tragic ending of Farewell To Arms was intentional, because he was still angry at the World War I nurse who broke his heart.  That's not much to ruin a book for.

Trace Adkins - Just Fishin'

Tomorrow is Father's Day.  One of my clearest memories of Dad is him telling me that there was much about him that I would never understand until I had kids of my own.  That's some deep truth, right there.

Country music still has a lot of songs about family, and the old saying applies: all you need is three chords and the truth.  This song brings the truth about fathers - at least as we would like to be.  I watch this and think about all the times I had with my kids when they thought we were just doing whatever.  They may not remember the birthday party with a bunch of six year olds doing the Y-M-C-A dance at the Cosmic Bowl, but I do.

And I realize that I look back through the glass darkly at the times that I spent with my Dad, thinking that we were just doing whatever.  I don't remember the ones that I should, the way I should, and he's been gone these ten years so I can't ask him.  No matter.  I understand Dad now and know what he felt at the time.  You see, I've been there too.

Happy Father's Day to all Dads.  If you are fortunate enough to be a Dad with young kids, seize the day.  Even if they think you're just fishing.

Just Fishin' (Songwriters: Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell, and Ed Hill)

I’m lost in her there holdin’ that pink rod and reel
She’s doin’ almost everything but sittin’ still
Talkin’ ‘bout her ballet shoes and training wheels
And her kittens
And she thinks we’re just fishin’

I say, “Daddy loves you, baby” one more time
She says, “I know. I think I got a bite.” 
And all this laughin’, cryin, smilin’ dyin’ here inside’s
What I call, livin’

And she thinks we’re just fishin’ on the riverside
Throwin’ back what we could fry
Drownin’ worms and killin’ time
Nothin’ too ambitious
She ain’t even thinkin’ ‘bout
What’s really goin’ on right now
But I guarantee this memory’s a big’in
And she thinks we’re just fishin’

She’s already pretty, like her mama is
Gonna drive the boys all crazy
Give her daddy fits
And I better do this every chance I get
‘Cause time is tickin’
(Yeah it is)

And she thinks we’re just fishin’ on the riverside
Throwin’ back what we could fry
Drownin’ worms and killin’ time
Nothin’ too ambitious
She ain’t even thinkin’ ‘bout
What’s really goin’ on right now
But I guarantee this memory’s a big’in
And she thinks we’re just fishin’

She ain’t even thinkin’ ‘bout
What’s really goin’ on right now
But I guarantee this memory’s a big’in
And she thinks we’re just fishin’
Yeah, aww, she thinks we’re just fishin’
We ain’t only fishin’
(This ain’t about fishin’)

The young lady in the video is Adkins' youngest daughter, Trinity.

The Pen is mightier than the Internet

It may be that the first blogger was Robert Southey, Britain's tenth Poet Laureate.  You know some of his many works.  One is the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears; another is this:

What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails
And puppy-dogs' tails
That's what little boys are made of

What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And everything nice
That's what little girls are made of

The complete version of that has stanzas for young women, young men, old women, and old men.  It's pretty clever.

Bust of Southy in London's National Gallery  

But Southey was a man of wide interests, who wrote about all of them.  That sounds like a blogger to me.  He wrote the first (and still published) history of Brazil, in which the word "zombie" made its first appearance in the English language.  He wrote epic poems, mostly forgotten today.  He wrote criticism of other's epic poetry, most notoriously a scathing review of his friend's Samuel Coleridge's Rime Of The Ancient Mariner* which he said was like "a Dutchman's attempt at German profundity."

Lord Byron accused him of being a sell-out, giving up his youthful republicanism for a well paid social conservatism.  But Southey was instrumental in getting rid of Dr. Johnson's ponderous and self-satisfied prose style and introducing a clear, direct style in its place.   He wrote many biographies, most famous of which was about Lord Nelson and which was turned into a film.

Oh yeah - he and Coleridge were buddies with scientist Humphry Davies and participated in Nitrous Oxide experiments.  Groovy, baby.

I had never heard of him until this morning.  I remarked that The Queen Of The World truly was made of sugar and spice, and wondered when that line had been written.  She consulted the Oracle of Wikipedia, and then said This would make a good post for you.  Sure did.

* You've heard this as well - Water, water everywhere with not a drop to drink.

And so they've come for Abraham Lincoln

The Mayor of Boston supports removing the stature of Abraham Lincoln.  It seems that the battle against "Systemic Racism" has now devoured the Great Emancipator himself.

Long time readers will know that I'm not a great fan of Mr. Lincoln, but this is too much even for me.

Or we could just see this as a not-very-smart White Guy trying to figure out how to ride the tiger without getting eaten.

More lousy data

I've written for years and years about the terrible state of the climate databases - you know, the ones that are used to justify a $50T (that's Trillion) looting of middle class wealth.  Lawrence emails to point out that it's not just climate data that is lousy.  There are really interesting things going on with Kung Flu statistics as well:

Accord to the Texas DHS coronavirus tracking map, as of today there are1,098 “estimated active” coronavirus cases in Walker county.

However, when you go to the website for Walker County itself, it shows precisely 223 listed cases, which it breaks down as “233 reported – 8 duplicates – 2 not county residents.” Indeed it breaks down those number into individual cases, anonymized into case numbers, sex, and age range.

Moreover, it says that 113 cases have “graduated out” (which I take to mean they’ve had it long enough to be considered recovered and not infectious), meaning there are only 110 active cases, which suggests that (depending on the culling boundary for graduated cases), the state statistics are off by a factor of 5 to 10 times compared to county statistics.

There's a lot more, including really interesting things happening with death data that suggests (to me) that the State government agencies are trying to hide a massive screw up in the Prison system.

Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.  Now extrapolate this to the entire country.  Heads should roll.

Peggy Sue Wright - I'm Dynamite

If I asked you to name a famous singer from Butcher Hollow, Kentucky you'd say "Loretta Lynn".  You'd be right, of course.  If I asked you to name another famous singer from Butcher Hollow you might pause a moment before answering Crystal Gale, Loretta's baby sister.  Not many people know that the list of Butcher Hollow singers doesn't end there.

Peggy Sue Webb was Loretta's younger sister, second of four girls (and four boys).  She began performing with Loretta as her big sister's career started taking off.  She also started writing songs, collaborating with Loretta on Don't Come Home A' Drinking (With Loving On Your Mind).  She started her own recording career in 1969 with this (ahem) dynamite single, followed by an LP with the same title.  Over the next dozen years she had a baker's dozen of songs that reached the charts.

Married twice, she goes by Peggy Sue Wright.

I'm Dynamite (Songwriter: Loretta Lynn)

I know you see that don't touch sign all over me
My paint is wet and you'll get hurt all over you
I'm another man's woman to you I'm just bad news
I'm dynamite so please don't light the fuse

You turn me on but I can't turn me off 

I guess the switch is buried in my mind
The flame of love is burning just begging to be used
I'm dynamite so please don't light the fuse

You cannot undo the damage that I'll do 

and the first thing I'll destroy it will be you
Too many other hearts and vows that I can't stand to lose
I'm dynamite so please don't light the fuse

You cannot undo the damage...
I'm dynamite so please don't light the fuse

Does the American electorate want ideology, or does it want good governance?

This is what the election will be about.  Blue State Governors and Blue City Mayors have established a track record of what happens when ideology controls governance.  Red State Governors have shown what happens when good governance is the priority.  There is a real difference between the two in terms of economic activity, employment, personal freedom, and law and order.

I've never in my life seen the choice laid out in such a technicolor difference.

I guess we'll see which way the voters lean, but outside of the Faculty Lounge, the professional leftist agitator class, the New York Times newsroom, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, my money says that Americans want good governance.

Add in Joe Biden's many, many weaknesses, and the many uncomfortable laws he sponsored in his 40 year political career, and it looks like it will be a wave election.  We're already seeing signs.

The interesting question is what happens after the election?  I think that the Blue Cities will burn again.  No Federal bailout for rebuilding, though.  If their Mayors won't do what's necessary for their cities then we shouldn't either.

Man, I'm glad we left Maryland.

So is America insane?

The question needs to be asked.  I'm not sure what the answer is.  Two things are clear, that frame the discussion:

1. The Media are gas-lighting the public, spinning a narrative that may have a grain of truth to it, but only if you squint hard.  All of the news we get about both the virus and the riots protests is slanted in a particular way - to convince you that Orange Man Bad and that the riots protests are perfectly fine, nothing to see here.

2. The riots protests are clearly organized by persons unknown.  They are as spontaneous as astroturf.  Sure, there are a couple of actual spontaneous protests, but these are a vanishingly small percentage of the total.  Motivations of the rioters protesters run the gamut from justifiable outrage to Free Stuff Army.  The motivations of the organizers are unknown.  Of course, the media only talk about the justifiable outrage.

So where does this go?  What will be the outcome?  There is an election this fall, and there is still a widely acknowledged belief that legitimacy comes from the result of elections.  Yes, the Democratic Party (and their partisans in the Civil Service) have so far refused to accept the outcome of the last election.  I can't see anything changing this time around although it looks plain that Trump will comfortably increase his victory margin.

My sense is that America still has a fairly deep well of sensibleness, despite two generations of agitation to drain that.  My sense is also that the increasingly desperate attempts to divide this Republic along class, race, and gender lines is a reflection not of the divider's perceived strength, but that they see themselves as increasingly weak.

It's also beginning to be clear that there is a real divide in this country, but this divide is between Blue State public policy and Red State public policy.  The Governors of many Blue States are actively destroying their State's economies, and actively immiserating their populations.  You don't see this in Red States.  You also see a stark hypocrisy on display in the Blue States, where you are not allowed to go to church or to your grandma's funeral, but you are free to riot protest.  The fact that grandma died from the Kung Flu because the Governor made her nursing home accept infectious Kung Flu patients only adds to the whole ambiance.

But I'm not sure how this plays out.  I expect we will see more self-separation, where people who are sick of Blue State insanity move to more sane locales.  Heck, The Queen Of The World and I just did that, and we haven't had an ounce of regret about it.  Sure, we miss our friends, but they need to decide if they want to continue living in that mess.  They can move, vote the idiots out, or keep their status quo.

I guess we'll see in November.  Remember, Adam Smith famously said that there's a lot of ruin in a country.

The Altar of Victory and Robert E. Lee

The Altar of Victory was erected by the Divine Augustus himself in the Roman Senate house.  Raised in commemoration of his victory over Marc Antony and Cleopatra, the altar saw regular use - not least of which was the ceremony where the Senators swore loyalty to the Emperor.  You might say that it was at the beating heart of the Roman political order.

The statue of Victory on a coin issued under Augustus.  Nobody knows what the altar itself looked like.

But time and tide waits for no man, and the Roman political order changed over the centuries.  Constantine the Great ended the persecution of the Christians and funded the new religion.  His son Constantius II removed the altar in 357 AD, thinking that the old pagan rituals had no place in the "modern" Rome.  For the next 50 years it was back and forth - restored to the Senate House under one emperor, removed under another.  Finally in 408 AD it disappeared entirely.  "Modern" Rome had won.

We see the same playing out today in Richmond.  Governor Blackface has ordered the statue of Robert E. Lee removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond.  A judge has put a temporary halt to this - it seems that the land was donated to the State decades ago under the provision that the State would protect the statue.  The great grandson of the people who donated the land filed suit to stop the removal.

But like the "Modern Roman's" view of the Altar of Victory, many in Richmond today think that the statue represents an outdated, nay pagan past.  Its presence is a blasphemy against the Revealed Progressive Truth.  We shall see how things play out.

Conquerers of the Impossible 2

Just to amplify ASM826's posts about what America used to be, here are some statistics about US military production during World War II.  We manufactured:

108,000 tanks and self-propelled guns;

250,000 artillery pieces plus 100,000 mortars;

2.6M machine guns;

2.3M trucks and other vehicles;

300,000 aircraft;

124 aircraft carriers;

23 battleships and 72 cruisers;

over 800 destroyers, destroyer escorts, and frigates; and

34M tons of cargo sealift capacity;

The numbers are a little hard to grasp in this day of $100M fighter planes.

Sunday music: Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren Bacall - Am I Blue?

When you think of classical music, Florida doesn't quite spring to mind.  What does spring to mind is Ernest Hemingway and his many novels set in the Sunshine State.  "To Have And Have Not" is one of his best, made into a memorable film in 1944 staring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  Their long term romance started here.

At 18 years old, it was her first film.  Her screen test was the unforgettable "You know how to whistle, don't you?"  That wasn't intended to go into the film but, well, the director knew when he had a winner.

There is a persistent rumor that an even younger Andy Williams dubbed the singing for this song.  It isn't true, but Bacall's very low register was (and is) quite unusual.  It really is her singing with the great Hoagy Carmichael here.

A great D-Day tribute

357 Magnum as a great one posted.  David Hammond (of Top Gear fame) has three people recreate Omaha beach over a period of 4 days, which is then stitched together via clever video editing.  It is quite something to watch, and a respectful salute to the young men who fought there 76 years ago.

Highly recommended.

Welcome to Florida

I've been really busy for the last two months, and it really cut into my blogging. You see, The Queen Of The World and I moved.

It turns out our timing couldn't have been better.  While we will miss our friends up north, we won't miss the insane Blue State politics.  It feels refreshingly normal down here.  And gun friendly, in distinct contrast to Maryland.  With riots as the special du jour, it's reassuring to be in a place where sheriffs publicly say that home invaders should expect to be shot.

And it's very nice indeed to be close to grandkids.  We took one to a spring training game a couple months back (before the Kung Flu insanity hit) and I'm looking forward to a lot more of that sort of thing.  And we don't have as many aches and pains in the warmer weather which is very nice indeed.

So Maryland is a little Bluer today, and Florida is a little Redder.  I suspect that there's a fair amount of this going on, as the people of the country despair of normal politics and sort themselves accordingly.

Piggyback B-17s

I had never heard this story before:

Rojohn maneuvered to take a position to fill the void created when a B-17 (No. 43-338436) piloted by 2nd Lt. Charles C. Webster went down in flames and exploded on the ground. ‘I was going into that void when we had a tremendous impact,’ Rojohn recalled. Feeling the bomber shudder, the men immediately thought their plane had collided with another aircraft. It had, but in a way that may never have happened before or since.

 

Another B-17 (No. 43-338457), piloted by 1st Lt. William G. MacNab and 2nd Lt. Nelson B. Vaughn, had risen upward. The top turret guns on MacNab’s plane had pierced through the aluminum skin on the bottom of Rojohn’s plane, binding the two huge planes together, as Leek said, like ‘breeding dragonflies.’ The two planes had become one.

 

Whether MacNab and Vaughn lost control of their plane because they were seriously injured or the planes collided because both Rojohn and MacNab were moving in to close the open space in the formation is uncertain. Both MacNab and Vaughn were fatally injured that day and were never able to tell their own story.

 

Staff Sergeant Edward L. Woodall, Jr., MacNab’s ball-turret gunner, remembered that when a crew check was called just prior to the midair collision, everyone had reported in. ‘At the time of the impact,’ Woodall said, ‘we lost all power and intercom on our aircraft. I knew we were in trouble from the violent shaking of the aircraft, no power to operate the turret, loss of intercom, and seeing falling pieces of metal. My turret was stalled with the guns up at about 9 o’clock. This is where countless time drills covering emergency escape procedures from the turret paid off, as I automatically reached for the hand crank, disengaged the clutch and proceeded to crank the turret and guns to the down position so I could open the door and climb into the waist of the airplane. I could see that another aircraft was locked onto our aircraft and his ball turret jammed down inside our aircraft.’

 

By amazing piloting, half of the aircrews survived.  Most bailed out, but one pilot and copilot pair survived the crash landing unhurt.  Wow.  Go read the whole thing.

The 2008 obituary of CAPT Glenn Rojohn, DFC is here.

The covenant of civilization

There is an unwritten - and ancient - agreement between the rulers and the ruled that underlies civilization.  It is so fundamental that it is basically the bedrock of civilization itself.  Back in the Dark Ages, "justice" was the responsibility of the people - specifically their extended family. Clan feuds were the norm - and this has echoed faintly down to our own times with stories of the Hatfields and McCoys. Government was weak then and so justice was rough. The deal that was negotiated between the states and their subjects over the next 600 years was that the State would administer justice, but do it as fairly as it could, making blood feud unnecessary.

Looking at what has been happening so far this year - the tyranny of Governors putting their citizens under house arrest, followed by those same governors allowing unhindered looting by mobs - makes me wonder when enough of the public decides that the government has reneged on the 1000 year old deal.  What percentage of the population needs to decide this?  My guess is less than 10%.

Looking at the rioters it calls to mind the endless ages of border raiding.  That ended a shockingly short time ago - the 19th Century in the United States as whites encroached on Indian land.  Remember, the deal was that the State would enforce justice fairly so that blood feud would no longer be needed.  

Things are not made any better by the collapse in credibility of the media.  When a majority of the population thinks they are being consistently lied to, that adds fuel to this fire.

Leo the Great and Attila the Hun

The Roman Empire was falling.  The Fifth Century was a disaster for the Empire, but it didn't help when Attila the Hun invaded Italy in 452.  The Empire's armies were exhausted and beaten, and the path to the Eternal City itself lay open.  With nobody to defend the people, Pope Leo rode out to meet the (in)famous barbarian.

Fresco by Raffael showing the meeting of Leo and Attila

Leo faced Attila and his Huns.  All we know for sure is that it was Attila that blinked; the Huns withdrew beyond the Danube river, leaving Rome untouched.  Not for nothing is Leo called "The Great" - the first Pope receiving that much-desired adjective.

But that was then, and this is now.  St. John's Episcopal Church sits on Lafayette Square in Washington D.C., across from the White House.  Rioters tried to burn it down, and Donald Trump took an unexpected walk across the square to stand up for civilization.  You'd think that people trying to burn down historic churches would be, well, barbarians.  If you listened to the Bishop from that church, you'd think you were wrong:

She told Anderson Cooper of CNN, "I am outraged. The president did not pray when he came to St John’s nor, as you just articulated, did he acknowledge the agony of our country right now — in particular, that of the people of color in our nation who wonder is anyone in public power will ever acknowledge their sacred worth and who are rightfully demanding an end to 400 years of systemic racism and white supremacy in our country … We distance ourselves from the incendiary language of this President."

 

The bishop sided with the barbarians. I suppose turncoat bishops have done that over the centuries.

Mariann Edgar Budde is no Pope Leo the Great.  The barbarians are trying to sack our Eternal City and the Church is telling us that we're on our own.

The fabric of society 2

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

― Richard P. Feynman

1804 was a bad PR year for Napoleon Bonaparte. In March, he had sent French Dragoons across the Rhine into sovereign German territory to kidnap Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien, bringing him to Paris to be tried on trumped up charges of conspiracy and then executed. A European aristocracy who had breathed a sigh of relief that Napoleon had leashed the French Revolutionary Terror instantly became implacably opposed to his rule. While he was able to conquer for a while, he was unable to hold his gains in the face of their continuing resistance. As Talleyrand is said to have explained, It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.

Napoleon's hubris - his belief that he could exercise power with fewer and fewer restraints was a blunder.  We see this in our own day.  The War On Drugs has led to the militarization of the police forces.  It has led to an ever increasing ratchet of police use of force - including deadly force.  It has led to an "us vs. them" mentality, as police forces face increasing criticism for this increased use of force.  It has led to "no knock" raids, sometimes at the wrong address.

Yes, there's a lot of opportunistic looting going on right now.  Yes, radical leftist organizations like Antifa are using this as an excuse to spread chaos and fan the flames.

But it's hard to see how this happens without the last 40 years of military police tactics.  There's a real distrust between the citizens and the police, one that did not exist when I was young.

All for a War On Drugs that sees record levels of drug overdose deaths, the sale of narcotics on every street corner in the Republic, and a monstrous black market funding Narco-terrorists (among others).  Can we all agree that the War On Drugs is a blunder?  We can argue later about whether it was a crime.

Quote of the Day: Riots edition

Miguel brings it:

Burning Books.  Burning Churches.  You what comes next.

The election this November will be interesting.  It looks like it may be the last time the voters get a chance to reject the party of insane, unhinged chaos.  We'll see if the voters choose to do so.  And if they do, we'll see if the rejected party accepts the outcome.

A Republic, if you can keep it.

- Benjamin Franklin, when asked what would be America's form of government