Vince Gill - One More Last Chance

So some Covid Karen tells us we all need to forgive and forget about the damage, deaths, and pain inflicted by the Covid lockdowns.  Lots of folks are talking about this - I particularly like Aesop's. Better people than I have written eloquently about the death and destruction, and about how forgiveness requires repentance.  I really don't have anything more to add about that, either.

But one thing struck me about Karen's (actually Brown University Economist Emily Oster) article.  Specifically, this:

The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward. [My emphasis - Borepatch]

Whoa, slow down Cowpoke.  There wasn't any luck involved at all.  Case in point, Borepatch, March 22, 2020 - a week after lockdowns were imposed:

There are three very interesting Coronavirus narratives emerging in just the last day or two:

1. The virus looks to be less bad - and perhaps much less bad - than we had feared.  As we learn more, we learn that the worst case scenario that had been put forward is much less likely.
2. Government actions have been a factor in making the outbreak or response worse or of using the outbreak to cover up their failures.
3. The government response is strangling the economy.  By their own admission (i.e. bills being discussed in Congress), there is at least a Trillion dollars of damage so far.

So look at this situation: things are not as bad as we feared, governments are to some extent demonstrably incompetent and untrustworthy, and the draconian crackdown/overreaction is destroying businesses, jobs, and people's lives.

Man, I sure was lucky in that analysis, wasn't I?  But I guess that I'm particularly lucky because a month later I wrote this:

Most importantly of all, we're not tracking (well, modeling) how many of the Kung Flu deaths are people who had severe health problems and would likely have died soon anyway.  Sure, there are stories about young healthy people keeling over from this; we know that this is a vanishingly small minority of the total deaths.

But we know that we are putting the population of the country under severe strain, and that this has very real consequences.  Aesop left a comment from the health care front lines that illustrates this:

And yes, in one night, three of the traumas we had were domestic violence.

Normally, we see one of those a month; at worst, one a week. Not three in one night.

But it hasn't been that way every night. Yet.

Man, that's two in a row for Borepatch!  How lucky can you get?  But wait - there's more!  Posted here September 3, 2020:

A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens.

Up until this point there had been no simple, rigorous analysis that accurately and definitively conveys the true costs of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Accordingly, Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

Bold in original.  That's some medical response, right there.

In all honesty, this really isn't controversial at all.  We've studied the health effects of unemployment for decades and decades.  We know what happened to employment, and how many people lost their jobs.  Applying known health impacts to those people allows us to quantify mortality due to the lockdown.  It's just math.

What is interesting here is the analysis of age at death.  For virtually all (90%) of Covid deaths, the patient was very old.  This means that there were few "life years" left for that patient.  However, for unemployment caused mortality the age at death was much younger, and so there were many more years for each of these people.

The process of higher mathematics gives the result that is in boldface in the quote.

It's hard to see a more counter productive government response.

Man, I must be the luckiest man on the face of the earth, stringing these analyses and predictions together like that.  I'd better buy a Powerball ticket for tonight!  [/snark]

So what is it that makes me so much smarter than a Brown University Professor?  I wrote about this in the April post linked above, specifically:

Once a government executes a particular power, they will want to do it again.  Most of the country in under house arrest; where does that lead in the future?  To SiG's point that people will answer this by saying that people will die and isn't it heartless to let them die over a hypothetical, let me reply by asking how many people?  Because we don't know the number because we're not measuring the factors that would tell us the answer: how many are very sick and would die within the next 6-12 months?  Sure their lives are valuable but do we wreck 50 million lives to give them and extra 6 months?  That sounds harsh, but that's exactly the tradeoff that we are making.

It's the Unseen.  And the costs are Unseen, too, because no Governor in the land wants to make it explicit to the voters just what are all the many miseries that have been unleashed on them by said Governor.  That it is Unseen is not by accident.

And so our policy makers see the situation poorly, looking through a glass darkly at only a portion of the situation.  Of course the resulting public policy is hideous.  Interestingly, the misery is concentrated on Trump voters (the hourly wage class), not the governing class (who work from home via videoconference).  You can't get to your factory job that way, but the salaried class are doing fine.  No doubt this is all a coincidence.

Even a private University like Brown cannot exist without the generous support of the Government.  Professor Oster has a financial incentive to follow the government with respect to this policy, and when a person's dinner depends upon their support for a particular policy they tend not to see any evidence that runs counter to that policy.

Oh, and no doubt Professor Oster did just fine during the lockdowns while working class people in Providence lost their businesses.  No doubt this was all a coincidence, too.

Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.

Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.

Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.

Point of order, Professor Oster: it wasn't the pandemic that caused all this damage.  Rather, it was the government imposed lockdowns (supported by "experts" such as yourself) that did.  Some of us called this very, very early: April 21, 2020 to be specific:

There is simply no rational, science-based justification to keep the lockdowns in place anymore.  We see this recognized by Governors (who are starting to end the lockdown) and by the population in general (who are starting to willfully violate the lockdown).  Everybody but the "experts" is starting to recognize this, and the "experts" may be refusing to recognize it so that they don't get blamed.

We knew this from the very beginning, but dim-bulb "Experts" like Professor Oster got this public policy wrong all the time.  They got it was catastrophically wrong. Yet somehow the "experts" keep wanting another chance to get things catastrophically wrong again.  And again.  And again.

Professor Oster wants us to give these same "experts" one more last chance.  There's a Country music song about that.

(Best country music cameo ever)

One More Last Chance (Songwriters: Vince Gill, Gary Nicholson)

She was standing at the front door
When I came home last night
A good book in her left hand
And a rollin' pin in the right
She said you've come home for the last time
With whiskey on your breath
If you don't listen to my preachin' boy
I'm goin' to have to beat you half to death

Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
I know I drive you crazy baby
It's the best that I can do
We're just some good ol' boys, a makin' noise
I ain't a runnin' 'round on you
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through

First she hid my glasses
'Cause she knows that I can't see
She said you ain't goin' nowhere boy
'Til you spend a little time with me
Then the boys called from the honky tonk
Said there's a party goin' on down here
Well she might've took my car keys
But she forgot about my old John Deere

So give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through
I know I drive you crazy baby
It's the best that I can do
We're just some good ol' boys, a makin' noise
I ain't a runnin' 'round on you
Give me just a one more last chance
Before you say we're through

If you use Signal ...

Someone (maybe LindaG?) left a comment a week or two back about how "Signal is removing support for Android".   There seems to be some confusion about this, enough so that Signal put up a good blog post that explains what's going on.

Short answer: Signal is still going to support Android, but they are removing the SMS feature from their Android app.  This is overall A Good Thing.  So keep using Signal on Android.

Longer answer: SMS (Short Message Service, generally called "Text" by everyone normal) is what phone companies use to allow short, text based person-to-person or group chat messages.  It's been around for a long time - at least 20 years and probably longer.  It was a clever hack to the telephony protocols that allowed short messages to be sent without setting up a circuit (i.e. phone call), so it gave users something they liked without really adding much stress to the phone network's capacity.

The fly in the ointment is that SMS really isn't very secure.  We've known about this for a long time; I posted about this probably almost ten years ago (too lazy to chase this down in the almost 14,000 posts here).

Since Signal is all about security, they've finally dropped their SMS support feature.  I think this was just used as an add on to their login mechanism - you not only had to enter your password but you had to have a second method of verifying that you are actually you.  Signal would send your phone (well, the Signal app on your phone) a text with a secret code that you'd enter to complete your login.

Since SMS is not secure, this isn't a great way to add this second authentication step.  So Signal has added their own mechanism where their server sends a (secure) message directly to the Signal app.  In general, this is a security improvement over SMS.  There's more detail at their blog post, but as I said earlier, from a security perspective this is A Very Good Thing.

So I hope this clears up the confusion.  Signal is still there, on Android, and more secure than ever.

Dad Joke CCXXXVIIII

Did you hear about the guy who drove his German luxury car into a tree?   He found out how his Mercedes Bends.

Blogger HTML Access - Now With Pictures

Since Silicon Greybeard asked in the comments, here's how to access the HTML code in Blogger. Having created written instructions for users many times over the last 30 years I have learned that instructions with screen shots are understood more clearly and are better received than text only instructions. 

1) Log into Blogger.

2) Select "Design" in the upper right hand corner.

3) Select "Theme" from the menu on the left.

4) Click the drop down arrow attached to the "Customize" button.

5) Select "Edit HTML" from the drop down menu.

6) The code that appear is the structure of your primary page. Here there be dragons. You have all the editing power, including the power to make an unusable mess. If you want edit the widgets, like blogrolls and text boxes in the margins, click the icon with the four little boxes in the top right.

7) Select the desired item from the drop down menu. Since we have our blogroll broken into categories, there are several in our menu, named "Bloglist1" and so on.

8) If what you are doing is trying to restore your full blogrolls, open each "Bloglist" and find 'numItemsToShow'. You can search the page or just scroll until you find it. Change that number from 10 to a number large enough that your blogroll is no longer truncated.

Anything else you want to do could be done in the HTML. You could copy the page out into an HTML editor, make changes, and copy it back. Blogger works fine for what we use it for and this is the first time I had made a change at this level. No one I know designs pages in raw HTML, it's all done in some WYSIWYG editor, like Dreamweaver, but if you're comfortable in the code, any text editor can be used.

Dad Joke CCXXXVIII - special Halloween Dad Joke

Why don't mummies take vacation?  They're afraid to unwind.

Site Maintenance

 In support of Borepatch, I went into the HTML that underlays the blog and set all the blogrolls to display 100 items before hiding anything. So if you look at our blogroll, you now see the entire list again. It had been hiding anything more than 10 for at least a couple of years.

Since we are talking about the blogroll, I recommend looking through our lists and visiting some of them to see some very fine content. Far better than the usual drivel and dad jokes we manage to post here. The only thing stopping me from picking some to recommend is that I would be passing by equally deserving blogs and I don't want to post the whole list.

How Florida recovered from Hurricane Ian so quickly

These linemen are restoring power to Sanibel Island.

Shock and awe.  

Spotted by The Queen Of The World.

Buck Owens - (It's A) Monster's Holiday

"Bigger than the Beatles" is a cliche in the music world.  Buck Owens wasn't bigger than the Fab Four, but he was first - he recorded "Act Naturally" before they did, and his version inspired them to record their cover.  Owen's career peaked in the 60s and early 70s but this 1974 gem is just plain fun for Halloween.  And you can play it for the kids without scaring them.

(It's A) Monster's Holiday (Songwriter: Buck Owens)

Frankenstein was the first in line
And the Wolfman came up next
Dracula was doing his stuff
Breathing down my neck

Jump back, make tracks
Here comes the Hunchback
Better get out of his way
Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum
It was a monster's holiday

Well, I hopped into bed
And I covered up my head
Said, I'm gonna get
A good night's sleep

I got woke up
About twelve o'clock
And I jumped right to my feet

There was gremlins and goblins
Dragons and zombies
Lawdy, what an awful sight

I said, good buddy, you may get me
But, brother, let me tell you
It's gonna be after the fight

Frankenstein was the first in line
And the Wolfman came up next
Dracula was doing his stuff
Breathing down my neck

Jump back, make tracks
Here comes the Hunchback
Better get out of his way
Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum
It was a monster's holiday

Uncle Bill
Well, he took ill
And they sent for me to come
Well, I had to pass
By the old graveyard
So I went on the run

There was screaming and moaning
Wailing and groaning
Scary as a mummy's curse

I said, good buddy, you may get me
But, brother, let me tell you that
You're gonna have to catch me first

Frankenstein was the first in line
And the Wolfman came up next
Dracula was doing his stuff
Breathing down my neck

Jump back, make tracks
Here comes the Hunchback
Better get out of his way
Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum
It was a monster's holiday

Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum
It was a Monster's Holiday
(Gotcha)

Dad Joke - CCXXXVII

 In Greek Mythology, Chiron was half man, half horse. He was also a doctor of medicine.

You could say that he was the centaur for disease control.

@#$%! Google

There are a lot of blogs on the blogroll here that Google won't display.  Sure, it let's you add them to the blogroll but it only displays ten.  When the heck did they start that?

Apologies to those of you who mysteriously dropped off - it looks like I'm going to have to do major surgery to get everyone back.

Dad Joke - CCXXXVI

I boiled a funny bone last week.

It turned into a laughing stock. 

The Internet interprets censorship as damage

It routes around it.  Big Brother Google (you do love Big Brother, don't you?) cast Big Country into the Outer Darkness, yea with bell, book, and candle.

He's baaaaaaaack.

Looks like this may have wedged Divemedic's blog, though.

UPDATE 24 October 2022 11:53: Divemedic's blog is back.

John Morris - "Transylvania Lullaby" from Young Frankenstein

John Morris had a long career writing music for Mel Brooks (he scored "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers), but this is his most iconic work from Brooks' equally iconic 1974 film Young Frankenstein.  It's a very rare film, a satire that was both critically and commercially successful despite (or perhaps because of) its intentionally retro approach.  Filmed in black and white using the laboratory devices from the original Frankenstein film, the movie works on many unusual levels.

For example, Aerosmith's iconic song "Walk This Way" was inspired by Marty Feldman's line in the film.

It's one of The Queen Of The World's and my favorite films, especially around Halloween.

Here is the City of Prague Symphony Orchestra performing the theme from Young Frankenstein.

Bad Livers - Honey, I've Found A Brand New Way

Nimrodmaroon emails to ask if I'd ever heard of Bad Liver.  I hadn't but holy cow, this is right up my ally.  They were a (fittingly weird) Austin bad from the 1990s that has been described as "thjrash-grass", "contemporary bluegrass", and acoustic-metal-bluegrass".  How can you not check them out after that? 

This song is less weird than many of theirs - almost normal bluegrass but with a little seasoning of we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-Toto.  I like it.

Thanks for the heads up, nimrodmaroon!

The "French Haircut"

E.M. Smith has a typically thoughtful post about what is happening in Europe right now:

Do note that at present the EU & UK are having about a 10% to 20% reduction in their natural gas flows. This is about 5% to 10% reduction in their “Carbon”. Now both currencies have dropped about 1/3 of their value vs the $ US (that is also losing value fast to inflation….). They also have a political revolution in the starting phases, governments being turned out, and massive marches in the streets. It isn’t even winter yet… With that small a step toward the WEF “Decarbonization Goal”, this is what you get. What do you think will happen with a double of that “decarbonization”?

He then goes on to point out that the EU's "accomplishments" to date are only about 10% of the decarbonization goal and that to meet these goals each of the next ten years will have to do even more than what the last year has seen.  He points out:

Street Protests in the EU / Europe writ large are the prelude to riots that are the prelude to insurrections and revolts. I’ve often said these Elite need to remember “The French Haircut”. Yet they do not.

A lot of folks in Europe are going to die this winter.  We'll see what things look like in March, but I wonder how many of the EU governments will still be in power by then.

 

Just how wrong are the Climate Temperature models?

I've written for years and years about how the Climate Temperature Models seem hopelessly broken. So just how broken are they?  This broken:

A major survey into the accuracy of climate models has found that almost all the past temperature forecasts between 1980-2021 were excessive compared with accurate satellite measurements. The findings were recently published by Professor Nicola Scafetta, a physicist from the University of Naples. He attributes the inaccuracies to a limited understanding of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), the number of degrees centigrade the Earth’s temperature will rise with a doubling of carbon dioxide.

File this under "prediction is hard, especially about the future".  Gosh, it almost seems like the climate system is massively chaotic and difficult to understand, or something ...

The paper groups dozens of models used in the CMIP 6 reference model into low, medium, and high ECS.  Here are the four major temperature databases and their results against the three groupings:

The black lines are the actual temperatures; the yellow bands are the model's predicted temperatures. Notice that the actual temperatures have diverged outside the yellow predicted ranges (i.e. recorded actual temperatures are lower than predicted for all temperature data bases and all model groups). Long time readers know that I prefer the UAH satellite temperature record because (a) it is truly global and (b) it is only minimally adjusted.  I have been vocal for a long time that adjustments to the other temperature records are excessive, and may be wildly excessive.

Let me emphasize here that the models have been wrong for 40 years.

There is another paper just out that corroborates Prof. Scafetta's results.  In other words, the accepted scientific consensus for ECS is out of whack.  Gosh, it seems like "Consensus Science" doesn't understand things as well as they tell us they do.

It's not easy being green

Wind energy company fined $35M for killing hundreds of bald eagles:

An American wind energy company has admitted to killing at least 150 bald and golden eagles, most of which were fatally struck by wind turbine blades, federal prosecutors said. 

ESI Energy pleaded guilty Tuesday to three counts of violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) after eagles died at three of its facilities in Wyoming and New Mexico, according to a statement from the Justice Department.

Nice going, Greens.  If the rest of us even pick up an Eagle feather from the ground we can go to prison, but your corporate buddies just cop a plea and, the cost to electricity rates, and go back to collecting their subsidies.

I'll believe that the Greens are serious when they insist on prison time for this sort of thing.

(via)

R.I.P. James McDivitt

Gemini and Apollo astronaut (and USAF General) James McDivitt dead at 93.

As usual, Dwight is your go-to guy for obits. 

Dad Joke - CCXXXV

 I went to the bookstore yesterday. There was a self-help book titled "How to Make 50% of Your Problems Disappear". 

I bought two copies.

Dad Joke CCXXXIV - Special Science Edition

All the science posting lately means we need a science themed Dad Joke.

Why do you never hear good chemistry jokes anymore?  Because all the good ones Argon.

Finally!

A Science-Based approach to weight loss!

Click to embiggen or read it at Dilbert.  This is simply top shelf mockery.

 

Loretta Lynn (and Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette) - Silver Threads And Golden Needles

Loretta Lynn passed on a week ago.  The Choir Invisible's gain is our loss.

She was a force of nature, both professionally and personally.  Professionally she is the most awarded female country artist ever; personally she was as tough as they come.  She said of her husband that he never hit her where she didn't hit him twice.  The Coal Miner's Daughter wasn't of a mind to back down.

Her music defined country music in the 1970s, when she was awarded artist of the decade.  The 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter (starring Sissy Spacek who won the Best Actress Oscar that year) wasn't so much a movie as it was a national singalong - Mom and Dad went to see it at a theater in Brewer Maine and said that the audience knew all the words to all the songs.  Lynn was asked whether Sissy Spacek could sing the song in the film and Lynn replied, "Well, she's a-gonna."

Tough, and not of a mind to back down.

We've lost something here.  Only Dolly is left from the trio of 1960s break through country women.

Rest in peace, and rise in Glory.

The Scientific Dark Age

I ran across this photograph somewhere in the last couple of weeks:

It was from the Fifth Solvay Conference in 1927.  IIRC, 16 of these gentlemen and one lady received Nobel Prizes.  There are only 29 people in the photograph, so that's a 58% Nobel rate.  I suspect that's a world record for a scientific conference.

Aesop says that we are in a Scientific Dark Age,* and I agree.  He says we may have been in it for a couple hundred years, and that's where our opinions part.  I think that it's been since July, 1969.

I am currently reading Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feinman.  Feynman will need no introduction here, but for those unfamiliar with him he worked on the Manhattan Project and then taught Physics at Princeton for Decades.  He was the guy on the Space Shuttle Challenger Investigation Committee who showed that O-Rings lost their ability to seal pipes when they were cold.

He had a fascinating career - one of the world's greatest scientific minds, he rubbed shoulders with the rest of the world's greatest scientific minds.  One theme that continually comes out in his memoir is a passion to question why things work the way they do.  He independently derived methods of solving mathematical problems that in some case were superior to the "Official" ones.  His was a strict allegiance to experimental proof:

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong.

This is from the 1960s.  That's gone now.  Exhibit A for the Prosecution is my last post's reference to the chief of CERN - the world's most prestigious physics lab - and his command to his staff not to comment on the Svensmark experiment (because it calls into question the Scientific Orthodoxy of Global Warming).  Exhibit B is the fact that for multiple reasons the climate databases are "seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted." Exhibit C is how NASA administrators are prohibiting NASA scientists from publishing papers that run against current Global Warming orthodoxy.  There are many more examples of this in yesterday's post, and many, many more (over 500, in fact) here.

So something happened between July 1969 and today.  Back then we were able to make atomic bombs, invent integrated circuits, and land a man on the moon.  Now it's arguments over string theory and why we can't detect more "Dark Matter".

Feynman could have told people about that last one.  I suspect that today they wouldn't listen, because they don't want to listen.  Careers will be lost if the scientific grant gravy train gets upended.

And the funniest part?  That gravy train is controlled by the same Government Leviathan that challenged the scientific community to land a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.

Mission accomplished.  But what to then do with the gravy train?  Well, never let a gravy train go to waste.  And thus the beginning of the Scientific Dark Age dates to July 1969.  It sure as shootin' hadn't started when the 1927 Solvay Conference was fresh in the rear view mirror.  It took the Feb.Gov to royally screw up Science.

They're still having physics conferences at Solvay.  There's a table here showing who chaired each conference.  After Oppenheimer in 1964, the roster lists a bunch of nobodies.

* Interestingly, the picture that appears at the top of Aesop's post is of Percival Lowell in his Flagstaff observatory.  Lowell is best known for his maps of the Canals of Mars, so this shows that the scientific rot had set in well before 1969.

 

The biggest science story in decades is being swept under the carpet

I was going to post about this a couple of months ago, but the story is getting even more interesting.  The new James Webb Space Telescope is showing images of the most distant galaxies ever seen, and it is raising questions on basic, fundamental theories about the universe - most notably, the Big Bang theory.

Plasma physicist Eric Lerner (a long time questioner of the Big Bang theory) lays out the case for the prosecution:

It is not too complicated to explain why these too small, too smooth, too old and too numerous galaxies are completely incompatible with the Big Bang hypothesis. Let’s begin with “too small”. If the universe is expanding, a strange optical illusion must exist. Galaxies (or any other objects) in expanding space do not continue to look smaller and smaller with increasing distance.

Beyond a certain point, they start looking larger and larger. (This is because their light is supposed to have left them when they were closer to us.) This is in sharp contrast to ordinary, non-expanding space, where objects look smaller in proportion to their distance.

Put another way, the galaxies that the JWST shows are just the same size as the galaxies near to us, assuming that the universe is not expanding and redshift is proportional to distance.

Smaller and smaller is exactly what the JWST images show. Even galaxies with greater luminosity and mass than our own Milky Way galaxy appear in these images to be two to three times smaller than in similar images observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and the new galaxies have redshifts which are also two to three times greater.

This is not at all what is expected with an expanding universe, but it is just exactly what I and my colleague Riccardo Scarpa predicted based on a non-expanding universe, with redshift proportional to distance. Starting in 2014, we had already published results, based on HST images, that showed that galaxies with redshifts all the way up to 5 matched the expectations of non-expanding, ordinary space.

There's a lot more at the link, but this excerpt is long enough to give you the flavor.  Amusingly, Lerner links to a peer-reviewed paper on the subject: Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field

I love the first word in the title, although rather think that the authors used this with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

The wagons are being circled by the scientific establishment (which is what makes this story interesting to me).  Space.com has an article filled with the usual name calling: "pseudoscience", "disinformation", claims of "misused" and "out of context" quotes, "serial denier", "anti-science", and even "flat-earth".  The article quotes (at length) a guy who wrote a book called "How To Talk To A Science Denier".

Whew!  That's a lot of insults to pack into a single article.  I'm glad to see scientific discourse advanced!

Now I'm not an astrophysicist (although older brother is), so I don't know which is right - Big Bang or Non-expanding Universe.  Or maybe neither.  Who knows?

But the reaction to this challenge to "Scientific Orthodoxy" is fascinating.  And the science.com brings to mind that quote from Hamlet: Methink the Lady doth protest too much.  It also brings to mind two very old posts of mine.  In The Iron Law and the Bureaucratization of Science I write about the curious fact that scientific progress does not seem to be accelerating, despite hundreds (or thousands) of times more scientists and funding.  In it I posted a chart from Nigel Calder's blog (he founded and edited New Scientist magazine):

These are Calder's opinion but are a reasonable comparison.  It certainly does not seem like things are speeding up - certainly not by a factor of 100x.  There's a lot in my post of complaints by eminent scientists about suppression of views dangerous to the scientific establishment.  I encourage you to click through and read the whole post.  Remember, this is more than ten years old.  And think about the science.com article linked and all their name calling. 

This is not a one-off, a "black swan" event.  The scientific establishment has been doing this for a long, long time.  In Soviet Science, I wrote about how the head of CERN prohibited employees there from commenting on Svenmark's experiment (likely because it casts doubt on Global Warming theories).  In it, I point out the breakdown in the scientific method on display:

At this point, I must confess that I'm an old faht, getting my science education back in the 1970s, from teachers and professors who got theirs in the 1940s.  I was taught that the Scientific Method went something like this:

1. Observe something happening.
2. Formulate a testable hypothesis about what might be causing it.  
3. If your hypothesis isn't falsifiable (i.e. cannot be shown to be wrong), go back to 2.
4. Formulate a Null Hypothesis (likely alternative) for your hypothesis in 3.
5. Construct an experiment to test your hypothesis against the null hypothesis.
6. Perform the experiment, and document the results.
7. Explain which hypothesis was closer to matching the observed reality in 1, and why.

It seems that the head of CERN - one of the biggest scientific research organizations in the world - doesn't want his people to do that last step.  Everything else is OK (for now, at least), but that last one is right out.

You can read more about Svenmark's hypothesis and experiment here.  The scientific establishment seems to hate this theory, as it's so not helpful to the Global Warming position.  Unfortunately for them, it has been experimentally confirmed (see the link) - in great contrast to much of establishment climate science.

So what gives with all of this?  I mean, this is not the public image of cool, rational scientists advancing our understanding of the universe.  I wrote (again) at length about this a long time back in Science and the Cold Civil War.  The post has multiple examples of how the scientific research funding game is played.  The Climategate emails make an appearance here, as does the term "Saganized".  I know that I'm throwing a lot at you, but this is important as a description of the (dare we say it?) pettiness of the scientific establishment.  Physician, heal thyself.

Lastly (I can hear the cheers of relief) is Science as practiced today is very sick.  This seems pertinent as it lets us circle back to the both science.com article and Calder's wonderment at the slowdown of scientific advancement:

Developing new methodologies is harder than inventing new particles in the dozens, which is why they don’t like to hear my conclusions. Any change will reduce the paper output, and they don’t want this. It’s not institutional pressure that creates this resistance, it’s that scientists themselves don’t want to move their butts.

How long can they go on with this, you ask? How long can they keep on spinning theory-tales?

I am afraid there is nothing that can stop them. They review each other’s papers. They review each other’s grant proposals. And they constantly tell each other that what they are doing is good science. Why should they stop? For them, all is going well. They hold conferences, they publish papers, they discuss their great new ideas. From the inside, it looks like business as usual, just that nothing comes out of it.

It also has what may be (but probably isn't) my first link to RetractionWatch.

So is the Big Bang theory right?  Maybe.  But as older brother told me long ago, the Scientific Method isn't replacing a falsehood with a truth, it's replacing a falsehood with a more subtle falsehood.  But the Big Bang theory is not the point here.  Rather, it's Physicists behaving badly:

The Queen Of The World and I loved that show, and a lot of the reason is in that clip.

So the issue is not whether the Big Bang theory is right or wrong, it's why won't the establishment allow actual scientific discussion of so many issues.  There are too many sacred cows (and gravy trains) at risk.

Oh, yeah - this has been going on a long, long time.  And even NASA scientists admit it.

Do you get strange Youtube suggestions?

Tacitus tilts at the algorithmic windmill and seems to be making some headway getting the oddball suggestions turned off. 

Tacitus, a grateful Internet thanks you.

Ron DeSantis and hurricane preparation

While the media try to pin hurricane deaths on Gov. DeSantis, here's what they are not telling you:

Linemen have reportedly restored power for roughly two million customers in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian last week, the governor said on Sunday.

45,000 linemen from all over the country* were pre-positioned before the storm hit.  In 4 days (Friday - Monday) they're restored ~ 80% of all outages.

The media are biased jerks who have changed Mark Twain's old addage.  It used to be "If you don't read the newspaper you're uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you're misinformed."  Now you're uninformed no matter what, but you're only misinformed if you read the paper.

* I saw one in the last day or two from Kansas City.  That's a long way to come to help out, and we appreciate it. 

True

 Stolen from blogbrother Irish.

Max Steiner - Theme from Key Largo

The hurricane hit Florida last week, an old story made new by Mother Nature. The story is so old that there's a great film about it - the 1948 movie Key Largo staring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Claire Trevor.  The great Max Steiner wrote the score which delivers (ignore the picture in the video which is from a different Humphrey Bogart/Max Steiner film):

Claire Trevor won the Oscar for best supporting actress, playing a washed up, alcoholic bar singer.  She wants a drink and the villain makes her sing a song before she gets one.  The song is about a cruel boyfriend, and Edward G. Robinson plays that part to perfection.  Trevor realizes as the song goes on that she's in the same position as the girl in the song.  Her despairing performance is what is said to have won her the Academy Award that year.

More impressive is that Trevor repeatedly asked the director (John Huston) to rehearse the scene.  He repeatedly put her off because "there's plenty of time".  Then one day he told everybody to shoot the scene.  Trevor sang the song both unrehearsed and a Capella which is unbelievably impressive and way more than Huston deserved.  Here's her one take wonder:

I'm back (mostly) - plus an important message

First, the message:  Napoleon famously said that an army marches on its stomach, and Big Country is trying to provision his army of attorneys to save his grand daughter from a completely messed up home situation.  I expect that you've already heard about this (I expect that 95% of our readers also follow him), but any spare change you can toss his way would be very much appreciated.   You can donate here.

Plus he's made an appearance in Chris Muir's Day By Day cartoon.  Pretty darn cool.

Now for a quick update.  It's been nothing but asses and elbows for a week, first getting ready for the storm and then cleaning up after.  Long days, and it's shown me that I'm not in very good shape physically.  Need to start working out.

The Queen Of The World is hurting pretty bad - back, hip, and knees have been an issue for a while now, and all the lifting and carrying has not helped.  Today is a day off, by executive order.  I'll post more tomorrow, but we're both pretty wiped out now.

I heard from Borepatch

 Borepatch, the QOTW, and Wolfgang are all okay.

Borepatch will give a full report when they are reconnected with the modern world. Neither he or I know when that might be. I heard from him by text message tonight. I don't have much any other information, but I know the regulars were waiting for some report so there ya go.

As ready as we will ever be

Generator works - some spray brake cleaner through the carburetor did the trick.  Thanks to everyone who left a comment - useful info.

We have lots of water and food, batteries, and everything.  All in all we're bedded in tighter than a tick on a dog.

But this looks like a big one, and the eye of a CAT 4 hurricane will pass within 20 miles.  Weather Underground says it should pass late today.  Good luck to the Florida bloggers.

And Wolfgang doesn't want to go out to do his business when the wind is blowing the rain horizontally.  I expect he'll reconsider once his eyes start to cross.

@#$%! Generator

Damn generator won't start.  It will almost start - start to turn over, but then shuts off.  Here's the situation:

• Last time I ran it was when I got it, four years ago.  It's been in storage ever since.
• I drained the gas tank and ran it until it quit before storing it, so it is unlikely that it's a bad gas issue.
• I checked the oil.  Unsurprisingly, it looks pristine.
• I filled the gas tank with ethanol-free gas.

Anyone have any thoughts?  I didn't take the carburetor out to check it because that's kind of a pain.

Prediction is hard, especially about the future

And especially if you're trying to predict a hurricane's track.

Divemedic has a great series of posts up about hurricane preparedness (this post will lead you to the others).  He sounds ready.

The Queen Of The World and I are ready, too, although I'll get another 5 gallons of gas for the generator tomorrow.  We have some things that Divemedic didn't include on his list.  For example, a Homer Bucket (5 gallon orange bucket from Home Depot) with a toilet seat and some cat litter makes a makeshift toilet.  Hope we don't need that one, but it's not a bad idea - although Divemedic's idea of filling the bath tub for toilet flush water will be plan #1 ...

But he also points out that predicting the track of a hurricane is not the most accurate science.  We're keeping our eyes on the forecast, and it's changing multiple times a day:

• At 11:00, Weather Underground said maximum wind speed on Wednesday for our location would be 80 mph (exciting!)
• At 2:00, Weather Underground said maximum wind speed on Wednesday for our location would be 45 mph (not so exciting)
• Now (6:00), Weather Underground said maximum wind speed on Wednesday for our location would be 25 mph (not exciting at all)

I don't mind if the storm track moves away from us, but there's no reason it can't move back again.  We both are pretty confident that we can ride this out if it does, and the running around earlier was time well spent.

But Divemedic's post is today's must-read if you're anywhere near the southeast.

Is Tesla's autopilot mode killing motorcyclists?

I don't know, But I Just Want 2 Ride sums up what's going on.  If you're a two-wheels-down sort of reader, you should go check it out.

In other news, I Just Want 2 Ride is still posting.  I think the first time I linked there is seven years ago which is pretty long for the blogsosphere.

 

Dad Joke CCXXXIII

 I had a wonderful childhood.

My friends and I used to stick each other in old tires and roll down the big hill.

Those were Goodyears.

LOL [snort]

 Man, that's funny.  Any yes, I am a nerd.  Why do you ask?

Shamelessly stolen from Jennifer who has a bunch of them.  This one may not even be the funniest.

Dad Joke CCXXXII

How do billboards communicate?

Sign language.

The jail is full of animals!

And if you go to Key West, you can visit them at the Monroe County Sheriff's Office Children's Animal Farm.  It's located at the county jail, and got started more or less by accident:

The farm was started in 1994 in an open area underneath the jail facility. The Stock Island Detention Center was built to withstand a Category Five Hurricane, and is built on stilts, about 11 feet above the ground. Underneath the building is employee parking, and a secure fenced area used for the evacuation of inmates in the case of a fire. It was in this evacuation area, initially a graveled area not used for anything else, that the farm was started.

The farm began as a haven for homeless animals. The first inhabitants were Muscovy ducks and a group of chickens which were plaguing a nearby golf course and were being killed on a regular basis by vehicles traveling on the road leading to the jail. A short time after the chickens and ducks were brought to the area, the SPCA in Miami called and asked if the facility would have space for a blind horse they had found abandoned in their area. Using inmate labor, a pen was created for the horse, who was christened Angel, and the animal farm was born. Since, it has blossomed into a beautiful park, complete with an large aviary, reptile exhibit, rabbit warren, farm animals and other domestic and exotic animal species.

The inmates work the farm, taking care of the animals, under the supervision of one of the Deputies.  I must say that The Queen Of The World and I heartily approve of this.  It rescues animals, and it has got to be good for the inmates.

Note that they have an Amazon wish list for the animals, if you want to send something.  TQOTW sent some baby food to Kinx the Kinkajou (a rain forest species).

Bravo to the Monroe County Sheriff for a very creative effort.  We intend to visit the next time we're in Key West.

Dad Joke CCXXXI

What kind of dog likes bubble baths?

A shampoodle. 

Duke Ellington - "Mood Indigo" from the film "Paris Blues"

Actually, it's more correct to call this "Academy Award nominated Duke Ellington" since he was nominated for the 1961 Best Original Score Oscar.  He (and fellow nominee Dmitri Shostakovitch) lost to the West Side Story steamroller (10 awards that year).  But "Paris Blues" is an interesting flick - stars include Sidney Poitier and Diane Carroll matched against Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and Louis Armstrong made an appearance as well.

It's not the typical Sunday Classical fare but it's pretty terrific.

Joe Bonamassa & Eric Clapton - Further On Up the Road

It's been ages since I put up some blues here.  So here's Joe B. and Clapton.

You're welcome.

Dad Joke CCXXX

Did you hear about the explosion in the French cheese factory?  There was nothing left but de Brie. 

Quote Of The Day, medical system edition

Dr. Samizdat has changed his practice, for quite good reasons:

There is no doubt that hospitals are, in this day and time, among the most dangerous places to find oneself surrounded by. The thing I love about what I do now, compared to years past, is that 99% of what I do is considered to be outpatient. I stepped back from a component of my practice that was complex, high-risk, and in my estimation after two decades of experience, had limited impact upon survival relative to what I do now. One of the reasons I altered my focus is that while the hospitals were more than happy to have that complex, high-risk practice under their rooves, they weren't willing to spend the money to provide adequate ancillary support to maintain satisfactory, SAFE postoperative care. These were faith-based institutions, mind you.

You really should go read his post.  The health care system in this country will not survive under these conditions.

So Ken Starr is dead

It must be said ...

You're welcome.

Spitfire or Hurricane

The iconic fighter plane from World War II for England was the Spitfire.  But the Brits won the Battle of Britain with a Spitfire-Hurricane team.  So which was more effective? 

It seems that the answer is the Hurricane.  Consider:

• 55% of German planes were shot down by Hurricanes.
• The Spitfire cost £9,500; the Hurricane cost £4,000.

From a cost per kill perspective, the Hurricane seems to be almost three times as effective as the Spitfire.

Twenty-One Years

Christine Lee Hansen was 2 1/2. She was going to Disney with her parents when their plane, United Airlines Flight 175, was hijacked by Muslim extremists and flown into the Trade Center in New York City. She was the youngest person to die on 9/11. Her father was holding her on his lap as the impact occurred. We know this because he was on the phone with his dad as it happened.

 

It was twenty-one years ago today.

UPDATE 11 SEPTEMBER 2022 14:06 [Borepatch]:  (This is Borepatch now)  ASM826 has posted about Miss Hansen for as long as I can remember, first on his blog and now here.  It's a fitting tribute.  I'm butting in with a song that I think captures the mood.

Rest in peace and rise in Glory, Christine.

Dad Joke CCXXVIIII

Which is smarter, Longitude or Latitude?

Longitude, beause it has 360 degrees. 

Rest In Peace, Elizabeth II Regina

Dead at 95, the second longest reigning monarch in modern history (behind Louis XIV).  She now rejoins her beloved Prince Philip who no doubt has a gleam in his eye and a prank readied for the reunion.

Her type will not be seen again - wiser and tougher than younger heads of state.  Remember, she learned to shoot at 14 by using Winston Churchill's tommy gun.

May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

Um, farming is hard work

Peter writes about how a bunch of folks underestimate just how hard subsistence farming really is.  "Green Acres" is funny because Oliver Wendell Douglas doesn't have the faintest idea how to farm, but it's just a TV show.  Reality is different.

Just how different is shown nicely by a very interesting young lady from China.  Li Ziqi has a farm where she grows pretty much everything she eats.  The Queen Of The World found her Youtube channel and I find it to be very relaxing to watch - the music is soothing and the videography is simply spectacular.  There's a reason that her videos have been viewed almost 3 billion times.

But if you watch you will see just how hard she works.  Her life looks rewarding, but she works increibly hard for it.  Folks thinking that they'll set up a couple acre farm for the End Times should really watch a few of her videos just to get a sense of what they are getting in for.

As I said, The Queen Of The World and I are big fans of Miss Li, but we're both a little old to start that sort of lifestyle.

That's some mighty fine bull roping, pardner

A bull jumped the fence into the stands at the Florida State Fair but one of the cowboys roped him.  Pretty cool.

You probably shouldn't call him "Tex".  "Florida Man" is out.  But nicely done.

Hat tip: The Queen Of The World.

Dad Joke CCXXVIII

 I have a new mission in life. I want to let everyone know the benefits of eating dried grapes.

It's called raisin awareness.

Tesla Support Vehicle

 When your Tesla needs support, they send a Ford.

Johnny Cash - Don't Take Your Guns To Town

So Dark Brandon gave a speech:

People are scratching their heads as to what motivated what is without doubt the most divisive Presidential speech of my lifetime.  One suspicion is that he is trying to incite some of the 75 million Trump voters to start shooting.  Likely the FBI is working overtime to entrap some "ultra MAGA semi-fascists" like like they ginned up the plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan.

Remember, kids - they guy who says it's time to start shooting Federales is the Fed.  So don't take your guns to town.

Don't Take Your Guns To Town (Songwriter: Johnny Cash)

A young MAGA named Billy Joe
Grew restless waitin' to vote
A good patriotic boy 
Didn't like being made a goat
He changed his clothes and shined his boots
And combed his dark hair down

And his mother cried as he walked out
"Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town"

He laughed and kissed his mom
And said, "Your Billy Joe's a man
And I can shoot as quick and straight
As anybody can
But I wouldn't shoot without a cause
I'd gun nobody down"

But she cried again as he rode away
"Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town"

He sang a song as he rode along
His guns hung at his hips
He rode into Joe Biden's town
A smile upon his lips
He stopped and walked into a bar
And laid his money down

But his mother's words echoed again
"Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town"

He drank his first strong liquor then
To calm his shakin' hand
He tried to tell himself at last
Democrats won't push him around
A dusty FBI  at his side
Began to laugh him down

And he heard again his mother's words
"Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town"

And in his rage
Billy Joe reached for his gun to draw
But the Fed drew his gun and fired
Before he even saw
As Billy Joe fell to the floor
The crowd all gathered 'round

And they wondered at his final words
"Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town"

A hundred and twenty years have passed
And nothin's really changed
A young man on the city streets
He has to make his name
He's still too young to know
A gun can't make a boy a man

And his mama cries as he walks out
"Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town"

The lyrics have been updated a bit for the new Age of Brandon.

Quote of the day - Government mandated electric cars edition

Johnathan Pearce hits the nail on the head:

In my view, the idea of making people rely on electric vehicles (EVs) and then curbing how much power they have, is a design feature, not a bug. Those of a Big Government cast of mind (most politicians) might rather like the idea of fitting “kill switches” into EVs so that a bureaucrat can disable them. By making cars costly and annoying, it also forces people to use public transport.

To dismiss the California ban on internal combustion cars as mere incompetence misses the depth of the fascist evil on display.  They want to own everybody in California, and make them submit to their will.  They simply hate freedom, and that's what cars mean.  It's what California used to mean.

A picture from Wolfgang's summer camp

He had a blast.

 

Google is weird

So yesterday my Google pageviews dropped 80%, from over 4000 two days ago to 1000 when I went to bed last night.  Today Google tells me that yesterday saw over 3000 views.

Never change, Google.