Nikki Haley was right

The Civil War was not fought over slavery.  This is trivial to demonstrate.

Consider the Corwin Amendment:

The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that has never been adopted, but owing to the absence of a ratification deadline, could still be adopted by the state legislatures. It would shield slavery within the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment does not explicitly use the word slavery, it was designed specifically to protect slavery from federal power. The outgoing 36th United States Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, with the intent of preventing that war and preserving the Union. It passed Congress but was not ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.

Yeah, yeah - Wikipedia.  But the article plays it straight up.

So if the war was about slavery, why did both houses of Congress pass this amendment, and why did the President sign the bill, sending it to the States for ratification?  And oh by the way, Congress passed this without the Representatives from the seceding States.

And Abraham Lincoln - the "Great Emancipator" himself did not oppose the Amendment.

So the War was all about slavery, but Congress was playing 6-dimension chess or something, right?

[rolls eyes]

I'm no fan of Haley, but she is also right that the question was a liberal plant.  Her response might have been bad politics in 2023, but she is 100% correct on the facts.

But while facts are stubborn things, so is the ignorance and arrogance of the media (including the ostensibly conservative media). Remember, the history of that war as taught today is retarded.

Save the planet by violating Indian treaties

I mean, why not?  There's a long American tradition of ignoring treaties with the tribes.  But this time it's playing out differently: Federal Judge sides with Osage Nation, Orders removal of 84 Wind Turbines:

The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.

...

The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Graves is the culmination of 12 years of litigation that pitted the tribe and federal authorities against Enel. During the construction of the project, the company illegally mined rock owned by the tribe, and it continued to do so even after being ordered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to stop. Instead of halting work, the company sped up construction. Enel must now remove the 84 turbines that it built on 8,400 acres of the Tallgrass Prairie located between Pawhuska and Fairfax. Removing the turbines will cost Enel some $300 million.

As you might expect, the Oklahoma State courts were corrupt - with the Chief Justice of the OK Supremes benefiting from the project.  But the Federales were different, and ruled for the indians.  It looks like there's very little chance of an appeal, as the US Supremes ruled on a very similar case in the not so distant past.

And this bit is spot on:

By thrashing Enel in court, the Osage tribe not only stands to collect millions of dollars in damages and the removal of the loathsome turbines, it also has handed Big Wind the biggest public relations debacle in its history. It’s not just that the wind industry lost; it lost to a Native American tribe. That’s a particularly bad look when it comes to the branding of wind energy as “clean,” “green,” “sustainable,” and, of course, “renewable.”  

Chalk one up for the good guys.

Surgery today

The Queen Of The World is having a cataract removed.  Unfortunately, then she'll have a clear view of me.

Getting old is not for sissies.

Merry Christmas

God bless us, every one. 

J. S. Bach - Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring

It's Christmas Eve, which calls for the best of traditional Christmas music.  You don't get much more traditional than this.

José Feliciano - Feliz Navidad

Michael Buble's version is great, but nothing beats the original.

Michael Bublé - Blue Christmas

The stockings are now up, but there are only two.  Wolfgang had a stocking with two feet (he had twice as many feet as we do, right?).  He sure loved Christmas, knowing he was going to get Puppy Loot.

Now we just have memories.  I sure miss you, buddy.

Here's a picture of his stocking last year:

 

Joe Bonamassa - Christmas Boogie

It's been almost a month since I posted any Blues.  Fixing that now.

Big Pharmacy chains turn over medical into to police without warants

Hey, you can trust the Government, right?

All of the big pharmacy chains in the US hand over sensitive medical records to law enforcement without a warrant—and some will do so without even running the requests by a legal professional, according to a congressional investigation.

...

They include the seven largest pharmacy chains in the country: CVS Health, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Cigna, Optum Rx, Walmart Stores, Inc., The Kroger Company, and Rite Aid Corporation. The lawmakers also spoke with Amazon Pharmacy.

All eight of the pharmacies said they do not require law enforcement to have a warrant prior to sharing private and sensitive medical records, which can include the prescription drugs a person used or uses and their medical conditions. Instead, all the pharmacies hand over such information with nothing more than a subpoena, which can be issued by government agencies and does not require review or approval by a judge.

This sure seems like a violation of HIPAA, not to mention that pesky Fourth Amendment.

(via)

Dad Joke CCCIIII

Good Lord, it's been a month since the last Dad Joke.

Where was the Declaration Of Independence signed?  At the bottom.

When the White Hats are actually Black Hats

Not cool, dude:

An Atlanta tech company's former COO has pleaded guilty to a 2018 incident in which he deliberately launched online attacks on two hospitals, later citing the incidents in sales pitches.

Under a plea deal he signed last week, Vikas Singla, a former business leader at network security vendor Securolytics – a provider to healthcare institutions, among others – admitted that in September 2018 he rendered the Ascom phone system of Gwinnett Medical Center inoperable.

...

After all of the events had transpired, Securolytics began emailing potential clients regarding new business opportunities, citing the publicized attacks.

 Quis custodiet ipsoes custodes, indeed.

 

Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops Orchestra, Pops Christmas Party 1959

The mid-20th Century was the high point of the much appreciated and much lamented in its passing "Mid-Brow"* culture: a set of societal expectations that a properly educated man or woman should know certain (respectable) things and behave in certain (respectable) ways.  One of these things that people were expected to know was classical music.  There were two great popularizers of mid-brow music: Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Fiedler.

Bernstein was a musical genius, who wrote fabulous music.  "West Side Story" is perhaps most famous, but "Candide" is perhaps his greatest composition.  Of course he was a dirty commie bastard, but there's no denying his influence on the Mid-Brow public.

Arthur Fiedler was the long time conductor of the Boston Symphony and (more famously) the Boston Pops which became perhaps the most famous Mid-Brow orchestra ever.  Fiedler joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1915 (!) and graduated to cunductor in 1930.  He remained conductor of the Symphony and the Pops for the next half century.

His career was the apogee of Mid-Brow culture in America.  All 3 networks plus PBS covered the July 4, 1976 Pops concert from Boston live.  All of them.  After all, people were expected to behave in particular (respectable) ways.

Alas for the America of my youth.  Here's a delightful musical album of the 1959 Boston Pops Christmas.  Sadly, Youtube tells me that this has only 173 views.  Alas for the America of my youth, indeed.

* Not the hoity-toity High Brow set, and certainly not the Low Brow set.  Mid-Brow, the sweet spot.

The terms "Software Engineering" and "Military Intelligence" are strangely related

It is said that Engineering is "Science that works", so we have to relegate "Software Engineering" to the same bucket as "Military Intelligence" and "Jumbo Shrimp".  Exhibit A for the prosecution is this month's Microsoft Patch Tuesday, which fixes a data leakage vulnerability caused by a divide by zero condition:

CVE-2023-20588 is a “division-by-zero” vulnerability affecting specific AMD processors that can “potentially return speculative data resulting in loss of confidentiality.”

Microsoft addressed the vulnerability in its Patch Tuesday update round, as the latest Windows versions enable mitigation and protection.

[blink] [blink]

Oooooh kaaaaay.  Maybe I'm old fashioned but aren't folks taught that divide by zero is no bueno?  Like taught that in Coding 101?

All I can think is, well, bless their little hearts.  Wow.

Nat King Cole - Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire

A classic from the Master.

Tony Bennett - My Favorite Things

Thanks for all the great music, Tony.  Rest in peace.

Mike Rowe, John Rich, and The Oak Ridge Boys - Santa Claus Has A Dirty Job

Proceeds from this song go to Folds Of Honor (scholarships for military and first responder's kids) and the Mike Rowe Works Foundation.  Bravo, gentlemen.

If you don't like this, I'm afraid we can't be friends anymore.

Courts smack down New Mexico Governor's gun ban

Lawrence has a great analysis. Key bit:

By actually applying the Bruen test, and using it to strike down half of the remaining decree, the courts have giving gun owners at east three-fourths of a loaf here.

We're winning.

César Franck - Prélude, Fugue et Variation op. 18

Perhaps the greatest organist of the Romantic Era was César Franck.  Organist for over 30 years at the Parisian church Sainte-Clotilde, he was renowned for his improvisational ability.

He loved the organ in the church, and as his reputation grew the organ manufacturer increasingly asked him to debut new organs purchased by other churches.  He also started impromptu recitals at the church, which later became regular scheduled events attracting notables such as composer Franz Liszt.

As with many great composers, he was a child prodigy, giving his first concert at age 12.  The Paris Conservatory recognized his ability and made him a professor.

He is known today for his symphonies, but I like this organ music which was his passion.  Happy birthday, César Franck!
 

Alan Jackson - Let There Be Christmas

This is a Country song for people who don't like Country Music.  Alan Jackson wrote this, and he's about as Country as anyone - but this is essentially a traditional Christmas song that Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole could have recorded if they had lived to 2002.  No slide guitars or banjos, just traditional sentimentality.

I like this song a lot, but you know how sentimental I am.  And I'm not the only one - not only did this reach #6 on the Country chart, it also reached #27 on Billboard's 200.

Let It Be Christmas (Songwriter: Alan Jackson):

Let it be Christmas everywhere
In the hearts of all people
Both near and afar
Christmas everywhere
Feel the love of the season where ever you are
On the small country roads
Lined with green mistletoe
Big city streets where a thousand lights glow

Let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let every heart sing
Let every bell ring
The story of hope and joy and peace
And let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let anger and fear and hate disappear
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere

Let it be Christmas everywhere
With the gold and the silver, the green and the red
Christmas everywhere
In the smiles of all children asleep in their beds
In the eyes of young babies
Their first fallen snow
The elderly's memories that never grow old
Let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let every heart sing
Let every bell ring
The story of hope and joy and peace
And let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let anger and fear and hate disappear
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere

Let it be Christmas everywhere
In the songs that we sing
And the gifts that we bring
Christmas everywhere
In what this day means
And what we believe
From the sandy white beaches
Where blue water rolls
Snow covered mountains and valleys below

Let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let every heart sing
Let every bell ring
The story of hope and joy and peace
And let it be Christmas everywhere
Let heavenly music fill the air
Let anger and fear and hate disappear
Let there be love that lasts through the year
And let it be Christmas, Christmas everywhere
Christmas everywhere
Christmas everywhere

 

Tommee Profitt - Carol of the Bells

 

Divemedic has lost his mother

I'm so sorry.  Rest in peace and rise in glory.

Anniversary

The Queen Of The World and I have taken another lap around the sun.  She's my brown-eyed girl.

Christmas movie trivia - Scrooged

The Queen Of The World and I watched Scrooged, the 1988 Bill Murray Christmas flick.  It's a quite fun film but it has a fair amount of depth as well - not to mention an all-star cast including Robert Mitchum, John Houseman, and Carol Kane among others.

And the "among others" was the fun part of watching.  You see, the ghostly taxi driver (Ghost of Christmas Past) is played by David Johansen, a.k.a. Buster Poyndexter.  Yeah, that Buster Poindexter:

Notice the cameo by Bill Murray in this video?  The video was made in 1987; Scrooged was filmed in 1988.

Astonishingly, The Queen Of The World had never watched this video before.  Her reaction?  Buster Poyndexter is a really good actor, both in film and in the video.  About right, there.

Scrooged gets two thumbs way, way up.

Irving Berlin - Sisters from White Christmas

This scene was ad lib, with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye reprising the song from Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen.  It started as Bing goofing around and everyone thought it was funny so they filmed it.  They filmed it several times because people were laughing so much that it was hard to get a clean take.  The laughter you see here is genuine.

The Queen Of The World and I was watching this, and she found this at 35 surprising "White Christmas" facts.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - Peanuts Christmas Special

 

Lightnin' Hopkins - Santa

He considered this one of his greatest hits.

DoD Education Chief of Staff arrested for human trafficing

Well this isn't good:

The chief of staff for Department of Defense Education Activity schools in the U.S. was arrested last week during a two-day human trafficking operation in Coweta County, Georgia, according to local authorities.

Stephen Hovanic, 64, of Sharpsburg, Georgia, was arrested Nov. 15 in a sting that netted 25 additional suspects on charges related to prostitution as well as drugs, weapons and warrants, according to the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office and its Police to Citizen Portal website.

Ugh.

The highest recorded mileage on an automobile

Irv Gordon bought a new Volvo P1800 in 1966 and drove it 3.2 million miles. The car could have gone farther, but Irv died in 2018, so that was it for the mileage streak.

He said he just did regular maintenance on it.  Wow.

About that iPhone security "flaw"

There's a lot of discussion about the security of Apple's iPhone NameDrop feature. Police departments are recommending turning this off.  It's gone viral, and given Apple a bit of a security/privacy black eye.

It's also overblown.  Key things to know:

1. If your phone is locked (say, at the gym) it will not share contact info via NameDrop.

2. NameDrop only works when the phones are unlocked and the phones are physically in contact with each other.  Just being "close" isn't good enough.  Nobody is going to swipe your data by walking past you.

3. Your phone will ask you if you want to share data.  It won't share automatically.

There's more detail on this here.  Here's how you turn NameDrop off if you want to:

Open Settings, then select General.  Select AirDrop and disable "Bringing Devices Together" and "Use Cellular Data".  You're good to go.

That said, you can share contact info via text message with anyone you want to, so this feature seems pretty useless to me.  I have disabled it on my phone, and I strongly recommend you disable it on any child's phone (or iWatch).

The Piano Guys - I saw Three Ships

This was filmed in a neighborhood where two adjacent houses do annual musical light shows at Christmas.  They agreed to be part of this video which is nothing short of wonderful.

Richard Dawkins is a midwit

Aesop brings the Hammer Of Truth down on the good professor:

One cannot have "only a quarter of an eye, only a hundredth of an eye, or half an eye, is better than nothing " (3:50ff).

Basic physiology disagrees:

It doesn't work like that.

 

In the trade, there's a technical term for what you are when you have a half, a quarter, or a hundredth of an eye (and by this we mean not just the eyeball itself, but the entire cascade of processes enabling vision): BLIND.

There's a lot more in the post, and even more in the comments.  But what I find most interesting is the fact that Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and so he knows this. Aesop has a simple answer to why Dawkins still tells this sort of lie  (he's a lying liar).  Well, sure.

But that's not particularly interesting.  Why does he lie?  Moldbug explained this 15 years ago:

Nonetheless, it’s my sad duty to inform the world that Professor Dawkins has been pwned. Perhaps you’re over 30 and you’re unfamiliar with this curious new word. As La Wik puts it:

The word “pwn” remains in use as Internet social-culture slang meaning: to take unauthorized control of someone else or something belonging to someone else by exploiting a vulnerability.

(At least here at Unqualified Reservations, pwned alliterates with posse and rhymes with loaned.) How could such a learned and wise mind exhibit such an exploitable vulnerability? And who—or what—has taken unauthorized control over Professor Dawkins? The aliens? The CIA? The Jews? The mind boggles.

Ah, those crazy kids and their barbaric slang like pwned.  Good Lord, do I really have over 400 posts with that tag?  Ahem.  

Continuing with Dawkins' failure to adequately explain the difference between Science and Religion:

My belief is that Professor Dawkins is not just a Christian atheist. He is a Protestant atheist. And he is not just a Protestant atheist. He is a Calvinist atheist. And he is not just a Calvinist atheist. He is an Anglo-Calvinist atheist. In other words, he can be also be described as a Puritan atheist, a Dissenter atheist, a Nonconformist atheist, an Evangelical atheist, etc., etc.

This cladistic taxonomy traces Professor Dawkins’ intellectual ancestry back about 400 years, to the era of the English Civil War. Except of course for the atheism theme, Professor Dawkins’ kernel is a remarkable match for the Ranter, Leveller, Digger, Quaker, Fifth Monarchist, or any of the more extreme English Dissenter traditions that flourished during the Cromwellian interregnum.

Frankly, these dudes were freaks. Maniacal fanatics. Any mainstream English thinker of the 17th, 18th or 19th century, informed that this tradition (or its modern descendant) is now the planet’s dominant Christian denomination, would regard this as a sign of imminent apocalypse. If you’re sure they’re wrong, you’re more sure than me.

Now I must warn you, Moldbug is pretty thick going.  Fosetti has a very accessible overview that will give you 95% of Moldbug's arguments.

One other interesting comment at Aesop's place concerned science as a process.  As I've pointed out repeatedly over the last few years, science as practiced today is very, very sick, and the reason is The Iron Law of Bureaucracy in action:

I can't seem to find and data about the number of scientists working today, vs. the number a century ago.  I can't even find decent proxy data for this - say the number of scientific articles published in 2010 vs. the number published in 1910.  But we can all agree that there has been a vast increase in the number of working scientists and the number of published articles (which may be up to 50 Million by now).

And yet we are not seeing any obvious acceleration in the pace of scientific discovery.  Nigel Calder again:

While the modern advances are all impressive, are they really more impressive than those from a century ago?  Especially when you adjust for the army of scientists at work today - perhaps a thousand times as many as at the dawn of the 20th Century - the question becomes why has science slowed down?

The post about how sick science as practiced today is gives the reason:

Nothing is moving in the foundations of physics. One experiment after theother is returning null results: No new particles, no new dimensions, no new symmetries. Sure, there are some anomalies in the data here and there, and maybe one of them will turn out to be real news. But experimentalists are just poking in the dark. They have no clue where new physics may be to find. And their colleagues in theory development are of no help.

...

This is a long and detailed discussion which is hard to excerpt.  This bit seems very important as to the institutional rot:

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.

This is not a problem that will go away by itself.

The people who run the institutions of Science don't see that there's a problem.  I mean, hey - there's a ton of grant funding coming in and nobody can be allowed to rock that boat, amirite?  And so it's all gatekeeping and name calling.

The result? Scientific Progress has essentially ground to a halt.

Note that this doesn't apply to Engineering, which we can call "science that works".  SpaceX is Exhibit 1 for the Prosecution here.  But Science as currently practiced is a game for fools and liars. And Richard Dawkins, but I repeat myself.

Retractionwatch is Exhibit 2 for the Prosecution.  A few minutes thought will produce another dozen Exhibits.

And yes, I was an Engineer not a Scientist by training back at State U.  Because of that, I haven't been (intellectually) pwned, like Dawkins has.  But good gravy, it's getting to where the term "scientist" is almost as pejorative as the term "intellectual".  The last word goes to Aesop, who explains why:

I doubt, with Dawkins being so invested, intellectually and morally, in the lifelong lie, he'd ever be intellectually honest enough to admit that he, just like Darwin, had a grudge against the idea of the divine or supernatural, and both had therefore sunk their spurs into the idea that there is no god, because it makes the rest of their pathetic existence tolerable and comfortable, not to mention lucrative.

He's entitled to go to hell in whatever way he sees fit to do so; that's free will in action.

But to make it his life's work to try and bamboozle others by deliberately ignoring the utter lack of any scientific underpinning for his delusions, and furthermore the evidence to the exact contrary, and outright lying about both in support of his line of twaddle, is quite inarguably and inexcusably monstrous and damnable.

Radio Security news

Not to steal any thunder from The Silicon Graybeard, but this is pretty interesting:

A set of encryption algorithms used to secure emergency radio communications will enter the public domain after an about-face by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

The algorithms are used by TETRA – short for the Terrestrial Trunked Radio protocol – and they are operated by governments, law enforcement, military and emergency services organizations in Europe, the UK, and other countries.

In mid-2023, Netherlands-based security firm Midnight Blue disclosed five vulnerabilities affecting all TETRA radio networks that could allow criminals to decrypt and intercept communications in real time.

The saying is that "Open Source makes bugs shallow" - more eyes on the code finds bugs faster, but we shall see.  Linked to this is how easy it will be to update vulnerable radios - my guess is not very.  We will also see if radios will need to support dual encryption schemes - one that is more secure for communicating with updated devices, and the old version for backwards compatibility.

As another old saying goes, the only reason that The Lord created the entire heaves and Earth in only six days was because he had no installed base to support.

Pentatonix - Where are you, Christmas?

The kids are all right. Yes. they're young (hey, they're kids, right?). Yes, they have weird hair - just like you (and I) did when you were their age. It's designed to annoy their elders, just like you (and I) did when you were 18. But these kids have some serious musical chops. 

There's a lot of discipline that goes into A Capella and they do it very well indeed.

John Williams - Somewhere In My Memory (from Home Alone)

I often say that classical music is alive and well, it's just decamped from the symphony hall to the movie theater. Today's composition from the soundtrack to the 1990 film Home Alone was nominated not only for The Best Original Song Oscar, but also for a Grammy. John Williams needs no introduction - for those of you who have never heard his music, go watch Star Wars for cryin' out loud. 

Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma - The Wexford Carol

Alison Krauss is a national treasure.  So is Yo-Yo Ma.  This song is magical.

The first Christmas Carol

St. Ambrose is often described as one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church*, influential theologians who established the foundations of the church in the fourth century.  Unlike his compatriot Doctors, Ambrose was a most unusual saint.  He was the Roman governor of the province around Milan when he (kind of accidentally) became bishop of Milan.  He was quite popular as Governor and when the crowd was beginning to get rowdy debating who would become the next bishop, someone called out his name as a suggestion.  Suddenly it was a done deal

Except there was this little problem: not only was Ambrose not a priest, he wasn't even baptized as a Christian.  The crowd wasn't about to let minor issues like that stand between them and their new bishop.  So Governor Aurelius Ambrosius became Bishop Ambrose.

He was a force to be reckoned with, even excommunicating Emperor Theodosius the Great (I think that this was the first time this had ever happened).

He also composed the first Christmas Carol, Veni Redemptor Genitum (Come, Redeemer of the Nations).  It is still performed today, 1650 years later.

 

Latin:

Veni, redemptor gentium;
ostende partum Virginis;
miretur omne saeculum:
talis decet partus Deum. 

English translation:
Come, Redeemer of the nations;
show forth the Virgin birth;
let every age marvel:
such a birth befits God.

Now the Christmas season is upon us.  It seemed right to start our annual christmas music posts with the very first Christmas carol.

* The others are St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the Great.  It was sort of a Murderer's Row lineup of the early Church batting order.