Sunday's Stock Car Race

Dale Earnhardt Jr said that Sunday’s race at Charlotte, NC was a “good race” which he enjoyed watching.

I would like to know what his definition is of “bad racing.” There were 28 caution flags during the race, on average one every 14 laps, and 17 of 38 drivers (45%) failed to finish due to crashes.

Not sure how anyone could describe that as a “good race.”

Failure to Think

 Is building homes for the homeless really a solution?

You have a family member who is running a fever, with a temperature of 105 degrees. You take him to a doctor who says he will solve the problem by putting the person in a bathtub filled with ice water.

If you have any capacity for critical thinking, you know that the fever is not the problem. The fever is the result of an underlying illness, and you expect the doctor to discover that underlying illness and to treat it.

So why do we settle for politicians “solving the homeless problem” by simply building homes for the homeless?

When a politician sees a person living in squalor on the street, he tells us that we can take care of that person by saying that the person’s problem is that he/she is “homeless” and giving that person a free home.

But being homeless is not that person’s problem any more than the 105 degree temperature was your family member’s problem. Being homeless is the result of a problem that the person had before they became homeless. That problem might be any one of or a combination of many things; alcohol or drug addiction, mental health issues, family problems, employment problems and more.

To actually help that person it is necessary to look at her/him not as a member of a class (“homeless”), but to look at him/her as an individual and determine why that person lost their home to begin with, and to help them with that problem.

But that is hard to do, and politicians don’t do hard things.

On "Rushing In"

I have an explanation, I suspect, for the cops in Uvalde who loitered outside the school. They were pretty sure that it would be necessary to shoot and kill the shooter inside, and that the shooter was a person of color. 

They also knew that if you take down a criminal who is a person of color, you will be put on trial for murder and will spend the rest of your life in prison.

On Banning Guns

A person becomes enraged and drives his car into a crowd of people, killing many. Not hypothetical. It has happened more than once. How many times has it resulted in calls to ban automobiles?

Clarity of Thought

According the the latest Rasmussen poll, 44% of the American public approves of the job Biden is doing, while only 26% think America is heading in the right direction.

 How many people inhabit both the "performance approval" and "wrong direction" groups is not readily apparent from the poll, but clearly, even if 100% of the "right direction" group are Biden supporters, 41% (18% of the 44%) of Biden supporters approve of the manner in which he is leading this nation in the wrong direction.

Moon Soil?

"In a NASA-funded study, scientists at the University of Florida grew plants in soil collected from the moon, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology." 

 I'm not sure why they're so excited about this. The best tomatoes I ever ate were grown at the University of Arizona Agricultural Extension using no soil at all.

Photographic Evidence, Not

I have found it interesting that so many news items lately, especially with respect to the “Special Military Action” in Ukraine, but not limited to that subject, are accompanied by photographs which actually seem to prove the content of the article to be inaccurate.

For instance, one article went on at great length about Russia digging trenches with bulldozers and committing mass burials of bodies in Ukraine. It was accompanied by an aerial photograph of a field filled with what are obviously neatly dug individual graves in precise rows, so clearly visible that the viewer can see that one row and part of another are still open and waiting to be used.

Another article was reporting the tale of a Ukrainian soldier who had observed the destruction by artillery of a Russian column attempting to cross a river which he said would require “about ten pontoon segments” to bridge. He went on to report that the artillery began when eight segments had been placed and that dozens of tanks were destroyed and about 3000 Russian soldiers were killed.

That article, too, was accompanied by an aerial photograph, showing four tanks, a river and some pontoons. One pontoon spanned halfway across the river so it would take two, or at most three, of them to facilitate the river crossing, and in any case only two pontoons were shown in the photo.

I really don’t get the media’s process of, “I’m going to show you a picture that illustrates the falsity of the story I just told.” Weird.

Government Speak

San Diego Gas & Electric paid $100 million for a franchise to deliver power to the city of San Diego just one year ago. It was the second such payment, agreed upon after the first franchise expired. There was only one bidder; which is quite understandable, since SDG&E already had the infrastructure in place and any other bidder would have to purchase that infrastructure from SDG&E if they were to assume the franchise.

The city then formed what it calls a "consumer cooperative," in which the city  purchases power from other producers and delivers it to SDG&E customers over SDG&E power lines, passing a law that forced SDG&E to accept the proposition and set the transmission rates that SDG&E could charge. They also made it automatic that all consumers in the city are automatically enrolled in the "cooperative."

 

Calling something that is owned and operated by the city government rather than by the membership who are consuming the product a "cooperative" is pretty weird. It's actually a form of socialism, but of course the city government didn't want to go down that rabbit hole.

This action, of course, made the franchise worth far less than SDG&E paid for it, but the city government considered that a feature, not a bug. Any time a government can screw a business, it will leap at the opportunity.

So the local newspaper carried a headline on May first, when the "cooperative" went into effect and the franchise was officially breached, "SDG&E Monopoly Ends Today." Monopoly, forsooth.

Waiting

There has been quite a lot in the news lately about a mysterious outbreak of unexplained hepatitis in young people. Unexplained as in not caused by the usual viruses and causes.

Most people think that hepatitis is a specific disease, but it’s not. It is merely a “disorder,” meaning that there is something wrong in the liver. It can be caused by a number of things, most of which have been identified.

This latest outbreak has not been, and current thinking is an adenovirus. Not very likely, actually, since the virus in question has been around for a very long time, is extremely common, and has never caused hepatitis before. Why would it do so now?

I have been waiting for someone to connect this liver ailment to an article regarding the Pfizer Covid vaccine, describing an issue which almost certainly applies to all mRNA Covid vaccines.  The article is very technical and a bit difficult to read, but it says a couple of things that are of concern.

One is that the mRNA in the vaccine does transcribe into DNA in human cells, which it was not supposed to do, and the other is that the liver is one of the primary places that it does that. In other words, the mRNA vaccine is, in fact, engaging in genetic engineering in the people who receive the vaccine, the vaccine is actually "gene therapy," and specifically the DNA change is happening in the liver.

Is that connected to the hepatitis outbreak? I have no idea, as the subject is way over my head, but why is no one asking that question?

Define "democracy"

We charmingly claim that the United States, and the local governments within it, are democratic because we elect representatives who govern in accordance with the principles and wishes of the citizenry which elected them to office.

Case in point, a headline that reads, “San Diego County Supervisors vote 3-2 to redefine ‘woman’.”

Specifically, the council passed an new ordinance which makes it illegal to discriminate against women in the City of San Diego. On the face of it, such an ordinance would seem to be entirely symbolic, since state and federal laws already make it illegal to discriminate based on sex, but the City Council injected a twist.

The new ordinance provides that the protection, “extends to transgender women, gender nonconforming women, youth, and those assigned female at birth, which includes transgender men and intersex communities.” 

"Intersex communities?"  The ordinance includes both transgender women and transgender men, so the City Council apparently believes that you are a woman and are protected as such even if you declare yourself to be a man. I’m not sure I get that, but I am old enough to not quite understand the principles of transgenderism.

To make sure the ordinance is not unclear, it continues to declare that, “the term ‘discrimination against women’ includes any distinction, exclusion, or restriction on the basis of gender and sex assigned at birth.” Assigned by whom?

So far, that is all just a case of Democratic Party liberalism, no big deal, and the ordinance passed with three Democrats voting for it and two non-Democrats voting against.

There was, however, a time for public discussion prior to the vote, and 437 members of the public spoke against the measure, while only 40 spoke in favor of it. One person said that, “[I]t is an honor to be women, and the idea that men can simply identify as one, is degrading to all women.”

So with the public speaking more than 10:1 against the measure, all three members of the Democratic Party voted in favor of it. The irony is hard to miss, but pretty much all Democrats will miss it.

Clickbait

Every once in a while, I bite. I can't help it. Curiousity.

One deal shows the little black diamond on a tape measure and says it's going to tell you why it's there. I've never survived all the clicks, gotten past all of the other "facts" (many of them nonsensical), that might be required to find out. I know it has something to do with the center of studs in the wall of a house, but I didn't learn that by hitting clickbait.

Another one is going to tell you why there are holes in the prongs of an electric plug. Hell, I'm a licensed electrician, so I probably should know that. Embarrassingly, I don't. I've hit that clickbait several times, spent endless hours clicking "Next," crashed my computer twice, and I still don't know.

I read comments, so if you know, feel free.

 

Update, Wed. Apr 20: Aha. I was right; the holes in the electric plug are definitely not to engage a detent in the socket.  Some guy dismantled a bunch of sockets and none of them had any such detents. 

 

Turns out that, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association the holes are "optional, but if present must be located as illustrated above and are for manufacturing purposes." Most plugs are cast, and the holes are for a rod to hold the prongs in position while the material is poured into the die and allowed to solidify.

Unhinged

There is a bill pending in the California legislature, and one like it at the federal level, which would mandate that all companies with 500 or more employees adopt a 32-hour work week, paying overtime to those who work more than 32 hours in a week.

Politicians refer to it as a “populist” concept, and workers are thrilled at the idea of working fewer days/hours per week. As far as I can tell, economists are silent on the subject so far, but I have gone through all of the economic problems that this country is suffering at the moment, and it seems to me that every one of them would be made significantly worse by this policy.

We have shortages of practically every product one can name, so let’s have workers work fewer hours, make fewer products, and create even more severe shortages. Why does anyone think that this is a good idea?

Perhaps the idea is that more workers will be hired to fill out the work week, but we also have a labor shortage, so how is that going to pan out? We can’t fill the job openings we have, so let’s create more job openings. Really?

Inflation is eating up wage gains, so the pay that workers are receiving is  buying less and less.  So let’s reduce their buying power even further with a reduction of their income due to shorter working hours. Brilliant.

If we increase workers’ hourly pay to offset the reduced hours it would mean increasing the price of the products they are producing. That would make inflation even higher than it is now, and it’s already the worst it has been in four decades. Who thinks that is a good idea?

On the other hand, reducing working class income means less consumer spending, which trashes the economy. We all want to see that happen, right?

This nation has broken out in an epidemic of highly contagious stupidity, which seems to have originated in California and is spreading out of control.

Hot Air

The endless ranting about how Democrats are going to “lose control” of Congress in this year’s midterm election is beginning to get on my nerves.

For one thing there is no guarantee that any such thing is going to happen. Democrats are still very much in control of the election process, a process while lasts almost an entire year and of which “election day” in November is more or less merely symbolic. It is done mostly in back rooms (no longer “smoke filled”) and involves primary elections in which only party hacks and fanatics vote. 

 

In the last general election involving the US Senate in California, voters were offered a choice between two Democratic candidates, both of whom were females.

You call that a democratic (small ‘d”) election?

And that's assuming that today's elections are legitimate, which is by no means assured. Maybe they are, but I would not stake my fortune making a bet on it.

 
Even if it did happen, there is no reason to think that it would effect any meaningful change in governance of the nation. No Republican Congress has ever undone anything that the preceding Democratic ones have done in several decades.

The last time we had Republican control of both houses of Congress we had a Republican president in the White House, and Congress claimed it could do nothing because it was hamstrung by the Democratic minority which “blocked its initiatives at every turn.”

Funny how a Democratic minority can frustrate a Republican majority, but the inverse situation creates an unfettered Democratic control of Congress, which can be frustrated only when one or two of its own party members refuses to “toe the line.”

14,610 Days

To save you the time of breaking out your calculator, that is 40 years, the length of time since the last time I got drunk. It's also the last time since I had a drink of alcohol. Same thing.

The Dragon Reawakens

If you thought the freedom-killing coronavirus crisis was over because you've been distracted by the beginnings of WW3 in Ukraine, be advised that your freedom to engage in social pursuits is soon to be lost again, and Fauci did not slink off into the sunset like the proverbial tribe of Arabs.

Omicrin BA.2 is ravaging Europe and Indonesia, while parts of China are locked down tighter than the proverbial fiddler's bitch. It has us bracketed and we are next. We will die in droves unless "vaccinations" are imposed in record numbers.

But relax. Maybe WW3 will happen quickly and Russian nuclear bombs will obliterate us first.

Update, 10:20pm: Wow, this variant is really deadly. According to ABC News, Hong Kong has the highest death rate, at 0.004%. Awesome.

I Am Not Alone

...in being trivial. Headline today,

"NATO Chief Tells Putin to Stop The War."

 

Why didn't Winston Churchill think of this in 1939?  It would have saved the world a whole lot of death and destruction.

I Am Sometimes Trivial

I keep seeing these commercials for walk-in bath tubs, the ones with a little door that allows you to walk in and close the door behind you. They are supposedly aimed at old people like me who cannot step over the rim of a regular bath tub.

For the record, at 78 I can step over the edge of a bath tub just fine, and I take showers anyway, not tub baths.

That does not keep me from wondering just how fast these things fill up once you have stepped into them. Do you close the door and then have to sit there naked for fifteen minutes waiting for the damned thing to fill up?

NPR Joins The Panic Fest

NPR, which for stands for “National Propaganda Radio,”  is warning us of the new subvariant of Omicron, the one that is coming to send the country back into Democrats’ preferred status of isolation and shutdown again.  “BA.2 has now been found from coast to coast,” they tell us, “and accounts for an estimated 3.9% all new infections nationally, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It appears to be doubling fast.”

They report from the Yale School of Public Health  that, "A lot of us were assuming that it was going to quickly take off in the United States just like it was doing in Europe and become the new dominant variant." They do add that so far that hasn’t happened but add their own assessment that, “The fear is that spread may be on track to rapidly accelerate in the near future.” ( Yes, English is their first language, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.)

 

After telling us that the new BA.2 variant is at 3.9% and “appears to be doubling fast” according to the CDC, they add that, "If it doubles again to 8% (actually 7.8%, ed), that means we're into the exponential growth phase and we may be staring at another wave of COVID-19 coming in the U.S.," according to Samuel Scarpino, the manager director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation.

Notice that NPR has combined two sources for that scary prognostication, the CDC and Rockefeller Foundation. If one source’s material isn’t sufficiently frightening, combine material from two sources and you can scare the shit out of anyone. It may be inaccurate, but accuracy is not the object here, spreading fear is the point.

Reviving the Panic

The general population is beginning to catch on to "the sky is falling” narrative,” forcing even California to begin dropping the most serious socially stifling mandates. But there is still hope for the panic mongers, as yet another “new variant” rears its ugly head, offering opportunity to renew, perhaps even increase the panic level. As a bonus, we are building a case for another round of vaccines.

Emphasis in the following is added by me.

CNN  Feb 19, “The BA.2 virus -- a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant -- isn't just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease…”

They go on to say, “And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely.”

I love the precision of the “74% less likely” in a virus that has, at this point, only infected 83 people, 64 of them “fully vaccinated.” Okay, I made up that last part, but so did the people who came up with the 74% number.

Deseret News Feb 18,  “New lab experiments in Japan found that BA.2 has a number of features that can make it capable of causing severe Covid-19 symptoms on the same level as previous strains.”

They too add more, saying that, “The research — published before peer review on the bioRxiv server — found that BA.2 can resist Covid-19 vaccines and some treatments,”

 

So not only cannot we be vaccinated against this new variant, there is no treatment for it either. "We are all going to die," returns to the narrative.

 

If you think we’re done with Fauci and Walensky, I fear you are going to be disappointed.

Formula 1 News

The title is misleading, as there isn't any news in Formula 1. The only items published in Formula 1 are about the decision ending the final Grand Prix race in Abu Dhabi which "cheated Lewis Hamilton of his eighth world title." 

 

The FIA has been  "reviewing that decision" and is close to announcing a decision as to what will be done about this terrible, horrible, immoral decision in which the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time was conspired upon by an evil cabal to deny him of his rightful due, because when an English Knight of the Realm is driving in a race it is immoral and illegal for anyone else to win.

I believe that their decision should acknowledge that they are allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Drivers, not the FIA control the system, so at the end of the race there should be a vote of the drivers to determine who won, irrespective of track position. Voting should be based on championship standing with each driver being allowed a number of votes based on his current standing. Each driver should be given the number of votes equal to his current number of points in the championship race.

That would assure that Lewis Hamilton could win every race, which would keep him out of hiding and active in social media and would keep the fans assured that all is fair and well as the "greatest driver of all time" remains unbeaten.