Big Numbers Don't Lie!

Some people are easily panicked by big numbers taken out of their proper context. Take "climate change" which was once called "global warming."

Recent NASA and subsequent media stories have said this about Greenland and Antarctic ice: "The two regions have lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice in three decades; unabated, this rate of melting could cause flooding that affects hundreds of millions of people by 2100." 

Big, scary number there! 6.4 trillion tons lost! Our coastal cities are doomed!

But how much ice is there in Antarctica? Wikipedia reports it as 26,500,000 gigatons. Throw in the ice in Greenland, and the total ice loss each year is a nearly undetectable three ten-thousandths of one percent (0.0003%) of the world's ice mass. Despite statements of certainty, this loss is well within the range of measurement error.

So, how much has the sea level risen? Compared to when? And where would it be measured? The continents themselves raise and lower over time because they're floating on the mantle, with tectonic plates slipping over and under each other.

The fact is that while there are ancient cities divers can explore underwater in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, the water didn't rise by tens or hundreds of feet. Rather the land sank due to volcanoes and other dramatic local changes.

The Fat Lady Has Sung, the 2020 Election Is Over

 

The Fix Was In

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided not to take up the lawsuit Texas initiated against the “battleground” states despite its clear constitutional issues. For anyone who doesn’t know, the US Constitution requires that the selection of the Electors that will vote next Monday be managed by the various state legislatures. IOW, it’s solely up to them to define the election rules in their states. There is no mention of that process being changed by the governors, secretary of states, or even the state’s courts to do such things as redefine the requirements that the ballots must meet, such as postmarks or signatures. On the basis of the facts, Texas had a case and the court should have ruled in its favor.

But the facts didn’t matter.

So, What Did Matter?

Let’s face it… there are those in the leadership of the Republican party who fear ever upsetting the applecart and allowing the voters see how much fraud there has been in the process ever since Nixon had the 1960 election stolen by thousands of dead voters in Illinois. For them it’s far more important to maintain the illusion that the election process is valid and cannot be stolen. Since it’s Donald Trump who is the victim here, it’s fine to have a “senior statesman” like Joe Biden take the White House. They know him well and can work with him. BTW, the other victim here is the truth.

Anything Else?

Then there’s the matter of the fear factors. The power players in both the Republican and Democratic parties fear several things:

• They fear the extreme leftists who have shown they can and will loot, riot, and burn down businesses if they don’t get their way.

• They fear that Trump might prevail in exposing the behind-the-scenes dealing that places family members of elected officials into lucrative positions so foreign funds and lobbying dollars can be funneled into their pockets. Joe Biden isn’t the only person to become a multi-millionaire on a senator’s salary and own multiple mansions.

• They fear that their own parties may yet turn on them. In this age of the “cancel culture” no one is truly safe. Things that were said or written decades ago can be found and presented out of context to prove that they weren’t always enlightened and totally correct in their beliefs. And with today’s technology, “deep fakes” are an ever present danger. 

What Don’t They Fear? 

They certainly don’t fear us common folks. 

We poor, trusting members of the hoi polloi are supposed to believe everything reported by the mainstream media, buy the advertised products, enjoy the sports spectacles, and leave governing to the experts who know better than we how to live our lives.

During Trump’s presidency the Republicans have repeatedly shown that they aren’t willing to keep their campaign promises. They honestly seem to prefer to be kept out of power and to blame the Democrats for their failures. Having control of the presidency as well as both houses of Congress meant they had to tread carefully and find ways to blame the Democrats for filibustering or otherwise preventing them from fulfilling those inconvenient promises that they never believed in themselves. 

IOW, most elected Republicans seem to be far more liberal than the voters back home. They regard themselves as being better educated and understanding better how to run the country. When Barrack Obama said of us working-class folks, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations" he revealed what many in the leadership of both parties believed.

Donald Trump has been the first president since Ronald Reagan to keep his promises. I hope he’ll find ways to continue making a difference and serve to inspire other honest people to reclaim our government from the self-appointed elites who gave us the debacle of the 2020 election.

What If the Curve Cannot Be Flattened

What if everything we've been trying in order to "flatten the curve," to contain or defeat COVID-19 has been pointless and ineffective because the virus behaves in ways that other viruses have not? As an example, contact tracing works wonderfully well with viruses that are passed through intimate, sexual contact with other people. But what if COVID-19 cannot be traced that way?

What I'm asking is how do you track and control a virus that doesn't cause symptoms for several days after contracting it... and what if 86% of those who do get it never have any symptoms? How do you corral that? And the only contact needed between a host and a new victim can occur at a distance of a few feet... or even by touching something a host has sneezed or coughed on hours, or even days, earlier?

If you're wondering about the 86% figure, that's been known since April and was published in the peer-reviewed professional journal, Science, in May 2020. It's the reason we cannot contain the virus; no one believes they're sick (no symptoms at all!) and so unknowingly pass it on. We can scan everyone entering a building with a fever scanner and make them wear masks, but it's too little too late. This virus isn't going away unless, as we have with influenza, convince enough people to take the vaccine when it becomes available that it fades into the background. Indeed, we may end up needing new vaccines for new strains of it just as we do with influenza each year.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221

The good news is that at least 2 unusually effective vaccines are on the horizon. On this Thanksgiving weekend, I hereby thank those that have worked so diligently on the vaccine and those who cut through the red tape to make it possible.

Who Controls the Information We Use?

Observation: 

On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his presentation making the case for war with Iraq at the United Nations. He was armed with satellite photos showing the movement of weapons of mass destruction! He had numerous intelligence reports supporting that narrative. His claims were supported by intelligence agencies both here in the US and by those in the allied countries.

And yet... The charge has been since been made that "Bush Lied, People Died!" After all, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, either during or after the War. So was Secretary Powell lying to the U.N. in 2003?  Those who wanted to believe Secretary Powell was truthful tried to argue that in the long buildup to the war that Hussein had somehow successfully hidden or smuggled those weapons out of the country.

But what if there's another explanation that never occurred to us at the time? Have we learned anything since then that would clear Secretary Powell of that charge?

Observation: 

On November 8, 2016, Donald J Trump was elected President of the United States. His election was certified by Congress on January 6, 2017. A few Democrats in the House of Representatives protested, but because they had no support from the Senate, the certification passed.

Between those two events a rumor started that somehow Trump had had outside help from Russia to win the election. A few months later, on May 17, 2017, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate that claim. That happened amidst an avalanche of news stories in the New York Times and other papers, as well as on CNN and other networks, that supported the Trump-Russia collusion story... and every report was from anonymous inside sources.

Finally, on March 22, 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr received Mueller's report, marking the end of the Mueller's investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump Campaign. While Mueller had discovered some ancillary events resulting in indictments for a few Russian operatives for buying ads on social media to spread misinformation and some of Trump's people for crimes unrelated to the campaign (for example: tax issues years before the campaign, perjury for not telling the same story, word-for-word, each time they answered questions by investigators, and so forth), there was NO EVIDENCE FOUND to support the collusion charge. Also, there was no definitive proof of obstruction of justice, just a few instances of Trump, in the privacy of the White House, losing his temper and shouting things about the "witch hunt." But note: Trump never withheld any documents or claimed executive privilege during the investigation as did President Nixon.

Question: 

What do these events have in common?

• Both involved Republican presidents who were elected amidst controversy since they didn't win the popular vote nationwide, but did win in the electoral college. And let's just say that they were not popular with Democrats or with the media.
  
• The materials that Colin Powell used at the U.N. were provided by the intelligence community. The avalanche of reports condemning Trump were coming from unnamed sources...

More Questions:

What if those unnamed sources were also in the intelligence community? What if there were people in those organizations who were leaking misinformation to reporters who chose to believe them without corroboration? What if those leakers resented President Trump because of things he had said about not needing daily briefings from their agencies? (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-briefings-232479)

A Possible Conclusion:

Republicans are not just viewed as political opposition by member of the Democratic party, many of them also view Republicans as evil, as mortal enemies to all that's good. Therefore anything you can do to oppose a Republican is thereby ethical! The end justifies the means... even if that involves lying, creatively charging them with imaginary crimes, or anything else. And this POV may exist in the intelligence community!

So, creating satellite photos and providing a false narrative to Bush's Secretary of State was permissible in order to embarrass Bush... never mind the lives the war cost. "Leaking" false information to reporters wouldn't be a crime if it brought down the detestable Donald J Trump.

What This Means to Us:

In our lives we rely on certain sources to inform us so we can make wise choices. That includes things like Consumer Reports to warn us off buying bad products, and news networks to report the news accurately, using multiple sources to confirm their stories.

What if those sources are not accurate? What if they're deliberately lying? Who do we trust? And why do we trust them?

Hate?

Hate?

Whom do you hate? And why do you hate them? How does it feel to hate someone? What does it cost you?

The Political Divide

Much has been said since the 2016 presidential election about the increasing rift between parties. The truth is that there are multiple fissures that have been developing and widening for generations. This isn't new! Even the rift between President Trump and the Republican leadership isn't really new; that one is just a new facet in the divide between "insiders" and "outsiders" within the party.

On the Democratic side of things there's a similar rift between elements in their party. This was visible during their 2016 primary when Senator Bernie Sanders won primaries in state after state but lost in the total delegate count when "super-delegates" chosen by each state's party leadership went mostly to their eventual nominee, Hillary Clinton. Since the election of 2018 another rift has appeared between younger Democrats, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the older ones, like Nancy Pelosi.

The Cost of Hating

Hating is an expensive hobby! It excites the hater with an adrenaline rush and the heady feeling of a righteous anger, but consider the costs:

• Time and Energy--While you're busy hating someone, perhaps plotting against them, or only daydreaming about your eventual revenge, or visualizing seeing them being carted off to jail, you're not working towards your other goals. 
• Exhaustion--Living on adrenaline simply wears you out! Your body isn't capable of running on it 24/7... and your health will decay.
• Bitterness--Your monomaniacal focus on the object of your hatred affects your other relationships. You may soon neglect family and friends; you may even judge them as unworthy of your time and attention unless they share in your hatred. And the longer it takes to "make things right" in your eyes, the more they'll wonder why they even put up with you. A hate-filled heart has little or no room for love!
• Regret--As your other relationships fall apart, as you discover that you've failed to live up to your potential, you learn the truthfulness of the poet's observation:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”
― John Greenleaf Whittier

Your Legacy

How will you be remembered by the people in your life? Do you want your tombstone to read, "A dedicated hater"? Will you have spent your time and energy on social media explaining why you hate someone? Or will you be known for acts of love and service to others?

If You're a Hater...

If you're into hating, please make the world a better place and give it up! Find ways to build people up, not tear them down. Take care of yourself and those around you.

Math Isn't PC, It's White Privilege?

Sometimes words fail me. I can't begin to describe my mixed emotions when I read articles that tell me things like:

• algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites

or

• math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white

Then there's

• "all knowledge is “relational,” because “Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively"

These quotes are from an article about Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, who argues that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.

Really?

https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10005

BTW, her bio shows her degrees as follows:

Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Chicago, 1995
M.A., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Chicago, 1995
B.A., Human Biology, Stanford University, 1990

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Stepping Up My Stargazing Game

1. On April 4, I received my early birthday presents: A decent pair of Celestron astronomical binoculars with a tripod adapter, a set of Plossl eyepieces, a Celestron NexStar 102SLT refractor telescope, and a Celestron Lithium Phosphate (LiFePO4) PowerTank. Of course the skies didn’t cooperate until, finally, Friday night, but we were out for the evening (watching Casablanca on a big screen at a local university). Saturday was still decent, so I finally got to play with the telescope.
   My wife was more impressed with the binoculars than the telescope, I think, because there weren’t any electronics involved and she knows how to use them. 😉
   For anyone bemoaning the fact that I’m skipping over the steps of learning the night sky, I’d like to offer a few reasons for going with the computerized (GoTo) system the telescope uses.
   First, I’m turning 65 this month and I’ve already found out what it’s like to survive a cardiac arrest. I don’t want to spend too many hours studying how to find things by star hopping.
   Second, I’ve already had the experience of having what I’m trying to view slide out of sight before I can drag family members out to see anything. With the GoTo it tracks, so that’s no longer a problem.
   Third, I’m wanting to play around with astrophotography, so tracking is important. Without tracking the stars’ apparent motion turns them into light trails within a few seconds. With it, I can get exposures of up to 20 to 30 seconds before other problems interfere (such as field rotation).
   Finally, with the light pollution we have here I can only see perhaps two dozen of the brightest stars without a telescope. But once the GoTo has been aligned to 3 of the brightest, it can point itself to anything in its catalog of over 4,000 stars, nebulae, galaxies. Through its 102 mm lens I can then see so much more… and that’s easier and quicker than driving for 45 minutes each way, not to mention loading up the car, setting up the scope, and reversing it for the return home.
   Ad astra!

A Demonstration of Astronomy on the Cheap!

I don't yet have a fancy telescope that can track stars and take long exposures of them. But the moon is a different story!

That photo was taken from my hometown, in the midst of real light pollution, and with a street light across the road. As for the technical details:

Taken on January 28, 2018, with the moon at about 92% full

Telescope: Orion SkyScanner 100 telescope ($95)

Camera: Taken with iPod Touch, 6th Generation

Software: NightCap Camera ($1.99)

Settings (in NightCap): ISO 30, Shutter 1/150, Zoom factor 1.8

I plan eventually to get a decent refractor scope with tracking capability to minimize the "smearing" of images caused, of course, by the earth's rotation during time-lapse pictures.

Added Photo 1/31/2018:

I took this one last night when I set up my gear preparing for the eclipse this morning. You can see some clouds swirling around the moon... and it got MUCH worse. This morning, during the eclipse, our valley was totally covered with clouds. 😒

How Do You Measure a Planet’s Temperature?

Why I Think Global Warming Is a Fraud: How Do You Measure a Planet’s Temperature?

When astronomers measure the temperature of a planet, they have both an advantage and a disadvantage over meteorologists here on Earth. Their instruments can acquire data from nearly 50% of a planet’s surface at a time… but they cannot measure that temperature as accurately as someone on that surface might be able to at a specific location. In other words, astronomers can only measure the average temperature of the portion of the planet that their instruments can "see." And until satellites were first used in 1979 meteorologists here on Earth had to measure the temperature at multiple points and mathematically average them.

How Accurate Was the Global Record Before Satellites?

The first continual instrumental record of temperature in the world is the Central England Temperature record, started in 1659. During the mid-19^th century the measuring and recording of temperatures spread to other locations, but not until 1873 with the foundation of the International Meteorological Organization that people began to try and take the temperature in the same way.

But note that these temperature readings were limited mostly to urban locations in Europe and North America until after World War II. And that they were not monitored for changes to the environment of the thermometers, such as the introduction of asphalt roadways and parking lots. Or the introduction of new heat sources, like nearby mechanical equipment.

At no point was there any real attempt to set up a regular network of automated thermometers at set distances apart over the entire planet. The expense would have been immense and the technical difficulties, such as placing devices in high mountainous areas or positioning them on the open seas, insurmountable.

Other Attempts to Establish a Global Record

Lacking direct measurements hasn’t been a barrier to some. They have chosen to infer temperatures through such means as ice cores from Antarctica or variations in the thickness of tree rings. Yet how accurate can those be? What assumptions are they making?

What Satellite Measurements Show

Since 1979 the satellite data does show a warming trend of 0.114 degrees Celsius (0.2052 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. If it continues for a full century, that would be 1.14 degrees Celsius (2.052 degrees Fahrenheit)! But is that truly significant?

That raises yet another question for me: measurement error. In my college physics classes we were cautioned about relying too much on apparently precise measurements. To quote Wikipedia:

Observational error (or measurement error) is the difference between a measured value of a quantity and its true value. In statistics, an error is not a "mistake." Variability is an inherent part of the results of measurements and of the measurement process.

A simpler way to put it is that we cannot be certain that any measurement is as accurate as multiple digits after a decimal point imply. Before digital calculators became common and affordable, most calculations were performed with slide rules. We assumed that there were perhaps 3 significant digits in each calculation we made, and only 3 or 4 in the final result. Now we can quickly add together hundreds of values from thermometers and find their average, with results like 72.36426229… But the fact is that those initial values were probably recorded as whole numbers and that final calculation should be rounded to 72. Reporting those extra digits give a false impression of accuracy that’s not supported by the instruments used.

Confirmation bias also plays a role in this situation where we emotional, semi-rational humans unconsciously look for reasons to put more emphasis on data that support our beliefs and, of course, to reject data that conflict with them.

My Bottom Line

I believe that many who are accepting the global warming hoax are often ignorant of how the data is being collected and reported by researchers. I think those who know better are guilty of knowingly violating the rules and standards of data collection in order to gain power or financial rewards.

Simply put: The truth is not in them.

Before Buying a Telescope

Before Buying a Telescope

I’m certain that the total solar eclipse of 2017 will have tempted many in the US to have invested in telescopes. That’s wonderful for two reasons:

1. Seeing the stars and planets through your own telescope is fun!
2. There will soon be some amazing deals available for used telescopes in most parts of the country.

Now, forgive me for the negativity expressed in that second reason, but during the past year I’ve discovered that too many of us who impulsively bought telescopes have learned some hard lessons… and I wish I could have read the advice I’m about to give here before I invested in my telescope.

How often will you be able to use a telescope?

We often joke about the many treadmills and exercise bikes being used as clothing racks. Too many telescopes are doomed to join them. Why? Because of the weather!

Before investing in a telescope you need to come to grips with your local night sky. Telescopes can be fitted with special filters to block out much of urban light pollution, but nothing enables them to show you the night sky if it’s cloudy. I recommend that you first pay attention to how often your sky is relatively clear at night, especially during the hours that you’d want to be viewing the heavens. You might even start a calendar of clear nights that you’re having either where you live or where you might expect to drive to.

Where I live, since I bought my telescope last March, we’ve had 33 clear nights during those 286 days, which averages to about 1 in 9 nights. And given that sometimes there will be 2 or 3 good nights in a row, sometimes there will be 2 or 3 weeks without any good nights at all. Of course, now that we’re into winter there will probably be more good nights for viewing, but less time each night before hypothermia sets in…

What do you expect to see with a telescope?

The first thing you need to know is that it’s not the telescope that determines what you’ll see in the night sky, it’s your eyes. Human eyes work best with strong lighting; we can see more colors and for farther distances during a bright, sunny day than we can on a cloudy day or at night.

This means our eyes simply cannot see the colors through a telescope that pictures in magazines show us. Those are time-lapsed photos, taken with long exposure times with telescopes that track their targets across the sky. Those images are then manipulated with special software to bring out the colors that you’d see if you were much, much closer to those objects. Often special filters are also used to bring out particular colors produced by gases in the nebulae or other objects.

For example, here’s the Orion Nebula as seen with your eye through a telescope:

And here’s the same nebula as shot by an amateur with astrophotographic equipment and manipulated with software to provide color:

Beautiful, high quality images can be obtained with amateur-level equipment, but it will take both money and effort to get there.

What’s the best way to start out?

Binoculars, when used with a good tripod, are an inexpensive way of getting into astronomy. Good quality binoculars cost far less than a good quality telescope—all you need to add is a tripod (and an adapter) to stabilize the binoculars.

Do look for a pair with 10x to 20x magnification and have apertures of at least 50 mm (that would be written for example as 10x50). Some advantages to starting with binoculars:

• They are portable and easy to handle
• The image will look “correct” which makes it easier to find what you’re looking for
• A $100 pair can deliver images rivaling those seen through much more expensive telescopes
• They can also be used during the day for other purposes

So, which telescope should you buy?

Beginning astronomers often start out wanting just to see what’s up there. Eventually, though, they start wanting to share what they’re seeing by videoing or taking pictures. Both are fun, but the equipment required for each task differs in some important respects—there’s no such thing as the “perfect telescope” that can do everything very well.

Warning: Be prepared to ignore ads hyping 600-power telescopes (or even higher!). Why? Because from the surface of the earth you can’t use super-high-power telescopes and see anything worth seeing!

1.      Stars twinkle. Through our atmosphere, stars do seem to twinkle, to move about slightly, because our air is often turbulent. That’s why the most powerful telescopes are built for observatories on mountains like Mauna Kea in Hawaii, at 4,205 meters (13,796 feet). And those telescopes use advanced technologies with lasers and computer-controlled mosaic mirrors to minimize the effect of turbulence in the atmosphere above that altitude!

2.      Objects in the sky move, right? Well, you were told in school they appear to move because this old Earth is spinning—and that is true. So, when you magnify the image that apparent movement is also magnified and you end up having to keep the telescope moving to allow for it. In other words, if it takes 100 seconds for the moon to drift out of view at 20x magnification, it would drift out of view in just 20 seconds at 100x magnification.

3.      Much of what you’ll want to see doesn’t require much magnification anyway. For example, the Andromeda Galaxy stretches almost 6 times the width of the full moon (178 arc-minutes vs 30 arc-minutes).

Frankly, any resolving power over 300x will be wasted except on the clearest nights with extremely calm air.

Light matters!

With a telescope, what really matters is the amount of light that reaches your eye or camera. That’s the secret to seeing things many, many light years away. There are two ways to get more light to the eyepiece:

1.      Aperture—how much light is entering the telescope is usually a function of its diameter. Generally speaking, an 8 inch aperture telescope delivers about 4 times as much light to your eye or camera as a 4-inch one… and about 800 times as much light than normally reaches the typical 7 millimeter pupil of the human eye!

2.      Time—focusing on an image over time allows more light to strike the photoreceptors in a camera. In the olden days astronomers used photographic plates or film to produce their images. Today cameras take multiple images of a few seconds each and then use software to “stack” them.

Kinds of telescopes

Basically there are two kinds of optical telescopes:

• Refractors are the type of telescopes we’re most familiar with in films and television, in which the focusing of the light is accomplished through multiple lenses and, sometimes, prisms.
• Reflectors use mirrors to focus and bounce the light to the eyepiece.

Both refractors and reflectors have their strong points and are worthy of consideration.

What do you want to do with a telescope?

Answering this question will help you decide whether you want to spend a lot of dollars on a computerized telescope that does much of the work for you or just start with a small telescope and explore the night sky on your own, perhaps aided by a good book that will help you learn the stars and constellations. Some telescopes are better for astrophotography, others for just plain seeing what’s up there. You may even want to buy separate telescopes for specific purposes.

I strongly recommend that you visit friends who have telescopes or attend a few public “star party” hosted by local astronomy clubs. Look through their telescopes and pester them with questions until you’re comfortable that you can decide which sort of telescope you’ll want.

Whatever route you choose, welcome to the universe!

Fake News, Confirmation Bias, and George Carlin

The big story last week among my liberal friends was the announcement that the Trump administration had banned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using “7 words” in sending its budget requests to Congress. They gleefully linked to a single report in the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/f503837a-e1cf-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.177532f52b82

It states that “Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing.” Note that no one person is named as the source of that advice. Yet my friends immediately denounced the Trump administration as being responsible. Since that report came out many have commented on it, assuming it to be further proof that the Trump administration lives down to Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” label.

The problem, of course, is that the adults in charge of the CDC have denounced the report and denied having created the list. None of the articles since have established “guilt” amongst the Trump administrators. So, this “breaking news” has lasted less than a week as a real news report but continues to provide fodder for those wanting to assign evil motives to Trump.

So, is this an example of “fake news?” For those who care about truth over politics, yes! The report was factual as far as it went, but it didn’t really establish who had created the list or how they had gone about the task. For those who are motivated by politics above all else, it fits their confirmation bias perfectly, confirming that Trump’s people are anti-science and crazed religious zealots.

My Theory

I suspect the ghost of George Carlin had more to do with the list than anyone in the Trump administration. The late comedian and social critic was known for many brilliant and funny routines, but especially for his “The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.”

First, note that both lists consist of seven words or phrases. Then consider the ages of the mid-level administrators at the CDC and their educational backgrounds. Finally, what are their political leanings most likely to be?

In most bureaucracies today mid-level managers tend to range from about 30 to 60 years in age. Most of them would have been in college during Carlin’s most active years on television (1970s to early 2000s) and certainly would have seen his Seven Words. Being of college age, which coincides with the ages during which young people are most certain they know everything worth knowing (and that their parents are obviously clueless about), they would certainly have picked up on Carlin’s nihilistic attitudes. And I do believe that at the core of their current belief system is the absolute certainty that Trump supporters are knuckle-dragging, anti-science deplorables.

Given that background, how likely is it that one or more administrators at the CDC would have started, as a joke, their own lists of The Seven Words You Can Never Say to a Trump Supporter? And that the List evolved into The Seven Words You Can Never Say to Congress?

I believe that’s the reason that the story hasn’t had “legs” and evolved into a witch hunt for a guilty party in the Trump administration. There is no “there” there. But… we haven’t yet heard from Robert Mueller.

I Give Up!

Even though I have never been politically correct, I have tried to be polite. I'm losing patience now with the PC crowd because they've clearly lost their minds!

LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP Training

Reading the article led me to claims that "Diversity Is Our Strength!" Rational thinking clearly is no longer required to be accepted as an adult in the PC quarters; reciting the mantra of the day has taken its place.

The Ultimate Source of Stress Today

There are more sources of stress today than one can count. Seriously! Many have existed throughout the human experience, such as drought, famine, disease, war, etc. Some are relatively newer than those, like traffic jams, utility bills, and dropped cellular connections. Today I want to talk about one that has only recently been recognized for the pernicious, ever-present stresser that it is:

Bureaucracies

I'm not just talking about the ones we find in governments at every level because they also exist in other organizations. Every business, both profit and non-profit, develops a bureaucracy of its own once it reaches the size where it must divide itself into departments with specialized purposes and forms for everyone to fill out.

The noted philosopher Hannah Arendt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt) was an expert on totalitarianism, having escaped Germany during the Holocaust. Here in America she became the first female lecturer at Princeton and wrote extensively on the power and psychology of violence.

She predicted there would soon be a great increase of domestic violence and social unrest in modern societies for a particular reason: bureaucracies.

How could that be? Don't they exist to help businesses and governments to function smoothly and efficiently? How could anyone blame everything from road rage to mass shootings on the very organizations that make modern life possible?

Well, let's start off with what the word means: government by bureaus. That's pretty obvious, right? But what does the word "bureau" mean? It turns out that the original French word means "writing desk." Yep, it's government run by people at writing desks. What do they do? They make you fill out forms which they process, file away, or send on to other desk jockeys. They enforce the policies and rules that their bureau creates. If you can't document that your situation qualifies for their aid, you're out of luck.

As Hannah Arendt wrote, "The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant."

That lack of accountability on the part of our rulers, for that's what bureaucrats have become, leaves us without reasonable recourse when their decisions deprive us of our freedom, our income, perhaps our homes. And what makes it doubly frustrating is that they are insulated from the results of their actions. As bad as it was for the victims of Nazism, where the guilty were "only following orders" and had to wait for the war to end for any justice, today it's worse in that guilty bureaucrats are almost never held accountable.

Most of the time the guilty are blissfully unaware of how their decisions are inconveniencing, disturbing, or even killing people. Consider the career officers in the Food and Drug Administration... If they approve a drug that harms perhaps a few hundred people (and the press finds out!), their careers will be over... but if they withhold approval no one is likely to note the thousands that will continue to die for lack of that medicine.

Of course, the largest bureaucracy we have to deal with in the US is that which Congress has created and funded with our tax dollars. While a certain amount of bureaucracy is necessary to enforce and uphold the laws Congress creates, the real danger is that Congress has abdicated much of its power to those bureaucracies! One of the most egregious example is "Obamacare" which has at least 200 points at which the Secretary of Health (a bureaucrat with a huge bureaucracy to lead) gets to create the rules and regulations that we must live under.

The only solution is to elect legislators who will rein in the organizations that Congress has created and abdicated their powers to. If the candidates we put into office fails to act, we need to replace those people, and each and every successor, until we get ones who will uphold their oath of office and quit spending their time fundraising and planning their next campaign.

Who Do College Speakers Need Protection From?

During the past few months several prominent authors and columnists have been invited to speak on college campuses... then dis-invited them, citing security concerns. So, why can't the schools provide adequate security? Just who is threatening violence? What is their justification?

From my perspective in the mountains of Utah, it looks like the schools are kowtowing to radicals among their students and faculty. On various occasions the administrators have told area law enforcement to stay away, to let the barbarians break windows and burn things.

What most of us don't know is how many times this has happened at colleges and universities throughout history. It didn't begin with the election of Donald J Trump. It didn't start with the Vietnam War. One of the earliest occurrences in the US happened at Thomas Jefferson's pride and joy, the University of Virginia.

According to an article by Carlos Santos in the Virginia Magazine, in 1825 "Jefferson, a scant seven months after the school had opened, had called the students to the Rotunda to chastise them for their egregious behavior, which he termed 'vicious irregularities,' after the hooliganism had escalated into the school's first riot. The students were hostile. His professors were threatening to quit. Jefferson's enemies, and they were legion, were ready to pounce and shutter the school they considered a godless playground of the rich."

See http://uvamagazine.org/articles/bad_boys for more details and accounts both of this event and of riots at Yale and Harvard. Then there was the time a University of Virginia professor was murdered...

So, my points are these:

• Colleges and universities have a long history of failing to demand and get civilized behavior from their students.

• This has resulted in students taking over buildings and assaulting people with no consequences. 

• Many of their faculty members, once radical students themselves, side with the young hooligans "on principle."

• These attitudes have led to many dysfunctional approaches to problems in academia, including pampered students who face no punishment or notoriety for their criminal behavior.

None of this will end until and unless those who reflexively contribute to their various alma maters decide to quit feeding the beast. Money talks, and the lack of money talks even louder!

Correction Time

Mea Culpa!

I am guilty of sloppiness concerning two senators with the same last name. They were:

Joseph McCarthy 
According to Wikipedia, he was born in 1908 in Grand Chute, Wisconsin. He is the infamous one, whose name has become attached to "reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents." He started his political career as a Democrat, but switched to the Republican Party in 1944. He died young, at age 48, in 1957 of acute hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, possibly caused by alcohol abuse.

Eugene McCarthy

According to Wikipedia, he was born in 1916 in Watkins, Minnesota. He is the more admired one, having supported many liberal Democratic causes. He was a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which was affiliated nationally with the Democratic Party. He lived much longer, dying of complications from Parkinson's disease at the age of 89 on December 10, 2005.

They both served as US Senators from their respective states. Neither was a saint or a devil,  but history has been far kinder to the latter since the press has been far kinder to liberal Democrats for several decades now. For details as to their successes and failings, I suggest you look them up yourself.

The Swinging Pendulum of Russophobia

When I was born in the 1950s, our nation was in its second "Red Scare" with such people as Senator Eugene McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) looking for subversives, especially communists in government and elsewhere in our society. This second "Red Scare" had originated with a Democrat, President Harry S Truman, whose Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947, required that all federal civil service employees be screened for "loyalty." Of course McCarthy was a Democrat, as were the leading members of the HUAC. 

So was most of Congress during that time. In fact, except for brief lapses in 1947-49 and 1953-55, both houses were controlled by Democrats until 1981. Yet today if you question people about the eras of the Red Scares, they'll tell you it was probably conservative Republicans who were engaged in the "witch hunts" which compelled private citizens (screen writers, actors, etc.) to bear witness against everyone around them.

By the time I became an adult in the 1970s the debate over the Viet Nam War had changed the narrative of things dramatically. By that time it was Democrats who conveniently overlooked the fact that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had started the mess; Nixon and his party were the "hawks" that were guilty of warmongering and enriching the evil "military-industrial complex" which President Eisenhower had warned us about. 

It was also about that time that people began "remembering" the history of the Civil Rights Act as being a Democratic Party cause, forgetting that it was southern Democrats who had filibustered against it and Republicans who had rallied to pass it.

When President Reagan came into office with his goals of destroying "the Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union, suddenly Republicans were being castigated as warmongers and Democrats were proclaiming that communism wasn't really that bad. Warren Beatty wrote, directed, and starred in "Reds," a movie in which an American journalist journeys to Russia to document the Bolshevik Revolution and returns a revolutionary, seeking to change America.  In 1989, many liberal Democrats seemed sickened by the demise of the Soviet Union.

In short, history was being rewritten before our eyes, and no one really noticed.

Fast forward to today: Russia, in the past few years, has gone from a country to build alliances with (anyone remember the heroics of Boris Yeltsin?) to one to "reset" relations with (Putin was too scary?), to one that's now suspected of hacking into everything and controlling our presidential election (Putin is too scary!). 

Attorney General Sessions has been forced to recuse himself because he had contact with a Russian ambassador during the campaign. General Flynn was forced to withdraw himself from consideration as the National Security Advisor because he talked to the Russian ambassador after Trump's election.

Have Democrats met with that ambassador? YES!

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/03/03/heres-a-list-of-democrats-who-also-met-with-the-russian-ambassador-n2293775 

Until last month only one group has stayed absolutely convinced that Communism is a good thing, that we need to all become Socialists, and that capitalism is the scourge of mankind: college professors! Yet today even they are chiming in that Russia stole the election from Hillary. 😕

Oh well, that pendulum does swing!

Am I Who?

This is not glurge, a syrupy bit of fiction designed to make the reader feel good. It happened, tonight, to me.

Tonight when leaving a restaurant with my wife, I noticed a homeless man sitting just inside the door with all his belongings in a black garbage bag. The temperature outside was 9° and it's supposed to go below zero tonight. The manager approached him and asked if he wanted anything. He said, "I just want a cup of coffee and to get warm." She said "Yes, it is a cold night."

On an impulse I then did something I have never done before. I pulled a $10 bill from my wallet and gave it to the manager and said, "See to it that he gets a full meal."

As I turned to leave, the man asked me, "Are you Jesus Christ?"

All I could say was "I try to follow him."

If anyone ever reads this, I'd like to know how you would answer that question.

Hardest or Easiest Job in the World?

Now that the election's over, I'd like to call your attention to the job of the president, or POTUS as some insist on calling the occupant of the office. Given the ages of the various presidents when they entered office, it's no real surprise that they continued to age... but some aged more than others, presumably from the stress of the job:

http://www.boredpanda.com/before-and-after-term-us-presidents/

So, just how stressful is the job? Take a good look at each one and consider how they went about doing their jobs.

To my eyes, the one who was affected most in the shortest time was Abraham Lincoln. He truly served in an extremely stressful time. I can't imagine anyone else doing as well as he did with such a difficult task as leading the nation through a Civil War.

The one who I think was affected least was Dwight Eisenhower. After successfully managing the European theater of World War II, fighting with Congress didn't affect him so much. The bullets they shot at him were all verbal! He quietly did what he thought was best and ignored his critics. And he had impressive results. His behavior in office was that of a man comfortable in his skin, his grandfatherly smile reassured most Americans that he was doing the right thing because he cared for them. It was reflected in his extremely high approval rating during office.

So, how hard is it to be a peace-time president? Eisenhower made it look easy. Is it? No matter your politics, there will be those seeking your destruction. There will be people striving to use your power and prestige to enrich or empower themselves and their friends. You'll feel like you have a bulls eye painted on your back as the press snipes at you for every little thing you might do wrong... and even when you've done things right, they'll twist your words and invent errors you've never made.

What will Trump face compared to what he's seen so far in his life? Will he masterfully appoint and hire the right people to get things done? Or will he try to micromanage his way through as so many others have done? Will he pick fights with Congress or will he challenge them to write legislation the way the Constitution requires of them?

I believe a great leader inspires others to do great things. I hope Donald Trump will do just that.

Whew!

The great news is now that I've worked with my replacement in my church position (see prior post) I understand now why she seemed so foreboding to me and others who had gossiped about her. (Yes, it was gossip, and I'm sorry I listened). And, I find that I've much more in common with her than I would ever had guessed.

This lady has survived a traumatic traffic accident that broke her neck in two places. The doctors fused the vertebrae and she has healed—physically. Being a Texan, she has continued on with her life on sheer guts and willpower. She has put her energies into teaching people to excel at singing. She's even making a living at it!

What she hasn't done as nearly well is deal with her PTSD. It's affected her personality—she comes across as very brusque and insensitive—and is very hard to befriend. Here's a challenge I can look forward to! After all, I've tangled with that particular burden myself...

Waiting for a shoe to drop...

I’ve no idea how many people have ever read this blog. Perhaps I’m just writing for my own entertainment. One thing I do know is that I’ve mostly written about what I think about things and very little about what I feel about them.

Part of being a member of my church is the idea that we are “called to serve” in various positions by an inspired leader. The length of that service can vary by quite a few years. Eventually, we are “released” and someone else is called to serve. That release can come about by moving away, dying, or just because it’s someone else’s turn to serve in that position. Most of us muddle through new callings, gain in our skills, learn how to do things right, then we’re called to yet other positions.

Right now I’m in the most difficult part of that process. After being for a few years in a position I loved, someone else has grudgingly accepted a call to that position. She seems to not care too much for it and is talking about scaling it all back to suit her existing calendar. I’m finding it hard to keep my mouth shut and am wondering how long it will take for her to destroy what I (and my predecessors) built up.

I hope I get called to something else soon! Not having a position is bad enough without this drama.