9/08/2019

Thoughts On A Sunday

It’s the first post-summer weekend and it’s quiet here. Most of the summerfolk are gone and we won’t see them again until next May. Those summerfolk with cottages and camps will still be using them for another few weeks, with most finally closing them up over the Columbus Day weekend in six weeks. Many of the seasonal shops and restaurants are closed with a few others opening only on the weekends for the next few weekends.

Road traffic is way down as is boat traffic on the lake, but it’s still above the usual ‘non-summer’ traffic levels and will be until after Columbus Day weekend. Fall foliage season is approaching so we’ll see an uptick in traffic starting at the end of September until after Columbus Day.

While many of the local diners were as busy as usual, it was seeing the year round residents filling the seats rather than summerfolk. It’s nice to have our eateries back again!

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This week’s Comment Of The Week comes from this story about vegan protestors storming a Spanish rabbit farm and being surprised when the farmers fight back.

The comment from Pamazon:

It's almost the basic definition of the difference between Cons and Leftist. Cons just want to be left alone, and leftist DEMAND you do it their way. About EVERY freaking thing.

Yup, seems that way to me as well. I’ve known more than a few that believe it wholeheartedly. I know others who are horrified at the idea that their fellow Progressives feel that way. But the ratio of the first to the second is seriously lopsided towards the first.

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As if the A-10 Warthog isn’t lethal enough on the battlefield, there are new weapons and cockpit upgrades are on the way that will make it an even better and more lethal.

After decades of the USAF brass trying to kill off the A-10 and ground forces wondering why the USAF was stupid enough to want to do so, it looks like the Air Force has finally realized the A-10 is as effective and as lethal an aircraft as has ever been seen on the battlefield. It has even gone as far as ordering wing upgrades to increase the Warthog’s combat capability and longevity.

As ‘cool’ and as high tech the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is, it still doesn’t have the loiter time, weapons load, or survivability of the A-10. The A-10 is a close-in combat air support platform that the F-35 can’t come close to matching.

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It was time.

I had to face the fact that my old flip phone, my “Gibbs” phone, wasn’t capable of doing some of the things I need it to do, particularly since I have started travelling for work again. It uses the 3G cell network which the cell carriers are going to start shutting down towards the end of this year. (It makes sense to do so as most 3G phones have ‘aged out’ and been replaced by 4G/LTE phones.)

While I haven’t replaced it with the latest whiz-bang Does Everything 5G phone, it is new enough (4G/LTE) for me and does what I need it to do. (It also costs a fourth of the 5G phones.) Of course, I have no doubt that some folks are probably thinking “It’s going to take that old fossil forever to figure out how to use it”, but they’d be wrong. The new phone is an Android phone and I have a few Android tablets, so it isn’t all that strange to me. The thing I’ll have to get used to is the size of the phone, seeing it’s more than twice the size of my old phone. It doesn’t fit easily into any of my pockets. I’ll have to get something that will let me clip it to my belt.

Not that I expect that I’ll become yet another Smart Phone Zombie as I still have better things to do than have my nose buried in my phone for hours on end. It is purely driven by the need to replace my less than capable flip-phone, period.

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It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that Donald Trump is a racist. After all, his efforts have brought down the unemployment rate of black Americans to record lows. By reducing the number of black Americans who require government assistance to support their families it is clear that he hates the poverty which blacks have been trapped in by their saviors, the Democrats. It’s apparent that a number of Democrats see raising black Americans from poverty as their purview and that anyone else doing so must be racist. (No, I don’t understand the logic of that belief. But then we aren’t really dealing with logic, are we?)

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Gee, it turns out a study purporting that ‘hate’ crimes increase by 226% after Trump rallies is “fatally flawed in its methodology” according to two Ph.D. students at Harvard University.

[Harvard P.h.D. candidates Matthew Lilley and Brian Wheaton] were able to replicate the initial study’s findings with respect to Trump rallies, but found an even greater increase in hate crimes in counties that hosted Clinton campaign rallies during the same period.

Once the researchers controlled for population size, the effect of Trump rallies on hate crimes became “statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Heh.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the crowds of summerfolk have melted away, the restaurants and lake are ours again, and where we still have some summer weather to enjoy for another few weeks.