Thoughts On A Sunday

Yesterday was our little town’s Old Home Day, a celebration of our town, it’s people – both present and past residents – and its history. There’s a parade, all kinds of food trucks/trailers, crafts, music, games, and during the evening, a band concert and fireworks. Each year Old Home Day has a theme, with this year’s being The Movies.

We had a number of politicians in our parade, folks running for both state and federal offices – New Hampshire House and Senate, and US House of Representatives. I had a chance to speak with a number of them which cemented my decisions about which ones I would be voting for in the upcoming state primaries next month.

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It looks like hot, hazy, and humid weather is on its way back to New Hampshire this week, though it won’t be nearly as hot as what we experienced earlier in the month nor will it be around for more than a couple of days.

I was discussing the summer weather and its effect on boating traffic on the lake with an acquaintance of mine at the aforementioned Old Home Day. He works for one of the local radio stations and we got to talking about boating and I mentioned that I haven’t been out on the lake anywhere near as often as I usually am, between the high gas prices and high temperatures we’ve experienced.

He mentioned his discussions with a number of marina operators, particularly regarding boat traffic and he was surprised to find that the number of boaters out on the lake during hot weather is actually lower than during more normal temps. It seems counterintuitive, but on really hot days the last place some people want to be out in the sun with no shade, even with all that water surrounding them. It is not a comfortable place to be, even with shade.

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I saw this great sarcastic ad lambasting Biden’s decision to ‘forgive’ portions of student loans by making the rest of us pay for it.



This should be played at every opportunity between now and the mid-terms in November.

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Is this the beginning of the end for the Big Three networks?

Apparently, NBC is seriously considering cutting prime time programming hours by one hour.

It’s no secret that the major, over-the-air TV networks are losing viewers to streaming services and cable TV. But almost from the start of the television age, ABC, CBS, and NBC have broadcast three hours of programming in prime time, 7–10 p.m. (8-11 p.m. on the East Coast – ed.)

Now NBC is seriously considering dropping programming in its 10–11 p.m. EST slot. It’s expected that NBC would return that seven hours a week to local broadcasters.

The move would certainly save money. Not having to program an hour-long drama in that slot will be a huge cost-cutting measure, considering the average hour-long TV drama episode costs around $4.5 to $5 million. Multiply that by 20–25 times a season and the savings would be significant.

Cable TV has been pulling viewers away from the traditional networks for decades, but with streaming services offering a wide range of programming on demand, is it any wonder the traditional networks are losing viewers? Considering the quality of some of the programming on the traditional networks, that fewer people are watching is also not a surprise.

I looked at my own viewing habits and came to realize I watch very few hours of ABC, CBS, or NBC programming these days. I watch some local programming, primarily our local news and New Hampshire-centric shows like New Hampshire Chronicle and New Hampshire Life, the first on our local TV station and the second on NESN. I also tend to watch shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and a couple of other streaming services.

One has to wonder if ABC and CBS will be be following NBC’s lead on this.

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this:

Whiteboards are racist because 'they collaborate with white organizational culture'.

Did a recent physics study argue that whiteboards are racist?

"Observing Whiteness in Introductory Physics: A Case Study" was published last month in Physical Review Physics Education Research. The study observed three students as they worked to solve a physics problem and analyzed how "whiteness" is present in academia.

The study found that whiteboards can have racist undertones and perpetuate whiteness.

Seattle Pacific University Research Associate Professor of Physics Amy Roberton served as lead author. W. Tali Hairston, director of community organizing, advocacy, and development at Seattle Presbytery, served as the co-author.

Hairston told Campus Reform that although whiteboards "are not inherently racist," the common classroom object can perpetuate racism.

What about blackboards? Are they racist, too? What about large LCD screens used for the same purpose as whiteboards/blackboards? Can a sheet of paper be racist? Where do we draw line?

What the study (and a lot of the wokerati) ignore is that objects cannot be racist. They are inanimate objects. Only people can be racist. What’s worse is that the very people assigning racist attributes to objects are quite often “the racists in the room”...and they don’t even realize it. If they do, they don’t care because they ‘support the narrative’ or are just stirring up s**t.

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To close out this week’s TOAS, there’s this little bit of advice:

This isn’t how you’re supposed to launch your boat.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been great, we’re heading back into HHH weather, and where once again Monday is returning all too soon to punish us for having a good weekend.

A New Take On An Old Theme

Unlike painting oneself into a corner and waiting for the paint to dry, these guys will have to find a way to remove one or more of those bollards in order to get that van out...and that isn't going to be easy.

From The Archives - Diminishing Returns And Perceived Risks

This post from January 2012 is still germane since both concepts are still problems, perhaps even more so today than they were 10 years ago.

As has been with other From The Archives posts, dead links have been removed and related text has been edited (slightly) to ensure the text makes sense. Only one link (from Futurepundit) is dead, but that shouldn’t change the context.

One part of this old post deals with something I’ve discussing in the comments to other posts dealing with energy efficiency, specifically electrical efficiency.

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One of the most difficult concepts that many people have problems understanding is that of diminishing returns. This applies to many different areas in our lives and in our society. I don't know whether it's a lack of education, a failure in their upbringing, or something inherently lacking in the people themselves. Perhaps it's a little of all three.

Going hand in hand with this concept is one that has many of the same roots - perceived risk – something that has driven some folks into action to get the government to “Do Something!” about something that is a minor issue at best.

In case you're wondering, however briefly, how this particular subject came up, it was during a discussion at work about a post from FuturePundit dealing with the declining return on investment from electrical power efficiency.

My employer is always looking for ways to reduce our energy usage, something that appeals to the frugal Yankee in me. Over the past five or six years a number of measures have been taken to reduce our electrical usage, including the use of more efficient lighting at all levels, timers on our existing electric water heaters to shut them off when no one is in the building, on-demand water heaters replacing the older tank-type water heaters as they wear out, more energy efficient refrigerators (used for both food and for storage of certain manufacturing substances...though not in the same refrigerator!), and motion sensors to shut off lights in rooms when no one is in them, just to name a few of the improvements undertaken. All of this has helped reduce our electricity usage by over 20% as compared to 6 years ago. Will further investment reduce our electrical usage any more than it has? Sure it will, but (and it's a big 'but') we won't see anywhere near the savings we already have unless we spend a lot more money than has already been spent. We have reached the point of diminishing return. We'd need to spend many times more than we already have in order to achieve a small fraction of the savings already made. From a financial point of view the return on investment makes no sense, meaning further investment in this effort will not result in energy savings equal to what was spent to achieve them. Or put more simply, we'll spend more than we'll save. It's not worth it.

OK, back to the subject at hand.

We've seen more than a few times where some project has reached its original goals, whether it's a cleanup of some Superfund site or the closing of a municipal landfill. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the contaminants were cleaned up or the landfill might leak 0.001% of the liquids or decomposition products from the landfill. But for some folks that isn't good enough. They want 100%. Never mind that achieving that last little bit will cost as much, if not more, than what has already spent. Never mind that it will likely be the taxpayers footing the bill. Never mind that in the end it won't make one bit of difference. The project has blown past the point of diminishing returns and spending any additional money won't help...other than to make the folks bitching about it feel better. (It would be cheaper to give them some mood-elevating drugs to do that than wasting taxpayer dollars to 'fix' the last little iota of the problem.)

We see this lack of understanding about diminishing returns in all kinds of places and situations. It is also where the problem with perceived risk comes into play.

One of the biggest disservices ever perpetrated upon the public is the notion that life should be totally risk free. This meme started some time in the 1960's. (Yes, I know drives to improve safety started long before that, but the 100% risk free crap started in the late 60's/early 70's.) There's nothing wrong with reducing risk. But to think life can be made 100% risk free is ludicrous. It can't be done. But that doesn't stop people from trying to do so anyways. I wouldn't mind that so much if those same people understood the difference between real risk and perceived risk. The problem is that they don't and because of that lack of understanding money is wasted on slight risks while major risks are ignored.

An example:

Which entails more risk to life and limb: Driving a car or flying on a commercial airliner?

The answer is, of course, driving a car. (There were over 32,885 traffic fatalities in 2010, with many times that number of injuries. As an aside, that number is the lowest number of fatalities since 1949 despite more miles being traveled then ever before, giving us the lowest fatality rate ever.) But people perceive flying as more dangerous. Yet how many fatalities have there been in the US due to commercial airliner crashes over the past few years? None. A person is far more like to be injured or killed driving to or from the airport than they are by flying on a commercial airliner, but they're more afraid of dying in a plane crash. It's all perception, not reality.

Let's try another:

One person lives near a nuclear power plant. Another lives near a coal-fired power plant. Which one is at a higher risk of cancer, injury, or death?

The answer is the person living near the coal-fired plant. The effluvia from the smokestack and any runoff from the ash pile are a far greater hazard than anything coming from the nuclear plant under normal circumstances. Yet people perceive the nuclear power plant will cause them to get cancer and other illnesses. Even after the Three Mile Island accident there were no increases in cancer or other radiation related illnesses. (Some initial studies stated there were, but review of those studies by the CDC found some creative editing of the health statistics to 'prove' the case. Once all the raw data was reanalyzed those alleged increases in cancer cases disappeared.)

Over the years it seems to me the the perceived risks have received far more attention (and money) than actual risks. Efforts will be made to reduce risks that have little actual impact, but large risks will be ignored.

For instance, the NHTSA wants to ban the use of cell phones and other electronic devices by drivers of cars and trucks. All kinds of efforts are being made to codify that ban in to law across the nation despite the fact that the actual percentage of accidents caused by these distracting gizmos is unknown. The perception is that these devices are leaving a swath of death and destruction along the highways and byways of the nation to rival those caused by drunk driving. The NHTSA reports that 3092 traffic deaths were caused by distracted driving in 2010. That's one out of every eleven fatalities. How many of those were due to cell phone use or texting? The NHTSA doesn't actually say, though the article linked implies all of them were (but there was no actual number cited). The implication is that this is a major risk and that the government must “Do Something!' even though the actual risk is quite small.

But will the government spend a dime on something like removing homes from flood plains or barrier islands, obviating the need to constantly pay out to rebuild them again and again after they are destroyed? (Disclaimer: The gubmint did do that after the Mississippi River floods in 1993, relocating a number of towns to higher ground because it was cheaper to do so rather than paying out the flood insurance claims again and again and again and again, ad infinitum.)

Or will money be spent on things like crumbling roads and bridges, things that endanger us all? We must remember incidents like the Mianus River Bridge collapse on I-95 in Connecticut, the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, or the Nimitz Freeway collapse during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 , all of which killed and injured motorists. (The Nimitz Freeway collapse occurred because necessary upgrades to the highway support pylons were postponed.) How many other others are out there waiting to happen because we haven't spent the necessary funds to reduce a very real risk? Maybe this is due to the opposite of perceived risk, where people see no risk and therefore think nothing needs to be done, yet the risk exists and is higher than many of the perceived risks people waste time and money dealing with. How much did these real incidents cost compared to what it would have cost to fix the problems in the first place? Do I really need to answer that?

The people need to learn how to discriminate between real risk and perceived risk, and to understand the relationship to diminishing returns. Otherwise we will continue to ignore real risks and waste ever more money on things that are minimal risks at best.

Thoughts On A Sunday

After a comfortable week the hot and humid weather has returned, with temps yesterday in the mid 80’s and today’s temps right in the edge of 90º. I’m not complaining since I didn’t really need to use the A/C here at The Gulch on Saturday. A ceiling fan and two small floor fans were enough to keep The Gulch comfortable, something that has become more important since the electricity rates up here just doubled. Between the higher rate and the use of A/C during the over two weeks of hot, hazy, and humid weather the electricity bill more than doubled.

Considering the electricity rates here in New Hampshire have been some of the highest in the lower 48 for years, the result of decades of efforts by Watermelon Environmentalists to prevent expansion of the state’s generation capacity...unless it was unreliable, weather-dependent, non-dispatchable and expensive renewable sources, the doubling of our already high rates was adding insult to injury. (We know it’s their plan because they’ve fought tooth and nail against reliable, non-weather dependent, dispatchable and inexpensive sources like hydropower, successfully blocking two different powerline projects that would have brought that inexpensive green energy into the state.)

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What is it that has been causing homes to explode? We had one home here in New Hampshire that blew up (fortunately with no fatalities and only minor injuries) and another home in Indiana that exploded, killing three people and damaged 39 other homes.

Both appear to have been caused by gas leaks. Both had had recent work done to their gas appliances – the first to a stove and the second to a water heater.

I don’t like ‘splody houses. The former Manse used propane, but we never had any issues with the furnace, water heater, emergency generator, or clothes dryer. The Gulch uses oil for heat and hot water and all of the other appliances are electric. (Yes, we do have a generator that will run from gasoline or propane, but it isn’t a standby generator like at the old Manse.)

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Good is Bad. Bad is Good. Black is White. White is Black. Up is Down. Down is Up….

Pro-life proponents are Extremists. And Pro-abortion proponents who assault Pro-life proponents and firebomb their pregnancy centers are the Good Guys.

Notice that it is the folks who have no problem terminating innocent life also have no problems committing acts of violence against those who disagree with them...and have the backing of the Governor of New York while doing so.

What do you expect from worshipers of Moloch?

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How deluded is this?

It looks like an media institution, one dependent upon the Constitution, more specifically the First Amendment, has no use for the Constitution, as a recent op-ed in the New York Times shows us.

In recent years, many liberals have become openly hostile to the Constitution. The present moment in history, with the Democrats controlling the House by the barest of majorities, a 50/50 Senate with a Democratic vice president, and a Democratic president, has heightened liberal frustration with the Constitution. With their hands, for a brief moment at least, on all of the levers of power, why can’t the Democratic Party effect a total transformation of American society?

To a normal person, that question perhaps answers itself. But check out this op-ed in the New York Times, which is literally one of the stupidest things I have ever read. Its authors are Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn, professors at Harvard Law School and Yale Law School respectively. The op-ed advocates doing away entirely with the Constitution. Why? The authors don’t quite put it this way, but the reason is that the Constitution fails to establish a pure democracy by plebiscite, and makes it difficult to use a transient majority to effect radical change. Those who had a high school civics class understand that this is more or less the point.

As anyone who has any understanding of human nature knows, the desired “pure democracy by plebiscite” can lead in only one direction – a tyranny of the majority. We’ve seen the results of that before, with the worst being The Reign of Terror. We’ve also been seeing it at the state level, specifically after the Reynolds v Sims and Baker v Carr Supreme Court decisions which created de facto tyrannies of the majority in the states.

Some of those states immediately started using those majorities to marginalize the rural areas, minimizing their power in the state legislatures and reversing the flow of tax revenues, making sure a majority of them left the rural areas to feed the ‘needs’ of the urban areas. All one has to do is look to New York as an example. Upstate New York – defined as any area not part of the Metro New York City area – is virtually invisible to the Metro area and the state government in Albany. The rural areas are getting poorer at the behest of said Metro New York City area with the help of Albany.

Need another example? Then look to California, a state that has done very much the same thing, with the coastal Blue enclaves ruling over the rural and agricultural areas of the state and, like New York, sucking them dry and imposing increasingly harsh regulations which crippled them, affecting both small businesses and agricultural operations.

Bring that to the federal level and I guarantee it would lead to civil war. Maybe that’s what the New York Times wants.

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In light of yesterday’s post about how climate change will be affecting ketchup and salsa, I had to include the latest bit of climate change idiocy.

It appears climate change is causing Muslims in Nigeria to kill their Christian brethren.

Is there nothing climate change can’t do?

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Is the FBI now Joe Biden’s Gestapo?

According to a new Rasmussen poll, a majority of voters believe that is indeed the case.

Up until recently, it would have been unthinkable, but one of the numerous catastrophic consequences of the Biden administration’s reign of terror has been a plummeting of trust in once-revered institutions. Former Trump advisor Roger Stone said it in November 2021: “We have a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI … as Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo.”

After the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Rasmussen Reports surveyed Americans regarding their attitude toward the FBI and reported on Thursday that “a majority (53%) of voters now agree with Stone’s statement — up from 46% in December — including 34% who Strongly Agree.” That’s an extraordinarily severe credibility problem for the FBI. But will they do anything to correct this impression? Almost certainly not.

Rasmussen noted that their “new national telephone and online survey” found that “44% of Likely U.S. voters say the FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home made them trust the FBI less, compared to 29% who say it made them trust the bureau more. Twenty-three percent (23%) say the Trump raid did not make much difference in their trust of the FBI.”

With the FBI acting more like secret police, working at the behest of the Biden Administration, and by extension the DNC, and less like an actual law enforcement agency, is it any wonder the public’s trust in the FBI and other government institutions has been crumbling as each one has become weaponized against the American people?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summer heat and humidity have returned, the summer itself is slipping away all too quickly, and where we’ll need to jam in as much summer as we can in the remaining time before it fades into fall.

More Climate Silliness?

From the ‘Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Sillier’ Department comes this bit of silliness.

Climate change is threatening ketchup, salsa, and California.

Honestly, I don’t care if climate change is threatening California. Much of that is because a lot of California’s problems are self-inflicted. It seems more than a few of those problems can be attributed to virtue signaling rather than actually solving real problems.

But the problem to deal with is the affects of climate on tomatoes. No tomatoes, no ketchup or salsa.

One-fourth of total tomatoes grown every year on our planet comes from California, but now tomato production is decreasing in the state at an unprecedented rate. The yield of tomatoes dropped by about 23% in 2021 as compared to the year 2015. Plus, the limited supply of tomatoes is further causing a never before seen jump in the prices of popular tomato-based products like ketchup, salsa, and pasta sauce in the US and elsewhere in the world.

The blame for this is being laid on climate change, specifically the drought that has been plaguing the Southwest. To read some of the reports out there, drought was never a problem until the evil humans caused the climate to change.

Then again, a lot of the Southwest is arid or semi-arid and has experienced more than a few megadroughts, some which lasted decades and few which lasted centuries, all of which occurred long before humans started pouring gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Some of the drought problem can also be laid upon the aforementioned virtue signaling which caused much needed water projects to be canceled and existing water infrastructure to be dismantled which has only added to the water supply problems. Somehow, I doubt we’ll hear anything about that from the media.

Sound Advice

(H/T Knuckledraggin)

Thoughts On A Sunday

The heat wave we experienced for two weeks is now long in the rear view mirror. It’s been pleasant since the heat and humidity departed at the beginning of last week. The cooler weather hasn’t dimmed the enthusiasm of the summerfolk as they’re just as busy at the beaches, out on the lake, in the restaurants, and at the ice cream and farm stands.

The summer has been passing so quickly as it seems Memorial Day was only a couple of weeks ago and the Fourth of July was just last wee. It’s hard to believe that Labor Day weekend is only three weeks away. The summerfolk are certainly cognizant that summer will be coming to an end all too soon and are making the best of the time we have left.

It always seems that way. This year it’s even more so considering neither BeezleBub or I haven’t spent much time out on the lake in the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout. Normally we’d be out two or three times a week, but with the high gas prices, particularly at the marinas (about $1 or more than at the local gas stations), a day out on the lake can run through $100 in gas. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford more than a few days like that, particularly in light of very high home heating oil prices of ~$6/gallon expected over the winter. For me that means around $1200 for each delivery.

Like a lot of folks up this way, I am on a budget plan, paying money every month throughout the year as a means of reducing ‘fill up’ shock when heating oil is delivered. This year that monthly payment is $350 versus last year when it was $168 and the year before when it was $110 a month. Thanks, SloJo!

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Now it seems a Marxist professor, Nina Turner, has decided there is no debate about forgiving student loans and leaving the American taxpayers to pay for them all.

That’s simply unhinged.

Student debt cancellation means spending trillions of the American people’s tax money to pay off the bills of a relatively affluent slice of society. One study even found it would benefit the top 20% six times more than the bottom 20%. It’s a regressive taxpayer bailout.

So, it’s little wonder that this proposal is unpopular with voters. Full student debt cancellation—Turner’s position—is supported by just 37% of the public, NPR polling finds.

Like the typical Marxist, she believes no one should be able to profit from knowledge. She comes right out and says that in her tweet. So if I develop a technology that could create abundant and cheap green energy, I should not be allowed to profit from all my work and effort? Yeah, and you know what I would do then? I wouldn’t let anyone know I have it, would be clandestine about it, selling it on the black market. And if the thieving Marxists like Turner wanted to take it away from me I would make sure they got none of it and that all the records, prototypes, and designs would dissolve in nuclear fire...taking them with it.

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Here’s yet another example of just how well strict gun control has been working.

54 people in Chicago shot over the weekend.

It doesn’t help that the Chicago PD is further handicapped by strict limits on who they can pursue and under what conditions.

And people wonder why Chicago’s crime and homicide rates are skyrocketing?

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I’ve mentioned all kinds of double standards over the years. Some are small and trivial. Others are huge and entirely in our faces. This one is one of the latter.

Trump is hounded by the Democrats and his home raided by the FBI for documents ‘someone’ said are classified.

Obama takes over 30 million documents from the White House when he left office and never got audited or raided. No one knows how many of those documents are classified. Obama has never answered that question.

What’s the difference between Trump and Obama?

Trump is a Republican. Obama is a Democrat.

Double standard much?

And then there’s the questions about all of Hillary’s classified e-mails on her unsecured e-mail server...which were never answered and for which Hillary was never punished.

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It looks like California’s carbon offset program is in trouble.

California has been using its forests carbon dioxide uptake as part of their carbon offset. However, their forests have a problem: they’ve been burning down.

Researchers have found that California’s forest carbon buffer pool, designed to ensure the durability of the state’s multi-billion-dollar carbon offset program, is severely undercapitalized. The results show that, within the offset program’s first 10 years, estimated carbon losses from wildfires have depleted at least 95% of the contributions set aside to protect against all fire risks over 100 years. This means that the buffer pool is unable to guarantee that credited forest carbon remains out of the atmosphere for at least 100 years. The results, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, illustrate that the program, one of the world’s largest, is likely not meeting its set requirements.

Carbon offset programs have become popular action plans to combat the climate crisis. California’s carbon offset program was established to utilize the ability of trees to absorb and store carbon and applies to around 75% of statewide emissions allowances.

The program allows forest owners to earn ‘carbon credits’ for preserving trees. Polluters buy credits so that they can emit more CO2 than they’d otherwise be allowed to under state law. Each credit represents one ton of CO2. This exchange is supposed to balance out emissions to prevent an overall increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.

They don’t have enough trees in order to take up all that CO2 the carbon credits were sold to take up, and with one set of wildfires after another, the CO2 taken up by those trees have been returned to the atmosphere. Considering California’s recent records regarding wildfires, particularly since the state prevented reasonable forest management practices such as prescribed burns and brush cutting to remove fuel loading over the past couple of decades. A perfect formula for disaster.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is gorgeous, the summerfolk are enjoying themselves, and where I hear the call of the ice cream stand...

This Hit A Nerve - Men And Women

I have to say that when I saw this post at Instapundit and read the linked article from Psychology Today, my first thought was “Oh, boy. This is gonna generate a sh*t storm...”

The post and article delve into the ‘Rise of Lonely, Single Men’ and the problems that go with it. There are almost 800 comments to the Instapundit post as I write this, some from men who fit the ‘lonely, single’ man profile, others from men and women who offer their observations (and criticisms) of the linked Psychology Today article, and yet others from older men who are, for the most part, past the age where the problems outlined directly affect them but can offer insight into the problems, and more importantly the causes.

I found the PT article to be incomplete and, quite frankly, trite. It seemed more like like a collection of platitudes and more than a few direct “It’s all men’s fault they’re alone and lonely and they need to step up” claims. The article ignores the other side, that being that too many single women have unrealistic expectations that very few, if any men could possible meet.

This is a major disconnect on both sides.

From the PT article:

Younger and middle-aged men are the loneliest they’ve ever been in generations, and it’s probably going to get worse.

This is not my typical rosy view of relationships but a reality nonetheless. Over the last 30 years, men have become a larger portion of that growing group of long-term single people. And while you don’t actually need to be in a relationship to be happy, men typically are happier and healthier when partnered.

Here are three broad trends in the relationship landscape that suggest heterosexual men are in for a rough road ahead:

● Dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing as relationship standards rise.

● Men represent approximately 62% of dating app users, lowering their chances for matches.

● Men need to address skills deficits to meet healthier relationship expectations.

I have questions about the first and third bullet points, that being “Who has set the rising relationship standards and expectations men are expected to meet?” This brings on a follow-on question: What relationship standards and expectations are women expected to meet? It isn’t a one-sided problem, but the article implies that it is. That does not help solve the problem.

A number of comments to the Instapundit post delve into the issue that the PT article glossed over.

Writes one commenter:

“They prefer men who are emotionally available, good communicators, and share similar values.”

No they don’t. Such men do not command respect from women and such marriages tend to end in divorce.

What the fool writer is saying is that women want to have all the benefits of marriage without fulfilling the role of a wife.

Many women today are incapable of being a good wife.

That doesn’t mean the husband and wife won’t split household chores 50-50, but I have seen more than a few women state on various YouTube, Rumble, or TikTok videos that they won’t do household chores, won’t cook, won’t do laundry. They expect their husbands to do them or to hire staff to deal with it. What is the percentage of women who actually have that attitude? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me it to find that a majority of the women feeling this way live in urban areas.

Another commenter brought up something else the PT article ignores, specifically Dr. Helen Smith’s book Men On Strike, a tome written 9 years ago that delves into the reasons why men weren’t getting involved with dating, marriage, and fatherhood. What’s telling is that the issues Dr. Smith brought up back then haven’t changed. To think the issues brought up by Helen Smith aren’t still a factor today would be naive.

Another commenter broke down the statistics of online dating, based upon a study on dating apps like Tinder:

For the dating apps like Tinder, there was a study on likes that went the following (assuming a 70-30 male-female ratio [as] noted [elsewhere]...):

Picture 1000 users:

The top 10% of men get 50% of the women (70 men choose from 150 of the women)
The top 20% of men get 80% of the women (140 men choose from 240 women)
The top 50% of men get 95% of women (350 men choose from 285 women -- and the men in the 20%-50% "normie" range end up with the dregs already!)
Meaning the "below average" men (bottom 50%) get the BOTTOM FIVE PERCENT of women -- 350 men fight over a mere fifteen women, and they are the most likely the worst of the bunch.

Any wonder why dating apps are a complete joke? If likes were like water, men would die of thirst while women would die drowning in a flood.

This does not bode well for those men who want to date, want to get married. Then again, dating apps like Tinder, Match.com, and others aren’t really dating apps, but more like ‘hook up’ apps. The profiles are short on information and matches are based more on looks than the personalities of the people using the apps. This also ties in with the second bullet point in the PT article, that being that 62% of the users of dating apps are men. This means their odds are even worse.

This isn’t a “Men are all…” or “Women are all…” issue. Society has changed over the past 50 years, with rapid changes over the past 20 years regarding relationships, specifically dating and marriage. One other thing that changed during that time has been the Internet, creation of dating apps, and the rise of radical feminism. There are more single-parent families. Divorces have skyrocketed, with 70 to 80% of divorces filed by women. (Some of this seems to be driven by the “grass is always greener” principle, something too many find out is not the case after it’s too late.) Broken families are the norm, not the exception. Fathers are not part of many children’s lives, not because they don’t want to be, but because they are prevented from doing so by family courts. It’s only getting worse...and some people are trying hard to make sure that continues.

Thus endith my incomplete, somewhat disjointed, semi-rant...for now.

A Much Needed Reminder

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’re towards the end of two weeks of hazy, hot, and humid weather with a few more days of this weather forecast. So far I haven’t had to use the A/C in the trusty RAM 1500 because I’ve been on the move. As long as I have open windows and decent breeze, either natural or because I’m tooling down the road, so-called 4x50 A/C (4 windows open at 50mph) works. Katy mentioned to me that she’s been keeping the A/C on at her place, though I neglected to ask her if she was using her convertible rather than the A/C in her day-to-day car.

This weather has certainly made the lake a popular place to be. The two public beaches near The Gulch have certainly been full. The sandbars around the lake with which I am familiar have also been popular and quite busy. The same can be said for all of the ice cream stands in the area. (How do I know this? It might be because I stopped at more than a few...for quality assurance reasons. I had to check the quality of their black raspberry ice cream...)

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They say that karma is a b*tch. They’re right, as NPR has found out the hard way by way of Governor Ron DeSantis’ press secretary.

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Is climate change responsible for the lightning strike outside the White House?

Yes. Yes it is...and the Biden Administration should take it as a hint that perhaps they’re getting a warning from “a higher power”.

Then again, they haven’t been capable of taking hints about anything. “It seems to this reporter” that the only thing the Biden Administration is capable of taking is bribes.

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Are the lights going out across Europe?

Yup.

Germany has already started shutting off city lights and Spain will be following suit.

What’s ironic is that former President Trump warned them this would happen if they became dependent upon Russia for energy.

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We’ve seen what’s happened in Sri Lanka. We’re watching what’s going on in the Netherlands. We’re also hearing news that Canada is going to follow their lead.

What am I talking about?

The willful destruction of agriculture by those countries’ governments. What’s worse is it is being done at the behest of people who do not have people’s best interests at heart, i.e. the Greens, aka watermelon environmentalists, who want agriculture to fail as a means of greatly reducing the human population through famine. (Not that they would ever admit it out loud...well most wouldn’t admit it out loud.)

Who will be next? Not that it would take much to figure that out: the U.S.

There have already been some ideas floated by the government about taking measures similar to those already taken by Sri Lanka (whose agriculture system has totally collapsed), the Netherlands which has already reduced nitrogen-based fertilizers by two-thirds and has decreed a reduction of the remaining by another two-thirds which has had triggered the ire of Dutch farmers and widespread protests, and Canada which has said they will follow the Dutch government’s lead.

This means there’s a question that needs asking: How will American farmers grow enough corn for the ethanol blended with gasoline, and particularly if WRBA is stupid enough to force an increase in the blend from 10% to 15% ethanol?

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As an aside, early this afternoon I attended a pig roast hosted by one of the members of our town’s police department. Lots of pulled pork and some brisket, both of which were delicious. I got to rub elbows with a wide range of my fellow townsfolk. It was in the mid 90’s and very humid, but there was a nice breeze which helped provide some relief from the heat. It helped that there was also sufficient shade so heat exhaustion was not much of a concern.

All in all, I had a great time and it looked like everyone else did too.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s hot, hazy, and humid, thunderstorms are popping up here and there, and where tomorrow is going to be just as hot, hazy, and humid.

It Ain't The Carbon Dioxide

I have been hearing more than a few of the AGW faithful blaming the heat waves we’ve been experiencing on CO2, totally ignoring anything else that might have contributed to the heat waves...like water. Or in this case, over 146 million metric tons of extra water injected into the atmosphere.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.

In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams [146 million metric tons]) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.

That is a lot of water, or in this case, water vapor injected into Earth’s stratosphere. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it also has an amplifying effect in regard to other greenhouse gases. With the amount of water added to the stratosphere due to the Tonga eruption it shouldn’t be surprising there may be warmer than normal temperatures. Eventually that extra water vapor will be gone and the amplification effect won’t be there.

From The Archives - Ignore Human Nature At Your Own Peril

This post came from October 2012. Be aware it does make references to the 2012 Presidential elections, but some of the subjects referenced are still germane today. I did make a few small changes with the ‘old’ out of date information struck out and new info right next to it.
The subject matter of this old post is always timely, but something that needs to be stated again and again. People need to be reminded of things they may have forgotten, or perhaps never knew.

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I have to say that I have been a student of human nature since I was twelve. Not that I knew I was studying human nature at that tender age, but looking back from 44 54 years later I see that even then I wondered what made people tick, what made them do what they do. Not that I was delving into individual behavior so much as human behavior in general.

Over the years I've realized that much of human nature cuts across all cultural and racial lines. There are cultural differences, but for the most part the variations are minor compared to baseline human nature.

I'm not going to get deeply into this subject as it could easily exceed 100,000 words. Besides, I know you do not have either the patience or the time to read something that long. I won't be dealing with psychology as I have no expertise in that area.

Before I continue let me state that I am in no way professionally trained. All of my 'expertise' is derived from over 4 5 decades of observation, personal experience, and deductions derived from that. Please keep that in mind as you read my non-scholarly scribblings.

First and foremost, people will act in their self-interest or the interests of their family and friends above all else. Altruism, as nice as it sounds, is something that we humans will express now and then, and then only under certain conditions or circumstances. No one can be altruistic 24/7. It isn't possible as it makes them either doormats or slaves to others wants and needs to the detriment of themselves or their families. Yet this little bit of human nature is something oft ignored. Over centuries there have been many attempts to create altruistic societies, some by mutual agreement and others by force of arms and 're-education'. Every single attempt has failed.

One of the better documented attempts at all-altruism-all-the-time took place in the American Colonies, specifically in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the early 1620's. They predated Marx's axiom “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need” by 350 years. All colonists would supply the common larder and all colonists would draw from that larder as needed. The problem this created was that more people were willing to draw from the larder than to fill it. It lead to famine and the colony almost died out. Only help from the local Indian tribe prevented them from starving to death. Once they abandoned that philosophy and went back to doing things on an individual basis did the colony flourish.

Over the centuries other countries and cultures have tried the same thing and all their 'experiments' have ended the same way – utter failure, economic collapse, and many times, armed revolution. We've seen it again and again just in the 20^th century: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Cuba (falling apart), and Venezuela (also falling apart). The People's Republic of China, while still a Marxist state, has abandoned most of the Marxist economic policies because they knew they didn't work and saw the results of not making a change. And while their economy is now more capitalist and the economic riches they have brought has made China an economic powerhouse, they still cling to some of the Marxist economic oversight/planning and much of the political baggage that goes with it. In the end it is still likely to come apart as world economics change around them.

And now we get to the crux of the matter – politics. It is here where politicians of all stripes get it wrong in regards to human nature. (Well, not all politicians. Just most of them.) And because of this lack of understanding, much of what they do at the local, state, and federal level falls prey to the Law of Unintended Consequences. This in turn tends to create more problems that what they thought they were fixing (if indeed anything really needed to be fixed in the first place).

During the 20^th century a number of attempts have been made to improve the conditions within our society. Some have worked. Many have not. Those that succeeded tended to work with human nature. Those that failed chose to ignore it, or worse, those supporting them believed that human nature could be changed.

Many of the welfare programs that existed prior to 1965 worked, for the most part. Both control and funding were provided locally and the welfare officials knew their clients. Except for those truly incapable of supporting themselves, most folks weren't on welfare long. In fact, the welfare rolls had been decreasing starting just before the Korean War. The welfare system as it was was working. True, there were more than a few that weren't very good, but they were the exception, not the rule. Then came along Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society, a massive takeover of welfare by the federal government. It's theme was “The War on Poverty.” It looked good on paper, but it overlooked human nature in regards to how the programs were regulated and structured. While the new welfare system was supposed to help those in need, it ended up trapping many of them in poverty, providing too much in the way of help and making remaining one welfare preferable to working. The laws and regulations also had the effect of breaking up many families as too often the only way a family with children could receive assistance was if the father was absent. Other 'incentives' such as increasing benefits with each additional child perversely created more single parent homes with each child fathered by a different man. This was not the original intent of the Great Society (at least I'd like to think it wasn't), but that's what we ended up with. The people 'stuck' in the welfare system decided it was in their best interest to stay within the system rather than taking jobs that provided far less than their welfare benefits.

And so it is with many other 'gifts' bestowed upon the populace by the government. Things that were supposed to help end up making the problem worse as more people come under the sway of things that appeal to their self-interest, not realizing that by taking advantage of these gifts they are giving up some things even more important, namely their independence and self-respect. How often has it happened that the very folks who are 'helped' come to resent those who have provided the help in the first place? How often do they come to feel perpetually entitled to that help? Call those but two of the many unintended consequences of political action taken to fix a problem that didn't need to be fixed.

Then there are policies, laws, regulations, and taxes that move business owners to do just the opposite of what was intended by those same policies, laws, regulations, and taxes. As we have heard over the past four years all of the government's efforts (or should we say the President's efforts) have had just the opposite effect of what was intended. Call this another example of what happens when you don't understand human nature.

When success is punished by heavier taxation, when laws are passed that make it more attractive to do business elsewhere, when regulations make it difficult if not impossible to do business, one of two things will happen – businesses will move elsewhere or businesses that might have thrived will close. Yet those who figured these laws, regulations, and taxes that burden businesses would be gladly shouldered by them are surprised when they find it isn't so. But anyone who understands human nature knows they won't. We've certainly seen that in a number of places over the past few years. All we need to do to see examples of businesses giving up is to look to California, the EU, Argentina, Venezuela, and a host of other countries and states. If government goes against human nature when dealing with business, everyone loses as businesses flee or pull the plug and close their doors. It's happened again and again, yet the Powers-That-Be fail to learn the lesson: punish people enough for being successful and they'll stop being successful or move someplace else and be successful there.

Ayn Rand outlined that issue in Atlas Shrugged, where government took all kinds of actions “for the good of the people”, yet every action they took made things worse. All those efforts by the government had exactly the opposite effect, and businesses and business owners “went Galt”, meaning they refused to support the government and went on strike, denying the government the fruits of their labors. The business owners acted in their own self-interest – as is human nature – and told the government to go screw itself. The result – the economy, and with it the government, headed for collapse. (Rand certainly seemed to understand human nature as evidenced by Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.)

OK, enough said. I haven't covered anything I haven't covered before. But with the upcoming elections I have to remind everyone that the one thing we have to keep in mind is that one party has a somewhat better understanding of human nature than the other, and it's not the party that presently holds the US Senate or the White House. If nothing else they have ignored human nature and taken a course of action that has deepened the recession, driven prices up across the board (except for housing prices, which have collapsed), and made it very unattractive to do business here.