Thoughts On A Sunday

Winter reminded us that it isn’t quite done with us despite it being spring. We had some snow yesterday, though not much. We got about and inch and most of that accumulated on the bare ground (what there was of it), rooftops, and the remaining snow. There wasn’t much on the roads themselves as much of the snow melted when it hit the relatively warm pavement. We have a little more that might fall late Tuesday/early Wednesday, but again not much is expected.

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Though winter is trying hard to hang on, spring is starting to win out.

While out running errands this morning I saw a lot more open water on the big lake, a sign that the warmer temps and longer days are working their magic. The snow banks have been melting away, evidenced by the two at the end of my driveway having shrunk from almost 6 feet in height a week and a half ago to about half that height today.

It’s hard to believe boating season is a little over 6 weeks away.

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I got to some maintenance here at The Gulch, having to replace the gooseneck faucet on the kitchen sink. The failure of a push-on quick-connect coupler meant we had no water coming out of the faucet. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a replacement coupler from the manufacturer, something that would have taken me all of 5 minutes to swap out. From the costs of similar couplers the repair would have cost me all of $19. Instead, I had to shell out $179 for a complete gooseneck faucet assembly.

I wish I could say I was able to take care of it myself, having done so in the past, but I can’t. I found I couldn’t reach the large nut that secured the old assembly to the sink as the space under sink was taken up by the garbage disposal and related drain plumbing which made it difficult to find a position where I could reach the underside of the faucet. I had to call in reinforcements in the person of BeezleBub since he was smaller and could fit in the space I couldn’t. He swung by after finishing his day at the farm and in a couple of minutes we had the old faucet out and the new one in.

One thing I can say about my old home - The Manse - was that there was a lot more room under the kitchen sink which made it easy when I had to change out a faulty faucet about a year before we sold it.

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Is the electrical grid collapse being seen in Africa a precursor to what the Democrats have in store for us here in the US?

The problem in Africa is that the grid failures are getting even worse.

From Zimbabwe, where many must work at night because it’s the only time there is power, to Nigeria where collapses of the grid are frequent, the reliable supply of electricity remains elusive across Africa.

The electricity shortages that plague many of Africa’s 54 countries are a serious drain on the continent’s economic growth, energy experts warn.

In recent years South Africa’s power generation has become so inadequate that the continent’s most developed economy must cope with rolling power blackouts of eight to 10 hours per day.

What has driven this accelerating collapse of the grids in Africa?

Con artists...with government credentails.

So what do Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and South Africa all have in common? A couple of years ago, Zimbabwe agreed to a UN plan to mandate more renewable energy and move away from coal and natural gas. At roughly the same time, Nigeria signed on to the UN Clean Energy Demand Initiative and John Kerry showed up in person when Nigeria’s president signed the mandate. And as we’ve discussed here before, South Africa started its “transition” to renewable energy years ago, dumping $8.5 billion into the plan in a move the New York Times described as a “Breakthrough for the World.” A few years later, people are sitting in the dark with no heat over wide regions of each country. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, right?

It was all done on purpose. Many of the same people who pushed this on Africa are trying to the same thing here. We’ve already seen some of the effects, with coal plants being shut down with no other sources replacing the lost power, natural gas plants being affected by artificially limited gas supplies, and a politically driven and irrationally emotional ‘ban’ on new nuclear power plants, even though the new generation reactors are better, safer, and less expensive to build and operate.

But wait! There’s more!

Do you know who isn’t worried about having enough power? China. They’ve been issuing construction permits for an average of two new coal plants per week for the past couple of years. China’s carbon output is more than double that of the United States, where the energy industry has been slashing emissions for years. And yet you didn’t hear a peep out of John Kerry and the rest of the climate hecklers who flew their private jets to Davos so they could scold everyone else. China can apparently do what they like because they’re a “developing nation.”

The Chinese are laughing their butts off at us right now. We’re tanking our own power grid and our economy to placate the climate gods. I somehow doubt Beijing is too concerned about potentially getting into a hot war with a country that can’t keep its lights on...

So we have been ‘making up’ for China’s expanding CO2 emissions by dismantling our electrical grid and crippling our energy production by being forced to change over to inadequate and unreliable ‘renewable’ energy sources? No wonder China is laughing at us.

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Since I’ve brought up the subject of electricity, I am going to delve into electric vehicles, and more specifically why they are more ‘smoke and mirrors’ rather than a solution to a problem that has been vastly overstated and oversold.

One of my biggest problems is something everyone notices and can’t deny – They’re too damn expensive. When an equivalent electric vehicle costs $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 more than an ICE or hybrid vehicle, and then add the cost of the support equipment – a fast charger, being but one – and you can add up to another $10,000 - $15,000 in costs.

Then there’s other issues like higher insurance costs, higher repair costs, and higher likelihood of the EV being declared a total loss for accident damage that if it had occurred on an ICE or hybrid vehicle would have been repaired.

And then there’s the “carbon footprint mythology”, the claims that EVs are no/low carbon when in fact they are nothing of the sort. It’s more virtue signaling and “economically debilitating and environmentally irresponsible.”

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This is a perfect example of “The legal profession [being] among the many institutions that have been subverted by leftism.” What is ‘this’?

The High Price of Low Bond for Lowlifes.

Jonathan Welch, the Detroit man who was released on a low bond after being charged with several felonies including torture, has now been charged with a fourth murder that happened prior to his original arrest in June.

This victim was 24-year-old Natayla Morse, whose head Welch allegedly bashed in before stealing her car and setting it on fire. The June arrest was for torturing his ex-girlfriend for 4 hours straight in the presence of their child.

Previously Welch had allegedly killed this same ex-girlfriend as well as his mother and step-dad and then killed Morse. Why was this guy released on such low bond ($10,000)?

There are plenty of examples of violent criminals with low/no-bond release from previous crimes committing more crimes, sometimes only hours after being released. When re-arrested, they are again released with low/no-bond.

Does anyone else think low/no-bond release is a stupid idea?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is breaking up, the snow banks are melting away, and thoughts of boating are coming to the forefront.

Not A Living Document

At first I thought it was just my imagination, the surly curmudgeon in me thinking “Everything is going to hell”, that thought being driven by what I’ve been seeing.

What is it I’ve been “seeing”?

An increasing disregard for the law and the US Constitution by the Left.

It has been increasingly apparent the Left has no use for the First, Second, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Too many of them also think Article V can be ignored and that the Constitution can be amended by the courts, more specifically the Supreme Court because the Constitution is a “living document”. By that reasoning, any of the Articles and Amendments can be ‘reinterpreted’ to mean the opposite of their original intent by judicial decree. That means any our our rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights can be eliminated by judicial decree, something I think even the Left would see come back to bite them in the butt.

Some possibilities of ‘living document’ judicial amendments:

Reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment so American citizenship cab be revoked, even the citizenship of natural born Americans. Non-citizens can be afforded all of the rights of citizens, including the right to vote. House reps could be apportioned by lot or by the majority political party rather than by population.

Reinterpret the Fifteenth Amendment to bar white males from voting as a form of ‘racial reparations’ to right previous wrongs.

Reinterpret the Fifth Amendment to make it possible to imprison political prisoners without benefit of trial. The Miranda decision could be overturned and the right to remain silent stricken. The government at all levels could take private property for any reason and tell the owners they’re out of luck because they won’t be compensated.

Reinterpret the First Amendment to outlaw some religions or to establish a government religion – Marxism, for example. Or they can squash the freedom of speech, something that already is being destroyed on college campuses, and if you don’t toe the government/Progressive line you’ll be imprisoned. Your right to protest will also be eliminated.

Reinterpret the Second Amendment so only the government/criminals will have guns.

Reinterpret the Ninth and Tenth Amendments so only the federal government had power and the states would have no jurisdiction at all.

Are these extreme examples of what could happen if the Constitution were truly a living document? Yes, but they are not something that wouldn’t happen. We’ve seen such tyranny before, even here in America before the Revolution. We see it today in other countries.

The first thing I think of when I hear the phrase “Living Document” is “Not worth the paper it’s written on”, be it the Constitution or federal and state laws. It leaves the decision in the hands of the judiciary and Congress and the state legislatures be damned.

What would such a “Living Document” version of the Constitution and the laws lead to outside of a tyranny?

Revolution, and a bloody one at that.

Thoughts On A Sunday

We had the slow-moving Nor’easter pay us a visit this past Tuesday which dumped up to 3-1/2 feet of snow in some parts of New Hampshire. Here at The Gulch we saw about a foot though other parts of our town saw 20 inches or more. The storm disrupted all kinds of things including school and the annual Town Meeting/Elections in a number of towns. My little town was one such, with Town Meeting/Elections postponed until March 28th.

Looking around this weekend you’d think the Nor’easter had been a small storm because so much of the foot of snow that fell has already melted away. The same can be said of the snow piles created during snow removal. The roof of The Gulch and surrounding homes are bare, the snow having melted away in a couple of days. Then again, March snows tend to melt away pretty quickly because of the warmer temperatures usually seen this time of year.

I have to wonder if last week’s snowstorm was my fault. After all, I did renew my lease for the boat slip where we berth the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout during boating season and asked the boatyard where I store it to have it ready by the second week of May. It’s the late winter version of washing your car in the summer – it rains.

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Watching the collapse of a number of banks, many heavily leveraged into both crypto-currency and being woke, does not fill me with the dread so many others are feeling.

This isn’t a repeat of the banking meltdown during the first years of the Obama Administration where banks were heavily invested in mortgage-backed securities, most of the mortgages being risky sub-prime, interest-only, and NINJA mortgages, i.e. ‘junk’ mortgages. Mortgages were handed out like toilet paper in a high-end restroom to people who really didn’t qualify for them, the banks having been pressured into doing so under the Community Reinvestment Act. When the toll of the recession started making itself felt, a rapidly increasing number of those mortgages defaulted because people couldn’t make their payments. Mortgage-backed securities collapsed and took a lot of investment banks, commercial banks, and other financial institutions with them.

The only thing that will be a repeat of last time is the unethical (and probably illegal) privatization of profits and socialization of risks. If these banks and other financial institutions make profits, their shareholders make money. But if those same banks and other financial institutions make bad investments or other financial moves, they are made whole by the the taxpayers. To all intents and purposes, there is no real risk to investors because Uncle Sugar will make sure they get paid. That isn’t supposed to be how it works. The American taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for other people’s bad financial decisions.

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I find it interesting that a New York D.A. is going after Trump for allegedly paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and a number of other women. But when Bill Clinton did the same thing – in his case paying off Paula Jones – there was nary a peep from anyone about Clinton’s illegal act.

Former President Bill Clinton paid Paula Jones a whopping $850,000 to keep her quiet over sexual harassment claims — but was never arrested for it.

The case stands in stark contrast to reports that former President Donald Trump will be arrested on Tuesday for an alleged $130,000 hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016 over an alleged sexual encounter that the two had in 2006.

Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to charges over the payment in 2018 and was sentenced to three years in prison.

In 1998, the Washington Post reported, “President Clinton reached an out-of-court settlement with Paula Jones yesterday, agreeing to pay her $850,000 to drop the sexual harassment lawsuit that led to the worst political crisis of his career and only the third presidential impeachment inquiry in American history.”

Double standards much? But then that’s all we’ve come to expect from the Democrats these days.

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How do we correct deficiencies in Math and English in our schools? There are a number of tried and true ways to do so, but it looks like New York State is trying something different:

Lowering the minimum scores for proficiency in Math and English.

Yeah, that’s going to work out well for the kids who are struggling to become proficient.

New York will change what it takes for students to reach “proficiency” on state math and English language arts tests, calling last year’s lower scores the “new normal.”

A scoring committee that reports to the Board of Regents said Monday that they must take into account the results of last year’s tests for students in grades three through eight to determine whether schools are showing improvement from year to year. On Thursday, the committee wanted to clarify that they must also reset scores because the tests will have new performance standards.

Last year some schools posted shocking results — in Schenectady, no eighth grader who took the math test scored as proficient. And the scores for the third through eighth grade tests throughout the state were much lower in 2022 than in 2019, a result no doubt of the absence of in-person learning during the first year and beyond of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lowering the minimum scores doesn’t fix the problem. It hides them. How the Board of Regents thinks this is going to help anyone escapes me. What it’s going to do is push more kids out of the public school systems and leave the kids stuck in the public schools nowhere to go, nowhere to get the help they need in order to become more proficient.

Yet again, the “state” pushes a policy that pushes everyone to the lowest common denominator, i.e. equity.

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From comments I posted elsewhere in the net come this, something that is becoming ever more important in light of SloJoe’s ill advised push to make washing machines even worse in their ability to actually get clothes clean:

As I have commented elsewhere and in public, increasing energy efficiency reaches a point of diminishing returns, sometimes quicker than most people realize. Whether one is talking about lighting, heating, appliances (washing machine, clothes drier, refrigerator, dishwasher, etc.).

My employer went through an efficiency upgrade program in our facility a few years ago, changing all of the lighting over from fluorescent, sodium vapor lamps (for outside) and incandescent lamps to LED lighting, replacing 40 and 50 gallon electric water heaters with point-of-use demand heaters (including timers to disable them when the building is unoccupied overnight), using automatic switches to turn interior lights on only when rooms are occupied, increased ceiling insulation, and replacing seals on exterior doors and windows.

Our electrical usage for lighting decreased by over 30%. Our heating/cooling costs dropped by 20%.

While we could have done even more to reduce energy usage, we had reached the point of diminishing returns, that point where any additional monies spent would not see a return on investment, costing us more than anything we would save.

It isn't much different with the washing machines that SloJoe wants to make so efficient that they won't work. We saw this already during the initial Energy Star push for energy efficiency. It got to the point where the machines used a fraction of the water and electricity of pre-Energy Star machines...but clothing was coming out of those machines as dirty as when they were put in.

Consumer Reports tests all kinds of appliances and there was an issue the then-missus and I read through that had tested a plethora of Energy Star rated machines because we were in the market for a new washing machine. For the first time in their history they couldn't recommend any of the 35+ machines they tested because none of them were able to clean the test loads of dirty clothing CR used to evaluate machines. With one or two exceptions, none of the machines provided enough water to get the interiors of the test loads of clothing wet. If the clothing isn't wet, then it isn't getting washed.

It looks like SloJoe wants to go past even that level of 'efficiency'. The machines will cost even more money, will not last nearly as long as old machines, and you'll still have to wash your clothing by hand.

Spending a lot of money for a minuscule increase in energy efficiency doesn’t make sense on any level, particularly if that increase energy efficiency comes with a large decrease in the ability of that more energy efficient appliance to do what it’s supposed to do.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where temperatures are going to in the 50’s this week, where preparations for the new boating season are already being made, and where the snow is rapidly melting.

What's The Problem?

The first step to solving a problem is admitting there is a problem. The second and most important step is identifting the problem.

Yeah, I'd say we've identified this particular problem.

Something To Ponder

This certainly sounds true. If it is true then we have something important to talk about, don’t we?

Thoughts On A Sunday

I don’t know about you, but I am not really having any issues with the switch back to Daylight Savings Time, at least not yet. While some folks have said we won’t have to do this anymore as we’ll be staying on DST for the foreseeable future, the only reference I have seen to this change deals with year-round Daylight Savings Time legislation being stalled in the House.

I hate the twice-a-year change which really serves little purpose these days. Some of this dislike is due to New Hampshire (as well as Maine and Massachusetts) being on the extreme eastern side of the Eastern Time Zone. We should probably be in the Atlantic Time Zone and remain on Standard Time year-round. More than a few studies have shown the time changes cause a number of physical and psychological problems for a week or so after the change.

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We have another big storm headed this way, something the Weather Guys^TM are calling a “slow Nor’easter”, with the snow starting sometime late Monday and continuing until Wednesday. At this point they are predicting 12 inches of snow here at The Gulch, but as is usual, they are hedging their bets by telling us local snowfall amounts may be higher.

I’ll be all set to go as the tank on the trusty RAM 1500 will be topped off, the Official Weekend Pundit Generator will be pre-positioned, and the various snow removal implements checked and within easy reach.

As this is supposed to be heavy snow, a number of officials are warning homeowners to remove any snow remaining on their roofs as the added snow load from this storm could cause them to fail. I don’t have to worry about that as most of the snow on our roof is gone.

What’s going to make this storm even more problematic is that Tuesday is Town Meeting/Election Day for a number of towns here in New Hampshire, including mine. I’ll be spending all day at the polls, performing my duties as an election official. This won’t be the first time we’ve run elections during a snowstorm and it won’t be the last. It will mean that I won’t be home to shovel the snow or run the generator should the need arise during the day.

Such is Town Meeting in New Hampshire.

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At least one liberal has come to see the light, particularly when it comes to the January 6^th “insurrection” that wasn’t. And now she’s apologizing for believing the BS.

Writes Naomi Wolf:

There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere.

It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways.

But that erasure of personal and public history would be wrong.

I owe you a full-throated apology.

I believed a farrago of lies. And, as a result of these lies, and my credulity — and the credulity of people similarly situated to me - many conservatives’ reputations are being tarnished, on false bases.

The proximate cause of this letter of apology is the airing, two nights ago, of excepts from tens of thousands of hours of security camera footage from the United States Capitol taken on Jan 6, 2021. The footage was released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.

While “fact-checkers” state that it is “misinformation” to claim that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was in charge of Capitol Police on that day, the fact is that the USCP is under the oversight of Congress, according to — the United States Capitol Police.

This would be the same Congress that convened the January 6 Committee subsequently, and that used millions of dollars in taxpayer money to turn that horrible day, and that tragic event, into a message point that would be used to tar a former President as a would-be terrorist, and to smear all Republicans, by association, as “insurrectionists,” or as insurrectionists’ sympathizers and fellow-travelers.

The deeper we dig into the January 6^th Insurrection hearings the more it becomes apparent that they were an excuse for a witch hunt, something Naomi Wolf now sees to be the case.

Now if some of the other ‘sleepers’ will awaken to this truth.

What makes this even more poignant is the revelation from the Chairman of the Select Committee on January 6^th, Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., claiming the panel never analyzed the blockbuster footage Fox News aired this week.

So they were using only cherry picked video for their hearings and didn’t look at any of the exculpatory videos as they should have. But then that wouldn’t have fit the narrative and have worked worked against the aims of the witch hunt.

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Just when I thought the Biden Administration couldn’t be any more clueless, they prove me wrong. The latest bit of buffoonery?

Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm praising China’s response to climate change. China’s ‘response’ to climate change?

Increasing their already large carbon dioxide generation by building and bringing more coal power plants online. They are already the largest emitter of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the world and are working hard to emit even more.

Somehow I doubt Granholm meant to praise their response...or is totally ignorant of the facts when it comes China’s environmental record, particularly when it has anything to do climate change.

There is very little that an American should find praiseworthy about China. The Communists are lying, thieving, secretive, paranoid, oppressive, murderous thugs.

But Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm couldn’t stop praising Communist China during a recent interview at the annual SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. Granholm showed her admiration for the Butchers of Beijing for the way they’ve shown the world how to deal with climate change.

--snip--

The problem is that China doesn’t give a whit about climate change. They care about appearing to do something about climate change.

In fact, China is building more coal-fired electric plants at three times the rate of the rest of the world combined.

That our own Energy Secretary has fallen hook, line, and sinker for Chinese propaganda isn’t surprising. Biden’s cabinet members have a particularly hard time hiding their misplaced enthusiasm when it comes to China.

What else can you expect from an administration bought and paid for by China?

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In last week’s TOAS I mentioned the plans to ‘geoengineer’ our way out of climate change by affecting the level of insolation – the amount of sunlight entering the atmosphere – as one means of doing so. However, there’s something the proponents of doing such a foolish thing have chosen to ignore, that being the concern that rich nations will be controlling the amount of sunlight while ignoring the input from, or the needs of, poorer nations.

Concern grows over rich nations controlling sunlight.

Radical climate interventions — like blocking the sun’s rays — could alter the world’s weather patterns, potentially benefiting some regions of the world and harming others.

That possibility, climate scientists say, means any research on such methods must consider those risks and involve the countries that already bear the greatest impacts from a warming planet.

“If you’re actually talking about actively deploying technologies to alter the climate, then you need to engage all of us in the discussion,” said Andrea Hinwood, chief scientist at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi, Kenya. “And that means those who are the most vulnerable to these effects need to be able to have a say.”

The push for inclusive research comes alongside growing interest — and debate — over solar radiation management, a little understood way to avoid catastrophic climate change by injecting sunlight-blocking particles into the stratosphere or changing the density of clouds.

Such control could also be used as a weapon in the wrong hands, those wrong hands being those who have no problems justifying their actions as being “for the common good”. Such justifications have been used in the past to excuse all kinds of horrifying actions, including genocide.

It is my opinion that none of this should even be considered until we have a much better handle on the atmospheric physics that drive our climate. Anyone who says they understand those physics to the point they where they understand the semi-chaotic system that is our climate is either deluded or lying.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it’s sunny and warm today, will be snowing to beat the band on Tuesday, and where tomorrow will be used to get ready for everything happening on Tuesday.

From The Archives

As I do from time to time I peruse the Official Weekend Pundit Archives to see if there’s something I should do a follow-up post on. Other times I find posts I wrote years ago that surprise me, mainly because I find it difficult to believe that I wrote something like that. I sometimes feel like a fraud, as if I plagiarized it in it’s entirety because I doubt I could write something so prosaic or profound or humorous. Yet there they are.

The post below dates back to January 2012 and covers two topics I have to deal with now and then, both with my job and in my life – Diminishing Returns and the always fascinating Perceived Risk.

Note: A little over 11 years have passed since the original post. Unfortunately the links below are now dead.

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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 this 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. [Update: In 2021 there were 42,915 fatalities, the highest number since 2005] .) But people perceive flying as more dangerous. Yet how many fatalities have the 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. (Update: There is a lot more data on distracted driving accidents, mainly due to drivers trying to use their smart phones when they should be paying attention to the road. Some years have seen more ‘smart phone’ distracted driving accidents than DUI accidents. That’s why many states have so-called “Hands Free” laws on their books to address this problem. My home state of New Hampshire is one of them.)

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

The latest snowstorm to visit us departed last night, but not before depositing around around 14 inches of heavy snow. It helped that neither the WP Mom or I had to go anywhere yesterday. About the only thing I had to do was shovel snow from around the trusty RAM 1500 and pull some of the snow down from the roof. We were fortunate as there were plenty of others who had to venture out, some of which experienced misfortune in the way of traffic accidents, including one of our little town’s plow trucks. (Fortunately no one was injured but the plow truck did suffer suspension damage.)

The size of the snow banks in our neighborhood is daunting as we are literally running out of space to put the snow. I didn’t think we’d had that much snow, but the evidence can be seen right outside The Gulch’s front door.

And to think I made arrangements to rent the boat slip for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout just last week.

==+++==

Yeah, like this is going to work out well.

Solar Geoengineering 'Only Option' to Cool Planet Within Years, UN Says.

Messing with the insolation level for Earth to ‘cancel’ out warming will have all kinds of effects, with some of them being catastrophic. Yet there are actually some folks who think this is OK because it will “Save The Earth”. Not that Earth needs saving as it has been both colder and warmer on Earth, even during the last 12,000 years, and the Earth did not become uninhabitable.

At least the UN isn’t proposing anything other than studying the prospect at this point.

Research into sun and heat-deflecting technologies to tackle climate change are proceeding at a rapid pace around the globe, prompting the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to investigate their potentials and dangers while stating that these controversial interventions are humanity's "only option" to quickly cool the planet within years.

In a report published by UNEP in February, an independent panel describes what’s currently known about so-called solar radiation modification, also called solar geoengineering, and concludes that, despite its great potential, it's not viable or even safe right now. Nonetheless, amid growing calls from governments to find an emergency brake for climate change—and ongoing, independent efforts to develop solar geoengineering technology—the UNEP is calling for a full-scale global review of the tech and eventual multinational framework for how it should be governed.

My only problem with such geoengineering is that they really don’t know what the effects will be. I have to wonder if proponents understand what the unintended consequences could be.

Ask any atmospheric physicist and they’ll tell you Earth’s atmosphere, and by extension its climate, is a semi-chaotic system. How does anyone factor in the chaotic elements of the atmosphere in order to come up with an even semi-representative model of what will happen? We certainly haven’t seen that with the climate models the so-called ‘climate scientists’ have been using to push their agendas. They haven’t even come close to predicting what is happening and were dismal failures when tested by hindcasting - using the models to ‘predict’ climate starting a few decades or a century ago and seeing how the predictions match the data of what actually happened – which fills no one with even a modicum of understanding with any kind of confidence that these same folks will have any understanding of what their efforts will reap.

If they trigger a premature Ice Age will their only response be “Oops! We didn’t think this would happen. Sorry!”

==+++==

Watts Up With That has been posting a tutorial addressing reliable versus intermittent power generation. It deals with the issues of ‘traditional’ power generation systems – coal, natural gas, hydro, biomass, and nuclear – versus intermittent power generation systems – solar and wind – and the problems with providing power where and when it’s needed. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

This two-part post is a follow-up to Robert Bradley’s recent IER article, “Wind, Solar, and the Great Texas Blackout: Guilty as Charged.” His article discussed how regulatory shifts and subsidies favoring Intermittently Variable Renewable Energy (IVRE) producers resulted in prematurely lost capacity, a lack of new capacity, and upgrade issues with remaining (surviving) traditional capacity. These three factors–“the why behind the why”–explain the perfect storm that began with (or was revealed by) Storm Uri.

It seems it’s primarily folks who have little or no understanding of how electrical grids work and the delicate balancing act required to keep the grid up and running in order to meet demand are the ones pushing solar and wind. Their ignorance, honest or willful, drives them to push for renewable energy in place of reliable and well understood generation systems. What’s worse is that when it is shown the renewable sources aren’t reliable and add to grid instability, their answer is to push for even more renewable sources as if they will magically fix the problem...which only makes the problem worse.

==+++==

Last week I wrote about how social media is hurting our kids.

Legal Insurrection has a follow-up, focusing more on how social media is contributing to the mental illness epidemic among teen girls.

When impressionable teenage girls become ensnared by social media, the real world being subsumed by social media – a make believe world that tantalizes, beguiles, tempts...and lies. Is it any wonder those same teenage girls can be wrecked emotionally and mentally by such a place?

A big story last week was the partial release of the CDC’s bi-annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which showed that most teen girls (57%) now say that they experience persistent sadness or hopelessness (up from 36% in 2011), and 30% of teen girls now say that they have seriously considered suicide (up from 19% in 2011). Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller.

As one commenter to the LI post asked, “By “mental illness epidemic,” are we including the trans craze, or… too soon?”

It is a legitimate question because it seems much of the ‘trans craze’ is hawked heavily on social media. It is a major source of influence among teens and many of the ideas and memes being pushed there are damaging to the mental health and well-being of our teens.

Limiting teens’ access to social media is one possible means of reducing this epidemic, something we can no longer ignore.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re still moving snow, Winter Break is ending, and the kids have to go back to school tomorrow morning.

Will They Destroy This Too?

Just when I think they can’t make it any worse I am proven wrong.

An American institution, one that has existed for 100 years, is being whittle down, eaten from the inside, and being destroyed by people who have nothing but contempt and hatred for American culture and traditions. Of course they are doing so because in their twisted and nihilistic ideology anything they disagree with must be evil and needs to be canceled. Their target?

Disney.

The latest gripe they have with Disney are lyrics to a song from a movie they deem racist.

Cover the kids’ eyes. “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” after the bit about it being a wonderful, sunshine-filled day, continues: “Mister Bluebird’s on my shoulder / It’s the truth, it’s actual / Ev’rything is satisfactual / Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay / Wonderful feeling, wonderful day, yes sir!” That’s basically it. There is nothing in the song about blacks or whites or anything having to do with race at all. The Left hates the song because it is joyful, which Leftists never are, and because it was sung in the movie Song of the South by a black man, James Baskett, in a context that suggests that human beings could still be happy even amid circumstances of oppression and injustice. That kind of thinking blunts the revolutionary ardor, and that will never do.

Above all, Song of the South has frequently been denounced as racist, and so even though there isn’t anything remotely racist about the song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” itself, it is associated with a racist production, and so it has to go. One wonders how the wokesters who run Disney came to this conclusion. Were they inundated with complaints from black Americans and their Leftist “allies,” who found themselves weeping at the collective memory of the chains of the slaver and the lash of the overseer whenever they heard that it was a wonderful, sunshiny day?

Were the Disney offices overwhelmed with angry emails from people berating the sinister media giant for reminding them of the awful Song of the South (of which Disney is so ashamed that it doesn’t offer it for sale, despite the critical acclaim it received upon its release and its historical and cultural significance)? Or (and this is, of course, much more likely) did no one express any offense at all, but the woke censors prevailed anyway?

Of the two possibilities I have no doubt it was the second. Only the twisted wokerati could find offense and they had to do a lot of digging to find yet something else to be offended about. Of course they are the only ones offended. No one else cares because no one else is offended.

It’s time to purge these self-important narcissists from Disney - and from any organization, business, or institution - because they serve no useful purpose. They exist solely to throw monkey wrenches into the machinery of our society, destroying it. Should they succeed all they will leave behind is the proverbial smoking wreckage and they will replace it with…nothing.

Am I being over the top? I wish I was, but I have a feeling that if anything, I am understating the case.

Before And After Mug Shots - Drug Use

California Fleein'

There's nothing I can (or need to) add.

Thoughts On A Sunday

It seems the winter weather is catching up here at the lake, with two more storm systems paying a visit this coming week. While the Weather Guys^TM haven’t yet predicted how much snow we can expect from the two storm systems, they have said it will be plowable amounts. I figure I can work from home on those snowy days. It isn’t that I wouldn’t make the trip into our engineering lab since anything less than a foot of snow is a nuisance. But if I don’t have to drive into work that means I don’t have to burn any gasoline since the trusty RAM 1500 won’t be used.

We’ve seen above average temps here at the lake in January, but February saw both some of our coldest and warmest temps of the winter. Our precipitation total is slightly above normal, but mostly due to rain, not snow. It looks like we’ll be making up for the lack of snowfall over the next week or so.

Oh, and sugaring – maple syrup production – has started in earnest. Quite a few producers started tapping trees a week or so ago. I am not aware of anyone who has started their evaporators yet, but they should any day now.

==+++==

I keep wondering how long it’s going to take before the clueless among us realize that “equity” has absolutely nothing to do with “equality”? While the words sound similar they do not mean the same thing, something which we must point out again and again as we fight the increasing push for DEI ‘requirements’ in schools, colleges, and businesses.

The clueless do not understand what equity entails - due either to ignorance or indoctrination – that being reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator. Well, everyone except the elite.

History shows that is a particularly abysmal idea as in the end societies that do that die, usually in fire and blood. (The elite will ignore that fact that it is usually their blood will be spilled by the people they reduced to that lowest common denominator, i.e. abject poverty and virtual slavery.)

==+++==

Why would a Virginia teachers union and Democrats in Virginia’s legislature oppose teaching children about the victims of Communism?

Although House Bill 1816, the “Standards of Learning; instruction on dangers and victims of communism,” passed the House of Delegates with some Democrat support, it ultimately met its demise in the Democrat-controlled Senate of Virginia, Fox News reports.

The bill was “passed by indefinitely” by the Committee on Education and Health, which means it could be reconsidered at a later date. If it isn’t, the bill essentially will be dead.

--snip--

The bill calls on the governor to “annually issue a proclamation setting the seventh day of November as Victims of Communism Day,” and that the day “be suitably observed” by all public primary and secondary schools.

It also directs the state board of education to update Virginia’s history and social science learning standards to include the “dangers of communism.”

Could it be that they want to hide Communism’s genocidal history, the death toll being somewhere north of 100 million (and counting)? Could it be they want to hide Communism’s/Socialism’s dismal 400+ year record of one economic failure after another? Why would they want to hide any of that...unless they want to make it easier to fool people into embracing Communism and Socialism as a cure-all for the ‘evils’ of Capitalism even though Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system?

==+++==

Is the real reason Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was hospitalized is because he can no longer take care of himself?

Fetterman was sworn in as Senator on January 3 and kept a low profile until his office reported he had checked himself into George Washington University Hospital, in Washington, D.C. on February 8 after feeling lightheaded. His spokesman released statements that all tests on Fetterman came back negative and he was released after two days.

What the spokesman did not disclose was that Fetterman was diagnosed with depression and was advised to see the Capitol physician, which he did the following Monday. The doctor recommended Fetterman check himself into the hospital for clinical depression.

It turns out Fetterman’s lightheadedness was the result of him not being able to take care of himself: He was not eating or drinking enough fluids to sustain himself.

Fetterman is on his own in D.C. His family did not move to Washington with him, opting to remain in their hometown Braddock. This meant that Fetterman, still recuperating from a debilitating stroke while starting a new high pressure job, had no one to look after him. His staff obviously wasn’t. They knew he was suffering from depression and that between the stroke and depression he was difficult to deal with.

Fetterman shouldn’t have run for office in the first place as he wasn’t physically up to the task. WRBA couldn’t lend a hand because they were so busy keeping Biden functional. They have even less resources available today since Biden requires a lot more ‘maintenance’ now.

==+++==

Is the flawed Equal Rights Amendment coming back from the dead?

The Equal Rights Amendment is once again up for debate in the Senate next week, and Democrats and weak Republicans want you to believe that the only “debate” this time around is a procedural one. The original proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to include a clause to guarantee identical legal treatment of both sexes passed in 1972 with a seven-year ratification deadline. Despite extending the deadline to 1982, the ERA never received the requisite approval from 38 of the 50 state legislatures.

Seeking to win some political points by resurrecting the dead amendment, Sen. Ben Cardin, the Maryland Democrat, has proposed a resolution, concurrent with a House resolution passed in 2021, to strike the ratification deadline from the text of the ERA, thus, presumably, reopening the amendment for passage by state legislatures. The Senate will debate the resolution Tuesday, an event that Democrats hope to keep at the bumper sticker level: Who doesn’t value men and women equally?

The amendment, however, does not pose the question of the equal inherent worth of men and women, as Cardin and his colleagues on the right and the left would have you believe. The question, instead, as most political ones, is one of prudence. Is it prudent to treat men and women identically—or, reframing it, to treat women as men? History, and most of the women in it, issue a resounding “no.”

I can think of a number of negative effects the ERA will have, particularly for women. Here are just a few of them I can think of right off the top of my head:

1. Women will have to register for the draft. (It’s not much of an issue now as it was back in 1972 because the draft isn’t active like it was back then...but it could be.)

2. The dynamics of divorce will change, particularly when it comes to child custody. (This is something I can support as in general men get the short end of the stick, being awarded custody under 20% of the time.)

3. Women convicted of crimes will have to receive the same sentences as men for the same crime. Right now women receive lesser sentences for identical crimes.

4.It will mean an end to all sex-segregated spaces – locker rooms, restrooms...and prisons.

5. There will also be repercussions for men: “When you treat women identically to men, it turns out, society merely adapts standards to favor more feminine characteristics, enabling women to succeed but feminizing men in the process. With the ERA in place, it’s worth asking if any part of society would be permitted to exhibit the masculine virtues.” The answer to that is “No”.

The Law of Unintended Consequences will come into play and the downsides are likely to outweigh the upsides, just as Phyllis Schlafly understood back in 1972, which is why she fought so hard against its ratification.

Maybe Congress should take a closer look at the ERA to determine if it will cause more harm than good in its original form.

==+++==

And that’s the news from a snowy Lake Winnipesaukee, where February vacation is in progress, the ski resorts are busy, and more snow is on the way.

Social Media Is Hurting Our Kids

The claim has been made for a while that social media is something that children should be banned from using. I will admit that at first I thought that might be going too far, but after seeing its effect on children, and particularly teens, I have to wonder if banning it might not be enough.

The effects of social media on kids has been seriously underestimated since in most cases they do not have the defense mechanisms maturity brings. (OK, defense mechanisms that maturity might bring as there plenty of adults out there who have major problems dealing with social media.)

Social media present people with multitudes of false impressions about how wonderful other people’s lives are as well as being used to torment and bully others, particularly teens. There have been times when social media has driven people to suicide, usually by way of cyberbullying. This is particularly true of teens.

Clearly, kids are in terrible pain. In trying to understand why, many conservatives have embraced ideas about the damaging effects of social media championed by Haidt and Twenge. The Republican senator Josh Hawley cited Twenge’s work in calling for a ban on social media use by kids under 16. “Depression and social media use go hand in hand,” he wrote in The Washington Post.

--snip--

Social media has not connected or united the world. It’s tearing people apart. And young people are suffering the most. Researcher Jean Twenge, who has spent her career chronicling social media’s effects on kids, has observed that the longer children use social media, the more likely they are to harm themselves. This finding held true for both boys and girls — but especially girls. Depression and social media use go hand in hand.

As I have written elsewhere, social media tends to twist people’s perceptions of reality because social media is really cyberspace, and cyberspace isn’t reality. However, people treat it as if it is. Too often they don’t understand that most people try to paint a picture of their lives that is better than reality. People looking at those “My life is great” posts start to feel their own lives don’t measure up. This is particularly true of teens because too often they have little life experience to use as a comparison. It makes them vulnerable...but it’s something we can do something about by distancing our kids from social media. The question is, will we be brave enough to actually do so? We don’t need legislation to do so. We just need to be parents and tell our children “no” when they insist they absolutely must have a smart phone.

Sometimes New Isn't Better

When I saw this post in Instapundit my first thought was “Let me guess: The decision to do this was made by either a bean counter to save a few bucks or some mid-level suit without any understanding of ‘How Things Work’.” What is it I’m talking about?

User interfaces, in this case the user interfaces inside of cars and trucks. (The linked post slams the user interface of the Chevy Colorado.) More specifically, when it comes to controlling various functions like the radio station tuning/volume, interior lights, exterior lights, the heat/AC/temp/fan speed/vent selection, and a whole host of other functions usually handled by knobs, switches/buttons, and sliders.

The move away from the traditional controls and towards using a touchscreen on the vehicle’s infotainment center has some serious downsides, the biggest being the driver is required to take their eyes off the road in order to use those controls.

As Glenn writes, “Touchscreens are cheaper than buttons and knobs, which is why they’re pushing them. But they’re inferior.”

There’s one comment to the post that lays it out succinctly:

The biggest problem with the interface is that everything uses the same control. By that, I mean that unlike 'traditional' controls in automobiles (even if they all go through some kind of on-board computer) is that there's no muscle memory involved with controlling various systems.

With traditional controls - buttons, switches, and sliders - one quickly learns which button, switch, or slider does what. That in turn leads to a driver not needing to look at the controls in order to change anything from the the fan speed, temperature (heat/AC), the vent outputs (defrost, floor, side/center vents), headlights, internal lights, radio station/volume, and so on. All require different actions and the body quickly remembers how do these various functions without thinking about it. The driver doesn't have to look away from the road in order to do any of these things.

The touch screen interface destroys that because the same action will have different functions depending upon which screen is active. The driver has to look at the screen in order to perform routine functions. That means taking their eyes off the road. That is what is called "A Bad Thing" in the engineering biz.

While some may try to use the "Then why don't you use voice command?" argument, I have found that can be as distracting as having to look at the screen, particularly if you have to perform some function you do only now and then as compared to every day.

User interfaces are supposed to be designed to make things easier for the user, not the manufacturer or engineering staff.

It isn’t just in automobiles that I’ve seen user interfaces that were awful and not very easy to use.

Does anyone remember the debacle that was Windows 8?

The programmers decided that a user interface that looked just like the ones seen on smart phones and tablets was a great idea...and it might have been if laptops and desktops had touchscreen monitors. But back then only a few monitors had that capability. People were still using a mouse or touchpad to navigate and the tablet style user interface was a painful experience with those devices. This drove Microsoft to come out with Windows 8.1 which returned to a version of the Windows 7 interface. (By then the damage was done and most people stayed with Windows 7 rather than switch to Windows 8.)

I have seen other poorly designed user interfaces for things like test equipment which made it more difficult for service personnel to use the equipment for its intended purposes. The engineers who designed it may have had no problems navigating the interface, but the average users hated it.

With that it mind, GM needs to go back to the drawing board for the Chevy Colorado’s user interface and return to using actual knobs, switches, and buttons...before it gets someone killed.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I was out making a quick trip to our local Walmart to pick up a couple of things I needed to help my friend I mentioned in yesterday’s post when I ran across Skip of GraniteGrok fame. He was doing some grocery shopping with his grandson when he spotted me and wondered what I was doing there on a Saturday afternoon. (As I have mentioned more than once in TOAS, I tend to do my Walmart shopping Sunday mornings prior to church. So me being there on a day other the Sunday was unusual.)

As I was driving to and from my usual Sunday Walmart shopping run, I saw that much of the ice that had formed on the lake during the sub-zero temperatures a couple of weekend ago was gone. There were still sections here and there that had a thin skin of ice, but there were large swaths of open water. This is going to be one of those few winters where the lake never freezes over entirely. I can think of three occasions over the past 20+ years when Lake Winnipesaukee did not freeze over entirely, so it is not an unprecedented event. Of course the Climate Change Faithful will point to it as yet more proof the Earth’s climate is warming. If the failure of the lake to freeze over had occurred only over the period of the past 20-some years, I might agree. But history shows numerous winters where the lake didn’t freeze over entirely over the past 150 years or so.

==+++==

Skip at GraniteGrok (mentioned above) has posted about the logic we use up here in New England to decide whether or not it’s time to turn on the heat in our homes. Considering the cost of heating oil, propane, and natural gas, the decision can seriously affect our bank balances, so it’s something we take seriously. If the house is heated with wood, the decision is more about when it’s time to put more wood in the stove.

As I think I’ve written before, back when I was working for Digital Equipment Corp (“DEC”), I was transferred to Honolulu for a 3 month stint. I remember a couple of days after arriving that the morning was around 65 degrees F when I got up for work. Coming from a few weeks of 10-28 degrees, this was SPRING TIME! Just a polo shirt and khaki pants.

The locals were walking about in puffy down jackets. Quite the contrast.

The above also ties in with my post from yesterday.

==+++==

Richard Fernandez reminds us (and the Progressives and their ‘followers’) what Communism is all about and how it’s been a dismal failure everywhere it’s been tried.

It’s really amazing how Communism, even after killing hundreds of millions of people on the past 100 years and ruining every country it ever ruled – without exception – can routinely take the moral high ground and unfailingly strike the pose of the movement of tomorrow.

That some of our young people think communism, or it’s slightly less destructive sibling – socialism – will solve ‘problems’ that aren’t really problems shows they have never cracked open a history book and have absolutely no understanding of human nature. If they had, they would be running away from those related genocidal ideologies as fast as they could.

Communism and socialism go after the ignorant young because they have no basis to make any judgments about whether or not what they’re being told is BS or not, makes any sense or not, will work or not. They’re gullible, inexperienced, and have little knowledge of the real world. That makes them the perfect target for indoctrination, exploitation, and use as cannon fodder.

==+++==

It turns out the ignorant young aren’t the only ones supporting Progressive ideology. The willfully ignorant white liberals aren’t much different than the indoctrinated youth, particularly since they don’t have to deal with the fallout of destructive Progressive legislation, regulations, and programs.

My good friend Harrison Finberg — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him, but we can be good friends on Twitter these days — noted this tweet from Philly First Ward, the Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward. We have previously noted the mayoral candidacy of Helen Gym Flaherty,[1] one of the furthest left of the ever-growing list of hopefuls, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer described as a “longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing”. Mrs Flaherty’s campaign website is full of the usual ‘progressive’ bromides, but, at least as of this writing, there’s no actual issues page, telling the city’s voters — of which I am not one — what she would actually do, other than those bromides, in office if elected.

While she says that she will fight “gun violence,” what she doesn’t want to do is fight the criminals who use guns. I guess that’s not much of a surprise, since ‘progressives’ seem to think that guns simply levitate and shoot people all by themselves.

As long as none of the laws and policies put forward negatively affect them they don’t care what their Progressive politicians do to others that are not “them”.

==+++==

First, it’s Elizabeth Warren. Then it’s Rachel Dolezal. Now it’s Raquel Evita Saraswati.

What do they all have in common?

They are all liberal white women who claimed ethnicity they don’t have.

Elizabeth ‘Fauxcahontas’ Warren claimed Native American heritage. She doesn’t have a single drop of blood that allows here to make that claim.

Rachel Dolezal claimed to be of African American heritage. But like Warren, she has no such genetic heritage.

The latest is Raquel Evita Saraswati who claimed to be a “queer, Muslim, multiethnic woman.” However she, like Warren and Dolezal, is not what she said she is.

But now it has come to light that contrary to her claims, she is infected with the Left’s original sin: Raquel Evita Saraswati was born Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, and is as white as the native population of Switzerland.

And so it continues.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice is receding, the skiers are still coming to hit the slopes on this holiday weekend, and where I do not have the holiday off.

Dependence

I was recently reminded of just how dependent we’ve become on the Internet when friend called me in a panic, asking if I could help her configure her new cable modem and wireless network.

Apparently her old wireless router decided to end itself and died. She ended up deciding to both update her Internet service speed and replace her now defunct wireless network. Herein lies the problem.

Her ‘tech’ guy couldn’t seem to get the new setup up and running before the weekend.

I headed over there last night and attempted to get her network up and running.

I failed.

It wasn’t until my second trip there today I was able to figure out that her new cable modem was the problem. After being activated by the cable company I found out that even though it would be recognized by the cable system and link in, there wasn’t any Internet access. It was necessary to perform the necessary rituals to gain access to the Internet. But the modem would lose connection to the Internet when the power was cycled, a necessary step in setting up the wireless router. That necessitated performing the rituals...again.

In the end I could not get her network up and running which upset my friend to no end. Without access to the Internet there were many things she was going to be unable to do, and the inability to do those things had her upset.

It showed me just how dependent she was on the ‘Net, how much she could no longer do without it. How much so many of us could no longer do without it.

I know I would have to change how I pay most of my bills as with only a couple of exceptions I pay all my bills online. A couple require me to pay either with cash or check since the establishments in question do not have online payment capabilities. I also do quite a bit of shopping online as do most of us.

In my friend’s case, most of her TV viewing is via streaming on the ‘Net, so she’s also been TV-less for some time, too. That’s the case with a lot of us as well.

At least my friend did manage to get a new cable modem and it appears to be working. That means I’ll be back over to her home tomorrow to set up her wireless network.

So True

I can attest to the veracity of this, having seen proof first hand.

Maybe Time To Ban Assault Box Trucks?

After seeing reports of this incident in Brooklyn – a man in a U-haul truck running down pedestrians – one has to wonder if there will now be calls for U-Haul Control measures in the Big Apple.

It appears the driver of the U-Haul was someone who had rented the truck down in Florida, meaning the deadly “assault box truck” was brought in from out of state. His violent rampage injured 8 people and killed 1, bringing into question whether “Assault Box Truck Free Zones” will be declared across the Metro New York area.

Thoughts On A Sunday

Seeing the difference in temperature between last Saturday and yesterday shows an almost 70ºF swing from the low temp last week and the high temp this week. While a bit of weird winter weather-wise, I am not complaining that the temps this past week have been above normal. That’s meant the furnace here in The Gulch hasn’t been running all that much, at least during the day.

The sub-zero temperatures helped more ice form on the Big Lake, though there is still plenty of open water in a section of the lake called The Broads. While Ice In was declared last week, it being defined as all five ports of call for the MS Mount Washington being iced over. That it was declared so late is unusual, but I have seen late Ice In’s before in the 40+ years I have resided in New Hampshire.

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When I heard the governor of my state is considering a run for president in 2024, my first thought was “Oh no!”

My second thought was “Oh HELL no!!”

Mind you, I have no dislike for Chris Sununu. He’s been a decent governor, but there are a lot of things he should have been addressing in New Hampshire that he’s been wishy-washy about, particularly things like CRT/DEI ‘indoctrination’, or refusing to tell the “Abortion No Matter What” pro-choice extremists to step off (though he did sign legislation banning on-demand third trimester abortions despite being pro-choice himself).

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To add to the embarrassment for my home state of New Hampshire, we now have one of our school districts – Milford - deciding that urinals in the boys’ lavatories in the middle and high school be blocked off and made unusable by anyone, all in the name of “compromise” when it comes to bathrooms and gender identity. I kid you not.

Dozens of students walked out of their New Hampshire school after the district banned urinals in a compromise to a proposal that would have blocked children from using facilities based on their gender identity.

The school board decided a few days before the Friday walkout to prohibit students at Milford Middle School and Milford High School from using urinals or shared spaces in locker rooms.

The ban in a town of about 15,000 people roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Concord, New Hampshire’s capital, was the culmination of a long debate about district rules about bathroom use and gender identity.

People need to be fired. The school board needs to be voted out because they have caved to the woke busybodies who are doing this not to actually help anyone, but to make themselves feel better about themselves for having done something, even if it’s the wrong something.

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Yeah, I can agree with this wholeheartedly:

I think what I respect most about Pres. Joe Biden is how every day, in every way, he shows how empty and hypocritical all the Trump hating was.

Also, big shout out for inflation-fueling porkfests, ruinous energy policy and foreign policy humiliations.

‘Nuff said.

==+++==

It looks like the actual science is in and it’s telling us that the claims about masks preventing the spread of Covid is just a bunch of hooey.

The landmark Cochrane study shows that the mask skeptics were right.

I believe in the scientific method: make an observation. Ask a question. Form a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. Listen to the answer. Insisting on the answer before pursuing this methodological approach is not science, it is propaganda.

And “masks work” was never more than propaganda — rooted in mechanical plausibility, not actual science — furthered by public health officials, left-leaning government leaders, the press and the party faithful starting in 2020 and continuing to the present day.

--snip--

Those who claim to be on the side of “the Science” will continue to push unscientific policies in order to prove that they were right all along. This is the sunk cost fallacy writ large. Don’t admit mistakes. Ignore the actual science in favor of “the Science.” And continue to punish those who challenge. As well as those most vulnerable who simply aren’t in a position to challenge at all.

“Science” has apparently been rebranded by the left. It is now a slogan — a tagline — shouted at heretics to signify one’s moral superiority and loyalty to the party. What we have now is “science” that ignores the scientific method, which means “the science” is a cult. And a dangerous one at that.

It’s Lysenkoism brought forward to the 21st century by the Progressives in order to back up their power plays.

The aforementioned Cochrane study is here, and says this:

One of the largest and most comprehensive studies on the effectiveness of masks found they do almost nothing to reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.

The study reviewed 78 randomized control trials—experiments that have long been considered “the gold standard” for medicine—which assessed the effectiveness of face masks against flu, COVID-19, and similar illnesses. It found that wearing masks “probably makes little or no difference” for the general public, no matter what kind of mask is used. Even N95 masks, considered the most effective at filtering airborne particles, showed no clear benefit for health care workers.

The study was published on January 30 by the Cochrane Library, a world-renowned medical database that is famous for its high-quality evidence reviews. It comes as a battering ram to the recommendations of the U.S. public health establishment, which urged children as young as two to wear masks throughout the pandemic.

“This amounts to the scientific nail in the coffin for mask mandates,” said Kristen Walsh, a clinical professor of pediatrics in Morristown, New Jersey. “I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that some schools are still actively forcing children to wear masks, much less children who need to see faces to learn.”

This will, of course, be devoutly ignored and the mask mandates will continue despite the evidence to the contrary.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where it feels more like spring, the snow is melting, and the furnace isn’t running nearly as much as it might.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences Reigns Supreme

I think I can safely say pretty much everyone has heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It’s also safe to assume that that a good portion of those folks have experienced the effects of that law.

Throughout history we have seen actions taken, either be individuals, corporations/businesses, and governments that have generated unanticipated, and quite often, undesired results. Depending upon who took those actions, where, and the magnitude of those actions, the unintended consequences can range from trivial to profound.

Sometimes unintended consequences are the result of willful ignorance as there are plenty of examples of others pointing out flaws in plans and warning about likely side effects of the planned actions, yet those warnings are poo-pooed, dismissed out of hand, or ignored as if they never existed.

A recent example of this?

The #FightFor15 movement.

One of the consequences that many warned the proponents of a $15 minimum wage about was the loss of jobs, particularly jobs that could be better and more cheaply handled by machines. States and cities which implemented a $15 minimum wage saw job losses, particularly at some of the chain fast food restaurants. Workers taking orders at the front counter were replaced by ordering kiosks, allowing walk-in customers to place orders without the need for a worker to do so.

As I have mentioned in other posts here and there, our local McDonald’s has done that during a recent remodel. If memory serves, Wendy’s had announced they would be installing ordering kiosks in their franchises. We have a Wendy’s in our town, but I can’t say whether or not it has has such kiosks installed. (I haven’t been in a Wendy’s since the start of the Covid Pandemonium.)

Another reason for machines replacing human workers?

Businesses can’t seem to hire the people they need, even at $15 or $25 an hour.

Where are all of the workers who demanded $15 per hour, who now have access to much higher wages for entry-level, mindless jobs? They’re sitting at home playing video games, smoking the devil’s lettuce, and living off the handout-heavy U.S. government under President Joe Biden. That’s where they are.

--snip--

The answer? Automate. Just look at your local McDonald’s owners or any other fast-food chain businesses. They’re no longer sitting around and begging for slackers to show up and click buttons on a screen.

Robots are now the logical and increasingly affordable solution to the ongoing labor shortage problem.

Sure, it’s more expensive up front than hiring a 16-year-old kid, but robots never take off work, never come in late, and never whine about how hard the job is. And they never need a raise, benefits, unemployment insurance, or any of the other headaches that come along with traditional workers.

Oh, and robots aren’t interested in forming unions, which also happens to be quite attractive to both small and large companies attempting to stay alive in Biden’s inflation-ridden, supply-chain-disaster of an economy.

The #FightFor15 movement really shot itself in the foot years ago when defiant business owners who were merely trying to keep their businesses afloat turned to automation as waves of minimum wage strikes unfolded across the country.

It isn’t like none of this could be foreseen. Businesses in Europe, particularly fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s, have been using ordering kiosks for a number of years because of labor costs and more particularly some of the labor laws that made hiring human workers less attractive.

Call it another example of how the Law of Unintended Consequences reigns supreme over all of the ignorant economic nonsense put forth by the Give-Us-More-Money-Or-Else advocates.

I Gotta Get Some Of This Too

I thought this post would be enough to give the anti-gunners the vapors.

I figure this one will give them nightmares:

Thoughts On A Sunday

The sub-zero temperatures have departed, making today’s temps in the 20’s and 30’s feel absolutely balmy. My neighbors had issues with their heating system during this bout of arctic temps which made for a couple of interesting days of trying to keep their pipes from freezing.

For the most part it was business as usual for most folks. Some ski areas closed their lifts because of the high wind chills (-40ºF to -50ºF). Firefighters had to battle frozen hydrants, frostbite, and hypothermia.

I could hear the furnace here at The Gulch running almost continuously once the outside temps fell below -15ºF. I saw dollar signs in the form of water vapor exiting from the furnace flues here and at my neighbor’s homes.

At least the trusty RAM 1500 had no issues dealing with the cold. However, some friends found their vehicle batteries weren’t up to the task of starting the engine under such cold conditions. (This happens every time we experience sub-zero temps.)

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This isn’t something that surprises me in the least.

Wind power isn’t what was promised...but not necessarily for the reasons you think.

While wind power sounds like a great idea, the reality is that it hasn’t come close to meeting the promises made. Those who went all in one wind are finding wind cannot meet their needs, particularly when they need the power they generate the most. There were a lot of things ignored by proponents, or worse, were not informed or mis-informed about.

However, there’s a different problem affecting wind power: Wind turbine manufacturers are having problems while others have shut down.

Now the entire industry is hitting headwinds they hadn’t counted on and it could spell disaster.

The European wind industry has warned of continued difficulties in 2023 as high materials costs and slow approvals for new wind power projects drag back profitability, despite rising demand for renewable energy.

…The effects of the Russian war on Ukraine drove up prices for energy and important raw materials such as steel last year, creating a perfect storm for the European wind sector.

Despite escalating demand from governments and customers for renewable energy as a result of the energy crisis, the slow EU and UK approval processes have created a backlog of projects and delayed new turbine orders.

And then there are quality issues to deal with, with two companies, Vestas and Siemens, having a problem with quality which has eaten into earnings, turning profits into losses.

Don’t you find it odd that they are having demonstrably terrible problems with faulty products and hardly a peep about any of it in the mainstream cheering for wind? There seems to be a concerted effort to hide the reliability of these products from the get-go in the hype and renewable raptures.

You (say, Siemens, for example) get a reputation for overpriced junk – no matter how subsidized it is, your order sheets will start reflecting your reputation.

It isn’t just overseas manufacturers having problems.

Here in the U.S., General Electric was humming along in its financials except…*sad trombone*…when it got to their turbine business. Ooo, they took a hit, too. Really fugly numbers.

…The company’s renewable energy business has been facing challenges due to inflation and supply chain pressures. The unit reported a loss of $2.2 billion in 2022. GE is reducing global headcount at the onshore wind unit by about 20% as part of a plan to restructure and resize the business.

How is GE and Vestas and Siemens planning to deal with their problems?

Subsidies funded by taxpayers.

Any industry that is supposedly so beneficial and popular with ‘everyone’ shouldn’t require taxpayer money to survive. That should be telling us something right there.

==+++==

Biden finally ordered the Pentagon to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon. I’d say he waited too long.

That it carried such a huge instrumentation package - the size of three buses - makes me think it had nothing to do with studying weather. The package was large enough to carry high-resolution multi-spectral imaging systems, ELINT systems, and more.

If the Chinese had talked about these ‘research’ balloons well in advance, talked about the mission and the instrumentation being used for weather research, I would have been more inclined to believe them. But the fact that they hadn’t and was dismissive of questions about them after they were spotted makes the paranoid side of me doubt their explanation.

Having been involved in the defense industry for over 20 years, understanding reconnaissance systems and their requirements, the Chinese using high altitude balloons (60,000+ feet) for intelligence gathering makes sense. Satellites are expensive to build and launch, even to low earth orbit (62 miles minimum altitude). Balloons are cheap and the instrumentation packages can be much larger, heavier and carry more equipment than satellites. The also move a lot slower than satellites (1-200mph versus 17,500 mph) which can allow for much higher resolution imaging.

Weather research balloon versus ‘spy’ balloon? Of the two, I believe the one shot down was the latter.

==+++==

Karens can ruin just about anything. It’s even worse when NPR gets involved and backs the busybody Karens.

What are this batch of ‘woke’ Karens complaining about?

The Kansas City Chiefs.

Kansas City has been on an adrenaline high since the Chiefs won the AFC Championship last Sunday. Go anywhere in the metro and you’ll see Chiefs gear everywhere. Next stop: the Super Bowl in Arizona.

But of course there are the party poopers, the Debbie Downers, the Karens, who want to take the city’s pride down a notch or two. You can find them at KCUR, the National Public Radio affiliate in KC.

--snip--

On Friday morning, as the victory high in KC was beginning to taper off, the KCUR website published a story with this title:

“As Kansas City Chiefs head to the Super Bowl, their violent traditions alienate even some local fans”

It goes downhill from there...like it always does with these ignorant, intolerant, narcissistic wokerati.

==+++==

And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the lake still isn’t frozen over, the temps have returned to somewhat normal levels, and winter rolls on.

From The Comments (From Someone Else's Blog)

A little over a week ago I addressed California’s money grab by way of a wealth tax that could end up being the death knell for the once Golden State.

However, I didn’t give enough thought to the constitutional implications of such a tax, something that may prevent California (or heaven forbid, Congress) from being able to impose upon taxpayers. But someone else did.

From the comments to this GraniteGrok post comes this analysis of those constitutional implications:

Isn't this the same thing the Bottomless Pit of Sacramento wants to do with its subjects...er...citizens? California wants to tax "the rich" a portion of all of their assets, including unrealized gains. Worse, they want to continue to do so for ten years after "the rich" depart from the Pyrite State. After all, 'The State' has better use for their assets than those who own them, earned them, made them, right?

Too bad there will be constitutional restrictions - primarily under the Fifth Amendment's "Not be deprived of...property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." They aren't taxing income or sales. They want to confiscate private property for public use, but not compensate the owners for the property taken by the state.

This is something I think SCOTUS will find compelling should California do something this stupid. Then again, California has been doing increasingly stupid things that is driving out more people, businesses, and the money that goes with them.

Wicked Cold

It’s going to be a might chilly up this way. As I write this the temperature is -9ºF with a wind chill of -33ºF. The temperature will hit -17ºF by morning with the wind chill hitting close to -50ºF.

The summit of Mount Washington has already seen a record breaking wind chill of -106ºF -109ºF. (Update: Overnight the 'old' record which lasted all of a few hours was broken with an even bigger windchill record.)

I got home around 4:30pm after dealing with some town business and parked the trusty RAM 1500. I have no plans to use it again until late tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. I have no plans of stepping outside The Gulch until then, and even then only if it’s absolutely necessary.

At least the trusty RAM 1500 hasn’t balked at starting during these cold temps...so far.

Unfortunately one of my neighbors has been having problems with their furnace, something that has been difficult to handle because they live in another state as their place is their vacation home. The last thing they need is for their furnace to fail during the deep freeze we’re experiencing.

It’s wicked cold up here...