Defund The National Parks Service

This is along the lines of something WC Varones posted earlier today.

A friend of mine is planning a trip to Pinnacles National Park. Here's what their website looks like today.

Can you say, "extortion," boys and girls? Of course you can. I knew you could!

Defund the lot of them, the greasy weasels. They can't keep a website up because of the government shutdown? Maybe they shouldn't be trusted with anything.

Japanese Investors Quietly Flee To Safety

From Reuters.

TOKYO, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Japanese investors piled into foreign bonds in July, making their biggest net purchase in three years - providing early evidence that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's expansionary policies are having the desired effect.

Japanese investors bought 3.482 trillion yen ($36 billion) of foreign bonds in July, the largest amount since August 2010, data from the Ministry of Finance showed.

It also marked the first net monthly purchase since January, as investors sought higher returns overseas after the Bank of Japan launched its massive bond-buying stimulus campaign.

Emphasis mine.

Whatever statist fantasy world the author lives in, this most definitely does not show that Abe's expansionary policies are having the desired effect unless the desired effect happens to be driving all investors out of Japan in a mad rush for the exits. What it shows is that savvy investors are fleeing the Yen, getting into anything they can get their hands on, even manipulated, depressed instruments like foreign government bonds.

Only a desperate person would deliberately buy US Treasuries right now when the Fed is holding rates low by printing money and monetizing government debt. The Japanese investors are fleeing because they know the jig is almost up for Japan and the Yen is going to depreciate. They also know that Japanese Government Bonds at 0.22% are a lousy investment when the Bank of Japan (BOJ) is committed to printing money until inflation hits 2%.

No word on how the BOJ is going to stop the inflation freight train once it hits 2%, crashes through the barricades and hurtles on to much, much higher numbers. In the meantime, anyone who can do basic math and isn't blinded by patriotism or rose-colored glasses is getting out of the country.

I have no doubt the the combined force of all of the BOJ board members could stop this with their bare hands. No, really. They'll hit 2% inflation and it will just glide to a halt.

Back To School Night

... obliterates the myth of "hard-working American families struggling to survive."

I've reported this before on the 'Post, but this year it was the same story at my daughter's public high school. only about 10% of  the parents showed up for back-to-school night. At our sons' Catholic high school, it was close to 95%.

That nauseating, recurring line in political debates about "hard-working American families, struggling to make ends meet, unable to chase the American Dream blah blah blah" is just a canard. Most of them expect success to fall in their laps.

Purple Fuzz

This is one of my favorite photos of the year. I left it huge, so clicking on it ought to be worthwhile.

Enjoy.

Mexcan Sage, Salvia leucantha

Too Much Kindness

I like Megan McCardle. Well, I like her writing and, by extension, I'm guessing I'd like her as a person. She's got a typically good analysis of the Detroit pension mess over at Bloomberg which describes how the pension trustees handed out extra money to the retirees because they felt like it. However, Megan is too logical to understand that what the trustees said was exactly what they meant.

It’s very hard for me to attribute this to something benign, like total economic illiteracy or gross inattention to their responsibilities as pension trustees. I can’t imagine that anyone who can read and do basic arithmetic ever thought that draining off the “excess earnings” in the good years could result in anything other than exactly what it has wrought: a pension fund so disastrously underfunded that it may not be salvageable. No, wait, that’s too kind: they were also draining off … what should we call them? “excess non-earnings”? in years when the economy was melting down, the Dow Jones was trading for less than a Mickey Mantle rookie card and the region’s chief industry was teetering on the brink of extinction. What could they possibly have been thinking?

Megan read precisely what they were thinking and refused to believe it.

“People were having a hard time, living hand-to-mouth, and we thought we would give them some extra,” Ms. Bassett said.

Ms. Bassett cared. That's all that mattered. Ms. Bassett, like so many progressives,  felt certain that the excess money she was handing out would be replaced somehow. "How" didn't matter when she saw "need." That "how" hasn't turned up for any of the other cities or counties or nations where this same sort of thinking has predominated didn't matter either and that's the point Megan is missing.

If you had asked the people in Detroit or Greece or Japan why they handed out money they didn't have and were never going to earn, they'd look at you like you were crazy. Yes, there was graft and corruption and power-hungry political demagogues, but the folks making the financial decisions are all living on a foundational principle of caring. Caring and kindness trumps math. You can see it over and over again, whether it's in Obama's speeches or the harangues of your progressive friends on Facebook and Twitter.

So, yes, Megan, you're absolutely right. They can read and do basic arithmetic. They just don't think those things matter as much as compassion.

Elegance, Wisdom, Inspiration

Is it any wonder why she's our Maximum Leader?

Arguing Politics Is To Miss The Point

Last night, my wife and I went to parents' back-to-school night at our daughter's public high school. A couple of the teachers had tangentially political comments to make and one looked like a cartoon character you'd draw of a crazy progressive who waited tables at UCSD's Che (Gueverra) Cafe. Every teacher we met was solidly progressive. I'm certain that, given the political leanings of the education industry, the same little dramas were being played out all over the country.

As I sat there, I thought how surprised these people were going to be when the roof caved in on them. In Chicago, for example, the school system is down $1B and is about to go bankrupt. That led to a very simple thought that, because of articles of secular faith adhered to by the progressives, was probably a complete mystery to the teachers.

The government is simply too large for society.

Really, it's not any more complicated than that. Commercial enterprises pay for the State and if the State gets too big, you have what we have right now - monster debts and deficits leading to school closings, infrastructure rot, pensions reneged and so on. That the progressives fight for more spending and resist the cuts shows how they're a religious movement and not a philosophical one.

When you argue in favor of smaller budgets, the dialog usually goes something like this.

The government is too big.

OK, what would you cut?

Well, we're going to have to cut entitlements because that's where most of the money is being spent.

You'll never cut entitlements. They're too politically popular. In fact, here's a list of Republicans who vote for entitlements all the time.

Which is beside the point.

"The government is simply too large for society" is not a debate issue, it's a mathematical fact. As Detroit is showing us and Japan is about to, to argue politics is to miss the point. Popularity doesn't pay the bills, tax revenue does. If you don't have the income, you can't spend it.

Somewhere out there in the past was a turning point where we as a society decided we didn't need to balance our budgets. I wonder what that was. Keynes, perhaps?

Oh well, it was a nice run while it lasted.

Miracles

So I'm a scientist and engineer by training and practice. I never really believed in all that mumbo-jumbo mystical stuff. I went to church on Sundays and sent my kids to Catholic school, but I rolled my eyes when people got supernatural on me. Still, I bought the concept and performed the rites.

I was in my late 40s when I experienced a miracle. I have no doubt what it was, Who it was or what it meant. Well, to be perfectly honest, I laugh sometimes as the meaning becomes deeper and I realize how shallow my previous understanding was, but jeezey moe, it was God interacting with me, just how deep can I be expected to go to comprehend all the things He was trying to tell me?

When I hear atheists talk about there being no proof of God, I feel like I'm talking to a person who has never left Kansas telling me there's no proof that the Pacific Ocean exists.

"Dude, it's right here. I swim in it. I dive in it. One of our sons surfs in it."
"It's all explainable through science. You are only imagining it."
Sigh.

I was blessed enough to be given proof. It's more than metaphysical.

You Probably Need To Pacify The Area First

On Twitter, I read through a particularly nasty exchange where some Tea Party type was told, in essence and with a lot of profanity, that they were a heartless scumbag because they wanted to cut government spending. My first response, which I did not post, was to ask, "Is Detroit compassionate?" That's an old theme here at the 'Post - it's not compassion when you go bankrupt, it's actually quite the opposite.

That led me to scope out the Detroit Free Press on line to see how the Motor City was doing these days which led me to this article on street light repair. Detroit's got a lot of infrastructure rot and self-inflicted damage that city crews are valiantly trying to fix. Not everyone is joining in the effort, however.

Although several residents said streetlights are needed in the east-side area, one man suggested keeping them in place could prove challenging.

“You know, it’s a start. ... But then again ... if you get some young guys that are selling drugs out here who don’t want streetlights, they’ll shoot them out,” said David Adkins, 47, who lives on Tacoma, which is part of the east-side project area.

Confronted by this situation, my thought would be to pull all repair crews and occupy and control the area first. If you're so short of money that you can't do all basic repairs or pay full pensions for retirees, it makes no sense at all to fix things only to have them wrecked by the residents. That's like setting fire to what little money you have.

So that's where things stand. They've run out of money to do all the necessary repairs and are faced with trying to extend services into what is effectively hostile territory. That's quite a harvest for the compassionate and open-minded who spent the place into bankruptcy and discarded traditional, nuclear-family-based morality.

Given their budget situation, a Starter Army is probably all they can afford. Still, they could do worse. When it came to pacifying barbarian lands, these guys were pros.

Fun Google Music Trick

I just went over to my Google Music account where I've got thousands of songs stored. I looked at my individual songs and then sorted by the number of times I've played them. It turns out that the Monkees are still my favorite, but the Newsboys are almost as popular. Farther down the list, there are some Rolling Stones and swing music, but the list is dominated by the Monkees and Newsboys.

I'm now listening to the list in order. It's way cool. I'm going to make a playlist of all the songs I've heard 10 or more times. It will be eclectic, but it should be full of teh awesome. At least for my taste. :-)

Give it a try!

Update: OK, this is just too weird. The music doesn't flow at all. It goes from mid-60's pop to modern, Christian hard rock to swing to ...

Video Of The Day

I saw that I'm practically copying Dean's post title. Sorry about that, old boy. I suspect my content's a bit different.

Dig this.

Rejected West Side Story Lyrics

When you're a Jet
You're a Jet all the way
From your group health plan
To your 401K

You're welcome.

Getting It Back With Interest

Last week I worked at Catholic Charities again, helping the poor and homeless get food. If you ever get a chance to do this, I'd highly recommend it. It's more fun than you can shake a stick at*. I met a guy who had just gotten out of prison and was looking for a start on his new life. I also got to meet several Chinese people and had a great time working through our menu translation. Smiles and laughter all around.

It's definitely worth your time.

* - Properly formulated: More fun than at which you can shake a stick.

Japanese Companies Are Quietly Protecting Themselves

... by getting some of their money out of the country.

A while back I posted links to some alarming commentary about Japan from hedge fund manager Kyle Bass. His takeaway: if you're invested in Japan, get out now. It turns out Japanese companies are doing just that. They're not in an economic boom, so they're not flush with profits, but thanks to the Bank of Japan printing money like mad and making it available and insanely low interest rates, they've got money to spend. They're spending it overseas.

Real estate in Viet Nam.

Japan currently tops the list of 47 countries and territories investing in Viet Nam’s real estate. According to statistics from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, Viet Nam attracted a total of US$12.63 billion of FDI in the first eight months of this year, a rise of 19.5 per cent over the same period last year.

Assorted businesses in Thailand.

Incoming non-portfolio investment reached Bt278.6 billion in the first half of this year, with Japanese projects accounting for 54 per cent of all foreign-owned projects and 66 per cent of foreign direct investment (FDI).

Despite having a trade deficit, they're on a record pace for investment outflows.

“In fact, Japanese FDI recorded its biggest monthly outflows from Japan ever in July (JPY3734bn or USD37bn)”.

“If Japanese firms keep investing outside Japan at the current pace, FDI outflows this year could exceed the previous record amount in 2008 (JPY13.2trn)”.

“While FDI is expected to remain elevated, the Japanese trade deficit is estimated to have widened in August”.

They're bringing their money to the US as well.

Softbank Corp. (TYO: 9984), the Japanese mobile network operator, is in the process of completing its acquisition of Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S). Earlier this week, Dish Network Corp. (Nasdaq: DISH) dropped out of the fight for the third-biggest U.S. wireless carrier and Softbank now hopes the deal will clear its final hurdles by the beginning of July. Once completed, it’ll mark the largest Japanese acquisition of a U.S. company in more than 30 years.

This would make perfect sense and be a sign of stability if Japan was experiencing tremendous growth and was seeing wild inflation in asset prices at home, but they're not. They've had deflation for quite some time now and their economy has been stagnant for nearly 20 years. To me, this looks like the smart money is getting out while it still can.

Feeling Temporarily Underbussed By The Pope

Yesterday's papers ran stories of an interview with Pope Francis with excerpts talking about how the Church needs to stop yapping about things like gay marriage, contraception and similar minor issues and focus instead on spreading God's love. I had three reactions in succession.

1. Seriously? We need to stop talking about gay marriage? I've been pretty active in the Church for decades and gays and contraception are not things we talk about voluntarily. The topic is being relentlessly rammed down our throats. Even with all the popular culture emphasis on semen-coated feces* being indistinguishable from our children, we still don't talk about it at Mass. I'm pretty confident that of the last 50 homilies I've heard at Mass, the topic of gays came up in no more than three sentences and those as a member of a set of examples of self-worship. We don't bring the topic up on our own.
2. OK, I get it. Even if the topic is brought up, it's still a peripheral one. Just because some dingbat starts baiting you with, "Have you finally stopped hating gays?" it doesn't mean you need to respond. Dismiss the subject and move on to the things that matter. It's not that important. If it were, we'd have been talking about it already. See #1.
3. Duhh, it's the press. Who knows that the pope really said. The press is so gay-besotted that the pope's quote could easily have been taken out of context, blown up, printed on poster board, stapled to a long pole and waved around. I've seen a few references on Twitter and other blogs that this is exactly what happened.

At a higher level, all popes are tough dudes. That's part of the reason they get the job. I don't mean tough for non-Catholics, I mean tough for the faithful. #2, whether that's what Pope Francis really meant or not, is the correct response and it's very, very hard to do.

Focus on Christ's love and God's forgiveness. Got it. Will do, sir.

* - Yes, I know this is terribly crude. However, I'm trying to get with the spirit of the secular science crowd and call things by their proper name. You wouldn't want to be a prude, you know.

Yep, That Was Me

Driving in to work today, going through a residential area, I came up on what looked like the crumpled body of a little creature, the size of a cat or possum.

If you're wondering who that was in the car near you saying, "Awww, poor thing" about a bathmat laying in a heap on the street, that was me.

Hey, even bathmats need sympathy sometimes.

Should I Give Apple Access To My Medical Records, Too?

... actually, ObamaCare will take care of that problem by digitizing and centralizing the stuff so that's probably a lousy title. Oh well.

Walt Mossberg has his standard Apple fanboy column up today, this one praising the new iPhone and its fingerprint technology. Subtitle: "Fingerprint Technology, New System Make the 5S the Leader of the Smartphone Pack." Walt must never have heard of the NSA.

I'd have to be completely out of my mind to have my fingerprint stored on my phone. Yes, yes, I read about how the fingerprint will only be stored on the CPU and won't ever, ever, ever been shared with anyone else. I'm supposed to trust that? When every big company out there owes its existence to the government, those promises automatically come with expiration dates. The instant some government agency decides it wants access to that data, all they have to do is threaten to enforce this or that regulation on Apple* and poof! no more promise of fingerprint data security.

No iPhone for me, thank you very much.

* - Given how much power has been ceded to the bureaucracy, they can simply rewrite rules to punish defiant companies. No Congressional action is required.

Microsoft Update Drives Me Bonkers

Maybe I just don't know how to use it.

I've got a PC that I had to wipe clean and restore from a restoration partition this week. No problem. All the data was saved and the apps can be reinstalled muy pronto. The restoration took almost no time at all. (Thank you, Dell!) What killed me were the Windows updates. The cycle went something like this.

1. Boot
2. Open Windows Update
3. No updates needed!
4. Click on "Check for Updates"
5. Wow! I found some critical updates. Should I install them?
6. Yes
7. Download and install
8. You need to reboot. Want to reboot?
9. Yes
10. Go to #1

Why isn't there just a "Bring my computer up to date" button? There was no reason for me to be involved at all. The thing could have gone through that whole iterative process on it's own while I went off and did something more rewarding. Instead, I was up until about midnight nursing the thing.

The sooner Adobe Creative Cloud is available on a Chromebook, the better.

Your Science And Engineering Fact Of The Day

The battery in a 2001 Nissan Altima can be replaced in the time it takes to drink one Newcastle Brown Ale.

You're welcome.

Confronting Mechanical Mortality

The FredMobile, my 2001 Nissan Altima, isn't long for this world. There, I said it. No matter how hard it is to admit, I'm going through the stages of grief dealing with my upcoming loss. I think I'm at the "That's not my oil leaking, that must be another car that parked there" stage.

I wandered around a local Nissan used car lot and the fellow helping me confirmed my fears when he showed me their boneyard of trade-ins fated for auction. 12+ year old cars that have more than 175,000 miles and have been left outside all their lives are worth almost nothing and all need thousands of dollars worth of work to keep them on the road. They were uniformly beaten up and looked a lot like the FredMobile.

I'm hoping I can squeeze another 25,000 miles out of it without putting any money into it. I think it's time to make sure I've got AAA roadside assistance.

It's Not Funny Any More, It's Just Sickening

I've read a lot of the breathless gasping about President Faculty Lounge and Secretary Botox falling down a flight of stairs over Syria but as it goes on and on, it's not interesting any more. A train wreck is fine at a distance and for a moment, but when you get to actually dealing with the real wounded, it's not amusing, it's a horrifying grind.

Yesterday, I saw a WSJ headline about Secretary Botox meeting with his Russian counterpart to discuss this Syrian chemical weapons farce and read a couple of quotes where he acted like something real was going on and he was being all stern and tough with Assad and Putin. It was nauseating. Everyone in the world knows this is a charade in the purest sense of the word. That is, this is not a figurative or allegorical charade, it is, quite literally, play acting on all parts with America as the butt of the joke.

It's going to go on and on and on.

As we were driving around Cambria over the weekend, my wife asked me what I would do about Syria if I were Obama. At the time, I would have backed off the whole thing, blaming congress and fed some long-dead racism case file from the FBI to my lapdogs in the press. I would have gotten Syria off the front page as fast as I could and replaced it with an expose of a 3-person Idaho skinhead movement. We'd all be back to talking about how whitey hates dark-skinned people like we should.

Now because Secretary Botox is an idiot, Syria is going to be thrust in our faces for who knows how long, each day worse than the previous one. It's going to be like hearing the same knock-knock joke over and over and over again with us as the punchline.

All of the right wing bloggers who have used words like "incompetent" and "unprepared" to describe Obama over the last several years were right all along and it's obvious to all. That was fine to type on the keyboard, but the true horror of living under such an administration is going to be worse than you had imagined. It's not prose any more, it's real.

Secretary Botox. Our point man on Syria. We're screwed.

Putin Was Just The Mopping Up Operation

... the Battle for Syria was lost when we withdrew from Iraq.

Assume Obama and Kerry hadn't spent the last month hitting each other in the face with cream pies. Assume for a minute that Obama's soaring rhetoric convinced America to pinprick, err, surgically strike Syria. If either Syria had retaliated in some way or Assad had fallen and it looked like the Al Qaeda goons in the rebel armies were going to grab mustard gas stockpiles, then what? There's no way to follow up on this without the fabled Boots on the Ground.

Just where were we going to stage such an invasion? At sea? With what?

How do you inject, say, 100,000 troops into Syria with no land borders on the place? Syria is geographically large and the damage from either a collapse or a significant retaliation wasn't going to be contained by drone strikes. Not only was nothing prepared for these eventualities, it's not immediately obvious that anything could be prepared. For one, we managed to vacate the best place of all to stage such a force - Iraq - and for another, we've got nothing like the kind of fleet required to support such a massive invasion from the sea.

Everyone wants to focus on the gossipy part of the collapse. Putin dunked on Obama, Putin wrote a snarky op-ed, Obama gave a lousy speech, Kerry rotated his feet through his mouth on a daily basis, Chuck Hagel smeared library paste all over his sleeves while working on his construction paper art project and so on. It's irrelevant. There was no practical way to follow up on the strikes and our enemies all knew it.

The speeches and idiocy were just decorations. The real failure occurred when we gave up on bases in Iraq. Without them, all we were ever going to have were speeches and a couple of cruise missiles. That's no deterrent to a guy who's willing to gas thousands and others who are willing and able to support him.

This is what landing 100,000 troops looks like.

You're Nothing Special

... so saith our Secretary of State*, Vladimir Putin.

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.

Snarking aside, that editorial was about a thousand times more coherent than anything coming out of Laurel and Hardy. When I read it, I thought I could see Russia's motivation in supporting Assad. The last thing they want are more weapons in the hands of Islamofascists, finding their way into Chechnya and Russia.

Just what the heck America is trying to accomplish remains a mystery.

* - At least I think that's his title. Since he's running our foreign policy, that's got to be his position, right?

Buy The Newsboys CD

No, really. Go buy it.

I got it on a whim off a Pandora playlist and so far I've loved every track.

Now stop reading this and go buy the CD.

The Model UN At Punahou School Was Never Like This

... where Billy gassed some of the second graders and then Joey stood up for him and made a total fool out of Jane and Walter as they bumbled around trying to do something about it until Wayne, Barbara and Massoud all quietly left the room to go watch Spongebob Squarepants.

When they got older, international relations seemed so easy in the Ivy League faculty lounges.

I'm Going To Turn Into A Criminal

I swear, that little sticky tape they put at the top of CD jewel boxes is enough to make me start pirating music.

Maybe You Can Hear This

... I know I can't. I've tried several times today to make it through this song, but I keep getting interrupted. Enjoy it for me.

What If The Russians And Chinese Shoot Down Some Of The Tomahawks?

The Tomahawk cruise missile is a relatively slow flyer. Like the V-1 of WW II, military aircraft of today are faster than it is. Given that they have to be fired from naval platforms of known locations in any attack on Syria and given that Chinese and Russian warships outfitted with surface-to-air missiles are in the area, what happens if the aforementioned use the cruise missiles like skeet shooting targets?

What if the Chinese and Russians have aircraft in the air and relay targeting data to Syrian anti-aircraft missile batteries? Is that a provocation? An act of war? A humiliation we'll just swallow?

Would we go to the UN and demand signal inspectors examine captured, raw RF data logs in order to determine who tipped the Syrians of and then demand a strongly worded letter against the Russians and Chinese, both of whom are on the Security Council?

Montana De Oro Tide Pools

Yesterday we went south from Cambria to hike around in Montana De Oro State Park. It's not a very big park, but it's got enough to keep you busy for the day. The land is coastal desert, a lot like the canyons around where we live in San Diego. The coast, however, is quite rocky, very different from the soft, sandy beaches of home. The tide pools are plentiful and dramatic.

A cool, murky day added to the mystery and romance of the pools.

In San Diego, at least around La Jolla Cove, it's a decent swim to get from the shore to the kelp beds when you go diving. Here, there are any number of places where you'd be out into something interesting within a short distance from shore. The water's colder so you'd need a heavier wetsuit, but the sea life would have to be different, too. I might give diving a try the next time we come up.

Seaweed Pressed In Glass

... at least that's what this looked like to us. It's actually a seaweed assortment growing off the pylons of the pier in San Simeon Bay. I felt like the plants had arranged themselves perfectly for our viewing pleasure.

It's as if they were showing themselves off, hoping you'd select one of them to take home.

Everything You Need To Know About AT&T U-verse

So we finally managed to wrestle AT&T to the ground and get the Interweb Tubes turned on here at the rental. Well, "turned on" is probably not the right phrase, given how often this comes up:

My favorite part is the URL. HURL01. Hurl, indeed.

Fail.

On the plus side, we hiked in Big Sur yesterday at Salmon Creek and got some nice waterfall photos. We've got an ocean view here and I captured the sunset yesterday, turning it into a 1-minute video. The photos are something I can probably share while we're here, but the video will have to wait. Uploading a 30MB file to YouTube through this DSL connection has almost no chance of success.

I Have No Choice But To Go Out Into The Real World

We're spending a long weekend up in Cambria. We have rented a perfectly lovely house that has excellent ocean views. Well, except for the fact that the ocean views they showed on the Internet had the numerous telephone wires Photoshopped out. Still, it's a beautiful place.

I would include photos, but there is no Internet service. Thanks to AT&T, there are so many locks on the Internet access that it has been impossible to get on.

Flipping through the DirecTV channels last night, we found nothing but porn and horror movies. Aside: what is wrong with you people? How in the world can there be enough demand to support 34 porn channels? And how many disembowelments do you need to see?

Meanwhile, the sports channels have all been disabled. That means we won't be able to watch any of the World Cup qualifiers this weekend. At least, until they can manage to get the Internet working.

That means we are just going to have to go out and hike in Big Sur. I feel so incredibly put out.

:-)

Seriously, though, I hope you have an equally enjoyable weekend. I'll try to share some photos later.

Green, Leaf-shaped Grasshopper

We found this handsome chappie in our back yard the other night and he held still for me while I fried his retinas with macro, flash photos. The poor thing has a confused look on his face as if to say, "Why do you keep doing that flashy thing to me?" My favorite part is the leaf-texturing along his sides. He's not just leaf-colored, he's leaf-shaded. Well done, sir!

I left the photos large so they might be worth a click. I'm hoping Tim could do a quick ID here. I started to peruse the bug guide, but ran out of time.

We're Not Going To War In The Classic Sense

... we're just going to shell them for a while from a bunch of warships off their coast.

It's a fine distinction, but I think you can see what John Kerry's getting at.

Fortunately, neither Syria nor their Hezbollah allies are capable of formulating a retaliatory response. I mean, really, what are they going to do, blow up some American civilians somewhere? It's not like these are the kind of guys who would do that sort of thing. No, I envision them sitting in the corner with their hands folded neatly on their laps, thinking long and hard about what they've done.

Tierrasanta September Sky

We had some dramatic clouds for Labor Day, so I did a 30 minute video, condensed down into 30 seconds. There's a full HD version available at YouTube. Enjoy.

Amazing Cat Behavior Of The Day

Dig this.

Uh-Oh Of The Day

Kyle Bass is pessimistic about Japan.

Convincingly pessimistic.

Fortunately, his doomsday scenario won't come to pass until private entities start dumping Japanes bonds (JGBs).

Uh oh.

Japan’s public pension fund, the world’s largest, said it has been selling domestic government bonds as the number of people eligible for retirement payments increases.

“Payouts are getting bigger than insurance revenue, so we need to sell Japanese government bonds to raise cash,” said Takahiro Mitani, president of the Government Pension Investment Fund, which oversees 113.6 trillion yen ($1.45 trillion). “To boost returns, we may have to consider investing in new assets beyond conventional ones,” he said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday.

Obesity In The Hood

Earlier this weekend, we were shopping at the Ikea in Carson, CA. It serves a polyglot clientele and I was struck by the number of morbidly obese, mid-20s women with kids walking, err, waddling the aisles. None of them had wedding rings, so feel free to insert the standard Scratching Post moralizing here. I spent a little time googling the issue and came up with this as the standard explanation.

After the 1992 riots, city government made it a priority to bring full-service grocery stores back to South and East L.A. neighborhoods, and though there were some successes, most of the stores that did open closed soon after. Now, there are 60 full-service grocery stores in South L.A. serving an average population of 22,156 residents per-store, compared to 57 stores in West L.A. that serve only 11,150 residents on average.

While the disparity in access to healthy food is undeniable, the potential solutions are more debatable – how can the city, and the residents of South and East L.A., attract grocery store chains?

Which is answered in the next two sentences.

Why can't a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's turn a profit in traditionally underserved areas? If they build the markets, will the customers come?

The analysis of the situation always assumes that the residents want to have a healthy diet, but don't have access to it. That seems to defy business logic. The numbers above show that if there was really a demand for the product, the stores would open. Grocery store chains are pretty sophisticated operations and they don't leave much on the table when it comes to making profit.

This parallels the education argument in the same neighborhoods. When poor performance is seen, all kinds of explanations are trotted out with the exception of: they just don't care.

That explanation would seem to fit all the facts.

Image from this post which itself has a related story.

Father John

I am blogging from my Galaxy S3 while parked outside a person's house where my wife is inside bringing Communion to the homebound. I spent the morning watching English Premier League soccer and wasn't quite sure what I would post to the blog today, but God provides.

One of the things that always struck me about Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II was how they gave their bodies completely to Christ. They did not end there ministries until they were physically unable to go on. It was a fantastic example to the rest of us of how to completely devote ourselves to God.

At our parish we have a very elderly priest named Father John. He is old and infirm he struggles to walk and most of the time he is in great pain. He said Mass this morning for the first time in probably two months. There were other priests who could have said Mass in his place, but he chose to do so. I don't know what his motivation was, whether it was something he loves to do and wanted to do again or whether it was an act of devotion. Whatever his reason, it was tremendously inspiring and moving.

His homily was given in a clear, ringing voice and spoke of humility. He spoke with humor and feeling. It was great.

You don't always need to look to famous nuns or popes for inspiration. Sometimes a simple parish priest will do.

"I Have Not Yet Made A Decision"

... but Obama made enough of a decision to throw British Prime Minister Cameron out into the line of fire. The very lowest bar of all in American foreign policy is to get the British to go along with something. President Obama had made a decision to launch strikes because you know the British PM didn't get humiliated in front of Parliament on his own. He had to have had a phone call with the American Commander-in-Chief before taking one for the team.

Way to go, genius. I'll bet Cameron will be happy to do that again.

Meanwhile, there's this. Is it satire or real news? Hard to tell.

The Catican Guards Taken With A Nikon Coolpix

I love the photos this thing takes. It's a little too big to fit in your pocket comfortably, but that's because it's got a lens that goes to 22x optical zoom. Beautiful shots. The two below are cropped and then reduced more than 1/4 in size (surface area). If you click on them, you'll get a really good view of the Guards.

Now That The Brits Have Backed Out Of The Syria Thing

... Obama should rethink this whole bomb-them-gently idea. Instead, I recommend he show how he's working for peaceful change in the region and have his Silicon Valley cronies fund the opening of a satellite campus of UC Berkeley in Lebanon where Syrian refugees are given free tuition to take gay, lesbian and transgender studies classes while receiving abortions and birth control at taxpayer expense.

Hey, at least it would be consistent with what he's been saying all his life.

Unstable

Clicking around the Interweb Tubes this morning, I found an article on Japan's Nikkei Index. I hadn't been watching it and discovered I've missed out on some wild drama. Dig this 1-year chart.

In 5 1/2 months, it almost doubled.

That's not the Costa Rica index or the Moldovan 20 industrials, that's Japan.

That's totally unstable.

Link Of The Day

... comes from Fr. Dwight Longenecker who shreds atheists as boring. Here's a tidbit.

Atheism on the other hand is so mind numbingly dull, and the worst kind of atheism is the self righteous, “We’re good people too you know” kind of atheism. “Oh, look at me. I’m working at the soup kitchen! I campaigned to ban nuclear power! I have a ‘co-exist’ bumper sticker on my Prius.” They pretend to be revolutionaries, but to me they seem as dull as the McMansion next door and the usual suburban, fast food, shop at the mall American. At least the old fashioned atheists followed their logic and tried to wipe out everyone who didn't agree with them. Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot had teeth. The present day respectable atheists are about as interesting as yesterday’s oatmeal.

Read the whole thing. It puts my feeble efforts to shame.

Yes, It Is Indeed 2013

Dig this.

Earlier Wednesday, the U.K. introduced a draft proposal to the core nations of the United Nations Security Council seeking authorization for military action against Syria to protect civilians. But Russia and China blocked the action, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, said in a Twitter message that was verified by her spokesman. Russia, one of the council's five permanent members, is an ally of President Assad.

The US ambassador to the UN released an official statement on Twitter about a possible move towards a war in the Middle East.

What, did she forget the password to her Tumblr account?

:-)

Assad Will Claim Victory

As I understand it, we're going to bomb Syria to punish them for using chemical weapons against the rebels, but not to destabilize or topple the regime. In effect, we're acting as NFL referees here. Assad's team Illegally Used Chemical Weapons resulting in a 23 Cruise Missile penalty and Loss of Airplanes.

Or something like that.

Meanwhile Assad will broadcast to his loyalists and allies that he withstood the might of the Crusaders and still stands, defiant and faithful to Islam and the Arabs. Of course, as B-Daddy argues, toppling the regime would be even worse than not toppling it, so there's that to consider. I'm still trying to figure out what we get out of the whole deal other than smug, self-satisfaction.

I swear, this administration never left the faculty lounge.

Professor Pepper Schwartz Needs To Watch Some East Cleveland Street Fights

... and maybe take some math and finance classes, too.

So Miley Cyrus went full porno on MTV. You can find her performance on YouTube. I watched about 3 minutes of it. The word appalling doesn't do it justice. By the end, I was thinking that anyone involved in any way with that Caligulan piece of trash should have all government benefits taken away, permanently, including social security. Everyone watching it for real at home should have their benefits taken away, too. If you want to live like that, fine, but expecting the rest of us to take care of you is not OK.

My fiscal dream will come true long before Miley's teddy bear orgy one.

Professor Schwartz, a highly decorated veteran of academian bubblery, penned a piece of fantasy wherein she recommends that we all just get over Miley Cyrus' antics and use the event as a way to counsel our kids. Great idea, Pepper. I'm sure the single moms out there will get right on it.

This, of course, is another piece of fantasy. The Pepster isn't writing for the single moms nor anyone else below the poverty line. She's writing for her peers in the Academy where the walls are high and the security guards numerous. Out in the, err, less savory parts of town, there are fewer people interested in what she has to say, but plenty whose daily intellectual intake includes Miley Cyrus and far, far worse. With predictable results.

The ultimate fantasy from Pepperoni is that she thinks she can sip her lattes, discuss Miley's marketing strategy with other charming, erudite elites (who all hold the Proper Opinions) and then find her car where she parked it because the impoverished Miley-watchers are staying where they belong and not victimizing her or her other betweeded comrades from the University.

Good luck with that.

Pepper ought to take a little time to read some history. Maybe some financial history. I don't know, like maybe any financial history where a country pays its bills with printed money while engaging in large-scale moral debauchery. When the bills finally have to be paid, the Mileyites in the hood won't be helping Pepper with the tab, they'll be helping themselves to Pepper's goodies. After all, that's what people like Pepper, who sneer at traditional morality ("I don't think we are ever going to get our teenagers and young adults back in saddle shoes"), have taught them to do.

You've got your concealed carry permit already, don't you Pepps?

Reality Is Optional

Dig this bit from an insane article in Der Spiegel.

Intersex people, that is, those who are born neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, form one of the most invisible groups in our society. Contrary to popular belief, this has little to do with their supposed rarity and more to do with the violence our society inflicts upon those who don't conform to binary and mutually exclusive "male" and "female" categories.

The rest is equally crazy.

Umm, guys? You might want to look at this.

My favorite part is not the chart above that shows how Germans have completely detached themselves from the reality of reproduction, but how a bunch of "science-based" secularists have gone off the deep end when it comes to an essential aspect of biology.

If they were talking about some animal they were studying, say, Ernst the Polar Bear (who was at this moment drowning because of Global Warming Climate Change), they would tell you Ernst was a male. They wouldn't tell you that Ernst was of indeterminate gender and still searching for his sexual identity.

So while the rest of the world goes on with life, making babies, caring for their young, raising the next generation of polar bears, spiders, Mexican feather grass or what have you, German intellectuals are objecting to the whole notion of sexual identification to ever smaller classrooms of Kinder.

Good luck with that.

I Am Thy Lord The State And Thou Shalt Have No Things Before Me

(T)he New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that Christian photographers cannot decline to participate in gay-marriage commitment ceremonies, even though that state does not have gay marriage and the court acknowledged that providing services for the ceremony violated the Christian’s sincerely-held, traditional religious beliefs.

Fascism, anyone?

Rest Until You Feel Better

It's been a crazy month and a half or so here in the Catican Compound. Kids going back to college, others finishing summer school, plenty of turmoil at work, volunteering at Catholic Charities, home projects getting done, dinner parties and on and on. I don't know about you, but if I don't get some alone down-time to recharge, I gradually lose steam. Right about now, I'm at this energy level:

I think one of the reasons I've been so agitated about the way NBC has botched the English Premier League coverage is I had discovered last year that laying around watching EPL games on demand on foxsoccer was a great way to recharge. It was depressing to think I no longer had that sanctuary available to me.

Today we're going to experiment with Jedi Master Ivyan's idea for getting at it another way. In any case, the kids are all off working or at college now (save for our daughter), so a little R&R can now be had. In the past, I'd take it easy until I was barely able to get up and rush to the next task, but this time I think I'm going to lounge a bit longer. Like running around too soon after recovering from a cold or flu, that kind of thing can just wear you out even more.

Sound Advice

If your sandwich smells bad, don't eat it.

You're welcome.

The Proper Context For Counter-Zimmermans

As I've blogged before, the whole Zimmerman racialism thing was like leaning into a left hook. With so many counterexamples out there to be thrown in their faces, it was just ratcheting up the "No, you suck!" contest. Personally, I've got no problem with a bit of that mud slinging, but I think it ought to be in this context:

Is this what you wanted - everyone reaching for examples of people of their race being attacked by another? How much more of this would you like to see?

Until race-mongers like Sharpton, Jackson, Obama and Holder get 10,000W yellow traffic light bulbs shining right in their eyes every time they start down this road, we're all going to be drowning in this garbage.

Before dragging race into any issue, proceed with caution. Lots of caution.

A Trayvontastic Pandora's Box

... or maybe a Zimmerman Boomerang, given the most recent interracial crime to get the headlines.

White Aussie Chris Lane was gunned down by a group of black thugs, apparently just for fun. This provided the perfect weapon for people sick of the Zimmerman race baiting to counter attack as detailed by Ann Althouse. Specifically, there was this Drudge headline.

The MSM Zimmerman hysteria, which led the president and his fellow racialists to demand a National Conversation on Race, was probably the largest miscalculation of the year. The bubble these people live in must have walls 4' thick. After all, they never considered the ease with which one can find counterexamples of interracial crime, blacks being 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than vice versa.

So now, instead of having a discussion about, say, the breakdown of the traditional family, we're going to spend lots and lots of time shoving interracial crimes in each others' faces.

Yay.

A Cat Pianist

This is absolutely brilliant.

Smart Diplomacy

Nothing to see here. Move along.

CAIRO (AP) — After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like "prisoners of war" before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.

In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Islamists have attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority...

Nearly 40 churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged since Wednesday, when chaos erupted after Egypt's military-backed interim administration moved in to clear two camps packed with protesters calling for Morsi's reinstatement...

Review: English Premier League Soccer on NBC Sports

... it's about as bad as I'd anticipated. It's a huge step down from Foxsoccer.tv.

NBC has paid $250M for the rights to the English Premier League. They carry all of the games on NBC sports and NBC Sports Live Extra on line. That means that if you have the right cable or satellite package, you can watch any game you want on TV if it's the premium match of the week or online if it's a second-tier game.

Note how I did not say you can watch every game you want. There is no on-demand feature like there was with foxsoccer. Since most of the games go on at the same time, you have to choose which one you're going to watch. Yesterday, I watched the Fulham - Sunderland game, hoping to see the Mackems (Sunderland) lose. They obliged, falling 1-0 to Fulham, but I missed the best game of the day, Arsenal vs. Aston Villa. The Arsenal game was total chaos in the second half with red cards, penalty kicks, a big upset and booing, unhappy Arsenal fans stalking out of the stadium before the game was over. It would have been awesome to see. Here's a sample.

αρσεναλαστον ourmatch.net by ourmatch

Last year, I would have clicked over to foxsoccer and watched the second half of the Arsenal game at my leisure. This year, thanks to the troglodytes at NBC, I have to track down Russian video servers to watch the highlights. It's like the people at NBC never watched foxsoccer and are only vaguely familiar with the concept of digital media servers. Pathetic.

There are some solutions. The companies that own the EPL rights in both New Zealand and Australia offer all of the games on demand for up to a week after they've been played. unfortunately, you have to come at them from an Australian IP address which means finding a proxy server with reliable throughput.

Sigh. Why can't NBC just do it the right way?

Taking A Break

It's been a rough couple of weeks here in the Catican. No trauma or crises, just way more work than normal and no time to recharge. That ended last night when I delivered a talk I'd been preparing. It went well and got a partial standing ovation, but it also went over time and apparently missed a couple key points. Oh well. I had a good time giving it. Maybe more on that later. For now, it's time to rest.

I Would Watch The Republican Primary Debates If

... they were moderated by someone who, you know, had actually talked to real conservatives at some point in their lives.

There's a debate going on within the Republican party about how the debates should work in the next election cycle.

A few RNC members are even talking about ditching conventional journalists as moderators and bringing in Sean Hannity or Mark Levin

I'm completely in favor of this. I watched almost none of last year's debates, knowing they were going to get questions like George Stephanopoulos', "Should contraception be outlawed?" The candidates should have walked off the stage at that point, after flipping Georgy the bird. As long as MSM "journalists" are allowed to run these things, this is what we're going to get. Questions about sodomy laws, one percenters and why are Republicans always such racists.

At least Hannity and Levin would ask questions I'd like to see answered.

"Congressman Ryan, would you rather see gays gassed or shot?"

We Need A Dictatorship

... to implement Obamacare.

In essence, that's what the president is saying. When asked why the administration is having to backtrack on this or that element of the law, he blames his political opposition. As the bill was rammed down our throats, passed without any support at all from his opposition, this can hardly come as a surprise to him.

So he needed total control to pass it and now he needs total control to implement it.

Sounds good to me.

Cheezburger of the Day

Using Sugar As A Plant Fertilizer

... is actually a pretty bad idea.

I've always thought it would be an interesting grade school science fair experiment to see what would happen if you used ordinary sugar as a fertilizer for plants. I had thought sugar contained nitrogen, a crucial element for plants, but it turns out not to be so. Sucrose, the most common table sugar, is C12H22O11. No nitrogen there.

In fact, sugar would remove nitrogen from the soil.

There are many microorganisms that can consume nitrogen as part of their natural life cycle. Researchers at Charles Sturt University say that feeding and encouraging these organisms to grow is one of the most effective ways to reduce nitrogen in the soil.

So there you have it. Don't feed your plants sugar.

(It would probably give them cavities anyway and who wants to be taking their begonias to the dentist for a filling?)

Race Relations Are Actually Pretty Good

Just a short post, noodling over an email that Mut sent me.

If I didn't have the media to inform me otherwise, I'd say that race relations in America are actually quite good. Working with the poor and homeless at Catholic Charities, I see as diverse a crowd as you could imagine. They all get along with each other. They're at stressful points in their lives, they are riddled with self-doubt and they have nothing but clouds hanging over their heads, but while they wait to be served, they chat and smile and trade helpful tips and suggestions. They give each other emotional support in all kinds of ways, from smiles to pats on the back to simply listening as one tells their story of woe.

Where's the racism?

I've tweeted this before and my buddy Dean has responded and said that at the shipyard where he works, he sees the same thing. At the church where I'm a Eucharistic Minister, I see a very diverse congregation every Sunday and they're all getting along, too. If I had never turned on a TV, I'd never have guessed that we needed a National Conversation on Race.

I've suggested before that the left is a religion in crisis. Maybe it's more like a cult in crisis. Dig this.

Many spoke of the tremendous loss they felt as the Brethren was their entire life; loss of family, friends and identity. Those who left family behind felt guilty about the hurt they had caused and some felt that they were not part of the wider world; neither one of ‘them’ nor one of ‘us.’

Fear was another common factor - fear of the outside world, fear of not being able to cope and being alone. 

"After I had stated I was intending to leave the Brethren, I had many dark warnings about the cold hard world outside, telling me that there was nobody caring, that everybody was selfish and nasty and ready to use me for what they could get and treat me as disposable afterwards."

That sounds pretty familiar when you consider the way conservative blacks are treated by the left.

Maybe we don't have to spaz out over the whole thing. When racialist carpetbaggers are down to bringing their own racist signs to political rallies because no one else will, that would seem to indicate there's not much real racial animosity out there.

Instead of a National Conversation on Race, maybe we all need to learn how to help people that are in the grip of a cult.

Texting And Driving

I've been guilty of this. I hereby pledge to stop doing it.

Yellow Jacket Eating Rib Eye Steak

Don't worry, he won't eat much.

Something Beautiful

A while back, I was working at Catholic Charities, doing customer intake for their food resource center. Waiting to be seen was a white woman in her 80s, sitting in a wheelchair with a lined face and hair as white as snow. I had just helped a black man in his early 30s. While he was waiting to get his food, he sat in a chair next to her, leaned forward towards her, put his hand gently on her arm and the two chatted as they waited. The love and gratitude in her eyes made her face glow, a glow reflected in the man's own.

That kind of thing happens all the time. I tear up when I see it or when I remember it.

God is good. All the time.

Quite Possibly The Greatest Thing Ever

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I Want Tile

Unfortunately, I'd really want to attach it to my glasses. They're the things I lose the most often. Details here.

Looking Into A Very Small Mirror

I thought this article on Wired was really cool.

We can now see molecular bonds as they form.

Using atomic force microscopy, we can now see individual atomic bonds within molecular structures. This is beyond awesome. It's like looking into the smallest mirror imaginable. You can imagine how you'd see the molecules the make up your body doing whatever it is they do all day.

Of course, if you're a pure materialist and don't go in for all of that metaphysical "soul" stuff, this means that your chances of ever finding your free will in the physical world grows ever smaller. As of now, it looks to be about a few ten-millionths of a millimeter in diameter.

Good luck finding it there.

At This Point, What Difference Does It Make?

Anthony Weiner, front-page politician, engaged in mutual sexting with God-only-knows who all. The key word is mutual. Recently, he pranced about in the Ecuadorian Pride Parade*, apparently embracing his "scandal." That last bit is the key to me. He's taking the Sophie Tucker / Hillary Clinton point of view.

Let's be like the French. After all, what difference does a little consensual sex make?

How soon before this becomes the norm?

* - There's an Ecuadorian Pride Parade? Who knew?

Atheism Is Wish Fulfillment

In a recent Twitter debate with an atheist (now a pair - the first called for reinforcements), we established that the atheist had no theory of free will or self nor any clear idea how they were going to arise from science. And yet, he knew that such things existed. I told him that he was describing faith. His response was that he hated the word "faith" as it implied weak-mindedness.

My response was that I had come to see non-nihilist atheism as lazy and weak-minded. None of them had thought their position through at all. Just like this character, they ended up with Tooth Fairy Atheism, where they believed in free will and believed in themselves as independent, thinking entities despite not having anything solid from materialism to back it up. His last response to me was pitch-perfect.

He said I believed in "no-evidence magic" and he wasn't weak-minded at all. No evidence, no refutation, no chain of deductions, just that. He had just gone back and forth with me over and over showing that his logical constructs were identical to mine, but with no hope of any path to get to where he needed to go - free will - and could only come back with, "No, you're a dummy!"

It's not that he doesn't believe in God, it's that he doesn't want to. Everything he has constructed in his world-view is designed to disprove God. Whether it disproves his own existence in the process is irrelevant. This isn't logic or philosophy, it's simple wish-fulfillment. He doesn't want there to be a God, so he sticks his fingers in his ears and hums.

His ally, by the way, turned out to be less than useful. Last night he came at me with this one. 'Maths (sic) and chemistry are different. In science there are no "facts" only strong evidence.' If any of you can figure out where they're going with that nonsense, let me know.

Sigh.

A Family Google Account

Within the Catican Compound, there are 6 adults (or almost-adults) who live here at least part-time. Coordinating schedules and sharing information may seem easy in this age of ubiquitous smartphones, but it's still been a problem for us. To deal with that issue, we created a family account on Google last night. Everyone gets access and we can all add things that affect the others to the calendar. The calendar then gets shared to our personal accounts, so we always know what's up with each other. This will include college schedules, vacation planning, soccer practice and game information, etc.

Another cool thing is that we can use Google Docs to make sure information gets shared. No more wondering if the email was received or the right information was there. Instead, we can check to see if we gave everyone the right info and correct it if it was wrong or needs to be updated.

I'm hoping this is going to make it easier to plan things and keep up to date.

White With Purple

Joey, Have You Ever Been In A Turkish Prison?

Charles Blow is a columnist for the New York Times. He's a big fan of marijuana, too. I was able to deduce this from his most recent column on marriage and minorities. Here's one of the reasons he gives for the annihilation of traditional families among minorities.

(M)ake no mistake: mass incarceration rips at the fabric of families and whole communities.
According to the 2011 book “A Plague of Prisons” by Ernest Drucker, a public health expert:

• “The risk of divorce is high among men going to prison, reaching 50 percent within a few years after incarceration.”
• “The marriage rate for men incarcerated in prisons and jails is lower than the American average. For blacks and Hispanics, it is lower still.”
• “Unmarried couples in which the father has been incarcerated are 37 percent less likely to be married one year after the child’s birth than similar couples in which the father has never been incarcerated.”

Related to mass incarceration is the disastrous drug war, which essentially has become a war on marijuana waged primarily against young black men, even though they use the drug at nearly the same rate as whites.

So here's the situation as he sees it: In the past 20 or so years, for young, black men, marijuana use has led to imprisonment. All kinds of bad things happen to you in prison. For one, it's hard to keep a wife when you go in and hard to find one when you get out. There are other, unmentioned, downsides to prison as well, like the inability to drive over to Walmart to get a charging cable for your new Galaxy S4. There are probably many others, but I'll leave it to you to come up with them.

So now let's assume that after, say, 18 years of seeing this happen in your neighborhood, you come to the conclusion that lighting up a blunt greatly increases your chances of getting locked up. What do you do? Well, if you're Charles Blow, you seem to light up anyway because ... because ... well, because you just want to, gosh darn it!

That's Charles. How about you? Say you were taking a trip to Turkey to visit the site of the most recent protests and rioting. As you're packing, a friend comes by to borrow some cumin and library paste, hears about where you're going and says, "Well, don't wear green. In Turkey, you'll be thrown in prison for wearing green!" You look it up on the Internet and find out she's telling the truth. Do you:

1. Pack the green clothes anyway, because, gosh darn it, you like green clothes!
2. Pack even more green clothes just to stick it to The Man.
3. Take every scrap of green cloth out of your suitcase and then start looking at removing yellows and blues since they can be combined to make green.

If you're Charles Blow, you pick either #1 or #2. I'd probably go with #3. After all, I can find lots of other ways to get high and have a good time fun outfits to wear that aren't green.

When You Think About It, 8800 Dangerous Felons Aren't All That Much

So California, after having built prisons until it just can't build no more, has been ordered to release 10,000 inmates from its overcrowded prisons.

How you can go on a prison-building spree and still not have enough prisons seems to be unaddressed in the media. But I digress.

Anywho, the Golden State's got to open the pressure relief valve at the prisons and let 10,000 go. Using some basic guidelines: inmates who committed nonviolent crimes, have a low risk of committing new crimes once out of prison, are not tied to a prison gang and have less than a year left to serve on their sentence, they've found 1200 such. That leaves 8800 more to release, albeit of, how shall we say it, less savory quality.

Now that may seem like a lot, but you have to remember, California is a big state. We've got 163,696 square miles of space. That works out to 18.6 square miles per dangerous, newly-released felon. If you live in the state, your chances of running into one of these guys is practically nil! Just imagine, there you are, fenced into an area of 18.6 square miles. Somewhere in that space is a dangerous criminal. Think of it as a hide-and-go-seek game. Surely you can manage to stay concealed for years, even if the criminal is really, really smart and knows all the good hiding places.

Seriously, you have nothing to worry about.

Unless you're somewhere like Plaster City where there aren't too many places to hide. Then you're screwed.
(Image source)

Reaping The Rich, Delicious Harvest Of Zimmermanmania

So now that we've all gotten wound up about some dude we didn't know offing another dude we didn't know and everyone has taken sides according to their race, take a gander at the comment threads on any given inter-racial crime story on the web. There's lots and lots of racial animosity with Zimmerman as a reference point.

I trust you didn't think it was going to stop with Zimmerman. Getting the last word is always hard.

Maybe the best national conversation to have about race is one about the Kentucky Derby.