Stairway To Barking

I love photos like this. They make me think of on album cover.

It's the Catican Trio's new hit recording!

The Trunk Monkey Chaperone

This came up at work yesterday and I never get tired of it. I figured I should inflict it on you. Enjoy.

Of Fruit Flies And Elephants

In comments on this post, Tim and Ohioan both noted that the massive numbers of fruit flies breeding were enough to lead to macro-evolutionary changes over time. Even if the odds were billions-to-one against advantageous structural changes in genetic material, the fact that there are so many fruit flies producing so many offspring makes it conceivable.

Hooray for fruit flies!

How about elephants?

There aren't many of them and elephant cows produce a single calf every 5 years or so. Wouldn't evolution grind to a halt as the higher-order species produced so few offspring? If you need a billion hatchlings / calves / lambs to get a single new species with a new genetic structure instead of modification to existing genes, wouldn't it take practically forever to make those changes?

I've got a counter-argument to this line of thought, but I'm interested in what others have to say.

Aside: The original posts weren't really designed to question evolution, but were about Darwinian dogma being essentially religious. Still, it's a fun discussion and everyone's been quite pleasant, so let's see where else it goes.

Criminal Activity In San Diego

I'm saddened to report that last night, a gang of criminals broke into my house while I slept and cooked an elaborate meal for what looks like a dozen people. They then left without cleaning up. I came downstairs to the wreckage this morning.

Words fail me. I'm disgusted that the authorities would allow a band of rogue chefs to wander unchecked, breaking into homes, cooking and leaving behind ruins like this.

What's this world coming to when an innocent householder is afraid for the cleanliness of his kitchen?

Donald Trump Is Undermining Democracy In America!

... but only after it's been nearly killed off by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

So I missed all of the debates, but for some reason I heard a replay of Trump's fateful refusal to say he would definitely endorse the results of the election. He said the election was rigged and used as one piece of evidence the fact that Hillary wasn't in jail.

For the first time in recent memory, I agree completely with Donald Trump. Hillary is a criminal who escaped prosecution so that she could win the presidency. That seems like a rigged election to me. Consider these tidbits.

• The Hildebeast is guilty of all manner of crimes as are her minions. For one, mishandling classified material is illegal. Not only did she do it, but her goons did as well.
• Obama knew she had an illegal server and lied to everyone about it. He was sending her emails to that address under a pseudonym.
• There was no search of Hillary's homes as there would be under a normal investigation of these kinds of things.
• Hillary was sending classified material to people outside of the government who did not possess any clearances at all.
• By conducting her business on the private server, she made all of the content on that server government property whether they were yoga emails or not. Deleting 30,000+ government emails is a crime.
• Then there are all the bribery laws she broke with Bill being paid for speeches to groups negotiating with Hillary.

I could go on and on (and do a better job organizing my list), but who cares? They wanted her to be president, so they faked the investigation(s) and lied to everyone. That's not a democracy as I understand it.

Is Trump undermining voting with his petulance? Yes, he is. But Hillary and Obama are far, far worse.

An OGE-450 form for reporting outside income as an employee of the Executive Branch. Imagine filling it out as Hillary and marking down all of the money Bill was taking for his speeches, plus the Clinton Foundation, plus, plus, plus. No one I know would have been allowed any of those sources of income. However, since they wanted Hillary to be president, she got away with it.

Darwinian Dogma

In my discussion yesterday with the atheist on Twitter, something that struck me was his strident defense of Darwin's model of macro-evolution. By macro, I mean creatures changing from one to another through gradual evolution. I'm listening to a book right now, which I will blog about later, that's made me question this for the first time in my life. How do you get from the genetic structure of a fruit fly to that of a sheep through random processes?

I get the whole micro-evolution stuff where creatures breed to improve the species, but we've been breeding fruit flies for a long time and ended up with more fruit flies and not some kind of mutant superfly whose genetic structure is different than the others. (Aside: With whom would such a freak breed to produce viable offspring when its genetic structure wouldn't match its mate's?)

In any case, what hit me was how tied the guy was to Darwinian evolution. He couldn't allow even a single disagreement or objection. It had to be true, nay, it was true and anyone who didn't dogmatically agree was an infidel. As a Catholic, I don't really care one way or another. Recall that we believe that God doesn't make contradictions and that if established science conflicts with theology then theology must change. Science doesn't bother me at all, but miracles or intelligent design don't bother me, either.

So in all innocence, I brought up those objections - how do structural genetic changes occur resulting in fruit flies eventually producing sheep? He went bonkers and threw all manner of snarky, you're-an-ignorant-moron meme images at me.

I hope he had fun doing it. Me, I idly wandered off and had a Firestone Union Jack and watched the Cubs game.

Follow Up: Here's a UC Berkeley bit on the evolution of flight, but it begs the question at hand. I can see how flying is better than not-flying, but I don't see the process at the molecular level. Where did all those atoms come from in the modified genetic codes? Why did the reactions happen instead of producing death and deformity?

Lots of people dream about flying like a bird. Do lots of birds dream about driving Buicks like a person?

God And The Holocaust

So somehow, I managed to get teased into a conversation with an atheist today on Twitter. It was the usual stuff, snarky and devoid of intellectual content. I was supposed to be scandalized and perplexed and God knows what else by his rapier-like wit. Whatever. One of the hilarious jabs he threw at me was this image which was promptly retweeted and liked by all kinds of his fellow travelers.

I'd never thought much about it before, but when I saw it a bunch of things went through my head which I will attempt to synthesize here. I'm a fan of Third Reich military history and I've recently been slogging my way through the ghastly Mein Kampf. Given that foundation, when I was confronted by this brilliant repartee, I mildly wondered, "Why was the Holocaust God's to stop?"

Hitler wrote Mein Kampf long before he came to power. Anyone who read it knew he was trouble from the get-go for Jews in particular and Europe in general. Never one for subtleties, while he doesn't lay out the blueprints for the gas chambers, it's hard to see how it all ends well for the Jews. When he finally did seize power in Germany, the sequence of events, including Kristallnacht, made it clear to everyone where this was headed.

Germany wasn't a military super power in the mid-30s. Had the British or French decided enough of this Nazi nonsense was enough, they could easily have whacked Hitler and replaced him with someone less offensive. Sure, it would have been messy, but in retrospect, it's impossible to see how Londoners hiding in the subways during the Blitz wouldn't have wished that Her Majesty's government had snuffed out the little creep years earlier.

Instead, England and France clung to their "right side of history" rubbish and America slept through the whole thing. And after everyone finally managed to rouse their lazy butts after wake up calls in the form of HE-111s bombing the living daylights out of European cities across the Continent, we eventually took out the twit and his goons. Meanwhile, in the Holocaust referenced in that genius image, millions of Jews were gassed because earlier we couldn't be bothered to read and understand Hitler's book and see where the whole thing was going.

And that's God's fault?!? I think not.

On Rigged Elections

... don't they seem like a self-limiting process?

I have to admit, that outside of an intellectual curiosity about what this election says about American culture, I've kind of checked out. Still, the accusations that this election is "rigged" are interesting.

Of course they're rigged. Just to take one dimension, the news media, outside of the execrable Fox News, is positively manic in their hatred of Donald Trump. Well, good for them. After Trump goes down to a well-deserved, landslide defeat, the news media will have ... what? Well, as far as I can see, their frothing howls against Trump will have turned off 35% or so of their potential viewers. Further, Sanders supporters will be incensed that the news media didn't see fit to report on Hillary and the DNC using Bernie like a honeypot for the kids.

So the news media wins in 2016 and gets what they want, but in 2017 and beyond, they lose influence because the people they sneeringly dismissed will go somewhere else for their news. That was happening anyway, but this is going to accelerate the process. Personally, I had no illusions about the media's objectivity, but this has been breathtaking to me.

When it all fails - ObamaCare, student loans, the Middle East, etc - and Hillary's administration is left in smoldering ruins, will it all have been worth it to the news media flunkies?

How will they "rig" things in 2018 and 2020 now that they've ticked off so many people?

Lizard Of The Day

I had a different post in mind, but this little fellow let me get close enough to take some decent photos with my phone, so here he is, reared up and posing for the camera. Enjoy!

Voting For Lower Prices

Driving home from the retreat yesterday, we passed a billboard advocating Prop 61, claiming it would lower drug prices. We can vote for lower prices? Who knew it was that easy?

I think bananas cost too much. Let's vote to lower their price by 10 cents a pound.

I Think Larry Elder Went To My Daughter's Public High School

... because this tweet was spot on.

"Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams...
"BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/wyjBgCiutb

— Larry Elder (@larryelder) October 11, 2016

Happy Caturday!

Our Maximum Leader in her favorite chair.

We're All Fascists Now

There's an easy answer for everything. Vote the right way and the nation will be fine. You won't have to make any real sacrifices, the government will make sure they make all the sacrifices, "they" being whomever your chosen political savior happens to despise.

So here we are, selecting between Mussolini A and Mussolini B - Trump and Clinton. One is a personal messiah, the other is a policy messiah. Thoughts of personal freedom, personal accountability and governing as much of your own life as possible are being washed away in our hunger for a strong leader to make the bad things go away.

This didn't happen to us, we did it to ourselves. If we had wanted freedom, the Democrats wouldn't have become completely fascist and the Republicans would have chosen someone, anyone other than Trump. Nope, this is who we are, as Obama might say. I guess fascism was on the Right Side of History after all.

My thinking isn't political these days, even though I'm frequently giving in to the siren song of political blogging. Instead, it's cultural. How do you turn this thing around? Truth be told, I'm kind of at a loss. For one thing, while our political leaders are all strong-men-in-waiting, it just doesn't seem like the culture is. But it must be, right? Or is this just the natural consequence of living the Marquis de Sade life where all that matters is pleasure? Are we looking for a strong man so we can leave all that icky constructive stuff to someone else so we can focus on weed, porn and video games?

That last seems like the best explanation to me. I guess if you don't have any real ambitions in life, having someone tell you what to do isn't such a big deal. If you're not trying to go somewhere significant, who cares what regulations you have to follow?

Directionless fascism?

They're serving free ice cream after the rally, so it's all good.

Going Cold Turkey

I'm about to go work a men's retreat weekend. I've decided to turn my phone off while I'm away, only checking it at night and in the morning to see if there are any emergencies. Under normal circumstances, I'm a total Twitter and Internet addict. I check my phone all the time. According to Nicholas Carr, this is a bad thing.

3 1/2 days isn't enough to rewire your brain, but I suspect that by Sunday, I'll either be much calmer or a total, raving maniac. In the meantime, I'll queue up blog posts here because I'm OCD about daily blogging. I apologize in advance for not replying to any comments that come in. Those will have to wait until Monday.

Of Lathes And Sleeves

... wherein I wonder why I didn't think of this before.

I'm making one final push to finish rewiring my MGB. I've taken the cockpit wiring apart again and am using my new BB-60 workbench to do a 1-1 scale assembly of the wiring harness. In the process, I've discovered I seem to be missing some of the sleeves that keep the light bulbs for the dash instruments lit at night from falling out the back.

The tachometer. Note the bulb nearby. That goes into the back of the tach to light it up at night.

The rear of the tach with the bulb inserted. The next photo shows how loose it is.

The bulb will fall right out!

Here's the back of the speedometer. Note the metal sleeve that gives the bulb a snug fit. Why didn't MG make the bulb housings the right size? Because they're British, that's why!

I stopped by one of my favorite British auto parts places yesterday and got some sleeves that might do the trick, scavenged from an old MGB wiring harness. I kept thinking there must be a way to build these sleeves from scratch, but my brain wasn't functioning properly until this morning's coffee.

I need to learn how to use a lathe.

Lathes make cylindrical objects which are symmetric down the center line, exactly what I need. There are Maker Places and Fab Labs nearby with lathes and classes. I might have all the sleeves I need now, but it would be grand fun to learn how to use a lathe and keep that trick in my back pocket the next time I need to do something like this.

Hmm. I wonder if I could create a functional sleeve out of plastic using a 3D printer.

Leafhopper

I saw this fellow perched on one of our fences the other day and as he seemed relaxed, I went inside and grabbed the Nikon D60 Artillery Piece to get some macro shots. I was disappointed. The camera focused on everything except the bug for all shots save this one. I might have been better off using my phone where sheer megapixel count makes up for a lack of a decent lens.

Oh well. The only real regret I have is that we don't often see leafhoppers, probably because we don't get much water. I think they're cute little bugs and I'd love to take more shots of them. At least I was able to get this one. Enjoy!

How Do You Turn A Ship Around When Everyone Is Rowing In The Wrong Direction?

Remove chivalry and the police and relations between the sexes become a matter of upper body strength. That's a contest women can never win. Typically, chivalry is an ideal that must be embraced by the elites, both publicly and privately, in order to be adopted by the populace.

Both parties are now all in on supporting sexual harassment as long as it’s done by powerful people with the right political affiliations.

— (((Megan McArdle))) (@asymmetricinfo) October 10, 2016

Oh well. Maybe we can count on support from the culture to shore things up.

And let's be real America. If women are offended by Trump's language, who bought 100 million copies of "Fifty Shades of Grey"?#debate pic.twitter.com/CzcvKf1Nwu

— Jared Wyand 🇺🇸 (@JaredWyand) October 10, 2016

Hmm. That doesn't look so good, either. I'm guessing that checking out rap music lyrics from a randomly selected top 10 hit isn't going to help.

How about the police? Oh, that's right. Never mind. The police are racist. In any case, the police show up long after the deed has been done.

That leaves us.

On Saturday, I hung out with more than 50 Catholic men preparing for an upcoming retreat. None of us would ever speak the way Trump has spoken or act the way Bill Clinton has acted. None of our wives or girlfriends would ever defend a pig like Bill Clinton the way Hillary has. I guess it's up to us.

Whoops! I forgot. We're homophobes and prudes. It's best to close down our businesses and take our nuns to the Supreme Court to force them to buy contraceptives.

Good luck with that whole "respecting women" thing, America.

The Reason You Should Vote For Hillary

... is because her patronage will fall upon traditional Democratic Party interest groups. Trump's patronage will fall at random, depending on who is sucking up to him the most at the time. You must vote for Hillary to show your support for the Democratic Party Machine.

Our politics have become a Mobius Strip of evil. The Trump tape of him talking about forcing himself on married women is not as bad as what Bill Clinton actually did to women and what Hillary Clinton defended through savage character assassinations. Still, the attitude is the same - one of aristocratic entitlement. Trump and the Clintons can say and do whatever they want while you have to watch your every utterance for signs of racism / sexism / homophobia / blah blah blah.

Again, Bill Clinton taking sexual advantage of an intern young enough to be his daughter in the White House and Hillary and her minions savaging the girl and Bill's previous victims is worse than anything Trump has ever said.

There is no appreciable policy difference between the two, either. They both stand for a bloated, intrusive, leviathan government and economically illiterate trade wars. Neither has a clue about how to deal with the everlasting global civil war that is Islam.

We're choosing between Mussolini A and Mussolini B. So why is the press so bent on destroying Trump? Because his spigot of government goodies, which will gush forth at the same rate as Hillary's, will point in random directions. The teacher's unions and university faculty can't be sure that they will get their graft. The spigot might spin away from them and pour money into for-profit schools instead. The racial grievance industry won't have a reliable sugar-daddy or sugar-momma in the White House. Instead, they'll have the equivalent of an arcade fortune teller that spits out random pronouncements when activated.

This is important stuff. The power system built around Washington, DC wants no part of an administration that is so capricious. Like a house pet used to being fed at the same time every day, it is completely opposed to any possible changes in its sluice of payoffs and opportunities for corruption.

Make no mistake, Donald Trump, if elected, isn't going to change a thing. He's just going to turn a corrupt system into a tilt-a-whirl instead of a predictable funnel. And we can't have that.

Welcome to Washington, DC under a Trump Administration.

The Problem With Going Nuclear On Donald Trump

... is that you might drive him out of the race.

Trump is the only person Hillary could beat in this election. If she were facing Marco Rubio or even Jeb Bush, she'd be down by 10 right now with no hope at all of recovery. The Democrats would be staring at a complete wipeout. Instead, she's facing off against someone as morally vacuous as she is.

As the calls for Trump to step down roll in and accelerate from Republican heavyweights across the country after Hillary's release of his utterly predictable audio clip of him being a total swine, her campaign staff is waking up to the idea that they might have to deal with white bread Mike Pence or boyishly charming Marco instead of Trump. In a single instant, the over-the-top attacks on Trump become liabilities. Whatever Mike or Marco have said, it's not within a factor of 100 of what The Donald has.

The Democrats have one playbook and one playbook only. After Trump, how do you call Mike or Marco a racist / misogynist / homophobe / Islamophobe? How do you call either of them crazy or dangerous?

The only way for Hillary to win is to damage Trump enough to beat him, but not enough to drive him out. Methinks this audio tape, which comes as no surprise to us Never Trump folks, might have been overplaying their hand.

The only reason to vote for the angry hag is Donald Trump.

A Controversial Title

... might not be a good idea for this post.

I just finished a book about Mohammed and after reading the Koran and several books on Islam, things made a lot more sense. Here are a few things I picked up from my most recent foray into the Religion of Peace. I'm doing this from memory in a hotel room, so I apologize if I've got a few details backwards.

• The Koran, a book Moslems claim always existed in the mind of Allah, was revealed to Mohammed in bits and pieces throughout his life by the archangel Gabriel. In this, it reminded me of the Mormons whose scriptures were revealed to a single person in a secret way.
• Muslims claim that Mohammed's coming was foretold by both Christian and Jewish writings. That blew me away. I'd never heard that before in my life and in fact, the book's author says there are no such references. Not surprising as Mohammed arrives in the year 600, a couple of centuries after the Church Fathers had settled on the Nicene Creed and were moving on to other things. By 600, the Church was pretty solid, theologically. They weren't waiting for another prophet.
• The claim of Christian and Jewish prophecies anticipating Mohammed reminded me of the North Korean legends about Kim Jung Il and the rest of their dear leaders.
• Mohammed's first phase of evangelization was to preach to the polytheist Arabs in Mecca. This was modestly successful at best, gathering only a small number of followers.
• He then moved on to Medina and tried to preach to the Jews there. That didn't work so well, either.
• Things began to improve for Mohammed and his followers when he turned to caravan raiding and war.
• Recall that all the while these things are going on, new pieces of the Koran are being revealed to him. As someone pointed out in the comments on an earlier blog post, if two sections of the Koran contradict each other, you take the later one as correct. In concert with what Mohammed was doing at the time, the later ones are the ones that validate violence.
• As Mohammed and the boys conquered territory in the Arabian peninsula and beyond, he established rules for governing non-believers which carry on today - taxes, conversion and so forth.
• Taxing non-believers turned out to be quite the money maker.
• Something that struck me was how imperial Islam was. As they conquered territory, they offered the residents the choice of conversion or punitive taxes. Conversion was relatively straightforward, so only the devout of other religions paid the tax. Everyone else converted. Had the Nazis employed this strategy, we'd probably all be goose-stepping around today.
• Conversion is a one-way door. If you convert away from Islam, you are to be killed.
• Mohammed did not perform any miracles. Early in his career, prior to the wars, he claimed to have been taken into the 7 heavens by a winged horse. The locals thought it was all nonsense and demanded he perform miracles. He claimed to have spoken with Allah who said, "If I perform the miracles and they still do not believe, I will destroy them out of wrath." Not wanting the unbelievers to be killed, Mohammed chose not to perform miracles and claimed the Koran was miracle enough.

I think I'll leave it at that without any further commentary.

One More Preachy Attempt To Drive Readers Away

Yesterday, I posted about incremental self-destruction through small sins, something I knew would be unattractive to all y'all, but I needed to write it as that's the way I learn. While looking for a graphic to add, the clip below occurred to me, but I didn't use it as I wanted to go with something a bit goofy. I went back and watched the clip and was shocked at how close it was to what I was trying to say. I put myself in the role of Dean Cain's greed-soaked businessman and the scene became even more powerful.

We were created by a loving God and given a world to live in. God gave us rules to live by in the form of universal, objective morality and an example in the form of his Son. Since He is a loving God, following those rules pays off, not just in eternity, but in the here and now. That is, if you lie, you lose the confidence of those around you. If you cheat on your spouse, you may well drop the atomic bomb of divorce on your life. If you embrace porn, you can become addicted, rewiring your brain to dislike normal sex. If you drink to excess, you're physically hosed.

God has given us the path to a better life and through sin we choose to reject it. The prison cell door slamming shut in the video can refer to hell, which is probably the first thing you think of when you watch it, but it can also refer to a lost job, a failed marriage, estranged children or hopeless addiction. The booze or porn or cheating or lying can all be fun and games until the moment when the cumulative damage of your sin hits you like a 2x4 upside the head. When I saw it in this light, I loved the scene even more.

Enjoy.

Every Journey Continues With A Single Step

Or is it: If every day is a chance to start life again, then every journey begins anew each day?

That can't be true, Journeys leave marks on your psyche in the form of memories and habits, so each day isn't really a chance to start anew, it's just a chance to change direction.

Habitual sin is a journey. Small, habitual sins are journeys of tiny steps. Each step is, in and of itself, relatively inconsequential, but in the aggregate, quite damaging. Each small sin is a decision that's easy to make because of some combination of the following:

1. You can (you have the opportunity)
2. There's some payoff
3. It's not really hurting anyone

It's the last one that gets you in trouble. Any individual step on a long journey doesn't get you all that much closer to your destination, so each step is unimportant taken by itself. However, the cumulative steps of selling your integrity, having another dink or drinking every day, downloading a little more porn, criticizing your kids or mocking your wife for a mistake can be horrific. Addictions and divorces result from such individual steps.

I've got a good friend who is a recovered alcoholic. The other day he told me that people turn around their lives when they find the one thing they won't give up for their addiction. In his case, it was his family. My point here is that he got to the point of having to make the choice between his drinking and his family by single steps.

I'm sure he'd rather have seen into the future, imagined what that moment of choice was going to feel like and turned his steps around before he hit bottom.

We all have that choice every day, but we almost never make it. Instead, we go for that payoff because one more (drink, lie, criticism, porn viewing session, theft) isn't going to hurt anyone all that much.

Until it does.

This was the most cliched image I could think of for this post.
You didn't think I was going to be completely serious for the whole thing, did you?

Grasshopper

Another insect photo taken with my Galaxy S7. I left it large, so it's worth clicking. The camera on that phone still amazes me. Enjoy!

Maddi The Cat, Seen From Space

OK, well, maybe not space, but a long way up. Like at the top of our stairs looking down on her snoozing in one of her many chairs.

Tranquility Base.

How Much Is Experience Worth?

... compared to scientific studies?

Following an offhand remark on Twitter, I got a (very pleasant) earful from a guy with a PhD in Neuroscience who questioned whether sexual differences in scholastic choices was nature or nurture. That is, why are the STEM subjects dominated by men? The always unstated version that disrupts the progressive narrative of patriarchal oppression is: Why are they dominated by men when women are getting most of the degrees?

I dunno, man. I'm a father of boys and girls, I've coached boys and girls, I've worked with boys and girls and it sure looks to me from years and years of this stuff like there's some kind of underlying difference. It's also hard to believe that 100,000,000 years (or whatever the number is) of evolution wouldn't result in brain specialization like it has with physical specialization.

Aside: Can we please stop with the action movies where women are beating up men? It just doesn't happen. I'm sorry, but when I see it, the movie is pretty much ruined for me.

Anyway, I don't have any studies to back me up because I'd rather watch the morning EPL games and cook bacon. Besides, why do I need studies if I've got a wealth of experiences that jives with every other coach and parent I've ever met?

I blame the Patriarchy.

Abbott And Costello Go To Wall Street

Looking through my draft blog posts, I started this one in January. I hope it's not a plagiarism of someone else's. If it is, sorry about that. In the meantime, enjoy.

Update: I completely lifted this from a US News and World Report opinion piece. I must have been looking for a place to stash the dialog and blogger was closest at hand. Hilarious!

---

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.

ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It’s 5.6%.

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?

ABBOTT: No, that’s 23%.

COSTELLO: You just said 5.6%.

ABBOTT: 5.6% Unemployed.

COSTELLO: Right 5.6% out of work.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 23%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it’s 23% unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, that’s 5.6%.

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 5.6% or 23%?

ABBOTT: 5.6% are unemployed. 23% are out of work.

COSTELLO: If you are out of work you are unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, Obama said you can’t count the “Out of Work” as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!

ABBOTT: No, you miss his point.

COSTELLO: What point?

ABBOTT: Someone who doesn’t look for work can’t be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn’t be fair.

COSTELLO: To whom?

ABBOTT: The unemployed.

COSTELLO: But ALL of them are out of work.

ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work gave up looking and if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

COSTELLO: So if you’re off the unemployment roles that would count as less unemployment?

ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don’t look for work?

ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That’s how it gets to 5.6%. Otherwise it would be 23%. COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?

ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?

ABBOTT: Correct.

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?

ABBOTT: Bingo.

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to have people stop looking for work.

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like a Democrat.

COSTELLO: I don’t even know what the hell I just said!

ABBOTT: Now you’re thinking like Hillary.

The Problem Of Good

I just finished Andrew Klavan's excellent conversion memoir, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes To Faith In Christ. In it, he discusses how the Holocaust was an impediment to his conversion. How could such evil exist?

As I listened to his discussion of wrestling with that issue, I thought of the converse. How can good exist? The Holocaust is only unique in that it was perpetrated by industrial Germany. Only the Germans could do it with railroads, chemical factories and paperwork. Everyone else who has engaged in mass slaughter has done so much more crudely. From the Romans taking revenge on Carthage to Mao's Communists starving their own people to death in China by the tens of millions, mass murder has been a part of our collective history.

And why not? Ants do it. When ant colonies fight it out, there's no peace treaty and rebuilding program at the end. The wining ants slaughter their enemies. When dolphins go after balls of bait fish, they don't do it in a sustainable way. When a new male baboon becomes alpha, he doesn't send the loser's babies to boarding school in Switzerland to get them out of the bedroom, he kills them.

If we're just animals, why don't we act like animals with animal logic and animal disregard for a vanquished foe? Why is it that when we do, historians point at it with remorse and talk about the guilt of the winners? If we're just animals, why are we expected to be different from animals?

It's not evil that's the conundrum for believers. It's good that's the conundrum for the doubters.

If the Marquis de Sade had it right, we're on the wrong side of History.

What's A Decent Arrest Ratio?

That is, how many cops do you need on hand to arrest one person? How many do you need when the neighborhood is up in arms against you?

After watching the video I posted yesterday and others just like it, you notice that no one is getting arrested. It's immediately obvious that given the anger of the crowds and the relative size of the two forces, the cops couldn't arrest anyone even if they wanted to without provoking a full-scale melee which they would lose.

Something else you see when you watch raw video from these riots is the hatred directed at the police. You get the feeling that the crowd is itching for a fight. They've been whipped up into a frenzy by years and years of propaganda. The narrative they've been fed was originally designed to keep them voting for Democrats*, but it's metastasized into something truly dangerous.

Do you suppose the mobs know when they become too big to control?

* - 4 years ago, when Vice President Biden told a group of blacks the Mitt Romney (!) wanted to put them all back in chains, it seemed funny. I know I had a laugh at Crazy Uncle Joe. Looking back on that, it wasn't funny at all. It was hideous.

It's Not The Cops' City, It's Yours

I had another post in mind and then I came across this video and several more like it from the riots in Charlotte.

When you watch these, you see people not involved in the rioting taking videos with their phones as if they are completely neutral on the whole affair. Meanwhile, their jobs are leaving, their property values are going down, businesses are closing and insurance rates are going up. There's a surreal, childish aspect to it like when you were little and something bad happened, but it didn't occur to you that life was going to change.

Meanwhile, you see the cops trying to stop it, totally outnumbered. It's as if the cops are mommy and daddy, dealing with the crisis and the bystanders are thumb-sucking toddlers.

Weird.

Rules, Judgment And Understanding

I've prattled repeatedly on this blog about the need for some amount of judgmentalism in our lives and how objective morality is a good thing. This weekend, I spent time with representatives across the San Diego Diocese discussing how the Church can better minister to divorced people. It was enlightening to me in many ways. As usual, I'm pressed for time, so this will be necessarily terse.

Rules, judgment and objective morality are crucial. Without them, there is no ideal for which to strive. All of us fall short of our ideals every day, no matter how hard we try. Just because people fall short, it doesn't mean we need to beat them up or ditch our ideals. That was the message of the meetings this weekend. You can have love and judgment at the same time. That's the underlying proposition behind "love the sinner, hate the sin."

Since we all fail, we can all have some understanding of our fellow, fallen humans when they fail, even if they fail in a way different from our own. At the same time, we can still affirm the ideal to which we all should strive, that of a Christ-like life. Throughout the whole discussion, which lasted 6-7 hours, we discussed how to love and support those experiencing divorce, both adults and children. While we talked about how devastating it was, we did not talk about blame or guilt. Instead, we focused on how to make their lives easier and show them that they were still loved and valued as they tried to pick up the pieces of their lives.

It made me proud to be a Catholic.

And then, of course, we discussed how to oppress gays and women, but that goes without saying.

A Drinking Game For The Debate

... and it's for the debaters, not for me. I'm going to be watching the Saints - Falcons game.

Here's the game:

• Hillary takes a shot every time she lies.
• Trump takes a shot every time he says something ignorant.

They'd both be blacked out within half an hour. The best part would be to see what happens when Hillary hits about #7 or so as the alcohol interacts with her anti-seizure medication. Before long, she'd be reciting Das Kapital in Urdu. After that, she'd be flopping around on the ground like a fish on a dock. Meanwhile, Trump would be slumping over his podium repeating "Trusht me, we're gonna be winning. So mush winning."

That's still not worth watching. Even if the Saints get trounced.

Bonus Tidbit

Here's a proposed question for Hillary: Is Harambe part of the rape culture?

Crouching Tiger, Sleeping Chihuahua

I'm guessing our Maximum Leader was crouching somewhere. Since she loves to hunt birds in our garden, it's a good bet she was crouching. As for the smallest Catican Guard, well, she was doing what Chihuahuas love to do. Sleep under the covers where its warm.

Love For The Divorced

I attended the Diocesan Synod on Marriage and the Family today. I'm tired and brain-drained, but joyful. It's wonderful to be part of a team that's working to help those going through divorce find healing, love and acceptance.

Regular blogging resumes tomorrow, some of it with things I learned today. Right now, I need a beer.

How The Iranian Negotiations Went Down

So we sent Iran planeloads of cash and gold. Literally, cash and gold, like some kind of drug deal payoff. I've started wondering what the negotiations looked like from the Iranian point of view. After decades of being told to pound sand by American diplomats, they finally got to sit across the table from a set obsessed with making a deal. Any deal. I'm guessing it went something like this.

John Kerry: And now, we'd like to negotiate the repayment of your frozen assets.

Iranian negotiator Mohammed: You'd what?!?

Kerry: We'd like to negotiate the repayment of your frozen assets.

Iranian negotiator Achmed: Yes, yes, of course! (Silently kicking himself for seeming so eager.)

Kerry: How much would you like?

Mohammed to Achmed quietly: Quick, Achmed, what's the biggest number you can think of?

Achmed (blurting out): Err, one point seven billion dollars!

Kerry: That sounds fine.

Kerry wanders out of the room, smugly proud at what a great negotiator he is.

Mohammed and Achmed as they do a double face palm, realizing they could have gotten anything they wanted: Argh! We asked for too little!

Living In A World Of Mousetraps And Ping Pong Balls

Imagine that the Black Lives Matters protesters are ping pong balls perched on cocked mousetraps in an enclosed space. Imagine that a cop shooting a black man, armed or not, justified or not, is a ping pong ball dropped into that enclosed space. Imagine that you're in that enclosed space, neither a ping pong ball nor perched on a cocked mousetrap. You're just some tiny dude, maybe 1/10 the size of a ping pong ball, trying to survive.

The riots that are now commonplace following any police shooting would look like this to you.

Living in a world of cocked mousetraps is frightening. Now that it's starting to happen reliably (Milwaukee, Charlotte, whatever), it's pretty apparent that the progressives have gotten everyone primed through racial grievance-mongering. Who knows where it's going to happen next. Not many Confederate flags in Milwaukee, so don't think being north of the Mason-Dixon line is going to save you.

The analogy works further as the original ping pong ball, the cop, isn't trying to set off a destructive chain reaction. It's just doing what ping pong balls normally do. In fact, in the absence of the cocked mousetraps, i.e. the racial grievance culture, a falling ping pong ball would only disturb a few of the other ones.

Finally, anyone miniature wandering around in the enclosure has nothing to do with any of it. They're just caught up in the maelstrom that wasn't there yesterday, but today is sweeping through the city.

Just a silly metaphor that popped into my head. Enjoy?

Chris Hayes Gives Us The Strangest Tweet Of The Week

 Dig this bit from MSNBC genius Chris Hayes on reluctance to bring Muslim immigrants and illegal aliens into the country. It may be the strangest thing I've seen in a month.

Again, swap in "Jews" for everything Trump and Co says about refugees, Muslims and immigrants it's immediately clear what they're doing.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 20, 2016

There's so much to unpack here. I don't have the time to work it into a cohesive essay, so let's just go with a numbered list. This is so fundamentally flawed that I'm sure I'm missing plenty, so feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

1. First off, he's comparing Trump to Hitler. A big government, strong man racist, Trump's got a lot going for him. However, Hillary has all that as well as does the entire Democratic Party, so I'm not sure where calling someone a Nazi is going to lead other than all of us donning our brown shirts and marching around. On the other hand, Hitler was more race-positive than race-negative and none of our current political figures are that. That is, Hitler was obsessed with the German race. His hatred was for those who obstructed der volk, not the sort of pandering racism of Trump and the Democrats. The analogy doesn't work at its most basic level.
2. Violence all around the world is driven almost entirely by Muslims and almost not at all by Jews. I can't remember the last time there was internecine Jewish conflict like what's going on in Syria. The thought of it is ludicrous. Comparing Jews and Muslims is just silly.
3. Did Chris think to ask any real Muslims what they thought of being compared to Jews, the sons of pigs and apes? It's in the Suras, for crying out loud.
4. Did Chris think to ask any real Jews what they thought of being compared to Muslims? Maybe he could have interviewed some refugees from Islamic anti-Semitism as they fled parts of Europe.

The last two are the strangest for me and they illustrate the utter vacuum at the heart of open-minded, tolerant multiculturalism. Chris sees everyone as blobs of clay which just happen to be different colors. Sure, they are different colors, but they're still clay. Pieces of clay can be mashed together with ease. You might change the color of the blob, but it's still clay. To Chris, there is nothing distinct about any of them. They're just tokens in his political game, like pieces on a Risk board.

Equating Jews and Muslims has to be the ultimate in cultural ignorance. It's inconceivable that anyone with any kind of appreciation for the two cultures would do this. When you stop and think about it, multiculturalism isn't multi-cultural at all, it's unicultural. There are no meaningful differences between philosophies, religions, ethnicities or nationalities, there is only humanity, governed by whatever it is Chris and his buddies come up with today*. The rest of us are just blobs of clay.

Ironically, he's practicing what my faith, Catholicism, teaches. We are all made in the image of God and God loves us all equally so we should love each other. The difference is that I am required to respect you and how you're different. I am supposed to work to understand your point of view and appreciate it. He doesn't even know that you have a point of view.

* - Today, it's cisgenderism.

Air Turbulence: Am I Going To Die?

I've flown a lot for work. I'm pretty relaxed in the air, although I never like going over the ocean. If something happens in the middle of the Pacific, you're just screwed. Many times, I've sat there and tried to map out how long it would take rescue ships to reach you if there was a water landing an hour outside of Hawaii or San Diego. The answer: too long.

Turbulence bothers me, too. I prefer the window seat, so when we hit air pockets, I've got a perfect view of the wings flexing. I know the engineering is sound, but the primitive part of my brain is running in circles, screaming in panic. "Are they supposed to bend like that? How much does it take to snap them off?" The answer: quite a bit. In fact, a lot more than you'll ever experience.

Here's a good article on aircraft testing. Below is a video showing wing stress tests where the wing finally snaps at 154% of its design rating. The real bending starts around 1:40.

So fly in relaxed comfort, my friends. Thanks to the math, physics and engineering discoveries of Christian Europeans*, the elements aren't going to bring you down.

* - Yes, I had to get that in. ;-)

On Open-mindedness And Gay Marriage

These days, I'm listening to a terrific book called, I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist. I highly recommend it. It's as much a philosophy discussion as it is an argument. Although I've read many books like this, it's managed to teach me some new things.

The first is the ability to look for self-defeating flaws in arguments, particularly in regards to the exclusionary nature of truth. That is, if I hold that something is true and you believe in something contradictory, I must believe your concept is false. There is no such thing as, "This is the truth for me." After all, if there is no such thing as universal truth, then "this is the truth for me, but not for you" cannot be universally true. Relativism dies from self-inflicted wounds. I'd seen this trick before, but never described so succinctly and clearly.

Another good example is the assertion that support for gay marriage is open-minded. It is not. Muslims, for example, do not support gay marriage. If you hold that gay marriage should be legal, then you must assert that Islam's teachings on homosexuality are wrong. There are no two ways about it. You aren't being open-minded at all. You are affirming a very distinct position and denying all contradictory ones. "Love wins and the rest of you morons lose" ought to be the gay marriage slogan.

Bonus tidbit: David Hume's foundational statement for skepticism is taken out behind the barn and shot quite nicely. Here's what that sounded like as Normal Geisler shot it in front of his college professor.

"The principle of empirical verifiability states that there are only two kinds of meaningful propositions: 1) those that are true by definition and 2) those that are empirically verifiable. Since the principle of empirical verifiability itself is neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, it cannot be meaningful."

Ouch. That had to hurt.

The Solution Is To Get Rid Of Your Own Citizens And Keep The Immigrants

After all, your citizens are repulsive, knuckle-dragging xenophobes.

Germany is blowing up again over migration. The Saxon town of Bautzen has, like dozens of similar places across Germany, a barracks for some of the million or two Middle Eastern migrants who have been streaming across the Mediterranean for the past year-and-a-half. People in Bautzen aren't used to foreigners, and now groups of young men have taken to congregating in city's central square, the Kornmarkt. The migrants say they come there for the free internet. This upsets the locals, 80 of whom waged a pitched battle against 20 teenage migrants on Wednesday evening. Alcohol was involved on both sides.

I know whose side the President would take if this was the US. I can't imagine Angela Merkel is any different.

I wonder if right now, she's trying to figure our how to kick out undesirable, possibly baskets of deplorable, Germans.

Grass In The Sun

I was sitting, drinking my coffee yesterday morning, when I saw this through the window. I ran upstairs, grabbed my camera and took a few shots. This one captured what had captured me - reddish grass seeds glimmering in the sun. I hope you like it, too. I left it really large, so I think it's worth a click.

Enjoy!

I Could Do A Lot With $65,914

With every dawn, a new day of racial jabbering begins. I challenge you to pick a political or societal essay at random and find one without race, specifically blacks, being discussed at least somewhere in it. Meanwhile, dig this.

I dunno, man. If I had a wife and an income of $65,914, I could do alright. My kids wouldn't go to Stanford, but they'd certainly be able to get a career-building education at a state university or a trade school.

The American promise is the right to pursue happiness, not have it delivered to you while you lounge poolside with a mint julep in your hand. $66K gives you a chance for a lot of pursuing. Dittos for "equality." Just what is "equality," anyway? None of us are physically, mentally or emotionally equal, no matter what we do. How much "equality" do you need before you just get on with living your life?

I can't figure out what all the fuss is about.

Cheezburger of the Day

I thought this was cute. Enjoy!

Edgar Allen Poe: The Perfect Author For Our Times

... particularly his masterpiece, The Masque of the Red Death where a collection of wealthy revelers party like it's 1899 while outside their mansion a horrible plague sweeps the countryside.

I know I've used this metaphor before, many times, but it just keeps coming back to me in so many ways. Dig this interchange about who's got the right skin color.

Then there's this rant about how baseball is racist. Or something like that. I didn't have the energy to watch or read the thing. I skimmed it and then needed to lie down for a while.

In the meantime, the debt is over $60,000 per citizen, heroin use has gone crazy, little girls from "alternative" families are being sexually abused at a 20-1 clip over traditional families and cities like Chicago are experiencing huge increases in crime, just to pick a few things at random.

Notice that, like a plague, these pathologies are unaffected by the color of your skin. Nor do they care about your sexual orientation or how you self-identify your gender.

So party on, Prince Prospero. Let's order another round of drinks and toast race, sexual orientation and, perhaps, global warming climate change.

I Knew It! I Knew Noah's Ark Wasn't A Fable!

Finally we have proof to convince all you Bible-hating, skeptical elitists! Dig this.

If water didn't cover the entire Earth, how did the sea salt get into the Himalayas? Well, smartie-pants, what's your answer to that? Plus, it's pink. Pink!*

Bonus tidbit: Since salt is NaCl and all Na and Cl atoms are 13.82 billion years old, isn't all salt ancient?

* - I have no idea what the salt being pink means in a theological sense, but you have to admit, that salt is pretty pink. Or maybe it's a light orange. Whatever.

I Want A Copy Of Hillary's Medical Records!

Now that I don't subscribe to the local paper, starter material for the charcoal chimney we use with our Weber grill is hard to find. I figure a nice, thick medical record, full of contradictory half-truths and outright fabrications ought to be enough to get fires going for a whole bunch of steaks, blackened fish, lambsicles and more.

Honestly, why is anyone making a big deal out of this? With this crew, anything they put out will be a lie, the revised version they put out a week later will be a lie, the all-new version a month after that will be a lie and the no-kidding-this-is-what-happened version a month after that will be a lie.

What's the point of asking for information from a person who, along with their entourage, does nothing but lie?

Throw another steak on the barbie, mate! Those medical records got it going right quick!

Code Word Is A Code Word For Deliberately Ignorant Bigot

Martin Castro, chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights recently penned this lovely bit of bigotry.

"The phrases 'religious liberty' and 'religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance."

"Code words" simply mean that Marty can put whatever words he wants into your mouth and then the accused has to do the impossible - prove the negative. For example, if you say you like pancakes, I can retort with, "Liking pancakes is just code words for being an Oakland Raiders fan!" You then have to prove that you're not a Raiders fan, despite the fact that you have watched them on TV at some point in your life.

Clearly, you're a Raiders fan, you amoral scumbag. The rest of us may now safely work to get you fired, fined and perhaps even imprisoned*.

Code words is a license for wild accusations, a way of denouncing your political enemies to the mob so the mob can take action. Let's see if we can find some code words in something Martin Bormann Castro has said in the past.

Never mind. I just found his Twitter stream. What a dork. Dig this.

#TomPerez @LaborSec : "We need to make an #America that looks like America!" @HNBANews #Chicago Convention #diversity #labor #civilrights

— Marty Castro (@TheMartyCastro) September 10, 2016

An America that looks like America? Good Lord, Martin. Why not just wear a t-shirt that says, "I am an idiot?"

I suppose that with a code word practitioner like Martin, we could expect nothing less. Moron.

* - Well, that's what ought to happen to Radiers fans. I mean, really. It's the Raiders!

Have We Become A Nation Of Pansies?

I hope not.

Two data points.

We will tell you what you can sing in your car

From a previous post, there's this bit.

WORCESTER, Mass. — A freshman tentatively raises her hand and takes the microphone. “I’m really scared to ask this,” she begins. “When I, as a white female, listen to music that uses the N word, and I’m in the car, or, especially when I’m with all white friends, is it O.K. to sing along?”

The answer, from Sheree Marlowe, the new chief diversity officer at Clark University, is an unequivocal “no.”

We will tell you what you can and cannot wear under your clothes

From a Federalist article on ladies' undergarments, there's this bit.

The New York Times discussed these shifting ideals: “For over 50 years, women in America have largely cast off such constrictive undergarments, which feminists criticized as symbols of repression.

My reply options

People trying to tell me what to do are likely to get a response selected from a very narrow range of alternatives.

1. Go away. The Crystal Palace game is about to start and I want to watch it in peace.
2. Do me a favor and shut up. I like this TobyMac song and you're talking over it.
3. If you're going to keep talking, I'm going to need more beer. Lots more.

Seriously, when did we Americans become such sissies that we allow people we don't even know to tell us what underwear to buy and what songs to sing in our cars?

Is this how America ends? Pajama Boys, all?

It's Hard To See From Inside A Bubble

So Brown University, a member of the prestigious* Ivy League, will now distribute tampons in men's rooms because, according to Viet Nguyen, UCS president, "menstruation is experienced by more than just those who identify as women and that not all people who identify as women menstruate."

I suppose.

I get what they're trying to do, I just don't see the need for it. There's something surreal about an earnest little dweeb bringing tampons to men's rooms, thinking he's doing something important by striking a blow for the mentally ill transgendered women. It's a luxury act, a kind of elitist hobby. It has a whiff of Weimar corruption to it or maybe the last really big investors' party on the night of October 23, 1929 where everyone drank excellent champagne and ate caviar, toasting their wealth in the stock market.

Meanwhile, the traditional family has been killed off by earnest, little dweebs like Viet Nguyen, resulting in both the death of the oppressive patriarchy and mountains of human debris from ruined childhoods. Maybe Viet could visit some of the neighborhoods wracked by violence and drugs and hand out tampons there.

* - Prestigious apparently means full of quack ideas and blinkered idiots.

Shrimp Etouffee With Homemade Seafood Stock

... is absolutely mind-blowing.

Man, it's been a long time since I've blogged here.


I've been busy in the test kitchen.

Shrimp Etouffee is one of my favorite dishes. I use the Crawfish Etouffee recipe from Terry Thompson's Cajun-Creole Cooking and substitute 31-40 count shrimp for the crawfish. In the past, I've used boxed seafood stock, but when I made it a few weeks back, I couldn't find the stock at our local market.

Pro tip: When you can't find an ingredient at the first store you visit, give up, go home and find a substitute! Every store visit costs you at least 30 minutes and you quickly run out of time to cook. If it's an unusual ingredient like boxed seafood stock, your odds of finding it at the next place are slim. You can quickly turn a leisurely, fun afternoon culinary adventure into a desperate race against time.

Instead of running to another store, I did a quick Google and found this recipe for homemade seafood stock. I found the ingredients for that in the store where I was and headed home. The stock was easy to make an simply blew the store-bought stock out of the water. The end result was the best etouffee I've ever made or ever tasted. It got rave reviews from everyone, even those who aren't usually etouffee fans.

Bon apetit!

You Literally Can't Even

... deal with the tiniest of setbacks.

That's the message of the micro-aggression movement. The latest micro-aggression idiocy news comes from the New York Times. Dig this.

WORCESTER, Mass. — A freshman tentatively raises her hand and takes the microphone. “I’m really scared to ask this,” she begins. “When I, as a white female, listen to music that uses the N word, and I’m in the car, or, especially when I’m with all white friends, is it O.K. to sing along?”

The answer, from Sheree Marlowe, the new chief diversity officer at Clark University, is an unequivocal “no.”

Why any self-respecting person is asking some dimwitted university administration toad if it's OK to sing along with music in their car is beyond me. My musical questions are a bit more theological, but more on that later.

The Bigger Issue

What's happening here is not the speech codes, it's the statement to the offendees that they lack sufficient strength to deal with 19-year-old blondes singing in their cars. The little cutie in the article wasn't being told to keep her crooning to her self for her own sake, it was for the fragile bits of humanity who might hear her and collapse in an emotional heap.

In both Jason Riley's and J. D. Vance's books on growing up and out of poverty, one black, the other white, the key epiphany for each was that they had agency over their lives. When they changed from thinking that the world around them doomed them to poverty, drugs and violence to realizing that their choices were powerful and they could shape their own futures, they went from failure to success.

It's one thing to say you're too weak to overcome growing up with a heroin-addicted mother. It's quite another thing altogether to say that hearing some petite coed laugh as she sings along with her bubblegum-chewing sorority sisters to some hip-hop hit is too much for you.

Micro-aggressions are the ultimate in teaching people that they have no power over their own lives.

My Musical Question

If you invite a bunch of crazed papists over for a party and you start with some hard-rocking Jesus music (think Building 429 and TobyMac) is it OK after a few pitchers of Blue Hawaiians to evolve into this? Asking for a friend.

Photoshop Ups And Downs

So our Maximum Leader likes to sleep on one of our couches. She's a prodigious shedder, so my wife has put out a sheet for her to lie on. It's green. A perfect green to use as a green screen for masking out everything but cat.

Maddi on green.

I know how to use the magic wand tool to select by color, but once I've got my selection, I've forgotten how to do masks. I didn't have time to learn that today, so I'm frustrated because I couldn't work my magic.

I did, however, learn how to use Photoshop to do some higher quality video restoration. Adobe Media Encoder allows you to convert videos to jpg sequences which you can then batch edit in Photoshop. You import one image, make your changes and save them as an action and then run  that action as a batch file on your directory of video frames. It works like a champ.

Ah, the highs and lows of a crazed blogger.

Homemade Pesto Sauce

Every year, we grow a couple of basil plants in our raised beds. Once they get to be enormous and start to flower, we harvest them to make pesto sauce. We get the pine nuts from Costco and use the recipe on the back of the bag. The pine nuts are unquestionably the most expensive ingredient. Last time I looked, they were $20 per pound. The end result, however, is quite worth the money and effort.

Two big basil plants will make a lot of pesto. We put some in a Tupperware container for immediate use and freeze the rest in muffin tins. A single frozen pesto puck from the muffin tins will make one recipe of pesto pasta. Our pucks usually last until the beginning of Spring.

I Have A New Favorite Author

and it's Tom Wolfe. I'm listening to The Kingdom of Speech right now about the evolution of language and I don't want to turn it off. Witty, incisive and elegantly merciless in his analyses of Noam Chomsky and Charles Darwin. That's a strange combination, but if you give the book a try, I think you'll like it.

Does The Left Have Any Standards At All?

... or is it all about amassing more power to the government all the time?

On the right, this election has started some pretty nasty fights among major media figures. Sean Hannity (pro-Trump) and Jonah Goldberg (anti-Trump) might be the best examples. Both are big names for conservatives and their disputes have been public and vigorous.

Am I simply ignorant or is there no such fighting going on over Hillary Clinton on the left? There was some new outrage involving the FBI this week, but it's not worth repeating the details here. It's painfully obvious that Hillary is a venal liar whose corruption is unparalleled in American presidential history. Does anyone on the left care? Where's the squabbling? Where are the respected pundits who are saying they will never vote for Hillary under any circumstances?

If Hillary doesn't create such disputes, it's hard to think of what personified combination of greed, duplicity and power-seeking might.

Animals Are Atheists

... and they have derived their morality from first principles. In it, theft, rape, cannibalism and adultery are all fine.

Here's a really long essay on morality from the Dawkins Foundation. My eyes glazed over pretty quickly and I wondered just what the author would say or do if a squad of einsatzgruppen smashed down his door and decided he was sufficiently Jewish for forced labor or extermination. Maybe he'd demand that they read his essay first.

Meanwhile, the author can't be bothered to look out his window and watch the birds and the bees, creatures of very limited romance or compassion.

Hens beware.

San Diego Harbor

Out at Seaport Village with a friend who was visiting from Chicago, I took this shot with my Galaxy S7. I kind of like it. I left it large, so it might be worth a click. Or not.

Enjoy!