Month: January 2022

A Real Big Bang in the Pacific

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Here’s the video of an underwater volcano erupting in the ocean near Tonga.  It’s impressive.

“The eruption spawned a 4-foot tsunami that hit Tonga’s capital of Nuku’alofa, which is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of the volcano. A sonic boom from the eruption was heard across the Pacific Ocean, reaching as far away as Alaska, according to the Associated Press.

Nuku’alofa was reportedly covered in a thick film of volcanic dust, according the AP. There have been no official reports of injuries or damage from Tonga’s capital, but its internet access was interrupted by the event, the AP added.

The volcano on Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai first erupted on Dec. 20 and then exploded with a massive eruption on Jan. 13, which was also spotted by GOES West, NOAA officials said in a statement. That eruption was seven times more powerful than the December event and sent a huge plume of ash and gas over 12 miles (20 kilometers) into Earth’s atmosphere.

Saturday’s eruption also sent an ash plume to an altitude of nearly 12 miles, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told the AP. New Zealand officials hope to send military surveillance flights over the volcano on Monday to assess its status, followed by aid and supplies for Tonga, where water supplies may be contaminated, Ardern added.”

 

Update:  Hat tip to Big Mac for a link to a very informative site on the details of that volcano.

 

The Quadratic Franchise

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Many, many years ago I read an essay by the science fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein about civics.  He was making the case that democracy was the proposition that a million men were smarter than one man or a few men.  And he batted that idea around.  His point was that the average man might not be the right decision maker for society.  And then he thought of how we could rig things to make democracy better.  Now, being an engineer, his first idea was based on the type of tests that would appeal to a technical mind.  He imagined the voting booth being equipped with a visual display of some sort that communicated a problem to the voter to solve before being allowed to vote.  Heinlein favored solving a quadratic equation as the qualifying test.  I can’t remember if it was a multiple-choice question or not but at the time, I saw the sense of it.  Pick some minimally difficult standard of intelligence and make it a condition for voting.

But intelligence is not the only criterion for citizenship.  Moral fitness may be even more important.  You may be smart enough to know something is a bad idea for society but if you think that you’ll personally benefit from it then you might go along with it.  So, another way to rig the franchise is disqualify people who have chosen to live antisocially.  Currently, most states disqualify felons from voting.  That seems a reasonable measure.  But I think there are other larger voting blocks that should be looked at.  Perhaps civil servants should not be allowed to vote.  After all, teachers and prison guards have controlled politics in California and other states like Illinois and New Jersey for decades based on their habit of voting in Democrats to keep their pensions and salaries robust.  Maybe anyone on welfare should be taken off the voters’ roll because they’ll vote for the liberal who will keep their gravy train flowing.

Or maybe we should go the other way around.  Maybe people’s votes should be weighted according to how much taxes they pay.  So, Elon Musk pays on average ten million dollars in taxes a year and I pay fifty thousand so his vote should count for two hundred of mine.  And the guy who pays no taxes has no vote or maybe some minimal fraction of a vote.

But of course, the absurdity of this whole discussion is that none of this matters because as Dementia Joe recently pointed out, it’s not who votes but who counts the votes, that counts.  Even when unheard of numbers of Americans came out to vote in 2020 the people who rig elections in Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Madison and Phoenix simply ran the photocopy machines ten times as long and manufactured the votes needed to fake the election result they wanted.

We can talk about who the least responsible voters are.  My favorite is women because they vote with their emotions and because they’re gullible and easily flattered into thinking their self-interest is equal to the good of the country.  But even they will recognize grim reality when it comes in the likeness of a BLM mob.  So ultimately trying to fix representative government means absolutely nothing when the ballot box is being stuffed.

I think the attempts to fix this situation and the simultaneous attempt to codify fraud by the Democrats is the biggest struggle going on right now in our country.  I don’t want to overblow the criticality of the result because the bad guys never run out of ways to degrade our country.  Literally they never quit.  But I think the attempt to fix this problem is a fair test of whether there is enough strength left in our system and in our will to turn the country around.  If after what happened in 2020, we don’t solve this problem then we’re not going to have the strength to survive the diseases that afflict our country.  They will overwhelm the system like a parasitic disease that saps its host’s strength and eventually leads to death.

Heinlein thought about civics and ways that we could improve citizenship.  But he also predicted the decay of our society under the influence of progressivism.  I think he would have recognized the symptoms we are currently suffering from but he still might have been sad to see it happen to the country he loved.

War Pig’s Feedback

I prefer the government of “Starship Troopers”. I also like the idea he postulated in “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” – that any law passed can be nullified by I believe a 1/3 vote of the People. After all if a law is so poorly written or unnecessary that a full third of your citizens despises it, it is a bad law.

I do NOT trust the form of voting in Sam Clemen’s “The Curious Republic of Gondour”, since we have seen what craziness is professed in western colleges and universities. What was it William F Buckley Jr said;- “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

 

(Good to hear from you War Pig.  All the best.

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15JAN2022 – OCF Update – Deep Freeze

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Camera Girl announced to me this morning that the outside thermometer registered an impressive 2° Fahrenheit.  I went to the kitchen porch and duly ventilated my lungs with this arctic air.  When the coughing fit subsided, I made a mental note not to do that anymore.

I went through the news today and I didn’t see anything new of value.  I guess I will have to wait until something comes along to bloviate about.

Today is a good day for writing and doing some research on local events that might have value as photographic subjects.  Yesterday I got out and did some photography in a colonial era cemetery here in Dunwich.  Some of the dearly departed were bound to be warlocks and witches and other friends and family of Selectman Cthulhu so I was very conscious of any sounds or vibrations emanating from the ground.  I’ve seen enough movies to know that being dragged down into a graveyard is your own fault.  Sidestepping that sort of thing is trivially easy.  Luckily no such trouble occurred.  The dead were slumbering under a layer of fresh snow and the only noises I heard were Camera Girl grumbling under her breath about wasting her time.  It was a relatively short outing but it awoke my COVID drugged reflexes to seek out interesting images in the wide wonderful world.  However, 2° Fahrenheit is a powerful deterrent to wanderlust.  I’m staying put today and planning future treks.

Having finished the Star Trek episodes is a great milestone and a highly encouraging event.  Without the horrors of Season 3 shadowing my heart my spirit is buoyant and I can look forward to new projects with renewed zest.  I do plan to do some follow up work on the Star Trek project.  Some quantitative analysis of my ratings of the episodes might provide insights.  But that is for the future.  Right now, the attitude is, “Free at last, free at last.”

I’ve been disappointed by the fact that the last few Galaxy’s Edge novels have not been published in paperback.  I guess I’ll be forced to get kindle to read them.  I sent an e-mail to one of the authors to question if this is a permanent situation but he never got back to me.  I also have to catch up on the most recent Monster Hunter book too.  And eventually I have some movies to see also.

January 15th!  Time is whizzing by and they haven’t quite broken us yet.  I’m looking forward to more bright (but warmer) days like this and to getting out and about in the short winter days.  If anything interesting catches my eye I’ll be sure to pass it along but for now enjoy your day and stay warm if you’re living in the arctic waste like me.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 24 – Turnabout Intruder

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Great Caesar’s ghost!

If there had been no other reason to cancel the Star Trek series, this episode, in and of itself, would provide that rationale.  But it is the last episode so here we go.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the holy trinity of landing parties, arrive at planet blah, blah, blah where Dr. Janice Lester, an old flame of Kirk’s from his Starfleet Academy days, is sick with radiation poisoning.  Dr. Coleman, her private physician,  informs McCoy that she needs space medicine or something.  But when they leave Kirk alone with Janice to tend to a patient who’s already dead, Janice shoots Kirk with a petite phaser that she had hidden in her purse.  Then she drags him to a wall full of lights and standing next to him pushes a button that exchanges their personalities.  Now Janice in Kirk’s body (JIKB) carries Kirk in Janice’s body (KIJB) over to the bed and starts strangling KIJB with a stylish pastel scarf.  But the others return before JIKB can get the job done.  Coleman is in cahoots with JIKB and is given medical authority over KIJB by JIKB, much to the chagrin of McCoy who feels his authority has been trampled on as ship’s physician.

Coleman keeps KIJB sedated to keep up the charade but KIJB fools dim-witted Nurse Chapel into leaving the room and smashes a drinking glass that the sedative was in, to provide a tool to cut through her restraints.  But JIKB happens to see KIJB running by and punches her out, which raises eyebrows on both McCoy and Spock.  And as you know both characters love raising their eyebrows.  At this point everyone in the crew has noted the highly emotional, annoying and sometimes hysterical actions of JIKB.  Spock is so suspicious that he interviews KIJB in the holding cell.  And he uses the Vulcan mind meld and learns the truth of the personality transfer.  When Spock acts on this knowledge he is accused by JIKB of mutiny and is court-martialed.  JIKB’s bearing and words during the trail soon raise doubts in the minds of all the officers.  When Scotty and McCoy discuss in the corridor outside the trial the outcome if Spock is acquitted Scotty states clearly that they will have to commit mutiny.  But they were recorded secretly by JIKB.  Now Spock, McCoy and Scotty are declared mutineers by JIKB and he declares that they will be executed.  Sulu shouts out that the death penalty is forbidden and JIKB flips out and has a hissy fit.  Now Sulu and Chekov as the most senior remaining officers decide to defy JIKB and when this occurs on the Bridge JIKB spazzes out and we see the personalities reverse for a brief moment before reversing again.

Now JIKB freaks out and runs down to Coleman and says he’s afraid he’ll lose the Kirk body.  Coleman tells JIKB that he must kill KIJB right away to prevent permanent reversion.  But when they go down to do this KIJB attacks Coleman and suddenly the reversion happens spontaneously.  Now we have Kirk and Janice back in their own bodies and she wails and moans about losing the Enterprise and being just a poor weak woman being discriminated against by strong cruel men.  Kirk says some incoherent things about coulda, woulda, shoulda and the thing mercifully ends.

Just to put it right out there this episode broke the Shatner Mockery Index Meter so it gets an 11 for that.  JIKB snapping at everyone in the crew and behaving like a refugee from the tenth-grade mean-girl’s lunch-table is something to behold.  It makes me wonder if Shatner was given a course of estrogen injections before the filming began.  But my favorite scene is where Spock informs JIKB on the bridge that the same star course he had ordered could be made in less time by going faster.  She flounces off the bridge with her nose in the air.  In other words, he was attacking her driving skills.  Well, what can I say?  It’s finally over.  Free at last.  Free at last.

Score:  4   //   11

Note:  this is the last episode.  When I have recovered sufficiently from the strain, I intend to do some follow-up posts on the whole series, but not right now.  Oh, the pain, the pain.

14JAN2022 – Random Reactions to the News of the Day

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There is much that is newsworthy today.  But all of it is incremental to old stories.

Reactions to the Supreme Court decision on the OSHA Mandate from both sides.  The far-left reaction is comically panic stricken.  One writer at Salon named (I kid you not) Heather Digby Parton claimed:

“The goal of destroying the government regulatory apparatus that makes America a first-world country is shared by Republicans from Bannon to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney to Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney to Chief Justice John Roberts and every conservative in between. And it’s one of the most radical agendas any political faction has ever advanced. If you want to know why all the Republicans backed Donald Trump even when they knew he was monumentally unfit, this was it. They got their court and their dream is about to come true. Unfortunately, it’s a nightmare for the rest of us.”

So, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney are wild-eyed bomb throwing radicals.  Good to know.

 

Lindsey Graham, of all people, is warning Mitch McConnell to patch up his differences with Donald Trump to avoid damaging the Republicans’ effectiveness in 2022 and beyond.  He says:

LINDSEY GRAHAM: You don’t have to agree with Trump, what he did in Syria I didn’t like it. I’ve had my differences with President Trump but I appreciate what he did and the media tries to divide us all the time. January 6th was a dark day in American history but it was not Pearl Harbor, it’s not 9/11, and that’s all they have to talk about. So to my Republican colleagues, let’s spend our time growing the party and realize that President Trump is the most consequential Republican in the country since Ronald Reagan and see if we can work together. Whether or not they can repair the relationship is up to them, not me. I hope so.

SANDRA SMITH: Senator, you would not be saying any of this unless you believe Donald Trump was the future of your party.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: You are so smart.

SANDRA SMITH: And that he can actually win.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: You are so smart.

JOHN ROBERTS: We know you well enough.

SANDRA SMITH: Is that it?

LINDSEY GRAHAM: In case you missed the last four minutes, that’s it.

A mealy-mouthed milquetoast like Graham is mocking brainless Fox News reporters?  Has the world gone topsy turvy? To me that signifies that even spineless mollusks like Graham recognize just how badly the Biden administration has overreached and want to make the most of the political thumping the Dems are about to experience.  It seems to me the Stupid Party should be gathering donations from their billionaire patrons to build a larger-than-life statue of Manchin and Sinema and set it up in the Capitol Rotunda.  As to the question of whether Trump and McConnell can bury the hatchet my guess is no.  McConnell is a weasel and making money on his position probably overrules any other consideration.  So doing the right thing isn’t even in his vocabulary.

 

Here’s an article handicapping the Senate outcome in 2022 based on Dementia Joe’s approval rating which is at about 41% currently:

“What does it tell us about 2022? Assuming the parties don’t nominate particularly weak candidates and there are no further retirements, a Republican-controlled Senate starts to come into the picture when Biden’s job approval falls to around 51% and becomes the most likely outcome at around 48%.

At 42%, the model envisions virtually no chance for Democrats to hold the Senate and predicts a loss of four seats as the most likely outcome. At 42%, the Colorado Senate seat could potentially come into play, assuming that Republicans produced a credible candidate (remember that a relatively unheralded candidate held Sen. Michael Bennet to a six-point margin in 2016).”

 

Well, that sounds wonderful.  Crying Chuck Schumer will lose his majority leader job and be forced to hand over his seat to AOC along with his testicles.  What’s not to like?

 

Here’s an article that calculates the real inflation rate as almost double what the administration is saying.

“The probability is that inflation will run closer to 10% than 5% for the first half of 2022, pushing the Fed to tighten more than investors now expect.”

This shows us that nothing can provide good economic news before the November election.  The Dems are toast.

 

All of this is good news.  Well actually, it’s bad news for our enemies which is not quite the same thing but close.  We’ll have to suffer through what’s coming but at least the bad guys will get their lumps.  Even the idiots who legitimately voted for Biden are horrified and disgusted at the mess he’s presided over.  The incompetence, arrogance and malevolence have been impossible to miss.  They are going to lose the House and most probably the Senate.  Good.

But we’ve been in this situation before.  Our side is run by idiots and they will not kick the enemy when they’re down.  They’ll help them to their feet, dust them off and extend the hand of friendship just in time to get stabbed in the belly.

So, for me this is the time to work on building our own things and look for allies.  In my mind Ron DeSantis is the brightest light that has appeared since 2016.  What I’m looking for is a breakthrough.  I’m looking for an initiative that pushes the Left back instead of just trying to stand our ground.  And maybe we’ll see some of that in late 2022.  So, this is a good time to judge who are the real leaders and who is just collecting a paycheck.  Judge them by their results.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 23 – All Our Yesterdays

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Kirk, Spock and McCoy visit planet blah, blah, blah that is about to be destroyed by its sun going nova.  The whole population has used a time machine to escape into the past.  But one librarian is sticking around to handle any late arrivals.  He tries to convince the Enterprise crew to use the time machine to escape.  Kirk accidentally goes through the portal and ends up in an analog of 17th century England.  And McCoy and Spock follow him and end up in an Ice Age hellhole.

Kirk is accused of witchcraft when he is heard talking to Spock and McCoy when they are in a different time through the portal.  He finds a fellow time traveler and convinces him to help him escape back to the future.  When he gets back, he has to violently convince the librarian to help him find Spock and McCoy.

Meanwhile Spock and McCoy are found by another time traveler.  It is a woman named Zarabeth who has been sentenced to the Ice Age prison by an evil dictator.  But because they are now 5,000 years in the past, Spock reverts to the emotional condition his ancestors existed in at that time.  He becomes quite belligerent when McCoy calls him a pointy eared Vulcan.  And, of course, he falls in love with the pretty woman (played by very pretty and very young Mariette Hartley) in the skimpy cavegirl outfit.  When McCoy accuses Zarabeth of lying about whether McCoy and Spock can get back to the future Spock becomes enraged and starts choking McCoy.  McCoy brings this to Spock’s attention and he realizes that he is acting like a primitive.  Zarabeth clarifies that she knows she can never return to the future alive but she doesn’t know whether Spock and McCoy can.

The two men decide to try to find the way back and with just minutes to go before nova Kirk has the librarian open the path to the Ice Age time portal.  After Spock paws at Zarabeth for a few moments Kirk successfully urges the two men to return.  McCoy talks to Spock about how he feels about leaving Zarabeth in the past and Spock says some Vulcan jazz about her being dead and buried but it sounds more like bitterness than lack of emotion.  The librarian quickly makes his escape to his own time destination and the Enterprise beams the landing party back just in time to escape the nova.

This is a pretty good episode.  Sure, it’s silly and set up as a thriller with the clock running out on the nova.  But the story moves along and watching Leonard Nimoy act almost like a human being is amusing.  I especially liked when he had McCoy by the windpipe.  Even Kirk avoided his usual histrionics.  And the funny little bald librarian provides some humor to the proceedings with his bureaucratic fussiness.  And Mariette Hartley is a charming looking woman and did the best she could do with the lines she was given.

With the series all but over and faced with the reality of transgender Kirk in the final episode I feel extremely generous.  I’m going to award this episode with a 8 // 2.