Month: June 2025
07JUN2025 – Quote of the Day
I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you CANNOT conquer America…As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense, and every effort, still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent—doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies—to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, never! never! never! …I call upon the honour of your Lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution.
William Pitt (the Elder)
June, Moon, Spoon, Tune
What is it about the first really hot patch of summer weather. Today was the first day where the inside of the house was warm enough not to require three layers of clothing. The attic has absorbed enough heat so that it has finally heated up the leftover winter air. It’s actually uncomfortably warm inside and I’m luxuriating in it.
And outside it’s ninety. Butterflies and dragonflies are flitting around and the birds are tearing around looking for food for their hatchlings. The moist hot grass is breathing water right into the air and you can smell the photosynthesis cranking away. I love this kind of weather. It rejuvenates me. It makes me wax rhapsodically. It makes me babble idiotically. It recharges body and soul.
For the last couple of weeks, on and off, a hatchling milk snake has been sheltering under an old sheet of copper that I put out for snakes. I have been hoping for years for a mouse eating snake to take up residence in the lower driveway wall. We have plenty of mice and moles and voles around here and a milk snake (or even better, a black rat snake) would put a real dent in their numbers. So, I’m cautiously hopeful that this little reptile is gonna stick around. But currently he’s so tiny that nothing but the youngest pink mice could serve him as food. I wonder if he’s presently surviving on insects, worms and maybe very small salamanders. Well, it’s something to think about.
But it’s not all fun and games. I’m still so behind in the repair and maintain chores. I haven’t even gotten to clean the really high gutters. I’ve got a twenty-four-foot ladder and my guilt is slowly driving me to get busy on it. Camera Girl thinks I should hire a handyman to do it but I scoff at this kind of defeatist talk. And likewise, all the other chores. They build character and spare the bank account. So, I’m putting together my schedule and thinking through the order of operations and locating rope and other supplies to set up the ladder.
Today I saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen around here. Whether people call them fishing spiders or wolf spiders I haven’t done a close identification. But it was a huge bugger. He’s living close to where the exhaust from my heating system reaches the open air. I’m guessing the heat is an attractant for insects in the colder months. I’ll attach a photo here.
Camera Girl says she bought a red coneflower plant for me at Wally Mart. I’m making a row of various perennials but especially coneflowers. They attract butterflies and other insects for my photography. And finally, the other three preying mantis egg sacs that I can still find have all now hatched out. And they’re pretty evenly spaced around the property. Nice how that worked out. Of course, there were another six or eight of the things that seem to have disappeared. Well, that’s on me. Anyway, it’s an excellent day to be out and about. Nothing exciting just the good old summertime. June, moon, spoon, tune. All that stuff.
06JUN2025 – Photo of the Day
06JUN2025 – Quote of the Day
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins.
William Pitt (the Elder)
Guest Contributor – Chemist – 05JUN2025 – The BBB
Actually, based on the title, I thought this would be a political post.
I’m referring to Elon’s opposition to the BBB.
Is it perfect? No.
Will we get a better package with a razor thin majority in the house and the RINOs and squishes we currently have in the GOP?
Also no.
The BBB is just a stepping stone and will give team MAGA breathing room to win the midterms and, maybe, get rid of a few RINOs. Here in Texas, we are going to primary John Cornyn and replace him with a real conservative.
Trump needs time to show his economic policies are working and to get the right people in congress.
Baby steps, Elon. Baby steps.
And, yes. I would love to see a moon base. But its Elon’s money and if he wants to spend it on a symbolic trip to Mars, I won’t stop him.
Come On Elon, Baby Steps
So, what to talk about tonight? I’m kinda at a loss. I’m not in the politics mood. I haven’t figured out the next chapters in the stories I’ve been spinning. Not much going on around the Compound today and even the First Selectman has been on his best behavior and hasn’t eaten anyone in a few weeks. I guess things are in a lull right now.
So, I was thinking with all the talk about Elon Musk getting us to Mars was that really the space mission we need? I think not. What would be better and much easier would be to build a Moon base. The space station we have now is a lame piece of junk that is more trouble than its worth. And living in free fall is really bad for humans. But a permanent base on the Moon is much easier than a Mars trip, much cheaper and much less risky for the astronauts.
Of course, the real reason why this base would be so valuable won’t appear until a magnetic survey is performed and a strange “anomaly” discovered. Once this mystery is investigated and the signal is tracked back to a Jovian (or is it a Saturnian) moon the real exploration of the solar system will begin in earnest. All we need to remember is not to drive the ship’s AI psychotic with conflicting mission requirements and also make a point of not teaching it to read lips.
But seriously (or semi-seriously), I think a Moon base is a much more realistic space project and putting stuff on the Moon instead of in Earth orbit is probably a good idea in general. There’s just too much junk floating around up there.
As for the name, Luna City is one obvious choice. I could be convinced that Sheepshead Bay would sound good. After all there are a lot of Mares up there so a seaside name makes some sense.
But the most important thing that a lunar base would provide is a chance to see if space travel is useful at all. Can a base on the close-by Moon come up with anything useful that can’t be done better and cheaper on Earth?
One thing I can think of are particle accelerators. Maintaining a vacuum on the Moon will be a heck of a lot easier than on Earth. And the lower gravity might have some advantages in certain kinds of construction. And there are probably other scientific experiments that can be done better on the Moon. Maybe the long lunar night would be a great time to do telescopic observations. Instead of the Hubble and Webb space telescopes maybe we could build a really big telescope on the Moon and see right out to the edge of the universe. Of course, we might not like what we find on “the edge.” We might find that the galaxies are arranged to spell out the words, “TO READ BEYOND THIS POINT YOU MUST BUY A SUBSCRIPTION!”
Well, anyway, that’s what I was thinking. The Moon’s the perfect compromise between the fantastically risky Mars mission and the useless and boring International Space Station. Come on Elon, baby steps.
05JUN2025 – Quote of the Day
You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony; but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage—you cannot conquer; it is impossible: you cannot conquer the Americans. You talk, my Lords, of your friends among them to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army: I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch! …If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you; you cannot make them wear your cloth: you will plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they can never respect you…
William Pitt (the Elder)
05JUN2025 – Photo of the Day
Tomorrow is Another Day
So today was a day of penance. Sins of omission had to be paid for with sins of commission. The pool fence has a gate with a closing/locking mechanism that requires the two posts and the door to be in rather finicky alignment to work properly. Well, it’s been getting more and more out of whack for the last couple of years but I’ve been putting it off because … well because I’m a very lazy man.
But yesterday the pool guys opened up the pool so I figured I couldn’t stall any longer. I had all my tools (drill, 200-foot extension cord, screwdrivers, pliers, wrench, two different socket sets and drivers, a small sledge hammer, wheel barrow, shovel, ear protection, eye protection, hacksaw) and the kits I was using to shore up the two posts and the hardware I needed to repair the gate. The wheelbarrow and shovel were to fill a hole next to one of the posts. I had dug it and filled it with large stones (~fifty pounds each) to hold the post in place but this wasn’t doing the trick. So, I removed the stones and replaced it with dirt and compacted it with the sledge hammer. But unfortunately, I couldn’t get at this post because of a large concrete planter that Camera Girl had filled with plants right on top of the post so I had to wrestle it out of the way. Who knew concrete and dirt were heavy?
Finally, I could get to work on the posts. But when I moved the planter, I must have covered over a hornet’s nest. Because now they were looking for their nest and couldn’t find it. So, they came looking for me! So, I’m banging the reinforcing post into the ground and bolting it together and drilling holes into the post while dodging and swatting hornets. So, I’m swearing and moving erratically to escape the bugs and Camera Girl sees me as she’s walking in the yard. And she comes over to see what’s wrong. But she blows up when she gets any kind of bug bite so I’m yelling at her to stay back. So, she thinks I must be going crazy but after additional arm waving and hollering she retreats.
Finally, I finish with the first post and quickly manhandle the planter back in place and the hornets find their home. So I go looking for Camera Girl to explain what was going on. She yeah-yeahs me and tells me to get back to work. The rest of the job goes fairly well. Of course, I make approximately a thousand trips back and forth to my tool room in the garage because nothing fits and all the hardware is wrong. But eventually the posts are square, the gate is straight and the lock works (more or less). I put away all of the various tools and head to the pool to empty the skimmer for the first time. But I can tell something’s wrong with the pump. It sounds wrong. I turn off the power and I see smoke coming from a union near a valve that the pool guys replaced yesterday. The union cracked and the pump has been running without water for some unknown amount of time today. I sigh. Yep. One step forward. Two steps back.
As Scarlett O’Hara wisely observed, “Tomorrow is another day.”