This guy is a walking, talking parody of the global oligarchic elite. And his demand for applause accountability is such an echo of the Stalinist requirement for endless applause that it’s hilarious. I think his next biography should be of North Korea’s Kim. That should be about right up his alley.
Today I have to catch up on some work. I have to read some pretty boring procedural documents for work. Also I’m trying to figure out how to make a global change in the website database. There’s a free “plugin” that can be used to make the change one post at a time but I need to carry it out on something like 5,800 posts. There’s a commercial version that supposedly will carry out the change globally but I think it’s a small programming change to do it myself. So I’m reading this book on PHP and MySQL development. The book’s about 600 pages so I suspect this will take a while to get a handle on. But I feel it’s a good idea to start understanding how this web development stuff works. Underneath the HTML page structure the PHP programming controls the dynamic aspects of the web site. the thing I want to do is a database copy and paste operation. In my ignorant take on this it should be like copying a row of excel cells and pasting it into another row. But the reality, I’m sure, will be much much messier. If the website crashes and burns you’ll know I pushed the wrong button.
Other than that, I’m continuing on with my holiday routine of eating too many Christmas cookies and watching way too many old movies. It’s a simple plan but it works for me.
I studiously avoided the Zelenskyyyyyyyyy speech before Congress. I added the extra y’s because I have now seen his name spelled with one y and two y’s and want to get ahead of the curve. Honestly I wonder how long we can keep up sending billions of dollars to those people. All we’re doing is throwing gasoline on a fire. It’s pretty scary. If the Russians level Kiev are we going to try and invade Russia. Even Dementia Joe can’t be that stupid. He’ll end up on the trifecta with Napoleon and Hitler.
Well, that’s enough for now. I’ll get something together later when the Muse strikes.
Winter Solstice. The first day of winter, the day when the sun spends the least amount of time above the horizon. The longest night of the year. Well, while some neo-pseudo-druids will be cavorting around the Stonehenge site I’ll spend today reveling in the joys of the season. I’ll watch some more of my favorite seasonal movies, eat some more Christmas cookies and try to work off the calories with some exercise. Camera Girl is devilishly busy with her preparations for the Christmas feast and I am more or less nothing but a hindrance to her at this point. I ask if I can help and just get scowls of contempt for what she considers hollow offers. Maybe I can carry some heavy pots of soup or sides of meat downstairs. But other than those few things I’m essentially of no use to her. Well, what can I say? God has divided us, quite wisely, into men and women and along those same lines he has provided or withheld various talents to the members of the human race. And like the fabulous ant and grasshopper of Aesop some of us toil and are productive and others of us feast and sing. I am cursed to be among this latter group. And Camera Girl is solidly in the former category. Such is life.
It’s bright daylight today. I intend to walk around in the woods and snap a photo or two of whatever strikes my eye. If tonight is as clear I must take a walkaround in the starlight and enjoy a sight of the winter constellations on this longest night. In fact, the moon is on the next to last night before New Moon so viewing the sky will be almost optimal. Orion will be about 45 degrees above the horizon at about 11 pm and that’s when I’ll take a wander outside. The forecast is for mostly clear skies and 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Sounds pretty good for late December in New England.
The world diverges into two contrasting pictures. When I hear what is going on in the wide world it is a ghastly disaster. Evil men run just about everything there is to control. Joe Biden is a symbol for a world collapsing into decay. But when I look at my personal world, I see good things all around me. Good people are working hard to improve the lives of their families and displaying wonderful qualities of self-sacrifice and industriousness. I see youngsters working hard at their studies and displaying intelligence and good will. So, it’s a paradox. How can so much good exist in a world that has embraced nihilism and irrational goals? And I must say I haven’t an answer. But I will celebrate the good and hope for the future no matter how bleak the big picture seems to be.
So, I’ll go out today and take the optimistic approach. From here on in the hours of daylight will be increasing and the New Year comes with the ever-renewed hope that the world will come to its senses. That’s good enough for today.
Half the news today is about the January 6th Committee recommending criminal charges against Donald Trump to the Justice Department. Now, there is nothing surprising about that recommendation. Nor is there any doubt that if the Justice Department decides to prosecute him that they can find a crooked DC court to convict him. They’ve proven they’ve got access to any number of kangaroo courts and they can pack a jury with partisan hacks. But what they can’t do any more is convince the majority of Americans that there is anything legitimate or honest in their activities.
Thirty percent of the country consider the federal government to be a pirate operation. Probably more than 50% feel that voting laws have been tampered with to the point that fair elections are no longer possible. And a safe majority of Americans are aware that the press and many institutions are obviously controlled by the Democrats.
So, whatever the Justice Department does, no one will mistake it for justice. It’s just the application of power against their enemies. And that’s where we’ll be. From now on we’re sort of where the Soviet Union was in the 1980s. Everyone knows how things get done and no one believes the “official” explanation for anything. It’s just the way the system works.
And that’s the way it will be. The Left controls this country lock, stock and barrel. They’ll do whatever they want to do. But at the same time, they’re ruling over something between 30 and 50% of the population that considers itself under forced occupation by a banana republic junta. Based on the activities that we’ve seen from the Obama and Biden gangs we can expect that gross incompetence and corruption will be the hallmarks of this regime. And the faltering economy portends great suffering for the former working and middle classes.
So, it’s an open question where this goes. Can the Democrats screw things up badly enough that despite election fraud they could still be voted out of office by their own voters? I sort of doubt it. I think the outcome of these elections is no longer in the hands of voters at all. If that is the case then it will take the disruption of normal life to finally wrench control of the country away from the Left.
It will take something on the order of what Germany went through in the 1920s and 1930s to convince Americans to finally reject their current masters. That’s a harrowing idea. We’ll need to be ruined and destitute to finally cast off the crooks currently running this country.
It took about seventy years for the Soviet Union to fall. But the United States has a much more robust economy and a long history of governmental stability. Nevertheless, Americans are not used to true poverty. Even during the Great Depression most people worked and could feed themselves. But the way the current gang are deindustrializing the country any level of economic destruction seems possible. I won’t pretend to know how things will turn out for us. It’s an open question.
But I will say that they’ve achieved permanent alienation of a very large minority of the country and that will seriously change the complexion of life in this country. Joe Biden can wave the flag all he wants. No one is following him to the Ukraine or anywhere else. Let him organize the Tranny Brigade to head over that hill for him and best of luck with that.
Half the country (and probably a lot more) are now completely pragmatic about how they interact with their government. No one is volunteering for anything anymore. Self-interest of themselves and their families is the name of the game. There’s us and there’s them.
When a chemical engineer is tasked with designing a mixing system for insoluble liquids, he has to calculate the amount of energy needed to turn the liquids into an emulsion. So, these liquids that completely repel each other like water and oil can be suspended in each other and thereby come in intimate contact with each other. And in that state they can be smoothly reacted with each other by some catalyst or chemical.
Something similar has occurred between the different camps on the Right. Michael Anton describes himself as a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration. He became well-known for writing the “Flight 93 Election” back before the 2016 presidential election when he advocated for Donald Trump as our last chance to stop the country from sliding into leftist tyranny.
He is as far philosophically as anyone on the real Right can be from the Z-Man when it comes to beliefs about the nature of government. And yet these two men have now made contact. Specifically, Anton has written a (very) long post at American Greatness defending the concept of natural rights against an assertion that the Z-Man made that natural rights do not exist. And in fact, the Z-Man’s post was a reaction to an Anton post that was itself a reaction to an essay by yet another personality on the Right the paleoconservative Paul Gottfried. Enough agitation is occurring in our environment to bring these various species in contact with each other and the interaction is yielding change and reaction.
Now suffice it to say that what passes for debate here is more like low intensity warfare (especially in the comments sections). But I think the fact that, at least, they are beginning to acknowledge each other’s existence is the beginning of communication. And this communication is important. Not so much for the writers but for the readers. Currently the ideas of the various groups on the Right are pretty thoroughly siloed. Having the readers get a taste of the other opinions around is all for the good. These ideas need to be banged around against each other a good deal for some clarity to emerge. People need to compare the words to the world around them and decide which model is right or mostly right. Because chances are no one model is completely correct. There could be valuable insights from more than one camp. And it’s possible that minds could be changed on certain points if a wider consensus is formed.
So, this is just talk. But it’s a beginning. One thing that’s been totally lacking on the right is any kind of open discussion of the taboo subjects. We’ve allowed the Left to control the allowable agenda for discussion on the Right for generations. What we’re seeing is the beginning of the breakdown of that control. It hasn’t reached the point where the establishment Right will acknowledge the relevance of the dissident opinions but the middle is starting to address them. Once the majority of the non-Left has shifted to the edge of the dissident territory the establishment will be forced kicking and screaming to the right. What happens after that is unknown.
It may turn out that the Left will outright win and all this will be moot. But if the Right manages to push the country in our direction, then the establishment Right will convince themselves that they were always in the vanguard of this great movement and deserve all the praise and benefits. And eventually the Right will overstep itself and some reaction will occur.
But that’s hardly anything for us to worry about. It will take a generation just to stop the leftward swing of the cultural pendulum, never mind getting it back to the center. But it is encouraging to see the center acknowledge the dissident position and even begin to give grudging approval to some of their ideas. Let’s see what’s next.
When Scrooge awakens and embraces his new life we feel the electric thrill he feels at everything around him. He rediscovers life and the joy it contains.
“What’s to-day!” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.
“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”
“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!”
“Hallo!” returned the boy.
“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired.
“I should hope I did,” replied the lad.
“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?”
“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy.
“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!”
“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.
“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”
“Walk-er!” exclaimed the boy.
“No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown!”
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
“I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s!” whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He sha’n’t know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will be!”
Today is the highest of solemnities in Camera Girl’s kitchen calendar. I, even I, am banned from encroaching on the rituals being performed. And I’m no fool. Interfering with the magic going on risks the spoiling of those spells and the blighting of the baked goods being produced; a horror not to be imagined.
Today Camera Girl and her daughters and now her granddaughter will gather like a coven of witches and take their magic ingredients and hover around the stove and drink coffee (or hot chocolate in the case of Princess Sack of Potatoes) and knead dough and add vanilla extract and hand shape the grandma cookies and the chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies and whichever new variants they decide on.
And wondrous aromas will waft through the house and when they’re through there will be a pile of cookies to get us through to New Year’s Day. Splendiferous confections that turn a coffee break into a feast. And make watching an old movie into a special event.
But even ignoring the practical results of this activity, this is a primary ritual of our domestic calendar. The hand written recipes are coming on fifty years. The paper is beginning to crumble and the writing is fading from exposure to ingredients and wear and tear. I’ve warned Camera Girl that they need to be copied and digitized, printed out and distributed to her daughters to preserve them from loss. But if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to take on the project.
I look at some of the recipes and the notes on them and see the names of friends and relatives from long ago. Only one or two living women are represented. Most are from our parents’ and grandparents’ generation. A few go even farther back.
And that’s a comforting legacy. In these times when fools are trying to deconstruct the meaning of man and woman and sever the traditions that have given meaning to our lives, there still exist people and rituals that ground our lives and make them human and pleasant. Baking cookies may seem to some people to be a trivial and possibly harmful activity in a world of obese people. But it’s exactly opposite. Christmas cookies are a special and specific part of the year. Once they’re done, we don’t make more. We move onto the winter months when we subsist on meager fare, far removed from the bounty of summer and fall. Christmas is a celebration and an ending of the year and needs to be treated as such.
So, I will withdraw from the kitchen and keep myself busy with other things while the women commune with their flour and butter. From time to time, I’ll find an excuse to walk by the kitchen and see how things are going. And maybe my granddaughter will come visit with me for a game of Candy Land. But for the most part I’ll leave them to their industry and their talk. And before I go to bed there will be the hoard of golden and white and brown cookies in various cookie jars and containers. And of course, there will be a big mug of coffee and one or two (or even three) cookies waiting for me to enjoy during a holiday movie. God bless you Camera Girl and long may you bake.
When I was working for a design engineering firm, we often looked at exotic metals and alloys as solutions to chemical reactor material for highly corrosive compounds. Nickel, chromium and cobalt alloys such as the Hastelloy B and C metals were extremely attractive for their corrosion resistance and strength properties. Of course, they were difficult to work with because their hardness made them difficult to cut and mill.
Now research is coming out that alloys consisting of equal quantities of those three metals have extremely high strength and ductility.
“The toughness of this material near liquid helium temperatures (20 kelvin, -424 °Fahrenheit) is as high as 500 megapascals square root meters. In the same units, the toughness of a piece of silicon is one, the aluminum airframe in passenger airplanes is about 35, and the toughness of some of the best steels is around 100. So, 500, it’s a staggering number,” said research co-leader Robert Ritchie, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and the Chua Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley.”
If you notice this extreme toughness measure is recorded at -424 °F. This implies that the toughness number is not as high at normal temperatures. Now this is unusual. Most materials become brittle at cryogenic temperatures not more ductile. But I assume the toughness they’re measuring is still at very high levels for ambient conditions. A material that’s five times stronger than the strongest steels is remarkable. Even double or triple is unheard of.
These alloys are very expensive and would start out being used in the most critical applications such as space flight. But over the course of time these new materials will find other applications. Maybe one day this material might end up in the beams of a mile high building or an enormous bridge. And before you know it they’ll make golf clubs and tennis rackets out of it.
It’s gratifying to see that not all the physical sciences and engineering fields have completely ground to a halt during the Age of Biden. Possibly there is still hope of our civilization escaping another dark age.
The 1984 version of A Christmas Carol has I think the best portrayal of Marley’s Ghost
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
Mankind is the business of us all. And today the priority is to preserve what makes us human. Protecting the young from the lies and perversions of the nihilists must be our focus.
Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens
The last week before Christmas. Now Camera Girl must marshal all her powers to coordinate the schedule of buying and cooking the feast. Today she came home with a ham, chopped meat, escarole and some of the other ingredients of the various courses. The roast beast won’t arrive until the end of the week. And the pies and cakes won’t be baked or bought for a few days more. I was explicit that there must be a good quality vanilla ice cream in copious quantity to complement the pies. And very good coffee to wash it down.
The mashed potatoes, corn, crescent rolls and the stuffed mushrooms are all last-minute items that won’t be started until Christmas Eve but they’ll add their dimension to the meal. And finally, I demanded chestnuts and that rope of dried figs that no one ever eats. Camera Girl, being the frugal woman that she is, complained bitterly that chestnuts now cost $8 a pound. But I was adamant. I never liked them as a kid but my father-in-law always had some out at Christmas and after trying them a few times I actually developed a taste for them. As for the dried figs, they’re so hard that they’re almost inedible but somehow it wouldn’t be Christmas without them lying around on the table so I demanded them too.
And this year I’ll show my little granddaughter the trick with the mandarin orange skin and a lighted match. The oils in the skin are flammable and she’ll be amazed to see it ignite around the match when I squeeze the skin near it. And this year I think I’ll try to get the kids to join in a penny ante poker game with me. Camera Girl has an old bucket of pennies. There must be a thousand of them and we can play for hours without any serious money changing hands.
I’ve got my favorite Christmas DVDs at the ready and several albums of Christmas music on tap. And no one should be sick this year because everyone has already been stricken with the Chinese Bioweapon recently. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a sugar plum but I’m pretty sure there’ll be all kinds of chocolates and mints on the table.
Sure, everything is about twice as expensive as normal and that old dimwit Biden keeps gassing off every few days about Ukraine or gay marriage or trans-something-or-other but I’m satisfied that this will be a good Christmas despite him and the rest of the grifters who run the crime family that fleeces us.
It’s still Christmas, friends, family and food and that’s a pretty good combination. I can no longer feel any community with the degenerates that surround us and plot bigger and uglier ways to degrade the good things in the world. But I feel kinship with the normal people that work hard and raise their kids and try to make the world go round. With them I can hope for a Merry Christmas and we’ll worry about the New Year later. Where’s that sweet potato pie?
