Father’s Day 2023

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Ah, Father’s Day, that most inexplicable holiday in the calendar.  Children, wives and the fathers themselves walk around that day with confused expressions on their faces.  What are they all supposed to be doing, or feeling or even pretending to be feeling?

Everyone understands Mother’s Day.  The bond between mothers and their children is self-explanatory.  Even the act of becoming a mother to a child is one of self-sacrifice and love.  Even husbands are unable to be completely selfish on Mother’s Day.  We’re forced to acknowledge that our role in the circle of life is the easier side.  And we do.  Every man in a good marriage honors his wife on Mother’s Day and tries to show some class on that day.  And so, he encourages his children to gather around his wife and celebrate the nurturing nature of mothers.

But Father’s Day?  I mean, we try to be good fathers.  We spend time with our kids and teach them things and show affection.  But do we want to be applauded and be fussed over about our role in the family?

Honestly?  No.

What we’d prefer is to get up late, have a nice big breakfast, watch some really bad movie or go fishing or read a book then have a steak dinner and then watch another bad movie and go to bed.  Of course, this leaves room for variation.  Maybe instead of fishing you’d rather work on restoring an old car or head to the gun range or have a catch with your grandson or something.  And I even know some fathers who aren’t happy unless they’re doing home repair projects on their day off.  There’s a natural range.

One of my favorite fatherhood memories was taking my son to the north shore of Lake Champlain to fish for pike and bass.  It was a long trip and we didn’t know any of the local details for fishing so we tried a row boat which turned out to be a dicey thing on a lake with a particularly strong current.  But we caught some fish and ate some bad food and spent a memorable weekend together as father and son.

I guess it’s natural for us to think of our own fathers and try to figure out how we stack up.  My own father had six sons and he spent most of his time with us trying to stop us from hitting each other quite so much.  He was one of the most aggravated individuals I can remember.  He was just outnumbered was his problem.  But deep down I think he liked us most of the time.  And since I feel that about him, I would conclude that he was a successful father.

So really none of us get to decide if we were successful at fatherhood.  It’s the kids who get the last word (although the wives probably would like to add a footnote or two as usual).  So, if after they’re grown, they’re still talking to you and if from time to time they still talk about any of the things you did together, then a case can be made for you as a good father.  Anyway, that’s my take.

The Progressive Coalition Starts to Unravel

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Hamtramck, Michigan is a majority Muslim city near Detroit.  When the city government became majority Muslim  in 2016 the liberal white population there cheered.  But things haven’t gone as well as the white residence had hoped.  Recently the city council voted the banning of pride flags from city property and the liberal minority feels betrayed.

Well, welcome to planet Earth where Muslims aren’t big fans of the rainbow coalition taking too big an interest in their children.

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.

After several years of diversity on the council, some see irony in an all-male, Muslim elected government that does not reflect the city’s makeup.

…

Their talking points mirror those made elsewhere: some Hamtramck Muslims say they simply want to protect children, and gay people should “keep it in their home”.”

This mirrors similar fault lines that show up between Latinos and the various cohorts of the queer coalition.

 

 

Betelgeuse to Provide Fireworks for My Grandchildren to See (Maybe Me?)

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Some astro-physicists have calculated that the bright red giant star Betelgeuse in the shoulder of Orion will probably reach its supernova event within a few decades.

And I quote:

“CONCLUSION
We have found carbon-burning models that excite the radial fundamental mode, as well as the first, second, and third overtones. The
periods excited pulsation modes agree with periods of 2190, 417,
230, and 185 d that had been detected in Betelgeuse. On the HR diagram, these models are located within the allowed range of effective
temperature and luminosity of Betelgeuse. Beginning with a mass
of 19 𝑀⊙ at ZAMS (with a rotation velocity of 0.2 or 0.4 𝑣crit), the
models lose significant mass mainly in the core-He burning stage to
MNRAS 000, 1–11 (2023)
Pulsations of Betelgeuse 7
have a mass of 11 ∼ 12 𝑀⊙ in the core carbon-burning stage. A large
radius of about 1300 𝑅⊙ (needed for the long-period fundamental
mode) is supported by interferometric measurements of the angular
diameter combined with the distance. We conclude that Betelgeuse
should currently be in a late phase (or near the end) of the core carbon burning. After carbon is exhausted in the core, a core-collapse
leading to a supernova explosion is expected in a few tens (of) years.”

Note that last line, IN A FEW TENS OF YEARS.

So even an old guy like me may live to see a close supernova in the sky.  That’s pretty exciting.  Apparently Betelgeuse has reached the stage where it is fusing carbon into magnesium and based on the pulsations in the size and brightness of the star, it’s about to run out of carbon.  Since it’s not big enough to go through another higher round of fusion it’s going to collapse into a neutron star via an incredibly violent supernova.  It will be as bright as the half moon and will be seen even during the day.  Sounds pretty exciting.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 17JUN2023 – The Converged Corporation

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

 

To me it’s a mystery, the nature of the process by which a publicly traded corporation allows their prime directive to morph from creating and marketing the best products possible under whatever economic constraints and generating a profit for the owners to social justice, profit be damned. It doesn’t make sense from the corporation’s viewpoint.

The only analogy that I can think of is when a virus invade a host and, infecting the cells, co-opts the machinery of the cells to the purposes of the virus with no allowance for the continued health or, indeed, continued existence of the host.

Actually, an accurate analogy, I think. (One more word beginning with a and I could have had a straight.)

If This Goes On … Then What? – Part 5 (Last)

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As the final trend that I want to examine let’s look at the mindset of the American people.  The graph above, for what it’s worth, provides a measure of the well-being of the American people.  Notice that only for short periods does it ever crack the 60% level.  The average in the time before 2008 looks like it’s somewhere around 40%.  But since 2008 it has only cracked 40% once and that was right before the COVID debacle.  Now the average looks like it’s closer to 25%.

I won’t claim that we can read any deep meaning into this graph.  But what it seems to indicate for the post-2008 period is that only about 20% of the population are satisfied with the way the country is run.  I’ll assume that 20% is the affluent part of the population.  So, 66 million people are happy and 260 million are angry.  How is that going to work out?

When Donald Trump was elected in 2016 it was attributed to populist anger.  If you look at the graph you can see the satisfaction index increasing pretty steadily from 2016 to 2020 and then there’s a step down after 2020.  Unless there is an increase in material prosperity between now and the 2024 election the same populist anger will be present in the electorate to an even higher degree than in 20216.  The only difference is that the voter fraud that characterized the 2020 elections will be even more pronounced.  There is every indication that the outcome in 2024 will once again thwart the will of these populist voters.

What will be the result of this frustration?

One possibility is that the have-nots will just give up.  They’ll retreat to their parents’ basements, play video games, watch porn and die.  Their parents will live off their social security checks, 401K accounts and wait for death.  And the managerial state will rearrange society around the 20% that serve the interests of the elites who control all of the money and resources.

Another possibility is that regional leaders will organize a separate economy with a populist agenda.  This will run up against the dictates of the federal government.  And this spawns two separate possibilities.

In one case the populist entity will defy the federal government and continue on with its agenda and the federal government will acquiesce to its actions rather than attempt to subdue it by force.  In that case it would seem that the greater dynamism of the populist entity would tend to undermine the popularity of the federal government and might cause a moderation of the elite agenda.

In the second case, the federal government would attempt to coerce the populist entity by force.  And in this scenario the populist entity would be forced to fight a war to free itself from the federal government’s authority.  We’ll assume that the war is successful because the case where the war is unsuccessful is included in the first possibility where the populists give up.

So, these are the paths forward that I see.  There are other variants.  For instance, even with voter fraud if the economic situation in the United States continues to deteriorate, it’s very possible that the Democrats could be voted out in a landslide.  I’ll throw that case into the second scenario because it ends up with a populist government that does not have to fight a war with the feds.

My guess is something like the second scenario.  I think that autonomy will grow in populist areas of the country.  And that will allow for dissatisfaction with the federal government to be addressed.

What do you think?

What Will Happen to the Populist Revolt

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