During a recent trip to Texas, I rented a car as one does. It was a 2023 Jeep something-or-other. What kind of Jeep? A white one. It turns out that I own and drive a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. Obviously, there have been continuous upgrades over the years. One of the “improvements” is the graphic user interface, GUI, controlling the radio, ventilation and navigation. Maybe some other things- I couldn’t tell. Annoyingly, the thing searches for your phone as soon as the car powers up and complains when it can’t make a connection. It’s the goddamned internet of everything slithering up around my ankles insisting on my attention.
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I have to say that I find the trend towards automotive graphic user interfaces quite annoying. Certain features that were once controlled by knobs or buttons are now controlled on the GUI. If you want to adjust the air conditioning while driving, there is no longer a knob to grab without taking your eyes off the road. A knob can be turned on bumpy roads without looking at it. A GUI requires that you make a precise finger contact with a screen and not have it slide around.
Auto manufacturers have known forever that car customers are like baboons when it comes to buying cars. Any shiny new thing on the vehicle will draw their attention and increase the odds of a sale. The GUI in a new car will attract customers like flies to a dung heap, they thought. The appeal of automotive modernism is a sure thing for car makers. It’s true.
The appearance of the GUI in automobiles was no doubt preceded by a highly focused sales campaign by the electronics industry. I can just see it. Conference rooms packed with C-suite executives watching slick presentations touting the inevitability of the automotive GUI and the excitement of customers swarming dealerships waving cash at the sales team. What a wondrous future it is that lies before us. How can we cram every bell and whistle into these blessed touch screens? How can we print money even faster?
I am making a stand here and now to keep the control knob and the button, well known by the ancients to be reliable and simple. So it was and so it shall be.
The GUI is something that I will resist until I move from being on the top of the grass to 6 feet below the grass. Ok, I guess I am being a Luddite here but I don’t care.
Colorado’s very own congressperson, the twice elected Rep. (R) Lauren Boebert of the 3rd Congressional District, was caught misbehaving during a theater presentation of Beetlejuice at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts the other day. Besides vaping and some very mild hooliganism, she was caught on surveillance video making out with her date. Like many others who have attended Beetlejuice, they couldn’t resist the urgent pull of their tingly bits. You may recall that Pee Wee Herman had a similar problem as well.
Let me emphasize that there is nothing wrong with making out, mind you. I know many who claim to have done this. After all, this was the true purpose of the drive-in movie theater in years past. Heaven only knows how many solid citizens walking around today were conceived at a drive-in. I think that the move away from bench seating in the automobile had a negative effect in this. But I digress.
Colorado’s 3rd District covers quite a bit of turf as you can see. Most of it is desiccated and somewhat vertical so the overall population density is low, thus the large size. A lot like Wyoming. There is a bit of agriculture but no real corn and soybean acreage like a proper farm state.
As with other western states, Colorado has a mix of folks of polar opposite politics who find themselves concentrated in separate zones. Running down the middle of the state is the majority of the population stretching from Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs. Nobody can decide if Pueblo is part of this corridor despite being on I-25. This is the urban corridor along interstate highway I-25 and west to the start of the Rocky Mountains. This band of settlement has for the last few election cycles voted majority Democrat and has driven state politics in the legislature and the governor’s office. Oh, and the House of Representatives and the Senate too. This includes the I-70 corridor running west halfway to Utah. There are scattered islands of liberalism like Durango smack in the middle of Boebert country. I feel for them- really, I do.
Some have tried to explain away Boebert’s behavior as being not uncommon for a refugee from that Fertile Crescent of sweaty redneck-ism, Florida. She is after all a pistol packin’ grandma at age 36 and close to being properly “deevorced.” Regardless of her background, she has lifted herself from the obscurity of the swamps to become a full-throated Centurion of MAGAstan. It is a real accomplishment.
America is now a place where audio and video tapes of titillating content starring national politicians will not lead to their downfall. Instead, they get an uptick in their popularity by rabid apologists who will make urgent whataboutism style counter-claims about Hunter’s laptop. MAGA folk cheer their politicians like people do at a professional wrestling match- with vigor and encouragement of more violence.
East of the I-25 corridor you soon encounter another conservative swatch of the state, border-to-border between two state panhandles- Nebraska and Oklahoma. This area has much more pivot irrigated farmland than in the western side of the state. Corn, wheat, and sugar beets are popular crops east of the interstate. Through what I suspect were underhanded dealings in the past, Oklahoma is said to have been paid to be a buffer between Colorado and Texas. Many will say that this was a smart move. (Relax- it’s a joke)
In Colorado we have two bookend corridor cities that are well known for their politics. Boulder, northwest of Denver, is to Colorado what San Francisco is to California, but without Silicon Valley or a suspension bridge. It is liberal progressive and a bit on the exotic side. The Hippie movement arrived in the 60’s and never faded away completely. In the 70’s and 80’s you could see ex-hippies with thinning gray ponytails tooling around town in their Beamers. No one bats an eye when weird news sprays out of there. It’s expected. Every state should have a Boulder. Look at Texas of all places- they have Austin.
Colorado Springs, on the other hand, is deeply entangled with far-right conservative Christian evangelicals. Add to this mix a large population of very conservative retired military and you have something very special. The city plays host to Fort Carson and the North American Air Defense Command, NORAD, deep within Cheyenne Mountain southwest of town. You can bet that the Russian and Chinese strategic commands have the exact coordinates of this facility. The US Air Force Academy resides in the forest north of town with its unique chapel jutting proudly above the landscape.
Located at the base of Pikes Peak, “The Springs” enjoys considerable scenic splendor and a conservative upper middle-class tenor. None of my liberal friends contemplate moving there no matter how splendiferous the place may be. It’s a cryin’ shame. This is the city where the wedding cake bakery went to the Supreme Court to protect their right to decline to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. They won. If I were a bakery owner who didn’t want to do business with someone, I would have given an outrageous price or a 12-month lead time or both with payment up front. There are easy yet subtle ways to poison an awkward business deal.
It will be interesting to see if Lauren gets reelected in 2024 given her antics. I have a nauseating feeling that she will be reelected given the demographics of her district. It’s one of those “she may be an idiot, but she’s OUR idiot” things that MAGAstan people can relate to. We’ll see.
The news cycle is presently focused on the meeting of Putin with a certain dictator of an impoverished nuclear state. Evidently, they agreed to hold hands against western imperialism and hegemony. That agreement just drips with irony about fighting imperialism. But it’s in the nature of dictators to claim to protect the state against the very thing they bring to their nations.
Having to stoop to sourcing arms and making nice with the waddling leader of the land of missiles and starvation must nauseate Putin in his reflective moments. But for now, he is tarting up the relationship as “statesmanship” with a former client state. Ok, maybe he’ll have to share secret rocket science technology and lessons in orbital mechanics with the tin-pot dictator of Asian Lilliput. Has to be done, I s’pose.
Over time, many of Russia’s institutions have been hollowed out to a husk by corruption and theft. Was this a symptom or a feature of Tsar Putin’s leadership? Maybe that is how you retain power- allow people to pilfer but rack-up debt to the leader.
At minimum, an influx of arms from what’s-his-name can only mean prolonging the Putin-Ukraine war. Putin’s people will do battle with garden tools if he so desires it. Ole Pootie-poot is just followin’ in the footsteps of Uncle Joe.
It’s very interesting. The post with the most hits on this blog is for one I wrote May 15, 2008, titled Neutron Lethargy: This Weeks Obscure Dimensionless Quantity. It receives hits nearly every day. Is it revealing atomic secrets? No, it does not. Here is part of it-
“Neutron lethargy, or logarithmic energy decrement, u, is a dimensionless logarithm of the ratio of the energy of source neutrons to the energy of neutrons after a collision: u = ln(Eo/E), or, u2-u1 = ln(E1/E2). So, if you plot a curve of E vs u (E = Eo*exp(-u)), you see an exponential decay of energy per unit collision showing that the greatest delta E’s of energy result from the early collisions.
Basically, it shows that in order to obtain thermal neutrons from fission decay neutrons, you have to contain them so that they can rattle around and dump energy before they fly out of the area of interest. As to the number of collisions that are needed? Well, that is a different issue.
Source- Glasstone & Edlund, The Elements of Nuclear Reactor Theory, Van Nostrand, 1952, p 146.”
Now mind you, this does not necessarily mean it was a glistening contribution to the nuclear zeitgeist of 2008. It’s more like the title attracted clicks. Excellence and clicks don’t overlap much. It shows that my intuition on what a popular post looks like is completely off.
I am going to bring up some observations that may be uncomfortable to many of my fellow citizens of the US. It has to do with the idea of “Greatness” that is frequently bandied about.
Commonly, the word “greatness” is carefully chosen to swell the patriotic pride of American citizens. Swinging around the idea of greatness in public is often used as a rhetorical device to align people to a particular point of view. We are raised to see ourselves as the good guys. The use of “greatness” is a favorite buzzword of far-right conservatives to rub people’s noses into.
The conglomeration of US ultranationalist groups- a different name for homegrown fascism- along with Christian dominion ideology has produced a vocal a far-right political group who, on one hand demand libertarian-type free market dominance in lieu of government, while on the other sees protestant Christian reconstructionism providing guidance for a leading role in national and world affairs. The motivation is two-fold: first is to bring humanity under close Biblical law and the second is to prepare for the prophesied apocalypse and second coming of Christ. Many believed that Trump was to have a role in this. Imagine, the guy who invented DNA and set the galaxies spinning picking a bloviating wealthy-narcissistic-real estate developer-shyster-philanderer from Manhattan. Seriously? Something is wrong with this picture. For a preview of Biblical law, have a look at the bronze-age Book of Deuteronomy. Interesting as ancient history but, as a foundation for modern legal procedure, we can do a lot better going forward.
At the present time it is in vogue for the far right to parade around signaling their disapproval of US support of Ukraine in their battle against Russian invaders. Their grasp of history and judgement is sadly lacking.
Some Republicans have stated that the funds and war materiel sent to Ukraine could be better used at home.
Who believes that the Republican leadership would actually direct these savings to issues at home? Directing these funds internally for aid would be dismissed as “socialism” and ignored. Some insist that money that can be spent on Ukraine’s defense can also be cut altogether.
The US has seen much cultural achievement since our inception but sadly we have not been a universal force for good. Like everyone else, we have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes we’ve been on the wrong side of history. Our treatment of native Americans from the very beginning was simply criminal. As if that wasn’t enough, an estimated 620,000 people died in a bloody civil war to shut down slavery, then we failed miserably at promised reconstruction. Women have long been denied equality and have received it only grudgingly. African Americans had long labored under the Jim Crow laws until only recently. Our government has meddled in the affairs of many nations in the Americas and elsewhere, with some of it blowing up in our faces (e.g., Cuba and Iran). We invaded Iraq in Gulf War II resulting in the violent death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens based on deception from the Bush administration.
On the other side, we’ve pushed medical advances like drug development and vaccination, brought food to the starving and saved millions of lives around the world. America has been generous with its growing base of scientific knowledge by publishing results obtainable from open sources. The American University-Industrial-Governmental research complex has produced wonders especially from WWII to this very day in everything from aerospace, electronics, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. The explosive growth of knowledge and technology in the 20th century is unparalleled in human history and the US has had a big part in that.
However, as comfortable as it may be, the theory of American exceptionalism has a few holes in it. Our practical capitalistic economics has some blind spots. Innovation usually moves forward only if a development has the possibility of creating profit and only if a small group of money people can be convinced of it. So, you say, this is just good sense. Why is that a blind spot?
Basic research is a hard sell to businesses. Stockholders must be convinced of a rapid payoff from the investment in discovery. It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. This proverb traces back to Plato. If a business is plugging along making a satisfactory profit at maximum output, what is the motivation to rock the boat for a possible improvement? The answer is the prospect of even more profit via some improvement. But, what if that improvement would require something entirely new outside the capability of current technology and in-house resources? There is necessity but invention is out of reach.
While American industry has produced a tremendous range of innovations with in-house resources, it has done so greatly aided by the contributions of our university and government institutions. Universities provide industry with an educated R&D workforce, largely as a result of the application of government funding. Indeed, my graduate and postdoctoral work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. I have been applying my business, chemistry and synthetic skills to the operation of private business for decades. And so does everyone else in industrial chemical R&D.
Here is the thing. The government funds the research universities which produces R&D results and an educated workforce. Most of the published academic R&D is of a fundamental nature and in the public domain. Chemical companies make good use of this information as a basis for their own R&D for product development. Sometimes the process Development part is begun quicker because the Research groundwork is mostly done by academia. With this, business gets invention quicker and cheaper with less risk because someone else initiated the necessity (the investigator/professor) and government funding paid for it. This represents industry getting a refund on some of their taxes.
In the military aerospace business, the US military provides the necessity by offering contracts for equipment under stringent specifications. Meeting the specs usually requires that materials and processes be developed to meet them. This is an example of the government providing necessity so industry will provide the invention.
A favorite notion in the US that persists is the “Greatness” of what has been a long period of leading financial and military power since WWII. Obviously, we in the US have a potent military and economy. The federal government plays a big role in these areas by supporting industrial and military readiness.
The US was not the first to put a satellite or man in orbit or land a craft on the moon. It was Russia. The US entered into the “space race” to primarily to match the threat of USSR’s space program. The USSR and communism were perceived as an existential threat to the US. Advances in rocketry could carry people, satellites or nuclear payloads. Did we win the race to the moon just because the USSR failed midway?
The US reacted vigorously to Albert Einstein’s warning of the possibility of a Nazi nuclear weapon. The Nazi secret program was under the guidance of Professor Werner Heisenberg. Rattled, the US put together a massive effort to beat the Nazis to the nuclear punch. Later, it was found that they were unable to produce a working nuclear reactor or weapon.
After the fall of Nazi Germany, the US scooped up a few of their best scientific minds, certainly more than the Russians did. The US benefitted greatly in rocketry and aerospace as well as engineering and physics.
The 1930’s was a decade of much advancement in the area of turbojet engines everywhere in the world but the US. We were late comers into turbojet engines. But post WWII we seized on the idea and did well.
US politics has been soured by a few extraordinarily awful people. I’m thinking of #45 in particular but many like-minded citizens have glommed on to his flying circus of bad ideas. Many people conflated business success with aptitude for governance. What they failed to consider was that a business is a type of dictatorship. It is not a democracy. It is run strictly from the top down. There is no bill of rights in business or first amendment. Trying to directly apply business experience to being chief executive of a democratic nuclear state is a fool’s errand. But, people still hold out hope for him.
Trump sailed into office in 2016 partly on his credentials as a “successful” businessman and television personality. For many voters, he was “famous for being famous.” Voters made the extrapolation that if he is a billionaire property developer in New York City then he was “obviously” qualified to be a president.
What nobody considered was that #45 was the CEO and major shareholder of his many private businesses. Not having experience leading a publicly owned corporation, he enjoyed zero transparency in his business activities. As CEO of his private companies, he never had fiduciary responsibilities to public stockholders. A private company is a dictatorship where he thrived.
The allies won the Second World War for many reasons. What made the US stand out in that effort was the fact that North America was geographically isolated and was harder to bomb or invade at that time. The wealth of natural resources and industrial capacity in the US certainly enabled our ability to carry the war to the enemies. The notion of some kind of intrinsic moral superiority held by some is just a fantasy. The US had talented leadership and a workforce willing and able to stand up and be counted. This was not a uniquely American quality. Most nations can and will do this if resources and their leadership will allow it. Being rich in lumber, petroleum, steel and uranium gave the US a distinct advantage.
The US is an amazing country among other amazing countries, but there is much yet to do. My goal is to help sustain basic liberal democratic ideals and one of the pillars is simple kindness. Let’s back off on the self-congratulation and cultish adulation of a despicable billionaire and focus on the basics of operating a democratic republic under the rule of law and with equal protection for all of its citizens.
It turns out that I have no aptitude at all for ball sports or dancing. My long suffering spouse has been forced to dance without me. My natural athletic abilities are concentrated on my uncanny ability to jump out of the way or just standing back. This proclivity is rich in survival benefits. For instance, I’ve never torn a ligament sliding into first base or cracked my head on the dance floor. Nor have I ever taken an elbow to the eye in basketball. No abrasions or grass stains from flag football either.
I do rather like to watch rugby though. I admire the pre-game Māori Haka demonstration for its drama and its sincere invitation to rumble. Hockey is another one I can watch at the game. The puck is always in motion. Unlike baseball, with hockey or rugby something is always happening. Even if a rugby player is injured, they continue to play around the body. I admire that.
Baseball games are just too damned long, even with the new rules. Ninety minutes should do it. They just stretch it out for concession sales. Some folks like to guzzle $9 utility beers and gnaw on $14 slices of pizza to the sound of old timey organ music. I can go maybe once a season, but more? Nope.
Watching golf is a colossal snooze fest. I do enjoy watching chess matches though- even that is more exciting than golf. And the muted voices of the announcers as if they have to keep their voices low. Gimme a break. Golf is for idlers. It is a meaningless difficult task. I understand that golf is hard. I just don’t care. My conception of hell involves watching golf in church.
Basketball? If you can dunk the ball, the hoop is just too low. For crying out loud. Enough said.
NFL football? Good gravy. I just watch the last 5 minutes. The manufactured gladiator drama pitting millionaires against each other is just nauseating. And the guys delivering the play-by-play color in the background yammering on about failed strategy as if randomness had no part in it. With all of the rules, it is nearly a technology, not a game.
Soccer? Good grief. Need I say it?
Ok, time to come clean. It isn’t the sports so much as it is the immense crowds at these live events. I truly despise being in a crowd. In fairness, the crowd probably despises me back.
This was first posted 1/3/2010 and is herein posted once again. My big question is, what the hell is with the saucer design for interstellar travel? Saucers have a large surface to volume ratio which inherently restricts the size of everything they would have to bring along. Don’t they have food and luggage to pack? The same argument holds even if they are tiny buggers. This line of investigation will have to wait for another post.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Imagine that you and a companion are out for an evening stroll after a big dinner, say in a park somewhere. You hear a curious whining sound and look up to see an alien spaceship on a landing approach to the park. The craft lands and the crew scuttles off to perform some tedious abduction or organ harvest in the neighborhood.
Your companion exclaims “Golly! There is something you don’t see every day!”. But you’re unmoved by your companions incisive commentary. Because you see this as a long sought opportunity to examine an alien craft up close.
What would you look at? The propulsion system? Or perhaps the weapons array or guidance system? Pffft.
I would look at something much more mundane. I think it would be very enlightening to see what kind of fasteners they use. That’s right. Fasteners. Nuts, bolts, latches, bungees, straps, nails, hinges, hooks & loops, and rivets. How do these confounded exo-buggers hold things together? What’s the deal?
Fasteners are mechanical contrivances used to restrain objects into a desired configuration, often by the application and fixing of tension or compression through some structural element. Think of all of the fasteners we encounter before we set foot out the door every morning.
Elastic articles of clothing perform a fastening function through the application of tension about numerous body parts through the miracle of Spandex/Lycra. Shoe laces are fastening devices that apply and hold tension on opposing shoe upper elements wrapped over the arch of the foot.
Moving upwards, the zipper is a fastener that works in concert with a trouser/skirt button or snap fastener. The belt and buckle are a fastener ensemble that together apply and hold tension about the circumference of the waist to keep ones trousers from succumbing to the pull of gravity.
Other fasteners include shirt buttons, brassiere connectors (damn those things!), earring wires, eyeglass frames (they connect to your face), cell phone belt attachments, the deadbolt on the front door, all manner of electrical connectors, and the list goes on and on. Electrical connectors are especially interesting because they combine the functions of electrical continuity and fastener. All are a compromise between the competing interests of biomechanics, convenience, safety, regulatory standards, and custom.
So, back to the space ship. How would space faring beings approach the problem of fastening materials and components. Would they use individual components fastened together or would they use integrated component assemblies that support multiple functions? Perhaps the mechanical fastener question is moot because components would be cast, glued, or welded.
Integrated components have a certain appeal, but, by their integrated nature could serve as a node from which to initiate failure propagation to multiple systems. For instance, if a battery was built to serve as a structural element for the craft, could a battery failure of some sort serve to initiate a structural failure mode? At what point is it foolish to integrate systems rather than leave them distributed? As always, it depends.
I think an alien spacecraft would have at least a few kinds of obvious fasteners. Surely alien technologies are subject to component failures and would require occasional repair. Of interest would be the concessions to alien biomechanics.
Humans occasionally use wingnuts to fasten objects that need not be permanently affixed. The wingnut is simply a style of threaded nut that has two modest protuberances that allow for torsion and compression to be applied by the fingers and wrist. The wingnut is not functional for beings who lack the sort of articulated digits that we have. Perhaps an alien being would have a latch or other contrivance to accommodate its appendages.
Of course, all of this alien talk is just a device with which to cast the matter of fasteners into a more interesting light. Fasteners are part of our collective technological heritage and are rather under-appreciated. But, if you are unfortunate enough to be abducted by aliens, I suspect that the matter of alien fasteners might be of immediate interest.
>>> Warning. This essay contains liberal political content. No chemistry here. This isn’t a “balanced discussion” of political values. I am flatly calling foul on WASPish conservatives who I maintain are destabilizing what has been an imperfect but productive US culture. <<<
No, the great knob of Florida isn’t DeSantis, although it is an amusing thought. Anybody remember when electronic devices had selector knobs that you would twist a certain number of clicks to the desired setting? The knob was constructed with detents that would hold the knob to a specific place in the rotation of a selector switch. It is a nice little simile for many things in life. For this writing, I refer to how the WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) Republican party (GOP) of the US state of Florida is methodically clicking the legislative knob toward their ultraconservative model of the social order. This is to be expected, I suppose, except that lately Florida is taking very large steps in the direction of banning many resources and services that were previously not the subject of legislation. DeSantis is backed by a substantially older, low information base of Republicans.
DeSantis’ thin-skinned punishment of Disney, Inc., makes him a very waspish WASP. But Mickey was clever. He had the board write up an agreement containing the Royalty Lives Clause before the governing board was dissolved. What a hoot!
Knobs are clicking all over the country. States with similar Don’t Say Gay bills in progress are: Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and of course, Missouri. This issue seemingly fell out of the sky in the last few years and has spread like wildfire. Sexuality has always summoned the Puritan in Americans, but homosexuality conjures images of the worst kind in them. Conservative leaders are leaping over one another to click the big knob while the MAGA people have their time in the sun.
[Side note] A old friend has been breathing fire on Facebook about the “liberal agenda” including imminent loss of the 2nd amendment and confiscation of guns. As usual, George Soros is blamed. Imagine the folly of attempting to confiscate guns in the US. It would be a complete disaster with widespread chaos and casualties. It ain’t gonna happen. Wackos with firearms and mass shootings will remain a baked-in feature of the US cultural landscape as far as anyone can see going forward.
Used to be, the radical right wing could be counted on to be squarely against “big government”. But now we find them burying their heads into public education like a tick. Recent legislation in Florida and other like-minded states is aimed at censoring library books and curriculum having “controversial” content, namely any mention of LGBTQ+ lifestyles, alternative gender designations and any history or social studies that might suggest white complicity in past inequities (critical racial theory, CRT). This controversy is a longstanding conflict with conservatives that, like IBS, has flared up again. This time, however, they have new vocabulary such as “woke” and “CRT”, and rancid mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson to continuously beat the propaganda drum. Joseph Goebbels would have loved Tucker.
One overreach by the GOP is the matter of their public attack on gender affirming care for minors suffering from gender identity issues. Republicans have put their cloven hooves down on this (ok, this was sarcastic). In the Republican view, minors should only receive treatment by way of “curing” gender identity issues by conversion to the heterosexual, birth gender side. The alternative is to just tough it out until they reach adulthood. The associated personal strife and suicidal risk connected to gender identity issues are unpersuasive to conservative WASPs.
Public schools have a mandate to provide a quality education for all students, including those with special needs. Public school teachers and their districts want teach students how to overcome life’s challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Gender identity issues can spiral into learning difficulties or even suicide. Parents are frequently at their wits end dealing with it and look upon the public schools to provide the right environment, specialists and curriculum. Very often, the parent(s) of troubled kids do not have the financial resources to provide treatment for their students nor can they take time from work. The schools have limited resources as well but they try because they are expected to.
The GOP image of gender affirming care is a manufactured bugaboo, much like so-called CRT or wokeness have been. It is another rallying cry for the angry and disenfranchised. Republicans know that they can readily frighten some fraction of low information conservatives into voting Republican by claiming widespread pedophilia, gay-anything, evolution or just general liberal leanings. Legislative knobs are clicking all across the country over this matter. Grand Poohbahs of the soon-to-be Christocratic States of America (Ok, that’s satire) are loudly proclaiming that there is a liberal agenda to turn kids gay. Just as absurd, some believe that seeing or hearing a drag queen could harm their immortal souls.
The LGBTQ+ issue, if you can call it that, is a straw man devised to sideline people into a state of outrage. That said, however, I can’t think of a pedagogical reason for extensive exposure to sexuality in general as a subject matter in classrooms with any more than a passing mention in grades K-9. In my view, however, for grades 10-12, discussion or readings on sexuality as a sociological phenomenon should not be out of bounds. Parents who object to even this could send a note to the teacher excusing their child from this topic. Deeper study can be left to college level. The acknowledgement that alternative pairings between people or gender identity even exists is not an invitation to join in. Kids have always sought out ‘forbidden” information. If they don’t learn from knowledgeable sources, they’ll pick up odd versions of it elsewhere.
We had a similar problem years ago with sex ed in the schools. More than a few imagined that the Kama Sutra was the textbook and spoke out aghast that kids will have exposure to this. In reality, the topic was based on biology and how reproductive systems work. Sexually transmitted disease was gently introduced as something to watch out for. The histrionics at local school board meetings could be intense. No, we’re not teaching little Johnny and little Susie how to do it. They’ll figure that out on their own.
Behind this is longstanding momentum from the large, assertive and well-funded conservative evangelical wing of the GOP. Their strategists and grandees know that if they repeatedly state that public schools are teaching LGBTQ+ lifestyles or CRT, low information voters will reliably panic and vote GOP. They’re right. There are large numbers of low information voters who are easily swayed by GOP hyperbole and outright lies. Schools are just a step stool for GOP power grabbing. Religious indoctrination and basic morality are firmly the responsibility of the family.
The public schools are for learning the massive amount of information that is of a secular nature. You know, like accounting, drivers ed, wood shop, spelling, math, PE, foreign languages, chemistry, physics and biology to name a few. You know, the things that the Bible is silent on. For crying out loud, God gave us brains and expects us to fill in the blank spaces.
I like words and this is a term that has a certain interesting tenor to it. I found it in this link. The author quoted Keith Olbermann –
“Donald Trump is a stochastic terrorist. He used stochastic terrorism to get somebody to attack the FBI after the Mar-a-Lago search and within days a man breached a local FBI headquarters to try to kill FBI agents. He used stochastic terrorism to get others to commit the insurrection of January 6. He used stochastic terrorism to inspire somebody to attack Democrats in 2018 and Cesar Sayoc sent out 12 liberals and he had a second list in his computer and I know because I was on it.“
“Trump is not just committing stochastic terrorism, he knows he is doing it, because it has worked for him, so well, and so often.“
The pristine definition of stochastic assumes truly random elements. The crowd responsive to #45 are self-selected and already aligned with him and sympathetic to his machinations, so any incitement is from a presorted set of people. #45’s casting about for someone in the crowd to take compelling action is obviously what he wants. It leads to media buzz focused on him. Stochastic Terrorism has a certain flourish that the word incitement lacks.
Understating #45’s words in milquetoast vocabulary like incitement is perhaps too feeble to capture our attention.
Keith Olbermann is a vocal far-left liberal by GOP measures. But maybe that’s because he pushes back openly and vigorously against conservatives. He may exaggerate a bit but conservatives are not strangers to exaggeration either.
Originally posted April 23, 2009. Yes, it’s a shabby repost.
Never one to allow reason to interfere with sentimentality, my blackened heart is softened somewhat by the recent shipment of Lipton Tea bags delivered to Th’ Gaussling from an online admirer via the US Postal Service.
The tea in this gift shall be symbolically applied to the local waterway, but not before being used to formulate some refreshing iced beverage via aqueous extraction. A vessel filled with aqueous goodness (OPE-Our Pure Essence) will be charged with the anthocyanin and alkaloid laden forest litter for extended exposure to solar radiation. Brownian motion will be relied upon to disperse the colloidal value away from the biomass.
Once so processed, the fortifying beverage will be passed through a pair of kidneys as a symbol of my dark contempt for the IRS. This nephro-raffinate will be discharged into the municipal fluid collection system for a kind of Nicene rectification that will provide further philosophical processing of the symbolic gesture. Finally, after the Liptonian fluids have been subjected to Libertarian aeration and Calvinist filtration, the clarified symbol will be discharged into the river for its turbulent hero’s journey to the drinking water inlets of New Orleans and beyond.
Lamentations on Chemistry 