Posts from — May 2013

There once [14^th century] was an Oxford philosophy professor named John Wycliffe. He was a Scholastic and wrote a lot about religion and religious dogma. He felt that the Bible was the ultimate authority on such things. Wycliffe decided the best way to have good Christians was to have the Bible widely available in the common language, so he put together a team and translated the official Vulgate Bible into English. The Church was not happy about this and many of the options that Wycliffe had expressed. Those who followed Wycliffe were called Lollards, a disparaging term, and were considered uneducated, ignorant people.

Despite the fact that Wycliffe died of a stroke at the of 1384, the Church charged and tried him for heresy decades later, the ultimate form of an in absentia trial. He was convicted and his remains were dug up and burned in 1428 with the ashes spread. That totally pointless act resulted in Professor Wycliffe being listed as a saint and martyr by the Anglican Church.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is no more affected by the actions of protestors concerning his burial, than John Wycliffe was. They are both dead.

Badtux, Charlie Pierce, and Echidne are all, in their way, wondering what the point is in the protests against burying the dead? This is the sort of tasteless thing the Westboro Baptist Church gets up to. Why are these people emulating the Phelps clan?

Muslims, like Orthodox Jews, need to be buried, and buried quickly for public health reasons, as well as religious reasons. Let’s not make Tamerlan a martyr over his burial.

I couldn’t access the ‘Net until the the afternoon because my ISP was down. When I called they made it sound like the problem was just in my area, but it was their entire system.

This is The Phone Company. They require you to have a landline phone to get DSL. They could have robo-called all of their DSL customers to tell us the system was down, but they didn’t. They posted news of the outage on THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE !!!!!!

Here’s a hint, CenturyLink, if your bloody system is down, I can’t access the Internet, so I damn sure can’t read a web site that I didn’t know existed! You’re The Phone Company, so use the over-priced landline you insist we have to tell us about the problem.

Microsoft has finally figured out that people with standard PCs mostly hate Windows 8. They say they are going to create a separate user interface for the desktop market. They might as well save it for Windows 9, because it is too late for 8.

I’m listening to the war mongers going at it again, about we have to do something about Syria.

OK, fine. So whose side are we going to be on – al Qaeda or Iran? Those are the choices right now, and the war mongers might want to take some time to consider their answer.

You can start by sending them stainless steel colanders™ because they are absolutely, positively convinced that the Tsarnaev brothers couldn’t have followed written instructions and done what they did without a cast of thousands to show them the way.

They have already arrested Jokhar’s buddies, the Three Stooges, but when that didn’t go anywhere they decided to target Katherine Russell Tsarnaeva. They have nothing to link her to the bombs or the plot, but they are going to harass her because where there’s a Muslim there’s always a conspiracy.

I would point out that the lack of a conspiracy is probably why no one noticed what Tamerlan was up to before the event. Secrets are best kept by one, but sometimes two people can manage. If the Three Stooges had known anything, the world would have known it after a six-pack. If the FBI understood what it was like to work 70 hours/week for months, they wouldn’t have bothered to ask the woman her name.

I wonder if they are going to file conspiracy charges against the FBI people who recruited and trained Abdalla Ahmad Tounisi. They radicalized him, and then arrested him, as they have done many times before. Have they ever considered that their actions are actually illegal and illogical to an outsider. They aren’t acting any differently than al Qaeda recruiters.

[Marcy Wheeler is doing her usual great job on this theater of the absurd.]

The first week in May is Wildfire Awareness Week in California. The wildfire season was once an almost exclusively summer event. As a result of climate change, the season now extends from the end of the winter rains until the rains begin again.

The Springs Fire in Ventura County has burned 28,000 acres and several outbuildings, but it is now 75% contained with full containment expected tomorrow.

Many of the contracts that the state has with outside sources, like the DC-10 water tankers, will need to be revised to reflect the new reality.

Wikipedia usually has to “lock” its Cinco de Mayo page. I suspect it may be related to the sudden appearance of sites opposing the celebration of this semi-holiday and others who have a hissy fit about any Mexican holiday being celebrated in the US.

In Mexico Cinco de Mayo or Batalla de Puebla, is only a really big celebration in the state of Puebla, where the battle took place.

The Mexican army won the Batalla de Puebla on May the 5^th, 1862, but the French went on to Mexico City in 1863 after receiving reinforcements and installed Emperor Maximilian.

It has the status of St. Patrick’s Day in the US, an excuse to eat different food, and drink different booze, and be obnoxious show an interest in other cultures.

Margaritas, tacos, and the destruction of piñatas, that’s what it is really about.

What a Human sees

What a Mouse sees

School administrators have lost their minds. Their ‘zero tolerance’ rules defy logic and common sense.

First you have 16-year-old Florida student who is facing a criminal trial over using common household products on a remote section of the school grounds to see what would happen. What happened was school administrators lost their collective minds, and people are asking: “How could an otherwise model student be expelled and charged with a felony over an experiment that didn’t hurt anyone?”

What she did was hazardous, because it involved toilet bowl cleaner which is usually hydrochloric acid. It can cause chemical burns. When you drop in a wad of aluminum foil a reaction takes place which produces aluminum chloride salt and hydrogen gas. The reaction is exothermic and generates heat which causes the gas to expand. If you use a small plastic bottle for the experiment and cap it after dropping in the foil, the pressure of the expanding gas may cause a rupture, like a tire blowing out. The remaining acid may react with the humidity in the air and produce white fumes that look like smoke. It isn’t anywhere as impressive as what happens when you drop a Mentos into a two-liter container of Diet Coke.

An educator would have required the student to write a research paper explaining what happened during the reaction she experimented with, and explaining the dangers of the acid and the hydrogen gas. She would be required to use actual books, not the Internet for her research.

This was a teaching moment and she learned how stupid some adults really are.

Then you have the case of a Chicago teacher: “Doug Bartlett, a veteran teacher with an upstanding record of 17 years, has filed a lawsuit against the school district of Chicago for suspending him without pay after giving a lesson on gardening tools to his second grade students.”

Mr Bartlett apparently had ‘weaponized’ pliers and wrenches in the locked tool box, that he used to demonstrate things to the class. The kids had no access to the tools, and didn’t even get to touch them, but their mere presence was enough for the administrators to suspend him without pay.

Update: Mr Bartlett was giving a mandated class on “garden-variety” not “gardening” tools, and one of the tools he selected was a pocket knife.

Cat in the Grass

He won’t find me here.

[Editor: Photos of Ms Blue normally require zoom, but she is ‘hiding’ behind some spiderwort which she assumes prevents me from seeing her.]

Friday Ark

The buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio, the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano, and the wildfires return to California.

CalFire lists five fires that started on May 1^st as a result of gusty winds and low humidity.

The Summit Fire in Riverside County was the big news yesterday, but today a new fire in Ventura County, the Springs Fire, has grown to 8,000 acres today.

California is dealing with hundreds of wildfire more that normal this year.

So, McClatchy says that after a month no one knows why the Exxon pipeline leaked in Arkansas, despite the fact that the damaged section burst according to all descriptions. The government and Exxon have agreed to say that 5000 barrels [210,000 gallons] of diluted bitumen leaked and the whole area smells like the pit at a Jiffy Lube with a new roof being installed.

Now we learn that the same pipeline, Pegasus Pipeline, has sprung a leak in Missouri. Not to worry, though, because the crack Exxon response team immediately switched from Red Man to Dubble Bubble and picked up a new roll of duct tape from MalWart. If that doesn’t get it, they are prepared to switch to Slime and Rescue Tape.

They might consider getting the name of a good plumber.

This is the tenth anniversary of the Shrubbery prancing around the carrier flight deck so he could proclaim “Mission Accomplished”. This meant he didn’t have any interest in the deaths of thousands of US service members in his war of choice after that point. He chose this date to open his one-book library to the public to begin his agitprop campaign to make everyone forget about all of the things he screwed up, including the economy.

Republicans blocked background checks for all weapons purchases, but now Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, and Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Cheyenne want to pass a bill that would limit Federal ammunition purchases. They apparently believe that the Federal government is violating people’s Second Amendment rights by buying up all the ammunition.

Well, I could be wrong, but I would guess that the ammunition manufacturers have something to do with the shortage, as is not hiring the people they need to meet the demand, which keeps the prices high. The government once manufactured its own ammunition, but Congress privatized the operation.

The Fed Open Market Committee released its minutes today and decided to continue doing what it has been doing for months – supporting the stock and bond markets by buying stuff. The only new bit is a passing reference that ‘fiscal policy’ isn’t helping the economy grow. What they really meant that all of this Federal budget cutting is holding down growth, or “Contractionary Policy Is Contractionary” as Duncan keeps saying. The IMF has also figured this out. Their problem is that Congress is controlled by people who benefit from the deflation, so the Congresscritters aren’t going to change.

The May Day association with labor is all American, and just as controversial as everything of any consequence in history. The day is tied to a strike for the eight-hour day and the so-called “Haymarket Riot” of 1886. When it comes to “riots” and the Chicago police are involved, you are not going to find a single truth.

The dynamic duo that mucked up the Pledge of Allegiance, Dwight Eisenhower and his Republican Congress, made May 1^st both Law Day and Loyalty Day so those Commie working people wouldn’t get any ideas about having rights.

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