Scattershots – 5mar18 (updated 8mar18)

If you cannot see the irony in having a gun ban enforced by men with guns, then you fail to understand why the Second Amendment was written in the first place.

George Rebane

The NYT publishes another exhibit of yellow journalism with an article (here) that leaves the naïve reader convinced that ‘assault rifles’, like the Parkland massacre kind, fire special bullets that cause “ghastly” wounds not experienced with normal hunting rifles.  They show X-rays of 223 bullets smashing bones and quote surgeons unfamiliar with war wounds being astounded by what a high velocity bullet does to meat and bone.  The truth of the matter is that regular civilian hunting rifles at calibers above 223 (5.56mm) firing higher velocity, more massive, soft-nosed bullets (banned in warfare) do much more damage than the AR-15 civilian versions firing the standard full metal jacketed bullets.  All this is lost in the NYT article, the main purpose of which is to promote the removal of AR-15 style rifles from civilian hands.  The reader unfamiliar with firearms is totally bamboozled by this latest dose of bullcrap from the now totally propagandized Gray Lady.

Respected ecologist Robert May (The Perfect Bet, 2018) showed that tightly connected, large complex systems are not stable.  (That’s why they don’t exist in nature.)  His corollary was that the larger the ecoosyctem, the less stable it is.  Question – can anyone connect the dots for what this says about a centrally planned, comprehensively administered, large socio-economic system?  While always welcome, progressives may be excused from participating in this little exercise.

Over the years RR commenters have divided themselves into two more or less distinct groups with how they support their debate arguments.  There are those who cite sources that present data which can be factually checked, and those who present sources that contain nothing more than restatements of their own fact-free allegations, thereby claiming that two sources of identical allegations are all that’s needed to confirm the verity alleged.  For the former, I draw your attention to commenters who cite colleges that now include leftwing propaganda subjects in their STEM curricula in support of the thesis that our institutions of higher education have been compromised along many dimensions of pedagogy.  These citations appeared in the recent Sandbox and repeated here and here.

Trump’s tariffs are an economic policy screw-up.  I know I’ve said this before, but it really irks me that he is now materially denting his presidency beyond whatever sins he has committed in his Twitter account.  Team Trump should know better than most, that you get less of whatever you tax more.  Higher taxes have never increased the supply of anything, and here Trump is attempting to increase America’s supply of jobs.  No one in his administration can explain why seeking to guarantee (not increase) the existence of 140,000 metals sector jobs will not jeopardize and reduce some of the 6.5M collateral jobs that depend on the current low prices of metals available to American manufacturers.  The bottom line here is that Trump’s tariffs will not bring more jobs to the steel and aluminum industries which are going balls out to automate and make better quality, cheaper metals at higher volumes.  An example of all this is seen in how a small steel mill in Austria (that global steel producing powerhouse) is able to stay competitive.  Hasn’t anyone in the WH studied comparative advantage, after all, they’re supposed to be Republican capitalists? (more here)  

Our George Boardman writes in the 5mar18 Union on gun control (here), and properly argues that existing gun laws should be enforced before we go willy-nilly into making another batch that ratchet us toward gun confiscation.  But then he can’t let well enough alone, and goes off the rails with a proposal to jail the victims of theft when their guns are stolen and subsequently used in crimes (which he correctly points out is the prime source of criminals’ guns).  Imagine if we took the Boardman Principle and applied it to automobiles, prescription medicines, household chemicals, plastic bags, sharp cutlery and tools, and who knows what else that could be stolen and criminally used.  In America storing something in one’s house (the owner’s vaunted ‘castle’ according to English common law) should be sacrosanct on its face, no matter how it is therein secured.  Your house is already supposed to be a secure facility against thievery and robbery; we establish and support local constabularies to make it so, and their failure to accomplish this should not be cause to also criminalize the victim.  Government’s reach into the home to dictate further how things in there should be disposed has already put us on a slippery slope on the return road to serfdom.  Mr Boardman seeks to don the mantle of reason with his helpful nostrums to surreptitiously decrease our rights to property ownership.  The Left has never accepted that you own something only to the degree that you can dispose of it as you will.

[8mar18 update]  NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten reports on another big government screw-up that is kicking our private parts from over 50 years ago.  In his 'The Curious History of Chain Migration' he takes us on a short trip on memory lane to illustrate "a classic case of unintended consequences".

Comments

[Bill Tozer]

Concerning Mr. Broadman’s latest article, I, too, think he started off on the right foot but then veered into the sticky brown stuff. Victimizing the victim of a burglary?

“Government’s reach into the home to dictate further how things in there should be disposed has already put us on a slippery slope on the return road to serfdom.”

Was not Roe vs Wade predicated upon what a person does in his home is their right to privacy? It was the precedent used in Roe vs Wade. Does not one expect a reasonable privacy from prying government in his home to apply to how one stores or secures a firearm as well as to which sex act one prefers inside the “castle”. Legal behavior of course...not talking about honey oil labs, child endangerment, or bomb factories. We are talking about unreasonable searches and seizures, not to mention invasion of privacy by the force of the government gun.

It seems to me judging by Hogg’s statements last week and a Congressman’s statements this weekend that the gun grabbers will not rest nor sleep until scary looking guns are banned forever. Little Hogg had said prior that he would be happy with a bump stock ban or better background checks. Anything would be better than nothing. Do something, anything! Toss him a bone, he will gladly take it. Just get a little toe in the door and he would be happy. This morning I heard a clip of a Congressman (D) saying we cannot settle for bump stock bans or better background checks. That would not stop the real culprit to school shootings, i.e., the AR-15.

The internet is full of memes the last few days that say, “9 teenagers die each day from texting while driving. We should ban texting until they reach 21 and ban teenage driving as well.” That argument gets no traction. Besides, all teenagers know that texting while driving is against the law, at least in CA. So is speeding and breaking into people’s houses stealing stuff. The only place I know securely lock by vehicles is when I go to The Grocery Outlet, the new Safeway, or any business near the Hospitality House. Too many car break-ins. If I am carrying something of value in the car, I don’t do shopping in town. Sad but true.

[Bonnie McGuire]

I was thinking about the confusion in America now, that has obviously been created by our major media, along with the money bait. It reminded me of Pavlov's dog experiments and the gathering of psychology doctors from all over the world in Russia to see how the leading authority does things. Witnessed the presentation of a doctor who was there. It didn't take much research to see the method of altering education (dumbing down) in schools and our media. In the beginning it was against the law to use subliminal messaging in television advertising, but over the years (with the decline of moral standards) it's probably been continually selling socialist mentality. Here's an interesting site about the technique: Inside the Kremlin's Hall of Mirrors.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/09/kremlin-hall-of-mirrors-military-information-psychology
"Fake news stories, doctored photographs, staged TV clips, and armies of paid trolls. Has Putin's Russia developed a new kind of information warfare - fought in the "psychosphere" rather than on the battlefield? Or is it all just a giant bluff?...
In 2013 the head of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Valery Gerasimov, claimed that it was now possible to defeat enemies through a “combination of political, economic, information, technological, and ecological campaigns”. This was part of a vision of war which lay not in the realm of physical contact but in what Russian theorists described as the “psychosphere”. These wars of the future would be fought not on the battlefield but in the minds of men. Disinformation and psychological operations are as old as the Trojan horse. But what distinguished the Kremlin’s approach from that of its western rivals was this new stress on the “psychosphere” as the theatre of conflict. The information operation was no longer auxiliary to some physical struggle or military invasion: now it had become an end in itself. Indeed, as the Russian encyclopedia for its practitioners concluded: “Information war … is in many places replacing standard war.”
The idea was clear enough. But what could “invisible radiation” really achieve? Was it simply an attempt to put a hard edge on what the Americans call “soft power”, conducted through cultural outreach and public diplomacy? Or was it really some new form of war – one that could outfox Russia’s enemies without firing a shot?"

[Robert Cross]

On the steel tariff, it seems that trump's old buddy and advisor Carl Icahn dumped close to a million shares of steel industry stock a few days before the steel tariff was announced and the stock's value dropped almost 20%. A little suspicious don't you think?

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/icahn-unloads-steel-stocks_us_5a9c9a47e4b089ec353b9dc1

[fish]

Posted by: Robert Cross | 05 March 2018 at 02:36 PM

......still president Bobby.

[Bill Tozer]

Situation Normal: All Fouled Up.

After a reported 45 calls to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, at least two specific interactions with the FBI and the fact that the troubled shooter, previously expelled from school, was also prohibited from carrying a backpack on campus, folks around the perpetrator had seen something and said something. Yet the authorities in place to implement systems of safety and enforcement failed to do anything. They failed to work within existing systems, rules, laws and regulations to stop crimes.

These system failures, however, are truly a SNAFU — chaos that has happened before and, sadly, will happen again, despite the hashtag herald of #NeverAgain.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/54528-guns-and-the-system-snafu

[Walt]

So much for the attack on the NRA
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/05/nra-memberships-surge-wake-of-anti-nra-protests-media-bias/

The attack on the NRA by Delta sure came back to bite. The fuel tax cut,, got cut. Yup,, trying to screw over 46 people for a 4% discount was worth it... Right?

[Scenes]

re: The new pronouns that I'm supposed to use ('zir' and the like). It occurred to me that if the local Green Libertarians think it's a darned good idea, who am I to deny them their language rights. A word means just what they choose it to mean, neither more nor less after all (h/t to Charles Dodgson, who occasionally seemed to have the ability to write a history of the future).

Some usage rules, notice the 'edu' address, so this stuff must be correct:

https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/

a bit more, but I'm still not getting where they should be used yet:

https://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com/tag/ze-and-zir/

Just an article...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/university-of-tennessee-switches-gender-specific-pronouns-he-and-she-for-xe-and-ze-to-promote-10478034.html

So, help me out here. Given this cut 'n pasted table:

HE/SHE HIM/HER HIS/HER HIS/HERS HIMSELF/HERSELF
zie zim zir zis zieself
sie sie hir hirs hirself
ey em eir eirs eirself
ve ver vis vers verself
tey ter tem ters terself
e em eir eirs emself

...are they all the same? Is zie used for a pre-op vs. ve for post-op? Tey is a mentally ill man in a dress while ey is a person born with two sets of genitals?

Maybe we can get some clarification from the left side of the aisle.

[Don Bessee]

Can it still be the grey lady if they don't own the grey building they are in? Just wonderin.

Now I couldn't imagine why-

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/03/05/cnns-acosta-complains-third-briefing-youve-not-taken-question-cnn/

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Yellow Journalism:
Russia, Russia, Russia. Russian Collusion? “17 intel agencies agree” reported here by our Popinjay was a lie. A friggin lie, but that is small potatoes compared to the big lie. Good article that lays it all out. Never knew Fusion GPS was hired to smear Romney donors. Learn something new everyday, but I digress from the big lie.

If most of us can now agree that Putin’s Russia is a potential threat to the United States, we shouldn’t forget that the Washington establishment regarded this as a radical opinion not so long ago. Shortly after President Obama was elected in 2008, Time magazine ran a cover with him asking a Russian bear, “Can we be friends?” The media generally celebrated Secretary of State Clinton’s attempt at a Russian “reset” in 2009. Obama was later caught on a hot mic promising Putin more “flexibility” once he was reelected. And during Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, when his opponent Mitt Romney characterized Russia as our greatest geopolitical foe, Obama mocked him by saying, “The 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back.” The New York Times editorial page said of Romney’s Russia comments that they “display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major presidential contender.”

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/russian-collusion/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_content=10202017&utm_campaign=imprimis-content-promo&hs_fb_account_id=1390410734517593&hs_fb_campaign_id=6094059157764&hs_fb_adset_id=6094059167364&hs_fb_ad_id=6094059617564&hs_parent_creative_id=6094119151164&source=fb

[Bill Tozer]

Opps. The above should have been posted under Sandbox.

[Bill Tozer]

Pronouns.

I can’t even wrap my head around pronouns since I got stuck on these gems:

1)“Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus.” —Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky

Hmmm. Perhaps not the best folks to be put in charge of medical procedures.
—————————————————
2) “Certainly somebody who’s 18, 19, 20 years old shouldn’t be able to purchase … gas-assisted receiver firearms when they can’t buy a simple handgun.” —Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM)

Hmmm. Why bother to even engage these folks or listen to what they say. It gives me a headache.

[Robert Cross]

Still a grifter Fishy.

[Don Bessee]

You must mean these grifters oh so cross one-

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/03/05/fbi-agent-peter-strzok-was-told-possible-breach-into-clintons-server-but-didnt-follow-up-sources-say.html

;-)

[Todd Juvinall]

Trump never left Manhattan. The Clintons are the true grifters as are most lib/dems. shysters all.

[fish]

Posted by: Robert Cross | 05 March 2018 at 06:03 PM

A Clinton supporter complains about grifters! Funny!

[Bill Tozer]

Avoiding the fact (?) that tariffs hurt everybody and putting aside the economic impacts of tariffs/trade wars, I will say I don’t like tariffs and I don’t like getting screwed either. We also impose tariffs on imported steel.

Looks like Canada will be the target of steel tariffs more than any other country. The world is sitting on an overcapacity of steel, big time. Thus the dumping at prices below cost of production by bad actors. The USA has an undercapicity to produce our aluminum needs.

1) From this link, I gleamed that the USA produces 70% of the steel used here. Imports are roughly 30%, which fluctuates year to year. We are not reliant on one source or county for imported steel, which would be a mega National Security concern for me.
https://www.trade.gov/steel/countries/pdfs/imports-us.pdf

2) Maybe it's really about renegotiating NAFTA. Money quote:

In a bid to bring negotiations to the table, the president has offered to forgo the steep tariffs proposed on steel and aluminum exports if a fair deal on NAFTA can be reached.
http://www.oann.com/president-trump-gop-offer-several-options-to-move-forward-with-nafta/

3). We need to retool to make things like pipes, say, greater than 30” in diameter 55ml thickness, FYI.
China is 2% of our steel imports....or is it 30%? Depends on what kind of steel and for what purposes.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/03/how-much-steel-do-we-import-from-china-its-complicated/

[Don Bessee]

I thought we would be seeing this but did not think it would happen so fast!

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/05/oregon-20-year-old-sues-dicks-sporting-goods-refusing-sell-rifle/

;-)

[Scenes]

re: BillT and tariffs.

To me, it looks like any proposed steel tariff is a chip thrown on the table. It's funny how steel tends to be in a tariff tiff so often.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/03/02/gop-tariff-scolds-are-rejecting-reagans-steel-protection-legacy/

http://www.businessinsider.com/bush-steel-tariff-impact-2017-7

No doubt with more Democrat backing than now since the prime directive of the US Left has become the overthrow of the Trump administration at whatever cost.

In terms of dealing with foreign barriers to entry, it seems to me that you could estimate the total cost and apply similar measure to another country, but that ignores the political powers of some groups (industrial unions or farmers for example).

I tend to ignore the arguments pro/con in terms of strategic value since no one appears to care much about heavily used electronic parts or something as useful (and boring) as shoes. If you made a list of the stuff that the US can be held over a barrel on, it would take pages. The tendency towards gigantism in manufacture combined with the cheapness of foreign labor (and their ability to throw the waste into the nearest river) leads you down that road unless something pushes the other direction.

Comparative advantage arguments are never 100% convincing to me. You do have to ask whether your country has any comparative advantages at all and if not, what do you do? In addition, taken to it's logical conclusion, you'd put the F-35 (or MREs) out to competitive bid and let the Chinese get a shot. One man's strategic item is another's profit making business.

[Bill Tozer]

College students:
Oh, nothing new here, just another my kind of feminist being booed on a small campus. She has been booed for years, no big deal.. The good news is that Ms. Sommers was not harmed and she even got most of her words out. That’s progress.

More signs of progress:

“At the same time, Steverson said that while there are many grounds on which to criticize Sommers, she did not think it appropriate to call her a fascist, as the protesting students did repeatedly. "In the law school it is important to define the terms that you are using and apply the facts to support the allegations that you have made," she said.

Oh, so that’s what the stink is all about.

She is known for pithy quotes that endear her to many critics of campus political movements but that advocates for women say oversimplify at best. Her lead quote on her Twitter feed is "Want to close wage gap? Step one: Change your major from feminist dance therapy to electrical engineering."
Of late, Sommers has spoken critically of the campus response to sexual assaults, questioning the concept of "rape culture." In a New York Times interview last year, she said that the push against sexual assault has "infantilized" women, and that "equity feminism," which she supports, has been replaced by "victim feminism" and "fainting couch feminism."

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/06/students-interrupt-several-portions-speech-christina-hoff-sommers

[jon smith]

Bessee 10:26 -
There you go again, trying to impose your morals on the rest of us. If a private entity decides it doesn't want to do something (make gay cakes for instance) what friggin' right do you have to tell them differently? "No shirt, no shoes, no service" seems like a reasonable self-imposed standard, but "we don't sell guns to anyone under 21" is different?

[fish]

Posted by: jon smith | 06 March 2018 at 07:36 AM

Yes....I'm sure you were at the ramparts protesting those "reasonable accommodation" regulations.

[Todd Juvinall]

Drudge is reporting an article on the Texas primaries and how the democrats are doing so well. The article fails to admit these are only dem on dem and R on R for now. Journalistic malpractice.

[Scenes]

re: jonsmith@7:36

I tend to agree with the idea that private entities can serve who they like, OTOH we've built a world with protected groups. Gays are worth more than sub-21 year olds, so there is that. I hate to imagine the morass of law that surrounds just which groups you are allowed to discriminate against, if only in terms of providing facilities. The ADA springs to mind, there's a reason that so many business make their restrooms unavailable to absolutely everyone or won't remodel them.

Put another way, if a store can refuse to sell firearms to those under 21, can they also refuse to sell firearms to black males (a more dangerous demographic by all accounts). Is there a limit to this? What is it?

[Walt]

I hope that young man refuses to settle out of court.
It's also time to end non disclosure agreements in cases like this.
Dick's and Walmart could be paying up big time.

If I had a store and refused to sell Ms."jon" a bottle of booze just because she showed up in a car, you can bet someone would be pissed.
" I don't sell booze to anyone in a car... They might drink and drive."

[Robert Cross]

A Hitler supporter complains about the Clintons; Fishy 6:30

On gun control:

America has 5% of the world's population and 42% of civilian owned guns. No small wonder people are getting shot up by crazed white nationalists.

Todd 7:55 fails to report that Dem. are turning out in record numbers that surpass republican turnout. typical right wing bias, leaving out important details.

[Scenes]

re: Robert Cross sez:

"No small wonder people are getting shot up by crazed white nationalists."

lol. Please dear God, don't make me go to all the trouble to dig out the race and reason over the history of mass shootings.

Honestly, I'll do it for you, but having facts at hand won't change your opinion. Seriously though, check it all out and get back to us.

[George Rebane]

Scenes 845am - No Mr Scenes, don't do the work for Mr Cross's allegation about the "crazed white nationalists". Let the readers witness for themselves how liberals debate with nothing but wafts of hot air to sustain their arguments. I recently posted once more on this long-practiced asymmetry.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2018/02/climate-reporting-and-other-asymmetries.html

[Todd Juvinall]

Seems to me the USA has not seen a Civil War for 160 years and relative peace inside our borders. I attribute that to citizens owning weapons of self-protection. During this same period, Europe spawned colonial takeovers of most of the planet's third world countries including China and India. Two world wars and many revolutions. I would say our system has forced peace on ourselves and the countries that have allied themselves with us. NATO, SEATO etc.

In Texas, my point is who gives a crap about the turnout in a primary where each party is opposed by soemone in their own party. JonSmith is too dumb to figure that out. And as far as November, the pronat turnouts are no gusaruntee these people will show up anyway. If JonSmith has a brain of history he couls see that.

[fish]

Posted by: Robert Cross | 06 March 2018 at 08:21 AM

Remember when everybody is a Nazi then nobody is!

Now....tell me more about how we are being deprived by not having Hillary as president.

[Todd Juvinall]

Oops, that was for RobertC. And please why smear yourself again with a Hitler reference. You libs always go low as we go high.

[Account Deleted]

As a sign of how unhinged the populace is about 'scary weapons', go no further than the recent op-ed by (ret) Col Ralph Peters. I don't always agree with his views but have found him to be normally sane and well reasoned.
https://nypost.com/2018/03/02/its-time-to-stand-up-to-the-nras-bullying/
He now goes after the NRA as 'bullies' who are 'tyrants'.
Proof?
"The NRA claims 5 million members.
The United States has a population of 325 million.
Thus, 1 in every 65 Americans belongs to the NRA.
That means that 1.5 percent of the population has been able to impose its position on firearms on the other 98.5 percent of the population."
I don't care what your opinion is of fire arms, but to come up with pure BS like that when you know it's pure BS is the sign of a diseased mind. The disease is hysteria and it smothers reason and clarity like mud dumped into a cake mix.
We can not move forward as a nation to protect innocent citizens from bad actors with nonsense like this.
Look folks - you are not going to get rid of any measurable percentage of semi automatic weapons in this nation no matter how many marches, how much crying and sobbing on TV and certainly no matter what laws you might pass.

[rl crabb]

I agree with you, Todd. When it comes to pronat turnouts, there are no gusaruntees.

[Walt]

On the subject of tariffs, someone needs to take a count of production mills.( not many left in the U.S...) Those that are still working are subsidized. ( I wonder why?)(not really)
Trump is trying to level the playing field, so our own companies can old their own without those subsidies. (what a concept)
Now Lefties,, just why do you want business behold'n to gov. money just to stay in business??

Maybe if American steel was used, the "new" Bay Bridge would not have started to fail before it was even open. There is your cheap Chinese steel for ya'.

[Todd Juvinall]

Thanks for the spell check. "Primary guarantee".

[Scenes]

re: ScottO@10:42AM

What a funny article. So basically the NRA is imposing some sort of tyranny with a tiny percent of the popular vote and is a relatively minor player in terms of political contributions.

What they have of course is a single minded orientation in a narrowly focused area. Oddly enough, you can achieve something under those conditions.

The cool thing about being a Green Libertarian is that you are never embarrassed even when you say things that are utterly ridiculous. Heck, I'm still waiting to here all about how all of these mass shooting through the years are due to 'crazed white nationalists'. lol. Gotta love it. What a bunch of maroons.

[MAGA Covfefe!]

Oh Dear God!!! A slide rule STEM geek has to take a mini-class in the Humanities on DECOLONIZATION so the geek doesn’t become a total STAR TREK SPOCK!!!
OH, THE HUMANITY!!! I hope they survive!!!

[George Rebane]

MAGA 351pm - And here all along we thought you were familiar with the operation of universities and the ways they can and do structure curricula. Fooled us.

[fish]

Posted by: MAGA Covfefe! | 06 March 2018 at 03:51 PM

The term you were looking for was Grievance Studies.....classes given to those who have no business at an institution of higher learning.

Now tell your minder its time for a new pair of Depends!

[Don Bessee]

Didn't Al Gore sell his failing tv channel to these guys?

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/federal-investigation-al-jazeera-gains-steam-qatar-funded-spy-op-u-s-jews/

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

And the beat goes on.

“Pointing out there are no mass shootings in gunless Iran, China, or North Korea isn’t making the point you think it is.” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

[Bill Tozer]

Well, goofy Covfefe @ 3:51 pm, take solace.

There is finally something you can do with all those teardrops dripping from your cheeks. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Many progressives have found refuge from a cruel hostile world by participating in afternoon craft time within safe confines of the mental institution known as the Democrat Party.

https://www.facebook.com/PatriotPost/photos/fpp.51560645913/10155456661515914/?type=3&theater

[Scenes]

re: GeorgeR@4:42

I was a bit bored (well, really bored) and thought it would be fun to cast around for important papers written by the great minds of our times.

Here's one I rather like. Melissa Click's (the crazy harridan at U of Missouri who is the 'triggered' poster girl) dissertation.

It’S ‘A Good Thing’: The Commodification Of
Femininity, Affluence, And Whiteness In The
Martha Stewart Phenomenon

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1041&context=dissertations_1

You do have to wonder at what time a PhD becomes essentially valueless. Perhaps there's a form of Gresham's Law at work here.

[Xeno]

Trump needs to tune up his tariff policy. Aluminum primary manufacture requires much electricity. Aluminum scrap processing requires 10% of the electricity. As the planet’s largest consumer of resources we end up with most of the world’s processed aluminum. It is a no brainer to let other countries mine and refine the ore and for the US to simply recycle the scrap.

Trump fears the wrath of China and Russia but they should be the ones hit with the tariffs.

It will take too long to get new nuclear power plants online here.

Check out the list of smelters around the world. Many are located in ‘friendly’ countries.

Note that a couple of foreign smelters are operated by Alcoa.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aluminium_smelters

[Bill Tozer]

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.———Ralph Waldo Emerson

——Ok, more on Christina Hoff Summer’s attempted talk to law students at Lewis and Clark College.

Social justice warriors masquerading as law school students proved themselves to be ignorant and intolerant—-Nicole Russel 3/7/2018

“True fascists are people like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, who infamously branded themselves fascists with movements that executed millions of innocent people, all in the name of power. Protesting third-wave feminism, balking at a so-called pay-gap, cautioning the #MeToo movement could go too far, and sounding an alarm over the war on boys do not make Sommers anything close to a fascist.”

Money quote:

“The reaction to Sommers’ speech shows the danger of progressive thought-policing. Rather than listen to Sommers’ arguments to see if she indeed did espouse fascist views of any kind, a small group of protestors proved they could no more handle the idea of disagreement, than actual debate.” From the Federalist.

[Bill Tozer]

Women opting out of STEM programs for the more caring social justice degrees.
Hmmm. Maybe the Google guy (James Demore) who got fired for writing the controversial memo on gender differences was on to something.
——
Published in the new issue of the journal Engineering Studies, Rulifson and Bielefeldt’s new study similarly concludes that “engineering should include concern for people, communities, and societal welfare at the heart of the profession.”

Women in engineering are more motivated by helping others, and engineering education needs to provide more examples of engineering as a helping profession,” the professors wrote.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-women-now-leaving-stem-fields-pursue-social-justice-degrees/

[Paul Emery]

George

Is it not true that both of our family histories incorporate what might be today interpreted as "chain migration"? Yours with your intact family from Estonia nad mine with my Grandfather from Greece arriving four years before my Grandmother and their daughter who joined him after he established a home for them.