Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 21sep2022 (updated 23sep22)

George Rebane

Do any of them know what they’re talking about?  Here’s a comment from a liberal sackhead –

I sense much desperation on this site from the host's diatribes against women, blacks, and the march toward MAGA extremism. ... The hosts(sic) denigrates educated women, and assumed anyone not a rank MAGA is an idiot when in fact the QAnon prone MAGA are far more dangerously ignorant and mind controlled.  Posted by: Whole Foods | 21 September 2022 at 07:21 AM

As the record shows, RR contains no “diatribes against women, blacks,” nor has it ever given evidence of any “march toward MAGA extremism.”  Does the commenter have a definition for ‘MAGA extremism’, or even know the tenets of MAGA?  My money is on ‘Not even a clue’.  Naked allegations without a shred of substance behind them is the progressives’ de rigueur of accepted indictments.

They also have a very coarse, actually a binary, concept of ‘hate’.  Their lexicon between embracing and hating is a barren desert.  Once you criticize something or someone, especially one of their totems, then you are automatically accused of hate.  Nuanced semantics are relegated to their never-neverland.  An example of the other bookend, once someone embraces any one of the many conspiracy theories promoted by QAnon, they are automatically relegated to membership in the internationally fractionated and unstructured organization, along with embracing the entire smorgasbord of socio-political worldviews attributed to QAnon.  There is no middle ground.

On the lighter side.  Here’s a brain teaser reputed to have even caused Einstein a moment of puzzlement.  An old car is to drive a stretch of 2 miles, up and down a hill (one mile up and one mile down). Being so old, it cannot drive the first mile (the ascent) faster than with an average speed of 15 miles per hour.  How fast does it have to drive the second mile (on going down, it can, of course, go faster) in order to have an average speed of 30 miles an hour for the whole journey?

[23sep22 update]  Democrats’ partisan 501c3 charities use tax deductible contributions to register leftwing voters.  Such charities are not supposed engage in partisan activities.  The evil party has done this for decades knowing that the IRS will continue to give them a pass (consider if the Repubs did this).  Kim Strassel provides chapter and verse about this crap in the 23sep22 WSJ, “America’s charitable giving laws have been an enormous force for good, but Democrats are cynically abusing the system for partisan gain. If Congress wants to keep dollars and politicking in the political sphere—and under the remit of the Federal Election Commission—it needs to change tax law to prohibit ‘charities’ outright from taking part in voter-registration or get-out-the-vote drives. The problem isn’t ‘dark money’—it’s the sham ‘philanthropy’ voter-registration racket, taking place in broad daylight.” (more here)  Talk about election fraud; and what has the incompetent GOP leadership done about this?  Nothing, absolutely nothing.

He is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

Dropout Derby (updated 7jun19)

George Rebane

By last count there were 23 Democrat declared candidates running to become the next POTUS, with two more standing in the wings making up their minds.  And here they are –

Now it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that all but a handful will make it through the debates and primaries, and to the convention floor.  One by one, most of them will start dropping out of the race for one reason or another.  And it occurred to me that trying to noodle the order of such casualties over the coming months would be much like filling in the March Madness basketball championship playoff brackets.  Only here it would be even simpler, and involve just making a list from the first to drop out all the way to the last one surviving as the 2020 Democrat candidate.

TechTest2017 Scholarships Awarded

George Rebane

Last night at the Nevada Union High School awards celebration Ms Barbara Ross of the Nevada Joint Union High School District presented scholarship checks to the top scoring seniors on TechTest2017 which was given on 1 April 2017.   The 1^st prize of $6,000 went to Jack Devlin, the 2^nd prize of $4,000 went to Harrison Costantino, and the 3^rd prize of $2,000 went to Keegan Zetterberg, with nine additional honoraria of $300 each going to the next highest scorers.  (more here)

This was the eleventh annual TechTest which is administered each spring to participating Nevada County high school seniors who are going on to study for their STEM careers.  Ms Ross is the TechTest academic chair under whose auspices the test is administered and graded.  TechTest and TechTestJr are sponsored by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation.  Both tests are the flagships of SESF’s youth education program.  I have had the privilege of writing TechTest and working with the test takers in their preparation for the merit scholarship competition. 

The test itself is a four-hour ordeal of a level that STEM students will encounter early in their lower division college studies.  Awards are determined strictly on the basis of highest ranked test scores.  The tests and solution sets are available for inspection and download at sesfoundation.org.  

Mr David Pistone, SESF board member, chairs the TechTestJr committee which designs and administers these merit-based tests annually to two cohorts of 5^th – 6^th and 7^th – 8^th graders.  The fifth annual TTJr tests were also given this spring.

Equality Questioned (updated 15jul13)

A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.  Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

Here’s a notion that should set progressive hearts palpitating, perhaps even inducing a case or two of apoplexy.  Should citizens deemed mentally (not physically) incapable of caring for themselves be granted a full franchise in a republican democracy?

In these pages this notion has risen implicitly over the years, and most recently occurred to me again during a thread on food stamps that developed in the comment stream of ‘Mindbending Marijuana’.  There I was asked whether I supported foodstamps, the 80% hidden component that has historically been included in past farm bills, and that was recently excised from the current House version going through Congress.  I repeat an edited version of my reply.