Claiming "Woke" Is The Cause For Firing Is No Excuse

I listened to Rachel Maddow earlier this week. She was filling us in on the results of various national polls - reputable ones - on how many of us were happy with the avalanche of changes tRump/Leon are ramming through our government. The ratings - meaning how contented we Americans are - have the Deadly Duo well below half of us feeling they're a good thing. It held true as an over-all assessment. It held true in every single separate category. I'd feel better about us if I thought our opinions held enough weight to foster change.

For anybody paying attention, it's no surprise. Need I list them all? You know, alienating other countries in so many ways who've long been our friends, tearing apart out institutions without even a thought as to the damage being done, ignoring our Constitution.  Anybody thinking about visiting our National Parks this summer while they're severely understaffed? Think long lines, filthy restrooms, few to no rangers to separate the idiots from the bears or bison or hot springs or the edges of very tall cliffs. That may be your idea of a good time, but not mine. How about our nuclear workers taking a "long break", nobody to regulate temperatures, safeguard secrets and materials? Is that your feel-good budget cut? Those are just a couple that got immediate outspoken reaction to push against the layoffs. I'd feel better again, but somehow lots of those firings happened with no way to contact the workers to call them back.

Oops.

In other national news I've been catching up on, there was a leadershiplchange at the Pentagon. It seems Hegseth is very much against "wokeism". If that's too new a word for you, just think of anti-woke as being pro male white Christian nationalism. If you're looking for a government job, anybody female, dark skinned, of any other religion or none, having any kind of disability at all, no matter how well educated, capable, or trained for the position, need not apply, or should prepare to be let go. This includes anyone in the LGBTQ community. Wimmen just gotta stay home and  raise babies, doncha know. Lots and lots of babies, especially white ones of course. Jewish? No. Islamic? No. Agnostic/atheistic/wiccan? Well, you get the picture.

In the full spirit of unapologetic anti-wokism, a (black) 4 star general was fired as head of the Pentagon and replaced with a (white) 3 star one. No word on an actual reason why, just a photo of each and reference to Hegseth's prejudices - without actually labeling them as such.

There are ways one can increase their hire-ability with this administration. First, grovel. Be loyal to Herr tRump (first) and Herr Leon second. (Oh, by the way, don't wipe your boogers off on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. It's currently out for restoration after 4-year-old X did that... on camera, after around 10 minutes of mining his nose for them. It remains to be seen exactly how welcomed he will be back in the Oval, but since his Daddy seems to wear him like protection from assassinations, I expect some accommodations will be made.)

Next, be white except when a token black person is required. For those times when a female is required, be sure to be young, pretty, thin, sexy without flaunting it -before the cameras at least. Then be willing to tell the most up-to-date lies with full sincerity, even if you were telling the opposite ones an hour earlier. Who keeps track? It will show your thoughtfulness to keep an extra work wardrobe handy for when you are unable to dodge thrown ketchup bottles so you can deny such events as being rumors spread by the opposition.  Finally, keep a discrete supply of wet wipes on hand. They're for your lips. All the necessary ass-kissing for an administrative position leaves stains.

"Well, Duh!" Science Studies

Have you ever run into one of those? You know, the kind where what they find is so obvious, you just have to shake your head, roll your eyes, and wonder how on earth somebody found it worth studying to find this "particular something" out? We're not talking quantum physics here, which can go straight through my brain and leave absolutely no mark whatsoever. Things like quarks might as well not even exist as far as I'm concerned. If you think you understand them, you go ahead and play with them.

OK, I confess, I'm being snarky here. I've been inspired.

If you follow me, you know I'm a science nerd, and more so now that I have lots of free time. Today I ran into two of those "Well, Duh!" studies. Why doesn't everybody on the planet know these things? I grew up knowing them, even before going to school.

Then I decided to try to be fair. Both concern water, and not everyone lives in water-rich habitats. OK. That's one. Another concerns trees, and I guess there are people out there who have never opened their brains while walking under them (or possibly never had them to walk under) since that's how I learned what their instruments in their study told them. I'm on the fence about being "fair" on that one in calling their "discovery" obvious.

But it is. 

That one was about trees and urban cooling on our heating planet. When it's hot, you walk under one, and it feels cool, sometimes more than others. It's not just the shade, though that helps, but you can get shade from a building too, and still feel hot. The difference is that trees lose water through their leaves in a process called transpiration, the water cools as it evaporates, and the temperature lowers... as long as the tree has some water in it to spare, of course. So the big conclusion was trees in urban areas will cool them - and you - better if you give them water.

Well, duh! 

Let me just add that failing to water them as it gets hot can result in dead or at least sickly trees. Somebody want to study that one too, or can I just get credit for it now and we can move on? I've seen it in Minnesota, land of 14,000 lakes. I've also seen it in recent extra-hot summers in the Phoenix area where by the end of summer the roads become trails past dead trees and even cactus which have been ignored by absentee homeowners, or at least not given water. Dead saguaro break your heart - well, mine, anyway. Anything that takes over a hundred years to get its first branch should be respected.

The second study involved why skiers get sunburned. Well, let's see: the sun? They don't ski at night? OK, I'm being silly. But I learned this as a child. It helped that all my ancestors, since they moved out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago and adapted to their new location, came from northern Europe. Places like Britain, Scotland, Sweden. For me "getting a tan" is just wishful thinking. Skin cancer runs in the family, and people were starting to figure out why. I grew up on a resort but was never allowed in the water until mid afternoon when the sun was lower, and never allowed to stay long. One of the reasons given, one I was repeatedly given, was that the sun reflected up off the water and I'd get even more burned then than anywhere else or any time else. Sun screen became a must as soon as it was on the market.

What does this have to do with skiing? It's not like I ever skied, and I avoided the super-cold weather whenever possible. Warmer, snowman weather I could tolerate when properly bundled up, which I also had to be for sledding, an outdoor activity one could do cheaply, even using cardboard for your sled, unlike skiing. But being bundled up meant little access for sun to burn your skin. However, the minute I read the purpose of the study, I knew the exact answer. And indeed, it was the study's conclusion.

I knew the sun bounced up off the water, so you'd get it from both directions during summer water activities. What the study discovered was - wait for it - that snow, especially fresh clean snow - was water too!

WELL, DUH !!!!!!!

Beam Me Up, Scotty, Transparent Aluminum Is REAL !!!

 All you Star Trek movie fans, do you remember when the Enterprise dropped down on earth in order to pick up a pair of humpback whales? They had to go back in time since none existed on the planet any more, and the earth was to be destroyed unless a probe detected real whale song?

So how do you transport whales in a starship? You build them an aquarium made of transparent aluminum, of course. There was an interesting discussion in the movie about Scotty giving away the formula that didn't yet exist, when a big part of their mission was not to change history, and practical Scotty simply asked how anybody knew that this wasn't how it was "discovered"? This was after, of course, Scotty found that the computers of the time didn't work on voice command and he'd have to actually type!

(Computer, meet Alexa. Two centuries early.) 

There were a lot of funny scenes in the movie where Spock, recently reanimated and retrained on Vulcan, is introduced to Earth and humans and does his unique best to blend in.

Of course some of the fun of the movie was all of us knowing there was no such thing as transparent aluminum. How could there be? It was impossible, something yanked out of the writer's imagination to make space travel seem possible, ignore that it can't be real and move on in the plot.

Except, it's recently been produced!

It is an oxide, TAIOx. So far it's been an extremely complicated process, requiring large vats of dangerous acids, lasers, vacuum chambers... not your basic household supplies and equipment. But  it is transparent aluminum.

Now there's a new process, much simpler, made by a pair of Filipino scientists in Ateneo de Manila University.which makes dot sized transparent "windows" in an aluminum strip. The newer process is called "droplet-scale anodization," and is also much more environmentally friendly, cutting down on chemical waste and energy use.

There are a lot of ideas for where it would be extremely useful, though nobody has seriously mentioned spaceship windows and whale sized aquariums - or not that I'm aware of. But a girl can still dream, right?

So beam me up, Scotty! I'll grab Steve and pull him along, and we'll enjoy some of that 23rd century medicine and a little space travel. Good times!

Foxes v. Wolves

One of the intriguing things about reading science articles over the years from various sources designed for an eclectic audience, both in terms of interests and levels of science education, is sometimes one gets to put together new and old information and make a left turn, if you will.

For many years the main source for reading about science in my world was Discover Magazine. (Scientific American had gotten too expensive and required too much educational background.) It has a wide range of topics - fields if you will - and articles range from paragraphs to several pages. Occasionally something sticks with me for years, then comes back from another angle.

These days those other angles can be PBS sources like "Nova" and "Nature", or other TV network offerings like the Blue Planet series. Of course there are all other kinds of cross connections out there. Some stand out. Others don't, or perhaps a detail does but its source is mislaid in my mental map. I'm pretty sure I can connect what I just read with a much older source, well over a decade back. Both just caught my attention and for the same basic reason: I'm a dog lover.

Today's source is my current favorite "brain food", Science X Newsletter. I get it online on weekdays. All kinds of things pop up on there, and I can easily spend two or three hours a day with it. (It's why I'm getting behind on TV!) The following is the introductory paragraph which caused me to read the full article:

"Simulation shows wolves had time to self-domesticate and evolve into dogs  A team of mathematicians and statisticians from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, the University of Tennessee and Valparaiso University, all in the U.S., has found new evidence that wolves had ample time to self-domesticate and evolve into modern dogs. In their study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group developed a computer simulation showing the evolution process."

 What caught my eye was their conclusions were based on a supposed time frame of 15,000 years for the process to take place. I had to wonder if that was based on assumptions going into the study, or looking at the more practical work of actually breeding for selected traits leading to domestication. Yes, it says computers, but what was the input? GIGO? Does it assume absolutely no input from humans, even though it suggests the presence of humans are why wolves changed on their own?

My questioning is because I had read years earlier of domestication changes happening with purposefully breeding foxes, which if memory serves correctly was written about in Discover Magazine. My Way Back Machine is rusted so I can't pin it down more than that. The sheer novelty of domesticating foxes stuck all those years. The method used was picking from each new generation the kit(s) with the most baby-like features - for foxes - for breeding the next generation. Pointy features, like muzzles and ears, were selected against, so noses shortened and rounded, ears flopped. Friendlier behaviors were also part of the mix selected for. Succeeding generations quite shortly had evolved into versions of foxes suitable for domestic pets, as different from their ancestors as dogs from wolves. It didn't take very many generations for the change, as I recall, and certainly nothing remotely like 15,000 years. This was one person's project. 

Of course, the difference raises questions about how wolves really were domesticated into dogs. Did they self-domesticate, or how strong was the hand of humans in bringing about the change? Was it a combination? Did it really take 15,000 year? Or maybe 15 generations? Is there an intrinsic difference between the two species that allows change in one to happen way faster than in the other? Did those looking at wolf evolution ever hear about the fox breeding results?

     *     *     *     *

How about totally different species? We know, for example, that there were woolly mammoths and  mastodons in North America when humans were first known to be here. While our arrival date is debated and currently stretching farther back than first believed, it's not disputed that we hunted them in groups, for food at least, likely using other parts in other ways because we're clever that way. Just not clever enough to avoid making them extinct. We recently discovered an "elephant graveyard" of fossils of earlier relatives in northern Florida predating humans by a very long time. (Lucky them?)

Let's head to the other side of the globe, where two kinds of elephants remain. The smaller one is commonly domesticated. Has anybody asked when and how that happened? For example, was the now domesticated variety formerly larger? Wilder? Did long ago humans have a hand in shaping them? Are we still?

Look at horses. How much of their differences are evolutionary differences and how much are because clever ancestors found different needs/wants from them and bred for those, the same as we do today, sometimes with the result of over-breeding race horses to the point where legs no longer reliably survive racing?

We know we can do it, have done it, forcing adaptions on wild animals changing them to be "ours". Just how far has it spread?

Planning To Fly? Lucky You, Have Fun! ...Uhhh, Planning To Land?

 Anybody counting? There was the crash on January 29 over the Patomac. 67 lost souls, as they put it. Those included some of our top figure skaters and their families, just to break your hearts a little more.

Then a Lear Jet dives into a neighborhood, 7 dead, 19 injured on the ground. The jet was an ambulance flight, a tragic oxymoron.

Following that was a plane fire in Houston causing everybody to evacuate via stairs or slides. They were lucky, sort of.

In Chicago a plane and an aircraft tug collide, critically injuring the driver.

A Japanese plane hit a Delta plane's tail at Seattle-Tacoma.

Next a plane crashes down on sea ice outside of Nome, Alaska, killing 10.

A landing plane slides off the runway into the tail of a parked one in Scottsdale, AZ, killing one, injuring 3. 

That last one happened yesterday. 8 major problems, the majority fatal for a total of (checks math) 84 dead, in just 13 days. I hate to turn on the news these days, wondering who and where for the next crash.

Admittedly we don't know yet how each of them was caused. We won't for a while as it often takes a year or more to check out all the possibilities. Still, more than one "incident" every two days since tRump took office - total coincidence, obviously. Could have happened under Biden. Though it didn't.

But hey, if it makes you all feel better, tRump got rid of all those unnecessary DEI hires in the FCC almost as soon as he took office. Fewer air traffic controllers "distracting each other" while our planes take off and land, eh? Has to be a good thing because he said it would, right? Think of all the money saved.

Still planning to fly?

Need a good lawyer for your will? Sorry, I used to know a really good one, but he died. Not in a plane, but from cancer some years back. Quieter times then.

Hey, "Woman Within", What Don't You Get?

Dear "Woman Within",

 First, I've loved your catalog over the years for a number of reasons. Your clothes are comfy, as soon as you realize they are sized larger than the market in general does. For example, your 1X is their 3X. It's flattering,  There is room in the sleeves for baggy arms, the kind we older folk get after losing weight. Those droops never quite go away, do they?

When I hit your sales, which are the only way I shop your catalog, the prices are decent. Not super, but decent. The colors match other items with the same color name, closely enough that one could suspect a single dye lot. On the whole, similar types of colors blend with others nicely, and prints work with solids perfectly. 

Your seven day knits are so comfy, soft, and wrinkle free. Unless I've been very sloppy, I really can wear them seven days, provided I fold them over a chair or something. No wrinkles!

However, there have been some changes. Some are on me. I moved, and now you are sending catalogs to four different addresses. Only one is correct, the one you last sent clothes to. The rest are a waste of paper, time, expense, and the patience of people who live at those addresses. Perhaps your marketing research shows that you get a new customer from, say, a hundred catalogs erroneously mailed out. Even so, your system needs fine tuning.

My lifestyle has changed a bit. Not  just to a different climate, which resulted in my latest order a few months ago, when for the first time in my life I ordered a down parka. On sale, of course. Still quite expensive even so, of course. I realize much of your sales tactics occur when I - or every customer - calls in their order. I have to try to be patient and not rude the the poor employee who is required to offer temptation after temptation, bonuses if we buy X, extra Y if we buy two more, discounts ("Today only!" for every day) if we add Z to our purchase. Your employee is allowed no common sense response to me, the customer, saying I only have $_____ budget at the moment and cannot afford X,Y, or Z, much less anything else, even if  it is free! Before we hang up, there is always that next offer you are sure I won't, can't refuse. 

Surprise! I can. And do. You''re predictable, and I'm ready. Sometimes even patient. Sometimes grumpy however.

But there has been another change recently, and this one is totally on you guys. I recently ordered some more seven-day knits, the long pants with both elastic and drawstrings in their waistbands. I love those - in principal - because the drawstrings stand up to years of use, and I can continue to wear pants I've shrunk out of or which may have lost elastic integrity in the laundry, thanks to those drawstrings, long after when other pants would have to have been tossed or donated. Seriously, I used to use old diaper pins, to keep big pants up, but everybody is into disposable diapers these days, so new pins are hard to find.

However... your quality has just dropped on those. I never had to worry about stitching, for example. The machines they were sewn on had a kind of lock stitch so a single pulled thread didn't pull far, and didn't keep unraveling. New cheaper machines, guys? New contractors? I can no longer simply transfer pants to hanger fresh from the dryer. I have to examine all the seams, and most often, mend a couple. This means both time and a purchase of color-matching thread.

ANNOYING!!!! 

On top of that, a tiny catch in the fabric itself now also leads to a long thread pulling out, leaving a hole which itself will ravel more. I used to live in cactus country, and that never happened. Now? A merest bump snags.

EVEN MORE ANNOYING!!!

I still have shorts from your former seven day knits from years ago, my very first purchase. They no longer fit by 3 sizes, and the fabric is not so smooth, but they hold together beautifully, and with those good drawstrings have been converted to the most comfortable jammy bottoms I've ever found. I couldn't possibly do that with anything from this newest lot of long pants, bought end of last winter, and mostly sitting in a closet until recent cool weather. Every one has running snags somewhere! The old ones get the same kind of use and care, and their much aged integrity still holds just fine.

If you want my business again, prove you've brought your quality back to its former level. You won't accomplish that by sending me a new catalog every week, or by combining yours with several other companies' worth of throw-away paper. The local composting center doesn't really need all that extra volume, and that's where it all will be going. Unread. Unloved. Undog-eared. Untempting.

Meanwhile, I'll be spending whatever spare time I can find working on mending my NEW pants from last spring. And hunting for somebody else's really warm sweatpants with drawstrings and POCKETS, which don't break or unravel threads every time I look at them! 

That money could have been yours.

Respectfully..... sort of.

If It Weren't For Good Neighbors....

...I wouldn't be writing this. I wouldn't be home yet. I'd still be stuck in a snow drift the next street over blocking everybody else wanting to get home or get away.  And if it weren't for good neighbors, I wouldn't have any neighbors at all.

Well, there were a few who turned their backs, but then again, I wouldn't have been able to help somebody in the same position myself. So I won't denigrate them. We all are, after all, retirees, and some are fitter than others.

It snowed yesterday afternoon.  It was a cold snow, not a warm sticky snow. Then today it started blowing.  It carried the snow across the well frozen lake, up on to shore, into drifts along the road along the shore, then up the streets lined with our homes all the way up the slope to the county road.

The plow had cleared our streets in the morning. It was less than two inches, so they hadn't been back again... yet. It was before the wind took its first deep breath and started gathering everything loose it could move from the lake, a gift if you will, helping keep lawns covered, protected against more cold weather to come, and more snow after that, with no thaw in sight yet for a while. Not all gifts are quite universally welcomed however.

I decided to pick up the mail on my way home from work. I could have parked at home and walked the block through yards each way, but the wind is harsh, its chill biting. So I parked by the mailboxes, walked in for a silly little unwanted catalog, and started the car down that street again, anticipating a full U turn to our street and back to home.

The drift just didn't look that deep. It had no tracks running through it to give perspective. It had accumulated right where the down slope ended and land flattened out, so anticipating slowing for my upcoming, possibly slick  turn, I slowed just a bit too much, and bottomed out in the snowdrift. 

Forward? Spin. Backwards? Spin. Slower? Faster? Spin, spin, and spin. Not an inch of movement. Nobody was visible, and I had no clue whom to call.  Steve couldn't help, Paul was at work for several hours yet, no local towing company in my phone, and 911 seemed like overkill. So I honked my horn about 6 times in rapid succession. It took about one minute for people in winter gear to come out, see the problem, and send those over who could help, first one, then a second, then four. By then others were watching to see if they were needed - or just observe the show - but with some rocking by all four in one direction to gain a couple inches, then everybody walking around the car to help in the other direction, nobody had too much to do and everybody's contribution helped. 

There were discussions as to whether the bags of salt I carried would help (no) and how slowly to hit the gas and when to stop. One person slipped and fell, but fortunately when the car was moving away from her. She cheerfully insisted she was just fine, stood up and got back to the business of helping.

One neighbor popped into their car, looked my way at the activity, and chose the other direction to get out of there in. We were making headway so I had no problem with their choice, and as I stated, not everybody is capable of pushing cars through snowbanks on slick surfaces. I get it, and mentally wished them luck.

As I finally got some momentum forward I got encouraging yells not to slow, to keep going. Another twenty feet and I was on pavement again, looking at choosing which direction I'd turn in about three more seconds to get home. I first started to turn where the car leaving ahead of me went, but they'd gone straight into a nice drift. Luckily they'd had a higher and heavier car, and plowed straight through. 

I wouldn't make it if I tried. This was already drifted across and higher than what I just had gotten out of. Since I had the temporary luxury of pavement, I looked the other direction while slowly backing up, and had clear road till almost the end of that block. I figured I'd just keep the speed up through that and should make it just fine, fingers crossed that nobody else was making the silly decision to turn into that drift from the other direction. 

They weren't, I kept my speed, and had pavement again just in time to slow to turn to head up the hill to the county road, again on plain dark pavement. From there it was clear through to my parking spot.

I have no idea just who those neighbors are. I had my windows down  for communication during the forward/back process and yelled our a very sincere "Thank you" as I finally got clear of that drift. I trust they understand why I didn't stick around for more sociable contact, and hope they heard me clearly as  I left. 

Steve had pizza waiting when I got home, even having no idea exactly when that would be. I'm de-stressing under a lap blanket and determining not to go anywhere again for any reason until Monday. Mail? In can wait. Garbage? It can pile up at the door in bags till it goes out. Recyclables as well. Groceries? Stocked. Bills? Paid electronically. The squirrels have their nests, and after watching three of them run through treetops a couple days ago, know they are sure to be snugly curled up inside with tails across their tender noses. For us there'll be TV, internet, books, and each other, safe, and together.

All thanks to good neighbors.

A Record Iceberg Broke, And I have Questions

You may never have heard of A23a, but it's the world's largest iceberg, broken off from Antarctica way back in 1986. You may well wonder why it's still in existence after all these years. That's not typical. They tend to drift towards the equator, whether coming from north or south polar regions, breaking up and melting along the way in warmer waters. This one got hung up on sea bottom for 30 years, finally breaking free in 2020. Ocean forces sometimes kept it spinning, not making much progress north to warmer waters, so it has largely stayed intact. It's now heading for South Georgia, not to be confused for any of the other places on the globe with Georgia in their names. While it lost a much smaller piece previously, the newest one to break is about 12 miles long, or 31 square miles. The big piece is about 42 times bigger. Both are now full of fractures, and may well continue breaking up fairly quickly, especially compared to its history. Or perhaps not. We can't tell yet.

Where it's headed towards is a major feeding ground for seals and penguins, which makes it a problem. That is, if it stays together and doesn't break up rapidly. Other major ones heading that way have grounded, impacting the area with high mortality.

It isn't known how both will behave on their renewed journeys. Will they continue on their paths uninterrupted now, or still be subject to currents pushing them around on various directions, breaking them up further in our warmer seas before they reach the vulnerable populations of birds and seals? 

What I would like to know is this: if people were to embed large amounts of explosives in the cracks they now sport and set them off, would the resulting pieces melt much faster and cause fewer deaths? One thought is that with enough breaks between chunks, there would be gaps the animals could navigate to fish and come up for air between.

Or would there be a multitude of unintended consequences from the (presumably) many new smaller chunks on their way that such action would cause more harm than possible good?

I do seriously doubt anybody would take that idea seriously. There will be a contingent who feel the need to study how these huge icebergs melt and break up under current warming conditions, especially now that we have figured out that ocean water is coming in under them and melting the ones we thought were resting on land from the bottom. There will be those simply not willing to go to the work and expense of trying it, period, and there will be those who simply don't care about the penguins and seals and whether a new huge iceberg or two cause huge new levels of mortality to a place few of us think about anyway, except maybe from some fun movies we've watched years ago.

Still, I do wonder.

For the source of this info:   https://phys.org/news/2025-01-major-chunk-world-biggest-iceberg.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-nwletter