Web Log for 11.10,25

Awards 

Looks as if our President is not on the short list for the Nobel Peace Prize:

https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/nobel-peace-prize-committee-says 

Though I'm not sure why he or anyone else would want to be. What do Europeans know about peace? The concepts of peace, freedom, democracy, civil rights, human rights, as the modern world understands them, were born on American soil. Nevertheless when Europeans feel ashamed of themselves they have been making condescending remarks about the American nations for a long time. One would think they might have noticed, by now, that as nations we are full-grown. Are in fact the sources of wealth, technology, and common sense to which Europe comes for help when Europeans can't keep from wasting everything they have on their never-ending tribal wars. If we hadn't sent shiploads of those overpaid, overfed, etc., young fellows who became the fathers and grandfathers of today's Americans, over there, those Norwegians would probably be goose-stepping yet. 

Trump can be individually blamed for fouling up Virginia's effort to feed our handout-dependent population but their real problem dates back longer than Trump has been alive. The idea that people could depend on government funds for handouts whether they did anything useful or not was what created the handout-dependent class. It came from Europe and was admitted to the United States in the Wilson Administration. From it grew the toxic European idea that needy people were not simply neighbors who had had bad luck, or tried a bad idea, or had too many children, while being otherwise as good as anyone else and able to climb back into society by taking an odd job or selling a luxury--which is the way Americans had historically seen poor people--but a class of people who had nothing to offer, whom nobody wanted to talk to unless they were specially trained and well paid for talking to them, who needed to be zoned into separate neighborhoods of "housing" and given a prescribed dole of "necessities" and, from time to time, "trained" for jobs nobody was offering them, who probably were best off when allowed to drink themselves to death at as early an age as possible. 

Social media are now full of posts about the disgraceful, disgusting, obese handout-dependents who squawk indignantly, "Work? I don't WORK!" In some places storekeepers have been told to release electronic payments for "whole foods" as distinct from "junk foods" and everyone has by now seen the videos of adults whining like six-year-olds "Can't I even get one chocolate bar?" Some people have indeed been degraded to levels from which rehabilitation won't be easy. Unfortunately the people who do have something to offer have been conditioned to feel ashamed of saying simply and sensibly "I need some money. Could I wash your car, do an errand for you, sell you an ornamental china plate?" Trump didn't do that; if anything, because many rich people still do ask each other for money, he's likely not to understand why Joe Sixpack is less comfortable saying "Could you spare $100 to help me buy gas and groceries? I can do or sell..." than Trump is saying "Could you spare $1000 to help me run for office? I can do or sell..." 

Food 

We should finally start to see accurate labelling of GMO ("bioengineered") products, soon. Why is this so important? Because most bioengineered products are "engineered" specifically to tolerate amounts of "pesticide" spraying and "pesticide" residues that would kill natural plants. And, as we the technorati know, but Joe Sixpack may still be unaware, those amounts of "pesticide" residues can also harm people who eat the plant products.

https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/20607-victory-center-for-food-safety-secures-win-for-the-public-s-right-to-know-in-gmo-labelling-lawsuit

Meanwhile, what fresh tortures are the greedheads preparing for us? I see nothing in this article about how permitting new chemicals to be tested on unwarned, uncompensated human subjects will be offset by, e.g., allowing chemical spraying to be done only by professionals who've spent, say, three years in trade school and paid, say, a million dollars a year for a license to spray chemicals outdoors WITH a permit that ensures that the same chemical can't be used twice within fifty miles within fifty years. Nor do I see anything about what it takes to break down this chemical and reclaim the land for clean crop production...sometimes a fire is enough, but then again sometimes it's not.

https://civileats.com/2025/11/05/epa-proposes-approving-fifth-forever-chemical-pesticide/

History 

Gandhi was a vegetarian. Hitler was a vegetarian. You knew that. Would you like to read about a vegetarian whose life, though memorable, was a little more ordinary and human than the extremes?

https://violetcowper.substack.com/p/john-oswald-a-scottish-jacobin

Weather

It wasn't just that temperatures dipped down to the freezing point overnight. It's that they've stayed below refrigerator range all day. The first snow traditionally doesn't cover the ground but it's falling as I type this. Serena and Silver have decided they want to be indoor cats, or at least screen porch cats. Last night, during the small part of the night I allowed myself to try sleeping on the screen porch, Serena decided that an old cold inanimate cushion wasn't good enough and she had to sleep right on my chest; any time my eyes started to close it seemed that the greater part of her back-up-to-fourteen pounds would be planted in a sensitive place as she rearranged her body weight. A person as sleep-deprived and cat-perturbed and generally grumpy as I am today should probably not be writing.

Petfinder Post: Calico Drama

The writing of this post is being complicated by my own calico cat drama. 

The first snow of the season actually stuck, here and there, in little patches of long grass or dead leaves on the ground, little caps and coats on objects. This is unusual and there was a clear consensus among the Cat Sanctuary cats that it's not fair. 

"We don't have our winter coats yet," Serena pointed out.

"Do I have to grow a winter coat?" said Silver. "Can't I just stay indoors all winter?"

"Most, if you want, but not all," I said. "You want to go out and leave treats for your possums instead of using a litter box in the office, don't you?" 

The second day after Silver came home, Dawn Possum was living in the cellar. 

"And you're not going to play any games of trying to steal food when I eat at the computer. I do not want fur in my food."

"You are No Fun," said Serena, "and you'll be sorry."

So when I had finished eating at the computer and went to let the cats back in if they wanted to come in, only Serena was on the porch.

"Where are your kittens?" I asked her.

"Down cellar, keeping warm," Serena nonverbally said. "Let me come in."

So after calling Silver and giving her time to come in if she felt like it, which she didn't, I let Serena spend the night on the screen porch with me. I went to the screen porch in order to go online but I didn't get in a great deal of online time. Serena said I was the only surface on the porch that was warm enough to sit on comfortably. Serena does know that if she sits in the loaf position for a few minutes, the surface under her will warm up, but she had some sort of agenda that involved sitting on top of some part of me all. Night. Long. 

What she thinks she's accomplishing, I have yet to find out. Such sudden changes in Serena's behavior always turn out to mean something and last as long as it takes for her to make her point.  

You too can have the endless entertainment of trying to figure out what your animal companion's point may be, by adopting one of these adorable adoptable cats and dogs...As always, this is only a photo contest. If you or someone with whom you've shared a picture actually go to a shelter to meet the animal pictured, you may find a different animal more appealing in real life. That is not a problem. The only problem we're trying to solve here is that too many animals are in shelters. Please share these photos far and wide and help us Picture Them Homes.

Zipcode 10101: Tunisia from Texas by way of Ridgefield, New Jersey 

Her web page: http://petfinder.com/cat/tunisia-78928389/nj/ridgefield/lone-star-pawz-tx2673/

She's only a summer kitten, so her adult purrsonality remains to be discovered, but she has been encouraged to purr and cuddle. She has at least one calico sibling.

Zipcode 20202: Jade from Conroe, Texas by way of Leesburg, Virginia 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/jade-the-gemstone-litter-77675860/va/leesburg/roams-to-homes-animal-rescue-inc-tx2797/

She was not adopted as a kitten so she's being advertised in the city as a young cat. Jade still likes to run and play, and will snuggle beside her human when she's bounced around enough. A high adoption fee includes transportation. Shelter staff may ask inappropriate questions; they say up front that they want animals to be adopted by people over 25 years old. 

Zipcode 30303: Stella from Lawrenceville 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/stella-78800083/ga/lawrenceville/angel-paws-inc-ga1145/

At some time in her past Stella had a human to love. Separation from her human made her wary of strangers, and at another time she found herself on death row just for not having been adopted. She is a large cat, thought to be about two years old. She will be cautious about deciding to like another human but will probably return adoration after soaking up a certain amount of it. 

Bonus: Reeses from Morganton, North Carolina 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/reeses-78839745/nc/morganton/the-cats-cradle-nc21/

It's not only the bold coloring and damaged ear. They say she really has the attitude of a young Queen Cat. If your household needs to be sweetly, affectionately, yet unmistakably dominated, this sassy little survivor might be for you. She prefers to come with her favorite brother. 

Zipcode 10101: Honda from NYC 

Her web page: http://petfinder.com/dog/honda-i-will-be-your-whole-world-79106681/ny/new-york/miracles-for-satos-rescue-ny1518/

There are eight of these puppies, all apparently crossbreeds between a Labrador Retriever and an Ibizan Hound, named after car brands. I thought "Honda" had the most distinctive face but you might want to see the whole litter. They are being encouraged to develop friendly, pettable pawsonalities. Honda will roll over to be tickled but doesn't seem to have learned any more useful tricks yet. With time and training, who knows.

Zipcode 20202: Meeko from South Carolina via Washington, DC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/meeko-78974346/dc/washington/final-victory-animal-rescue-sc497/

They're not sure where the white patches come from, but she has the pawsonality that goes with the Coon Hound in her ancestry. Smart, friendly, and adventurous, she may have been bred to thrive on a life of hanging out under the porch until someone calls her, but she has her own ideas and has been caught climbing fences. That is probably how she became a shelter dog. If your family can give her enough exercise and exploration that she's content to stay at home and rest, Meeko may be for you. 

Zipcode 30303: Kingston from Stockbridge 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/kingston-77651225/ga/stockbridge/tlc-pet-rescue-ga827/

Currently in the process of running up a vet bill, Kingston is about three years old, believed to be a terrier and dachshund mix. He likes children and small dogs. He barks for help when exposed to bigger dogs. 

Book Review: Great Meals in Minutes

Title: Great Meals in Minutes

Author: Time-Life Books staff

Date: 1985

Publisher: Time-Life Books

ISBN: 0-316-58065-9

Length: 279 pages, with index

Illustrations: many full-color, full-page photographs

Quote: “For the busy person—novice cook and gourmet alike—who enjoys serving meals that are different, tasty, and nutritious, but do not take long hours to prepare.”

Unless we’re using “great” in the obsolete sense of “large,” I doubt that it’s possible to identify recipes for “great meals.” (These meals aren’t especially large; each is planned to serve four.) If a meal is going to be memorable or exceptional, the recipe is only a small part of its quality...

What readers can be told is what’s in the meals. Each contains proteins, carbs, and veg for four, although menu planners aren’t too frugal to offer two or three protein options on the same menu. Photos emphasize the luxurious sensuality of fresh, crisp, colorful vegetables, softened or even splashed with oil but not cooked limp or “smothered” in anything—vegetables children would want to taste.

Menus are organized according to the kind of meat featured in the meatiest dish, with vegetable and fruit recipes mixed in. The beef section, which sprawls from pages 27 to 65, includes a quite appealing tofu recipe. Vivid salads and savory pilafs are scattered throughout. Several meals are dairy-free, several are wheat-free, and there are short sections of vegetarian and vegan meals. There are also menus with vegetables as the main dish and meat as a side dish, a nice idea for those who aren’t ready to go vegetarian but would like to reduce animal fat in their diets.

This is a book for people who need a little encouragement to start cooking meals that are cheaper, healthier, at last as attractive, and not much more time-consuming than what they’ve been going to restaurants for. Anyone who can assemble peanut butter sandwiches, trim a carrot, and peel an orange can convince kids that “even my useless teenaged sister cooks better than those cafeteria people,” but those who can find good-quality vegetables and cook them as suggested by this book may live to hear, “My Dad cooks better dinners than Les Posh’s.”

Book Review: Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit

Book Review: Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit

Author: Harry Crews

Date:  1971

Publisher: Morrow

ISBN: none

Length: 206 pages

Quote: “She taught killing techniques gently.”

She’s a blonde who’s outgrown winning beauty pageants and gone on to win karate competitions. She’s willing to strip before fighting men in order to distract and defeat them. thing of the spirit or not, this is a novel of sex and violence...well, in 1971 Norman Mailer was considered an excellent writer. It is possible to analyze the sex and violence as expressing a conflict of ideas, and feel that that conflict is resolved in the story...but how many people really care?

Two of the many, many guys who want the blonde Brown Belt make conflicting claims on her. One wants her to live for karate alone; one wants her to give up karate and have a baby. If you’re in any doubt as to which decision the blonde will eventually adopt, remember, once again: it was 1971.

I didn’t like this book. Some people, probably all male, do like it. I’m not trying to shame those people; I’ll even concede the possibility that, while reading it, they thought about the ideas that are being played out in the almost continuous fights and numerous sexual acts. I’ll concede this point because debating it was also a thing of 1971, and I have a life.

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Mendana

Many male Swallowtails have hairlike scales in the scent folds along the insides of their hind wings. This week's butterfly, Graphium mendana, may be the hairiest. While some of the Graphiums' white hairs seem to glow in the light, G. mendana looks as if it had cotton stuck to its wings. It is a rare, threatened species, found on the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

Photo from Swallowtails.net. 

The cottony hairlike wing scales have been studied in comparison with other Graphium wing scales:

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2017/05/McGuire-AME75low.pdf

"Graphium mendana malaitae" was proposed as a name for a color pattern slightly different from G.m. aureofasciatum found on Malaita island; more recently this difference has been considered insufficient to classify as a separate subspecies. McGuire et al. were talking about aureofasciatum.

The species name mendana and the subspecies name neyra commemorate the explorer Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra, credited with "discovering" the islands in 1568. The word "discover" did not always mean "be the first human being to find." It originally meant "uncover, remove the covering, unpack, reveal, expose to view." When Mendana, like Columbus, wrote of his "discoveries" for Spanish people they mentioned the language and customs, such as they knew, of the people living in the places they "discovered" to European readers. 

The furry-winged butterflies are popular. Paintings of them have been used on the postage stamps of several countries.

This set, which rates Graphium mendana right alongside the gorgeous Birdwings, can be bought at https://www.surinamestamps.com/stamp-issue-programme-2018/ .

This stamp can be bought at https://colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/220-Tuvalu/theme/3028-Animals_Fauna/year/2009/emission/2-Commemorative/min_accuracy/very_low/perforation/62-combi_11%C2%BDi . (Note that, although the drawing's accuracy is rated "very low," some museum specimens of Graphium mendana do show blue-white and black rather than yellow and mahogany-brown colors.)

Since nobody has studied their life cycle nobody really knows what these butterflies require to survive, but interfering with them by disturbing their habitat is classified as an "environmental crime."

https://solomons.gov.sb/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/20191214-Enviromental-Crime-Manual.pdf

However, the island governments encourage students to rear and sell native insects for resale to collectors. This New Guinean manual is worth downloading. Not only does it contain drawings of all New Guinea's special species of butterflies, beetles, moths, and stick insects; it also offers instructions people around the world can use to attract rare, little-known insects for "ranching." Don't clear land, just encourage plants the target insect species are known to like, and have a try at rearing the eggs...Somewhere a high school student is learning what Graphium mendana eats. Note also the explanation for the student's incredulous mother, who may have noticed that many male Swallowtails are composters, can even be nuisances if they like to lick human sweat, and aren't a great deal cleaner than houseflies, that some people actually want to collect deceased insects. 

https://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/files/research/projects/insectfarming/InsectManual.pdf

(Notice how small Graphium mendana appears next to the Birdwings. This is accurate--the Birdwings seem to belong in some other world where things are larger, to have been built on the same scale as  the whales, condors, and redwoods also found near the Pacific Ocean. But mendana is not one of the smaller Graphium species. Wingspans are often over four inches.)

Page 17 of the Solomon Islands' PDF explains the market value of butterfly carcasses. Of course the Birdwings are the most valuable but the Graphiums and Papilios are valued higher than "common butterflies," a phrase which on these islands includes the local counterparts to our Monarchs...

https://library.sprep.org/sites/default/files/survey-wildlife-management-SolomonIslands.pdf

There are four subspecies: Graphium mendana acous, G.m. aureofasciatum (or aureofasciatus or aureofasciata), G.m. mendana, and G.m. neyra. They are found on Bougainville, Malaita, Guadalcanal, and New Georgia islands respectively. They have slight but consistent differences in color patterns. Local people think they can eat pepper plants, but this has not been formally documented. More details are on page 234 of the printed IUCN Red Data Book, or page 246 of the PDF:

https://ia801305.us.archive.org/20/items/threatenedswallo85coll/threatenedswallo85coll.pdf

Web Log for 11.7-8.25

Real life continues to bustle with busy-ness but I did find some time to surf on Saturday night.

Baltimore 

White-on-White loathsomeness. 

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2025/11/06/he-attacked-elderly-pro-lifers-and-got-no-prison-time-trumps-doj-asked-to-intervene-n4945680

Comedy 

https://www.tom-cox.com/what-will-life-really-be-like-after-the-internet-gets-incinerated/

Decor

Found on the Mirror, not recently, where it was traced to somebody called Justin on Tumblr. Google has no further information. Supposedly nothing in the room had been replaced or updated since 1956.

Somehow I doubt this. Even if nobody noticed that the tiny 1950s television wasn't showing anything but that pale grey test pattern any more, they would've had to replace the light bulbs. The plant could be plastic, I suppose...

Anyway my point is: In the ordinary course of events, things in a house do need to be replaced and updated every few decades. Things get spilled on those lovely fabric-covered sofas. Nobody wants to encourage cigarettes in the house, so if an ashtray is still on the coffee table it's filled with something--useless glass beads, if nothing else. Carpets get downright nasty. The house my mother kept in Kingsport had all the original furniture, including the carpets, from 1967. We walked in and I sniffed the air and she said, "Yes, the carpet's gotta go." We took up the carpets and found patches that were solid black with Stachybotrys mold. It's possible to be too obsessed with keeping a house in perfect historic accuracy, just the way everything was on some day in the past.

But it's a triumph, I think, if even one room in a house looks just about the way it did in 1956, or in 1906, or in 1606. I don't like the idea of replacing things just because people can. Life's too short; there are better uses for money; and also the old things eventually become delightfully historic and interesting even to the visitor's eye. If you've been lucky, if the house and furniture have not needed replacement, I'd try to hold on to that time-warp effect. If anything can be kept, it probably should be kept.

Economics 

If you frame "inequality" as the problem, you can still get an answer that is favorable to socialism! Socialists for Equal Poverty for All!

https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/g20-report-on-inequality-urges-more-statism-more-poverty/

Glyphosate Awareness 

Syngenta's paraquat is available as a replacement for glyphosate. Don't use it. PARaquat causes PARkinson's Disease. Carey Gillam summarizes the facts in an excellent ten-minute video: 

https://substack.com/home/post/p-178218514?source=queue 

Irony Overdose 

Pfizer wants support from Trump? An appropriate answer might begin with a sound like the beginning of "Pfizer" and end with one like the end of "Trump," with as many onomatopoeic effects as the speaker can do, in between. If Trump doesn't invite Albert Bourla to the White House just for the fun of having the guards literally kick him down the front steps, Trump may reasonably be accused of having made progress in the direction of learning to act like a gentleman. How much deterrent value that will have for Trump remains to be seen.

https://pjmedia.com/robert-hornak/2025/11/07/were-supposed-to-support-pfizer-now-n4945743

Schumer Schutdown  

In Swansboro, North Carolina, a farm offers boxes of fresh produce for people whose food handouts have been delayed by the Schumer Schutdown. This is produce only, not convenience food, and there's no guarantee that people who don't have traditional kitchens will be able to use all of the food in their boxes. They have more produce and will offer more boxes to more hungry people if people sponsor more.

https://checkout.square.site/merchant/1VHSSVMB9YNGB/checkout/PY26WMSAK5ZMG3LB63HZC7QO

Who's doing something like this in your town, US readers?

Trigger Warnings 

Does the Bible need trigger warnings? Absobloomin'lutely. The "sexual violence" label does not really apply to the Gospels, which are all but sex-free, but it most definitely applies to the stories of Dinah and her baby brother Joseph in the book of Genesis. The Gospels contain gruesome violence--they all lead up to crucifixion, which was meant to give whole cities post-traumatic stress. And maybe, knowing students, we can hope that warning students that the Bible contains lots of graphic violence will motivate them to read it. 

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/11/07/when-even-the-bible-needs-a-trigger-warning-academia-has-lost-its-mind-n4945745

Women's Issues 

I don't agree that Mrs. Obama's complaints about having a team of fashion experts constantly working on her "look" make her a bad human being. An example of bad timing? Maybe. Not being free to pick one of a set of what we classify generally as "clothes," within a subset of "...that are clean and not in very bad condition," is a nuisance. Other people may be up against more difficult circumstances but it may actually help those people to know that the rich don't necessarily enjoy having a bevy of professionals fussing about every detail from their overcoats to their eyelashes. 

Fashion design is stereotypically a job for men who would rather look at boys than at girls, and prefer to dress boyish-looking girls. I suspect it attracts even more men--and women--who simply don't understand the engineering principles involved in designing clothes that flatter curves. One way or another, although haute couture fashion churns out lots of things designed for tall scrawny women, it is very weak on designs for tall, well-proportioned women. Fashion design also tends to favor blondes. Women who look like Mrs. Obama grow up hearing that people who are not their enemies like them, and like looking at them, well enough but they just are not and never will be the kind of fashion models Diana Spencer was. So they're still told, even today, that personality and character, talent and dedication, are more important than looking like a fashion plate. But still, even today, when young women go to the mall to look for jobs instead of only spending their parents' money, the ones who get the coveted store clerk positions are the ones who look good in the clothes the store sells. Still, if they apply and interview for jobs in which their education is relevant, the hiring decision is often based on looks. And still, even at the top...Americans want our First Lady to be a fashion leader. Mrs. Obama says nothing about her job coming with a team of specialists to help highlight her personality and improve her character. But it came with a team of fashionistas to give her a constant, and annoying, message that might be expressed in words as Why are you not Melania Trump? 

It's a problem a lot of women find relatable, however far below Mrs. Obama's wage level their jobs may be. The male writer who thought it made Mrs. Obama sound like an awful human being might do better to ask his wife how awful the fashion industry has been, for her, in her lifetime. Then he'd know why it's acceptable to express scorn for any "fashion look" that brings high-heeled shoes out onto the street, for any elaborate hairstyle or "makeup" effect, for any assembly of more than a half-dozen pieces including shoes, while affirming that pressure to conform to "fashion looks" harms women in every socioeconomic position. 

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/11/08/michelle-obama-just-proved-again-shes-an-awful-human-being-n4945755

Then there's that video Youtube has been promoting about "vocal fry." I'm not saying anyone needs to watch it. Long story short, the Kardashians called national attention to a speech pattern some women have--no, it's not only rich young women--of speaking mostly in a shrill whiny voice and then dropping at the ends of sentences down into a low raspy sound. Apparently this annoys some people; according to the video it's not the sound they hate so much as the people who make it, which raises the question why the bleep those people watch the Kardashians. They could just turn off the television and talk to one another. Anyway the sound of these women's voices does not make me angry, the way people on the video claim it does them, but it is distracting; it sounds to me as if they have colds. 

In view of which, instead of giving young women yet another thing to feel selfconscious about, the expert on the video might have done better to offer help to people who say they hate women with "fried" voices. How can those people feel less envy and resentment of the Kardashians? How can they work on their fundamental dislike of women?

A related question might be how women can have fewer colds, and how, at the same time, they can avoid the chemical pollution that produces allergy-type reactions that look and sound like colds. Neither the partly-blocked-sinus whine nor the fully-blocked-sinus rasp is pleasant to listen to; both are even more unpleasant to find ourselves doing when we're not consciously imitating television characters but actually have blocked sinuses.

Historically the Kardashians' speech pattern spread up from the ghetto, where Black American young women used to be consciously trying to reverse the influence their grandmothers' smooth, melodious, non-nasal, Southern States or Caribbean Island accents had had on them. Where their grandmothers spoke slowly, the "Baby Girls" of the 1990s and 2000s jabbered fast. Where their grandmothers had cultivated a well modulated, non-nasal sound, the Baby Girls embraced a shrill, nasal sound. Where their grandmothers had shown upward social mobility by enunciating consonants, the Baby Girls seemed to be trying to invent a language without consonants. Fads for piercings and jewelry in places where North Americans have not traditionally had them definitely encouraged this way of speaking. 

This speechmode can still be heard on a few rap videos. Only a few--it doesn't sell; nobody likes listening to it. (Young men who liked the Baby Girls usually seemed to want them to stop talking.) Guuurrhh, it dah' slurruh sowngh widou' da congh-si-nunghs da' meg you sowngh so geddo an' so stoobi' an' so easy naw da wanna be arowngh. Your grandmother's voice was probably beautiful. And I'm sorry, but stereotypes do attach themselves to the ways people speak. If you want me to think you're intelligent, you need to practice making it easy for people to hear not only the difference you make between "what" and "would," "when" and "went," but the difference you make between "which" and "witch." There are symptoms of illnesses people would probably not choose to have, which I don't want to allow to annoy me, and then there is a fad for speaking sloppily, which annoys enough other people, as well as me, that I think it's worth advising the young to avoid doing it. 

Lips and tongues are not for hanging jewelry on. They are for enunciating all the nice crisp consonant sounds that allow the English language to have such a wealth of different words. They are for making sure that nobody is ever in any confusion about whether you're saying "crisp" or "Chris's," "going" or "gone," "list" or "lisp." Old speech textbooks used to have lists of tongue twisters, often memorably silly phrases, people used to practice enunciating sounds properly. It's worth working with things like "She sells seashells by the seashore" and "Which white witch was which?" until, regardless of any colds you may or may not have, you can at least make your words understandable. We can't clear our sinuses by an immediate act of will; we can enunciate our words.

Book Review: Moment of Truth

Title: Moment of Truth

Author: Angela Miller Curtis

Date: 2023

Quote: "I like going out with our friends, but I'm looking forward to it being just the two of us."

Memo to young men: When a young woman--at least a desirable one like Allison, a good student from a good family, attending college on a merit scholarship, Most Likely to Succeed, and apparently even pretty on top of it all--says "I'm looking forward to it being just the two of us," she's looking forward to a meaningful conversation about her date's background, his hopes for the future, his "feelings" in general, why he asked her for a date, and what he likes about her. Hand holding is appropriate. A kiss might be indicated. There is no way a girl like Allison means what you might mean by "looking forward to it being just the two of us." 

Allison likes Cameron--what she's seen of him, so far. Her first day at college, when she was wondering whether she'd have friends, he invited her to a party. He was the one who passed around the marijuana joints. Allison passed the box on the first time; the second time she took a puff but, if she inhaled, it didn't have an effect on her. The story doesn't make clear whether marijuana, or smoking it, is legal in their State. (This may be because it's a reminiscence of a time when older people thought one puff was going to drag a person down into heroin addiction by the end of the school term and a horrible death alone in an alley within two years. Marijuana itself does not have that effect, but the idea that you need drugs to enjoy a party can have it, so teenagers beware.) In any case, although she's a Christian and reads the Bible often, Allison likes the way Cameron looks, appreciates that he invited her to the party and has talked to her during the next six weeks, and is interested in him enough to want to see whether he's husband material. That's it. That's all. She's looking for a "boyfriend" in the legitimate sense of the word--one of the people she's getting to know, the crowd from which her lifelong friends are likely to come, who happens to be male. 

There is, of course, a "guy culture" that tells boys like Cameron that they can expect to start making babies at this stage of acquaintance. This is false. If you are a good "boyfriend" to a girl who's going to be worth marrying, in college, at the end of a year of lunch and campus cultural events together, you MIGHT get to meet her family. If that happens, congratulations, you're on the list of prospects she and her parents can keep an eye on while you make your start in life and show whether you really are breeding stock. They may love you for the promising youth that you are, but baby-making starts after the wedding, which can reasonably be expected to occur after you're twenty-five.

Cameron, despite his looks and charm, is not husband material. At least, not for Allison. As soon as they're alone together, he wants to crawl into the back seat. There was a time when young women's prospects in life were poor enough that many of them went out on date after date, haggling about their boundaries and letting young men feel that premarital baby-making merely required them to "touch the bases" of haggling for just a little "progress" in that direction every weekend. Today, thank God and the feminist movement, young women feel free to admit that that's no fun. Allison just says no. No haggling. No groping. No second date for Cameron.

The story hints that if Cameron had been man enough to apologize properly ("I'm sorry I acted stupid and ruined our first date. I've watched too many old movies. Please give me a chance to show that I can behave like a decent human being"), Allison might have given him a second date. That would probably have been a mistake. 

Anyway this is a happy story, though it's not particularly well told. Allison says yes to life, which means no to Cameron, and lives happily ever after. We're not told about her other dates, though presumably she has some; we're told that she graduates from college and goes to work in her chosen field. 

Stories like this one used to be tabooed by the publishing industry. They still encounter prejudice; Curtis obviously didn't find a publisher willing to work with this story and may not have found the editor I think it needs. I think it's awkwardly paced, with three out of six chapters detailing Allison's first day on campus, her selection of wall art making it obvious that she belongs to Generation X rather than being "millennial," and the other half of the e-book consisting of the bad first date, the day after, and the rest of Allison's college career. The slow beginning seems to belong in a novel that would go on to show how Allison's character develops through work and social life, her friends, her community, temptations to pad time and expense reports or boost a friend's career at a more deserving person's expense, all the while she gets better acquainted with the two or three dozen other attractive men in her college social circle, and on through the inevitable disappointment with some aspects of her dream job and how she perseveres, until she meets a man who is at least worth showing to her parents, marries him, is inevitably disappointed, perseveres, has a baby, is inevitably disappointed, perseveres, and lives happily ever after...but this e-book is, after all, called Moment of Truth. It's about the moment when Allison turns back off the wrong road onto the road that leads to happily-ever-after. That being the case, the first three chapters could have been condensed into one. 

Still, there need to be more books like this one. Happy endings can be about staying true to one's beliefs, rather than about the first physical attraction a character feels being "romance." Years ago, novels like Women and Thomas Harrow were lauded for depicting how a rich, desirable man pursued happiness by not marrying any of the unsatisfactory women who threw themselves at him. How brave and honest John Marquand was to reject the fallacy of pop-culture romance! Well, no points for guessing--a desirable woman's pursuit of happiness may also involve saying no to unsatisfactory men. This brave, honest e-book deserves reading.

Bad Poetry: Emilie's Letter to Bertram

This week's Poets & Storytellers prompt invites us to write about edges. One of this week's DVerse prompts invited poems about Mary Cassatt's painting, "The Letter."

Of course I can't see you again

she's written. As she licks the edge

to seal the envelope, a pain

runs through her like a sharpened wedge.

She'll miss him. What would Papa say 

if she did not turn him away

now that he's been demoted down

to private, having been one week

a Sergeant First Class. In a town

a drunken lout, who'd come to seek

a quarrel, said she looked too fat.

He knocked him down. How bad was that?

Status Update: No Web Log for 11.5-6.25

I'm still here. I am deeply disappointed in my State. 

Not that the most stupid handout-dependents voted for the party they think sends them their pensions, while that party was withholding their pensions from them--that's to be expected; these people are not encouraged to use whatever brainpower they have. Not that the stupid men voted for the blonde; that also was to be expected. Not that some men stayed home because they didn't want to elect a woman; that also was to be expected, and is only further evidence for the case that males shouldn't vote. Not that some women failed to anticipate this and inform their men, "You will vote for our Winsome, and I will see you vote for our Winsome, or you will sleep alone for the next four years"; even that was probably to be expected. 

But that, when Our Winsome and the Governor decreed that our emergency funds would be used to ensure that our handout-dependents could eat breakfast before they voted, and then the Trump-stuffed Supreme Court said, no, federal emergency funds would be used, and then Trump screamed that only some handout-dependents would get their pensions, our State government failed to secure the handouts. I went into a supermarket and saw a sign warning food stamp shoppers that their cards  would not have been recharged with money. The next day a disabled man told me that although he still had food in the house, his pension check had not come through. Our honor has been besmirched. 

Party politics are always disgusting. Failing to feed the poor among us is a positive sin.

I'm with Trump in thinking that a large number of people need to be told that, for good and sufficient reasons, they personally will never receive a handout again, not even if they develop quadriplegic paralysis as a result of driving the way they do, so they'd better sober up and get to work. I'd even add that another large number need to be handed vouchers to buy up all the socks, or pencils, or floral arrangements, in Wal-Mart and resell them in the parking lots instead of receiving handouts. But it has to be planned in advance. They have to be warned. Some people who receive handouts are in fact unfit to work, are young children, or nursing mothers, or disabled, or just not called back when they apply even for burger-flipping jobs because too many young people are out of work and the managers owe other unemployed youth's parents favors, or are  the veterans to whom we owe wages and/or the indigenous people to whom we owe rent; their payments should be sacrosanct. We cannot allow the Party of the Stubborn Jackass to hold them hostage, and lie to them about who exactly is holding them hostage, as we have been doing this week.  

Trump well and truly scored an own goal; we'll now have four years to regret that, and who knows what damage it may do. All of us have sinned against our own poor. All of us will bear the consequences.

I've not been too despondent to use the Internet, but I have spent my online time avoiding all news and doing research on obscure languages.  

The Blizzard of'93

(Obviously this was meant to go live in 2023, but why waste it? Maybe it's a good thing to think about winter storms before we start seeing them.)

If you listen to the baby-boomers at the Weather Service, in Georgia and Tennessee the snowstorm of the twentieth century was the Blizzard of 1993.

Pooh. That's like saying the late summer storm of the twentieth century was Hurricane Floyd. If 1993 was Floyd, 1997 was Camille...at the Cat Sanctuary, anyway. Other people's memories differ.

Well...it was March, so people weren't expecting a major snow. In most of the Southern States nobody ever expects more than two feet of snow at a time. The Weather Service saw the Blizzard coming--up from Georgia--and whoever heard of a big snowstorm coming from the south? 

Anyway, Thursday, the eleventh of March, had been chilly but not cold. Some flowers were starting to bud, if not bloom. It had been a long cold winter; we'd seen our usual quota of snow. 

Friday, the wind turned cold, and snow started to fall, and it didn't stop. 

For some reason Gate City didn't get the full effect of the Blizzard of'93. It was Big Snow. We don't usually get Big Snow twice in one year, and we'd already had one, so it was unusual. It wasn't deeper than my boot tops. It was easy to walk through. 

Kingsporters, however, will tell you they never saw such a snow in all their lives. 

Now, the Weather Service admits that all Kingsport actually logged was 14 inches of snow. They'd seen more snow than that at one time before, and they have since. Maybe it was just that the roads weren't salted and froze faster than usual as the temperature dropped faster than usual. Partly it was that most Southerners would rather crawl on their knees than try to drive in snow, and most of the ones who do try to drive in snow shouldn't. Mostly it was that cyclone winds were lifting snow off the ground even as more was falling out of the sky, so people couldn't see the road before them clearly. Kingsporters aren't accustomed to that. They use the word "blizzard" to mean Big Snow. This was a real one.

Anyway, only emergency vehicles were on the roads for hours, and many people who had gone to work on Friday morning spent the weekend at work.

In what are normally called "the higher elevations" in my part of Virginia, which do not include my home, things were even worse. Somewhere in the town of Wise they measured 30 inches of fresh snow; after the blizzard people photographed evidence of 48" drifts. 

The worst inconvenience for most people was, as usual, the power grid. As usual, trees dropped snow-crusted limbs across power lines and power lines went down. Nobody had electricity for many days...

Except the retirees in what had not yet become Bedbug Towers. They had gasoline generators. Big ones, that could, in sequence, keep the building heated and lighted for four or five days. By a peculiar coincidence that was about how long the power outage lasted; it was still possible for the company to direct linemen to reconnect them first, the "grid" mania hadn't made it commonplace for our whole town to be blacked out because a pole cracked in Kentucky. Neighborhoods' grids were still fairly well separated. So the retirees' frozen food stayed frozen, they bathed in hot running water, and most of them had adult children and grandchildren visit them to take advantage of these conveniences.

My father had just moved into his dimly lighted, easily accessible flat, and set up a new radio to listen to the weather news on WJCW, which put the usual ball games and talk shows on "pause" and broadcast Blizzard reports all weekend. He spent much of the weekend sitting by the radio. He called what he was doing "rooting" rather than praying, because it was neither a formal prayer service nor a mystical contemplative kind of prayer; I'd call it a kind of praying. His opinions of most people were low, but he did care about them and want hardship conditions to be relieved. Most people had land-line telephones back then; many of the telephones worked when the electricity didn't, so Dad was buzzing all his cousins on the phone, checking on their families and relaying reports about situations that might be alleviated. 

There were a lot of those situations. People who weren't in any real danger, but were just unprepared, kept calling WJCW and wringing their hands. "We're stranded without heat" was the usual wail. Instead of playing pop songs the radio DJs were broadcasting, "Another report of a household without heat in  This town on That road," and people were calling in, "I have kerosene if someone can deliver it," "I have a Coleman stove," "I have a spare generator," and emergency responders were delivering these things. It was a once-in-a-lifetime weekend. Thank goodness.

Rebecca Solnit has written books, one titled Paradise Built in Hell, about weekends like that one. There's a "high," an actual measurable adrenalin rush akin to what people feel in battle or fighting fires, and akin to what they feel on learning to swim or ride a bicycle. You open your eyes, realize you're still alive, and start noticing all the things you can do. 

"Where're you going?" your grumpy old relative growls as you start to leave the building.

"Out to clear a path!" you carol. Normally the retirement project has people who clear the paths and mow the grass and so on. Today it's obvious that those people won't get in for some time, so you shovel. 

Part of what makes this so memorable for baby-boomers is that, in 1993, nearly all of us could still enjoy shovelling snow. We knew we'd wake up with stiff muscles in the morning, but most of us didn't have rheumatic joints or bad backs or bad knees to worry about.

You go out and shovel your snow. You see Neighbor A. A can't get to work and would like to get paid for shovelling snow. You refer him to B, who can afford to pay. B knows of a way to get to where you had planned to spend the weekend. You get into the truck of the person B knows, and soon come to a house where a tree has fallen across the driveway. B's friend C has a saw so you get out and stack up wood while C saws...You are healthy and strong and alive. The blood tingles through your veins. You feel fine. You feel so fine that, when you come to a store that someone has dared to open, you go in and buy oranges for C's children. And so on. All weekend long.

Nature didn't intend for this "high" to last very long, yet some religious people, medical people, and emergency responders feel a vocation to live according to the insights the "high" brought them. Solnit documented that whole, viable intentional communities have formed as people worked to recover from natural disasters.

If not intentional communities, at least neighborhood spirit tends to rise after people have been through hard times together. Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City are the "Tri-Cities" for which the airport was named. For people in Gate City, Kingsport is almost (but not quite) home; many of us never walked into Kingsport but, in the twentieth century, that was only because walking ten miles takes time. Bristol is a place we visited occasionally, not necessarily in every single year. Johnson City is further into Tennessee than most of us have any reason to drive--an exception, of course, being students who used to go to East Tennessee State University rather than UVa or Virginia Tech because it's closer to home. During the Blizzard, though, Johnson City was where the radio station broadcast the reports that helped people help each other. A family there might have something a family here needed, or vice versa. Suddenly people in Johnson City started to seem like neighbors, in the extended or New Testament sense of people who may not live on an adjacent lot but who are near enough to help or to be helped.

In its way, the Blizzard of'93 was fun. "The perfect storm," someone told a newspaper reporter, because, in about as much time as it took people to enjoy helping each other repair the damage, the snow melted away. During the next week the early-blooming flowers started to bloom. Anyway, although some trees were lost and there was a report of a roof caving in, the Blizzard of'93 did very little lingering damage to Gate City or Kingsport.

Every winter has a storm. Some are worse than others. The awfulness of different storms in different neighborhoods varies, but everybody can always count on at least a few days of inconvenience.

We can't always afford to be as well prepared as we'd like to be...Be prepared, Gentle Readers.

Book Review: Me and the Cute Catastrophe

Title: Me and the Cute Catastrophe

Author: Jessie Gussman

Date: 2021

Quote: "[M]y name is Claire Harding and I'm a home nurse, divorced with two girls."

And with gray hair. We meet one of the three narrators of this romance hiding from Trey, the man she used to have a crush on, because she's halfway through dyeing her hair. Trey, who used to have a crush on Claire, too, is getting flabby around the middle but decides to fight it, while he's back in Good Grief, Idaho, coaching the boys' basketball team. Claire doesn't really coach the girls' team so much as lead the girls in community service projects, and the girls love her, they tell her at one point in the story, they really do, but they'd like to win a game some time. Trey comes to their rescue.

It's a romance. Trey doesn't care that Claire's hair is gray. Claire didn't really notice Trey's flab. Gussman delivers reader's money's worth of family-friendly rom-com scenes with kids, dogs, and social life, but the main goal of the story is to get Trey and Claire into the church. (They're Christians; they don't talk about it much.) Getting Claire's sister, who is also divorced and who gets to narrate some of this first-person present-tense story just to make it a little more of a challenge to read, happily remarried will come in the next volume. 

If you like a romance whose characters probably liked Charles Schulz (and act a bit like his characters, Charlie Brown and the Little Red-Haired Girl, grown up) you'll probably want the whole series of stories about how the population of the town of Good Grief get married. 

Web Log for 11.4.25

Well, I voted. And although too many of my townsfolk sat this election out, those of us who came into town voted like good fellows, more than 80% red on all four lines on the ballot.  Tragically a lot of ballots were cast in the Swamp and we lost. The whole State lost. Those swamp creatures could not resist the blonde. 

They will soooo regret this. Somebody Out There needs to record an independent folk-processed version of "I Hate Myself for Voting Blue" for them to sing along with. For one thing, have they been watching her face aging, her hair thinning, her muscle tremors? Ghostface is quite likely to have a nervous breakdown before the first legislative session's over. When electing our first female governor we might have had one who was already safely through the Change of Life, but noooo! Angry Abigail is all set to show the world how ugly a Change can be! 

Wait'll the Schumer Schutdown wipes out the emergency fund, Swampies, and your D favorites do the only thing their party ever thinks of doing, and the taxes on your homes rise to the point that you have to move into the slums the Ds have been so carefully building and maintaining for you. You thought you were middle-class? Sorry, the Democratic Socialist agenda calls for more huddled masses to be miserable enough to think they want the DSA's "Great Reset." Maybe you'll form emotional bonds with the roaches.

Meanwhile this web site officially grants permission to Northerners to call the worshippers of the lemony locks Nazis, racists, and fools, provided that they recognize that we on the Point of Virginia have shown the common sense and the moral sense the Swamp so regrettably lacked..

Animals 

The great gray owl in the Western States typically stands taller and has a greater wingspan than the great horned owl in the Eastern States, but the great horned owl is typically heavier. Both are big enough that they can--and do--eat cats or small dogs, as well as poultry. Neither is intelligent enough to be scared away easily. Both are easy to shoot by daylight; unfortunately neither is exactly easy to move to a wildlife preserve where it won't do any harm, like the one photographed below, but, if you want to be Truly Sporting, you can try. Some people claim to have trapped these owls in raccoon-sized box traps. Others say you have to buy and set up the more elaborate bal chatri trap. A trapped owl is an angry owl, and an angry owl can lock its talons into a man's arm so stubbornly that the only way the man can reclaim his arm is to cut off the owl's feet, so the trap must be handled with care.

https://roadsendnaturalist.com/2025/11/04/gray-ghost/

Obituary 

Former Vice-President Cheney, age 84. I think he was our only Vice-President whose name has been censored for non-political reasons.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/11/04/former-vice-president-dick-cheney-dies-at-84-n4945586

Politics 

Seriously, this is what it's starting to look like...Obamacare is not viable. For anybody. The Party of the Stubborn Jackass are so committed to making this racket pay off (does anyone have any data on how much they're invested in insurance companies?), they don't even care if the people who can't pay their own medical bills all starve. 

The party's Democratic Socialist leadership are, collectively, a piece of work. Wodehouse's description of socialists a hundred years ago still applies: They work for the abolition of private property, and start by grabbing all they can and sitting on it. Though Angry Abigail Spambucket's spamming was lavishly funded by out-of-state donors many of whom have become very vocal about wanting to break our longstanding alliance with Israel, for example, Spambucket also took money from the pro-Israeli lobby:

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2025/10/23/caught-on-camera-spanberger-staffer-drops-a-36-second-bomb-on-her-own-campaign-n4945174

Salesmen, Reliability of 

I looked up the temperature in Kingsport before leaving the house. Google, of its own volition, churned up extra questions and answers. "What is the nicest neighborhood in Kingsport, Tennessee?" 

Answer: "Some of the best neighborhoods in or around Kingsport, Tennessee are Lynn Garden, Borden Village and Highland Park."

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Kingsport_TN/overview

Lynn Garden was nice...once. Before the construction and stocking of the slum. I used to walk through it at any time of day or night, my worst concern being tedious conversation. Now people I know prefer not even to drive through Lynn Garden. Now it's where to buy prescription drugs, including methamphetamine, without a prescription. Some call it "Meth Mountain." Very nice, Realtor.com.

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Book Review: Green Dolphin Street

Author: Elizabeth Goudge

Date: 1944, 1973

Publisher: Coward McCann & Geoghegan (1944), Pyramid (1973)

ISBN: 0-515-02886-X (Pyramid)

Length: 640 pages

Quote: “That a man who had emigrated to the New World should after the lapse of years write home for a bride, and then get the wrong one because he had confused her name with that of her sister, may seem to the reader highly improbable; yet it happened. And in real life also the man held his tongue about his mistake and made a good job of his marriage.”

That’s basically the plot of Green Dolphin Street. Sisters Marianne and Marguerite lived on a small island where marriage prospects were scarce. William, an off-island bachelor, appealed to both of them. The one he warnted was Marguerite; the one to whom he mistakenly addressed his proposal was Marianne. Marguerite became a nun. And after forty years they all made peace with one another.

If you like tastefully written historical romances, you’ll like this one; it’s full of history and adventures, with some mortal danger but no risk of anything sordid happening. It’s unfortunate that Goudge had never actually been in New Zealand, but she wrote the story as best she could from the historical data she had.

If you’re a real novel reader, you may even appreciate this story stretching on for 640 pages. I’m not, and my feeling is that 320 or probably even 160 pages would have been enough. 

A Strange or Useless Talent

What does it mean to call a talent strange or useless, as the Long & Short Reviews prompt does? If it's a talent, how bad is it for people to call it useless?

I'm not sure but I suggest, Gentle Readers, that if someone else tells you your talent is strange or useless, you maintain a good healthy distance from that person. For their kind of contagious mental illness a hundred miles is a good distance.

People used to tell women that any talents we had were, if not useless, if in fact what was keeping our children alive, at least strange. It was strange for women to be able to live, much less bring up children, without depending on some man. As technology made even labor jobs accessible to women, we just stopped listening to this toxic idea, and everyone's much better off without it.

Men, however, may now be getting messages from envious fellow males that it's "strange," or "White" or "girly," to have talents that involve communication. Lowest-common-denominator groups of guys can't claim that math is a "girly" talent (though they can claim that it's "White") because a real talent for math is genetic, and almost always found in men. When consistent differences in the IQ scores of different demographic groups persist after the poverty factor has been eliminated, the differences correlate nicely with the incidence of "the math gene" in different groups. "The math gene" is more often found in Asia than in Europe, more often in Europe than in Africa, but it is global. In fields that involve communication, however, John Adams was right. He feared that "On the day women are our equals" (under the law) "they will be our masters," that if women had equal access to education and publication and such we'd dominate those fields...as we did, and do. 

For anyone who's read the writing of women of past generations it is at least funny to see how quickly and completely the tables have turned. Many of the greatest writers in English were men; but the majority of English-speaking men never were writers. Isn't there something delicious about \the number of publishers who are still calling for manuscripts by women and members of minority lobbying groups (as distinct from real minorities that aren't big enough to do so much lobbying)...but won't read manuscripts that are admittedly by White men? 

There is, but it's still not right. It's a scenario that belongs in "revenge porn." In the real world White men deserve their chance to use their talents, just as everybody else does. Christians who show what Freud would have called a revealing obsession with other people's sex lives may need to be reminded that Jesus is not recorded to have preached on that topic at all, while He told a story that was recorded three times--which means He may have told it three hundred times--about the punishment of someone who, through cowardice, didn't use his talent for profit.

There are, of course, abilities like double-jointedness for which humanity has yet to find very much use. I don't usually think of things like double-jointedness, or sleepwalking, or the ability to grow hair more than three feet long, as talents. I think of them as quirks, but they may be talents. Super-long hair, for instance, tends to be strong durable hair. It didn't do much for Absalom but, if nothing else, it can be harvested every few years to make wigs. 

I have the quirk of extra-flexible hands. I have two visible tendons in each wrist that flex independently when I type and allow my middle and ring fingers to move independently. I also have the ability to touch the inside of each wrist with at least some of the fingers on the same side hand. Whether this has actually helped me type, I don't know. Back when there were typing competitions, I used to win them. That might be called a strange talent I have, but I suspect it's not been altogether useless. I suspect most of the quirks people inherit have some sort of use, whether people use them or not.

The Peace Post

Blog4Peace, the biggest link-up of all...I almost did miss it, this year. I've been busier offline this year. 

Nevertheless.

Even for Israel...This web site has no foreign policy. This web site believes that people in other countries look like adults, from here, and should settle their differences like adults. However, we have to say: Hamas terrorists have no reason to live, but seriously, Mr. Netanyahu, primary schools? 

Trump claimed to want to be the peace president. With Hamas he succeeded in removing the primary obstacle to proper police action, but not in securing peace, because a legitimate elected official's pledge of peace means nothing to terrorists. Now even Trump is making ugly Republican noises about war and this web site has to say: Please, Republicans yammering at Trump to do the Republican thing and declare war on a small harmless country. There has to be a better way.  

There is a hilarious movie about Republican warmongering. Everyone should watch it. It's free.

https://tubitv.com/movies/306923/canadian-bacon

Republican friends should know that warmongering is the primary reason why I and a lot of other people have never joined your party. The Republican Party successfully dumped segregation but it has yet to dump the idea that a big, rich country's declaring war on some small, poor country is a good way to stimulate the rich country's economy. There have to be other ways to stimulate the economy, and other causes to rally people around...Trump tried (give the devil his due) to use border-jumpers, but he self-sabotaged by confusing border-jumping criminals with legal immigrants. Trump is not the best person to rally people around the cause of ending hatecrimes against women, long overdue for national attention. Trump could try freedom of speech and/or privacy, as issues around which most Americans would rally, but he doesn't seem to want to try that...which, in view of his history, is a bad sign; he is still only a baby Christian. I'm downright eager to rally around Kennedy and go to war on chemical pollution, myself. But Nigeria? Has money even been tried in Nigeria?

"But war on chemical pollution wouldn't stimulate the economy! It would sabotage the chemical companies!" someone might say. 

To which I say: bosh. Very simple boiler/steamer technology would eliminate most need for "herbicides," but it wouldn't work on wheat. Natural botanical science might be used to find ways of growing weed-free wheat (without splicing genes). Robotic technology might be used to protect wheat in traditional fields. So-called scientists who are dragging their heels, not leaping enthusiastically at the problem of eliminating poisons from commercial farming, are weak and poor-spirited old men who need to be replaced. If visions of new technology aren't already dancing in their heads, that's their fault, not mine.

The young need their "New Frontier"...I propose this one. At the very least, building robots that can identify and destroy tares, and boll weevils and spongey moths, has to be more rewarding than war.