Morgan Griffith Goes to Azerbaijan

Editorial comment: Before we allow the corporations to wheedle for expensive new plants of any kind, we need to insist that they emancipate the United States from the hazard of a centralized power grid. Every house with a southern exposure should be producing its own solar power, storing batteries, and able to survive an attack on the grid for a month or months, before the companies consider any other investment of any kind. Last week's mini-crisis, when a misjudgment in a construction/maintenance project left people without electricity in freezing weather seventeen miles away, reminds us here in Scott County that none of us should depend on a central grid for anything. Many of us in Scott County can and should be entirely responsible for our own water and electricity. All of us should have means of energy production and communication that can't be plunged into chaos by a single attack on a central grid. Making grid connections optional is a prerequisite for making them anything more than a target--for allowing the corporations to survive. That must be their first priority. No blather about nuclear power plants, however shiny and untested the technology may be, should be tolerated until a majority of people in the Ninth District are producing rather than consuming grid power.

We may want to sell energy to places like Azerbaijan, and may have the ability to sell them cleaner energy than China is reportedly offering, but our technology is still imperfect and we need to be sure that what we're selling is beneficial rather than harmful to countries like Azerbaijan. 

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

As we approach the end of the year, multiple foreign summits gather and deliberate.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit took place in Peru, where President Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping were in attendance. APEC is a partnership focused on economic growth in the Pacific and regional integration of the member country’s economies.

President Biden then visited Brazil for the G20 Leaders’ Summit, along with the leaders of the 19 member countries, the African Union and the European Union. These forums serve as opportunities to discuss economic issues related to trade and international development finance.

Biden held no press conferences at the summits, and he was left out of a photo with G20 world leaders due to “logistical issues.”

Outside of Latin America, a different summit was also taking place.

The small Caucasian country of Azerbaijan, situated on the Caspian Sea and tucked north of Iran and south of Russia, served as host to COP29, the United Nations (UN) climate change conference.

I participated in a Congressional delegation to COP29 to advocate for strengthened American energy leadership and inform the world of leading technologies we have here at home in America that can be models for other countries to use as the world will continue to rely on fossil fuels well into this century.

Of the seven of us who attended representing the United States House, I came as the only representative from a district with heavy ties to coal.

In a featured press conference, the delegation stressed emissions reduction solutions that do not sacrifice American innovation, economic development, or national security.

Following the press conference, a radical activist approached me at the dais and accused me of being a traveling salesman for American fossil fuels!

If she had added American innovation for making it possible to use those fuels more effectively and cleanly, she would have been right.

Many environmentalists are unsatisfied with the world’s climate progress and accuse the United States of being a principal agent of greenhouse gas emissions.

I agree that we should mitigate carbon. But in the United States, we are embracing technologies that reduce our emissions.

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector have declined by 14.5 percent since 2007.

Meanwhile, China continues its track record of being the world’s worst polluter. Their energy-related emissions increased by almost 80 percent between 2005 and 2019, according to data from the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization that follows the global energy sector.

What’s worse is countries like China and India are treated as developing countries thanks to outdated UN classifications. Accordingly, they are not obligated or expected to contribute to climate finance aid like the U.S. and European powers do.

Further, under the Paris Accords, reached when COP met in Paris, China was allowed to continue increasing its carbon dioxide emissions until 2030.

America leads in emissions reduction technologies, and the Ninth District is the home of innovative companies dedicated to capturing and mitigating carbon.

For example, Pulaski’s MOVA Technologies cultivates an accomplished team to produce innovative technologies related to advanced air emissions filtration for numerous substances.

MOVA received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to advance a project capturing ammonia at poultry operations.

CNX Resources of Tazewell County is removing methane directly from working coal mines, instead of flushing the methane directly into the atmosphere.

Virginia Tech’s Project CARDINAL is also exploring the feasibility of carbon dioxide storage in the region.

Later, as a part of COP29, I was a panelist on a bipartisan nuclear energy panel.

Nuclear energy, when done right, enables prosperity and helps counter climate risks a community may be facing.

This Congress, I supported the bipartisan ADVANCE Act and voted to favorably report it out of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill has now become law and will modernize America’s nuclear energy licensing policy with sweeping updates.

Such updates include establishing more efficient permitting for many types of traditional nuclear technologies and allowing for new nuclear technologies like Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 Generation IV reactor in Oak Ridge, TN.

Appalachian Power Company recently announced plans to locate a small modular reactor in neighboring Campbell County.

Small modular reactors could be key nuclear pathways to provide more reliable, affordable and secure energy for major industrial development.

These solutions can help lower global emissions. I want to be sure that the United States pushes meaningful solutions, where we can lower our energy costs at home while cultivating appropriate stewardship of the environment.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov."

Book Review: The Witch Who Couldn't Spell

Title: The Witch Who Couldn't Spell

Author: Katie Penryn

Date: 2016

Publisher: Karibu

ISBN: 9782901556008

Quote: "One thing I'd been able to do all my life was move objects about. Not with my hands...with my thoughts."

Mpenzi Munro (Penzi for short) is not the usual English redhead. For one thing her father, Sir Alexander, was obsessed with Africa, lived there while his wife was at home, and stayed there when she left the house in Penzi's hands. Being the equivalent of a single mother to her younger brothers while finishing a degree and proving herself as a barrister, she's had no time for serious romance, though she's apparently not the type men can leave alone easily. She has psychokinetic powers, which her mother has told her makes her "a witch," in the non-religious TV-sitcom tradition. And she's so dyslexic she can hardly read; she's got through life relying on the little boys to read things to her. 

This full-length novel opens a series. Penzi's father wanted her and middle brother Sam to drop her law career and his still incomplete education, and reopen an antique store that's been moldering away for years on the coast of France. His secret agenda was apparently for them to keep an eye on their mother, who is a competent adult, but not the most competent. When they arrive, right away they find a murder victim stashed in the antique refrigerator their mother shoved out the door, and they spend the rest of this novel solving the murder just to prove their mother didn't do it. 

While they're there, Penzi accepts that she has magic powers; her mother sends her the family grimoire to learn how to activate them, and her father posthumously sends her a cat, Felix. Felix is actually a shapeshifter. He's comfortable being a fancy breed of cat but he can also do both human and leopard. Normal humans, however, usually see him as a cat when witches can see, and he can use the benefits of, human or leopard form. 

For me this piece of fantasy tears it. If a character is going to stand six feet tall and use fingers and thumbs, people aren't going to believe he's a cat, and unless his human form is more solidly ace or "gay" than Felix seems to be, his relationship with Penzi is sort of disgusting. If your pet thinks of your bed as anything beyond a warm soft safe place to take a nap, you don't let it in the bedroom, do you?  But evidently some readers don't mind that the characterization of Felix is illogical and tasteless. The series sells.

And why might that be? Because, if not logical, it is at least fun and funny to read? Because a completely ridiculous story works better for escape reading than a story that recalls the mind back to situations of concern in the real world? 

Anyway, this is a reasonably well written, borderline cozy mystery; Penzi gets hurt, deliberately, in a way that may trigger some readers' inner Bear Parental Unit, but nobody who has a speaking part in the story dies. There are hints of romance or even sex further along in the series. There is no real profanity. This is a totally frivolous, even silly, story to pass the time during a few commutes and/or boring meetings. 

Review of One of Several Books. Guess Which.

When I wrote these notes on a new novel, twenty-some years ago, I had one specific book in mind. Now I think that what I wrote could apply to any number of new novels. Guess which one. And, if you're a writer, please don't write another book like this.

Right-wingers have no political opinions, actually, or grievances, according to Writer X, who has lived in some places where it might be reasonable to imagine that X had ever met one, but apparently this was not the case. X's right-wing characters have nothing more than a pathological fear of "change." X does not mention whether these people change their shirts from day to day. People who change their clothes know that there are useful and harmful kinds of change, so if they're motivated by fear of something it's not accurately identified as "fear of change." Fear of unemployment, e.g., or war, or pregnancy, or any other consequence people cite as reasons why they vote for one candidate or another, is not "fear of change." People of any political persuasion can be neurotic. X's right-wingers are credible as neurotic cases but X offers them a sloppy, unhelpful diagnosis.

Who else is portrayed as being every bit as ignorant as the pathetic militia mom in this book? The author and editor, that's who., Despite the superficially "kind" treatment of the fictional militia mom, this book is full of cheap stereotypes and all but empty of insight. Change a few names and references, and it could be a KKK book. We're okay! They're not okay! They're LOOOO-sers! If we find out that you've become friendly with some of them, we won't like you either. Be charitable about them, but don't get involved. The author and editor are thinking exactly the same way the militia mom is portrayed as thinking. 

They even tolerate cheap shots for the sake of political correctness--like the scene where the vain, shallow sister gets the last word when she tries to support the homosexual lobby. She doesn't see why young men would care if other men are homosexual. And this the reader may well believe. A man, or an older girl who had ever loved a man, would understand more. Because men don't want to be raped or harassed any more than women do, that's why. It's hard to read this scene as even making a p.c. statement. It is a throwaway scene, making no difference to the plot of the book. It should have been thrown away. If young men are excessively, irrationally worried about being raped or harassed, they're unlikely to be persuaded not to be by a girl's lack of understanding.

The best thing about this book is probably that, by being so second-rate, it may help readers toward an instant, glib psychoanalysis of p.c. types who didn't get enough parental attention when they were little and so grew up to long for a big intrusive government to do the parenting they missed. They don't want to be responsible for their own wellbeing in a dangerous world., They don't want to realize that this is a dangerous world. They want to believe that so long as they're surrounded with other people who share their beliefs, they can go on playing in one big, "safe," happy nursery forever. They hate to think that anyone might prefer to live in a grown-up society that offers freedom and requires responsibility.

The research that would have made this book worth reading would have required the author to admit that people do prefer a grown-up society, and apparently she's not yet ready to deal with it. That research would have had to concede that right-wingnuts could become sane, helpful, and possibly the saviors of our society, by simply rejecting violence and choosing rational (and Christian) ways to reclaim their freedoms. And apparently the writer wants soi much to stay in that nursery world. Nooo! Nooo! I don' wanna grow up! I don' wanna have to work hard! Somebody else is'posta keep me 'safe' and warm and fed! Waaaahhhh!

Some people like little girls who play nicely, keep their clothes clean, and color inside the lines, even when they are fifty years old.,Some do not., But, so long as authors want to write like little girls coloring inside the lines, never looking up to draw their own pictures, they should stick to writing simple school stories about children who (mostly) color inside the lines. Books that pretend to find insights into people different from Writer X are clearly beyond her ability.

Web Log for 11.27.24

One Thanksgiving Day rant, one Thanksgiving Day message:

Rant

"

In Rome, the holiday that outshines all other imports is Black Friday. Advertisements begin months in advance. No one knows a thing about Black Friday’s origin, but no one seems to care. Black Friday – its name left untranslated – is accepted like the others. To those who will listen, I explain that Black Friday is not a holiday at all, that it is pure advertising gimmick, the product of a long weekend and a genuine holiday that always falls on Thursday. As an American, I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed or offended, since we have a splendid and relatively uncommercialized holiday just the day before that expresses the best in American civic instincts. What could be more wholesome than giving thanks? And what do Europeans import? The parasite without the host, consumption without gratitude.

"

Quoted from  Anthony Lusvardi, SJ. 

I like Black Friday as much as any other storekeeper when the day actually arrives, but I do not like the way it's being allowed to eat up Thanksgiving Day. Not everyone chooses to shop on Thanksgiving Friday.

Message

So, the message...

https://curiousasacathy.com/4-things-we-should-give-thanks-for-every-day/

Book Review: Matched with the Enemy

Title: Matched with the Enemy

Author: Macie St James

Date: 2023

Quote: "I heard...Your store is shutting down. It's being taken over by some big shot."

Brianna's bookstore lasted seven and a half years, a long time in her small town in the Smoky Mountains, but she's closing it down at last. Someone else is paying more for the lease. In theory that would be an enemy, but Brianna has already resigned herself to closing her doors.

When she meets the new lessor, he's not only an enemy but an old school friend. The only sore point in their past was that they stayed in the friend zone back in high school, when both of them secretly wanted to be a couple. 

It's a sweet romance. With, or in spite of, a little nudging from three older women who insist on keeping a book club going, although they're the only members and the books they pick are romance novels, Brianna and Matt soon become so close that they can confide to each other that both of them are secretly rich as well as cute, single, and successful. And delightfully secretive, a quality that's not sufficiently appreciated these days.

(Cute? Well...by this time one is inside the story and can forget the cover illustration. It's not the author's fault if the jacket illustrator couldn't draw nice-looking faces.)

There is no real suspense in a romance any more, but you may enjoy trying to guess what they'll end up doing with the building.  

Hemileuca Siriae

Continuing down the long list in alphabetical order, we pass by Hemileuca sandra, now considered a subspecies of maia; H. shastaensis, now considered a subspecies of eglanterina; and H. siriae, a species name that's not been used much. 

That's because it's new, and somewhat controversial. Ronald Brechlin and Erick Van Schayck described this species in a printed publication in 2014. By that time scientific journals were publishing online but Google's not showing any links, even to one of those pages that shows the summary, or part of it, and demands money to show the rest. 

Most of the online science sites do not have pages for Hemileuca siriae. Funet lists it as "unmatched" in the archives Funet excels in searching. Inaturalist has one "observation" consisting of four photos, two blurry. 

Photo by Henicorhina. It looks like H. peninsularis. Somewhere there's an explanation of a difference between the two, but it's not online.

Also by Henicorhina. 

Here's a summary of why species documented by R. Brechlin are not readily accepted as new, distinct species by other scientists. 

https://breedingbutterflies.com/brechlin-meister-species/

Briefly, he has had a tendency to define species by DNA differences that do not necessarily produce visible differences or prevent species from crossbreeding. 

Wikipedia has set up a page for Hemileuca siriae but has not filled it in with information except to say that it was found in Oaxaca, not Baja California.

Mark Warner's Thanksgiving Message to Farmers

From US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA):

"

Friends,

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are looking forward to a peaceful and fun celebration with loved ones. This year and every year, I’m grateful for my wonderful family and the opportunity of a lifetime to represent Virginia in the Senate.

As some of us prepare to tuck in and eat a turkey dinner, I wanted to make sure you heard about an exciting win for Virginia’s economy and poultry producers. Now, we can sell our turkey to India, creating an enormous new market to grow our poultry exports!

Here’s how it happened. For many years, India placed extremely high tariffs on importing turkey from America. Since India has an enormous population, that cut Virginia poultry producers out of a huge potential market for their products. 

In my capacity as Co-Chair of the bipartisan Senate India Caucus, I set to work to see if a little old fashioned diplomacy couldn’t grease the wheels for Virginia’s poultry farmers. I directly pushed on trade leadership, and after that effort, I announced a trade agreement and tariff reduction that makes it financially possible for India to import American turkey for the first time!

This is great news because we now have a huge new market for our turkey farmers to grow their businesses. It also creates more downstream business for folks that work in our ports, trade, and transportation, because we’re going to need to ship all those birds across the ocean somehow! 

I’m thrilled to fight for our turkey producers and continue to push for policy that supports farmers across Virginia. I’m keeping up my fight to pass a full, bipartisan Farm Bill too, because I know there’s a lot more work to be done for producers of all types in every corner of the Commonwealth. 

If you work in agriculture, I also want to take a moment to say thank you for the work you do to feed Virginia and the world. Your work is indispensable to keeping food on tables across the nation. Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re interested in reaching out to me about agriculture or another issue that is important to you, I encourage you to reach out to me using the form on my Senate website. You can also follow me on X, Facebook, Threads, or Bluesky. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[nice signature graphic: Mark Warner]" 

Web Log for 11.26.24

Holidays

Let's all make a resolution now not to let the word "h***y" out of our mouths at least until the idjits start annoying us about a "Cyber Monday," which has now apparently morphed into "Cyber Week," which might be considered to justify e-mails along the lines of "Honeychild, this family observes Zero Electronics Month between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day." But we can try not to use the evil H-word to family members during the Thanksgiving feast.

I got it from Messy Mimi. Google credits Pat the Wine Guy, whose blog I don't follow.

Hurricane

Trigger warning: FOLLOWING THESE LINKS WILL RAISE YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE. (Fortunately, post-COVID mine's tending to run low again.)

First, meet the person blowing the whistle on FEMA and the Salvation Army. Fair disclosure: she is a politician. Fair disclosure: she seems to be considerably more efficient than the average pol, a macher, somebody Trump and Musk might want as a consultant for the Department of Government Efficiency.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/11/25/amish-volunteers-built-100-tiny-homes-for-hurricane-victims-but-guess-what-happened-next-n4934609

It's getting chilly for tent living so where are the trailers that have been funded? 

One of those "unintended consequences" things: The Salvation Army became a "public-private partnership" because government recognized that they were "doing the most good" of all urban missions. So, right away, some ways they were doing good stopped. Other ways...sounded better than they were; political grandstanding that had toxic effects.

Should the Salvation Army have been required to employ homosexuals? I say no; they were a church and had a right to employ only church members, or members of other churches with comparable rules. No church should ever have to employ anybody who violates its rules, even rules against wearing colored shirts...the Salvation Army didn't have that rule for all members all the time, but fundraisers were supposed to wear white shirts or sweaters under the red aprons. But lots of people thought it was wonderful that "gay couples" could raise funds for the Salvation Army, as no doubt dozens of them were just longing to do (/sarc). I'm not in favor of discrimination against people's private behavior in public workplaces, but in churches...Why would people want to raise money for churches that frown on their behavior, anyway? Why not organize their own missions, as the writer known as Starhawk called for Neo-Pagans to do? Right. I get it. Singing for the Salvation Army is fun, at least until the weather gets cold. So why aren't there non-church, even anti-church, missions for which people sing and ring bells and have fun?

Next chapter of the story, not reported: Evidence comes in that the Salvation Army has also been obliged to employ thieves. Since they can't screen for private behavior...

Money that was sent to Asheville was not just tax write-offs made by corporations the size of Lowes, though Lowes made a big one. Money sent through the Salvation Army? We are talking about sixth grade students' pocket money. We are talking about what people on disability pensions scrape out at the end of the month. I've raised funds for the Salvation Army and stooped down to hold the collecting pan for toddlers to drop their coins in.

Well. There is a difference, after all. Nobody cares about charitable fundraisers' personal relationships, but misuse of funds can kill a charitable mission. And what a pity if it fails to kill an allegedly humanitarian government agency, too, just as fast and just as dead.

https://ncrenegade.com/follow-the-money-2/

I think the DoGE should make sure the feds specifically and directly pay for this. First: total ban on federal acquisition of any land in western North Carolina for another hundred years. Second: if any of these bureaucrats' jobs continue to exist, they should be reassigned by February 2025. Third: if any of these bureaucrats is free to look for work, person should be absolutely barred from working for any government office in any capacity ever again. I'd seriously consider requiring them to have CORRUPT tattooed on their foreheads. And, fourth: all of the tent village people's living expenses, until their homes are rebuilt and fully paid for, come out of the corrupt employees--let them live in tents. 

Poetry

Jeanie, the surviving human of the Marmelade Gypsy cat, posted this photo from a trip to England:

https://themarmeladegypsy.blogspot.com/2024/11/this-england-farewell-bath.html

,,,and it reminded me that one of the benefits of going to college is that when you see a beautiful image, you instantly think of beautiful words:

https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/plath/Pheasant.html

...and these days, once in a while, you can even find both online.

Wisdom, Native

California elder has many worthwhile things to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlPdfvivhNY&t=2842s

Book Review: Songs for All Seasons

Title: Songs for All Seasons

Author: Michael D. Young

Quote: "I'll dive into the history of the most beloved songs."

He does, after a fashion. He doesn't provide source information, which would be appropriate for the type of book he's written; his histories are bloggy. All very well for free content but, if people are going to pay, he owes them real research, including source information. But I received the book free of charge so I'll try to explain what I like and dislike about it.

What I like: Here are twenty-six songs that a majority of Americans know. Several of them are Christian; some are patriotic songs that refer to our history. Each song comes with a link or QR code you may be able to use to hear a recording of the song.

What I don't like: Here is no sheet music you can use to play the song if you don't happen to be online, or want to sing your own song without pre-recorded interference. This book is for passive consumers of music, not musicians.

Sheet music has always been more expensive to print than words. Songbooks have always been printed without the music, on the assumption that people are already familiar with the tunes, or know someone who is, or that people who want to perform music ought at least to write their own arrangements if not their own songs. The Internet should have resolved this problem, since musical notes and staves don't cost more to arrange on a screen than any other kind of graphics. Unfortunately it's not.  

However, most Americans are familiar with the tunes for these songs. Most are also familiar with the words, so you might not learn anything useful from this book. The songs are:

Happy Birthday to You

The Star-Spangled Banner

America the Beautiful

My Country 'Tis of Thee

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Columbia/Britannia the Gem of the Ocean (first verse of each)

God Bless America

Lift Every Voice

Yankee Doodle

Christ the Lord Is Risen Today

Amazing Grace

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

In the Garden

How Great Thou Art

It Is Well with My Soul

All Creatures of Our God and King

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Ring Around the Rosy

London Bridge

Danny Boy

Scarborough Fair

Auld Lang Syne

How Can I Keep from Singing

What a Wonderful World

Loch Lomond

The original content reports some of what is known about the first writing, printing, performance, or recording of each song. 

A Musical I Liked

The Sound of Music, of course. Everybody likes The Sound of Music. It has everything: gorgeous landscapes, songs that are fun to sing, adorable children, Nazis who are scary because they're Nazis but, considered as men, the type who probably lined up to surrender because they suspected your grandfather was going to be more humane than the other Nazis were, and Julie Andrews. The real Maria von Trapp was a very easy writer to like, but liking Julie Andrews is obligatory. 

(Most of the songs are free to watch on Youtube at 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLycQGoRl0aEwbg3fEx27AdWtISMz8oH_V .)

Camelot, which also had the Grandmother of All Sweetie-Pies in it, didn't have the advantage of starting with a nice, cute, likable story. The original story of Camelot was about how Arthur lost what he'd won. Instead of being a happy hero story in which Arthur always knocks friendly competitors off their horses and kills real enemies, the story called "The Death of Arthur" was a classic tragedy. His marriage to Guinevere was a political arrangement; they never fell in love with each other. Arthur loved England. Guinevere found another man  In some ancient monarchies the king's right to rule depended on his marriage, and although people still respected Arthur he lost respect for himself. He was defeated in a fight, and his body was taken to Avalon, the apple tree island, where for a long time some people believed that he was only resting and recovering. It was a useful myth anyway. The original script for Camelot followed the traditional story. Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, however, being nice people, decided the characters would have respected Arthur too much to commit physical adultery. They kept the romantic attraction but portrayed the characters not acting it out. This makes Camelot a story about how self-control is what makes niceness possible...which is more true than most things that came out of Hollywood. It also gave our language "Camelot" as a word for the nice, or honeymoon, stage of a relationship to a person or job.

(It's not free on Youtube. It may be free on Plex, or free with a purchase. No link to Plex here.)

There were some classic early twentieth century musicals from which I've sung songs, but which I've never watched performed. There were some musicals I watched, and liked, that aren't considered classics; a version of Huckleberry Finn stands out in memory. There are some literary classics that were clearly written to be musical plays, including some of Shakespeare's as well as Moliere's and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's, that might or might not be great musicals by today's standards but I've always wanted to see them done, and never have

So, to fulfill the Rule of Three...Some consider Gilbert & Sullivan works as operettas, a separate genre from musicals. The distinction has never been clear and I don't think it's useful. I like G&S, although and because their plots border on pure nonsense. I'll say The Pirates of Penzance, any version not performed by the college drama club in prep schools from New Jersey to Ohio, because I still remember all the words to all the songs. 

(This sounds as if it might be another school group, or community group...at least this version does not have your Auntie Pris in it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaem0R05xbU .)

Web Log for 11.22-25.24

The power grid was restored by 8 p.m., when someone headed in my direction came into McDonald's. But we should not let it be forgotten. While certain lesser-of-the-available-evils politicians are infatuated with the idea of burning through all our resources to revive the old oil-boom economy of our long-gone youth, We The People need to think further ahead. If you're likely to outlive the President, don't buy into his unsustainable fantasy. We need to break up the central power grid. We need to reduce energy consumption so that we can produce our own energy. We need to make sure that damage to one device, which actually turned out to be in Weber City, is not putting people in the cold and the dark all the way to Fort Blackmore. 

I was expecting that the damage would have been done by a snow-burdened tree. That was an inference made from correlation. Correlation does not equal causation. The damage was done by a corporate employee's mistake in managing a device involved in a corporate "upgrade." Let that sink in, local lurkers. Ask: When did it become possible for a device in Weber City to destroy all the mod. con. in Fort Blackmore? Why? Who benefits? Why have we allowed this and how do we make it impossible for what happened last week to happen again?

As this web site often observes, people who read stuff on the Internet certainly aren't in the top one percent of the world's richest people, but we are still part of a global elite. Given the materials, or money to buy the materials, we can figure out how to set up small, low-pollution, low-waste solar and wind devices for generating and storing our own electricity. Not everyone can do this so the companies should be going with the flow and helping people achieve energy independence.

They don't want to do this. Of course not. Who wants to be working on parachutes to allow them to fall safely, when there's a fantasy that they can fly higher than ever? The companies naturally want to buy into the fantasy.

We The People can bring the companies back to reality by becoming energy misers. You can get your electricity consumption down to where one circuit powers everything one person plugs and unplugs, turns on and off. Depending on your household size you can replace inefficient tanks that keep bathtubs full of water heated all the time with more efficient heaters that heat water when and as if flows over them, or just place the tanks in front of a window that catches the afternoon sun and have enough solar-heated water for one person absolutely free of charge (assuming you already have the tank), You can store a reasonable amount of food, for a reasonable amount of time, in a cooler bin and not need a refrigerator. The payoff? Two-figure monthly bills while you're on the grid and a realistic plan for meeting your energy needs with the energy nature has handed you: sun, wind, water, and don't forget your body with its physical need for exercise. With a little thought and effort we can live comfortable, modern, computer-enhanced lives without grid power. By doing that thought and effort, and lowering our bills this year, we can teach the companies that their options are going with our flow or crashing. 

Will there still be some need for some big corporate power plants to fuel big corporate projects like city transportation systems? Probably so, for a long time. But we can and should eliminate any real need for anyone's home to depend on an unreliable, just-paint-on-the-target-for-our-country's-enemies, power grid. Not only our way of life but our actual lives could depend on our doing this. We need generators that don't depend on petroleum.

Meanwhile...I went home, had lights, and dived into a book project. I came back online on Monday afternoon. The Internet connection seems to have sustained some damage, but it can still be described as working.

Animals

Extremely cute adoptable cat in Louisiana:

https://messymimismeanderings.blogspot.com/2024/11/farming-techniques-cajun-joke-sunday.html

Economic Indicators 

Where I live, the Arctic Cat is a pure nuisance. Used to compact snowy roads into sheets of ice, used to startle animals and disrupt people's privacy in their homes. I'm sure lots of people wish the company would just die.

What I wish is that roads were opened to those things, which were made to be driven on snow, when they become hazardous for driving regular cars. The Arctic Cat is a great big untapped potential for good. The hobbyists who drive them ought to be organized like a nonviolent militia, deployed whenever roads become impassable to deliver supplies to stranded seniors, take patients to hospitals, bring students home from school, and so on.

Such that I would think a case could be made for either the US or the Canadian government, or both, bailing out the company and upgrading the Arctic Cat's image. "ATVs aren't nuisances. Reckless, stupid, aimless or malicious ATV drivers are nuisances. But today's ATV drivers are neighborhood heroes!"

https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2024/11/16/luxury-items/ 

Glyphosate Awareness 

Viva Mexico! We need to be better neighbors.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/mexicos-sheinbaum-to-present-constitutional-safeguard-for-non-gmo-corn-in-coming-days/ar-AA1u5viA

Monarch butterfly populations continue to decline. (So do other butterfly populations--Monarchs only happen to be the best known and best loved.) 

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/18/nx-s1-5179002/protect-species-monarch-butterfly-decision-may-soon-tryb

Music 

Wu Fei and friends in Chinese-American jazz concert.

https://soundcloud.com/wufei/sets/house-of-wufei

Book Review: A Match Made for Thanksgiving

Title: A Match Made for Thanksgiving

Author: Jackie Lau

Date: 2019

ISBN: 978-1-989610-02-2

Quote:  "Why is it so difficult to have a one-night stand?"

Duh.

Lily Tseng has been told she's boring, so she decides to make herself more interesting to other idjits like the wormboy who told her that. She puts on a skimpy dress, goes to a bar, and tries to pick a man for a one-night stand. Instantly Nick Wong pops up. Having much in common--both have some Chinese ancestry, both spend time in Toronto, both feel excited by saying the same formerly unprintable word, and both like Nanaimo Bars--they proceed straight home for the one-night stand and, unlike real people who have one-night stands, immediately fall in love. But they have flopped into bed, drunk, first.

Well, it's not a sweet romance. It's not a romance I'd want to read on Thanksgiving Day. (And there's some intentional ambiguity about which Thanksgiving Day is being celebrated; neither the Tsengs nor the Wongs seem to care about the history, but they'll be thankful when their thirty-something children make them grandparents, they have made clear.) 

If you like an explicit romance with frequent mentions of body parts and a formerly unprintable word, plus close-knit families and the promise of three more siblings' holiday-theme romances, this one's for you.

Why Can't People Eat on Metro?

Last week I mentioned being disgusted by a scofflaw encouraging a child to lick a sticky sweet on Washington's Metrorail. I was disgusted because everyone learns that, even on Metrobus, there is a very real possibility of attracting literal "bugs in the system." Many parts of the city are overrun with German roaches. People who dsn't want these "friendly" little insects crawling from a sewer right up their legs. in pursuit of the warmth and chemical odor inside their laptops, have fairly intense feelings about the idea of attracting roaches to the public transportation system.

But a glance at an old newspaper I was about to burn reminded me that Metrorail has an additional reason to be vigilant about food and drink on the trains. 

Several, actually. Trains move. Crowds jostle. Food and drink spill. Nobody wants to step in other people's snacks, nor do Metrofolks want to scrub it off floors.

Then there's the fact that Washington is full of small restaurants and snack wagons run by nice people who need money, and if you feel a need to eat while you're in the city, you are supposed to pick a local entrepreneur to support. Noshing on packaged snacks is tacky. Everything has been done to attract the tourist's eye to all the nice places to sit down and eat the city offers. If, as it might be because you're on a one-week temporary job that is the first temp job you've had in a month, you do feel obligated to carry your own food around town, for goodness' sakes don't advertise the fact. 

But the reason why Metrorail is more vigilant than Metrobus is that Metrorail runs on electricity. Food and its containers are fuel that could easily catch fire. 

"In 1987," Richard Garrison of Arlington informed the editor of the City Paper, "31 people died in London's King's Cross underground station in a fire...caused by rubbish beneath wooden escalators being ignited." Metrorail's escalators are not wooden, but the prospect of all those electrical wires catching fire while people are somewhere in the middle of 160 steps is an effective way to suppress any normal appetite.

Metrocops have been somewhat inconsistent about enforcing the law. There's been a tendency to avoid getting involved if top government officials or big-spending tourists violate local laws, while enforcing the laws strictly on private local citizens. While most Metrocops are Black themselves, this still adds up to an unacceptable frequency pf Black youth going to jail for offenses like eating or littering on Metrorail, while older and richer-looking people might be politely ignored or, at worst, required to go to court and pay a $50 fine. So it's very likely that tourists ignore the law, stuff their bloated faces on Metrorail, and go home to tell their friends that city laws are enforced only by dirty looks and an occasional unfriendly comment. The sad truth is that those people probably don't even care that they're participating in a little sociological drama that is elitist, not racist, but is perceived as racist by ghetto youth. 

Like it or not, violating the law while rich and pale-complexioned is a way of grinding the faces of the poor into the fact that you are lapping up the benefit of prejudice that works against them. Not that people who think they are entitled to munch, slurp, and dribble in public places care. 

They won't care unless they are trapped in an elevator during a fire, and while that's a development all Washingtonians--even the ghetto youth--want to avoid, there would probably be some small compensation in considering that some two-legged swine deserve to be trapped halfway up a 500-foot elevator shaft in a fire.

Book Review: Harbinger of the Rose

Title: Harbinger of the Rose

Author: Bonita Clifton

Date: 2023

Publisher: Cozy Corner

Quote: "You plan on dressing up and scaring...the kids this year?"

The character to whom this question is addressed is one of those people who grow up not fitting the names they were given as children. He's called Colt, but he's a big man who needs only the fur suit to play "Smokey the Bear." But no, at the Halloween party where two of his friends fall in love, he doesn't need to dress up. Campfire stories are told, and then the happy campers slip into a time-travel adventure--or was it only a dream? Did they all dream about the same thing?--in which a folk hero scolds someone for telling his story wrong and an  historical escaped convict threatens the single woman, whom the single man can conveniently rescue. 

It's a fantasy, part of an interlinked series of fantasies about the same characters. I didn't get into it. Some people probably do. The romance is tasteful, with some kissing. The book is short, a possible choice for those who need to read something in time to write a last-minute book report. 

Butterfly of the Week: Graphium Bathycles

Passing over Graphium aurivillusi, which is known only from a few museum specimens, so that scientists are starting to think it was only a variant form of G. agamedes, we come to Graphium bathycles, the Dark Veined or Striped Jay. Neither this species nor a half-dozen species that look very similar to it seems to be very well known, which made the research...interesting.

Photo by Sl_liew. The color is an effect of the light; at different angles to the light the wings look black and white, or black and pale aqua. There are yellow or yellow-green and red, orange, or pink spots below. These contrasting spots distinguish the subspecies bathycles from the subspecies bathycloides. Subspecies tereus and capitolinus have also been identified as showing consistent differences from G.b. bathycles.

Another photo by Sl_Liew. This one is the subspecies bathycloides.

Photo by Kristofz. Color or black-and-white look seem to be determined by lighting. In this species male and female are believed to look alike, but nobody seems positive about this.

Photo by Dhfischer. Courting couple, or brothers standing at different angles to the light?

The wingspan is five to six centimetres, or two to two and a half inches, Like many swallowtails, they frequently sip water from shallow puddles. Nearly all photos of this species show it sipping water from a puddle, sometimes as part of a large mixed flock. 

Photo by Stijn_de_wijn. Highlighting seems to indicate that the photographer knew this to be a mixed flock including some of the look-alike species.

The Veined Jay is yet another south Asian butterfly that resembles our Zebra Swallowtails, but is obviously a different species. For one thing. it lacks the long tails on the hind wings. 

Graphium bathycles is easy to confuse with G. chironides; this web page discusses their differences.

https://nlliew66butterflies.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-veined-jay-graphium-chironides.html

Genetically they are very similar, and individuals found in the wild may be too close for even experts to call. Most recent sources list chironides as a separate species but some mention its having been once considered a subspecies of bathycles.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268876258.pdf

The species Graphium doson, G. eurypylus, G. evemon, and G. sarpedon also look almost exactly like bathycles so this monograph was written to explain how it's possible for experts to identify most, if not all, the individual butterflies of these species that they see. One reason why little is known about the life of this butterfly is that it takes an expert to be sure which of these species an individual belongs to.

https://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/app/uploads/2018/01/sbr2018-124.pdf

Subspecies appear to have evolved toward one end or another of the species' overall genetic potential in different locales. Bathycles of one species or another are found on some, not all, of the islands south of Asia. On some islands, like Singapore, they are considered visitors, though it may be possible for visiting butterflies to lay eggs that will hatch in a place they have visited. This butterfly's youthful condition was presented as evidence that he must have hatched on Singapore; his wings would have been more worn if he'd flown in from another island.

https://lkcnhm.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/app/uploads/2018/01/sbr2018-124.pdf

What puts an animal into a separate genus has been debated and reconsidered a few times. This Graphium has also been listed with the genus names Arisbe, Eurypleana, Papilio, and Zetides. 

Why bathycles? Bathycles was the name of a legendary sculptor in prehistoric Greece. Artefacts don't last long in warrior cultures, and the only piece of marble still believed to have been carved by Bathycles by Greek historians was an altar in a temple in what would later be called Turkey, but everyone agreed it was a good altar.

There is occasionally a published study that hints that the scientific study of butterflies may at times be fun. A Malay study determined that some Malay butterflies prefer bananas to watermelons, pineapples, guavas and various other fruits from which they may sip juice. Science now seems to lack something. Doesn't every butterfly species deserve a formal study in which students hang about in butterflies' territory, eating bananas, watermelons, and pineapples, throwing the scraps on the ground, and seeing which fruits the butterflies slurp up most eagerly? Considering the quality of students these days, I'd recommend that these studies need to be repeated annually, at all schools that are open in May, to observe the effects on the students. Fruits with thick rinds that keep out any poisons sprayed on the fruits, in the field or in storage, would need to be tested. One of my own very first observations of butterflies was that Zebra Swallowtails like fruit scraps. The Malay Graphiums, however, were not caught in traps baited with fruit scraps of any kind. Overripe bananas were found to be excellent bait for the Malay butterfly genus Mycalesis. Meanwhile, Graphium bathycles, which lives in and near forests, is known to pollinate lantana, bougainvillea, jasmine, abelia, and hibiscus flowers.

Caterpillars are said to eat a few different kinds of leaves, including chirimoya as well as plants in the laurel and magnolia families. Nobody seems to have posted a photograph of an egg, caterpillar, or pupa of this butterfly.