The real voting conspiracy

Donald Trump has been claiming election fraud since before he was elected.  His election defied polling results.

Now Trump and his henchmen have argued that the election machinery itself was hacked, and they know how it's done.

Maybe Trump is right.  Maybe the elections have been fraudulent.  And maybe he knew it because he was the beneficiary, rather than the victim.

The Republican party has demonstrated a willingness stoop to any level to win elections, from gerrymandering to disenfranchisement. Not to mention trying to use the courts to outright steal the Presidency.

Why have they focused so closely on elections where mail-in votes were counted last?  Could it be because their vote-changing algorithms were rigged to switch just enough votes from the day-of counts to assure "victory?"

Rather than challenging the votes of Pennsylvania, et al., somebody should be investigating states like Texas.  It is, after all, one of the favorite tactics of the Distracter-in-Chief to accuse his adversaries of transgressions of which he himself is guilty.

It's simple - Trump wants people to die

Remember when Donald trump claimed he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody"?  It appears he was not just bragging, he was fantasizing.

A pathological bent for seeing people die would certainly explain his behavior.

Granted, staring at the partially-eclipsed sun would only set an example for blinding, rather than killing, his worshipers, but drinking Clorox could easily bring an untimely end.

And now he's advocating hydroxychloroquine as an improvement over social distancing, despite strong evidence that it does nothing to help treat Covid-19 but might cause one's heart to malfunction.

When you hear Trump say losing 80,000 - make that 90,000 - Americans (and counting) shows what a great leader he is, know he means it.

Suspend the Rent Cycle

The first step toward remediating a stopped economy should be suspending all debt and rent payments.

Just as wage earners are being forced to make sacrifices while they are out of work, rent collectors should not continue to force payments while the economy is stalled.

In this way, people will not be forced from their domiciles, small businesses will not lose their leases, and investors will be able to defer loan payments on capital equipment.

Problems of subsistence can then be addressed with stimulus payments.

Refugees-us

In a just world, Japanese-Americans would not have been interred at the start of World War II.

In a just world, frightened folks from Central America would be welcomed to sanctuary at our southern border.

In a just world, refugees from New York would not be hunted down like slaves fleeing slavery when they left the city.

This isn't a just world.

I know, it's complicated.  I don't particularly want to see cars with New York license plates driving down my street right now.  But we're all in panic mode.

It would be easier to take the high ground had the government started developing testing modalities when they first learned of the plight of Wuhan.  Better still, the Chinese government might have let the world in on their little secret a bit earlier.  Had that occurred, however, I doubt our government would have acted any more quickly.

But just as we shouldn't be condemning our elderly to make the ultimate sacrifice (I've got plenty of skin in that game), neither should we condemn our northern neighbors for not wishing to make that same sacrifice.

I know, we all need to shelter in place.  But like those cruise ships at the start of this exercise in futility, we shouldn't expect everyone to stay put when the virus is knocking at their door.  There's probably a more humane solution than sending them back.

The Second Greatest Generation

Hey, Boomers, tired of living in the shadow of the Greatest Generation?

Now's the chance to make the supreme sacrifice for your country.

Ignore Covid-19 and get back out in society.  Quit your whining social distancing.  Put America back to work again.  Steepen that curve!

You may soon be dead, but you won't be forgotten for at least one news cycle.

You'll never be as Great as the Greatest Generation, but at least you won't be remembered as the Generation that Crashed the Economy.

Steepen the Curve

We're all hunkering down in an effort to "flatten the curve" of the novel coronavirus spread.  In order to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, we're supposed to help spread  out the incidence of the disease to a manageable caseload.

This is entirely backwards, and points out one of the many failures of the American health care system.

What are the economic consequences of shutting down the economy?  Aside from the so-far-projected $80 billion bailout of the airline industry, what about the $1,000/month basic income payment to each adult for, say, four months.  There's another trillion dollars.  We've lost a few trillion in "vanished" wealth in the stock market.  There are plenty of other victim sectors - just how well is the gig economy going to recover?  Ready for another housing market foreclosure debacle?

Suppose, instead, we had EXCESS health system capacity to care for the whole shebang.  Sure, we'd have to have more hospitals, and more health care professionals, all of which would sit idle during health emergency down times.  Still ... one can imagine the total economic costs would be considerably lower.

It would still be reasonable for us older, more vulnerable geezers to keep a low profile.  Retirees not going to work isn't going to cause much of a hit to the system.

In any system, enabling sick people to stay home from work would be a productivity-enhancing policy.

The "Good" Guys Need Bad Guys

In days of yore politicians often ran on "Lawn Order" platforms.  No, these weren't HOA's run amok when your grass got too high, it was frequently a pitch against those who got too high on grass.

That is to say, politicians argued for votes proclaiming they were going to make American safe again.

So, they got elected and passed laws that criminalized enough people for them always to have a straw victim they could blame when it came time to run again (usually the day after they were elected, but that's another story).

Did those politicians want to see crime go away?  Heavens now.  Without crime, they wouldn't have a leg to run on.

We now see this strategy elevated to the highest degree with Iran.

The President decries the behavior of Iranian rulers, then pursues policies to insure that behavior continues.

Today's elections in Iran are guaranteed to move that country to an even more America-unfriendly position.

Just what the current American regime wants.

N&O vs. Women-in-Sports

I’ve just completed a very unscientific analysis of gender bias, or perhaps simply gender ignorance, in the sports section of today’s (Saturday, April 21, 2018) News & Observer.

I counted 18 stories.  One of them showed a woman’s byline – a contribution from the Associated Press.  One of them covered news involving women – another story about the gymnastics physician scandal, in which a woman was actually quoted.  And there was a photo that included a woman and a girl – surrounding their man in the stereotypical role of male athlete’s family.

Surprisingly, there was a protracted listing of the first-round standings from this weekend’s LPGA event.

The standings page also showed the ubiquitous listing of the NWSL standings.  At least the N&O puts these standings in the paper just about every day, whereas they don’t even bother with the MSL.  Maybe bias against soccer is stronger than bias against women.

Granted, there are a lot more men’s sports out there than women’s.  But the best professional team in the Triangle, the North Carolina Courage, can’t even get a few column inches, despite an important win this week over Seattle that moved them alone into first place.

Where, for example, is the story about tonight’s Courage match?

There were two stories about NHL hockey, including an opinion piece wherein Luke Decock doubles back on his previous analysis and decides Bill Peters should have been fired in the middle of the season, and a story about a nearby club – Las Vegas – that was probably inserted as a dig against the Hurricanes.

Given hockey is so much more newsworthy than soccer in this area, at least based on youth participation, I’m a little surprised I learned via a television sportscast that a member of the UNC women’s tennis team plays hockey for the UNC men’s club.  That's ice hockey, not field hockey.

I guess I should not be surprised that a liberal newspaper like the N&O would sport an all-male sports reporting staff, or that soccer, a game favored by less desirable elements of our society, would receive little coverage.  Maybe it’s part of an effort to dissuade the MLS from expanding to Raleigh?

Perhaps the Courage would receive better coverage were they to start losing.

Oh, wait, there’s a little banner at the bottom corner of the standings page that includes a list of some of the staff, including Jessaca Giglio, Assistant Sports Editor.  I take it all back.

Oh Yeah, I Remember Now

While playing a round of golf yesterday, I found myself trying to recall the name of the actress who portrayed Phoebe on "Friends."  Should have been easy enough.  I've been watching season one of her show "The Comeback" over the past couple of weeks.

First I went through the cast of Friends, replayed a few episodes of "Episodes" (Joey ... er Matt LeBlanc), and then went to the tried-and-true method of running the alphabet.

I played the back nine much better than the front, which I might attribute to the listing of actresses that distracted me from concentrating too hard on my bad shots.  It was really an impressive list.  There are a lot of C's.

But I never came up with the name, and finally managed to forget my pursuit.

Until Peter Pan came on (#peterpanlive if anyone's looking for me).  At the end of the show, Future Wendy looked like another actress, what was her name?  It was right on the tip of my brain; it had even come up during my alphabetic exercise on the golf course.  Something with an "ie" in it, wasn't it?

Before that, I was mesmerized by Marnie portraying Peter Pan.  No amount of alphabet scanning would have turned up Allison Williams for me; she is Marnie.  And I was proud of her.  She was able to rise above (literally, visible wires notwithstanding) the contemptible character Lena Dunham has forced her to be.  Live on television.

The lesbian scene we haven't seen on "Girls" yet.  I expected Lena Dunham to strut, naked, onto the set of PeterPanLive at any minute.

Oh yeah, I remember what I was writing about.  When future Wendy came on I remembered not being able to remember Phoebe's actress name.  Or Minnie Driver.  So I headed to the computer to cheat.  And I typed "Lisa Kudrow" into the Google search bar.

The Selfie Generation vs. Usenet

This is a non-graphic selfie, inspired by the introductory story to a series on the Millennial Generation on Morning Edition.  In the story (more of an essay), narrator Selena Simmons-Duffin, a member of the Selfie Generation, claimed : "Millenials aren't simply users of social media.  We invented it."

Rather than going straight to my contradictory claim, let me first assure the 80 million Millennials who outnumber us Boomers that I don't hate them.  (" ... if you're not a Millenial, you kind of hate us.")

But what I really want to suggest is that social media were not invented by the Millenials.

In my own experience, social media, or at least one social medium, was invented in 1980s by a couple of Duke computer geeks, Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott (a couple of Boomers, incidentally), and called Usenet by Ellis.  When they connected Duke to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they created a social network.  (ARPANET preceded UseNet as the progenitor of the Internet, but I don't think it was exactly social.)

In trying to figure out just when I started using Usenet, I had a little forehead-slapping moment.  I found a reference to the creation of sci.econ.research, which I created, in June of 1993.  Then I remembered taking a computer science course at Duke in spring 1990 (I can date this because I had to take the exam early because I was getting married during exam week) from, here's the forehead slap, Jim Ellis.  It was, incidentally, the most interesting computer course I ever took:  Ellis (who died around 2001) took a Microsoft-based CAD program for designing a computer and ported it to the SUN OS we our class used in the computer lab, with which we could put together virtual computer parts, "wire" them together, write an instruction set, and pass virtual current through.  We effectively built a virtual computer using the same parts as in a real 8088 processor, and we could then write code to generate outcomes.  I think that gave me an insight into computers that served as a solid base for my career in computers and networks.  I can't swear that I was into Usenet by then, but I can't swear I wasn't, either.

But back to social computing.  Usenet was a collection of newsgroups, which function much like bulletin boards or forums.  They were very much like Facebook in that you could share your thoughts with others in a public arena (as opposed to email).

This was the day of command-line-only computing; GUIs were just around the corner, but the only graphics you'd see were ascii art.  One night I was Usenetting about college basketball, a message from one of the other correspondents on the group (rec.sport.basketball.college, I believe) suddenly appeared on my computer screen.  We carried on a real-time "conversation."  I think this is what the Selfies call texting nowadays.

The biggest difference, other than slickness of the application layer, between then and now is that on UseNet information was categorized at the subject level.  On Facebook at Twitter, the subject is "me."  If you want information at the subject level, you turn to Google or Wikipedia, which aren't really social.

Whereas I contendt the Selfie Generation did not invent social media, they did invent making money off it.

One of my earliest endeavors in computer user support was to attempt to install the new Usenet reader software, trn, the upgrade of the standard rn then current in the standard unix distro.  When I was having trouble getting the code to compile, I dropped an email to Wayne Davison, the programmer who wrote the software, and he guided me through the process.  No charge.  The trn reader was one of the most important innovations of its day, but if you look up Wayne Davison you don't see any reference to him being a billionaire.  I wonder if Mark Zuckerburg would help me with my Facebook photo gallery.  I also got a lot of freeunix help from a Dutchman named Caspar Dik.

I'd like to point out that the Millenium did not start in 2000, the Y2K plague notwithstanding, but it started in 2001, so none of the Millenials were even born in the Millenium.

Listen to the Mocking Bird

Near the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Morrow Mountain State Park, Uwharrie Mountains, I heard, but never saw, this delightful mimid, presumably a mocking bird.  I did see a brown thrasher a few minutes later.

Not Captain's Blog

My wife cleverly came up with the idea of writing a blog about our forthcoming travels in our tricked-out van.  We were looking at a Road Trek van, which rhymes with Star Trek, so it was only natural that she came up with the name "Captain's Blog" for the blog.

Then we found we preferred Pleasure Way vans to Road Trek vans, and now I see that on both Blogspot and Wordpress the name "captainsblog" has already been claimed.

Claimed, but not used.  Blogspot's captainsblog has an entry from 2000.  Wordpress's version has the creative entry "Hello World," with a 2005 date.

So don't look for me there.

Any suggestions for a name for the new "ship" will be considered.

Plagiarizing College Research Papers

The brouhaha over the UNC football scandal has brought to light alleged instances of plagiarism in cases where student-atheletes were writing papers for class. These allegations were levelled by N.C. State fans who searched the Internet for phrases that matched those present in one of those papers that was published on the 'net in an attempt to demonstrate that the student involved had not cheated. (These assertions were derived by this author from reading articles in the News & Observer, as well as on-line sources such as reports in wral.com. The suggestion that N.C. State fans were involve may be an assertion not directly founded in pertinent research.)

I've got news for you: If you're not writing fiction, or collecting you own evidentiary samples, then you aren't doing original work.

More than likely, rather than plagiarizing, the student was failing to properly attribute.

When I was in college at UNC, I took a course in journalism school for which I was required to write a paper on the press in Colonial America. This was a large survey class, and I earned one of only a handful of A's. This was a real turn around for me, as I'd struggled with "research" papers up until that time, thinking I was supposed to actually write something original.

In the course of the assignment, a light went off: I was supposed to copy somebody else.

I checked a half-dozen books on the subject out of the library, figured out the story I was going to tell, and then either copied, or paraphrased, from first one book or the next until I had my paper written. What I did right was to attribute: Footnotes for quotes, with the quote in quotation marks; footnotes for paraphrases without the quotation marks.

I thought that was cheating, at the time, but the paper was clearly done correctly as evidenced by the good grade. In hindsight, I realize this: You can't NOT use somebody else's ideas when you're doing a college paper.

Armistice Day

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, they signed a treaty ending the war to end all wars. They made a holiday of November 11, and called it "Armistice Day." This was supposed to be a celebration of the end of wars.

Unfortunately, the factions in the world that came to be called the military-industrial complex were able to make a mockery out of the idea of a permanent peace. The rise of Adolph Hitler provided the warmongers with a perfect moral imperative to go to war.

War is not moral.

Now, that military-industrial complex has co-opted the holiday intended to celebrate peace and turned it into a day to honor war.

The ultimate survival of the human species depends on solving the civil problem of war (along with a lot of other problems we've created, like destroying our own environment through non-military means).

The solution to the moral quandary of how to deal with Hitlers, and other terrorists, is to prevent them, not to defeat them. It's only a lucky coincidence that the Nazis did not develop nuclear weapons in time to eradicate their opponents.

It is ultimately the responsibility of each individual to choose not to fight.

Fried Okra

We were visiting Lou in San Jose on the way out of California, and he suggested dinner at a barbecue joint.

Well, not really a barbecue joint, a bar where Uncle Frank, or in this case Uncle Frank's protege, serves barbecue.

The bar is called The Quarter Note, and they probably play music there. When we entered the bar it wasn't at all obvious that they served food, and since it was Friday night and there were only two patrons in the bar, one had to wonder about the viability of the establishment at all.

But we asked and they handed us a menu.

We ordered ribs and brisket. They were out of hushpuppies.

HOWEVER, one of the sides on the menu was fried okra. Put it this way, I go to cafeterias specifically to get their fried okra, and cafeteria fried okra is only okay.

When the waiter, who was also the cook (and a musician, he told us) said they were not only out of hush puppies but greens as well, I was steeled for the disappointment of not getting my okra. But no, he said, he still had okra.

Lou's girlfriend Maricella indicated she was not a big fan of okra, but we talked her into trying it.

Let's just say Maricella is now a Big Fan of Fried Okra. The portions were sizable, served in little cardboard dishes like you'd expect to hold french fries. The okra came hot out of the skillet, breaded lightly and perfectly crispy. We had three orders, plenty of fried okra for five, and we still asked for a couple more for dessert.

The fried okra was as good as any made by my mother, mother-in-law, or wife, and that's saying something.

So, if you're in San Jose and get a hankering for fried okra, you'll find the real thing at the Quarter Note.

Addendum: This just in. I realized on telling this story that the locale was perfectly suited for the product: barbecue.

Three Coins out of a Fountain

I found three coins today, two pennies and a dime. That's a lot of luck. Finding a single coin in itself is a thrilling moment, let alone three; especially what with three itself carrying a charm of its own.

The day didn't start so well, however. Braves, Tar Heels and Jackets all playing, and needing wins. Jackets lost, to N.C. State no less.

But the Braves won early, and the Tar Heels prevailed, I'd cashed my pennies.

Stilled owed ten-cents, I got an email from my pen pal.

Three-for-three.

In the clutch

The cacophony from the back seat exceeded Gertrude’s tolerance level as she pulled up to the stop sign where her subdivision emptied onto the main road.

“Mommy,” shrieked the boy.

“Mommy,” echoed the girl, louder

The boy escalated the volume a notch, “Mommy!”

Mommy understood these were competitive jabs at one another more than pleas directed to her. She turned around and, with a sweeping, withering look, put an end to the discussion. She let the clutch out even as she was turning back to the front, but still distracted, she mistimed the accelerator and the car bucked to a stop. Next car’s an automatic, she thought to herself as she reached for the keys to restart the engine.

Whoosh.

A dump truck flashed across her bow.

Tift Nifties

This is actually about coinage.

Tift Nifties (after Tom Swifties) was what I dubbed the practice over at Tift Merritt dot Net of converting syllables in words to include Tift's name in it, e.g., Certifticate of Merritt (I did not come up with that one, but it is extra perfect, say along with Merritt Tiftmas).

Like I said, this isn't about Tift Nifties (nor Tom Swifties), but about coinages, Tom noted freely. (Har har har, get it, "note" [vs. coin] and free vs. what you need coins for, anyway.)


Tiftadelic
Photo by permission.

If coinage was worth the paper it was printed on, then I wouldn't be slaving for Massah Duke, I'd be sitting in the counting house. But then, if a filbert blogged in the Forrest and nobody read it, would a Filbert Hockey (tm) score make a sound after digital photography eliminates the plastic film "tins" used as goals?

But I digress ("yes, you do - frequently").

I recently coined a new motto for my work group, "We put the 'we' in the Web" (tm).

I'll also flip a few mixed metaphors, "Water under the dam," and "The cat's out of the barn," being my favorites.

This naturally, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to today's coinage, "As even keeled as a prairie schooner" (tm).

Not sure what it actually means, but those (tm)'s are at least double entendred.

Eagless

Quick update. Through 129 holes over the weekend, not only did we see no eagles, we did not even see any birdies. No eagles of the flying variety, either, although there were plenty of buzzards (cricling my golf game, perhaps).

Third Eagle

You may find it beneficial to follow me around next weekend.

Unable to play golf much this winter, I've spent the past two weekends walking around without a white ball to chase through the woods.

During a hike at the Harris Lake Wake County Park the other day, we paused on a bit of high ground to look out over the lake, when a large shadow swooped up from behind. My first thought was "heron," but when I looked up I was surprised to see the broad white tailfeathers of a Bald Eagle. It was exciting, if not altogether surprising. Eagles are known to nest around nearby Jordan Lake, and since Harris Lake is used to dissipate heat from the Sherron Harris nuclear power plant, what bird wouldn't be enticed to escape this winter's cold via a trip to a relatively warmer pond?

The next weekend, I just went for a walk around my local golf course, which, being covered in snow, was not in play. I strayed from the paved cart path to test the depth of snow on the untrodden sixth tee, and looking out in the direction of nearby Sunset Lake, I discerned a large bird flying toward me. Funny, it looked like it had a white head. Sure enough, a second eagle in as many weeks. (Since I was not able to band the first eagle, there's no guaranteeing the second eagle was not really just the first, reseen, of[f] course.)

Lest you think it commonplace to see eagles about, I will explain that these were my first eagle sitings in North Carolina while on foot, ever. And I've covered plenty of miles of would-have-been eagle habitat afoot over the last 41 years here.

Knowing how things seem to happen in threes, if you would like to see an eagle, I recommend you follow me around next weekend. The weather forecast provides some optimism for the possibility of golf. Who knows, maybe somebody in my group will hole one from the fairway.