Spare USB Mouse?

I almost bought one on Amazon for $2.25 delivery in Decembwer, but I bet one of my readers has a spare working USB mouse that is going into the trash today or next year that he or she wouldn't mind dropping in the mail.

Great Moments in Satire

More Bad Science From the Warmists

From Oct. 28, 2015 Washington Times:

How scary are your jack-o’-lanterns? Scarier than you think, according to the Energy Department, which claims the holiday squash is responsible for unleashing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Most of the 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins produced in the U.S. end up in the trash, says the Energy Department’s website, becoming part of the “more than 254 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) produced in the United States every year.”

Municipal solid waste decomposes into methane, “a harmful greenhouse gas that plays a part in climate change, with more than 20 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide,” Energy says.

 Showing the warmists don't even understand their own science.  The CO2 hazard is from releasing fossil fuels.  Co2 released from current production is only returning carbon back to the atmosphere from where the pumpkins extracted it.  And methane rapidly oxidizes to carbon dioxide and water.  Environmentalist increasingly means ignorant fool who majored in women's studies because science classes involved math.

This week on Sex City—October 27, 2015

Louise calls Victoria, BC academic Thea Cacchioni who authored Big Pharma, Women and the Labour of Love (University of Toronto Press, 2015). The book is inciteful, questioning pharmaceutical drives in developing a sexual enhancement drug for women, conceived with FSD: female sexual dysfunction. She examines the medicalization of female sexuality already, including sexual medicine specialists. The study also considers how many heterosexual women feel expected to undertake the labour of managing their and their partner's desire, while others forging changes to normative sex work.

LISTEN

Which Horrifies Me More?

Several years ago I posted a link to a Marie Claire about how women in  L.A. were getting their anuses bleached because otherwise men wouldn't be willing to sodomize them.  But this is certainly another sign of the moral degradation of our society.  From Oct. 28, 2015 New York Post:

Women are getting labiaplasty to look good in their yoga pants

Suddenly Idiocracy seems almost like an improvement.  As a comment on this at Instapundit observes:

Sane culture: Cutting and stitching the clothes to fit the body.

Insane culture: Cutting and stitching the body to fit the clothes.

Glad To See Increased Traffic

Advertising Revenue is a wonderful thing.  But if you are going to buy something from Amazon anyway (and they have an astonishing collection of stuff, including things you would not expect, like taps, dies, and CNC mills), use the Amazon search box on the lower right to buy it and it puts anywhere from pennies to surprisingly large numbers of dollars in my pocket.  Or click on this to go to Amazon.

Glad To See Someone Has A Sense of Humor

Inside Higher Ed reports on efforts to get Susquehanna University to change the name of their football  team from Crusaders to something less offensive to Muslims.  I love one of the comments:

Just drop all pretense of institutional self-respect and call them the Susquehanna Social Justice Warriors.

Another Homosexual Discusses Her Childhood Sexual Abuse

Margaret Cho "who has spoken openly about both her heterosexual and homosexual relationships..."   is now talking about the abuse she suffered as a child.  From Oct. 14, 2015 People:

Growing up in San Francisco, the comedian, 46, endured years of abuse at the hands of a family friend who molested her for more than seven years, beginning when she was just 5 years old. At 14, she was raped by a different acquaintance.

Green Madness

So outrageous, I went to the original German news report here to confirm it.

German ZDF public television recently had storyabout how this summer the town of Gescher in the Muensterland region of North Rhine Westphalia installed new solar powered street lamps for the handsome sum of 28,000 euros (roughly $32,000). The 5 lamps are supposed to illuminate a 1500-meter stretch of a bicycle/pedestrian path to make it safe for children on the way to a sports facility.

The don’t work at night when they’re supposed to!

But the ZDF reporter tells us there’s just one small problem with the solar powered streetlamps:

…the new designer lamps have one very decisive disadvantage: When it’s nighttime in Muensterland, the expensive lamps unfortunately remain dark.”...

er burgermeister Thomas Kerkhoff doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. He defends the installation of the lamps, telling ZDF television:

For the exterior area of our sports facility we wanted to offer our bicycle riders, citizens and children a safe path, and thus five lamps are better than no lamps.”

Better (even if they don’t function).
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

 German ZDF public television recently had story about how this summer the town of Gescher in the Muensterland region of North Rhine Westphalia installed new solar powered street lamps for the handsome sum of 28,000 euros (roughly $32,000). The 5 lamps are supposed to illuminate a 1500-meter stretch of a bicycle/pedestrian path to make it safe for children on the way to a sports facility.

The don’t work at night when they’re supposed to!
But the ZDF reporter tells us there’s just one small problem with the solar powered streetlamps:
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

German ZDF public television recently had story about how this summer the town of Gescher in the Muensterland region of North Rhine Westphalia installed new solar powered street lamps for the handsome sum of 28,000 euros (roughly $32,000). The 5 lamps are supposed to illuminate a 1500-meter stretch of a bicycle/pedestrian path to make it safe for children on the way to a sports facility.
The don’t work at night when they’re supposed to!
But the ZDF reporter tells us there’s just one small problem with the solar powered streetlamps:
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

Gescher burgermeister Thomas Kerkhoff doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. He defends the installation of the lamps, telling ZDF television:

For the exterior area of our sports facility we wanted to offer our bicycle riders, citizens and children a safe path, and thus five lamps are better than no lamps.”

Better (even if they don’t function).

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

This is the problem with being Green: it's all a big scam for looting by the politically connected.

Gescher burgermeister Thomas Kerkhoff doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. He defends the installation of the lamps, telling ZDF television:

For the exterior area of our sports facility we wanted to offer our bicycle riders, citizens and children a safe path, and thus five lamps are better than no lamps.”

Better (even if they don’t function).
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

German ZDF public television recently had story about how this summer the town of Gescher in the Muensterland region of North Rhine Westphalia installed new solar powered street lamps for the handsome sum of 28,000 euros (roughly $32,000). The 5 lamps are supposed to illuminate a 1500-meter stretch of a bicycle/pedestrian path to make it safe for children on the way to a sports facility.
The don’t work at night when they’re supposed to!
But the ZDF reporter tells us there’s just one small problem with the solar powered streetlamps:

…the new designer lamps have one very decisive disadvantage: When it’s nighttime in Muensterland, the expensive lamps unfortunately remain dark.”

- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

German ZDF public television recently had story about how this summer the town of Gescher in the Muensterland region of North Rhine Westphalia installed new solar powered street lamps for the handsome sum of 28,000 euros (roughly $32,000). The 5 lamps are supposed to illuminate a 1500-meter stretch of a bicycle/pedestrian path to make it safe for children on the way to a sports facility.
The don’t work at night when they’re supposed to!
But the ZDF reporter tells us there’s just one small problem with the solar powered streetlamps:
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

German ZDF public television recently had story about how this summer the town of Gescher in the Muensterland region of North Rhine Westphalia installed new solar powered street lamps for the handsome sum of 28,000 euros (roughly $32,000). The 5 lamps are supposed to illuminate a 1500-meter stretch of a bicycle/pedestrian path to make it safe for children on the way to a sports facility.
The don’t work at night when they’re supposed to!
But the ZDF reporter tells us there’s just one small problem with the solar powered streetlamps:
- See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2015/10/26/german-town-of-gescher-installs-9-solar-street-lamps-that-dont-work-at-night-for-28000-euros/#sthash.hv4b90uK.O7wlfGEG.dpuf

California Schools Going Off the Deep End

My kids actually attended schools in this district, and while not as good as the public schools I attended in my youth before progressives decided that goood schools were racist, they weren't this crazy.  From the Oct. 21, 2015 Santa Rosa Press-Democrat:

A new grading scale that redefines what constitutes an “A” or an “F” is causing strife and confusion in the Cotati-Rohnert Park school district. Some teachers and officials say it lowers the bar for student success, while others say it encourages students to succeed. 

The new system is called the equal interval scale. Essentially, it makes it harder to get a failing grade. It departs from the traditional A to F scale in which students receive F’s for scores below 59 percent. Instead, the scale awards F’s only for scores below 20 percent. 

“My mentor teacher, she’s not enjoying it. She’s got issues with it,” said Adam Green, a Rancho Cotate High School math teacher who likes the new system. “I respect her and I respectfully disagree.” 

Under the new policy, grades rise in 20-point increments. For example, scores of 20 to 40 percentage points earn D- through D+ grades — and so on, up the ladder. Students get an A- for scoring between 80 and 85, which traditionally is low B territory. 

Some teachers have tried to hang on to the traditional grading system but have been tripped up by a blanket new policy that students, even if they do not hand in homework or take a test, get 50 percent. Under the new rule, it’s possible for a student who skips a test to receive a better grade than a student who takes the test and does poorly.

 This district is in a county of deranged left-winger millionaires.

Do Ammunition Background Checks Reduce Murder Rates?

The short answer is NO.

Ammunition Background Check Laws

California Lt. Fool Gavin Newsom is pushing for an ammunition background check law, presumably because the gun background check law has disarmed the vermin there, who are using the ammunition as a threat: "Open the cash register or I will throw these cartridges at you.".  No other state seems to have an equivalenty law, but New Jersey and Illinois do require a firearms owner ID card to buy  ammunition (for Illinois) and handgun ammunition (New Jersey).  I am working on a paper analyzing how effective such laws are.  Does any other state require a license or ID card to buy ammunition?  Please tell me.

Obama As Bush III

To a lot of young people with whom I speak, Bush's great flaw was getting us involved in a war in the Middle East, because genocide there isn't our problem.  Obama's use of drone strikes has been more widespread than Bush's, but boots on the ground is the real concern of progressives, not the fairly abstract killing remotely.  (Obviously, as moral imperatives, this is weak.)  Now Obama's minions are talking about boots on the ground.  From Oct. 27, 2015 NBC:

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin "direct action on the ground" against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive.

"We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground," Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group.

Carter pointed to last week's rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages held by ISIS.

Carter and Pentagon officials initially refused to characterize the rescue operation as U.S. boots on the ground. However, Carter said last week that the military expects "more raids of this kind" and that the rescue mission "represents a continuation of our advise and assist mission."

This may mean some American soldiers "will be in harm's way, no question about it," Carter said last week.

Darsteller-Innen folgen ihren eigenen Leidenschaften - Schnick Schnack Schnuck Review

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Such Good News

From the Oct. 25, 2015 Independent:

In my studies of the Paedophile Information Exchange in the 1980s, many members admitted sexual feelings for children which they had been able to contain or turn to social good. Some gravitated toward occupations such as schoolteacher or social worker, where they could enjoy the company of children without plotting abuse. This fitted with personality profiles indicating that they were gentle, rational and not disposed to harm anybody.

I can see a new job counseling service opportunity.

Remember: Gun Self-Defense Is Really Rare

Or so, the anti-gunners keep insisting.  From Oct. 26, 2015 Orlando Sentinel:

Tyrell Owens returned home early Sunday with a case of beer and a pistol tucked in his pants.

It was 1:53 a.m. in Pine Hills, moments before 911 calls flooded the Orange County Sheriff's Office.
"Give it up," Owens was told. And then the stranger's voice blurted, "Oh, [expletive], he has a gun, too."

In the seconds that followed, multiple gunshots exploded at Avesta Rolling Hills apartments on Pine Chase Drive.

When it was over, Owens survived uninjured.

The stranger ran away leaving a trail of blood. He ran to a white Mercedes-Benz SUV with after-market rims waiting in the parking lot. He fell at least once as a result of his wounds. Later identified as Wilmar Jolteus, 32, he jumped into the passenger seat, and it sped away, a report says,

Later in the night, he was dumped outside the emergency room at Orlando Regional Medical Center, records show.

Jolteus — a convicted felon with 11 prior arrests in South Florida — had been shot in the left leg and his right buttock, records show.

Sheriff's records complimented Owens' coolness under fire.

Who Knew "Hard Worker" Was Racist?

From Oct. 26, 2015 Daily Caller:

While discussing the efficacy of a hypothetical Speaker Paul Ryan, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry cautioned guest Alfonso Aguilar against using the phrase “hard worker,” implying that it is somehow offensive to African Americans.
“I just want to pause on one thing because I don’t disagree with you that I actually think Mr. Ryan is a great choice for this role, but I want us to be super careful when we use the language ‘hard worker,'” she told Aguilar.
“I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like.”
“In the context of relative privilege,” Perry added, “when you talk about work-life balance and being a hard worker, the moms who don’t have health care… we don’t call them hard workers. We call them failures. We call them sucking off the system.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/26/msnbc-host-when-republicans-say-the-phrase-hard-worker-theyre-being-racist-video/#ixzz3piASlobk

When progressives parody themselves.It turns out that she uses the racist expression "hard work" herself: just racist when Republicans say it.

Adorable, When He Isn't Drawing Blood

Welcome to Problems in Applied Topology

I told you a couple days ago that my cabling problem wasn't as symmetrical or logical as a snake mating ball, and here's the proof.  This was part way through trying to solve the mess.  Power cables:

All cameras should either be wireless, or use a USB cable with the same shape connector.  The external DVD drive was connected to to the Lenovo docking station in a really clumsy way:

 It just gets worse:

And what does this set of cables do and connect to?

It's a work in progress.  You don't want to see the LAN cabling, either.

NPR Adfmitting Mental Health May Be An Issue in School Shootings

From Oct. 25, 2015 NPR:

We could start this story as we usually do with reminding of you of all the recent school shootings — including one just Thursday night at Tennessee State University — reporting how many people were killed, what inspired the shooter. We could hear local leaders condemning the acts of violence....

Every guidance counselor has a story like this. But what are teachers and administrators supposed to do if the situation escalates, or if the nagging worries about one student just don't go away?

That's what Greenberg focuses on now as the manager of a $500,000 grant given to Berkeley County Schools in West Virginia, where she works as a Project Aware coordinator. The money funds programs designed to increase awareness of mental health issues. Part of that means training people to recognize when someone could be a potential threat to themselves or others.

This Is Idaho

From WBUR (NPR in Boston):

Garden Valley School, a rural K-12 school with just 200 students, voted to purchase rifles and ammunition for self-defense. (gvsd.net)

In reaction to school shootings like the one in Roseburg, Oregon earlier this month, some have called for reexamining “gun-free zones” on campus. But one K-12 school outside of Boise, Idaho has taken a different tack, arming itself and training some staff members how to use a gun.

Garden Valley School District, a rural district with just 200 students, voted earlier this year to purchase four rifles and 2,000 rounds of ammunition for self-defense.
Here & Now’s Robin Young speaks with Greg Alexander, the district’s principal and superintendent, as they enter their first school year under the new policy.

Not Just Soylent Green

You remember the last line from Soylent Green?  Oct. 23, 2015 Yahoo Health reports on an analysis of hot dogs.  Many of the "vegetarian" ones contained meat, and some of the pork-free ones used to squeal.  Worse:

Even grosser: 2 percent of all samples were found to have traces of human DNA in them. Veggie dogs were the worst off, accounting for 67 percent of the hygiene issues and two-thirds of the human DNA found.

 I am not suggesting that someone is slaughtering people or that workers in the factories are short a few fingers. This is likely hair, fingernail clippings, etc.  But if you think diseases spread across species too easily, imagine within species.

Understanding Why Bad Things Happen

This Laua Story song "Blessings" conveys the answer to what is often a hard question for Christians to answer: why did something awful happen?  What good could have come from it?  I have led a very blessed life since I became a Christian with three exceptions: several horrible years when my daughter was being a parody of a problem teen (which she is now well past); the heart surgery in 2013; and the stroke recovery last year.  In each of these tragedies I can see a blessing now.  I sure didn't see it at the time!

The Square Sleeve Version of the Product

This is what the square sleeve version of the ScopeRoller casters will look like for the Losmandy G-11 tripod:

Before you say anything about that last picture, I am quite sure DSM-IV excludes scientific instruments from the definition of hoarding.  And the big telescope that did not make it into the picture is only one more.

Instructions For Those Moving From California to the USA

Rural Idaho: Cultural Wasteland?

One of girls from church needed to practice before a live audience, so we went to her place after church today:

Home schooled.  You can see why public school teacher unions hate home schooling so much.

Some of the strange noises in the background are puppies and parrots.

Idaho Fish & Game: Nothing If not Inventive

Back about 1950, they wanted to seed beavers in the back country.  What better way than parachuting  them in.  Boise Public Radio has the story with pictures of the brave paratroopers.  And KIVI channel 6's report.

Square Tubes

I mentioned a few days ago my intention to change over from round tubes to rectangular tubes for the ScopeRoller casters , and all the advantages of doing so.  I built a square tube version for the Losmandy G-11 tripod, and it was a great success.    Much faster to make, more repeatable where holes end up, and four bolts holding it to the leg instead of three.  Less clamping force required to lock it in place, so less finish damage to the tripod legs. Unfortunately, because the local Interstate Plastics store doesn't carry 2 3/4" thick acetal, the insert was made from a 2" and 5/8" thick section, which looks bad but works fine.  This will be for my  personal scope, untuil the thicker stuff arrives from California.

 For the Vixen HAL tripods, which is what the CNC mill was for,  I will use eight bolts to secure the sleeve to the leg.  And this way I can ship these replacements a bit sooner.