Big Stick Physics

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Climate Change Results in No Loss of Antarctic Sea Ice

February 21, 2023 /

Zero Loss of Arctic Sea Ice

According to a recent paper (Singh and Polvani), the Antarctica sea ice has “modestly expanded”, and warming has been “nearly non-existent” over much of the ice sheet.

I feel about Global Warming, the same way I feel about Covid.  I’m surprised that anyone still cares about those issues.  The doom-and-gloomers are earnest, and that’s the shame.  The rest of us just don’t care about their pain. 

Global Warming may or may not be real because climatologists manipulate the data in opaque ways.  Not being a climatologists, I’m left to speculate from the fact that none of the people prattling on about carbon dioxide live in a way to minimize their carbon foot print.  If they don’t care, why should I.

The climate is definitely changing.  It always has and always will.  I’ve never met anyone who disagrees with that.  When nuclear power gets rehabilitated and we start building reactors in the US, we will know that carbon dioxide is a problem.

The Covid virus was a pandemic, and people suffered from it.  Fauci, the CDC, the WHO and everyone who was supposed to be helping with epidemics, lied to us about nearly everything.  Draconian policies were enacted that changed the direction of our country as much as the terrorist attack on 9/11 did.  Unless we are talking about legal sanctions against the people who did the lockdown to us, I don’t care about Covid at all.

Republicans Shouldn’t be Allowed to Talk

February 21, 2023 /

Republicans Use Wokeism

Republicans Use Wokeism

Republicans have alighted on a strategy of decrying the dangers of “wokeism” and all things “woke” — catchall terms they have weaponized to include a host of liberal policies and positions they don’t like.

Leftists are angry that Republicans disagree with their cultural marxism, and would like to see any criticism automatically branded as sexist, racist, or otherwise beyond discussion.  The authoritarian impulse of the Leftists is blatant and disturbing.

Normal people think that the Leftists won’t win, but they so often do.  If a parent is disturbed that her daughter is changing in a locker room with an adult man sporting an erection, the parent is instantly dismissed as a hateful bigot.  If a female athlete, who has been training for years, doesn’t want to lose to a man, she is invited to resign from the team. 

Transgender politics is completely unreasonable, yet all criticism became taboo in a very short time.

Republicans and conservatives can’t be intimidated or timid when targeted for standing up for judging people by the content of their character, rather than their race.  Wokeism, cultural marxism, whatever one wants to call it, is divisive and authoritarian and must be resisted.  Ten years ago, no one would have thought that Canada would submit to tyranny so quickly.

 

Hide the Bunny

February 21, 2023 /

Sparky is eating breakfast, otherwise, he’d be muscling in on this photo.  His stuffed bunny, George, is barely visible under the t-shirts.  Sparky doesn’t speak English, so I can only speculate.  Sparky seems to be protective of the stuffed bunny, and is concerned that if I see it, I will take it away because I never let him do what he wants. 

Sparky’s list of grievances:

  • He has to dump in the poop pen, rather than a quarter-mile away at the retention pond by the church parking lot, where he likes to shit. 
  • Meals are only twice per day, rather than all the time.
  • He doesn’t get to eat my food.
  • I spend too much time on the computer or watching TV.
  • He isn’t allowed to roll in deer shit as often as he’d like.
  • He comes over and puts his paws on my knee, yet isn’t invited on to the couch and given any treats.  How is that fair?
  • He was given a bath, which goes against everything he’s trying to do.
  • He’s not allowed to live in the culvert pipe the creek flows into.
  • My truck is too high for him to get into. 
  • I make weird sounds and flap my hands around.  Crate?  Lay down?  WTF is any of that supposed to mean?  He walked over and sat down when I looked at him, isn’t that enough?  Where are the treats?

 

Sparky has a new friend or pet, I can’t tell. 

February 21, 2023 /

Sparky and George

I’m putting together a camping kit for Sparky.  I got him a little bunny from Tractor Supply, and thought he should get acquainted before we go on a trip.  With Mr. Moose, Sparky was rough, with the chewing and the fetching.  With George, he’s protective.  In his crate, when Sparky takes a nap, he covers George up with some old t-shirts I leave in there.   When we play fetch with Mr. Moose, Sparky will drop Mr. Moose on command.  He doesn’t do that with George.  It took some convincing to get Sparky to leave George in the house when I took him out to take a dump.

The bunny is named George because the Abominable Snowman sounds like what Sparky would say if he could speak English.  The Bugs Bunny cartoon is referencing Of Mice and Men from John Steinbeck.

 

 

 

 

Pointless and Authoritarian Vaccination Mandates

February 21, 2023 /

Natural Immunity Against Covid

Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks.

Early on in the Covid pandemic, before vaccines were available, I talked to many smart science teachers about natural immunity.  Most weren’t sure there would be natural immunity.  It seemed like if natural immunity wasn’t possible, then a vaccine wouldn’t be possible either.  We all used to know that a vaccine is a weak or fake exposure that gets our immune system spun up to attack the pathogen.  How did people forget that?

My brother wasn’t the first person I knew who came down with Covid, but being so genetically similar, I was interested in his experience.  His case wasn’t bad.  He chose to rely on natural immunity and never was vaccinated.

The CDC and the WHO were reckless or inept by not making a prior infection count as a vaccine.  The people who were fired, discipline or hectored by their employers or schools went through that ordeal for no scientific reason.  Truly shameful.

If East Palestine was in Kyiv, rather than Ohio, it might get some attention.

February 20, 2023 /

Biden goes to Ukraine, seems like a normal politician thing to do, but one wonders if this is how the Vietnam War got started.  Biden should be talking about a resolution, but that never comes up.

This part seems odd.

“We did notify the Russians that President Biden would be traveling to Kyiv,” Sullivan told reporters Monday. “We did so some hours before his departure for de-confliction purposes.”

At some point, the East Palestine, Ohio train wreck catastrophe warrants some attention by national leaders.  Pete Buttigieg treats his appointment as the Secretary of Transportation as more of an honorary title. 

Balloons Aren’t Funny

February 19, 2023 /

Chinese Home-made Airship AS700 Conducts Test Flightmen,

Some media and politicians are taking a whimsical view of these high flying balloons.

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed that the administration does not believe aliens are involved. “There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” she said. 

NORAD should consider anything invading American airspace to be a threat.  We don’t now much about the Chinese balloon that was shot down after passing over much of the US, but we do know that the Chinese government lies like mad. 

I think it was a trial balloon.  The Chinese government wanted to see what we’d do and how seriously we would take the incursion.  Since they had attempted this three times during the Trump administration, and Pentagon officials didn’t even tell the president, the Chinese government expected not much of a reaction.

Reports say that NORAD radar has been upgraded, so the balloons are easier to detect.  Our spy satellites could certainly see them.  The military shouldn’t be wasting expensive ordinance on hobby balloons, but they should be alert and have procedures to intercept incursions into our airspace. 

This report Inside China’s Military Balloon Program is more informative than anything I’ve seen in the New York Times.

Learning from the Best

February 18, 2023 /

Steve Vaughn

It is very rare for a first-year teacher to be in charge right out of the box.  Classroom management is usually a problem.  I started teaching at 36 years old, so knew a lot of things, but classroom management was not part of my skill set.

When I started at Normandy, I taught three classes of Physics and two of Physical Science.  One of the Physical Science kids was just a non-stop dick.  The other Physical Science teacher, Steve Vaughn, offered to have that kid transferred to his class.  Steve assured me that he wouldn’t be a problem.

Wanting to learn, I asked Steve how he would handle this student.  Steve said, “He knows that if he screws around, I’ll kick his ass.”

Funny, right?  By 1996, paddling was long gone.

“No seriously, you can’t kick his ass, so how are you going to get this kid to behave?”

“I’ll kick his ass.  He’s on the wrestling team, so during practice, I will slip on the mat and pancake him.  He knows I’d do something like that.”

Steve was the head wrestling coach.

Say what you want about corporal punishment, but that student behaved for Steve and passed the class.  I’d bet that Steve still knows this student’s name and can tell me where he works and how he’s doing.  The best coaches are like that.  They don’t get enough credit for the good they do.

And Steve?  Until 2025, he is the president of the Parma City School District’s Board of Education.

Here is a video of  Steve Vaughn’s story

 

 

 

Equity in Education is Corrosive

February 18, 2023 /

Equity in education is currently making the rounds, with school districts implementing it and parents pushing back.

WSJ: Eliminate Honors Classes

WSJ: Eliminate Honors Classes (no paywall version)

“We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and study,” Joanna Schaenman, a Culver City parent who helped spearhead the effort, said in the run-up to the meeting.

That isn’t what equity means.  Equity means reduce opportunities so that the smartest student can’t learn any more than the average kid.  The learning disabled are left out of the discussion.

When I first started teaching, I was too dumb to know about equity and social justice.  I did know that Physics explained everything in the universe and I wanted my students to see that.  I was also too dumb to know that working class students at Normandy weren’t going to become engineers. 

If I had a Philosophy of Education at that time, it would be to get every student to accomplish more than they thought they could.

Building things is fun, so we entered engineering competitions at CWRU.

Back then, students could drive themselves.  It wasn’t a class project or an official club, just something students could do if they wanted.  A dozen kids the first year, then more the next.  It wasn’t long before Normandy was a regional power in balsa wood bridge building. 

I didn’t want my students to just be number-crunchers, but to see the wonder of Physics in everything.   Amusement park physics is standard now, but it wasn’t typical when I started.  I think administration allowed a new teacher to plan a Cedar Point Physics Day because they didn’t mind having a bunch of juniors and seniors out of the building toward the end of the school year.

My students were as dumb as I was.  They didn’t know that working class kids from a school with no AP math or science classes could become engineers, so they went to college and became engineers.  It’s hard to say, but in my eight years at Normandy, something like a hundred became engineers.

Equity is bullshit.  So is diversity.  Every student is unique.  Everyone has their own aptitudes, motivation and ambition.  Teachers should challenge every student to get farther than they thought they could.

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