75F and mostly saturated. Yesterday cooled down a bit at the end, when some storm cells blew through. The lower temps and the breeze were much appreciated by the swimmers and their families.
It made for a long day, a short night,, and me sitting here, barely awake and zoning out. The inescapable truth is “I’m not young anymore.” Sucks.
Arrgg. Zoned out again.
Coffee, need coffee.
n
Well, at least you’re above ground.
My mom’s at the age where she figures that any morning she wakes up is a good day.
Yup. and only 77F with humidity dropping to 66F. Currently overcast/ patchy clouds.
n
re yesterday’s comments on suppressors and the court challenge, it’s been booted about in the gun community for decades that every time an important gun-related court case or Congressional vote is coming up, like clockwork there’s a shooting at a school or a group of terrorists are caught. John Ross hit this several times in Unintended Consequences.
Yah, sure, coincidences happen and there’s surely some confirmation bias happening in pointing out these cases, but after a while the coincidences pile up and the “calm down nothing to see here” explanations wear thin.
Especially when we know that the FBI spends months or years egging on marginal people until they finally commit an illegal act that the Feebies can arrest him for. How big a leap is it to think that those tactics work, and that someone might not ACT until after the patsy executes his plan?
Since the FBI literally manufactures local terrorists to then arrest, how can we rule out them or another agency literally manufacturing local terrorists who are allowed to carry out their plans? -We can’t.
Las Vegas – “I guess we’ll never know”– bump stocks
VA – “We have no apparent motive” — suppressors
every other one — black rifles
n
From yesterday, @nick said:
I’m also reminded that we have a black project .mil shuttle flying, and what looks an awful lot like a manned .mil orbiting platform, according to rumor.
The DOD never builds one of anything, they usually build 10 or 12. I suspect that we would be very surprised at their asset list.
Or by whatever replaced the Blackbird. They never give something up without having a replacement they like better….
n
Swan Eaters: consequences
https://www.gocomics.com/swan-eaters/2019/06/10
Oh my cat ! I agree with one of the commenters, Grandma sewed the villagers mouths shut.
Well, at least you’re above ground.
My mom’s at the age where she figures that any morning she wakes up is a good day.
Welcome back SteveF !
And I have been living with your mom’s supposition since my first heart attack in 2009. Of course this morning, the puppy woke me up at 6:53 am after I turned out the light at 1:45 am. But she went outside and did her business. After she smelled the air, smelled the pool, smelled the grass, smelled the leaf, smelled the …
BC: why is the unidragon not in the fossil record ?
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2019/06/11
So that is why !
One would think that mathematics would be the one field immune to the SJW mind virus, but nooooo.
One would think that mathematics would be the one field immune to the SJW mind virus, but nooooo. “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers”
Oh, they have been practicing this crap for over two decades. I tried to help my son with “new math” over twenty years ago and failed miserably. The “approximating” thing made no sense whatsoever. None ! And I made a 740 on the math SAT and a 780 on the math GRE.
I have discovered that my bright soon to be fifth grader has been encouraged to COUNT rather than do the arithmetic. She’s not solid on her multiplication tables either.
F me.
n
My mother is 99 1/2. She says ‘every morning when I wake up it’s a surprise’.
Still going strong.
BTW, the folks at DreamHost (host of this place and Barbara’s blog) say:
The lefties look at the same world we do, come to the same conclusion, but for exactly opposite reasons. Nuts.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/2/1861359/-How-do-we-avert-the-inevitable-plutocrat-driven-civil-war#comments
Scan the comments to see what the enemy looks like. The people posting there will not be reasoned with, or convinced to moderate their thoughts or expressions.
n
Today (Tues) between 4:00pm PDT and 7:00pm PDT, we’ll be upgrading your shared web server from Ubuntu Linux version 14.04.5 LTS (also known as Trusty Tahr!) to 18.04.1 LTS (aka Bionic Beaver!)
Wow, a four release jump. I hope everything goes ok.
Today (Tues) between 4:00pm PDT and 7:00pm PDT, we’ll be upgrading your shared web server from Ubuntu Linux version 14.04.5 LTS (also known as Trusty Tahr!) to 18.04.1 LTS (aka Bionic Beaver!)
Should be fine, but we have issues with chronyd and our applications. That shouldn’t affect web hosting, however.
SJWs and math, the “new math”, etc.. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect all over again.
A brief aside:
At our college, we’re having “strategic” meetings all week. Today, someone commented on the fact that – in computer majors – a lot of people fail out due to the math. He suggested, quite seriously, that we create a special major: computer science without math.
Funny, all of the technical people in the room just laughed. In all my teaching years, I remember one person who couldn’t do math, but could actually program. He was a very unusual case, with some sort of psychological block. In general, exactly the same people who fail math also fail the programming courses. I’m convinced it’s how your brain is wired, and the same wiring works either for programming or for math.
So: the “new math”:
I swear, these ideas are cooked up by people who don’t understand math. They come up with convoluted approaches to something that is fundamentally simple – because they don’t understand what is actually going on.
And, yes, part of learning is sometimes boring memorization: you simply must know the multiplication tables up to 9×9. If you lack that, you can apply repeated addition, or other weird techniques, but it’s like running a race with your legs tied together: sure, you may get there in the end, but it’s a slow and inefficient way to go about things.
– – – – –
Oh, the school also introduced all the new employees hired in the past year. Thirty administrative people and ten instructors. We’re already up from a 50/50 split about 12 years ago to 60/40 now, and it looks like the trend is continuing. Funny, how my class sizes keep increasing :-/
“Talking hurricanes and flooding with Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo”
https://spacecityweather.com/talking-hurricanes-and-flooding-with-harris-county-judge-lina-hidalgo/
Harris County is the main county of the nine county region for the Houston metroplex. Harris County population is somewhere between four and five million people.
““First, everybody needs to have a plan for themselves, for their families and their pets,” she said during the interview. “That means having their gas tank fueled and having a safety kit. Make sure folks have medicine, food, and water for seven days. That’s what we like to ask folks to make sure to have.””
“Seven days may seem like a long time, but as Hidalgo and the rest of the region experienced after Hurricane Ike in 2008, and like most of us witnessed after Harvey, it’s not unreasonable to expect to be homebound for an extended period of time after a storm.”
Seven days of supplies is a good start but the outages after hurricane Ike in 2008 lasted up to six weeks. Roads, electricity, gasoline, food stores, etc were all impacted, some severely.
Our power wasn’t restored for 14 days.
Our water was undrinkable for 3.
IDK how long the stores and pharmacy were closed because we didn’t need them.
n
BTW this judge is head of emergency management for harris county. Ed Emmett held the position for years, and was universally respected and liked for his Emgmt experience and execution. She was elected on a straight party vote (now harder to do). In other words, it was a BIG SHOCK to a lot of people that we lost Ed Emmett as chief of Emergency management because of straight party voting for judges. She has NO experience or training in emgmt. I’m hoping she’s a fast study or a quick burnout.
_Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION_ by Ryk Spoor
https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Past-REVOLUTION-Ryk-Spoor/dp/1948818132?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number two of a three book space opera series. I read the well formatted and bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback. I would have liked the font to be a little bigger though as my aging eyes are just not doing very well. I am now reading the third book in the series which does use a larger font.
https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Past-RETRIBUTION-Ryk-Spoor/dp/1948818272/?tag=ttgnet-20
As mentioned in previous reviews, I love space opera. And I love psi. Mix the two together and you get a totally cool mix for me. And there is a new word in this series for me, psispy.
As mentioned in the review on the first book in the series, Ryk has spent an enormous effort working on the universe for the series and it shows. Things work together and are not a total surprise when they show up. Nice !
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars (5 reviews)
BTW this judge is head of emergency management for harris county. Ed Emmett held the position for years, and was universally respected and liked for his Emgmt experience and execution. She was elected on a straight party vote (now harder to do). In other words, it was a BIG SHOCK to a lot of people that we lost Ed Emmett as chief of Emergency management because of straight party voting for judges. She has NO experience or training in emgmt. I’m hoping she’s a fast study or a quick burnout.
Yes, she was part of the bozo (Robert Francis O’Rourke) voter fallout down the ballot. She does seem to have an issue that she is working on, flooding. I note that she is talking about building huge water detainment ponds for Meyerland and Kingwood. That is a good start.
I encourage my kids to know their tables to 12×12, 12+12, and the integer division by quizzing them at the dinner table. The eldest child often beats the younger ones, but the younger ones compete against each other all the time. Word games, too.
Wow, a four release jump. I hope everything goes ok.
No choice. Five years is an eternity in Linux.
I’m not a Ubuntu fan, but they do take care with the “LTS” releases.
If you need to worry about not breaking anything for 10 years across updates, go with the latest RHEL/CentOS major number release.
Yes, she was part of the bozo (Robert Francis O’Rourke) voter fallout down the ballot.
That almost cost Will Hurd his seat in Congress. His opponent, Gina Oritiz-Jones hadn’t lived in the district in 20 years, but she only lost by 1000 votes.
After the Prog victory in San Antonio on Saturday, Robert Francis threw Hurd, his friend, under the bus and endorsed Ortiz-Jones for a second attempt at the seat next year.
If you lack that, you can apply repeated addition, or other weird techniques, but it’s like running a race with your legs tied together: …
I once (briefly) attempted to tutor someone in math. A particular problem involved multiplying a real number X = xxxxx.xx by an integer Y = yyy. I gave up on the tutoring when she attempted to get the product by manually adding X together Y times.
I let the younger kids do repeated addition at first. Still do for the youngest. But it quickly comes to “you should know this” and “Bobby?” Bobby shouts out the answer and Billy steams at the ears. Nothing like playing at their egos to get them to learn it. Competition is good.
Scrap paper is good, too. I make the eldest get out paper for figuring when we’re doing complex work. Write out the problem and show the steps. She’s coming along. It will be useful later on when she needs 20 steps to solve a problem. Youngers are learning the same way.
xxxxx.xx * Y? Should be almost trivial for any adult. Eldest has no trouble. Next has to work at it because he doesn’t grok decimals yet, but can get it with a little prodding. Youngest don’t grok stacked multiplication yet, but coming.
Thanks, but I haven’t been anywhere, just busy. I’ve been checking Daynotes a couple times a week to catch up but mostly didn’t have anything worth saying.
Two, actually. The even-numbered releases are stable and intended for public use.
Doesn’t that raise constitutional issues, because emergency management should be under the executive branch (whatever local execs are called in Texas) whereas an elected judge is judicial branch.
Not to make you feel worse or anything, because I’m a nice guy and would never do that, but I’ll bet the annual salary increases are larger for the administrators than for the teaching staff.
DreamHost updated my server a couple of weeks ago and “yawn”.
BTW this judge is head of emergency management for harris county.
Doesn’t that raise constitutional issues, because emergency management should be under the executive branch (whatever local execs are called in Texas) whereas an elected judge is judicial branch.
This is what I call a Texasism. The Head County Judge of each county in Texas (all 254 of them) is not a judicial judge. Instead, they lead the county commissioners court and are responsible for the entire county operation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_judge#County_Commissioners'_Court
There are more Texasisms. Many, many more.
Oh, the school also introduced all the new employees hired in the past year. Thirty administrative people and ten instructors. We’re already up from a 50/50 split about 12 years ago to 60/40 now, and it looks like the trend is continuing. Funny, how my class sizes keep increasing :-/
I hate to keep mentioning it but this is a classic example of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
This is what I call a Texasism. The Head County Judge of each county in Texas (all 254 of them) is not a judicial judge. Instead, they lead the county commissioners court and are responsible for the entire county operation.
Robert Francis father was a Judge of that type in El Paso.
There are more Texasisms. Many, many more.
For instance, we like to name our cities after other more famous cities. I went to truck driving school in Paris back in 1985. Paris, Texas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,_Texas
Oh, I’m sure the school administrators earn more than the profs. No doubt about it.
Unrealistically, I’ve always thought that management should be regarded as an ancillary service, like HR or accounting: necessary, but not special. There’s just no reason for a middle manager to earn more than, say, the engineers in his department. In fact, he should probably earn less.
One thing I miss from the school I taught at in Germany: there, most management positions were temporary: each prof took a turn, none of us liked it. There was almost no administration.
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Inconvenient Glaciers”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-inconvenient-glaciers/
“Glaciers at Glacier National Park in Montana have grown 25% over the past few years, an inconvenient truth for Leftists Climate Change pushers. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2019.”
No doubt, but that’s not what I meant. If the profs’ salaries are going up 2% per year, the administrators’ and secretaries’ will be going up 4%.
In my first job after the Army, an engineering company which mostly did DoD contracting, my unit manager was grumbling that the senior engineer in the unit made more than the manager. Just because the senior engineer had 30 years’ experience and contributed to many projects in the entire office whereas the manager was effectively an engineer with a few years’ experience who mostly shuffled paper and went to meetings was no reason that the manager shouldn’t make more than any of his people.
Aside from that, I agree. The people who are “promoted” from worker-bee engineer into management are usually not very good engineers. Sometimes this is because the personality which wants to manage is not the personality which is any good at engineering. In government contracting in particular, those who get promotions are often the bozos who can be spared because they don’t contribute to getting the real job done. I’ve heard of, though haven’t myself seen, valuable engineers being denied promotions because they’re too valuable where they are.
Lynn, a question on blood thinners: a family member in his 50s had a heart attack, got a stent, and apparently will be on blood thinners forever. He’s found that he’s bruising really easily, just from leaning against his truck and such. Does this go away after a while, or do you learn how to get through the day without getting bruises, or is this not something you experienced? Thanks.
Lynn, a question on blood thinners: a family member in his 50s had a heart attack, got a stent, and apparently will be on blood thinners forever. He’s found that he’s bruising really easily, just from leaning against his truck and such. Does this go away after a while, or do you learn how to get through the day without getting bruises, or is this not something you experienced? Thanks.
I had bruises all over the body when I was on warfarin (coumadin) (rat poison). And I was striving to be in the 2.0 to 2.9 range. My dad has a mechanical heart valve, he has to stay in the range 3.0 to 3.9. He really bruises quite easily and usually has a dozen or so.
I just take a baby aspirin (81 mg) per day now and I still bruise too easily.
https://www.bayeraspirin.com/products/aspirin-regimen-bayer-low-dose/
I do not know about the effects of the non-coumadin blood thinners such as Plavix. I took Pradaxa for a couple of years and then read the article about the number of days to get off it with no reversing agent. I seem to recall that I bruised easily on Pradaxa also but that has been a long time ago so my memory sucks.
Hopes this helps, an answer in short would be the bruising is just a fact of life. The worst thing is that you get a small cut and bleed all over your clothing.
Hopes this helps, an answer in short would be the bruising is just a fact of life. The worst thing is that you get a small cut and bleed all over your clothing.
As someone who’s been on Xarelto for a number of years, I concur. If you do cut yourself, it’ll take ~15 minutes for the blood to well and truly clot.
My dad was on thinners for his stents and the replacement valve…
Besides the bruising, he had paper thin skin that would break with any bump and bleed. Or bleed from any scratch. You carry a lot of bandaids in different sizes or you bleed on everything. It’s why I had the gear to help the old guy on the boat a couple of summers ago when I saw him bleeding and his wife unable to cope. I was carrying it to take care of dad. (dad would just fold a paper towel or napkin and masking tape it in place)
n
@lynn, there are already massive detention areas to protect downtown, they are named Barker and Addicks….
n
@lynn, there are already massive detention areas to protect downtown, they are named Barker and Addicks….
Meyerland and Kingwood are not in downtown. Meyerland is getting flooded by Braes Bayou and Kingwood is getting flooded by … ??? San Jacinto river ?
Yes, Kingwood had 400 homes flooded on May 7 of this year.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/400-homes-reportedly-flooded-in-kingwood/285-eb82dbb6-32da-4e82-8496-1f7d523e259d
As someone who’s been on Xarelto for a number of years, I concur. If you do cut yourself, it’ll take ~15 minutes for the blood to well and truly clot.
Yes, and the least little flex will cause the cut to break open and start bleeding all over you again.
I’m going to bed. I’m beat.
n
Have a stent and I just use aspirin too. Direct pressure with a clean tissue or gauze to stop things. Often takes some time. Yeah it’s those ones you don’t notice that get messy.
Band-aids or gauze with sports tape if you’re too lazy to hold it in place or it’s just too big.
Comes in lots of colors too.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sports+tape&rlz=1CATTSD_enUS748US748&oq=sports+tape&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.5963j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
The same nonsense is happening with math teaching up here in the Great White North (well Ontario anyway). Memorization is bad. Learning the basic calculation algorithms for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing is bad. Creative approaches to solve problems as team exercises is good (the one kid in the group that knows his tables and algorithms provides all the correct answers). They gave a bunch of the teachers the grade 6 math test they require the kids to get a 70% on. 50% of the teachers – people with university degrees – failed. They did not understand fractions. You wonder why your kids can’t learn math? They are being taught by teachers who are innumerate social science grads using a curriculum created by Education Department employees that are innumerate social science grads. Half the teachers don’t know what they are doing. The other half are crying because they know but have to teach the crap curriculum. It was a scandal up here (not that much is happening to fix it). It took 20 years to get over “you must teach reading using whole word and only whole word” and spelling doesn’t matter. To quote the late JP “despair is a sin” but there are times…
The same nonsense is happening with math teaching up here in the Great White North (well Ontario anyway). Memorization is bad. Learning the basic calculation algorithms for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing is bad. Creative approaches to solve problems as team exercises is good (the one kid in the group that knows his tables and algorithms provides all the correct answers). They gave a bunch of the teachers the grade 6 math test they require the kids to get a 70% on. 50% of the teachers – people with university degrees – failed. They did not understand fractions. You wonder why your kids can’t learn math? They are being taught by teachers who are innumerate social science grads using a curriculum created by Education Department employees that are innumerate social science grads. Half the teachers don’t know what they are doing. The other half are crying because they know but have to teach the crap curriculum. It was a scandal up here (not that much is happening to fix it). It took 20 years to get over “you must teach reading using whole word and only whole word” and spelling doesn’t matter. To quote the late JP “despair is a sin” but there are times…
I am in favor of outsourcing all teaching and giving the parents a voucher for any school in the area. I have no idea what to do with the kids who do not want to go to school other than send them to a lock-down facility known as the school of last resort. Just about all school districts in Texas already have one of these btw.
I am assuming that I do not have to explain what a lock-down facility is to this crowd. Some of the kids call it day jail. The kids walk in through a metal detector with 3 or 4 big guys watching every move they make. Some of the parents get waved around the metal detector, some don’t. The big guys know which ones to check out. The atmosphere is tough, very tough.
@SteveF: Anecdotal only, I was on Xarelto for a year or two, but I had no trouble with bruising. My cat likes to wrestle, and inevitably gets overenthusiastic – scratches like that bled seemlingly forever.
Re teaching and nonsense: At the kickoff of our week full of meetings, the head of our school gave a speech yesterday. One of his main points was that “knowledge arises from interactions, from conversation with the students”. Um, no? Knowledge is facts and skills. Facts you tell them, skills they practice. If they don’t understand something, they ask questions. Knowledge is objective, and does not magically “arise” from “interactions”.
But saying that sounds good, and probably goes over great in the rarified circles where he circulates. And is part of the reason we are continually encouraged to try “new” teaching methods, whether or not they are appropriate to our subjects. At this point, I’ve been teaching off and on for…geez…more than 35 years. I know how to get my material across to students effectively, and I’ll stick to my techniques, thanks…
“This Asteroid Has a 1-in-7,000 Chance of Hitting Earth This Fall”
https://www.space.com/asteroid-could-hit-earth-in-september-2019.html
We are all going to die.
“send them to a lock-down facility known as the school of last resort”
That is a real question: what do you do with kids who don’t care about learning anything, because they come from homes with parent(s) who don’t care? Military-style schools are fine enough for keeping them from roaming the streets, but eventually they get out of those schools. And then roam the streets.
The sad thing, of course, is: it isn’t the kids’ fault. It’s the fault of their parents and the culture they are in. When I taught judo to kids, one kid I eventually had to give up on. Coincidentally, I knew his home situation: parents who basically locked him in his room when he wasn’t at school. He wasn’t even allowed to turn on his bedroom light – electricity costs, you know. No wonder he flipped out at the least little bit of liberty.
Judo was kind of their hope of taming him. But when he came to us at the age of…dunno…maybe 10? 11? It was too late. He wasn’t mean, but had absolutely no judgement, no self-control. The other kids kept getting hurt. He wound up in one of those military-style schools, but more: a boarding school, so he lived their full-time. Dunno what happened to him afterwards…