Word of the Day

I see unfamiliar words every now and again. I read one just a moment ago and was compelled to look it up. That word is "struthious".  As in, "“The opinion correctly held, as we believed, that the defendants could not be so struthious as to ignore the overwhelming evidence in front of them that Mrs. Pichardo was in fact female,” said lawyer Ryan Marks."

Here is a link to the original article:

Grandma mistakenly booked into a Miami jail as a man. Court ruling details who was to blame.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article222363520.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article222363520.html#storylink=cpy

Draining the Swamp

This agency is a good candidate for dissolution.

"WASHINGTON (AP) — Mark Robbins gets to work at 8:15 each morning and unlocks the door to his office suite. He switches on the lights and the TV news, brews a pot of coffee and pulls out the first files of the day to review.

For the next eight hours or so, he reads through federal workplace disputes, analyzes the cases, marks them with notes and logs his legal opinions. When he’s finished, he slips the files into a cardboard box and carries them into an empty room where they will sit and wait. For nobody.
He’s at 1,520 files and counting."

Memos to Nobody: Inside the work of a neglected fed agency

Cold Civil War

"Political scientists sometimes distinguish between normal politics and regime politics. Normal politics takes place within a political and constitutional order and concerns means, not ends. In other words, the ends or principles are agreed upon; debate is simply over means. By contrast, regime politics is about who rules and for what ends or principles. It questions the nature of the political system itself. Who has rights? Who gets to vote? What do we honor or revere together as a people? I fear America may be leaving the world of normal politics and entering the dangerous world of regime politics—a politics in which our political loyalties diverge more and more, as they did in the 1850s, between two contrary visions of the country.

One vision is based on the original Constitution as amended. This is the Constitution grounded in the natural rights of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution written in 1787 and ratified in 1788. It has been transmitted to us with significant Amendments—some improvements and some not—but it is recognizable still as the original Constitution. To simplify matters we may call this “the conservative Constitution”—with the caveat that conservatives have never agreed perfectly on its meaning and that many non-conservatives remain loyal to it.


The other vision is based on what Progressives and liberals, for 100 years now, have called “the living Constitution.” This term implies that the original Constitution is dead—or at least on life support—and that in order to remain relevant to our national life, the original Constitution must be infused with new meaning and new ends and therefore with new duties, rights, and powers. To cite an important example, new administrative agencies must be created to circumvent the structural limitations that the original Constitution imposed on government."

Read the whole thing:
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/americas-cold-civil-war/

A Cold Winter is Coming

"Sept. 27, 2018: The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018, and the sun’s ultraviolet output has sharply dropped. New research shows that Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding.

“We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”"

Above: An historical record of the Thermosphere Climate Index. Mlynczak and colleagues recently published a paper on the TCI showing that the state of the thermosphere can be discussed using a set of five plain language terms: Cold, Cool, Neutral, Warm, and Hot.

The Chill of Solar Minimum

The Sound of the End of World War I

"One of the astonishing things about World War I is that for generations to come we will be able to hear it end. It was the greatest slaughter the world had ever seen. Something close to 20 million soldiers and civilians on both sides perished. Under the Armistice in which the Central Powers finally capitulated a century ago, the time for the end of the conflict was set at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Until that moment, the thunder of battle engulfed the front. The machine guns crackled constantly, and the howitzers kept reporting. The sound was God-omnipresent. We know that because of recordings, including ones made near the Moselle River. Yanks were there as part of a broad push that had been ordered by the Allied commander, Marshal Foch."

Read and hear it here:
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/birdsong-of-peace/90460/

War on Christians

"I want to stand by my comments on last Wednesday when I said that my God is a God that loves. No matter how I'm treated, no matter how my community is treated, we want to be able to love unconditionally in a Christlike manner and to respond in a Christlike manner," she added.

Chow told Campus Reform that she has no intention of resigning, citing the importance of representing her Christian constituents.  “There's a Christian community and campus that has been praying for me and encouraging me throughout all this. And if I don't represent their views, who else will?"

EXCLUSIVE: Berkeley student senator disavowed over Christian beliefs responds to calls to RESIGN

HT: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

Defenestrating

Out the window you go, and don't come back.

Fun With iPhones

MEMS Resonator

"“Exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near evaporating liquified gasses such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality. … If your device has been affected and shows signs of not powering on, the device can typically be recovered.  Leave the unit unconnected from a charging cable and let it air out for approximately one week. The helium must fully dissipate from the device, and the device battery should fully discharge in the process.  After a week, plug your device directly into a power adapter and let it charge for up to one hour.  Then the device can be turned on again.” (Emphasis added.)"

Why a Helium Leak Disabled Every iPhone in a Medical Facility

Rockets are Risky

SpaceX refuels their rockets on the launch pad.  As you can see here, things can go sideways.  Keep that in mind when a crewed rocket goes up in 2019.


https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22660/possible-spacex-falcon-9-explosion-on-the-launch-pad/

Immigration Without Assimilation is Invasion

"Our immigration laws were designed for lawful immigration, with some carve-outs for genuine refugees and asylum-seekers. What they were not designed to do is absorb a calculated onslaught of lawbreakers with no beneficent intent; instead, these people are very clear about their purpose: to manipulate the loopholes of the laws, force entry, earn money, and send it back home to their “countries” of origin—three of which are among the most savage and violent places on earth. America has no domestic need for these people, and no moral obligation to admit them, especially under these circumstances. There is no war ongoing in their homelands (the violence is entirely of their own making, and cultural history) and economic “refugees” can apply through proper channels like everybody else. America is a sovereign nation, not an international charity."
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/31/hello-honduras-goodbye-columbus/