Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Category: Rant

  • Simple Things the Government Screws Up Part I : Low Flow

    Simple Things the Government Screws Up Part I : Low Flow

    It’s been a long, hard day. As you enter the room you let the last bit of your clothing drop to the floor. You’re already feeling good and you know that the hot and steamy water flowing over you will only further your ecstasy. You lift in one leg and then the other. As you turn the knob water begins to flow from the tub faucet. It’s getting hotter and hotter. Just when you’ve reached the perfect temperature you grab the knob and turn. You can hear the water running up the pipe to the shower head. You’re ready, you’re excited, and you’re disappointed. It’s a low flow shower head.

    Yep, it’s an incredibly simple thing that the government screwed up. Now, if you live in California or some other arid climate, maybe there’s an argument to make for low flow showers (I have a free market base approach that might work here, but that’s a side debate). I don’t live in an arid climate. I live in Indiana with some of the most abundant water aquifers in the world. Not to mention one of the largest fresh water bodies on the planet that might just be a little bit north of my current location. With the exception of a minor, occasional mid summer drought. We don’t have a shortage of water here. Also, it’s incredibly cheap, so I’m not worried about price.

    Now this has been an increasing problem throughout my life. But there is a solution. It involves a couple pairs of pliers. One to take the shower head off and a pair of needle nose to pull out the flow restrictor. It’s really simple. Just keep working at it until all the plastic and bits aren’t in the way anymore. In fact, I carry pliers with me on every road trip that I take. There are hotels as far east as Virginia, as far north as Montana, as far west as California, and as far south as Texas that have higher flow rate shower thanks to me.

    Imagine water as a hot dog and this as the hallway. In this scenario it’s actually good for the hallway to be large.

    Unfortunately, this solution is working less and less. They’ve figured out people like myself are doing anything and everything I can the thwart their efforts. Manufacturers are now incorporating low flow into the faucet valve. I have a solution to this to, but it’s not quite as simple. It involves a drill and being willing to buy the parts two or three times for when you screw up. It’s still usually well worth it. Or, if you don’t about aesthetics you can make your own flow heavy setup using ball valves. Now your wife may not like it at first, but when it no longer takes her 20 minutes to wash the soap out of her hair, she’ll hopefully come around.

    In the meantime make sure you turn on a faucet and let it run for 15 minutes a day to counteract their measures.

  • Illinois- Why We’re Well and Truly Fucked

    In thermodynamics, we have three laws, which can be popularly and accurately summed up as follows:

    First Law: You can’t win, the best you can do is break even.

    Second Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.

    Third Law: You can’t reach absolute zero.

    And that sums up Illinois’s finances. I spent a day reading through some wonderful and depressing information at the Illinois Policy Institute’s website (www.illinoispolicy.org) and would suggest you do the same, even if you aren’t stuck here like I am: it’s a cautionary tale. I’m just going to toss out a few illustrative highlights I’ve dug up there, which will (I hope) inspire people to look further. And it gave me some good rocks to throw (metaphorically) at our Assembly candidates.

    Illinois’s woes are legendary, numerous, and well-documented. I’m simply going to list a few highlighted facts, which lead to the unfortunate and inevitable conclusion: we’re spiraling down the toilet and there’s no way to stop it. The root causes are baked in and, as a practical matter, immutable.

    As you’d expect from a state known as The Cradle of Graft, there’s an amazing amount of money lost to corruption. I found story after story showing hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in useless projects, subsidies, payoffs, kickbacks, legal expenses for police abuse, you name it. But all of that doesn’t even make page one of the Pareto chart.

    Illinois’s debt is over $200 billion, with state assets of about $20 billion, and this doesn’t even count local debt, which adds another $100 billion onto the flaming pile. This breaks down to over $50,000 for each and every taxpayer in the state. So you can see that the Three Stooges of How We’re Going to Fix Things beloved of politicians giving speeches (“Waste, Fraud, and Abuse”) are down in the noise; $100 million dollars doesn’t scratch the surface. The tax increases that have been proposed (which will somehow magically not drive people and businesses out of the state at a faster rate than they’re already exiting) aren’t even close to enough to cover this debt.

    Well, how about cutting spending? Let’s look at that a bit, starting with what we’re spending the money on.

    Far and away the biggest cause cause is well-known: public employee pensions and health insurance benefits costs. How bad is it?

    Here’s a delightful graphic which just looks at one typical municipal issue, cops.

    Though there’s variation from county to county, the pattern remains the same.

    How about fire?

    So again, the pattern is clear. If we cut every single penny of cops and fire protection spending, closed every police stations and fire house, and could somehow get around the unions and fire every worker, we would STILL be vastly underwater. There’s nothing unique here; there’s similar charts for teachers, nurses, clerical, administrative, and every other type of state leech employee classification.

    The debt, pension and health insurance costs for retired state workers represent over $185 billion, or about 85% of the Illinois debt. It cannot be stressed enough: this is for people who are no longer working. You could fire EVERYBODY currently employed, cut every goddam program (good or bad), shutter every building, and barely dent the issue. These deals were put in place by the generations of family politicians who have run the state and municipal governments, the Daleys, the Madigans, the Stevensons, the Simons, the Jacobs… all enriching themselves and their hangers-on, while pulling hundreds of millions from the fabulously corrupt unions to indebt all the rest of us.

    So since we can’t tax our way out, we can’t reduce spending enough to make a difference, I guess there’s only one thing left to do: cut the pensions. Oh wait…

    Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

    The above is Article 13 Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution. That’s right, it’s in the fucking constitution that we can’t touch the vast bulk of where the money is pouring out. If you want to cut even a dime of the vast sums of money being spent on people who aren’t working , you have to amend the constitution. To do that, there must be an affirmative vote of 2/3 of the House of Representatives and the Senate AND then be approved by a majority of voters on a special election ballot, most of whom do not pay the bulk of taxes. This is de facto a nearly impossible hurdle.

    So we can’t win, we can’t break even, and we can’t get to absolute zero debt. The politicians running who pretend to have ways to fix things and to help taxpayers and property owners are lying scumbags. We are all fucked. Like so many others, I’m doing everything I can to get the hell out of here.

    I will not miss this place.

     

  • You’re Doing It Wrong – #3

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    Find out what you were doing wrong previously. And the time after that.

    A while back there was a post where someone referenced the Digital Time that was proposed by the French Revolution. Well, arguments about our calendar are really useless.

    Or are they.

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    Your calendar: The changeover of the day occurs at midnight.  The changeover of the year occurs on 1 January.

    Status: WRONG

    This one is similar to the seasons example.  Looking at the daylight as a sine wave (negative light? work with me here), starting the day at the peak of the negative is the same as starting winter on the day of the Winter Solstice.  Again, looking at history, day used to begin at daybreak.1 

    Make 6AM the start of the new day.  While we’re at it, start the hour count at that time.  Noon is 0600, nominal sunset it 1200 and midnight (“middle of the night”) is 1800.  Suddenly makes much more sense.

     

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    Oh, yeah. Notice the 24-hour clock notation in there? Who decided that we need to reset the clock again in the middle of the day? Why are there two 8 o’clocks every day? If you’re going to have 24 hours in a day, count them all, dammit!2

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    By the same token, the year starts at perihelion? Our time, human time, is based upon the days of the season rather than some arbitrary orbital milestone. Again, looking at the previous post’s graph (reproduced at right), the logical start of the new year is the Spring Equinox, the positive-going zero-crossing. Interesting that this date was used as the start of a new Presidential term in the early days of the Republic. The Romans (among others) used that date to start their year.

    So again, there is a historical precedent.3

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    I can’t help but to be an engineer whose job is to “fix things.” Here’s a fix for something that you never knew was broken.

    Now get off my lawn.

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    1. I think the Romans used this. No citiation.
    2. Of all of my crackpot ideas, this would be the easiest to implement and the most certain to get the most screams; i.e.“Military Time!!” (the elimination of the BC/AD would be a very close second)
    3. Well, I’ve gotten this far without a citation so you’re on your own.

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  • You’re Doing it Wrong – #2

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    Find out what you were doing wrong previously

    A while back there was a post where someone referenced the Digital Time that was proposed by the French Revolution. Well, arguments about our calendar are really useless.

    Or are they.

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    Your calendar: Year One is the Year of Our Lord and all years previous are Before the Year of Our Lord

    Status: WRONG

    This has bugged me since I can remember. BC? AD? BCE? WTF? Herod1 died before he was born?

    It was one thing that really interferred with my understanding of history. “Third Centruy BC”. Was that the 300’s? The 200’s?

    Then I stumbled upon the Holocene Calendar. And the whole thing started to make much more sense.

    The Holocene marks the latest inter-glacial after the Pleistocene and is dated at starting roughly 11,700 years ago. After the african migration of 60, 000 years ago it marks the dividing point of the Neo-Litic (New Stone Age) and the Paleo-Litic (Old Stone Age). Human agriculture which lead to permanent cities and “civilization” is usually dated to this period. Why not start the calendar at this time?

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    All of human civilization has occurred in the past 12,000 years, much of it in half that time. Outside of astronomical events, every single human historical event that can be traced to a specific date2 falls into that period. As a user of the Gregorian Calendar I am a bit prejudiced but it seems that we could eliminate all of this BC-negative year stuff by starting the date accounting of Mankind at the beginning of the Holocene, call it 12,018 years ago. Simply add 10,000 to the current year.

    Suddenly, there is no more BC/AD adjustment. There is theoretically a Year Zero but it doesn’t matter since nothing is dated before. According to modern research, no one dates the first birthday of Jesus to 1AD; consensus seems to be that He was born around 4BC or born before He was born. So, born in 9997 and died in 10030. Does that take away from the basic message?

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    The Copper Age begins around 4000HE. Things start to come into position. Four thousand years from cultivated crops to refined metals, marking the end of the Neo-Lithic, the end of the Stone Age.

    The Bronze Age begins around 6700HE

    The first pyramid was finished in 7390HE

    The Iron Age began about 9200HE

    The Roman Empire was from 9974 until 10476. I think my four year-old granddaughter could even subtract those numbers.

    All of history can be represented by a continous number line. Later events are represented by a larger number. Years between dates are a simple arithmetic operation. We’re living in the CXXIst Century (121st). How cool is that?

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    Other calendar systems could be adjusted because the date of the start of the Holocene is rather arbitrary. This year is 5778 in the Jewish calendar. Adding 10,000 years pushes the start date of the calendar back another 3760 years. Or the date in the Arabic calendar is 1439 so, again, adding 10k years pushes Year Zero up 579 years. Same for other calendars.

    The one monkey wrench in this is astronomical dates. There are known dates of some events such as eclipses that would have to me mapped to the new calendar but -5,000HE is not that much different from 15,000BC/BCE. The addition of a Year Zero helps in calculations.

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    I can’t help but to be an engineer whose job is to “fix things.” Here’s a fix for something that you never knew was broken.

    Now get off my lawn.

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    1. Nothing special about him. Pick any other person born BC died AD.
    2. Like April 2, 2842 BC or something.

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  • Unseen Effects of the War on Drugs

    I have argued for a long time that the War on Drugs is the most destructive domestic policy since slavery. When you look at the inordinate rates of incarceration, it is best viewed as a direct continuation of Jim Crow laws and their impact on minority subjugation.

    While we all see the damage of the Drug War and the consequences inflicted on all involved, there are invisible and pernicious side effects that mostly go unnoticed. During my time in my hostel in Vietnam, I experienced something firsthand that often goes under the radar. The foreseeable consequences shoved down your throat.

    The guy at the front desk at my place offered me some weed. After a long day in the heat showing my mother around Hanoi, I was more than happy to purchase. I get into my room, had several drinks and smoked a large joint in the bathroom.

    I proceeded to chill, read and listen to music. And then the disturbance began.

    My private room is at the end of the hall. I hear a man and a woman, both in their early 20s by the sound of it, start to argue. It sounded like the man had gotten her down from the rooftop bar to begin his tirade.

    He is yelling at her. Something about her needing to “open [her] eyes” about something. It seemed very obvious that he was railing into her about how she could be so blind to not see how her boyfriend/significant other was cheating on her. I could be wrong about that, but that’s the gist that I got.

    I heard violent sounds. He wasn’t hitting her, but was banging doors and hollow metal, probably an air-conditioner unit. He was violently punching his own hand as punctuation. I could hear when she spoke but not what she said.

    I could only hear her sniffling and weeping.

    I was very concerned. I got on the floor and listened through the crack below the door. I got a cup to put to my ear to hear, though of no real advancement in my acoustic surveillance. The beratement continued.

    Amidst many slammed doors and stops-and-starts, a lull blanketed the hallway. I paused in introspection. My brain wants me to intervene. I’ve gotten one beating in my life and that was in Germany preventing a girl from being raped. Three men took turns kicking me in the face until I was unconscious. I was broken, but I’m very proud of that moment. I didn’t know if I’d have to do such a thing again.

    It began again. But this time it was another voice doing the shouting. I gathered that it was the boyfriend who had been called out. More door slamming. More punching of metal. More violent fists in palms.

    I decided to do something. I have two titanium hips and there’s a big concrete staircase. I can’t get directly involved, I figured. But maybe my appearance and a wary eye would keep people on their better behavior. I get dressed and put my shoes on.

    As I went to open the door, a sickening wave fell over me. I smelled my room. I evaluated myself. I am half-drunk, very stoned, and my room reeks like Paul McCartney’s in 1966. I took my hand off the knob.

    I thought about calling the lobby for help. But even then I realized that I would be a person-of-interest, and I certainly didn’t want to get in drug trouble in Commie Vietnam while on vacation with my mother.

    I was disgusted with myself. I kept listening and monitoring the situation. But I didn’t dare step outside my enclave and approach a confrontation where it sounded like imminent violence was about to ensue.

    I was too terrified to try to help this poor girl who was surrounded by at least two–drunk–large men who were doing everything that they could to intimidate her. Or possibly worse.

    This is just one of the evil, unseen effects of the Drug War. See Something; Say Something, they preach. But how many crimes go unreported because the witness is afraid to talk to the authorities or to testify because of some bullshit drug charge is hanging over them? I wasn’t being threatened by some thug or a criminal syndicate. I felt threatened by what the government could do to me and how they could ruin my life. All because of a plant.

    There isn’t much of a difference between the government and the Mafia. Punishment is punishment, regardless of who your jury is.

    I am sickened by how I responded to these external forces. But I do know why I acted the way that I did. It doesn’t make me feel better. Rather the opposite.

    People are handicapped by these immoral laws. They don’t report things that they know are wrong because they are trained to be fearful of the imminent reprisal. Is my getting beaten and sent to jail for smoking weed worth a girl getting thrashed around a bit?

    It’s a deeply disturbing calculus that goes through your head when you attempt to rationalize your decision to do nothing.

    A law on the books actively prevented me from helping a person in a very violent confrontation. That is the effect of these laws. I can only gather that this is how they want me to feel.

    Helpless. Alone. Dependent.

    And any attempt to do any good is struck down with the violent gavel of the God of Government.

    That’s the problem. Good people afraid to do good things. Because the punishment that might follow isn’t worth the gamble.

  • Disney and Marvel king and queen pimp of copyright kingdom.

    This article is inspired by the many mentions on this site of Star Wars, Marvel, Disney and how their SJW leanings  may be hurting their business. I have a theory that centers on trademark and copyright law about how in the cases of Marvel many of these crazy SJW stunts are actually evidence of Disney playing the long game and in the case of other properties such as Star Wars and The Muppets show that the company is largely being propelled by a few divisions while the rest coasts or bumbles around aimlessly.

    I will start with a basic and not at all legally sound explanation of trademarks and copyrights. Trademarks are basically legal claims towards branding, brand names and mascots can be trademarked in perpetuity as long as they remain active. This can be confusing because characters can have works that exist in the public domain such as certain books or films but still be trademarked characters. This is possible because the copyright of the work which features that character can expire without the characters trademark expiring allowing that particular book or film to be reproduced for free while other uses of that character would still be protected by trademark or copyright.

    Copyright is the other half of the equation and the concept is pretty clear from the term, it is the right to copy something. Copyright protects specific works rather than brands the way  trademarks do. The original post colonial copyright in the United States was 14 years with the option to renew for another 14 years; by the early 20th century this had expanded to 28 years with an option for a renewal of another 28 years. In 1976, this was expanded to 75 years for corporate owned works or the life of the author plus 50 years, and in 1998–with a major push from Disney–it was expanded to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication for corporate works or the life of the author plus 70 years.

    The impact copyright can have on media franchises can get very complicated. A great example of this is the Wizard of Oz franchise. Wizard of Oz started out as a media franchise in the early 20th century with books, plays and silent films but it is the 1939 film that has become the definitive version in the minds of the general public. The original wave of books, plays and silent films are all in the public domain which means free of copyright but the 1939 film is still under copyright.

    There are distinct elements to the 1939 film such as songs, plot points and design elements such as the ruby slippers that are not public domain. The shoes were originally silver but were changed to red to showcase the then still novel format of technicolor film. The books status as public domain allows anyone to create a sequel or new interpretation of Wizard of Oz but the copyright protecting the distinctive elements of the definitive version along with the lack of a young Judy Garlands has prevented any of these from becoming seen as legitimate entries of the franchise, including two attempts by Disney. The extension of copyrights benefits almost every media company but  I would argue that this is a major element of Disney’s business strategy and is used to add value to their merchandising and theme park divisions. The affect of this is most notable in the Disney Princess franchise which earns Disney millions from trademarked versions of public domain characters. It is also used recently in their live action film division through the remakes of their animated films.

    The deeper use of the ins and outs of copyright laws hasn’t really expanded to companies they have purchased, such as Pixar and Lucasfilms which is responsible for Star Wars and allegedly more Indiana Jones. The exception to that I would say is Marvel. I think the difference is because of the age of Marvel places much more of the companies value closer to entering public domain. Marvel started in the late ’30s with characters such as Captain America, Sub-Mariner and other members of The All Winners Squad with the majority of Marvels most famous characters from the ’60s or ’70s. Marvel began their version of using the ruby slipper like leverage before they were bought by Disney and it has accelerated since then. I think that a major reason Marvel even still publishes comics is to strengthen their copyrights covering more and more situations making it harder and harder to write a story using their characters without infringing on a copyright. Evidence of this is how their publishing strategy changed after the success of the X-men and Spider-man films.

    Marvel’s top property for decades was X-men to the point where often any book with an X on it would sell better than most of The Avengers solo books. Marvel began to shift the focus of their comics away from the X-men with events such as House of M removing power from many mutants and towards the Avengers adding Spider-man and Wolverine to the line up. This was done without any certainty that the sales of the comics would be maintained. Before this the Avengers were a team of former A-listers who had been surpassed in popularity by Spiderman and the X-men who previously were too valuable to be in The Avengers. This shift took place because the film rights to many of their characters were no longer owned by Marvel, because they were sold off during a bankruptcy. The Avengers film rights were the ones that didn’t sell and adding their star characters to the franchise helped move the focus to the avengers.

    Another example is the comics recent focus on The Inhumans. Marvel intended to replace the mutants with the inhumans because of their loss of the film rights. They did things like making some of the recently depowered mutants inhumans, retconning characters who were assumed-but-not-certain-mutants as mutants, and even in a few cases retconning characters who had previously been retconned to be mutants to cash in on the xmen’s popularity. The Inhumans before this were supporting characters in Fantastic Four who had never sustained an ongoing series more than a couple years. They also had major event series around this time which connected them with all the other ongoing comics. Marvel’s emphasis was no longer on selling comics but using the comics to lay down more copyright, and retrain and test what people think of the characters to prep for future movies and tv shows. They do something similar in the cartoons which feature upcoming characters such as Nova and Amadeus Cho.

    I also believe that much of their SJW recasting of their characters is Marvel woke-proofing their franchises. Peter Parker’s adventures will eventually become public domain even if eventually is a long time from now (especially if it counts as 70 years after Stan Lee’s death) but Marvel can keep the trademark of Spider-Man in perpetuity and they just have to change who the public thinks of as Spider-man. They have tried this with several characters but the only major character they have made significant progress with is Spider-man and the upcoming animated film starring Miles Morales (a half black half Hispanic alternate universe character) Into the Spiderverse will reinforce this.

     

  • Contaminants of “Emerging Concern”

     

    I’ve been thinking about writing an article on this for some time as an example of the runaway regulatory state, since it is within my field of expertise. And because it is also a fine example of a regulatory agency finding excuses to regulate more things just because they can, regardless of whether there is an actual quantifiable threat to human health and the environment. So what the hell, I’m giving it a shot, and if the admins choose to post it, feel free to have at me.

    I have been in the environmental consulting and remediation field in New Jersey for approximately 30 years. New Jersey is a fine place for such work, since it has been industrialized since the early 1800s; in fact, Paterson was one of the very first industrial cities in the nation. Until about the 1970s, there were few rules regarding handling of hazardous materials and wastes, so there is ample work here for someone in the business of environmental remediation.

    The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, (NJDEP) has recently developed policies and requirements regarding chemicals known as Contaminants of Emerging Concern. These contaminants are chemicals that have been used in various manufacturing and production processes, but were previously not identified as contaminants of concern, and could not be easily identified via laboratory analytical techniques and detection limits. In other words, these contaminants were previously not a concern because available laboratory methodologies were not sensitive enough to detect them at the levels they are typically present. These chemicals can be found in drugs, fragrances, detergents, pesticides and disinfectants, among other common products.

    Due to the new analytical abilities of laboratories, it has allowed detection of the exceedingly low levels at which these chemicals typically occur in ground water. Although the understanding of the toxicity and health effects of these chemicals is still developing, the NJDEP has issued guidelines under authority from the Technical Requirements for Site Remediation, N.J.A.C. 7:26E which requires all contamination, including all discharged substances, hazardous waste, and pollutants, must be remediated. In other words, even though there is no data which demonstrates human toxicity at these low levels, the State is regulating it anyway, by claiming authority under a broad general statute.

    Therefore, responsible parties at a site under environmental investigation must ensure that the potential presence of these chemicals must be investigated if there is any (any!) potential that they could have been used or stored on site or were contained in any of the products and materials used on site prior to closing the case.

    A little more background: In New Jersey, there is a program under the Site Remediation Reform Act which licenses environmental professionals with specified education, training, and experience to become Licensed Site Remediation Professionals, or LSRPs. If any site in New Jersey requires any environmental remediation, it must be performed by an LSRP, and only the LSRP can eventually close the case by issuing a letter known as a Response Action Outcome, or RAO.

    Since these contaminants include chemicals such as Per- and Polyfluoroakyl Substances (PFAS) that are not included in the standard Target Analyte List, analysis for these chemicals must be specified to the lab if the LSRP suspects that they may have been present on the site. Although the science regarding health effects is still emerging (currently no data showing human toxicity), the NJDEP typically uses advisory limits recommended by the New Jersey Drinking Water Quality Institute (DWQI), which are overly conservative. The recommended limits for different PFAS range from 10 nanograms per liter (10ng/L) or 10 parts per trillion (ppt) to 70 ng/L, or 70ppt. Therefore the laboratory must be prepared to achieve the required detection limits for analyses in order to properly investigate the ground water at the site.

    Since these Contaminants of Emerging Concern can be found in a wide variety of products and materials at extremely low levels, there are recommendations for precautions to be taken when conducting sampling, in order to avoid cross-contamination and potential false positives. Among the recommendations are: don’t wear coated Tyvek protective coveralls; don’t use Teflon sampling equipment, even though Teflon sampling equipment is required for all other ground water sampling; don’t wear clothing that has been washed using fabric softener or certain detergents; and avoid fast food containers and wrappers, as they may contain PFAS. That’s right, something that is safe enough to be used to wrap and contain food for human consumption may cause an exceedance of the regulatory standard in your ground water sample if it cross-contaminates it.

    So, even though people are constantly exposed to these very low levels of PFAS in clothes treated with fabric softener, fragrances, and even fast food containers and wrappers, which are deemed safe for those purposes, and there is currently no data showing human toxicity from low-level exposure, the State has decided that since modern laboratory equipment can now detect these very low-levels (parts per trillion!) of these substances, it will now regulate them, and require full investigation and remediation, at considerable expense, because they can.

    After all, the regulatory state isn’t just going to grow organically, it needs a little help now and then.

  • You’re Doing it Wrong – #1

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    A while back there was a post where someone referenced the Digital Time that was proposed by the French Revolution. Well, arguments about our calendar are really useless.

    Or are they.

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    Your calendar: Summer (the season) begins on June 21st.

    Status: You’re doing it wrong.

    I can’t believe the resistance that I get about this topic. It seems pretty simple to me. Why is June 22nd a summer day but June 20th belongs to spring? Chasing that question down led me to some surprising results.

    If you plot the deviation of daylight hours over the year it looks like a sine wave.

    But this looks weird. The days of summer don’t start until the longest day of the year?

    And, I had always wondered about Ground Hog Day. What was its significance? Wasn’t the first day of spring always fixed at 6 weeks after GHD? Spring is delayed until March 21st? Duh!

    It turns out that the dates of the seasons are fairly arbitrary.
    In fact, I cannot find where the dates were set to the current observation1. The “usual” observance doesn’t seem to have much of a tradition behind it other than it being the system in use.

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    So, what would be a logical definition of the seasons? It seems to me that the best layout would be based upon the duration of the solar day. To me, the Summer Solstice would not be the beginning of summer but rather the midpoint.

    Well, what do you know; this has been the standard recogntion for hundreds of years!

    Suddenly the Ground Hog Day tradition makes sense. Spring starts on Feb 2 (halfway between the Solstice and the Equinox) but rodent-shadow “Spring” starts on the Equinox instead as an abberation. May Day never made sense to me (other than the Soviet orgasm) but now it was simple: It’s the first day of Summer. Hallowe’en, the first day of Winter. Autumn begins on August 1st.

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    The earth has changed orientation over time and the alignment of the seasons has changed as well. If we were to do a strict reckoning then we would use the last graph, summer starting about May 6th and the other seasons following every 91.25 days. To choose the traditional dates (May 1st, August 1st, October 31st, February 2nd) seems to me to be a reasonable compromise, bringing matters back to traditional observations while being closer to the solar midpoints.

    I’m trying to keep weather out of this discussion, but for my region, November is a winter month. I could argue spring and fall, but May is a summer month here, as well. The USWS is off of my schedule slightly as they say that summer begins on June 1st (all others follow). It seems to me to be a rather arbitrary choice based more upon weather than anything else. It is their setpoint, not mine2. But basing the reckoning of seasons upon the weather makes little sense in places like Hawai’i. My friend spent some time there and mentioned that there is no weather segment on the local news. Every day had basically the same high and low temperatures year around. If there was something else (“Typhoon On The Way”) then it was news, not weather.

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    I can’t help but to be an engineer whose job is to “fix things.” Here’s a fix for something that you never knew was broken.

    Now get off my lawn.

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    1. I haven’t looked very hard

    2. They are the “Weather Service” after all

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  • Twitter: Private Enterprise or Public Platform?

    So over on Twitter, conservative and liberty-minded users are pretty constantly complaining about the bias of Twitter, the company. They accuse Twitter of “silencing” and “censoring” non-progressive viewpoints. Of “shadow-banning” conservative users. Of suspending or deleting accounts willy-nilly for various unwoke infractions. Of being “non-transparent.”

    Yes, this is highly likely.

    Ben Shapiro said this about the ‘shadow banning’ allegations:

    (Direct link – I think)

    And Jim Hanson wrote an opinion piece including this:

    What about the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech? Like it or not, it protects us all – from the far right to the far left and everyone in between. Whether because of an inadvertent computer glitch or by design, shadow banning is wrong and, frankly, un-American. If Twitter means what it says, I look forward to the quick end to this dangerous and abhorrent practice.

    Here is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    And here are some additional court findings.

    What about the Twitter Terms of Service? The TOS include this:

    Our Services evolve constantly. As such, the Services may change from time to time, at our discretion. We may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services or any features within the Services to you or to users generally. We also retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time. We may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, suspend or terminate users, and reclaim usernames without liability to you.

    Twitter is a private enterprise. They are not the government. They do have the ability to limit who uses their (free!) platform and how it is used.

    Don’t like it? Don’t be on Twitter.

    Go ahead. Convince me otherwise.

  • Credentialism and Bureaucracy: 2018 Edition

    Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. No, wait. Wrong story.

    Let me start again.

    In a former life, I was the owner of a hard-won and extensive set of healthcare credentials issued by the State of New York, and some other granting agencies and organizations. After I left NYS, I decided not to continue in that line of work and consequently did not transfer my credentials elsewhere to keep them active. This turns out to have been a huge miscalculation.

    For reasons too mundane and numerous to list, I’ve now decided that perhaps I want to get back into a very narrow segment of the field. The very specific skills and knowledge needed are ones for which I was universally lauded, and were a tiny portion of my previous scope of practice.

    Looking around at various job openings, I see that I am very well-qualified…except I don’t have the standalone piece of paper now needed for this.

    OK. So, how can I obtain the piece of paper? Take a certification exam. Excellent. I kick ass on certification exams, and my skills and knowledge are more than compatible with the current standards. I can do the work and can pass the exam, I should be able to get the gig.

    Nope. Can’t sit for the exam unless I have a different piece of paper from an “approved” program, attesting to my successful completion of a certain number of hours of training under the accredited program, the curriculum of which I could actually teach…and, in fact, used to teach in NYS.

    But, OK. I get it. This isn’t too different from the first time around. I’ll find a program at a college and enroll.

    Within a day of applying to the closest institution of higher education offering the required program this autumn, I was accepted. Awesome, no?

    No.

    I received a packet of information via email with the requirements that must be met before I can even register for the specific courses needed for the credentialing program.

    WTF? I can’t register for the courses even though I was accepted?

    No.

    First, I must attend an orientation session for the program. Well, that seems OK.

    There is only one offered this entire summer for a program beginning at the end of August. Still, I’m thinking, good thing I found out about it in time! I’ll sign up for it.

    Nope. No reservations or sign-ups taken, even though there is limited seating. But if you don’t get a spot in the room, you are out of luck until…next summer!


    [REDACTED EXPLETIVES]

    OK, so I’ll add it to my calendar, make some arrangements that are disruptive to the entire household, and will make sure I am there a couple hours early.

    In the meantime, let’s take another look at the list of requirements and see what else I can check off.

    *double take*

    They want…my ACT and SAT scores and high school transcripts? I graduated from high school in the early 1980s (and they know this), and I took those exams my junior year of high school. Why in the world would they want those?!

    To prove “English proficiency” and “Algebra readiness.”

    Now, I am a regularly published writer and professional editor with tear sheets, books, and lists of credits. I took higher math (unavoidable with a math professor dad!), but there is absolutely no math, and indeed, very little arithmetic, needed in this field. WTF?

    You guessed it, my Glib friends! Turns out those are some kind of government mandate. Being a published writer in English language magazines is not considered “proof” of English language literacy. Why? Because that isn’t on the list from the government.

    (Digression. High school guidance secretary, after several email exchanges: What was your name when you were here again?
    Me: Same as it is now.
    Secretary: Um…ok, I was…um, just checking. I’ll have to get back to you.
    Me: *head desk*)

    Ever dealt with the SAT and ACT folks trying to get nearly-40-year-old records? Gee, I have now. I don’t recommend it. Expensive. And takes weeks longer than I have to obtain the results.

    Because, remember, I can’t register for the courses before I get this info. Oh, and, hey, there is only one section of this program being offered at a time I can take it. And, “don’t delay on sending in your requirements as courses tend to fill quickly.”

    (I hear you wondering, “Why can’t she just use her college transcripts?” Because in the honors program I was in, we could design our own curriculum and neither English comp nor math had any place in what I was studying so aren’t on those transcripts.)

    Well, this is silly. I’ll research in what other ways I can “prove” these things.

    Turns out I can take placement tests. Seriously. Well, OK, if I have to, I can do that sooner than the other stuff will arrive.

    Except. That costs money. And the tests can only be done supervised, on-site. During limited hours which are, again, household disruptive. With an appointment that is weeks out, really pushing my registration window.

    Hmm. Before I spend any more cash, I better call the program chair and find out if there are even any openings in the course sections for which I need to register.

    “We don’t really know.”

    “Isn’t it shown right there in the computer roster?”

    “Well, things change a lot over the summer, so we can’t really know right now. I would advise you to keep going through the process and then try to register.”

    [MORE REDACTED EXPLETIVES]

    Back to the damn list.

    Proof of Residency. Check!
    Proof of Citizenship. Two for two!

    New student orientation. Crap. “NSO will teach you how to succeed in a college environment!” At least as a “non-traditional” student, I will be able to complete this as a series of webinars. With tests for each section and a final exam which must be passed with over 70% correct answers. Truth. Could I make that up?

    Meeting in person with academic advisor in counseling center. Really? For a certificate program? Yes! Mandatory, because it additionally grants college credit. Daytime hours, limited for summer, no appointments.

    Required tests and/or immunizations for healthcare programs, which must be done at the institution’s health center (yes, limited, daytime hours):

    TB 2-Step (9-day process) $9 ea
    OR T-Spot (1-2 Business day) $54 ea
    Hepatitis A Titre $22 ea
    Hepatitis B (series of 3) $46 ea
    Hepatitis B Titre (quantitative antibody) $35
    Hepatitis C Antibody $22
    Measles (proof of two) $78
    Measles Titre $35
    Mumps (proof of two) $78
    Mumps Titre $52
    Rubella (proof of two) $78
    Rubella Titre $17
    Varicella Titre $46
    Tdap $46
    Flu Shot $35

    Notice something about many of those? If the titre doesn’t provide a satisfactory result, the shots are needed. They are mostly series. Which must be spaced out by several weeks. Which takes me out of the registration window completely. (Did I ever have rubella? Doubtful. Can’t ask Mom, she rudely died a few years ago, not anticipating the inconvenience to me now.)

    Physical Exam (price varies)
    Eye Exam (price varies)

    Drug Screening – 10 panel, $50. Must be paid first at college cashier’s office after standing in line (daytime only hours, “limited for summer” !, then paperwork and receipt delivered to program secretary’s office, who will then issue the paperwork (“within 3 or 4 business days, but not Fridays during the summer”) to take to an off-site, non-local provider, with…yes, you know it, limited daytime hours, walk-ins only, no appointments.

    Sheesh. This is starting to add up. Oh, yeah, and I have to pay for all this stuff before knowing if I’ll get a spot in the program.

    Back to the list.

    Fingerprinting $28 – outside vendor, not local, limited daytime hours, walk-in, no appointments. *sigh*
    Background check $45 (Did I remember to list every address I’ve ever had?)

    Healthcare Provider CPR/AED – off-site through AHA. This one, at least, will be easy to meet as the classes are routinely scheduled for evenings and Saturdays at loads of local venues.

    Oh, look! Here’s another little wrinkle. This program is only offered with an August starting date. All the above requirements have to be met within 12 months of beginning the program in August. If I go ahead and pay for everything, get all the documents and tests completed during July to increase the chances of being able to register before the program is filled, and ultimately there is no space in the program this autumn…I have to do it all again to try to get in next year, because July is not within 12 months of next August.

    But, hey, that’s the end of the list!

    There is a cheery little message at the bottom:

    Notification will be sent to your email account when you have been granted permission to register for the program courses. If you have met all other program requirements, you will be able to register for any section that has availability, as long as the registration window is still open. Remember: enrolling in one course does not mean you will be able to enroll in the other courses required for the program. You may have to register for those courses during a later program year.

    TL:DR – I’m beginning to see why there is a shortage of healthcare workers, yo.