Digging Up a Nuclear Bomb

More about the Goldsboro Incident here.

CovCath, Twitter, the Trump Presidency and a Nation Unhinged

Saturday afternoon and evening, I got sucked into the apparently fake controversy in which a kid in a MAGA hat appears to be standing in the path of a Native American protester from the Indigenous Peoples march, while his classmates surround them laughing and jeering.  I watched the video, and my initial reaction was, "man, these MAGA folks are assholes."  Then I saw this video from another angle.

My reaction to the second video perspective was a little different.  It hit a little closer to home.  First off, seeing the guy in the Covington Catholic  sweatshirt made me realize these kids were from the local area, and also Catholic.  Secondly, I saw a kid in the background wearing a Notre Dame cap.  That is my alma mater.  Finally, assuming these kids were ultra-conservative Trump supporters spouting racist crap about foreigners (build that Wall), I felt like I was looking at myself in high school.

I tried to write a post late Saturday night entitled, "In Partial Defense of the Worst Kid In America."  The gist of it was going to be that, I, like that kid, was once a super-conservative supporter of the GOP who held some pretty racist beliefs, so there is the real possibility that the kid will grow up to hold totally different views as an adult.  That pretty well describes my arc from high school kid who listened to WLW around the clock and believed the United States was being taken over by the Japanese, to an adult who finds conservative politics to be generally racist arguments that Democrats and minorities are moochers, and that social welfare programs should be slashed so that tax cuts can be given to the wealthy.  I gave up on it because it was late, I was tired and half-drunk, and I wasn't sure how in-depth I wanted to be about a few of the things I'm most ashamed of from my youth.

Come Sunday, when additional video came out, and it now appears that the supposed showdown was staged by the handful of Native American protesters, I ended up feeling bad that I was quick to assume the kids were being assholes, and that the furor raised by the Twitter mob could end up benefiting Trump's bid for re-election.  It is a pretty good example of how easily we can be swayed to believe the worst in our fellow citizens who happen to be in the opposite political camp, and how we can dramatically overreact. Even on Saturday afternoon and evening, when I assumed the kids were being assholes, I felt bad for the school administrators who were caught up in this political firestorm.  They were suddenly being overwhelmed with terrible publicity and national media attention because a group of kids were involved in a public incident, and the school was being overwhelmed with vitriol.  The administrators had to try to get out in front of the news even though they didn't really have any idea what had happened.  After the additional footage came out, the case for feeling bad for the administrators and students is overwhelming. 

I am absolutely no fan of President Trump, and I hope he suffers a landslide defeat in two years.  I equate MAGA hats with racism.  When I saw stories that the additional video showed the kids to be innocent and the Native American protester sparked the incident, I didn't want to believe it.  And yet, at the height of the Twitter freakout, when I thought the kids were the assholes in the situation, I was feeling badly for the school administrators and could look at the kid in the center of the incident and empathize with him.  If I was feeling that then, you can imagine how Trump supporters will see all of this.  It is a massive own-goal for everyone who wants to see Trump defeated. 

Yesterday was the second anniversary of Trump's inauguration.  We have two more years of this pressure-cooker political environment which will be played out in a brutal election campaign.  The events of this weekend will most likely not be the most divisive we'll see.  It is going to be miserable, and I'm afraid the wounds to our civil society are going to be even deeper than I believed before.  Everyone, myself included, needs to take a deep breath and try to back down the rhetoric. 

Early January Links

It looks like the National Championship game might end up 54-52 or something.  Here are a few links for your reading pleasure:

The Ball Family Circus Comes To Ohio - Deadspin

Chicago Catholics struggle to build future with fewer priests as parishes shrink, cash dwindles – Chicago Tribune.  Not surprising, but kind of sad anyway.

St. Louis city and county: Divorced in 1876. Remarried in 2020? – St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  The massive number of municipalities in St. Louis County is crazy.  One only has 13 residents.

Wettest-Year Records for 2018, Take Two – Weather Underground.  So much rain.

Scientists Have 'Hacked Photosynthesis' In Search Of More Productive Crops - The Salt

Putin says Russia will supply soy beans, poultry meat to China – Reuters.  Probably just bullshit to rock the boat politically, but we really are shooting ourselves in the foot. 

The Farm Bureau: Big Oil’s Unnoticed Ally Fighting Climate Science and Policy – Inside Climate News

Fracking’s Secret Problem—Oil Wells Aren’t Producing as Much as Forecast – Wall Street Journal

Trump Has Promised to Bring Jobs Back. His Tariffs Threaten to Send Them Away. - New York Times.  The steel and aluminum tariffs just punish metal consuming manufacturers.  More foot-shooting.

How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success – The New Yorker  

Donald Trump Was Never Vetted - New York Magazine.   When people are voting for him because The Apprentice convinced them that Trump is a genius businessman, I'm not sure more vetting was going to convince them he's a fuckup.

American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth – New York Magazine. 

The Businesspeople Who Have Helped Enable Steve King’s Rise - Iowa Informer.  Looks like a who's who of Iowa business.

This Map Shows Where in the World the U.S. Military Is Combatting Terrorism – Smithsonian.  It would almost be easier to show where the U.S. military isn't.

A Christmas Story in Butter

The butter cow display at the 2018 Ohio State Fair honors "A Christmas Story:"

I like it, although I like all butter and butter sculptures.

Now That's Big

World's largest free span bin from the inside! 156' diameter. 2 million bushel capacity. @BigShowFarm @WHORadio #TeamSukup #AgTwitter #Plant18 #Ethanol pic.twitter.com/JVbcRHJrtt

— Sukup Manufacturing (@SukupMfg) April 25, 2018

Last of April Mid-Week Links

More stories for you:

The Mobster Who Bought His Son a Hockey Team – The Atlantic.  This is as good as it sounds.

ESPN Fawns Over The Intelligence Of Trevor Bauer, Who Is A Big Dumb Asshole - Deadspin.  I really have no opinion about Trevor Bauer, but this made me laugh, and the twitter exchange is amazing.

Yangxiang aims high with sows on many floors – Pig Progress.  I have no idea if this is true, but if it is, it sounds like a horror show.

Remembering the ‘Spooky Wisdom’ of Our Agrarian Past – The American Conservative.  I still don't think the phase of the moon has anything to do with setting fence posts.

Bosch Says It's Made a Breakthrough That Can Save Diesel Engines – Bloomberg

The Key to Everything - New York Review of Books

The Renegade Sheriffs – The New Yorker

Church of the Donald – Politico and Maybe It’s Time to Admit That The “Grotesque Caricature” of White Evangelicals is the Reality - Religion Dispatches.  These bother me more than most things Donald. 

Why Trump Gets Away With Lying – Bloomberg.  This makes an important point.  I have a hard time talking about Trump without saying, "dumbfuck" or "suckers," but that isn't going to sway any of his supporters, and probably will just make them dig in their heels deeper.  That's a challenging situation that requires more of me (and is one of the reasons I haven't written much about Trump).

Mick Mulvaney Says the Quiet Part Out Loud – The Atlantic.  Yeah, draining the swamp.  

The Reinvention of America – James Fallows.  He's more optimistic than I am, but that is a good thing (honestly, it is often hard to be more pessimistic than me).

This animal kills more people in a day than sharks do in a century – Gatesnotes.  Trump is far from alone when it comes to freaking out about sharks.

Mid-April Midweek Links

I managed to find a few decent stories in the midst of all the crap out there:

The one baseball's been waiting for – ESPN.  This dude is fascinating.

The Team With the Three-Man Rotation – Wall Street Journal

White Sox, Rays play in front of reported crowd of 974 – MSN News.  From one of the biggest baseball-haters I know.

The Wonder Protein That Makes Cheese So Stretchy - The Atlantic 

In the Battle for the American West, the Cowboys Are Losing – Wall Street Journal

Giant genitals were the downfall of some ancient crustaceans – Nature. Uh oh.

Ocean circulation is changing, and we need to know why - Nature 

Lovely Weather We’re Having … Now Who Will Save Us? - Belt Magazine.  I just came across Belt Magazine, but they have some terrific articles that are right in my wheel house.

More Mississippi bridges added to list; counties get 24 hours to begin closures – Mississippi Today.  The Republican Party wants to make the rest of the country just like Mississippi.

Why the U.S. Targeted This Russian Oligarch – Bloomberg.  I realy think Trump missed his calling as a mobster.

Due Process - Lapham’s Quarterly.  Very interesting.  I personally see the regulatory state as a necessary part of modern life, but find everything else to be dead-on.

Data Visualization and Cholera: An Unexpected Connection - Visual Capitalist

A Limb From Lego

Building a Prosthetic Arm With Lego from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

U.S. Wins Curling Gold

I would say this may be one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history:

About a week ago U.S. men's curling team was dead on the ice sheet. A 5-8 loss to Norway in round robin play left the USA with a 2-4 record and three basically must-win matches to go. U.S. skip John Shuster, thinking he had authored yet another Olympic implosion, walked with his family through the Olympic Park while his wife tried to convince him not to give up.
Eventually he sat down in the grass, looked around him and thought, "This is silly. This is the Olympics. I feel like I'm getting my heart broken by this sport and it's just silly." He says he went to bed that night and woke up the next morning and saw the story of U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, who endured years of shock defeats in the Olympics only to win the final Olympic race of his career.
From then on, Shuster and his team ("Team Reject" as Shuster jokingly called them, referencing their exclusion from USA Curling's High Performance Program after a disappointing showing at Sochi) of Tyler George, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner won five straight, culminating in today's shock victory over top-ranked Sweden to give the USA its second ever medal in curling, its first since earning bronze at the 2006 Turin games, and its first ever gold medal in the sport.
A large and loud U.S. contingent gave the arena a home game feel.

So the U.S. won gold in womens hockey and mens curling, and the Canadians didn't.  That has to to be a bitter pill to swallow north of the 49th parallel.

The Physics of Curling

The New Yorker explains that physicists aren't really sure why curling stones curl in the way they do.  There are multiple theories:

In June, 2013, Nyberg and his colleagues made that argument in an equation-laden paper in the journal Tribology Letters (“tribology” being the fancy word for “friction science”). Not long before, in the journal Wear, they had proposed a model of their own, which became known as scratch-guiding theory. Using images from an electron microscope, the researchers showed that, as a curling stone slides along, it leaves fine scratches on the ice in the direction of rotation. The scratches are laid down by the front edge of the running band, but when the back edge encounters them it has a tendency to follow them, causing the stone to curl in the direction of rotation. In follow-up experiments, Nyberg’s group found that, by scratching the ice themselves in various ways, they could alter the trajectory of sliding stones, even ones that weren’t rotating. In one setup, they created a lane in which the ice was scratched in one direction and then, farther on, in the other direction. Then they slid a stone down the lane and watched as it curled, first one way and then the other.

“All of this added up to a mechanism that we felt was reasonable,” Nyberg said. He feels further vindicated by a controversy that broke out a couple of years ago: curlers were using new brooms that scratched the ice rather than merely warming it, enabling them to control the curl like never before. The “Frankenbrooms” have since been banned by the World Curling Federation. “I don’t think they’d read our papers, though,” Nyberg said.

One person who did read Nyberg’s papers was Shegelski, and in January, 2016, he wrote a comment piece in Tribology Letters that called the dismissal of asymmetrical-friction models “inappropriate.” Nyberg and his colleagues soon replied, reiterating their earlier points. When I spoke with Shegelski, he noted that, while scratch-guiding theory is intriguing, the theorists haven’t attempted to demonstrate that the mechanism can generate a metre-wide curl, much less explain why the curl is the same regardless of the rotation rate. “The fact is, in a theory, you need to have quantitative results, and there aren’t any,” he said.
Recently, Shegelski teamed up with Edward Lozowski, a physicist and atmospheric scientist at the University of Alberta, to reconsider the curling conundrum. Some years earlier, Lozowski had published papers on the science of bobsledding and speed skating. “Ed is just a wizard at the physics of ice,” Shegelski told me. Together, the two men developed an improved explanation, which they unveiled in the latest issue of Cold Regions Science and Technology. They call it the pivot-slide model. Lozowski, whom I spoke to over Skype, explained it to me by holding up a hair comb and running his finger slowly across the teeth. Notice, he said, that his fingertip adheres to each tooth long enough to bend it, until the elastic force becomes large enough that the tooth breaks free and snaps back into place—that’s stick-slip friction. The same force will cause a circular saw, when it binds, to jump up and try to pivot around the obstacle. That’s what’s happening with a curling stone, he said.
“Every time the running band encounters a pebble, it catches on it,” Lozowski explained. “And, because ice is elastic, the pebble is deflected, then snaps back, and the rock moves on, pivoting during the deflection.” The pebbles and the pivots are small but they are many, and Lozowski and Shegelski calculated that the net result is enough to curl the stone by a metre. They emphasized that there is still a lot of research to be done—making models of the curling ice, quantifying the number of pebbles per unit area. “It could be all wrong,” Lozowski said. “But whether it’s right or not, at least it’s testable.” Nyberg, for one, is unpersuaded. “To be honest, I don’t really understand what they’re getting at,” he said.

That's a lot of complex theory about sliding rocks on ice, but they are pretty fancy rocks, and it isn't just your average ice, so I guess that part of it makes sense to me.  Not much of the rest does.  I would probably just stick to drinking beer and sliding rocks and saying, wow, look how much that curved.

If Obama Did This...

WTF?

Fighting California's Wildfires

What is a 179D Deduction?

The Des Moines Register has some interesting information about an obscure tax rule.  The craziest part is that if a government building installs energy-saving building features, the architect, engineer or builder could score a tax deduction paid for by taxpayers.  That is incredible. 

The Amazing Idiot Asshole Identifier

If you need to select who the dumbest asshole in a particular group is, let rural people vote on it.

Hot Dog Eating Record

On a lighter note, but no less a sign of American dysfunction, FiveThirtyEight gives us this:

God Bless You, Mr. Oliver

Eat shit, Bob. Also, fuck you Don Blankenship and Don Trump.

The Qatar Airlift

This probably isn't the best idea for a desert country with no rain-fed agriculture, but it is notable:

The showdown between Qatar and its neighbors has disrupted trade, split families and threatened to alter long-standing geopolitical alliances. It’s also prompted one Qatari businessman to fly 4,000 cows to the Gulf desert in an act of resistance and opportunity to fill the void left by a collapse in the supply of fresh milk.
It will take as many as 60 flights for Qatar Airways to deliver the 590-kilogram beasts that Moutaz Al Khayyat, chairman of Power International Holding, bought in Australia and the U.S. “This is the time to work for Qatar,” he said....
Most of the fresh milk and dairy products for Doha’s more than 1 million population came from Saudi Arabia up until a week ago. That milk is getting scarce after the kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and two allies cut transport links with a country that spends $500 million a week to prepare stadiums and a metro before the soccer World Cup in 2022.
Al Khayyat, whose main business is a construction firm that built Qatar’s biggest mall, had been expanding the company's agricultural business at a farm 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Doha. Food security is part of Qatar’s government strategy to steer the economy away from petrodollars, known, like in Saudi Arabia, as “Vision 2030.”
On a site covering the equivalent of almost 70 soccer fields, new grey sheds line two strips of verdant grass in the desert with a road running through the middle up to a small mosque. It produces sheep milk and meat and there were already plans to import the cows by sea. Then Qatar was ostracized, so the project was expedited.

I would say that trying to produce cow milk isn't the best investment of resources in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia's investment in a war on Shiite Islam and anyone who supports the Shiites is even worse.  I don't understand how Obama supported the Saudis' war on Yemen, and it is scary as hell that Trump feels the need to encourage the ultimate terror sponsors to start even more shit.  Hopefully we manage to avoid the idiotic war with Iran so many morons in this country want us to pursue (such as the commander-in-chief).  I'll be rooting for Qatar in the current fight.

Your U.S. Open Host Origin Story

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a really interesting story of how this year's host course Erin Hills was built, and how it came to host the U.S. Open.  It is hard to believe.

Planting 2017

Well, we finally finished planting (at least the first time) for the season.  May as well watch it rain some more:

FRACTAL - 4k StormLapse from Chad Cowan on Vimeo.

Dumbfuck-in-Chief

To all of you who think Donald Trump is doing a good job as President: Fuck off, morons.