Corn Sweat

This contributor to oppressive heat is new to me:

Unfortunately, that moisture is moisture that corn needs really badly right now.

Ignore Climate Change Issues At Your Peril

Stars and Stripes:

The temperature in Mitribah, Kuwait, surged Thursday to a blistering 129.2 degrees. And on Friday in Basra, Iraq, the mercury soared to 129.0 degrees. If confirmed, these incredible measurements would represent the two hottest temperatures ever recorded in the Eastern Hemisphere, according to Weather Underground meteorologist Jeff Masters and weather historian Christopher Burt, who broke the news.
It's also possible that Mitribah's 129.2-degree reading matches the hottest ever reliably measured anywhere in the world. Both Mitribah and Basra's readings are likely the highest ever recorded outside of Death Valley, Calif.
Death Valley currently holds the record for the world's hottest temperature of 134.1 degrees, set July 10, 1913. But Weather Underground's Burt does not believe it is a credible measurement....
If you discard the Death Valley record from 1913, the 129.2-degree reading from Mitribah Thursday would tie the world's highest known temperature, also observed in Death Valley on June 30, 2013, and in Tirat Tsvi, Israel, on June 22, 1942. But Masters says the Israeli measurement is controversial....
 While the Middle East's highest temperatures have occurred in arid, land-locked locations, locations along the much more sultry Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman have faced the most oppressive combination of heat and humidity. Air temperatures of about 100 degrees combined with astronomical humidity levels have pushed heat index values, which reflect how hot the air feels, literally off the charts.
In Fujairah, on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates, the dew point — a measure of humidity — reached 90 degrees  at 4 p.m. local time Thursday. The 90-degree dew point, combined with the air temperature of 97 degrees, computes to a heat index of over 140 degrees.

Why on earth would we spend trillions of dollars to fight over a region that is literally becoming uninhabitable?  Oh, that's right, so we can make sure the oil flows and makes it even more unlivable.  We are idiots and will be the cause of our own near-extinction.

A Humble Man

Donald Trump alone can make the nation safe?  How can anybody believe that crazy shit? But if they believe that, they will probably believe his interpretation of statistics, too.  I think Politifact will be busy for a while.

The Mistake on the Lake

I really don't know what to make of the shitshow that has been the GOP convention so far.  I already couldn't actually watch the speeches, because I just don't recognize the country that Republicans describe.  Does this country face immense problems?  Certainly.  But how can Republicans act as if they are blameless in this?  When people talk about how the economy has sucked under Obama, I would like to explain that it was much worse under Bush.  When Republicans talk about Hillary being responsible for the deaths of 4 Americans in Benghazi, I'd like to remind them of the more than 4,000 American deaths in Iraq thanks to Bush.  When they talk about how Americans are under attack by terrorists because Obama is weak, I think of September 11.  When they talk about how Hillary should be in jail for her email fuckup (she should probably get a punishment like Petraeus), I wonder how that trial for torture would go for Bush and Cheney.  When they talk about how California is a failing state, I like to bring up Kansas.  But the circus in Cleveland really makes it appear that the Republican Party has finally jumped the shark (although it was Chachi who spoke at the convention, and not the Fonz).  It's been all about tax cuts, guns and the freedom to be an obnoxious asshole and bigot.  I did catch a little bit of Mike Pence's speech last night, and I was amazed when he said Trump had an utter lack of pretense.  Seriously?  I thought Trump was all pretense.  However, that Ted Cruz self-martyrdom (or Trump's Cruz heel turn) was the craziest mess I've ever seen at a convention.  Thank you, Republicans, for making me feel better about the crazy mess that is my life.  At least I'm not a Republican.

How To Make A Tennis Ball

How to Make a Tennis Ball from Benedict Redgrove on Vimeo.

How Dayton Explains Today's GOP

This is a very good piece at ProPublica about the Dayton region and the changing GOP.  Here is a sample:

For decades, Dayton had been an exemplar of American capitalism and ingenuity — back when America not only invented things but still made the things it invented, Dayton did a lot of both. In 1890, it generated more patents per capita than any other city — there were the Wright Brothers and their bicycle shop, of course, but also James Ritty, the saloonkeeper who invented the mechanical cash register to keep his employees from pilfering dough, and John Patterson, who transformed Ritty’s invention into the National Cash Register company, and Charles Kettering, the engineer who turned Ritty’s creation electric. The sound of Dayton in these years was, literally, ka-ching. The Third National Bank was finished with imported marble and mahogany woodwork; patrons did their business at bronze check desks. Local hotels included the Biltmore and the Algonquin — the aspirations were transparent, and not unjustified.
Kettering went on to found the auto parts giant Delco, where he developed the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline, plus side ventures with DuPont and others to invent Freon and colored paint for cars. In the postwar years, Dayton had a higher concentration of auto workers than anywhere outside of Michigan. The city swelled with new arrivals in search of work — not just African-Americans on the Great Migration, but Scots-Irish up from Kentucky and Tennessee. By 1960, Dayton was still one of the 50 largest cities in the country — bigger than Charlotte, Tucson and Austin.
But as Whalen’s tenure carried into the 1970s, changes were underway. As elsewhere, the arrival of Southern blacks had been answered with white flight. In 1930, nearly three-quarters of Montgomery County’s population lived in Dayton, but half a century later, that share had plummeted to less than a third. They had moved to working-class inner suburbs like Miamisburg and Huber Heights, tight-knit communities with modest, well-kept frame houses and bungalows, and more upscale Oakwood or Beavercreek, which was just across the line into Greene County. The city that remained was the second-most racially segregated of Ohio’s eight largest. And the Appalachian migrants had added a more conservative element to the area’s political landscape.

It leans toward the rural versus urban dynamic, with the suburbs being the swing vote.  The prosperous suburbs with high percentages of college graduates tend to lean away from Trump, while the more working class suburbs are Trump country.  It is depressing to me how many people I know who support Trump, but I don't think there is much that's going to change that.  I suggest reading the whole piece,  it is very good.

The World Is Not Coming To An End

And violence against police isn't getting worse because Obama is President:

It's worth pointing out that in 2016, year-to-date officer fatalities via shooting only are up 44 percent over last year, according to the numbers compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial Fund. But that's partially an illustration of how sensitive these numbers are to individual incidents: If you set the Dallas shootings aside, the year-over-year increase is only 17 percent. And as Eugene Volokh points out, the 2016 numbers are roughly on par with the numbers for the past 10 years.

These figures in the chart above include all incidents in which a suspect intended to kill a police officer — shootings, stabbings, assaults, bombings and vehicular assaults. They exclude such things as accidental shootings, job-related illnesses and traffic accidents. If you were to narrow it down to just shootings, the overall trend would be roughly the same: from 80 deaths annually under Reagan to 48 annually under Obama. Again, factoring in the 2016 shooting numbers, including Dallas, has a negligible effect on the average under Obama.
These falling fatality numbers aren't simply a function of better medical care for injured officers. Overall assaults on officers are down, too. In 1988, the last year of the Reagan administration, there were 15.9 assaults for every 100 sworn law enforcement officers according to the FBI. In 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, there were 12.7 assaults for every 100 officers. By the end of the Bush administration that number fell further to 11.3. Under Obama in 2014, the most recent year for which the FBI has data, that number further fell to 9.0.

I read a comment on Facebook from a local person I've met before which stated that America's racial relations were improving before Obama was elected and he set about causing discord.  I wanted to just reply, "Bullshit," but thought better of it. The Blame Obama crowd seems to think that getting elected made Obama too uppity, and it is reflected in tense relations between black citizens and the police.  Never mind that these tensions have been in place for 50 years, and that it has only been the presence of cameras available to record police brutality that have brought these issues to the forefront.   I realize I won't be able to convince almost any white people that if they were treated like black people are by police every day, they'd take a swing at a cop within a week, but I believe that is true.

The frustrating thing for me is that the police videos last week were making some white people really consider what black people face every day.  I heard a few people I know to be typically critical of the generic black person in trouble with the law express shock at what they thought were unjust police actions.  But it only takes one instance of violence by a black person (albeit in this case, a particularly horrific one) to more or less wipe all that out.  Even generally peaceful protests anger the majority of white people I know.  It seems that white America can relate to the suffering of blacks as long as they suffer those injustices calmly and in silence.  I hope that America's streets become safer for all Americans, whether they are police or civilians, white or black, but the numbers indicate that in general, police are safer now than they have been at any time during my life.  And that is a good thing.

For Place and For Animals

For Place and For Animals from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo.

NASA Photo of the Day

July 2:

Firefly Trails and the Summer Milky Way
Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Park (North York Astronomical Association) Explanation: A camera fixed low to a tripod on a northern summer's eve captured the series of images used in this serene, southern Ontario skyscape. The lakeside view frames our fair galaxy above calm water and the night's quintessential luminous apparitions. But the trails of light are neither satellite glint, nor meteor flash, nor auroral glow. In the wide-field composite constructed with four consecutive 15 second exposures, a pulsing firefly enters at the right, first wandering toward the camera, then left and back toward the lake, the central Milky Way rising in the background.

Blogging Will Return

Yes, I've been terribly neglectful of this site in the past few months.  My town job has been beating the tar out of me on a daily basis, and the farm work used up most of the rest of the spare time.  Plus, the news and politics have been bleak enough that I haven't really been up for commenting on it.

Now, though, with nothing to do but watch the rain dry up before it gets to us, and watch our corn crop burn up, I'll try to get back in the swing of things here.  Misery loves company.