Guard Dog

Case in point. Military women can perform just as well as men in combat roles. That is mostly true. Women can serve equally well in armor, artillery, aviation, motor transport, etc. Then they go too far and think military women can serve in ANY role as well as a man. That is patently false. In 2015 the Marines conducted a study that found all male units greatly out perform integrated units. Women in infantry were six time more likely to be injured during training and failed the Combat PFT at 10X the rate of men without "gender norming". That is a nice way to say allowing women lower standards just so they pass. Which is what the Army is doing now. The Marines have, so far, resisted lowering infantry fitness standards but women are failing at such a rate that it is inevitable. This is just one example of woke/SJW/PC taking a good thing too far. I can easily provide others

Now reading

This is purely my own opinion here so take it for that. Woke/SJW/PC is all fine and good where it compels us to be more polite to our fellow humans. In that instance it is a positive force. Case in point, a trans man who is obviously male but presents themselves as female. It is perfectly ok even polite to address them as such. Use female pronouns and treat them with the same dignity and respect you'd treat someone who was born female. Or the other way around. But Woke/SJW/PC goes too far when it demands the world acknowledge something true to be false or something false to be true purely because someone "wants" it to be that way. For example that there are no biological differences beyond male and female humans other than their reproductive organs. This is simple false and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that is obstinance that undermines the whole position of the philosophy, even the positive aspects of it.

Wow, what an impressive body of work he had!

The funny thing is this would actually work. Not for a big room. Maybe like a guest bedroom in a single wide

I just finished reading two Zane Grey novels The Last Plainsman and Riders of the Purple Sage. They were both the literary equivalent of eating a bag of M&Ms. Enjoyable but probably not good for you. They had only a passing nod towards historical authenticity and were nowhere in the same vicinity as historical accuracy. But they were as entertaining as an old John Wayne movie. Can anyone recommend a western genre fiction that is historically authentic? Gone To Texas by Forrest Carter and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy come to mind.

That sucks. Its also sort of ironic as long as you are OK.

Talking with B today after she finished up some work for me. BTW hiring her to take care over data entry from me was one of the smartest things I've ever done. She hasn't made a single mistake that I've seen. Anyway she was asking about the engineering profession and how many women were in it. That gave me pause for a moment. You know, I've never met one. Not a single female EE. I've heard of a few but never interacted professionally with one. In my graduating class in college there were 23 of us. One was a woman and IIRC she was from China and was going back there. What are the odds? Other disciplines have plenty of female practitioners. I wonder why not us?

It was in a Zane Grey novel I'm reading. Not exactly high literature by any means and I know the quote it rips off is hedgehog not porcupine. I guess he changed it because there are no hedgehogs in west Texas in the 1880's so the quote wouldn't make sense in the context. I like it better that way actually. Porcupines are cool.

Quote of the day: "The fox knows many tricks. The porcupine knows only one. But it's a really good one."

The juxtaposition of homosexuality & pedophilia is one of the worst things to have been done to the LBGT folks. Children CAN be "groomed" by pedophiles because they don't know it's happening and can't fight back against it. I don't think it possible to "groom" someone to be gay. The reason being is by the time a kid has reached their teenage years and is actually able to be sexual they have developed to a point of knowing what they like and don't like. Don't get me wrong, teenagers are in no way emotionally mature enough to cope with adult life decisions and consequences. But they do have enough agency to decide who they are attracted to and likely enough savvy to avoid perverts assuming they had not been victimized earlier. The damage pedophiles and other abusers do to children is horrifying and often life long. I'm against the death penalty but I'd almost make an exception in that case. I'd even make them dig their own hole and stand in front of it. But treating homosexuality and child sex abuse as the same thing is a gross injustice. Doing so for the purely cynical reason of scaring people to vote a certain way is equally so.

The truth is I am not going to to have an informed opinion on how best to educate kids. And I can see the value of crosslinks between hard science and soft sciences. Particularly when it comes to things like economics and demographics. Heck the entire discipline of statistics and data analysis cannot even exit in a vacuum. You have to define what the data sets are and the variables that affect them. But we are discussing pre-high school basic math here. Multiplication, division, basic logical problem solving process (algebra). IMHO the only way to master the basics IS to focus on just those without the distraction of cross study. There is time enough for that later. A students ability to master advanced math begins in elementary school. You likely only get one shot at them. If they don't grasp the basics you'll lose them in Algebra and Geometry and without those they will never understand Trig or Calculus and without that STEM is closed to them. We (the US) are already lagging behind much of the rest of the world on that count. I'm not saying it's a terrible idea later on. But, early in the education path I think it is.

That would make things soooo much easier!

Nothing. Nothing at all. And it should not be. This very morning I am working on a project in Ohio where it it cost prohibitive to use fiber optic to extend a CPRI interface to a node that is nine miles (roughly 15 km) from the hub. So we are planning on using microwave to create the link. My job is to plan and design the hop. Well, the first step is to plot the exact distance and bearing between the GPS coordinates of the hub and node. You do that using a pen, paper, calculator and the Haversine Formula you might have learned in Trig. It's a method for plotting distance and directional vectors between two points on a sphere. Because even at that distance the curvature of the Earth must be accounted for. And Haversine does not care about your feelings.

Demophobia I believe it's called. I get very irritable around large crowds.

Do the Braves miss Freddie Freeman? Nope!

Last months trip to New York has borne fruit. We have a new customer and a new project. It will probably be a year (maybe more) before I play a role in that project. G & I spent six days there and had a great time. But I'm glad I don't live there.

You sir are a good uncle!

You called? I kid. I'm with you an Amentep. It is a term that has lost it's actual definition so it can be a boogeyman politicians roll out to scare voters. Case in point: Florida rejects 54 math books, claiming critical race theory appeared in some I can't remember where I read this, one one of the Florida newspsper sites. Most stories are paywalled after the first few hours. But apparently the objection is not CRT but rather Social Emotional Learning. Never heard of it? Me neither. Had to go to Wiki on that one. It sounds like the kind of navel gazing stupidity you might associate to common core. But Common Core is another term that has an actual definition that becoming lost in the politcshpere. Heck I'm not even sure what it is. Don't much care either. Anyway, the direction I was going with this is why say the mathbooks had CRT and refuse to provide the names and publishers or examples of CRT in the books? Well, there probably isn't any. If the Miami Herald (I'm pretty sure that is where I read it) is right and it's really an objection to SEL no one is afraid of that. But they ARE conditioned to be afraid of CRT. So there you are. Just my $.02.

Oh yes, we've talked about it. There are... unresolved problems... between us that complicate things like that. That is a long conversation. We'll see how it goes. As far as actually retiring next year that is also depending an a number of things. I have a 401k, IRA, and eventually SS to provide an income once I'm 65. If I pull the trigger in 2024 I'd need 12 years of modest income off investment to make up the gap. It's do-able IF somethings already in process continue to go my way. We'll see. It's more of a hope than a plan at this point.

You know what I've wanted to do? By an RV and spend the following twenty years or so living the gypsy life all over the US, Mexico, & Canada. Camp in State & National Parks, see everything there is to nee in North America from Cabo San Lucas to Newfoundland, Fairbanks to Key West. Like that old song:

G decided she want's to renew the lease for this house for one more year. The owner is a family friend and the rent is pretty reasonable for the area. I tried to persuade her to do something else but she's comfortable with her situation and doesn't want to rock the boat. So I dropped it. I'm planning on retiring at the end of next year (possibly) so this time next year I'm going to be a little bit more insistent. We'll cross that river when we get there.