Monday - June 08, 2020
Duck Season! Wabbit Season!!
• COVID: 11 New PA Coronavirus Cases Traced To Jersey Shore Gathering
• RIOTS: UK leader says anti-racism protests now ‘subverted by thuggery’
• COVID: High altitude living can protect you against COVID?
• RIOTS: Man shot by driver who rammed SUV into Seattle protester crowd. Also, rioting.
• COVID: New Zealand: No More Coronavirus Here At All
• RIOTS: NYC shifting money from cops to social services
You remember what they told us. People on the beach? Fools. Three people riding together on a boat in Michigan? Lethal. Tepidly reopening the economy? An experiment in human sacrifice. The virus doesn’t go away because you’re bored. It doesn’t care that you’re grieving, your livelihood is ruined, your business has collapsed, or your spouse is abusive. You can’t pray it away at your church. So stay home, stay safe, and flatten the curve.
And that’s an order.
Unless, of course, you’re protesting racial injustice. Those protesting George Floyd’s death in crowds large enough to fill a small stadium have evaded scrutiny from the same people who told us that Floridians lying distanced on a beach were Literally Killing People. Some elected officials say that these protests are different — that the demonstrators have a good reason to be congregating on the streets. As Bill de Blasio said, the protests are much different from the matter of the “aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person.” They don’t have good reasons to break quarantine. The looters do.
Friday - June 05, 2020
You Waited THIS Long??
Gun Sales Surge In NYC Suburbs As Rioting Gets Closer
Four hour wait just to get in to Long Island gun shops
“You don’t need a gun to protect yourself, just call the police” is curiously no longer something people are arguing.
...
In the last several days we’ve seen many people on social media say that they’ve called the police and have been told the response either wouldn’t happen or would take a long time. It seems now more than ever that Americans increasingly aren’t relying on the police to protect them and are taking things into their own hands.
Unrest across New York and America has left some feeling concerned for their safety, and prompting dozens to line up outside a Long Island gun shop Tuesday.
Fruma Tannenbaum stood in the long line outside LI Outdoorsman in Rockville Centre. Her wait for a weapon was triggered by fears of demonstrations across the country.
“I would like to protect my property in case anybody comes on and wants to loot, steal, do anything to me,” says Tannenbaum. “I want to be prepared and I want to be able to protect myself and my family.”
The fears come in response to a week of protests against the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, in which some have turned to fires, looting and clashes with police.
It was a similar scene at Coliseum Gun Traders in Uniondale, where the owner says dozens of people are waiting to buy weapons and ammo.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen people really scared,” says Andrew Chernoff. “They’re saying that they definitely want something to be able to defend themselves and they’re scared there’s going to be civil unrest. That they’re going to need to defend themselves from.”
Gong estimated his store has seen sales rise within the last week as much as 20 percent. Video taken at his store showed several mask-wearing customers patiently waiting in line to enter.
“They wait three, four hours to enter the store,” he said. During the pandemic, the store has reduced its hours, opening three times a week for about four to six hours.
The uptick in sales stems directly from the protests, he said.
Gong, who is Chinese, said most of his customers are people from minority communities who want to support his business because it’s minority-owned. They’re buying guns now out of fear of criminals, not police, he said when asked why his customers have said they want a gun now.
“Criminals, looters,” he said. “They’re not going to buy guns for cops, they’re going to buy guns for the criminals.”
Long Island gun store owners said they’ve seen spikes in sales before: Y2K, the passage of gun control laws, before and after elections. But this time is different, they said.
“This is like total new shooters,” said John Sweezey, the owner of Camp-Site Sport Shop in Huntington. “New gun owners.”
Michael Pucci, who owns Orion 7 Enterprises in Middle Island, said half the calls to his store are from women. The store specializes in historical, collectible firearms, but it also stocks some modern rifles and shotguns.
Some waiting outside Long Island gun stores on Wednesday condemned Floyd’s killing and said they support peaceful protests. It was the looters who scared them — and the prospect of widespread looting on Long Island in particular.
And the sin of it is, these frightened libs will go right back to voting Democrat once this is over. Because. They. Will. Never. Learn.
And the perhaps even bigger sin is, Long Island has been inundated with MS-13 for at least a decade. There are thousands of them there, stealing, killing, raping, beating, dealing drugs. But ... OMG those poor immigrants!! ... just look the other way.
on 06/05/2020 at 03:46 PM
Crime • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Guns and Gun Control • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
I forgot I was linked in Wiki
I did a post on this interim cannon ages ago. After the Civil War, where the best field cannon was the Model 1860 designed by John Griffen and built by the awesome Phoenix Iron Company, the ideas for breech loading and some form of recoil control resulted in the “grasshopper action” Model 1885, which was the first steel cannon in the Army. The barrel was built up from banded tubing, similar to the old iron Parrot gun of the Civil War. As metallurgy progressed, the early 3 banded barrel was replaced by the 2 banded barrel. The final version of the gun was actually designed to use smokeless powder, although this was often hard to get, and black powder used instead. These guns had nearly twice the range of the rifled muzzle loader field cannons used in the Civil War. The only real difference between the M1890 and the M1897 is that the newer one was made with a smaller powder chamber for the newfangled smokeless powder, while the larger black powder chamber on the M1890 gun was fitted with an internal sleeve the make a smaller chamber.
There’s one of these things in a little war memorial at the end of Main Street in Flemington NJ. I drive past it every week, for 12 years now. Eventually, I took a camera and paid a visit, and did a bunch of online research to figure out this oddball weapon. Made a blog post out of it, and wound up as Reference 8 on the Wiki page. Another reference there is to a much better research work than mine.
By 1902 these guns were obsolete. Technology was advancing that quickly.
It is a bit odd though that the Navy had a similar, older, smaller cannon called the Driggs-Schroeder, which did use fixed ammunition. Even more interesting because it was Driggs and Schroeder who designed the grasshopper action for this field piece. But the Army cannon went with bagged powder, not the faster and more weather resistant cartridge ammunition. Poor communication, or classic NIMBY-ism? [ I’ve been to visit the gun in the last pic at the above link. It’s in a little park on the edge of the Delaware River, just a few miles from here in Easton PA. I actually went there to take pics of the “free bridge” across the river there, and ... hey, check it out, a cannon! ]
I have no idea how I came to be looking at old cannons online again today. And I have no idea how I forgot about one of my most enjoyable blog research projects either.
I got your re-opening right here
Ah Trump, you magnificent bastard.
Nice try Dems, but you lose. Again.
The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent and payrolls unexpectedly rose by 2.5 million workers as the easing of restrictions on business activity and government aid led to new hiring in May.
The U.S. unemployment rate fell below last month’s record-high 14.7 percent, which was the highest on record in data going back to 1948. Economists estimate that the unemployment rate reached 25 percent during the Great Depression, although that predated the scientific economy-wide record keeping the government now deploys.
The job gains mark a sudden turnaround from a month earlier, when the economy shed a staggering 20.5 million jobs, by far the worst monthly decline on records back to 1939.
Economists had expected the unemployment rate to rise to nearly 20 percent and the economy to shed an additional 8 million jobs.
The mandatory closures of many businesses and stay-at-home orders slammed what had been a very healthy labor market hard. The economy added jobs for 113 straight weeks through February, a record streak of growth. The unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February. And yet job creation was running very hot, with the economy adding an average of 211,000 new jobs each month.
In May, employment in leisure and hospitality jumped by 1.2 million after falling by 7.5 million in April and 743,000 in March. Bars and restaurants hired an additional 1.4 million workers following a combined 6.1 million in job losses in April and March.
Construction employment jumped by 464,000 in May, gaining back almost half of April’s decline.
Dentist offices added 245,000 jobs. Health care employment overall rose by 312,00.
Retail shops added 368,000 jobs in May, after a loss of 2.3 million inApril. Over-the-month job gains occurred in clothing and clothing accessories stores were 95,000. Auto dealers added 85,000. General merchandise stores added 84,000.
9 Lives, Feeding All The Woodland Critters
don’t touch this bird, you could get melanerpes
Crivens, red bellied woodpeckers eat cat food. Every critter in the forest eats cat food, especially catbirds, except maybe squirrels. I haven’t seen any snakes doing it. Yet.
Sniffles, our itty bitty indoor cat, will sit at the window for hours waiting for a chipmunk or mouse to come and have a taste. She ignores the deer, the trash pandas, and any of the creatures bigger than her “massive” 5 1/2lb self, but is hypnotized by the little twitchy animals that visit the feeding bowl. She doesn’t do anything, but she does get all bushy and buggy eyed when they come by. Moe, Moe-ette, and their broods of baby possums don’t get her worked up either. Too big, too slow.
I was in the kitchen making yet another cup of coffee when I saw a movement from the corner of my eye. Our outdoor kitteh Ginger has his dish just outside our kitchen slider. We usually feed him at first light, but sometimes he doesn’t eat it all. Sometimes he comes back later. Sometimes he doesn’t show up, especially if the weather isn’t nice. And it’s not that nice today, super humid and slightly warm, with periods of rain here and there. Typical NJ day actually.
So there’s a bit of cat food left in his dish today. And hopping around and having a few pecks at it is a red bellied woodpecker. Life in the frickin’ jungle, get that protein in where you find it. After he ate what he wanted I put the dish in the fridge, because we’re not supposed to leave food out, and we’re under a Bear Alert. Some black bear has been sighted here several nights in a row, so everybody panic!! But how about that. Woodpeckers and cat food. Who knew?
Another Bit Of History Lost For Now
Another one of my “rabbit hole” posts, in which a small news story leads to looking up all kinds of links and uncovering some impressive stuff. Hours wasted, but insight gleaned.
MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) — City of Mobile Director of Communications George Talbot has confirmed to NBC 15 that the City of Mobile removed the monument of Confederate icon Admiral Raphael Semmes from its pedestal in downtown Mobile overnight.
Mayor Stimpson issued the following statement Friday Morning:
.On June 4, 2020, I ordered that the statue of Admiral Raphael Semmes be moved from its location at the intersection of Government and Royal streets in downtown Mobile.
The task was completed this morning, June 5. The statue has been placed in a secure location.To be clear: This decision is not about Raphael Semmes, it is not about a monument and it is not an attempt to rewrite history.
Moving this statue will not change the past. It is about removing a potential distraction so we may focus clearly on the future of our city. That conversation, and the mission to create One Mobile, continues today
The statue of Admiral Semmes was desecrated with graffitti just the other day, and the city immediately cleaned it up.
The Admiral Raphael Semmes Confederate Statue in downtown Mobile was vandalized early Tuesday morning, right around the time Birmingham was pulling apart its own memorial to those who had fought and lost in the American Civil War.
...
Down in Mobile, the statue of Semmes, who defected from the U.S. Navy after 35 years of service to fight for the Confederacy, was being cleaned vigorously by city workers.Using industrial power washers, the workers not only washed away the red graffiti but also the green patina from the copper plates surrounding the light sandstone. Parts of the statue have now been restored to its original state as when it was first erected in June 1900.
A city of Mobile spokesperson said a suspect has been identified and any decision to remove the statue would have to be collaborative.
Acting on what must have been awareness of a continuing threat, the statue was removed to somewhere safe. Hopefully, some day when saner heads prevail (as if) this statue can come out of hiding again.
~~~~
I read a post on Facebook the other day, put up by a long ago friend who grew up to be a super liberal. “Until Blacks Lives Matter, No Lives Matter”. Uh huh. Another quipped how her 7 year old daughter gets it, why can’t the adults?
Well, here’s one for all you woke-sters out there to grok. All these Confederate statues and memorials you want to destroy and erase are there to commemorate gallant men who served their country with bravery and pride. Duty called, they answered, and many paid the ultimate price. Generally, this has nothing at all to do with slavery, sexism, racism, or any of your 21st Century rose colored glasses. Nor, by long ago federal edict, are any of these men traitors or enemies. They were brothers, brothers in arms, on the wrong side of a family quarrel that claimed the lives of almost three quarters of a million Americans. And they were damn good at their jobs; these statues memorialize the best of the best.
So who was this Semmes guy? ( and the rabbit hole beckons ... )
Raphael Semmes was one of the most effective fighting sea captains in American history. Having served honorably in the US Navy for 35 years, surviving a famous shipwreck during the Mexican War (that ship itself “cursed” and famous for the only near mutiny in US Navy history, and probably the source for Herman Melville’s book Billy Budd, seeing that his cousin was on that ship at the time. That was before Semmes was aboard the USS Somers.), he joined the southern side when the war began.
. On 8 December 1846, while commanded by Lieutenant Raphael Semmes, Somers was chasing a blockade runner off Vera Cruz when she was caught in a sudden storm. Capsized by the heavy winds, she quickly sank with the loss of more than thirty of her crew
When Secession happened Semmes fought for Alabama. And he was so good at it that, over the years, the US Navy has named two destroyers in his honor.
After appointment to the Confederate Navy as a commander and a futile assignment to purchase arms in the North, Semmes was sent to New Orleans to convert the steamer Habana into the cruiser/commerce raider CSS Sumter. In June 1861, Semmes, in Sumter, outran the USS Brooklyn, breaching the Union blockade of New Orleans, and then launched a brilliant career as one of the greatest commerce raider captains in naval history.
Semmes’s command of CSS Sumter lasted only six months, but during that time he ranged wide, raiding U.S. commercial shipping in both the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean; his actions accounted for the loss of 18 merchant vessels, while always eluding pursuit by Union warships. By January 1862, Sumter required a major overhaul. Semmes’s crew surveyed the vessel while in neutral Gibraltar and determined that the repairs to her boilers were too extensive to be completed there. Semmes paid off the crew and laid up the vessel. U.S. Navy vessels maintained a vigil outside the harbor until she was disarmed and sold at auction in December 1862, eventually being renamed and converted to a blockade runner.
Semmes and several of his officers traveled to England where he was promoted to captain. He then was ordered to the Azores to take up command and oversee the coaling and outfitting with cannon of the newly-built British steamer Enrica as a sloop-of-war, which thereafter became the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama. Semmes sailed on Alabama from August 1862 to June 1864. His operations carried him from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, and into the Pacific to the East Indies. During this cruise, Alabama captured 65 U.S. merchantmen and quickly destroyed the USS Hatteras, off Galveston.
CSS Sumter, a 437-ton bark-rigged screw steam cruiser, was built at Philadelphia as the merchant steamship Habana. Purchased by the Confederate Government at New Orleans in April 1861, she was converted to a cruiser and placed under the command of Raphael Semmes. Renamed Sumter, she was commissioned in early June 1861 and broke through the Federal blockade of the Mississippi river mouths late in the month.
Early in July, the pioneering Confederate Navy commerce raider captured eight U.S. flag merchant ships in waters near Cuba, then moved to the South American coast where she took another pair. Two more merchantman fell to Sumter in September and October 1861. While coaling at Martinique in mid-November, she was blockaded by the Federal sloop of war Iroquois, but was able to escape to sea and resume her activities. Sumter captured another six ships from late November into January 1862, while cruising from the western hemisphere to European waters.
So after capturing 18 ships but being blockaded in Europe, the crew managed to sneak off, get back to the Confederacy, and were assigned to the CSS Alabama.
The C.S.S ALABAMA in the course of 22 months boarded 447 ships of all nations, captured 69 Union vessels, took 2,000 prisoners, sank the Union warship HATTERAS, and engaged the U.S.S. KEARSARGE.
During that time not one prisoner was injured to accident or disease, a large feat even today. She observed international law and the finest “laws of the sea”. Following her battle with HATTERAS the CSS ALABAMA put all her boats in the water and rescued all except two who were killed in the action...this at night with a Union squadron less than twenty miles away.
An officer and a gentleman, and a real fighter. When the Alabama engaged the USS Kearsage off of Cherbourg France, they lost. The massive guns of the Kearsage shot the stern of the Alabama to bits, and the ship sank. The commander of the Kearsage sat and watched the crew of the Alabama drown, until some were rescued by nearby English ships. At that point he bravely captured the surviving crew in the the two lifeboats they had managed to lower. Semmes got away.
Did he sit out the war after that? Oh heck no. He somehow got himself back to Cuba, snuck into Texas, made his way all across the South, and took command of the James River squadron defending Richmond His flagship was the new ironclad CSS Virginia II. They fought until Richmond finally fell, the squadron’s ship being burnt after losing a last, desperate river battle.
And still that was not the end. The sailors came ashore and became soldiers, running another blockade on land this time, to evade Union troops and join up with Gen. Johnston in NC. Semmes and his crew did not surrender until nearly 3 weeks after the war was over.
After the destruction of the naval squadron, Semmes’s sailors were turned into an infantry unit and dubbed the “Naval Brigade.” Semmes was then placed in command; Semmes intention for the brigade was to join Lee’s army after burning their vessels. Lee’s army, however, was already cut off from Richmond, so most of Semmes’s men boarded a train and escaped to join General Joseph E. Johnston’s army in North Carolina. A few men of the Naval Brigade were able to join with Lee’s rear guard and fought at the Battle of Sailor’s Creek.
Semmes and the Naval Brigade were surrendered to Union Major General William T. Sherman with Johnston’s army at Bennett Place near Durham Station, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865, and subsequently were paroled on May 1, 1865. Semmes’s parole notes that he held commissions as both a brigadier general and rear admiral in the Confederate service when he surrendered with General Johnston’s army.
I’d say he may have been the only General Admiral in US military history. But the guy was one helluva fighter. An inspiration to generations of sailors, I’m sure.
His story ought to be a movie. He had more swash in his buckle than any Douglas Fairbanks or Lionel Barrymore movie ever made, and as many amazing escapes as in any Indiana Jones movie. Maybe throw in a few flirtatious scenes with some beauties in period costume, although I gather he was married the whole time.
So naturally, his memory has to be eliminated. Because RAYCIS.
on 06/05/2020 at 09:50 AM
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Heroes • Military • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Thursday - June 04, 2020
Might As Well Just Burn It
LA Cuts $150M From Police Budget, Gives It To “Communities of Color”
Bet that cash buys a whole shitload of lap dances and bags of crack.
Mayor Eric Garcetti announced an enormous transfer of city funds at a press briefing Wednesday, with $100 million to $150 million being stripped from the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget and reallocated to “black communities and communities of color.”
Calling this an “urgent moment,” Garcetti first announced an overall transfer of $250 million from the previously proposed budget to be “reinvested” in communities of color, highlighting “jobs, education, and healing.”
L.A. Police Commission President Eileen Decker then announced that $100 million to $150 million of those cuts would come from the police department budget.
“It is time to move our rhetoric towards action to end racism in our city,” the mayor said.
And another $100M is coming from other budget cuts. Buying off the crybabies, again. Straight up pandering.
I’d put the entire fund into primary education - at the classroom level only - and truant officers, and DARE programs. Anything else is a waste.
on 06/04/2020 at 03:58 PM
Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Vile Action On TV
I found this to be infuriating and disgusting. How dare they! The Left is the lowest of the low, total shit-dipped scum suckers.
Nickelodeon Goes “I Can’t Breath”
8 3/4 minutes of black screen with tortured breathing sounds
Nickelodeon aired eight minutes and 46 seconds with the message “I CAN’T BREATHE” in white letters emblazoned across a black screen. The message’s length matches the purported amount of time former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck.
The ViacomCBS-owned channel that caters mostly to children and teenagers went off-air with the video message’s text pulsated rhythmically in tandem with sound a person breathing. The video included a countdown timer as a header, counting down seconds and beginning at 8:46.
The video’s footer reads, “Join @colorofchange and countless others to call on public officials across the country to take real action. Text DEMANDS to 55156.”
Color of Change describes itself as “an online racial justice organization” advancing “a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.” One of its founders is CNN’s Van Jones.
Chris McCarthy, the president of entertainment and youth brands at ViacomCBS’s, shared the following message with the company’s employees:
The last few weeks have brought to the surface long standing racism, videos of unspeakable behavior and the harsh reality of inequality many in our community deal with on a regular and daily basis. In Minneapolis, the horrifying murder of George Floyd, in Georgia the senseless killing of Ahmaud Arbery, and in Kentucky, the deplorable shooting of Breonna Taylor, to name just a few recent examples. This is on top of a pandemic which has emphasized the tragic inequalities that disproportionately impact communities of color, especially African American and Latinx communities, in addition to the unjust targeting of Asian Americans.
ViacomCBS aligned itself with Black Lives Matter, with its other channels and networks, including NTV, VH1, and Comedy Central, airing the same message.
This is disgusting. Pulling little kids into this is the lowest of the low. Instead of being used as human shields, they’re being used as weapons. And that’s over-the-far-horizon past the line of decency.
Meanwhile, it looks like Floyd had COVID, two kinds of heart disease, was high as a kite on dangerous drugs, and suffered a heart attack while on the street. A knee to his neck didn’t do him any good, but that isn’t what killed him. His own wretched condition killed him, along with police callousness and inattention
.It turns out, for example, Floyd didn’t die of asphyxiation according to the medical examiner. According to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s report cited in the criminal complaint charging Officer Derek Chauvin with murder, he died of a heart attack. The autopsy also found Floyd had fentanyl in his system, had recently used methamphetamine, had coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease.
Yeah, I’m linking an Ann Coulter article. I don’t like her much anymore, but she does write well and thinks things out. Usually. She makes the point that we’re in another Rodney King situation perhaps ... the media isn’t showing us the whole video, and they sure aren’t telling us the whole story or any background. Such as that Chauvin and Floyd worked together for years at the same nightclub. That Chauvin’s wife, a former beauty queen, is divorcing him ... and that her brother was one of the other cops involved, who is now also charged. Or that Floyd did time inside, and had a significant record.
Facts? Who needs them? React to a video clip that may be out of context. Exactly like Rodney King. We may never know ... but this wouldn’t be even the third time the MSM has fired up riots via their biased and selective reporting. They can not be trusted.
Wednesday - June 03, 2020
That’ll Teach ‘Em
All 36 people arrested by St. Louis police during riots have been released without charges, according to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
Schmitt said that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner declined to charge any of the people arrested during riots between Sunday and Tuesday.
“To see that kind of level of violence and rioting that went on, police officers being shot and shot at, a retired police captain being murdered, people throwing rocks and gasoline and frozen water bottles at police officers, firefighters being assaulted and blocked from doing their job, businesses that have served the community for years being burned to the ground, it’s unfathomable that every single person arrested that night has been released,” Schmitt said. “It is stunning.”
Gosh, you’d almost think that the Dems were encouraging this kind of behavior.
on 06/03/2020 at 03:33 PM
Crime • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
This May Not End Well
Riots, protests? Nah. Muesli bread!
I wanted to try making some kind of mult-grain bread with nuts and goodies in it, so I had the genius idea to use Alpen. Turns out Alpen is pretty hard to find where I live, so I got some of the Bob’s Red Mill stuff. Found some fairly fresh raisins in the cabinet, and some Craisins that weren’t too ancient. The dates were like gravel, so I tossed them. Oooh, let’s go all granola-squad and put some honey in.
And then when I was most of the way through getting out all my kit and collecting all the ingredients, I figured I’d look online ... and found out that my “original” idea has been done a million times already. Well fine. So I adapted a recipe, but added some extra bits anyway.
It makes a rather sticky dough. Not quite bread, but not quite muffin batter either. At least it has actual yeast in it, unlike those quick breads. Which are fine, but not what I wanted to make today.
ff w
So it’s in the big 4qt Cambro, rising. About time to check it. Update later maybe. A 2qt Cambro would work too, filled right to the top when the first rise was done.
UPDATE: It came out pretty darn nice. On the one hand, very tasty with lots of yummy bits inside. On the other hand, most of those bits were solid things which don’t dissolve. So the volume of the dough got quite large even though there wasn’t all that much flour in it. I wound up finishing the final rise in my biggest meatloaf pan lined with parchment paper. I don’t usually do pan bread, but the pan holds a wet and sloppy dough in shape, and the baked loaf is easy to make sandwich slices from.
So, based on this recipe, I enhanced it to become:
UPDATE: This is the revised recipe. The original dough was far too wet, so I cut down on the water and added some bread flour. Also, it had too much yeast, so I cut that in half. Worked just fine. This recipe makes a kilo of dough, a very solid loaf.
Crumb is better with the less moist dough as well. Not super open, but not lead bread either.
Muesli Fruit Loaf
1 cup (248gm) warm whole milk. I used the organic kind, which has more fat in it.
1/3 cup (82gm) water
1 1/2tsp SAF instant yeast
3 tbl (62gm) dark honey or a tiny bit more (75gm is OK)
1 1/4 cup (150gm) bread flour
1 cup (120gm) all purpose flour
1 cup (120gm) whole wheat flour
1 1/4 tsp (12gm) salt
1 cup (140gm) Bob’s Red Mill old country style muesli
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup Craisins
1/8 - 1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut
Warm milk in the microwave for 1 minute. Dissolve honey in milk, then add the water to cool it. When below 100°F add yeast and stir. Let sit 10 minutes to activate. It will be very foamy.
Whisk together all dry ingredients including muesli and fruit.
Add the liquid to the dry in your mixing bowl. Mix thoroughly at low speed, using soft spatula to wipe sides of bowl. Adjust the feel of the dough; it may need a little more flour. 5 minute rest. Dough will be somewhat sticky.
Knead. Transfer to large (4 liter) greased rising bucket, let double. With the small amount of yeast this took almost exactly 90 minutes.
Dump dough onto a well floured work surface. Do 2 or 3 stretch and fold kneads, working dough into a rough batard ( stubby log shape ) and pinch seams. Transfer dough to a well floured banneton, seam side up. Let rise 1 hour. Flip dough from banneton into a parchment lined large meatloaf pan, let rise another 30 minutes while the oven heats to 450F. Deeply score top of loaf, then bake 25 minutes. You can add steam if you want. Remove from oven, lift loaf from pan. Check brownness on sides and bottom; it may need a couple more minutes baking. Fruit on surface will char if over baked. Return loaf to pan, let cool 10 minutes then remove from pan and let cool fully.
VERDICT:YUM. This is almost desert bread. It’s got a slightly sweet taste from the honey and the coconut. It has lots of tasty bits inside. Texture is like a hearty whole wheat bread, slight crumb.
It is not a hard crusty loaf. I’d call it a keeper.
That’ll leave a mark
Some pity and outrage generator on social media today. Some young woman was attending a protest - these are spectator events, right? - and got shot in the face with a rubber bullet. In Lexington. Supposedly. She’s all busted up, got a chunk taken out of her forehead. Yikes.
Thing is, Lexington cops say they don’t have rubber bullets and thus didn’t use any.
But there’s her video. Sure looks like some LEOs were shooting something. Pepperballs?
Whatever. I’d say the best place to be during a protest that just might turn into a riot is ... at home.
10 minutes on FB showed me again who the super Libs are among the people I’ve friended.
So anyway, you know me, Mr. Engineer. So I looked up rubber bullets. And while pictures of these things on DisgraceBook might show something the size of a cannon shell, the real ones are quite a bit smaller.
We’re talking about a 40mm diameter projectile that weighs 41-51 grams (632 -787 grains) launched at 200mph (~~ 290fps). It’s about as aerodynamic as a wall (BC ~= 0.1) so it loses speed really quickly, and the things are fairly squishy. But don’t confuse “less lethal” with “non lethal” or assume it means “annoyingly painful but not that bad”. Getting shot with anything, anywhere, can mess you up big time.
So I got to thinking ... maybe a tennis ball gun would be better? Or would that be too pathetic to garner any respect? A tennis ball weighs about the same, 58 grams, is half again larger in diameter, 66mm, and with the fuzzy surface has even worse aerodynamics. So even at the same initial velocity, air drag slows them down faster. If you fired them at 300mph, they’d sting like heck at 100 yards, and probably hurt like a mutha at 20 yards. But a tennis ball has a sectional density (mass/square of diameter) less than half of one of these rubber bullet things, and about 1/9 that of a varmint bullet.
I don’t have the answers here.
The less lethal you can make a projectile, perhaps the higher likelihood it will be used, and with less provocation? And perhaps the less respect and fear/aversion it will get? “Hey, let’s go riot; the cops are only allowed to throw My Pillows™ at us, underhanded” vs “Um, count me out. They’ve got heavy machine guns and flamethrowers.”
A truth is, that if you use violent methods to disperse a crowd, well duh, people are going to get hurt. That’s not right. But if your crowd is rioting, already being violent? Then maybe all (or most) bets are off.
What if the crowd is merely being disobedient, having decided that their right to assemble defeats the local gov’s power to demand permits, impose curfews, impose social distancing and so forth? Respect for duly appointed authority is one thing, kneeling down before tyranny is another. And somewhere in between is your willingness to “do the right thing” for this pandemic emergency that we’ve all suddenly forgotten about. ( hey, if it’s ok for crowds of thousands to protest and riot for days, why do I have to stay 6 feet apart wearing a mask in the half-empty-by-decree grocery store for 10 minutes?)
In a better world, people would have the sense not to riot in the first place. It doesn’t prove your point or address your grievances. It merely makes you the enemy.
Tuesday - June 02, 2020
Good Writing
I found City Journal this morning after thinking of the “four boxes” relative to this national rioting thing, (the four boxes being the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box, ) which made me think of Kim Dutoit, the patron saint of so many right leaning blogs, and knowing that he is once again writing although I rarely visit anymore, I clicked over and found the gist of the post I made earlier. OK, I snagged a lot of it. Samizdat-ism. Afterwards, I started reading some of the essays at City Journal, and linked to the States’ Rights one below.
POINT: Here’s another one, about the rioting and the breakdown in law an order, and how it’s been a long time coming, excused or not ...
On the other hand, the Civil War analogy seems too linear, too coherent, too automatic—a cliché, even. The current outbreak of protests and riots feels like something else—like a sudden, comprehensive event of physics or meteorology, a perfect storm of perfect storms, multilayered and interpenetrating and simultaneous.
The motives at work in the disturbances are mixed and contradictory. So are the moods—a wind-shear of psychologies and attitudes: hysteria, grief, anarchy, frolic, spectacle, revolution, a fest of selfies against a backdrop of flames. Anarchists out of Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent trade germs with angry blacks and young whites on skateboards or $1,900 bikes. The deadly serious and the deadly unserious appear side by side in the performance.
Unfortunately, a crowd on the march does anger better than it does grief. An angry crowd tends to become a mob, and a mob tends to smash windows, to loot and burn. If that happens, whatever blameless emotion may have prompted the protest in the first place is corrupted into mere power. A mob, turning abusive, will, ironically, imitate the abuse of power that the demonstration was called to protest in the first place. On the other hand, if your intention is to destroy American society, then what’s the problem?
COUNTERPOINT:
The extent to which high elected officials in New York City are willing to excuse the mobs burning and looting the city, and attacking its police officers, is shocking. Even Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is taking enormous heat from the Left for his supposed hard line on policing the “protesters,” makes a point every time he opens his mouth of embracing their demands for “change” and acknowledging their “deep pain.”
Enough already. Peaceful protesters have had several days in which to make themselves and their concerns heard about the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. The Antifa hooligans firebombing police vehicles, and the looters gleefully grabbing sneakers, are not only not in mourning, they are having a party. This is a perverse holiday for them, one to which the liberal leaders of our city pay obsequious deference.
...
New York City’s political class is up in arms today—but not because criminals and arsonists are holding the city hostage. Instead, they’re alarmed because President Trump has pledged to restore order. Any New Yorker who wants safety and order must see de Blasio and the rest of the city’s leadership as abject failures during this crisis. Those who believe, on the other hand, in the transformative potential of chaos should be grateful for his leadership.
[ PS Mark Levine is a two faced hypocrite. ]
There’s many paragraphs more at the links.
Other essays there point out that voting Progressives into office leads to all kinds of problems, from increased crime, to homeless camps full of drugged out street poopers, to frustration in the police departments, to pandering socialist attitudes, to rioting and looting. What we are seeing today is what they have worked a generation to build.
Good writing is always worth a read and a think, whether you agree or not. Which implies it’s worth talking about too. Check it out, talk it out.
on 06/02/2020 at 10:17 AM
CULTURE IN DECLINE • Disasters • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Relearning History
Here’s a very interesting essay from 6 years back on States’ Rights, the understanding and use thereof, during the early to mid 19th Century.
Certainly a lot of what is written here can be debated, but the essay has one amazing thesis: slavery was defended by federal legislation and power, whereas a large amount of States’ Rights efforts went towards limiting and eliminating it.
That’s certainly a new twist on things ... except it’s likely an un-twist, a reminder of how, like so many other things, like “gay” and “liberal” for example, the very concept of States’ Rights was long ago turned inside out by certain elements.
My take-away is two part.
First, given the Constitutionally explicit limitations on the federal government, and given the 10th Amendment, and given the somewhat common belief in nullification of the era, it was the duty of the States to ignore, nullify, or eliminate extra-Constitutional acts and laws passed by the feds.
Second, there is ample proof that supporters of slavery used federal power and provisions to support their beliefs and actions, in contravention of many state’s laws and public attitudes against it.
Yes, it was a 83 year power struggle, 1783 - 1865. But the cudgel of States’ Rights was wielded at least as much by the forces of emancipation and freedom as by the forces working against those.
Lesson? History is complex, subject to convenient revision, and can not be crammed into a little nutshell or onto a 5 word bumper sticker. Philosophies built upon bumper sticker grade understandings are a house of cards supported by hot air that has a distinct barnyard aroma.
Tannenbaum, if you’re still out there somewhere, I’d love to have one of your well thought out and professorial comments on this one.
It’s A Riot Out There
“If you value your life, they probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County. Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded, and if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns. So, leave the community alone.”
Damn straight Skippy.
Also:
Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic, one that makes the recent saccharine exhortations to “stay safe” and the deployment of police officers to enforce outdoor mask-wearing seem like decadent bagatelles.
...This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.
...
Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/suv-plows-through-buffalo-police-2-seriously-injured
https://www.foxnews.com/us/george-floyd-protests-rioters-police-shot-hit-and-run
https://www.foxnews.com/media/gabriel-nadales-antifa-radical-failed-socialist-ideology
and on and on and on.
on 06/02/2020 at 08:43 AM
Crime • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • REALLY WORTHLESS and PUTRID PEOPLE • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink
Monday - June 01, 2020
I Saw A Sign, Plus Rule Of Thumb Math
I was down in South Plainfield yesterday afternoon doing my cleaning. And the steam sanitizing. Which is a lot of slow but easy work. It doubles my time on the job site.
Anyway, I stepped outside to put some stuff back in the car, and I heard a somewhat loud rumbling sound. I recognized it immediately as a jet plane. I haven’t heard one or even seen a contrail in the sky in months.
It’s a sign of life beginning to get back to normal. Oh happy day. A very small sign; the airlines are still just about shut down. Usually there are so many jets low in the sky there that it’s noise pollution. Out where we live in Clinton, jets are these silent microdots that crawl across the clouds leaving their steam trails behind them.
South Plainfield is on the landing path for Newark airport, just 16 miles away NE. So I looked up and there was a 747 coming in low and slow on early approach, wheels not yet out and in a slight bank. Totally cool. I held up my arm and stuck out my thumb and a bit over half my thumb covered the plane.
It was pretty close. Not right on top of me, but still, pretty close.
~~~~
Math problem: A typical 747-8 is 250 feet long. I measured that much subtending thumb as 1.5”, and my thumb was 22” from my eye. How far away was the 747?
This is not as hard as you think. It’s actually quite like the way hunters use the thickness of the crosshairs in their scopes to judge distance.
At first I figured I’d need all that SOHCAHTOA stuff from math class, along with arctan and a full featured calculator. But then I realized I should use the KISS principle, which made it much easier. A simple calculator does the job.
The angle formed by my thumb and the length from my eye - the opposite and adjacent sides of a right triangle - is the same angle as one made by the length of the airplane and it’s distance from me.
250 feet is 3000 inches.
So (using tangent’s opposite/adjacent concept) 1.5/22 = 3000/X ... 1.5 = 22*3000/X ... 1.5 = 66,000/X ... 1 = 44,000/X ... X = 44,000 inches… 44,000/12 = 3666.67 feet ... 3666.67/5280 = .69 miles.
So the jet was about 2/3 of a mile away. I can only guesstimate the vertical angle of my arm as a bit over 45°, so I’d guess the 747 was about 1/2 mile up in the air. These are really big airplanes.
Sunday - May 31, 2020
Breakfast Loaf, Media Arrogance
I made my standard 4 flour sourdough last night, left it to rise, then got up early this morning and baked it. Came out great.
No, I don’t want to write right now about Social Media censoring President Trump for his Tweet about the rioters that “glorifies violence”. Which it doesn’t. Looters get shot. Rioters get shot. Ever actually read the Riot Act? That’s exactly what it’s about. Cease and desist, or pay the price.
But oh noes, Resident Dump is glorifying violence because he wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. I’d call that law and order. ( he didn’t say he’d call for using lead bullets. There are rubber ones, and tazers too. The non-lethal approach. Plus teargas. Nor did he say anything like “I can’t wait to start shooting those stupid darkier down by the thousand!” which would actually be racist and glorifying violence. )
To me, the real story is that Social Media had the unmitigated gall to hide, edit, and/or censor the President’s words. Which, according to the New York Times Daily Briefing that shows up on my cell phone every morning somehow, is something they’d been working on for ages, with the full expectation (ie waiting with bated breath) that they’d have to use it. Gleeful little douchebags.
Doncha know that Trump jus be soo raycis ... because he mentioned protestors, not any race or gender. What a crock. As if we don’t know who is doing this (niggas, hired thugs, antifa jerks, brain dead socialist college kids).
So back to more important things -
and now it’s time to go play in the garden. I bought her all sorts of flowers for her birthday, so now we have to plant them.
And then I can go do my steam cleaning at office #2. Woo hoo!!
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