Cooler Weather

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On the heels of a huge wildfire now, Vegas has had significant rain this past week. We even set a record for the most rainfall at the airport in a single 24 hour period this week, beating a record set in 1951. Of course, the Church of Climate Change will ignore that information because they insist that things are getting inexorably warmer. They are committed to pseudoscience and investigate what supports the conclusions they already reached while ignoring everything else.

The rest of the country already knows why it’s cooler there than in Vegas. It was cooler in Vegas (in terms of degrees) this week because of the rain. It even dipped down to 89F one day as our July high, but they will still talk about the early 115F day even though it wasn’t a record. This has happened before. It’s just normally not that early, and the rest of July has been so much more temperate that I will spend only 75% of the money on Electric Air Conditioning this year compared to last. Why? This happened because in the rest of the company humidity keeps the temperature low. Nevada has very little water, hence low humiditiy, hence high temperatures, because water has a significantly higher specific heat compared to other molecules and then absorbs and retains things. This is one reason why we have a 20-30 degree temperature shift from day to night, because there is no water to release low amounts of heat all night long. The rocks release rapidly whatever thermoenergy they acquire, and we cool off until the sun peaks over the mountains in the morning.

Water vapor is the major regulator of atmospheric temperature. Venus, which has no water, is a whopping 5000F on the dark side of the planet, and Mars, which has no atmosphere, is cold because there is nothing to trap the energy. Between them, the earth sits, regulating its temperatures with the water on its surface. Water vapor is far more significant as a percentage of atmospheric gas than CO2, which has a statistically insignificant specific heat when accounting for significant figures compared to water.

Vegas had a mild summer in July because we had some good thunderstorms. The clouds radiated the heat back away from the state, and the rains picked up some of the heat from the area, even though they then evaporated into a sticky humid mess. It’s not as hot, just like in New Orleans, but it’s far less pleasant in my opinion. Even the children go outside to cool off in the water- sprinklers, pools, puddles, etc. It’s water that cools us like it cools our houses, our cars, and our bodies. Everything else is pseudoscience (images below courtesy of Weather.com).

“It won’t be as hot today because it will be more humid.” –KXNT news reporter

Official Use Only

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Last Friday night, while heading to Utah to go boating, we passed a car on the freeway that made me pause. It was 7:21 PM on a Friday night, and a White Dodge Caravan license NV EX 48654 was driving along the freeway. The driver, a male of significantly high melanin content in his early fifties, was driving at an excessive rate of speed. I wondered what official business in which he might be engaged at that hour, given that these vehicles are conspicuously marked “for official use only”. I know it is such a pain for me to obtain permission to use a motorpool vehicle when transporting hazardous chemicals that I frequently throw them in my own car and take the risk to avoid the hassle.

I doubt very much that this person was on official business. I think, like so many others in government, he was using a government vehicle on personal time for personal reasons. Of course I can’t prove it, but what government agency has business on a Friday evening? My own department came down on us lately for doing work outside normal business hours because the liability insurance only covers us during our regularly scheduled work day. Consequently, my boss makes sure we are gone when it’s time to go home unless we obtain express prior written consent to do something outside those hours due to time or something similar.

This incident made me reflect on what I do during my day. Years ago, a woman I sort of liked but who really liked me angrily called me after I ignored a series of text messages from her. When I answered, I told her that the state pays me to work at work, not to talk to her, and she reluctantly ceded the issue. Frequently I use personal items for work like my car, and I used to donate time to get work done when there was work to do, but with extra scrutiny and tighter budgets, I make sure that I do what I am supposed to and no more. Even on days when there is little to actually do because we have no students around, they insist that we are at or near our desks all day, and I had one “desk audit” a week or so back, just to make sure I wasn’t skipping out early.

We are stewards in government of tax money. I try very hard to spend it wisely. Some people think it constitutes a way to save or advance themselves. When I heard about the people in Detroit complaining about their pensions being cut, I heard claims that “if we had known this, we would have taken better paying jobs and saved on our own.” Hogwash. If you were a saver, you would save regardless of your wage; I am not relying on the government to pay me in perpetuity. They took these jobs because they wanted a safety net, possibly because nobody else would pay them to use company stuff to do personal work.

Although not unique to government, these miscreants aggregate there. One of my students told me a sad story of corruption in the private sector of a contractor he had who stole things from the Rampart casino to do work at a private resident and then charged the resident. This person’s deeds have caught up with him, and so now he cant get a job, but if he were in government, it would be very difficult if not impossible to fire him, depending on his melanin and estrogen content. This next week, I am transporting microscopes to different locations, and I am careful to make sure the paperwork is in so that people don’t think I’m taking them for personal use. They don’t belong to me. They belong to you.

Bitterly Clinging

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Today, I am pondering why so many in the UK hate Americans so much. I've been watching quite a few BBC programs on Youtube about UK history, and the sidebar suggests a plethora of anit-American videos for my next choice, and I wonder at why there are so many. Our fates like our histories are tied together by a plethora of confluence and circumstance, but we allow ourselves to be balkanized by the overemphasis of stereotypes. People need to be taken as individuals or not at all, because they are far too complicated to be boiled down to a few subjective adjectives.

Jealousy? Why are they jealous? I hear a lot of things about Americans that you hate. It makes very little sense to envy someone you hate. More to me it sounds like they are bitter because they are no longer as important as they wish they were. What makes you think I want to be important? America was not always so, and truth be told I wish someone else would belly up to the bar and pay the tab.

Irresponsibility? Clearly the British have forgotten that they tried to press us as colonists for responsibility of foreign wars. I’m sorry, but since we didn’t have any say in parliament, we couldn’t stop those wars. Why should our language be corrupt? Who says they speak British perfectly? What exactly is the origin of your language? You claim our way is silly and stupid, as if your language were pure. I can understand Firesian and the language of Schliesswig-Holstein because they resemble English, which contains some French as well because of the Norman influence and Aquitaine and Brittainy. English changes with time, and the preferred parlance provides perchance for pernicious and persnickety purloinment of new phraseology.

Ignorance? I think that mainly depends on whether or not you educate yourselves. As a largely agrarian society from the get-go, there was little need for that in America, but I have now seen two BBC documentaries that are mutually exclusive, one detailing the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the other attempting to debunk it. You have however never bothered to ask me about Walton on Thames or Wessex or Worchester nor looked at my library to see I have books by Bacon, Lock, More, Burke, Smith, Newton, Whitehead, ad infinitum including a copy of the Royal Standard English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. Furthermore I actually lived and attended school in Britain, so if I’m ignorant, you’re at least partially negligent. Stop interviewing politicians or broadcasting the most asinine of impromptu answers as if they are reflective of the entire population. I’m sure that same treatment could be tendered your neighbors to the same result evincing ignorance on the isles.

Fox news v. the BBC? I watch far more BBC than fox news, but I mostly watch BBC shows that I find on the zarkin’ internet. Perhaps what you mean by “news” is “what corroborates my preconceived notions”, in which case you are probably correct. I have come to realize that most journalists, most scientists, most politicians, and indeed most people have an agenda if not an ulterior motive. Most of them are not looking for what is actually true; they secretly hope the truth will corroborate what they already happen to believe. Any profession is only as virtuous as those who profess it. How is the BBC impartial because it’s public funded without advertisements? Do you honestly think that Al Jazeera is impartial just because it’s compulsorily funded by ‘the people’ without commercial interests? Studies have shown that people will believe almost anything prefaced with the phrase, ‘studies have shown’.

So many of you engage in stereotyping, comparing their strengths to our weaknesses. As if it’s our fault that we don’t “have a history”. We have their history too, excuse me. Plus we have our own. They talk of their restraint as if it’s a virtue in itself. I think the Zulu would argue the notion that you’re restrained or perhaps the Algiers. What was restrained about your treatment of Arabia in 1919? Just how many wives did Henry VIII have or how many illegitimate children did John Lackland bear? As for war mongering, yes, we have been engaged in many wars. From which would you have us abstain? Perhaps from war with Ferdinand’s Austria or Hitler’s Germany? Should we have given Napoleon more help? Maybe the world would be better without the Emancipation Proclamation. History is not a la cart.

On occasion, I have been ashamed of my countrymen. I find it hard to believe that every Brit is proud of every other Brit ever. That strikes me as somewhat Neville Chamberlain of them. You might find it interesting to know that my only friend at church is from Sussex; I have other fine British friends. In fact, the further your origin from mine, the more likely we are to be friends; familiarity with my own people sometimes breeds contempt. I am very fond of Burke and More and Newton and Tennyson, all of whom are yours as well as Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson who were all British before they were American. Our heroes are actually some of YOUR people. I have a rich British heritage from Ireland, Scottland, and Essex most predominantly, and I can trace my lineage back to 1028AD in body of Wlm the Conqueror. This means that like you I have black marks in my family tree. They are offenses I did not give against people who are not alive to be offended. However, it is perhaps natural albeit bad form to whitewash your own side and paint the other as villains or miscreants. That is how most people rise to power, by conflating the misdeeds of “others” to make your own beneficence appear greater. Pointing out the mistakes made by others does nothing to fix you own.

Ignorance and enlightenment do not correspond to strictly geographical domains. Other people manufacture labels to describe us quickly without having to get to know us. Each man is far too complicated in his facets to be so accurately distilled. I will agree that my knowledge of some things is limited. It is not because I don't study at all; I study specific things of personal interest. Regional stereotypes are often as unproductive as the rest because they are not predictive. Who could have seen Oliver Cromwell coming or Thomas More or Eric Liddel? They were as equally unlikely based on stereotypes as Ivarr the Boneless’s rise to prominence or Pope Benedict’s resignation or Joan of Arc or the defense of Jerusalem by Balien of Ibelin. The localized supposition of virtue requires only shifting our view of the door, and the more subjective the angle the more subversive the adjective’s objective. As Franklin suggested to his fellows, I suggest to my friends across the pond: in these troublesome and turbulent times, all descendents of Britain must hang together or assuredly we must hang separately.

Spared Suffering

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For the Fourth of July, a friend and I intended to hike up to Mt. Charleston (12 miles) and watch the fireworks from far above the city. It just so happens that this turned out to be a bad idea. Just prior to Independence Day, I felt disinclined to go and thought it was just lazy. Then, we learned about the fire.

At about 3PM local, the Carpenter Canyon Fire, which was 18 acres on Tuesday, crossed the escarpment into Kyle Canyon, which is where the trail is where we would have been hiking. The fire is now 1300 acres and 0% contained with 40mph sustained winds out of the west fanning it forward. Highway patrol closed the highway to Mt. Charleston 10 minutes before we arrived, turning us back, and by sunset, the plume was high, thick, and reddish hanging over the north end of the city with its black color and putrid odor. Our bushes evoke dangerous chemicals when they burn.

Here is a collage from the escarpment. The trail runs near the ridge now engulfed in flame.

It turns out that it was a good thing I didn't go hike this trail this week. If we had gone, we would have been up in exposed country without anyone knowing exactly where we were without many supplies and very near the flames. It might have been a good view under other circumstances, but I thank God for being spared the suffering and stress of trying to escape a wildfire, particularly after the 19 hotshots died in AZ just the previous week. I hope that things go better for our folks, and I even wish the inmates who may assist best wishes and Godspeed.

My Decor

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When you walk into my house, my decor will tell you almost everything you need to know about me. I specifically chose some things to communicate certain messages of importance, and I keep most of my treasured brick-a-brac in the first room. However, the library tells you a lot more about me, and since it's unlikely you'll see that, I share this picture. On days like today, it makes me very pleased to think that this is on permanent display in my library. Vive le libertie!

Growing up with Star Trek

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Although I didn’t grow up with Star Trek per se, Star Trek grew up with me. Interestingly enough, my father was the same age when Kirk commanded the Enterprise as I was when Picard assumed command. Both of us were interested in the Roddenbury universe at about the same age in the formative pre-teen years of our lives. Trek was something that we had in common at the same time in our lives and at the same year of age, and so it was something that helped me bond with my father evenings and weekends.

While watching Star Trek VI yesterday, I realized just how much of my beliefs and rhetoric were inspired by the Roddenbury universe. Many of my ideas, values and norms were influenced by the depictions in Star Trek. Trek addressed things that I knew well, that I would see as an adult, and that influenced me without my knowledge. It showed me how people could choose in certain circumstances and what the consequences might be, and it depicted situations that are difficult to handle and helped me think about them before I faced them as an adult. Moreover, the Roddenbury universe was one in which virtue was rewarded and in which money held very little sway (Scotty did after all somehow manage to ‘buy’ a boat even though he wasn’t paid by Starfleet).

As I grew, the crew of the Enterprise boldly grew. They faced more and bigger enemies, went further, expanded the diversity of crewmembers, captains, villains, and plots. They incorporated Shakespeare and symphony, discussed what it meant to be human, what good and evil really might mean, and explored things I never thought to explore. Sometimes that wasn’t a good thing. In any case, I left high school perhaps more prepared because I had seen things solved in ways I might not consider, and when I met the Wil Wheatons of my life, I knew it was ok to say, “Shut up, Wesley.” I grew tired of Data, found Q interesting albeit frustrating, and was only afraid of the Borg, but even there, I saw them resist anyway, and that inspired me.

By the time I was an adult, Star Trek had produced four different storylines spanning the balance of my formative life. It prepared me for the notion that I would enjoy parts of life and be glad when other parts were finished. It taught me that I could have good and lasting friends, but it also taught me that all things can come to an end. Star Trek even gave me the motivation I needed to get into shape when my metabolism stopped keeping me thin. My parents bought me the original series on DVD, and I watched them while I ran on the treadmill, because the episodes were precisely the right length. Trek literally helped me boldly go where I had never been before.

It’s hard to believe that world was so long ago. Picard became captain in 1989. Kirk’s last movie with everyone was in 1991. I have students who were not even born yet at that time. They do not know or love or understand that world like I do. Some of them think I’m odd because I do. Few of them look to the stars with the same wonder as I, and now that NASA is gutted, fewer still will dream of going to the stars. As Star Trek designed and built prototypes for products being manufactured by Apple and Google before those companies were anything, I grew in wisdom, in stature, and in vision. As Star Trek grew, I grew up, and I hope that when the call to command comes to me, I will also be able to Boldly Go.