I think so, Brain … but what role could he audition for in Part VII? Jabba was killed off in Return of the Jedi.
Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
Reply
Author Archives: wjjhoge
Getting Ready for Field Day
On the fourth full weekend of June each year, many ham radio operators in the U. S. and Canada spend the 24-hour period beginning at 1800 UTC on Saturday operating in the field. We refer to it as Field Day. The event began in the ’30s as a way for amateur radio operators to practice operating under emergency conditions. There’s still a bit of that in the event, but for many of us it’s become a social event as well. And for those of us who operate from a public space, it’s a chance to show off our hobby to our neighbors.
The Carroll County Amateur Radio Club will be operating from the Carnival Grounds at the Gamber Volunteer Fire Company. If you’d like to learn more about ham radio, stop by for a visit. We will have several stations on the air communicating with other amateur operators all over North America using voice and data modes as well as good old-fashioned Morse code.
Meanwhile, I need to finish packing the gear I’m bringing and set up my solar array to top off the charge in some batteries.
The Banality of Evil
Vodkapundit writes about the real danger of government snooping.
This is what the NSA does with data. They might someday need the contents of your email from your wife with the cute puppy picture, on the off chance there’s a coded message in there about TPing the Washington Monument with ricin-infused toilet paper. It may never happen, but Bureaucrat Bob isn’t going to be the one stuck with that particular hot potato on the day the TP Jihadis strike.
Is evil really banal like that? You bet it is. Right until some smart politician figures out some smart way to use those warehouses of data to cement his power. The IRS scandal showed a small-scale version of how to do just that, simply by using the complexities and intricacies of our corrupt tax code. The real danger however lies in those mountains of data being collected each and every day by Bureaucrat Bob.
Just so.
Read the whole thing.
Return to Sender
I gave a letter to the postman,
He put it his sack.
Bright ‘n early next morning,
He brought my letter back.
Meet the New Neighbors
WISE J104915.57-531906 is at the center of the main image, which was taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). This is the closest star system discovered since 1916, and the third closest to our sun. It is 6.5 light-years away. At first, the light appeared to be from a single object, but a sharper image from Gemini Observatory in Chile revealed that it was from a pair of cool star-like bodies called brown dwarfs.
The pair is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard’s star, which was found 6 light-years away in 1916. The closest star system consists of: Alpha Centauri, found in 1839 at 4.4 light-years away, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 light-years.
Since WISE J104915.57-531906 is only 6.5 light-years away Earth’s television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there, and viewers there are still watching the first season of the Tenth Doctor with David Tennant.
Image Credit: NASA
A Proposed Abortion Regulation
Ann Althouse reviews the Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion and proposes the following:
Here’s an idea for an abortion regulation that I’ve never heard anyone else discuss, but which occurred to me as I’ve read and reread the Supreme Court cases. A woman seeking an abortion must sign a statement: I have reflected on the nature of the procedure I am about to undergo, and I attest to my sincere belief that it will not kill a human being.
Read the whole thing.
Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
I think so, Brain … but would the Lardassians be credible villains for the StarTrek reboot?
Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
I found this bio of Kevin Zeese on the Occupy Washington, DC website (No, I won’t link to it.):
Kevin Zeese, J.D. is a lawyer from Baltimore, MD with more than 30 years experience of writing, speaking and advocacy across a broad range of issues around peace, justice and democracy. His recent organizing efforts include the Sounds of Resistance concert and protest against Bank of America and Stop These Wars/Expose the Lies/Free Bradley Manning last December and March. He is the co-director of ItsOurEconomy.us,the director of ComeHomeAmerica.us, and on the steering committee of the Bradley Manning Support Network. He also serves on the boards of Velvet Revolution and Common Sense for Drug Policy.
Serves on the board of Velvet Revolution? Really? The Velvet Revolution US’s IRS filings don’t mention him as a board member.
Checking over at the It’s Our Economy website (NIWLTI), if found out this about Mr. Zeese:
His recent election integrity work has included challenging the activities of the national Chamber of Commerce through StopTheChamber.org, as well as the activities of Karl Rove’s Americans Crossroads as part of AmericanCrossroadsWatch.org and seeking to overturn the Citizen’s United decision, including filing complaints against Justice Clarence Thomas, as part of ProtectOurElections.org. Zeese has also led the effort to prosecute Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp for hacking into private phones and bribing officials.
Those three entities are all a part of VRUS.
Stop the Chamber (NIWLTI) appears to be nothing more than a webpage at VRUS that functions as a sock puppet / echo chamber for posts on other sites and a link to a Justice Through Music Project donation page.
American Crossroad Watch (NIWLTI) seems to be more of the same with a DONATE button.
Protect Our Elections (NIWTLI) looks like still more of the same, but POE appears to have actually done some things. One thing that Mr. Zeese has done for POE is to file a frivolous bar complaint against Justice Clarence Thomas. And there’s a DONATE button. Of course.
So maybe Mr. Zeese is on the board of VRUS along with another lawyer, and perhaps neither one of those board members who have supposedly reviewed the IRS filing (“YES THE FORM 990 IS REVIEWED BY THE GOVERNING BODY”) feels obliged to assure that correct information is filed with the IRS.
Hmmmm.
Quote of the Day
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
—Sun Tzu
On War
Once upon a time, the Progressives were big on the idea of the moral equivalent of war, and so we’ve had a War on Poverty (which poverty seems to have won) and a War on Drugs (Yes, Prohibition in all it’s forms has been a Progressive movement.) among others. Progressives usually don’t like war, but they love the kind of control that a military organization exerts.
I used to be a soldier, and many of the skills I learned in the Army haven’t had real world applications in civilian life, but some have. One thing that the Army teaches its officers is how to make a plan and how to execute it. That has been useful.
In the aftermath of World War I, British Army General J. F. C. Fuller formulated Nine Principles of War. A version is still taught as a part of leadership development by the U. S. Army.
Mass Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time
Objective Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective
Offensive Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative
Surprise Strike the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared
Economy of Force Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts
Maneuver Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power
Unity of Command For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander
Security Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage
Simplicity Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding
Those principles aren’t really an invention of 20th century. They’re were old when Sun Tzu wrote about them in ancient China. They apply broadly to any enterprise. For example, violating the Mass principle by not having sufficient resources concentrated for an activity is a recipe for failure. And so on.
Throughout my career in business I have used the broad guidance of those principles to keep projects on track, and, yes, I’ve used them in my efforts vis-à-vis Team Kimberlin. Consider Surprise. I’ve known for months that perjurers can’t testify in court in Maryland. I didn’t let Brett Kimberlin know until a time when his lack of preparation was to my advantage.
Does any of this mean that I’m at war with Team Kimberlin? If I am, it’s not of my choosing. And if I am, I’ll use every skill and resource that I have.
Irresponsible Gun Ownership
Heidi Yewman has a post over at MsBlog about her spending a month with a Glock pistol.
Her behavior is prime example of the fact that not everything that is legal is wise—or, in her case, responsible.
She bought a 9 mm Glock, took it home, and freaked out when she opened the box and found a magazine in the pistol. She found a cop (who was doing a traffic stop) and asked him to remove the magazine for her.
The cop thought I was an idiot and suggested I take a class. But up to that point I’d done nothing wrong, nothing illegal.
Nonsense! She had done something very, very, very wrong. She was fooling around with a firearm and had absolutely no training, not even the Eddie Eagle safely class the NRA offers for kids.
She began her … quest … fool’s errand … whatever … because she’s opposed to Starbucks’s policy of not hassling customers who carry firearms in accordance with local laws.
I was right to protest Starbucks policy. Today, they have a woman with absolutely no firearms training and a Glock on her hip sitting within arm’s reach of small children, her hands shaking and adrenaline surging.
Did I say, “irresponsible”? Let me also add, “immoral”! If she is so afraid of her own self-control that she doesn’t trust herself to be armed, why does she assume that she has the moral right to endanger others.
UPDATE—Zed from Day by Day asks a good question here.
Why Bother With Copyrights?
The Congress shall have Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries …
—Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Section 8
I own a fairly good bit of intellectual property—trademarks, service marks, and copyrights. (My patent rights are assigned to a former employer.) OTOH, I’ve placed a good deal of material in the public domain or licensed work through Creative Commons. Why do I give some stuff away and retain control of other things?
Here’s the key word: control.
Some things have sufficient economic value to me that I want to keep control of them as sources of income. Some things have artistic or intellectual value that I want to protect.
Other things “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by being freely shared.
Still other things are worth giving away for the promotional value. For example, I someone were to post a copy this particular blog entry elsewhere and tell folks to go look at it, that would be free advertising for Hogewash!, something that a small-time blogger like me should be happy to have. Even if the person providing that free advertising were strongly critical of Hogewash!, I’d be disinclined to send a takedown notice so long as this blog entry was posted without alteration so that it could speak for itself.
But not every blogger is so confident of the integrity of his writings.
Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
I guess so, Brain … but I don’t think that “clear-channel” means a station with no listeners.
A Derp Brain Photo
Cabin Boy Bill’s bio says he served during the Viet Nam era as Navy Medical Corpsman and that he did a tour with a Marine Corps unit. Based on that, I assume that he would have qualified with the M16 rifle and that he should still retain at least a passing familiarity with it and the Marines’ standards of safe gun handling.
Schmalfeldt has spent the past couple of days whining about an unfairly cropped photo which he says unjustly portrays him as “crazed and evil.” This image is an unedited copy of one he posted at Breitbart Unmasked.
The Four Rules of Gun Safety (as stated by Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC Ret.) are
1. All firearms are always handled as if they were loaded.
2. Never point a firearm at anything you are unwilling to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are aligned on the target.
4. Be sure of your target.
This picture shows the Cabin Boy violating all four at once.
The picture clearly shows that Bill Schmalfeldt is irresponsible. The Gentle Reader may form his own opinions about “crazed” or “evil.”
A Thunderstorm on Jupiter
This false-color picture of a thunderstorm near Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was taken by the Galileo spacecraft in June, 1996. “Near” on Jupiter means about 10,000 km. The white cloud in the center is a tall, thick cloud 1,000 km across, extending 25 km or so higher than most of the surrounding clouds. The cloud base extends off to the left and appears red in this picture.
Different wavelengths of light penetrates to different depths in Jupiter’s atmosphere before being reflected back by clouds. Red represents data taken with the 756 nm filter, a wavelength where Jupiter’s atmosphere allows the light to penetrate deeply. Green and blue represent data taken with the 727 and 889 nm filters where the gases in the atmosphere absorb strongly, so only high clouds can reflect the light. The green and blue areas show high clouds; the red areas show deep clouds.
This red color indicates that the cloud base is very deep in the atmosphere, about 50 kilometers below the surrounding clouds. Most of the features in Jupiter’s clouds are ammonia clouds at a pressure just less than Earth’s sea level pressure. On Jupiter, water is the only substance forming clouds deeper in the atmosphere where the pressure is about five times the Earth’s sea level pressure. The red base of this thunderstorm is so deep that it can only be a water cloud. In 1979, the Voyager spacecraft detected convective clouds of this type near the Great Red Spot, but their cameras could not allow the determination of the storms’ altitude.
It is thought that these storms are analogous to an Earth thunderstorm, with the cloud’s high, bright, white portion comparable to the anvil clouds we see on Earth. We can’t tell it the precipitation is rain or snow, but there are indications that storms on Jupiter have lightning in them. The greatest difference between this storm and thunderstorms on Earth is the scale. The anvil of this storm is 1,000 km across and 75 km high. Here on Earth, the largest anvils are 200 km across and 18 km high. The image covers an area approximately 9,000 by 7,000 km. The thumbnail on the left shows an area of similar size on the Earth.
Image Credits: NASA
Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
Yes, Brain … but … Narf! … 300 pound of Velveeta?
Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
Say, I wonder what has been taking up so much of Brett Kimberlin’s time recently? He’s not spending much time on the Internet as he did earlier this year. Nothing has been posted at Breitbart Unmasked (No, I won’t link to it.) since 23 April. Things have even be quiet at the Justice Through Music Project website (NIWLTI either).
I found that information on the JTMP Recent Posts page at around 10 on Monday morning. Surely, something related to shedding “light on some of the injustices in the world through the power of music” happened last week. Was Kimberlin too busy working ‘with Congress Members on progressive legislation and oversight hearings” or meeting “with government agencies investigating illegal activity” or generating “petitions that have gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to focus attention on important issues” to be bothered with the Internet?
Or has he had something else on his mind?
Quote of the Day
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
—H. L. Mencken
The Summer of ’68
The summer of ’68 was a busy time for me. While many of my contemporaries were marching in the streets, I was sitting behind a microphone.
It really got started during April. The first week of April, I was was working fill-in shifts for a fellow Vanderbilt student who did the evening news shift at WLAC. WLAC is a 50-kW clear-channel station. Back in 1968, its daytime programming was aimed at middle-class white Nashvillians. At night, when its coverage area included 28 states and a large part of the Caribbean, it programmed R&B music. It was the #1 R&B station in the country. On 4 April, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, and I had the news mike at the country’s #1 R&B station.
After that week, I was happy to go back to working weekends on WLAC-FM.
The next station up the AM dial from WLAC back then was WWGM. It was a daytime-only station, one of only two daytimers in Nashville. It had been severely mismanaged, and the owners had gone bankrupt. The station was being run by the Receiver-in-Bankruptcy who was trying to find a buyer who would pay enough to satisfy the creditors. When some paychecks bounced, most of the staff quit. Another Vanderbilt student who had been working as a part-timer at the station was asked to recruit students from the campus radio station to work at WWGM and keep it on the air. I got hired as Chief Engineer because I had a First Class RadioTelephone Operator License. I also wound up with a 6-hour shift as a DJ on the weekends.
When the spring semester was over, I went full-time. Since I was also taking some morning summer classes at school, I wound up with the afternoon drive time shift, 3 pm to sign off. Something interesting happened to WWGM for the next couple of months. A group of college students had their hands on a real commercial radio station, and Ken Bramming, the Program Director, let us run it our way. We didn’t change the Adult Easy Listening format much, but we began being less stuffy and having fun on the radio. The station smiled at the listeners. We played a lot more jazz.
Unfortunately, no buyer was found for the station. At the end of July, it went dark, and I went back to WLAC-FM. Imagine my surprise when the next ratings book came out and WWGM had pulled a #2 in the afternoons. It may have been a fluke, but it was the best set of numbers I ever had. Back then, an FM station or daytime AM station was doing well to even show in the ratings. I was used to 5th or 6th place in a 14-station market (but #1 on FM).
I learned a great deal that summer. One of the things I learned was that I had been amazingly lucky. In April, I’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time but made it through without screwing up too badly. In June and July, I got to be a part of something special.
Being in the radio business was fun, but I wasn’t sure that it was the career for me. I was studying electrical engineering, and the job prospects looked more profitable in other fields. Also, I was an ROTC cadet with a 2-year active duty obligation looming. So when I graduated, I hung up my headphones and went off the Fort Gordon and Viet Nam.
Afterword—WWGM eventually got back on the air as a gospel station. In the ’90s, it was relicensed to Gallatin, Tennessee. It’s present call sign is WMRO. The WWGM call sign is now used by an FM station in the Nashville area.
So here I am, 45 years later, after a career mostly disconnected from the radio business. I’m getting offers for voice-over work. Who knows …
UPDATE—To save my many fans much Google searching, the list of stations that I worked for (talent and/or technical; full-time, part-time, or contractor) includes WLAC, WLAC-FM, WMAK, WNAH, WPLN, WRVU-FM, WSM, and WWGM. And, yes, I got my start at a carrier-current student station, WRVU. I also did some behind the camera work and announce booth work at WZTV. Maybe one of these days, I’ll write about being snowed/iced in at the WMAK transmitter for a week.
Derp Brain Radio
I listened to Bill Schmalfeldt’s Internet talk show today. (I do this sort of thing so that you don’t have to, and, no, I won’t link to it.) I make these comment from the point of view of a former broadcaster who managed to get decent ratings (#2 in afternoon drive time) in a major market (Nashville) and as someone who worked in the music business.
First, a technical observation. The program audio levels varied significantly as the show cut between live and recorded segments. It was as if no one was watching the signal levels. It makes me wonder if the Cabin Boy ever had to run his own board before.
Second, program content. The Gentle Reader will probably not be surprised to find that Schmalfeldt’s program isn’t my cup of tea. The quality of the musical bits was the sort of thing that usually elicits “Don’t give up your day job” as career advice. And, of course, the most charitable way of describing the program content would be factually challenged. For example, Schmalfeldt referred to @BillSchmalfeldt as his “one and only” Twitter account. Really? This was still up as of 2 pm ET this afternoon:
Another thing that Cabin Boy Bill continues to misrepresent is how the @mention function works on Twitter. He claims that using it causes his tweets to appear in the timelines of those who follow the person whose account he has @mention-ed. That’s not accurate. I follow Glenn Reynolds (@instapundit). I do not see all the hundred of tweets that are sent with @instapundit in them in my timeline. Prof. Reynolds follows me (Thank you, sir!), and he doesn’t see every tweets sent to me in his timeline just because they contain @wjjhoge. The Cabin Boy’s scheme only works for users who are following both the account he is sending from and the target account. Furthermore, Twitter’s Rules and Best Practices web page says:
You can direct a Tweet at a specific Twitter user using @replies and mentions. The @reply feature is intended to make communication between users easier, so please don’t abuse it by posting duplicated, unsolicited @replies to lots of users. This is considered spam behavior!
Third, listener participation. Throughout the program, the Cabin Boy kept giving out his phone number and Skype contact information. He took no calls. That leads to two possibilities. It could be that no one worth his air time called in. It could be that no one called in at all. I’m inclined to believe the second theory.
On the whole, it was a wasted hour-and-a-half.
Credit Where Credit’s Due
OK, I’ll admit it. There’s been a certain celebratory attitude among my supporters and me since I came out on top in the Hoge v. Schmalfeldt peace order case. For the most part, we tend to view Bill Schmalfeldt as a blot on the Internet and an unwelcome noise source who got what was coming to him.
But every once in a while, he has come up with some pretty good zingers.
For example, he grabbed an image of my face with a silly expression on it from a frame in a video and substituted it for the O in the Hogewash! logo. The result is moderately clever parody of my trademark.
Cabin Boy Bill has also taken a corner of a famous Currier & Ives print of the assassination of Lincoln and redone it as the header for his Twitter profile page. He’s replaced John Wilkes Booth’s head with mine and Lincoln’s with a Twitter bird’s.
Of course, Schmalfeldt missed an opportunity to put one of his talk balloons on the picture. That’s a shame, because I should be saying something like “Sic semper ignoramis!”
BTW, neither of these images have anything to do with the harassment that formed the basis of my complaint.
UPDATE—To further clarify my position, I should also state that I don’t view either picture as harassing or, in the case of the Hogewash! logo, an infringement on my trademark. At least in the contexts they were originally used, they are fair game parody.
Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
I think so, Brain … but didn’t the shrink describe him as having “neuroses beyond the dreams of avarice”?
Tar! Feathers! (Again)
This zero-tolerance lunacy is getting old. Another Maryland school system is inflicting a grossly inappropriate penalty on a child, a 5 year old kid who has an orange-tipped cap pistol in his back pack.
The Calvert County Schools will not expunge the record of the child’s suspension. This after school officials questioned him for two hours before calling his mother.
Gun Control Question
Will there be a universal background check on each member of al Qaeda that we arm in Syria?
Then Why Did He Vote For It?
Congresscritter John Larson (D-CT) says that it is unfair to require Representatives, Senators, and congressional staff to get their health insurance via Obamacare.
He voted for the bill.
