Robots, Internet, Long Distance Babysitting

Part of my electronic babysitting duties includes helping my grandson construct robots.  The book has dozens of robots with all the parts ready to be punched out of the templates and then constructed with a little help from glue.   I read the directions and he does the work.

If you can't read the description, the EVV is a professional stunt-bot and dare devil, 3 feet tall.  It's abilities include extreme agility and strength; complete lack of fear.

Here's the completed robot - the EVV.

Last night our internet crashed, after business hours.  This morning we got through after about 25 minutes.  While they couldn't fix it while I was on the phone, but once she sent it to the next level it was back on.

And it seems much better.  We've been having really slow speeds.  Too slow to have one grandkid on Jitsi and another one on Zoom.  But today while I was with M, Z called to see if we could zoom, and they both worked fine.  But I passed Z off to her grandmother.  I wasn't up for both on two different platforms.

It's certainly not the same as being there, but it is like being in the same room.  Sometimes we have conversations, sometimes we just do our own thing, but we can hear each other and make comments.  The kids are good at working on things independently, but they do like someone around to show their work to.  An arrangement that works for me.  And attending to your grandkids is always a legitimate excuse to not be doing other things on your list.

Mask Murderers? And Another Misleading Headline On Race Relations

1.  Virus Notes

Yes, it's a paradox - the more you shut things down, the more it hurts the economy, but then the less you shut things down, the higher the cases go, and that hurts the economy too.  So, accept the economy is going to take a big hit.  If most people wear masks in public, we could open sooner.  Now, will that be with a few deaths or with lots of deaths?  That's the decision.  It's not the economy this time, it's the virus, stupid!

Since I wrote that note here a few days ago I ran across an article  From University of California San Francisco:

"The latest forecast from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests that 33,000 deaths could be avoided by October 1 if 95 percent of people wore masks in public."

 

 30,000 deaths!!??  Dare I call those not wearing masks in public - Mask Murderers?  It almost works, though unmasked murderers would probably be more accurate.  

And if you think there are hardcore folks who won't wear masks, because they won't give up their constitutional rights, wait until you tell parents they have to send their kids to schools that aren't COVID-19 safe.  But DeVos is all about destroying public schools and transferring public school funds to private schools.  This move by the president bleeds money from public schools, and gives Republicans new ways to point at how bad public schools are.  But I think the president's dementia is so obvious to so many people now that it will backfire.


2.  Misleading Headlines  - in March 2019 I put up a post that is still getting regular hits today on Misleading Headlines.  That article goes into the history of misleading headlines.

Well I was struck yesterday by  a very misleading printed LA Times headline, which had a much better headline in the online version.  I've seen that before.  I guess editors have more room online.  I'm not sure how many people actually buy hard copy papers because of headlines any more, but if they do, there is the pressure to make them more compelling still I guess.


The paper headline and first paragraph was:

"Outlooks on race turn gloomier

"Californians’ perceptions of race relations in the state have shifted dramatically since the spring, with views statewide having grown significantly gloomier than they were five months ago, according to a new statewide poll."

Here's screenshot of the paper version:

I read the article, and actually, it's a hopeful article.  Basically, it said that since COVID and George Floyd, people's beliefs about race relations in the US are less positive.  That's not gloomier, which suggests things are getting worse.  But what I took from that was that white people's attitudes got more realistic.  And you have to stop denying before you start changing.  So it's all good.  

When I looked for the link to the online version to put on this post, I found a very different headline - one that mirrored my take on the article:

"Views on race relations in state alter dramatically as more white people see reality of discrimination, survey shows"

NOTE:  I've put up screenshots of the headlines, but I've also repeated them with text.  I do this when I can and it seems important, because seeing-impaired readers can't 'read' images.  the programs that turn text to sound can't read images.

Why Being Right Is So Satisfying, Even When You Would Prefer To Be Wrong

As those of you who follow this blog somewhat regularly know, I've been monitoring the daily changes in Alaska's COVID-19 count. (See the COVID-19 tab above.)  I've also been trying to keep up with what various people are discovering about the virus and how it spreads, both for my own personal protection as well as to be informed when I comment on our numbers.

When the Governor loosened the isolation rules for Alaska, I predicted that we would see an uptick in our numbers.  And that's happening.  Yesterday we had a new case high of 51 (not including non-residents) and today we blew past that with 64 new cases.

As the numbers have gone up I've been thinking about the internal conflict between wanting to be right, but wanting the virus to stay controlled, with low daily new case counts.

I can only speak about myself here. I  googled "Why do people want to be right?" to see what those who study this might say, compared to what I think.  But all the hits were for "Why do people NEED to be right?"  That wasn't my question.  All those articles talk about a culture of competition, needing to win, needing to not be wrong.  Much is in the context of marriage counseling - Would you rather be right or happy?  The articles talk about the complexity of issues and different perspectives which make 'being right' far more ambiguous.

But I've never been particularly competitive.  When I played tennis, I cared more about playing well than who won.   And I've figured out that in most cases, I don't NEED to be right.  My striving tends to be for understanding.  I could argue with someone about a topic and I can be pretty aggressive about it.  But it's not to 'win.'  It's to challenge the other person to show me the flaws in my thinking so I can get closer to the truth.

After that search for studies on why people want to be right failed, I remembered that BF Skinner had said that being right can itself a positive reinforcer.  And I found this: 

"According to Skinner, simply "being effective" or "being right" may be innately reinforcing."  

 Though since Skinner was usually a stickler for objective proof, this seems a little  soft for him.  He defined a reinforcer as something that causes you to repeat a behavior, when he saw people getting the right answer repeating their actions, with no apparent rewards,  he decided being right itself was the reinforcer. Not quite as objective as rats getting food by pushing a lever.  But  I think it is true for me.


A lot of this became much clearer when I took the DISC - a management personality test -  a long time ago and found out I was on the bottom of the Dominance scale.

For each of the four scales, Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness, there's a list of positive descriptors for each of the four characteristic and a negative list.  The thesis is that when you're doing well, you would exhibit the positive aspects and when stressed, the negative aspects.  For instance, if you score high in Dominance, the top of the scale was a descriptor like "Leader" on the good side and "Tyrant" on the negative side.  (I'm going by the test I took over 40 years ago.  I'm having trouble finding detailed descriptions of today's versions of the DISC - maybe because they want you to take the test before revealing the meaning.)

 I was stunned to learn I'd scored on the bottom of the Dominance scale.  My descriptor on the positive side was "Meek."  If that was the positive side, I was afraid to look at the negative side.  I felt better when I read the dictionary definition of meek.  (When I check online definitions today, their more like what I was thinking back then - spineless.)

But basically as I remember the definition that comforted me was something about not wanting to dominate other people.  So the biblical quote about the meek inheriting the earth, made more sense.   I think that's a natural tendency in me that was only strengthened by living in a Buddhist country for three years.

So, when I claim that my sometimes persistent  style is not about beating the other person, I have my DISC score to back me up.  I don't want to be right as much as to find out what is right.  If you present me with logic or evidence that is convincing, I'm happy, and I'll willingly acknowledge that you were right.  (Unless you've been a real jerk about it, then I'll do it a little less willingly.)

So as I try to answer this question about why is being right so satisfying, it's not about winning.  Rather, it's about having my understanding of things confirmed.  Having the way I think and solve problems proven to be useful to successfully navigating the world.

Lots of things in the world, as the psychologists pointed out in the articles on 'needing to be right'  just aren't right v wrong issues.  There are lots of complications and shades of gray.

So when there is something where facts can bear out what your mental models predicted, it's satisfying.  I think that's one reason why sports are so popular.  At the end of the game there's a resolution.  Your predictions about the winner or the score or the nature of the game, is known fairly quickly at the end of nine innings or four quarters.

The spread of COVID-19 is also born out with facts.  Based on what the science was telling us about how the virus spread, I believed that if more people mingled in public, in closed spaces, many without masks, that our numbers would rise.  And that's what's happening.  (And it's why our president wants to stop testing - so the numbers won't prove him wrong.  I'd note that I'm sure Trump would test over the top of the Dominance scale.)

Feeling good about predicting that our numbers would go up comes from the sense of control one gets from knowing that one can examine a situation and sort through different arguments and pick the ones that predict what actually happens.  It makes me feel safer when I stay home and avoid any indoor contact with others, and limit my outdoor contact.  I can lower the odds of contracting COVID-19.  The risks I take are minimum - biking on sparsely populated bike trails, with a mask ready to pull up if someone approaches, ordering food online and having it delivered to the car in the parking lot.  Washing my hands after getting the mail or newspaper.  Probably getting a little extreme, but it doesn't take that much effort or time.

I imagine others might come up with other non-winning kinds of reasons being right feels good.

Yet I don't want our COVID-19 numbers to go up.  I guess it's like betting against your favorite team - you don't want your team to lose, but if you're going to lose, you get something positive out of it.  I wonder if those folks who bet on a steep drop in the stock market have mixed feelings when they win big on someone else's disaster.   I suspect not.  There, being right is rewarding, but mainly because it allows one to cash in.

This all gets more complicated when there are real or perceived consequence for being wrong.  Politicians who downplayed what COVID-19 would do, tend to scramble to find the right language to say they were right all along, but that circumstances had changed.

And I would say, that you needed a better model that would have considered those possible circumstances and the probability they would occur.

Garth Jones Leaves A Big Hole As He Leaves Us At 95

I saw the obituary in the ADN yesterday morning before my bike ride.  The picture was of a man who lived  at least 25 years before I met him - young and handsome.

As I rode, it hit me that this man influenced my life more than most people I've known - if it weren't for Garth Jones, it's unlikely I would have ended up in Alaska.  He was the Dean of the School of Business and Public Administration in the late 1970s and was looking to fill a position.  He contacted his colleagues at USC, where he had taught earlier and one of them showed me the job announcement.  I'd been in Anchorage about 8 hours - from 6am to 1pm - about eight years earlier after Peace Corps training.  I'd gone home to LA for the weekend and then flew to Anchorage to meet the plane that was carrying us all to Tokyo, then Hong Kong, then Bangkok.  It had been a spectacular August day and I was astounded by how beautiful it was.

But I wasn't finished with my dissertation and had seen too many people who had taken jobs before finishing their degrees.  It was clear I needed to finish before leaving so I didn't apply.  But the faculty member had stayed another year and when I was finished, the position was open and I applied and was selected.

So in September 1977 I met Garth Jones, my new boss, and the only other faculty member there with a degree in Public Administration.  He was also probably the oldest member of the SPA faculty.  And I'd never met a person like him in my life.  He nurtured me and he drove me crazy.  Over the years he shared a lot about his life, and while I was trying to impress him as a young faculty member, he seemed also trying to impress me.

Early on I remember a dispute we had.  The university had $10,000 allotted to open a childcare center.  I had two children under 4 years old.  A preschool on campus would be perfect for us.  Garth was 100% opposed.  University money should be spent on students and college education, not child care.  So Garth, I continued, supposed someone donated $10,000 to the University that could only be used for day care, would you still be opposed?  Yes, I would.  Young children should be at home raised by their mothers.

He came from a poor Mormon sheep farming family in southern Utah. At times there wasn't a lot of food, he'd tell me. He married into Mormon royalty.  Women were supposed to stay home and take care of their kids.

But, Garth, I argued, you told me I couldn't afford to live in Anchorage if my wife didn't work.  So how can she work if we don't have child care?  You're different Steve.  You're Jews and you value education and take care of your kids well.  It turned out that Garth had a strong admiration for Jews, though it didn't always come out in ways that sounded complimentary.

What this exchange meant to me was that while we disagreed strongly on a number of important issues, Garth would be honest with me if I pushed past his initial assertions.  It was also my first introduction to his, sometimes odd, but sincere admiration for the value that he felt Jews put on education and scholarship.

Garth also had an inherent thirst for learning which, in his telling, made him something of an oddball in his community as a kid.  He had read voluminously and there were lots of words he had read, but had never heard anyone say out loud.  For a number of these book-learned words, he had his own unique pronunciation.  He'd made his way through college and into the State Department and ended up in Pakistan where he helped establish the discipline of public administration there and helped teach the members of the civil service.  As someone from a poor background, he was not a typical foreign service officer.  He learned Urdu and got along too well with the locals.  When he was reassigned to Indonesia the same thing happened.  He told me he got chastised for getting too close to the natives.  Perhaps my Peace Corps experience in Thailand was something he could relate to when he saw my application.

When he came back he got a faculty position at USC which had faculty who had had grants to help with Garth's public administration work in Pakistan.  He also published an article that was critical of the State Department bureaucracy that was unusual in its very personal tone as well as its frankness.  I immediately gained a lot of respect for Garth when I eventually read the article.

"Failure of Technical Public Administration Abroad:  A Personal Note" begins:

"Am I a Dodo?
Thirteen years of one’s professional life is a sizeable period to devote largely to one cause: technical assistance in public administration abroad. Ten of these years were spent in Southeast and South Asia, equally divided between Indonesia and Pakistan, and three years were spent in Los Angeles serving as the academic advisor to the University of Southern California Pakistan project. Since November 1956, my life has been almost completely absorbed in reforming or building public administration systems in Asian cultures-and I mean absorbed. During my last tour abroad, six weeks short of five years, I spent only two weeks in the United States and only six weeks away from Pakistan. My professional perspective of foreign aid is solely field oriented. My knowledge of Washington operations remains largely confined to memoranda, periodic meetings with headquarters personnel in the field, short and hurried debriefings in Washington, and scholarly works. Washington operations in my mind represent a rather confused, and I guess, distorted picture. I have never spent enough time in Washington to understand the real "bureaucracy" if that is ever possible.
With my return to the United States in September 1969, I felt for the first time in my professional life that I was a "Dodo." Was I professionally obsolete in my chosen vocational field of foreign aid? My thinking on the subject appeared certainly out of keeping with the current trends as I "felt" and "saw" them in the field.
Few persons - practitioners and scholars alike - question the prerequisite of a reliable public administration system for mounting a successful, planned development program. Beyond this, little can be written. Technical assistance in public administration the world over is yearly being given less importance in planned development programs. I do not believe that this decline necessarily indicates that the mission of technical assistance has been successfully accomplished, but rather that those of us who have a vested interest in public administration technical assistance have not been able to convince those who exercise "real bureaucratic" power that we have a valid body of knowledge which is useful in the development process."

As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) I could relate to someone on the ground in Asia thinking that those in Washington DC (the headquarters in Bangkok, even) didn't have an understanding of things 'on the ground' upcountry.

This slightly renegade outsider perspective also tied us together.

There's lots of posts worth of Garth stories, but let me just note a few more issues:

Donations - Garth amassed a enough money, that he was regularly setting up scholarships for students, research awards, and donations to academic programs he thought were doing important things.  

Marie - No post about Garth would be complete with mention of his wife Marie.  She was a force of nature and a fearless promoter and protector of Garth.  If you were on her good side, your life was made easier.  If you were on her bad side, watch out.  She also fiercely watched out for their children as did Garth.

Racquet ball - Garth was winning racquet ball games with much younger opponents well into his 60s.  He didn't run around much on the court, but he would regularly put the ball in the farthest corner from you, or he'd hit so it died and rolled on the ground after barely touching the front wall.

Mormon Rebel - Garth wrote regularly for a Mormon journal called Dialogue. The link goes to an issue with an article by Garth.   It's a journal on the fringes of the faith, enough so that its editor at one point got excommunicated.  While Garth was regularly meeting with local Mormons giving counsel and help as needed, and considered himself a devoted Mormon, he didn't necessarily agree with all their policies.  I remember him talking about birth control and the problems he saw with large families, where children ended up raising their brothers and sisters because there were too many for the parents to give close attention to them all.  His support and contributions to the Dialogue were one way he expressed this.

The world has lost a truly unique person, full of contradictions, who spent his whole life working to make the world a better place.  I can hear his chortle like laugh as I write this.  The closest I ever heard him come to swearing was his regular exclamation - "What in Sam Hill!!" - though Hill usually sounded like it had an 'e' in it.

While All Eyes Were On The President's Tax Returns, The SC Made A Big Decision For Native Americans

This post is here just to draw attention to this case.  Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion and was joined by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan.  The opening of Gosuch's opinion in McGirt v. Oklahoma reads:

"On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. In exchange for ceding “all their land, East of the Mississippi river,” the U. S. gov- ernment agreed by treaty that “[t]he Creek country west of the Mississippi shall be solemnly guarantied to the Creek Indians.” Treaty With the Creeks, Arts. I, XIV, Mar. 24, 1832, 7 Stat. 366, 368 (1832 Treaty). Both parties settled on boundary lines for a new and “permanent home to the whole Creek nation,” located in what is now Oklahoma. Treaty With the Creeks, preamble, Feb. 14, 1833, 7 Stat. 418 (1833 Treaty). The government further promised that “[no] State or Territory [shall] ever have a right to pass laws for the government of such Indians, but they shall be al- lowed to govern themselves.” 1832 Treaty, Art. XIV, 7 Stat. 368.
Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said other- wise, we hold the government to its word."  (emphasis added)

McGirt appealed his conviction on sex abuse in Oklahoma state courts arguing that because they occurred in Indian Country the State did not have jurisdiction.  The Supreme Court agreed.


From the National Congress of American Indians:

“Through two terms of the United States Supreme Court, and as many cases and fact patterns, this question has loomed over federal Indian law. This morning, NCAI joins the rest of Indian Country in congratulating the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and proudly asserting that its lands remain, and will forever be considered, Indian country – as guaranteed in their treaty relationship with the United States,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp.

I don't know much about the history of this case, but my sense is that it's a pretty big deal.  I'd note the Chief Justice Roberts argued the Venetie case before the Supreme Court.  He was a dissenter in today's decision.

State officials in Oklahoma seem to be pledging to make this all work out.

This week's decisions seem to indicate that not all the members of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court are as predictable as some expected.

Corona Art - Old Friend Gets Recognized Again

Got an email today from my friend Tomás.  He's a friend I met through the blog.  He left a comment and we connected before he returned with his family to Spain. That story was in 2010 and includes Exit Glacier.  He's been in Kentucky this year while his wife teaches Spanish in a high school.  Tomás is an architect and artist.

He wrote to let me know that the Washington Post invited readers to send in their pandemic art.  They got 650 submissions and Tomás was picked in their top 20.  Here's his picture, Corona Rising.

 

You can see the other 19 they picked, plus some of the honorable mentions here.  It's an impressive collection of very different visions.  

History Catching Up To Us - Civil War Statues And Integrating New Orleans Schools

Rick Steves interviewed Jason Cochran, author of "Here Lies America." Cochran spoke about traveling to places where bad things happened and how they've been repackaged.  He talks a lot about the South - he's from Georgia - and how civil war battlefields were rebranded into tourist spots that glorified the world.  Here's a bit about a concerted effort to place Johnny Reb statues all over the South in the first two decades of the 20th Century.

"Drive through American South, and I’m from Georgia by the way, in front of almost every court house  in every town, you’ll see the famous little statue of Johnny Reb, the guy from the Confederate Forces.  Every little town you go to you’ll find this.  What I discovered in the course of researching this is that never were these things placed there right after the civil war.  The war ended in 1865.  Look at the next one you drive past, look down at the plaque, look at the year.  I’ll bet you anything it is probably from the 19 zero years or the 19 teens.  You have to wonder.  This was 50 years after the fact.  There’s a story here.  How did they all suddenly show up. . .  It was a concerted propaganda effort for lack of a better word. I think it was an education effort is the way they would have put it.  Let’s pretend you’re a resident of the South and probably 25 years old in 1900 and your grandfather is a mess because he had been. in the war.  You hear stories about how much land you used to own so you’re upset that you don’t own that anymore.  So there’s a lot of resentment happening in the South.  So the children and the grandchildren of the people who went to the civil war and suffered those blows and death those blows, they were the ones who built these statues. Because they wanted to reframe or expand upon how people saw the South and what they thought they were fighting for at the time.  There are people, even today, who would tell you that what is written on those statues is not what they would have put on them in the 1860s because the passage of time had colored things, but it was an effort.  There were women’s groups, by the hundreds of thousands women joined these groups, they would put out a catalogue and you could pick which statue you wanted and they would send their members to hector and lobby local governments.  They would make sure those statues were never placed in the cemetery, where these statues would usually go, but in front of a school or town hall where people would make sure to see it."

 I was impressed at how apolitically this was all presented, as if there were no controversy going on today about removing statues that glorify the Confederacy.  It's just presented as factual history.


And related, is this passage from the book I'm reading for my next book club meeting - The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom.

"Woodson Elementary, McDonogh 96, Hoffman Junior High, and Booker T. Washington - Josephe's, Elaine's, and Ivory's schools - were segregated for all of their school years and long after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, the results of which were not seen in New Orleans until November 1960 when three six year-olds, Tessie Provost, Leona Tate, and Gail Etienne, dressed in full skirts and patent leather shoes, with massive white bows atop their heads, arrived in an all-white McDonogh 19, where they would remain the only three students in the school that entire year, taught in classrooms with brown paper taped to windows, blocking sun and jeers from white parents raging outside.  The same day in November first grader Ruby Bridges, the lone black girl surrounded by three US marshals, integrated William Frantz Elementary, spending half a school year as the only student.  A decade later, on the even of the 1970s, integration in New Orleans high schools would still cause riots.  Four decades later, it would remain factually incorrect to describe New Orleans schools as fully integrated."

Karens and Kevins have been around a long time.  

Hope This Independence Day Gave You Time To Reflect

European royalty was assumed to be anointed by God.  From Wikipedia:

"The divine right of kings, divine right, or God's mandate is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It stems from a specific metaphysical framework in which the king (or queen) is pre-selected as an heir prior to their birth. By pre-selecting the king's physical manifestation, the governed populace actively (rather than merely passively) hands the metaphysical selection of the king's soul – which will inhabit the body and thereby rule them – over to God. In this way, the "divine right" originates as a metaphysical act of humility or submission towards the Godhead."

While the Declaration of Independence uses words like 'Creator' it only mention's God once, and then it is "Nature's God."

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Declaration then goes on to talk about 'consent of the governed.'

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, , ,"

That's a break from being anointed via the Divine Right of Kings.  The colonists weren't without precedent.  Medieval barons had forced concessions from an English King centuries before with the Magna Carta.

That "the governed," by the time the Constitution was written,  didn't include women, men without property, or Native Americans, or Africans raises questions about the ideals.  Though as we know from modern times, politics requires compromise, and if all the colonies were going to be in this new union together, resolving the conflict by abolishing [slavery] was not a negotiable item for slave owners.

The NYTimes has a podcast up called 1619 (link to Apple podcasts) - the date the first shipment of slaves arrived in the colonies - that attempts to tell the history from a black perspective.  Adam Serwer has an Atlantic article that outlines the controversy it's raised among some prominent historians.

Hope you've been able to safely enjoy this holiday and that our nature imposed restrictions enabled you to ponder it in a new light.

Short Takes - RPCV Joins Alaska SC, Maxwell Arrest, Racism Like Apple Pie, Russian Bounty

Note: Another big COVID increase today.  Click COVID tab above for daily updates on state case counts

1.   Alaska's newly appointed Supreme Court justice Dario Borghesan is an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who served in Togo.



2.   Just hearing her name on the news for being involved with Jeffrey Epstein doesn't give you a sense of Ghislaine* Maxwell's role in the Jeffrey Epstein world.   The Netflix series Jeffrey Epstein:  Filthy Rich brings their crimes clearly into the light.  And how well connected rich people can get away with things on a scale 'normal' folks would never even imagine.  Well worth watching.


3.

“Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you’re protesting America.”

— romy🦋 (@romyreiner) July 2, 2020

This says it all.  But for many people it makes no sense at all.  Which proves the point.**



4.  Did Russia pay the Taliban bounties to kill US troops?  Of course.  Just like we armed and paid the Mujahideen to do the same in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union took over there.  But since Afghanistan bordered the Soviet Union** and the US is half a world away - it's much easier for Russia to do.  But even with the geographic advantage, the Soviet Union was forced out of Afghanistan.


*Throughout the Netflix series the pronunciation of her name was in serious conflict with my natural visual bent.  I'd have done better had I never seen it written.  But this is irrelevant.  She's a seriously evil person and her arrest may bring some comfort to her many victims.

**I realize this is a bit enigmatic for those who don't think of racism as being like apple pie.  If this leaves you scratching your head, just leave a (civil) comment and we can talk about it.

***Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were then part of the Soviet Union.  Today they are independent countries and are between Russia and Afghanistan.

Summer Visit By Downy Woodpecker And Fledgling

There was a Downy woodpecker in the yard.  In a tree next to the deck, and our presence didn't seem to bother it at all.

It was making holes.








Then there were two.

It turns out, the first one was the parent, mom, I'm guessing because of the coloring.  And she was getting bugs and feeding them to the second one.  This was the best picture I could get of a feeding.











Then she pecked away for more food.  Our trees must have lots of bugs in them.

Then she'd fly off to another tree.