Fireworks

 

I come from a country (South Africa) where fireworks were never a big cultural "thing".  The 5th of November (Guy Fawkes Night) was celebrated as a sort of hangover from colonial days, but not in a big way.  Dad would buy a small box of mixed fireworks, and us kids would wave sparklers enthusiastically while Roman Candles and small rockets lit up the sky over the garden - but it wasn't that big a deal to us.  It was almost exclusively a family affair, with few or no public displays of fireworks.  We didn't spend the rest of the year breathlessly waiting for the next round of bangs, booms and zooms.

Thus, when I came to this country, I was taken aback by the enthusiasm shown by almost everyone, adults and kids alike, at the prospect of converting large sums of money into smoke and (particularly) noise.  I can do that on a shooting range and get some useful practice out of it, but just blowing paper, cardboard and powder into the sky?  It simply doesn't do much for me.  Last weekend, when the town we live in held its annual July 4th fireworks display a little early, I didn't even bother to go out and look.  I did some writing at my desk, comforted the cats (who were being driven frantic by the excessive noise) and endured as patiently as possible until it was over.  I know some (a lot?) of my friends here can't figure that out.  To them, this is a highlight of the civic year, and the more noise we make, the better.  Well, I'm glad they enjoy it.

Something I could never figure out was the seemingly immense number of small fireworks stalls and outlets along the sides of local roads.  Within a couple of miles radius of my home there are at least five, all operating seasonally for major celebrations like July 4th.  A couple of weeks before the day they'll open their doors, and close them again a week afterwards, reverting to their usual status of derelict old shipping containers and garden sheds, locked up until next time.  I wondered how on earth their owners could make a living off such haphazard businesses . . . until I read Mr. B's explanation.

One of the guys that hangs around the airport works for an FBO….and his side job is managing at a Fireworks Outlet.

He was telling us that their market research tells them that the average customer spends nearly 820 dollars for the Independence Day holiday….And their average customer is on welfare or other government assistance, has 4 children, and gets some form of housing subsidy. They nearly all live below the poverty line.

Yet, oddly, they have enough money for fireworks.

He also said that the year they gave out Covid subsidy checks was the best year ever for the business.

There's more at the link.

The average customer spends $820 for Independence Day celebrations?  I don't know if that's for food and drinks as well as fireworks, but even so, ye gods and little fishes!  Those fireworks are over and above the bigger displays put on by almost all cities, towns and villages all over the country.  Around this time of year, you could fly over rural northern Texas and think you were having a flashback to World War II, with every town in sight trying to shoot down everything passing overhead!

I'm sorry.  I must be holiday-spirit-deficient in some way, because the thought of that much money being blown sky-high at this time of year - when many, many people are finding it so hard to make ends meet - is just . . . weird.

Peter

What if this happened to the Mississippi River?

 

I was interested to read that an ancient course of the Ganges River in India, some 2,500 years old, has been discovered.

Earthquakes, caused by the shifting of Earth’s tectonic plates, have the potential to transform the face of the world. Now, for the first time, scientists have evidence that earthquakes can reroute rivers: It happened to the Ganges River 2,500 years ago.

. . .

In a July 2016 study, Dr. Michael Steckler ... had previously reconstructed the tectonic plate movements — gigantic slowly moving pieces of Earth’s crust and uppermost mantle — that account for earthquakes experienced in the Ganges Delta.

His models showed that the likely source of earthquakes in the region is more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) away from the sand volcanoes that Chamberlain and her colleagues found. Based on the large size of the sand volcanoes, the quake must have been at least a 7 or an 8 magnitude — approaching the size of the Great 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

. . .

About 50 miles (85 kilometers) away from the sand volcanoes, the scientists also found a large river channel that filled with mud at roughly the same time. This finding indicates that 2,500 years ago, the course of the river dramatically changed. The proximity of these events in both time and space suggests that a massive earthquake 2,500 years ago is the cause of this rerouting of the Ganges.

There's more at the link.

The now-demonstrated fact that a major earthquake can change the course of even a huge river like the Ganges, moving it 50 to 100 miles away from its previous course, made me think hard.  I don't know that we've ever seen the like in North America;  most of our rivers have changed course through a combination of erosion and silting (as far as I know, anyway).  However, what might happen if something like the New Madrid Fault let go in a big way?

Earthquakes that occur in the New Madrid Seismic Zone potentially threaten parts of seven American states: Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and to a lesser extent Mississippi and Indiana.

The 150-mile (240 km)-long seismic zone, which extends into five states, stretches southward from Cairo, Illinois; through Hayti, Caruthersville, and New Madrid in Missouri; through Blytheville into Marked Tree in Arkansas. It also covers a part of West Tennessee near Reelfoot Lake, extending southeast into Dyersburg. It is southwest of the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone.

Again, more at the link.

What's more, the New Madrid Fault runs slap bang underneath the Mississippi River.  If it really let go, it could easily produce an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 to 8 - it already has in the not too distant past.  If it were big enough, and lasted for long enough, what might that do to the biggest river on our continent?  If a waterway that big were to be displaced by 50 to 100 miles east or west, how much of our economy, our cities and our population would it take with it?  And what would happen to anything in the way?

It's a fascinating subject for speculation.  I wonder if it might make an interesting novel - perhaps set in older times, around the Civil War or Wild West period, as alternate history?  There were powerful earthquakes along the Fault in 1811-12.  What if they were repeated, say, 60 or 70 years later, at even greater intensity?

Hmmm . . .

Peter

And so say all combat veterans, cops, firefighters and paramedics!

 

Found on MeWe:

(Presumably referring to this study.)

And all of us who've "been up the sharp end" in our joint and several ways nod our heads in agreement, and say (loudly, with feeling, in well-lubricated chorus):

Of course it is!  You don't think we'd have been there without being demented, do you?

Sheesh!!!

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,115

 

I guess this post could also be titled "Headline Of The Day":

Man arrested for using fake ID

to bond friend out of jail,

who was arrested for using fake IDs

A man was arrested Monday after he allegedly used fake IDs and information to make purchases at several St. Tammany Parish stores. 

Later that same day, his believed accomplice was also arrested for using a fake ID to try and bond him out of jail. 

One would think that, knowing your buddy had just been arrested over fake ID's, you might perhaps consider that the cops would be familiar with them and looking for more, wouldn't you?

Oh, well.  Looks like itinerant criminals are now in the business of providing entertainment to otherwise bored cops in Louisiana!

Peter

Larry Correia on Presidential elections after the Chevron decision

 

In his usual famously polite, delicate, shy and retiring way, author and friend Larry Correia points out what's needed after the Chevron precedent was overturned.  I've edited it for language (this being a family-friendly blog), but if you want the unexpurgated original, it's at the link.

In honor of today's argument about Chevron, here's my proposal for a new government agency that I wrote on here years ago. The Department of **** Your Job Security. :D 

## 

We need somebody who actively HATES the government to run it.

If I was President (ha!) I would only create a single new executive branch entity. The Department of **** Your Job Security.

The DoFYJS would consist of surly auditors, and their only job would be to go into other government agencies to figure out -

A. do you ****ers do anything worth a ****?

B. which of you ****ers actually get **** done?

Then fire everyone else.

Right now it is pretty much impossible to fire government employees. The process is asinine. It is so bad that the worst government employees, who nobody else can stand, don’t get fired. They get PROMOTED. It’s easier, and then its somebody else’s problem.

But the DoFYJS don’t care. If your job is making tax payers fill out mandatory paperwork and then filing it somewhere nobody will ever read it? **** you. Gone. Clean out your desk.

We need to get rid of entire agencies. Gone. WTF does the Department of Education improve? NOTHING.

Gone. Fire them all. Sell the assets.

Any agency that survives this purge, move it out of DC to an area more appropriate to its mission. Do we need a Dept of Agriculture? Okay. Go to Kansas.

This will also cause all the DC/NOVA power monger set to resign so I don’t have to waste time firing them.

Oh, and right wing pet causes, you’re not safe. I worked for the Air Force. We all know that we could fire 1/3 of the GS employees tomorrow and the only noticeable difference would be more parking available on base.

Cut everything. We never do, because somebody might cry. Too bad. They’re called budget cuts because they’re supposed to hurt. Not budget tickles. **** you. Cut.

Shutting off the money faucet will also destroy the unholy alliance between gov/media/academia/tech.

Right now there is a revolving door, government job, university job, corporate board, think tank, the same crowd who goes to the same parties and went to the same schools and all that other incestuous **** just take turns in the different chairs.

Sell the ****ing chairs.

Every entity that gets tax money inevitably turns into a pig trough for these people. Cut it all off. All of these money faucets ALWAYS cause some kind of financial crisis later anyway.

See the student loan crisis caused by the government, here is free money, oh college has become expensive and useless, so now we need more government to solve it. You dummies get to pay for it. Have some inflation.

It’s all bullshit.

Quit pretending any of this makes sense.

The only way the leviathan shrinks is we elect people who actively hate the government to the government, and then only let them stay there long enough to **** the government without getting corrupted by it.

The instant you see the small government crusader you sent to DC going “Oh, well maybe an unholy alliance between the state and OmniGlobalMegaCorp to develop a mind control ray is a good thing” FIRE HIM.

So there you have it. That’s my platform if you elect me president. Fire ****ing everybody. And only give me one term. Thank you.

I think I've found my ideal candidate for November 2024 . . .

Peter

Animals can be a darn sight more loving than many humans...

 

Click over to this tweet by Flappr and watch the brief video provided (it's just over a minute long).

Dang, it got dusty in here all of a sudden . . .

Peter

This gets to the heart of the matter

 

I'm long since sick of the talking heads that are yammering on about the Biden-Trump debate last week.  The essential elements could be figured out by anyone with two working brain cells (or even less) in a few minutes.  Nobody yet knows how it'll work out (although it promises to be a cross between a tortured melodrama and a laugh-a-minute yuckfest finding out).

There's one commenter who seems to have his finger on the political pulse of last week's encounter.  Speaking in Australia at a conservative conference, Tucker Carlson had this to say.  Even if you've seen or heard bits of it before, it's worth taking nine minutes out of your day to hear it again.

I wasn't very enamored of President Trump's performance last week either.  Bombastic, sometimes shrill, sometimes childish, sometimes downright dishonest . . . he did not come across as presidential, I'm afraid (at least, not by my somewhat old-fashioned standards).  Nevertheless, if the choice is between him and President Biden, I think most of us will line up behind him.

Unless . . . we could persuade Tucker Carlson to offer himself as a candidate?

I'm not sure that would be a good idea;  Carlson is invaluable as an honest, no-holds-barred observer of the scene and a trenchant commenter.  We need him doing his present job, and calling the rest of our political establishment to account (frequently).  Nevertheless . . . what if we had a mind like his in charge - whether from the left or the right, I don't care - taking a long, unafraid look at the catastrophe which is our federal government at present, rolling up his sleeves, and starting in on the cleanup?

Tempting thought . . .

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 216

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.