Sunday, August 3, 2025

Sunday morning music

 

Last week we lost a giant of comedy musical theater.  Mathematician and entertainer Tom Lehrer died at the age of 97.  His obituary (at the previous link) provides many details of his long and varied life;  you can read more here (including that he invented the Jello shot, which is neither musical nor mathematical, but is certainly entertaining!).

I'm sure most of my readers have their own favorite Lehrer tunes.  I've selected a few at random to entertain us, and introduce those who (inexplicably) have never heard of him to his music.  We'll start with my favorite.




At the time of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's, here's Lehrer's attempt to modernize Church music.




To satisfy wearers of the green, here's his take on an Irish ballad.




And, last but not least, here's an ode to pain (sort of).




Tom Lehrer's mix of talents was perhaps unique in musical history.  God rest him.

Peter


Friday, August 1, 2025

Weapons development: lessons from Ukraine

 

An interview suggests that old-style US defense manufacturers are ignoring lessons from Ukraine in rapid response to battlefield needs and fielding new designs in a hurry.  It's a long interview, with plenty of examples, and contains much food for thought.  Here's a key question and response.


Q: Talk a little bit about developing systems in combat and can you share any real-world examples of weapon systems tested in combat?

A: What is generally happening is that when somebody has an idea or somebody says, ‘Oh, there’s a need we’re going to build to fill it,’ before they ever go anywhere near the Ministry of Defense or anything for purchasing, they are working in tandem with a unit and constantly refining during the build process. And whether it’s refining the hardware, whether it’s refining the software, whatever it may be, all of this stuff is literally being built side-by-side with the military. So by the time it is ready to be purchased, it has already been fully tested. It’s build, test; build, test; build, test. It’s this constant cycle. 

One of the challenges that Ukraine has seen is that a lot of systems that are being sold or are ready for sale, they’ve hit what they’re calling their ready product. However, by the time they bring it to Ukraine, the systems have been closed. They did not build it in an environment that allowed for quick iteration, the fast changes that have to happen. So a lot of the systems that come in from the outside do not work. And it’s not that it’s bad tech in and of itself. It’s just that, and so many of these builds outside of Ukraine, I think, for most people, it’s just utterly unimaginable to build for the electronic warfare and the communications denied environment that exists here.

Q: What lessons does that offer for the U.S. when it comes to a potential conflict in Asia with China and the ability to adapt to what’s happening there? 

A: This is something that I am trying to talk about more, because it is so hard to understand from the outside and there definitely are implications for the United States. There are a couple of things. I think about this in four bullet points of things I really wish that the U.S. understood. 

So one is just truly the speed of iteration that happens here, and it’s both for the software and the hardware. And because you need to be able to adapt to everything that the Russians do – and I guarantee the Chinese would be exactly the same – in terms of the GPS-denied environments, in terms of being able to respond to the electromagnetic warfare that’s going on. You have to start with systems that are adaptable, and that can be changed. And it’s not going back to the factory that the soldiers themselves can do it. So that’s the iteration part. 

The second thing is, like you said, just the production, the scale of this stuff. Everything that the Ukrainians are using, for the most part, you know, the FPVs, maybe run $500 to $1,000, at most, if they’ve got really sophisticated components like nighttime cameras or something like that. The bigger fixed wings, maybe $10,000, though some of them are $30,000, but you know, those are even bumping up against the high point. And if you think about the scale, we’re talking about millions and millions of drones that are out there that are being used. You can’t have drones that are costing you $100,000, $200,000 a pop. 

So the third point is price. It’s the kind of production and the mass production, and also the price point that balances in that is extremely important. 

And then the fourth point is really the whole procurement process. And this is not in the hands of the producers or anything. I mean, this sits with congressional committees. It sits with the budgeting process. It sits with the Department of Defense in terms of how they’re going to buy things. But the traditional cycle for the DoD to be able to incorporate new technology is not speedy. It is not fast. It can take years. And even, like with Anduril and some of these new ones coming out, this is still not a super speedy cycle. The Ukrainians have done a couple of things that have just sort of been extraordinary and that I know can’t necessarily be reproduced exactly. But Ukraine completely revamped its official MoD procurement cycle, and it’s now down to three to four months. So once there is a product that has been battle tested, that they have proof from commanders out in the field that it works, they can now actually do procurement within about three months. The other thing is that they have given individual units – companies and battalions – their own budgets to be able to buy directly from an approved list of vendors that have already been put into the ecosystem. This speeds up the process because there’s no procurement in there. It’s a transaction that happens very, very quickly.


There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

I'm particularly interested because in South Africa, during its long border war, weapons development was often inspired by soldiers talking to friends in small companies, putting ideas into practical form, and then testing, improving and developing them into a combat-ready product.  Some of the most effective weapons systems got their start that way, at grass-roots level, just as some of Ukraine's most effective drones have done.

(Of course, sometimes the inexperience of developers and manufacturers caused hiccups in the process.  A very effective armored personnel carrier was developed as an independent design, and a small engineering firm got the contract to produce two full-scale prototypes for military testing.  They were supplied with special armor steel plates to build them.  Unfortunately, their workers somehow mixed up the steel plates, so when the first prototype was tested against standard enemy weapons and ammunition, they penetrated the bodywork without any difficulty.  The firm had to pay for a replacement set of steel panels and build another prototype for testing, which almost bankrupted it - although the vehicle did make it into production, and served very successfully.  A rueful engineer who told me the tale commented that, somewhere out there on an African farm, the farmer had trailers to tow behind his tractors that were as bullet-proof and landmine-proof as a trailer could get, because that's where the first consignment of armor steel plates ended up!)

I foresaw this problem with US drone development and production in a recent article in these pages.  This interview reinforces my perspective on the problem.  I wonder if the US defense establishment is able - or even willing - to loosen its death grip on procurement, to make room for this sort of innovation and rapid development?

Peter


Did ActBlue use mortgage chicanery to disguise money laundering?

 

If a newly released report is correct, that may be the case.  For those who don't know it, ActBlue is a major fund-raising operation of and for the Democratic Party, claiming to have raised up to $16 billion since its establishment.  The question now becomes, where did at least some of that $16 billion come from?

It looks (at least on the basis of the information released so far) as if hundreds of millions of dollars in vaguely-sourced, unattributed funds was used to finance "mortgages" on properties that were overvalued by dozens or scores of times - and once inside the conventional banking system, those mortgage funds could be recycled and "washed" through entirely legal transactions, benefiting both the progressive left and the suppliers of the funds (who might have been drug cartels, agents for one or more foreign powers, billionaire oligarchs, or whatever).

For example, the report notes:

  • A woman named Regina Wallace-Jones, along with Stefford Jones, presumably her husband, bought [a] home from Clarum Corporation on May 21, 2002, for $689,500.
  • On the same day, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones received a $651,600 loan mortgage from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc.
  • Also on that day, Regina Wallace-Jones received (1) a $651,600 loan and (2) a $552,253 loan from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc.
  • Also on that day, the sale price was listed as $68,950,000, with two unlisted sources making additional loans of $10,035,000 and $55,125,000.
  • On May 21, 2002, when Steffond and Regina bought 1257 Runnymede St. from Clarum Corporation, there were five simultaneous filings on the same day, three with identical $689,500 “sale prices,” but with different loan amounts or borrowers, as well as two other wildly different sales prices and loan amounts.
  • On May 21, 2002, the mortgage loan of $10,035,000 versus the listed “sales price” represented “a grossly inflated loan-to-value (LTV) ratio” that appeared to be a “highly likely synthetic debt injection or a placeholder loan.”
  • Then, on December 6, 2002, Regina Wallace-Jones and Stefford Jones received two additional mortgage loans, totaling $551,520 from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc. and $100,350 from Wells Fargo Bank.
  • On December 24, 2004, Steffond Jones and Regina Wallace-Jones got a $160,000 mortgage loan from Wells Fargo Bank, and on January 13, 2005, the couple got a $250,000 mortgage loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank.
  • On July 15, 2015, Steffond Jones appears to have sold the Runnymeade home to himself and his wife using three mortgage loans of (1) $565,000, (2) $74,800, and (3) $565,000, from Wells Fargo Bank.

Put that lot together, and the transactions begin to smell like a very old, very rotten fish, don't they?

As I said, this is very much at an early stage . . . but if further investigation proves the initial report to be accurate, we may be talking about money laundering in the billions, if enough transactions are uncovered.  Is this why ActBlue appeared to go into crisis mode after President Trump was elected?

Pass the popcorn . . .

Peter


Thursday, July 31, 2025

Late start today

 

Working on a couple of issues, so no time to blog today.  Check back tomorrow.  Thanks!

Peter


Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Another illegal alien problem - massive fraud and fiscal abuse

 

Following my thoughts yesterday about the seemingly insoluble illegal alien problem, a report from California illustrated yet another aspect of the issue - namely, deep-rooted corruption and abuse of taxpayer funds.


The entire school board for a Sacramento school that teaches English to adult migrants resigned after a state audit revealed mismanagement, fraud, and illegal use of education funding.

. . .

The auditor’s report alleged that the school board engaged in nepotism in hiring Cameron’s daughter, inflated the number of students to get more funding, purposefully avoided providing financial transparency reports to the state, spent money on repair bills for cars owned by board members, paid for luxury items such as food and travel, approved consulting contracts to friends and family members, modified test results, and committed a slew of other violations.

Some of the fraud concerned admissions to the school. The state charter only allows the school to admit migrants aged 22 and up and who don’t already have high school diplomas. However, the audit found that it was admitting students younger than the target age and also students who already had high school diplomas.

State officials allege these violations occurred to grow the school’s attendance numbers to boost the school’s state funding which was based on average daily attendance and the total number of students enrolled...


There's more at the link.

Understandably, some want to recover all the misused funds from the school.  Needless to say, pro-immigration activists disagree:


Some state officials are demanding that the school repay the $180 million in misused funding, but local activists say that forcing repayment would cause the school to shut down, leaving the hundreds of migrants currently enrolled and many thousands of future enrollees without a means to learn English in the area.


As far as I'm concerned, go ahead and shut it down!  If the school's primary reason for existence was to soak up taxpayer money for the benefit of its limited and privileged constituency, there's no reason whatsoever why that malpractice should continue.  Why reward malfeasance by making it possible for it to continue?

Like so many issues, the presence of illegal aliens has been used as a pretext to divert literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money to non-governmental organizations and activists who've grown fat on it.  They do little or nothing for the people they're supposed to help, instead using the funds to perpetuate well-paid jobs for themselves and build a structure that effectively makes their clients dependent upon them, rather than helping them become independent.

I hope those responsible for this mess in San Francisco go to jail for their crimes.

Peter


I don't want to hear him ask me that, either...

 

From the inimitable Stephan Pastis.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.



I think most of us would have to plead guilty to wasting far too much time, and far too much of our lives . . .

Peter


Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Why illegal aliens will keep on coming

 

I've heard and read a lot of comments about the illegal alien problem in the United States.  Many say - and I agree - that they should not be allowed to "invade" this country, and should be deported if they do.  Others argue for a "compassionate" approach, ignoring cultural and other conflicts in the name of a "shared humanity".  Whilst I'm more of a law-and-order guy, I admit they have at least some right on their side, too.

Problem is, both sides ignore the reality that people want to come here, and to European nations, because our way of life is so immeasurably superior to their own that they'll do literally anything to escape here.  For some it's quite literally a matter of life or death.  Three news headlines over the past week should bear this out.  Click any of them to read the related article.


Thirty Days as a Cuban


There are dozens more articles like those every week.  They are the norm in many countries.  People living there want nothing more than to get out of those hellish conditions, and move somewhere that offers them greater opportunity - and they'll risk their lives, if necessary, to get there.  They don't care about laws that supposedly forbid them from doing so.  What has any law ever done for them where they are?  Laws are things you ignore when trying to survive.  Anything goes.

That's why, while I applaud President Trump's efforts to deport as many as possible of those who've entered this country illegally, I also recognize that those efforts are doomed to failure unless and until we figure out some way to lift the standards of living in the rest of the world.  Clearly, we can't do that, or afford to pay for it, ourselves.  It has to start in every country as a grassroots effort;  but in many countries, those in power cling to it illegitimately, and have no objection to killing any upstart politicians, and destroying any political movements, who try to take over.  They'll strangle such a grassroots effort at birth.

Yes, it's a pipe-dream to suggest that we can reform the rest of the world.  We can't.  However, unless and until the rest of the world does become a better place to live, we're going to continue to be overrun by those who are desperate for a future that doesn't exist for them where they are.  No matter how many we deport, they're going to keep on coming . . . and they're going to bring with them the societal and cultural norms that have shaped and formed them.  They may try to fit into our society, but many of them will find it impossible to do so.  They're already set in their ways - and those ways are not, and please God never will be, ours.

The irresistible force meets the immovable object.  That's our real problem - and I don't know that there's a solution, except to continue to roll our Sisyphean immigration rock uphill.  We daren't stop, because if we do, the invasion will resume in full force, and our society, culture and nation will be overrun.  We're going to have to invest time, resources and a whole lot of money to preserve what we have - but is it moral or ethical for us to do so without at the same time trying to assist other nations to improve conditions for their own people, thus reducing our illegal alien problem?

I have no answers.  I can only face reality - and I think that, at present, too many of us are not facing it at all.  "Kick them all out!" ignores the reality that they'll be back, along with a whole bunch of others who are more and more motivated to do so.  To ignore that reality is to live in cloud cuckoo land, an imaginary "reality" that ignores the truth.

If anyone can offer any really viable solutions, I'd love to hear them.

Peter


Tough kid!

 

We've all heard the expression "Man bites dog" as an example of a strange newspaper headline.  Well, how about "Toddler bites snake"?


A toddler in India bit a venomous cobra so hard that he killed it.

Two-year-old Govinda Kumar was playing in his home in Bankatwa, a village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, when he spotted the three-foot long snake and grabbed it.

The cobra lunged at the child and coiled itself around his tiny hands during the incident on Friday, his relatives said.

But instead of screaming, Govinda put the snake’s head in its mouth and clenched his jaw, Mateshwari Devi, the boy’s grandmother, recounted.

He quickly lost consciousness after ingesting some of the deadly venom, but was treated in hospital and has since been discharged.

The snake died on the spot.


There's more at the link, including photographs.

Given the biblical reputation of serpents, one can only wonder what the snake's explanation was when it reached whatever hereafter is reserved for cobras.  As for the kid . . . I can see a bright future for him as a snake charmer.  His reptiles will be so scared of him they'll do anything to keep him happy!



Peter