The darker side of publishing a manuscript

 

I've just finished three days of purgatory, trying to sort out the bugs and problems besetting a manuscript before running it through a publishing program to produce print- and e-book-ready files.  The manuscript is for my wife's third novel, "Going Ballistic", which was published in e-book format last year.

Due to a number of factors, she wrote it over time in segments and sections, using different software packages to do so, then combined them into a single file.  There were immediate problems with the "final" version:  quotes that were sometimes straight (") and sometimes curly (“), the same with apostrophes, double spaces interspersed with single spaces in the text, and some really baffling pagination errors.  We managed to get the e-book version published, but I just couldn't get the print version (which would be in Adobe's PDF format) to typeset properly.  Under the pressure of COVID-19 and related health issues, that had to be put on the shelf for a while.

Three days ago, I tackled the manuscript file.  I began by trying global search-and-replace fixes for quotes, apostrophes, etc., only to find to my astonishment that they didn't work.  I've never found a manuscript before that actively resisted replacing punctuation like this.  It seemed almost to have a will of its own!  For example, when I tried to replace a straight quote mark with a curly one, the curly mark would be inserted after the straight one, but would not replace it, so that I now had two marks.  Also, if I wanted to insert a comma or a full stop or a space, very often the characters would be inserted before the quote mark, even if the cursor wasn't positioned there, and would insert themselves in reverse order to how I typed them.  Weird!

Frustrated, I began on Page 1 and started to do a one-by-one replacement of the offending errors.  Not only was this very slow, but it seemed to upset something in the manuscript and/or program logic, particularly when I altered pagination marks or chapter breaks.  Changes dragged on and on, not taking place immediately, but producing a "working" or "wait" symbol while they were processed.  Routine backups of the file every ten minutes began to take thirty to forty-five seconds to execute, during which time I couldn't do anything else;  and when I manually saved the file, the same delays occurred.  On two occasions, my word processing program (LibreOffice) crashed completely.

It was obvious that hidden code in the manuscript file was messing up the entire process.  I therefore saved the file every few pages.  Every 50-odd pages I copied all its text to memory, then pasted it without formatting into a brand-new file with a new version number.  I saved the old versions as backups, of course.  I'd got to Version 5 by the time I fixed the last error, after many hours of line-by-line editing and replacing.  However, the moment I fixed the last error and copied the text to the final version of the draft, all the weird problems suddenly went away.  Saving became a half-second affair, global search and replace worked as it should, and all the previous complications became merely an unpleasant memory.

I've no idea what could have caused such issues.  I've never had a file behave like that in my life before!  Can any reader suggest what might have crept into a simple DOCX format file that might cause it to (mis)behave that way?  I'm at a loss to figure it out, except to assume that extraneous code had crept in from the multiple programs used to produce the text.  (The original segments were produced in Windows 10 using packages such as Notepad [TXT format files], Wordpad [RTF format] and LibreOffice [ODT format], then imported into and combined in Libreoffice before being exported to an MS Word [DOCX format] file.)

Fortunately, Miss D. has now adopted a different document processor (Jutoh) to produce her manuscripts (sadly, she doesn't like LibreOffice - which I use - or MS Word, and neither of us like Scrivener, another popular standard).  Jutoh produces clean files with no complications - at least, so far.  Thank heavens for small mercies!

As soon as we've checked and double-checked the revised manuscript file, we'll use Vellum publishing software to put out a new edition of the e-book (if you've already bought it, yours should be updated seamlessly), and a print edition as well.  Miss D. is almost ready to publish her fourth novel, set in the same world as "Going Ballistic" and involving one of the characters from that book.  Look for a launch announcement here within a few weeks.  She's also working on a fifth, to complete a trilogy in that setting, involving a character from the fourth book.  She's been hard at work writing, and I've been hard at work preparing her files for publication.  I've also got my own works in progress; I'm preparing to publish a number of them at roughly one-month intervals from the fourth quarter onward.

There's no peace for the wicked, it seems - either of us!

Peter

Biden Administration: If we don't like a court order, we'll just stonewall it

 

It seems contempt for the rule of law may be an integral element of the Biden administration's approach to its duties.

Six weeks after a federal judge ordered the Biden administration to resume selling oil and gas leases on federal land, there’s no sign it has and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland struggled Tuesday to explain why.

“We are evaluating our options,” Haaland told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee amid sharp criticism from Republicans. “There’s a lot of work that goes into moving that forward.”

A Louisiana-based federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction June 15 against President Joe Biden’s order to pause lease sales on federal land and waters so it could be considered in light of its climate impacts. The judge ordered Interior to immediately restart leasing but the agency hasn’t scheduled any auctions or rescheduled sales postponed earlier this year.

Haaland faced withering criticism from no fewer than seven of the 20 senators on the committee amid growing bipartisan frustration with the halt of new leasing in areas that provide roughly a quarter of U.S. oil production.

“The pause is effectively defying the federal judge’s order to continue,” Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, said.

Haaland conceded that “technically, I suppose, you could say the pause is still in place.” But she insisted the agency is complying with the court order and is moving forward on releasing an interim report to guide future leasing decisions ... conservationists argue that greater scrutiny is needed to ensure those auctions comply with federal laws, including of how oil and gas development from newly sold leases will affect climate change.

There's more at the link.

Uh-huh.  Suuuuure, the court ordered us to resume sales;  but we'll do it in our own sweet time, and we'll impose new environmental regulations that make it more difficult - perhaps impossible - for would-be lessors to comply with them and still make a profit.  That'll have the same effect as stopping leasing, because they won't bid on leases they can't exploit.  Sucks to be you, judge - doesn't it?

Some may think this isn't important.  It's just off-shore oil exploration leases, after all - not a matter of life and death.  However, it sets the tone for the entire administration.  If one department can get away with this, why can't another?  Why can't all of them?  What happens when it is a critical matter, such as preventing us from working unless and until we comply with scientifically dubious medical requirements, or taking vehicles off the road if they don't conform to this or that spurious environmental regulation (which may or may not be scientifically valid)?  What then will we say about the importance of the rule of law as an overriding consideration?

When the administration is illegitimate at its core (due to the electoral fraud that allowed it to steal office), we should not be surprised to see that illegitimacy manifesting itself in most, if not all, of its dealings.

Peter

COVID-19: Blatant propaganda and rampant dishonesty

 

In case you're one of the handful of people who hasn't yet realized it, we're being bombarded by utter dishonesty in a coordinated propaganda campaign to scare us all into official compliance.  Government, news media and social media are all collaborating in this effort.  I'll cite just two examples from the very recent past to prove the point.

First, Twitter.  There are dozens (possibly, by now, hundreds) of accounts all tweeting the identical warning about COVID-19.  Here's one user's discovery of what's going on.  The image below shows six almost identical tweets from six different accounts, all saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same words.  If a picture tells a thousand words, this one speaks volumes.  Clickit to biggit.

That's not the only example of identical tweets being repeated ad nauseam by dozens, or scores, or hundreds, or even thousands of accounts.  Dishonest propaganda in plain view.

Next, social and news media.  Remember this article last week?

Dr. Brytney Cobia said Monday that all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the vaccine. The vaccinated patient, she said, just needed a little oxygen and is expected to fully recover. Some of the others are dying.

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

. . .

For the first year and a half of the pandemic, Cobia and hundreds of other Alabama physicians caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients worked themselves to the bone trying to save as many as possible.

“Back in 2020 and early 2021, when the vaccine wasn’t available, it was just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy,” Cobia told AL.com this week. “You know, so many people that did all the right things, and yet still came in, and were critically ill and died.”

. . .

“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

There's more at the link.

There's an interesting problem with that article.  Go to the Web site of Grandview Medical Center.  Click over to the "Find A Doctor" page.  Do you see a Dr. Brytney Cobia listed there?  Funny - neither do I.  The only "Cobia" listed is a Dr. Miles Cobia, a neurologist.  In fact, a general Internet search for "Dr. Brytney Cobia" reveals only her article and comments about it - nothing else.  I find that highly suspicious when we're dealing with a medical practitioner.  Surely her practice, or membership of a group practice, should show up somewhere?

EDITED TO ADD:  It appears that the above paragraph was based on wrong information, and/or I misinterpreted or misunderstood the information that was available.  My thanks to the readers who pointed that out in Comments, and my apologies to all concerned.  I've left the original text in place, but struck through, so that others can see what was said and thus understand the comments that were made, but know that it no longer applies.

American Thinker finds that Dr. Cobia's claims are not supported by official data.

Tucker Carlson points out that "this isn't about the science", because the official shibboleth comes apart at the seams when one examines actual, hard data.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

In Los Angeles, officials brought back the mask mandate when COVID cases moved up so slightly it's hard even to measure the rise on a chart. That's the so-called "spike" they cited as justification is barely noticeable on a chart. Do politicians in Los Angeles know something we don't know? We can't be sure. We do know, fairly certainly, the news media are lying about science in order to justify the new restrictions. Why would they want to do that? We have no idea.

But here’s one example: In Florida, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper recently ran this headline. "New COVID cases nearly double in Florida – the worst in the nation." Holy smokes. Better run to Georgia.

And to show how scary this is, they included a chart that shows an uptick in positive test results, and it looked terrifying. But those are the test results. But actually, who cares? What matters is the harm. What they didn't include is the chart showing COVID deaths. I wonder why? Because those are near zero. That’s a very different picture, and it’s the one that actually matters.

It wasn't long ago that all of us understood that. People like Tony Fauci, in fact, told us the goal was keeping people from dying from COVID. That sounded reasonable to everybody. That’s why they said we needed the vaccine. That’s why millions took the vaccine. Now that they have taken the vaccine, politicians have decided that actually, they can’t part with the enormous, unprecedented amounts of power they’ve amassed over the last year, so they’re going to keep ordering us AROUND, regardless of the science.

. . .

Rochelle Walensky is an actual doctor. She's the director of the CDC.  She went to Harvard. She’s never been elected to anything, but in a pandemic like this, her word is law. It’s more powerful than anything Congress produces. She’s her own federal agency. In fact, on a continuum, she sits somewhere between king and God. So read carefully as Rochelle Walensky tells you that COVID is killing twice as many children as influenza.

WALENSKY: I think it’s really important for people to understand that this is not a benign disease compared to other diseases our kids see. If you look at the mortality rate of COVID, just this past year for children, it's more than twice the mortality rate that we see in influenza in a given year.

So, you’re not supposed to question that, and we didn’t really dare to check those numbers, because who are we to check the numbers from an unelected federal bureaucrat when she’s commanding us to obey. So we didn’t, we just took it at face value. 

But a columnist called Phil Kerpen, who’s a columnist and had some free time, decided to check the CDC numbers on what the CDC director claimed on CNN.   

What did he find? He found that the CDC director has no idea what she’s talking about.  

From 2019 to 2020, according to the CDC, a total of 124 children died of COVID. From 2020 to 2021, 213 children died of COVID. By comparison, influenza killed more than 400 children just last year. In fact, that was not an abberation. Influenza has killed far more children than COVID has in each of the past five years. It's not even close. 

And that's assuming the CDC's numbers on child deaths from COVID are accurate, and it looks like they’re not. In a recent report, the CDC itself acknowledges it could be vastly over-reporting the number of children who are dying from COVID. The CDC report states that, when considering everyone who died of COVID, roughly 2.5% of those who died had a co-existing medical condition unrelated to their deaths. But for children under the age of 18, that number is dramatic – over 35% of children who died from COVID had what the CDC calls an "unrelated medical condition."

In other words, more than a third of children who are listed on the official records as dying from COVID had comorbidity that the CDC assures us cannot possibly be connected to COVID. But it appears, upon closer examination, the comorbidities might in fact be related to the deaths of those children.

. . .

This is insane. Who is going to get up and say so? No one so far. Instead, the floor is left to Rochelle Walensky and people like her: manipulators of data and liars.

. . .

If you want us to have confidence in your medicine, then tell us the full truth. But they won’t. They've been telling us for six months the vaccine is perfect. But clearly, in some cases, it doesn’t work.

. . .

The other day, Pfizer's purchase agreement with the Albanian government leaked on the internet. One of many fascinating excerpts from that document, lots of legalese. But between it all, lots of quotes like this:   

"Purchaser acknowledges the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known."

Reassuring? What are those effects? And why don’t we know? And why can’t we ask? No one is pausing to ask questions at this moment, though. That’s not allowed.

More at the link.

Fake tweets, fake news articles, fake "official pronouncements".  The powers that be are trying to herd us like scared sheep - and those who can't or won't think for themselves are allowing themselves to be herded.

For our lives' sake (literally), we'd better make sure we're not among them.

Peter

Oh - about that inflation thing...

 

... if you've been wondering how bad price increases are getting, here's an infographic from CNN that puts things nicely (?) in perspective.  Click the image for a larger view.

June's consumer price index, calculated on a year-over-year basis, gives those figures.  If you take the time to calculate the average percentage increase across all those products and services, year-on-year, it comes to 23%.

Twenty-three per cent.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Sure, many of us won't be in the market - yet - for some of those products and services, so some of those increases won't affect us for now.  Nevertheless, averaged across all those sectors of the economy, that's the reality of what we're seeing.  Those who claim that things may get as bad as in the Jimmy Carter years are being extremely hopeful, but they're already out of date.  If this continues, we'll look on the Jimmy Carter years as having been havens of economic stability.

It's going to get worse before it gets better - and it won't get better under this feckless, spendthrift, incompetent, illegitimate, abysmally ideological administration.  Brace yourselves.

Peter

The insanity of "woke" medicine

 

Would you expect your doctor or medical practitioner to treat you according to their preconceived quasi-political notions of what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine", irrespective of your biological sex?  Would you expect them to treat you according to protocols that are not only ineffective for your biological sex, but potentially actually harmful?  You might get that, whether you like it or not, if current trends in the American medical establishment go unchecked.

In two recent articles, Katie Herzog, hosted by Bari Weiss on her Substack page, has tackled this problem head-on.  The first is titled "What Happens When Doctors Can't Tell the Truth?"

I’ve heard from doctors who’ve been reported to their departments for criticizing residents for being late. (It was seen by their trainees as an act of racism.) I’ve heard from doctors who’ve stopped giving trainees honest feedback for fear of retaliation. I’ve spoken to those who have seen clinicians and residents refuse to treat patients based on their race or their perceived conservative politics.

Some of these doctors say that there is a “purge” underway in the world of American medicine: question the current orthodoxy and you will be pushed out. They are so worried about the dangers of speaking out about their concerns that they will not let me identify them except by the region of the country where they work. 

“People are afraid to speak honestly,” said a doctor who immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union. “It’s like back to the USSR, where you could only speak to the ones you trust.” If the authorities found out, you could lose your job, your status, you could go to jail or worse. The fear here is not dissimilar. 

When doctors do speak out, shared another, “the reaction is savage. And you better be tenured and you better have very thick skin.”

“We’re afraid of what's happening to other people happening to us,” a doctor on the West Coast told me. “We are seeing people being fired. We are seeing people's reputations being sullied. There are members of our group who say, ‘I will be asked to leave a board. I will endanger the work of the nonprofit that I lead if this comes out.’ People are at risk of being totally marginalized and having to leave their institutions.” 

While the hyper focus on identity is seen by many proponents of social justice ideology as a necessary corrective to America’s past sins, some people working in medicine are deeply concerned by what “justice” and “equity” actually look like in practice.

“The intellectual foundation for this movement is the Marxist view of the world, but stripped of economics and replaced with race determinism,” one psychologist explained. “Because you have a huge group of people, mostly people of color, who have been underserved, it was inevitable that this model was going to be applied to the world of medicine. And it has been.”  

“Wokeness feels like an existential threat,” a doctor from the Northwest said. “In health care, innovation depends on open, objective inquiry into complex problems, but that’s now undermined by this simplistic and racialized worldview where racism is seen as the cause of all disparities, despite robust data showing it’s not that simple.”

“Whole research areas are off-limits,” he said, adding that some of what is being published in the nation’s top journals is “shoddy as hell.”

There's more at the link.

The second article is titled "Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex".

In 2019, the New England Journal of Medicine reported the case of a 32-year-old transgender man who went to an ER complaining of abdominal pain. While the patient disclosed he was transgender, his medical records did not. He was simply a man. The triage nurse determined that the patient, who was obese, was in pain because he’d stopped taking a medication meant to relieve hypertension. This was no emergency, she decided. She was wrong: The patient was, in fact, pregnant and in labor. By the time hospital staff realized that, it was too late. The baby was dead. And the patient, despite his own shock at being pregnant, was shattered.

To Dana Beyer, a trans activist in Maryland who is also a retired surgeon, such stories illustrate how vital it is that sex, not just gender identity — how someone perceives their gender — is taken into consideration in medicine. “The practice of medicine is based in scientific reality, which includes sex, but not gender,” Beyer says. “The more honest a patient is with their physician, the better the odds for a positive outcome.”

The denial of sex doesn’t help anyone, perhaps least of all transgender patients who require special treatment. But, Lauren says, instructors who discuss sex risk complaints from their students — which is why, she thinks, many don’t. “I think there’s a small percentage of instructors who are true believers. But most of them are probably just scared of their students,” she says.

And for good reason. Her medical school hosts an online forum in which students correct their instructors for using terms like “male” and “female” or “breastfeed” instead of “chestfeed.” Students can lodge their complaints in real time during lectures. After one class, Lauren says, she heard that a professor was so upset by students calling her out for using “male” and “female” that she started crying.

Then there are the petitions. At the beginning of the year, students circulated a number of petitions designed to, as Lauren puts it, “name and shame” instructors for “wrongspeak.” 

One was delivered after a lecture on chromosomal disorders in which the professor used the pronouns “she” and “her” as well as the terms “father” and “son,” all of which, according to the students, are “cisnormative.”

. . .

This hypersensitivity is undermining medical training. And many of these students are likely not even aware that their education is being informed by ideology. 

“Take abdominal aortic aneurysms,” Lauren says. “These are four times as likely to occur in males than females, but this very significant difference wasn’t emphasized. I had to look it up, and I don’t have the time to look up the sex predominance for the hundreds of diseases I’m expected to know. I’m not even sure what I’m not being taught, and unless my classmates are as skeptical as I am, they probably aren’t aware either.” 

Other conditions that present differently and at different rates in males and females include hernias, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and asthma, among many others. Males and females also have different normal ranges for kidney function, which impacts drug dosage. They have different symptoms during heart attacks: males complain of chest pain, while women experience fatigue, dizziness, and indigestion. In other words: biological sex is a hugely important factor in knowing what ails patients and how to properly treat them.

Again, more at the link.

I highly recommend reading both articles in full, and watching Bari Weiss' Substack account for more of them.  Then, armed with that knowledge, assess your medical practitioners from a coldly logical, practical perspective.  Are they treating you for who and what you are, physically and biologically?  Or are they forcing you into an ideological pigeon-hole?  If the latter, I can only suggest that you find another medical practitioner at once, if not sooner.

If these views ever come to dominate medical praxis in the USA, getting older isn't going to be a problem for most of us.  We'll be dead through medical malpractice before we can reach that stage.

(For all I know, that may be part of the plan.  Dead people don't need Social Security or Medicare, after all.  It's cheaper for the state if we die young - and that may be the point!)

Peter

Wholesale shoplifting in California - possible solutions?

 

I note, with growing anger and irritation, that the authorities in California appear unwilling to do anything to stop the epidemic of shoplifting that's plaguing major cities in that state.

Retail thefts have been troubling major cities in recent months, forcing some stores to close their doors or limit operating hours.

Multiple incidents in California have been captured on camera, including a viral video from earlier this month that shows a group of shoplifters dashing out of a Neiman Marcus department store in San Francisco and jumping into idling getaway cars.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, another video that began circulating online last week appears to show two men in the suburb of Granda Hills casually leaving a TJ Maxx store with their arms full of items.

Authorities and retail officials in San Francisco have said that packs of shoplifters have regularly made off with merchandise to be resold.

Shoplifters aren't stealing "one or two items that someone might need to get by," San Francisco Police Department spokesman Robert Rueca told Fox News last week. "Our investigations have shown that there are organized fences where people are selling these products that they steal."

Millions of dollars’ worth of merchandise has been stolen from retailers in San Francisco, California Retail Association President Rachel Michelin told Fox News, adding that the funds from stolen items are ultimately used by crime syndicates.

There's more at the link.

It seems that District Attorneys in that state - backed up by ultra-liberal town and city councils - have decided not to prosecute thefts involving a value of less than $950 or thereabouts.  The result, inevitably, has been an explosion of such thefts.

During the rioting and looting last year, this meme was doing the rounds:

I think it's high time California passed a similar law directed against shoplifters.  If they're on any sort of government benefit, state or federal, at the time of their offense, then after conviction they should forfeit any and all rights to such benefits for the rest of their lives.  Instead, that money should go into a fund to reimburse the victims of their crimes.

Another thing.  District Attorneys and prosecutors who refuse to indict the criminals involved should immediately forfeit their jobs, be disbarred from legal work, and be banned from holding any public office, elected or appointed, for the rest of their lives.

Do those two things, and I reckon the epidemic of shoplifting in California would vanish almost overnight.

Peter

Very useful advice from someone who knows

 

I have to give a shout-out to the blogger at "Come And Make It".  He's an American living in the Philippines, who writes about life there and its challenges.  In the process, he often comes up with nuggets of useful information that can be really handy in the First World too.  I don't agree with all his views, but he frequently makes me think.

For example, his latest blog post is titled "Cooking Rice And Other Esoteric Prepper Subjects".  Here's an excerpt.

One thing that I have learned the hard way, after living on the tropical island, is the subject of rice.

Parboiled, Arkansas, Jasmine, Basmati, Sushi, Calrose.  There are so many damn rices out there.  How the hell does a white boy summer choose?

So as a guy who has pretty much ate his way thru the rice eating world.  From Stuttgart Arkansas, to Middle East to Philippines.  This is the hard won education I shall impart to you.

Asians including the Indian subcontinent flavor ALL wash their rice before use.  

This is two reasons.  First of all, Asian rice is harvested and dried on the damn highway.  As in ******* asphalt highway with cars driving over that **** at 65mph.  So after the brown rice fresh outta the combine is dried, it goes thru the mill and comes out as white rice.

The funky bits of stones, asphalt, and whatever ******* gots to be washed out of your pot of food.

So enter the rice wash routine.

HOWEVR, even if your rice comes all esoteric organic ******* clean first worlds handling you still gotta wash that rice.

The reason being is that you are washing out the starch from the outer bits of the rice.

This is the starch that makes your rice taste mushy and like ****.

Wash it off.  The Japanese will soak their rice overnight to get rid of that starch, leaving behind a lot more chewy protein.

Second of all.  Acid...  Japanese who have mastered the eating of rice to atomic physics levels, add in a bit of vinegar to their rice and the gourmets add in a bit of sugar too.

Acid will transform your ****** rice into something chewy and delicious.  Not like American style rice that is basically chunky gravy bits of starch.

There's more at the link.

He's not joking about rice being dried on the highway, with trucks and cars driving over it.  I've personally witnessed that in the Third World.  If you look at the foreign, more esoteric brands of rice available in stores like Oriental food markets, just bear in mind, the odds are very good that it was dried in that way - and it may not have been adequately cleaned afterwards.  His advice is worth following.

Another recent article was titled "Long Shelf Life Food Storage".

Chest freezers are handy for storing long term.  However not the things one would typically think about freezing.  Rather your dry goods.

Living on the tropical island, I have had to store many dry goods in the freezer to keep ants out of it. 

Things like Sugar, spices, boullion, cocoa powder, etc.

So I made a list of items that can have the shelf life extended indefinitely by putting in the freezer.

Also if your electricity does go out and you have taken care not to have frost build up in the freezer, likely you will not lose any food even for months of no power.

So here is my list, and it is not exhaustive, rather just to get your mind going.

raisins
dried chiles and chile flake
sugar
spices
beef jerky
dried cured meats
pasta
flour
rice
dried diced onion
powdered juice drinks
coffee
veg oil
baking powder
yeast
dried fruits and veggies
cocoa powder
chocolate (needs vacuum sealing also)
instant mashed potato flakes
pudding mix
skim milk powder
TVP
Dried fish

Many of these things should be vacuum packed and then probably overbag with mylar or wrapped in alum foil then vacuum packed to prevent odors from evaporating.  Many volatile compounds in foods can and will evaporate thru plastic.

Again, more at the link.

In other blog posts he talks about the impact of monsoon rains, the trials and tribulations of running a small manufacturing business in the Third World, his experiences with solar power, bureaucratic inefficiency, institutionalized corruption, and a host of other topics that aren't usually discussed outside that environment.  It's a useful perspective to understand how the vast majority of the world's population lives.

If you haven't looked at "Come And Make It" before, give it a try.  You might enjoy it.

Peter

Substack is worth a look for truly independent news and views

 

I found myself nodding in vehement agreement to an article titled "Substack: Last, Best Hope for Free Speech".

The promise of the Internet was that it would be a sort of Speaker’s Corner open to anybody and any ideas, an unlimited vista of imagination and innovation. In the 1990s it heralded a breathtaking advance for humanity, which had always been constrained by the distribution costs for ideas, which in turn created an oligarchy of information. If you didn’t own one of the handful of newspapers, magazines or television or radio stations in a given city, you had very little chance of reaching much of an audience. Pre-internet, the accepted cliche was, “Never argue with a man who buys his ink by the barrel.” Consider the title by which Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst and Rupert Murdoch were known: “press barons.” The rest of us were their vassals.

So the internet was a democratic revolution. For a while. Today, though, a huge proportion of ideas flows through just a few tightly controlled pipelines owned by the e-barons who rule Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google. The tech lords simply shrug at anyone who protests when they ban books, movies, newspapers, business bloggers, medical discussions and even a sitting president of the United States, which is what Donald Trump was when he was kicked off Facebook and Twitter. He continues to be banned from both platforms even as a private citizen, although the initial rationale was that he must be prevented from reaching an audience because he commanded the armed forces.

For those whose epistemology boils down to: Let everything be discussed, and may the best ideas win, it’s essential to build a safe haven for  free exchange of ideas. Just in the past few months, Substack has emerged as that platform. To call it a breath of fresh air would be an understatement; it’s more like a blast of pure oxygen after emerging from a coal mine. Legacy outlets such as New York magazine and the New York Times, and even sites built specifically to challenge existing narratives such as Vox and The Intercept, have driven out some of their most talented people, but they’re all having the last laugh on Substack, where they are finding large and receptive audiences — and in some cases are startled to suddenly find themselves among the highest-paid columnists in the United States.

There are Substack newsletters about running, Hollywood, basketball, art, food, wine, money, sex and lots of other subjects, but the platform’s greatest value is in publishing thinkers who challenge the intellectual ruling class.

There's more at the link.

I strive to read widely about issues, and learn about them from both sides of the political aisle.  Substack hosts independent journalists who offer facts and honest opinions about them, with whom I can engage even if I don't share their perspective.  Two of them are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, both (IMHO) worth the subscription to view their content regularly.  There are many others, of course;  see, for example, Substack's listing of its most popular news sites and contributors.  You'll find other topics listed at the site's home page under the heading "Who Writes on Substack?"  (I must admit, even without having looked at it in any detail, I'm intrigued by the site named "Affirmation Chickens" and its "positive poultry message".  Why did the chicken cross the road?  To be affirmed?)

I've been looking for a way to fund and support this blog and my writing without appearing to gouge my readers for money all the time.  I haven't used a blog "tip jar" for that reason.  Our recent gun raffles have helped - my grateful thanks to all of you who've supported them.  I'm thinking about some sort of Substack subscription newsletter, allied to this blog but not replacing it, where I could go into more detail about things that interest me, but wouldn't necessarily be useful to casual blog readers.  I could also put up regular excerpts from books I'm writing, discuss the writing world and developments there, and so on.  I don't know whether I'll proceed with that or not, but it's definitely worth thinking about.

If you haven't checked out Substack for yourself, I suggest it's worth a look.  Many of its contributors offer free previews of their work, so you don't have to pay up front to see what's available.  Just click on the "Let me read it first" line on the front page, and many will allow you a preview.  Also, if you'd be interested in supporting a newsletter from me on Substack, please let me know in Comments.  I'd like to gauge the potential level of support.  Thanks!

Peter

We laughed out loud

 

My wife and I share many tastes, and we both have a well-developed sense of humor and the ridiculous.  One of the comic strips we both like is Jennie Breeden's "The Devil's Panties".  Yesterday's cartoon made us guffaw out loud, because we know exactly the reaction she portrays - even though we wouldn't trust that particular brand of coffee to be strong or flavorful enough to deliver it.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the comic strip's Web site.

We don't like Starbucks coffee.  We find their products over-hyped, often too hurriedly prepared (at the expense of flavor), and not nearly as tasty as other, less mass-market coffee houses.  Nevertheless, we know the "over-caffeinated syndrome" well.  Our friend Old NFO achieves it through brewing "Navy coffee";  those of you with a service background will know exactly what that means!  (Think depth charges.)  We rely on a light- to medium-roast blend of really flavorful coffee (we keep several in stock), made fresh every time using a pour-over cone or (for larger quantities) in a Chemex.

I have to give a shout-out to one particular coffee house chain.  Those of you in Alaska and a few other fortunate places will know Kaladi Brothers Coffee.  Miss D. introduced me to it when we were courting.  They even have a special "Barista Academy", through which all their trainees have to pass before being turned loose on their customers.  Kaladi's is still the most flavorful coffee-house brew I know.  You'd better believe that when we get to a place that has one of their outlets, it'll be on our list of must-visit places.  (No, they're not compensating me in any way for recommending them - we just loooooove their coffee!)

Peter

Examining Stone Age art using Stone Age lighting

 

I was intrigued to read how Stone Age art - paintings on the walls of caves - took on an entirely new perspective when viewed using the sources of light that would have been available to the artists, rather than modern lighting.

In the wide chambers and narrow passageways of Isuntza I Cave in the Basque region of Spain, the researchers tested torches, stone lamps and fireplaces — nooks in cave walls. Juniper branches, animal fat and other materials that Stone Age humans would have had at hand fueled the light sources. The team measured flame intensity and duration, as well as how far away from the source light illuminated the walls.

Each light source comes with its own quirks that make it well suited to specific cave spaces and tasks ... Torches work best on the move, as their flames need motion to stay lit and produce a lot of smoke. Though torches cast a wide glow, they burn for an average of just 41 minutes, the team found. That suggests several torches would have been needed to travel through caves. Concave stone lamps filled with animal fat, on the other hand, are smokeless and can offer more than an hour of focused, candlelike light. That would have made it easy to stay in one spot for a while. And while fireplaces produce a lot of light, they can also produce a lot of smoke. That type of light source is best suited for large spaces that get plenty of airflow, the researchers say.

For Intxaurbe, the experiments confirmed what he has seen himself at Atxurra cave in northern Spain. In a narrow Atxurra passageway, Paleolithic people had used stone lamps. But near high ceilings where smoke can rise, they left signs of fireplaces and torches. “They were very intelligent. They use the better choice for different scenarios,” he says.

. . .

A lack of the right lighting also played a part, Intxaurbe and colleagues say. By simulating how torches, lamps and fireplaces lit up a virtual 3-D model of Atxurra, the team saw the cave’s art with fresh eyes. Using just a torch or a lamp from below, the paintings and engravings stay hidden. But lit fireplaces on the ledge illuminate the whole gallery so that anyone on the cave floor can see it. That suggests the artists may have wanted to keep their work hidden, the researchers say.

Cave art wouldn’t exist without harnessing fire. So to unravel the mysteries of subterranean studios, it’s key to understand how prehistoric artists lit their surroundings. “Answering the small questions in an accurate way,” Intxaurbe says, is a path toward answering a main question about Stone Age people, “why they painted these things.”

There's more at the link.

When you think about it, that's a very interesting insight.  We're used to works of art created in well-lit studios, painted in natural light or artificial light that approximates natural light.  Our Stone Age ancestors didn't have that luxury.  They had to not only translate what they'd seen outside their caves, in the light of day, into symbols and images that would be meaningful in the low, fitful light of the sources available to them;  they also had to ensure that their communities could understand and appreciate their efforts to portray the world outside the caves.  In a culture that existed before languages developed, where expressing abstract concepts was probably unheard of, what were they trying to convey through their art, and how were they trying to convey it?

Fascinating!

Peter

Mike Rowe: "Your Work Isn't Your Worth"

 

That's the title of a very interesting video interview that Mike Rowe, of "Dirty Jobs" fame, gave to Trinity Broadcasting Network last month.  I highly recommend that you take the time to watch it.  It's only nine minutes long, but encapsulates the dilemma of our current workforce, and young people planning to enter that workforce.

Sobering thoughts, particularly if you have children planning what they want to do with their lives.

Peter

Devastating evidence of the danger of COVID-19 vaccines

 

We spoke recently about the VAERS data for COVID-19 vaccines in the USA, and noted:

In just the first four months of this year, the U.S. government has recorded more deaths after COVID vaccinations than from all other vaccines administered in the United States between mid-1997 and the end of 2013. That’s a period of fifteen and a half years.

There's much more at the link.

In Europe, similar data is gathered and analyzed by the European Medicines Agency and Eudravigilance, the "European Database of Suspected Adverse Drug Reaction Reports".  Guess what?  They're reporting exactly the same trend in Europe as we're seeing in this country.  In brief, as of 24th July 2021, they report no less than 19,790 deaths and 2,062,703 "injuries" (i.e. non-fatal adverse reactions) to all COVID-19 vaccinations.  The raw data is shown below;  click on the image for a larger view.  I'm obliged to Gab user Don for compiling the combined chart, which I've verified by going to the Eudravigilance Web site.

We don't know what caused all of those casualties.  They're simply lists of people who died, or exhibited adverse reactions, after getting the vaccination.  We can't be sure whether the vaccine caused the reaction, or whether the injury came from some other cause (e.g. a motor vehicle accident, or a heart attack caused by some other disease, or whatever).  That'll take further investigation, which is doubtless ongoing at the moment.  Nevertheless, the raw, unfiltered numbers are a cause for very serious concern.  If even a quarter of them are caused by the vaccines (which is probably a very conservative estimate), that's a catastrophically large number.  Some may object that compared to the tens of millions who've been vaccinated, it's actually small by comparison - but that's cold comfort to those who've died or suffered adverse reactions.  "Oh, you're just a statistical anomaly!  Get over it!"  Yeah, right!

Note, too, that neither VAERS nor Eudravigilance are isolated sources, contradicting others.  Almost every authoritative source I've been able to find is confirming that deaths and serious adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccination are rampant.  To cite just one more headline:  "5,522 People have Died within 28 days of having a Covid-19 Vaccine in Scotland according to Public Health Scotland".  It's far from the only example.  Given that level of nastiness, nobody in his or her right mind should trust the vaccines at their present level of development.

I'm not anti-vaccine at all.  If you can show me a guaranteed effective, guaranteed non-dangerous vaccine against COVID-19, I'll take it in a heartbeat.  However, right now, considering the reported side effects, there is no such vaccine.  I refuse to be stampeded into accepting the current, apparently flawed products out there.  When both VAERS and Eudravigilance report the number of problems and issues that they are, that's a great big red flashing DANGER sign, as far as I'm concerned.  The fact that the vaccine manufacturers will only do so if they have legal immunity from any adverse reactions to their product is another.

Unfortunately, it looks as if the powers that be are on the brink of imposing swingeing sanctions on anybody who refuses to be vaccinated.  It may be that we'll soon be forbidden to enter shops, cinemas, hospitals, or any other public buildings unless we can prove that we've been vaccinated.  I suspect some of the "freer" states, like Texas, will resist this;  but if the head office of a supermarket chain orders its shops to implement such a policy, there's not much a state can do about it.  I'm sure millions of freedom-minded Americans will resist, but it'll become increasingly hard to do so.

I can only suggest planning ahead, and figuring out ways to resist such pressure.  Perhaps those who've been forced to get the vaccine in order to keep their jobs can do the shopping for those who haven't.  Perhaps community pressure on shops and other institutions can persuade them to respect people's individual rights.  On the other hand, the pressure may become so overwhelming that it's no longer possible to resist.

If that happens, note carefully the names and other pertinent information of every single politician, bureaucrat and administrator who imposes such a requirement on us.  If, as a result of their policies, people die or suffer serious health issues, then hold them accountable by any means available.  Shun them.  Make them social pariahs.  Refuse to do business with them, refuse to serve them in shops, refuse to allow them to enter into normal human society.  I won't advocate for direct retaliation against them, but I'm sure some will think long and hard about that - to which I can only point out that "two wrongs don't make one right".

I think it's abundantly clear by now, on the basis of official statistics, that the COVID-19 vaccines are much more dangerous than their predecessors for other illnesses.

Peter

"America Has Lost the Trade War with China"

 

That's what Charles Hugh Smith believes.  He adds, "The real pain has yet to begin".

Whether we like to admit it or not--mostly not--the American economy is entirely dependent on manufacturing in China. America's short-sighted obsession with increasing profits to fund buybacks and golden parachutes for corporate insiders and vast fortunes for financiers has led to a dangerous dependency that has handed China tremendous leverage, which China is now starting to make use of. (And why not? Wouldn't the U.S. start using the same leverage if it could?)

A long-time U.S. correspondent who prefers to remain anonymous for obvious reasons recently shared his experiences with parts shortages and price increases from previously reliable suppliers in China. Here is his account of the disruptive shift in the supply chain of essential parts from China to the U.S.

China is laying siege to the USA by slowing down production and delivery of goods. It doesn't take much to hang up US production, just one missing item can do it. So much stuff is sourced through China they can affect all supply chains. Semiconductors are just the canary--because the chains are so long and complex, and specialized materials are required, etc. But it is happening everywhere.

I have a little manufacturing company and I am seeing this in supply lines. I sent an order to China for printed circuit boards (US prices are astronomical because of various factors). They don't get back for a week, then they quote, then I send money, then they sit on it, then I call and they say they are having problems with some process... etc. But all the suppliers are like this, it is not an isolated incident. They are sandbagging.

So just as in laying siege, the attackers have the food outside the castle and wait for the people inside to starve.

As prices rise the Chinese manufacturers take bigger profits so the slowdown effects on that end are mitigated. For products they do not have a monopoly on, like PC boards, they slow down. for things like LCD displays and NFeB magnets, the items become unavailable (try buying magnets on Amazon).

I have to say this is a brilliant idea on China's part, and no one on this side has realized the situation yet. This plan is straight out of Sun-Tzu. implications? inflation and shortages will continue for a long time... maybe forever. The only long-term solution is repatriation of manufacturing to the US. But it is going to cause some serious hurt, vastly more than the sanctioning of Chinese tech companies.

i just sent a request for quote for some radio chips I use to Alibaba. they are $1 each and there are many vendors. I sent notes to 2 vendors i used before and after 4 or 5 days got a ping back that my requests were cancelled. i wound up getting the parts--for 2x the price-- from Hong Kong, which at the moment seems to be something of a channel to the mainland. But I expect they will close that leak pretty soon.

. . .

And now the chickens are coming home to roost. Essential parts and feedstocks become unavailable for all sorts of flimsy excuses, prices double, triple, then double again, and since we've allowed our entire economy to become dependent on a handful of sources for these essentials because that dependency maximized profits, then there are no alternatives.

There's more at the link.

I keep an eye on developments like that whenever I can, and overall I'd say they bear out the picture painted by Mr. Smith's correspondent.  For example, a local air-conditioning contractor was hired to install new air-conditioning systems in a nearby high school.  They ordered more than 150 units, to be installed on the roof of the buildings in a complex pattern and networked together.  The units were supposed to be delivered during the first week in June . . . but they didn't arrive.  The manufacturers in China first pleaded COVID-19 as an excuse, then blamed shippers for delays in getting the goods across the Pacific Ocean.  They finally arrived last week - and they're supposed to be installed and running by the time school reopens in three weeks' time!

A friend who works for that contractor says they're going to be running almost 24/7 at breakneck speed to get the job done.  Meanwhile, if any of their other customers have an A/C emergency, they probably won't be able to help them - they'll have to refer them to other companies for support.  That, in turn, may damage their long-term relationship with those customers.  So, supply problems from China have turned into an albatross around their neck, disrupting almost every aspect of their normal operations.

I'm noticing similar delays in getting parts and components in other industries.  For example, certain car parts are now so hard to get - particularly computer chips - that I know some folks whose vehicles will be out of action for literally months until their servicing dealers can get replacements.  Meanwhile, they're having to rely on co-workers to hitch a ride, or even hire cars medium- to long-term if their jobs rely on their having their own transport.  Similarly, if you work with firearms, you'll have noticed that many accessories such as red dot sights and telescopic sights - almost all made in China in the low- to medium-budget price ranges - are sometimes in short supply, possibly forcing you to buy a different model from what you wanted.  Other injection-molded plastic components like stocks and handguards may be subject to long delays, or just vanish from vendor Web sites altogether until one day they reappear without explanation.  I've taken to keeping a few critical items in reserve, even though I don't need them at once, just so that if I do, I don't have to wait.

Reading Mr. Smith's views in the light of last Saturday's discussion of China's grand strategy to displace the USA's influence, it's not hard to see many points of convergence.

Peter

A deadly landslide in India

 

In the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, through which the Himalaya Mountains pass, a landslide in the Kinnaur district killed nine and injured several others.  The fast-moving rocks struck and destroyed the Batseri bridge.  The rockslide was caught on video by a visiting tourist, who must have been scared out of his wits at what he saw unfolding right in front of him.  He was certainly in danger.

A tip o' the hat to reader Chip A. for sending me the link to that video.

I'd have hated to be in the path of that landslide.  I've no idea how fast those rocks were moving, but when you look at what just one of them did to that bridge . . . not a healthy place to be!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 68

 

... plus a couple that made me think, gathered from the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

More next week.

Peter

Sunday morning music

 

I'm sure older readers, and those into progressive and synthetic rock from the 1970's, will remember the Dutch group Focus.  It was formed by flautist Thijs van Leer, and was known for its zany, way-out music, even in those days of intense competition to be the zaniest.  It's still going strong, albeit after a lengthy interruption.

Here's their breakout hit, "Hocus Pocus", in a live performance from 1973.  Thijs van Leer is on keyboards, flute and vocals.

However, many people don't know that despite his zaniness with Focus, van Leer was (and still is) also a very good classical flautist.  He composed and/or recorded many pieces for the instrument, producing several albums under the general title "Introspection" followed by a number:  1, 2, 3 and so on.  They've sold millions of copies in Europe, although they're less well known in the USA.  You'll find most of them on Amazon.

A collection of selections from the albums, totaling two and a half hours of music, was released in 2007 under the title "Introspection:  The Collection".

The collection has been uploaded to YouTube, a gift for all those who enjoy his music in general and classical-style flute in particular.  His own compositions and other modern works are interspersed with classical pieces.  The track listing and start time for each are as follows:

00:00 Pavanne (Op. 50) (Gabriel Fauré)
05:48 Rondo (Rogier van Otterloo)
08:50 Agnus Dei (from Mass in B minor) (Johann Sebastian Bach)
13:48 Focus I (Thijs van Leer)
17:47 Erbarme Dich (from St. Matthew Passion) (Bach)
25:13 Focus II (Van Leer)
29:30 Introspection (Van Otterloo)
35:44 Goyescas No. IV (Enrique Granados)
41:15 Rondo II (Rogier van Otterloo)
44:14 Introduction (Domenico Cimarosa)
48:40 Siciliano (Johann Sebastian Bach)
51:02 Focus III (Thijs van Leer)
55:48 Larghetto & Allegro (Georg Friedrich Händel)
1:00:09 Introspection II (Rogier van Otterloo)
1:03:34 Sheep May Safely Graze (Johann Sebastian Bach)
1:07:54 Mild Wild Rose (Thijs van Leer)
1:13:05 Reigen Seliger Geister (Christoph Willibald von Gluck)
1:20:52 Rondeau (Henry Purcell)
1:22:41 Adagio (Remo Giazotto, Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni)
1:28:39 Brother (Roselie van Ler, Thijs van Leer )
1:34:06 Sicilienne (Gabriel Fauré)
1:41:11 Rondo III (Rogier van Otterloo)
1:43:39 He Shall Feed His Flock (Georg Friedrich Händel)
1:49:29 Focus V (Thijs van Leer)
1:54:10 Arcangelo (Arcangelo Corelli)
1:56:34 Instrospection 4 (van Otterloo)
2:01:58 Rondeau des enfants (Van Leer) 
2:04:52 Grave, allegro, adagio, allegro uit Sonate in e (Georg Friedrich Händel)
2:12:32 Le tango (van Leer) 
2:15:58 Air (Georg Philipp Telemann)
2:20:04 Pastorale (Domenico Scarlatti)
2:22:32 Sicilian en allegro (Georg Friedrich Händel)

Enjoy!

Peter