I am embarrassed to admit it, but I am descended from Iowans

I’m not afraid to hide from the truth. I am descended from a Myers clan that lived in Iowa during the 19th century. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War even, was in the Vicksburg campaign, and ended up in New Orleans, where he was a casualty — of malaria, I suspect — and was discharged to return back to Iowa, where shortly after the war he lost the farm, and the family drifted west to wash up on the shores of the Pacific ocean, eventually.

So I happen to know that Iowa was a Northern state, whose citizens fought on the side of the Union.

So why does Steve King have a traitor’s flag on his desk?

Steve-King-Confederate-Flag-3

I’m afraid that the answer must be that the Iowa gene pool was so greatly diminished by the departure of my family that only fools were left behind to elect even bigger fools to represent them…fools with no understanding or respect for their state’s history.

Yeah, that’s got to be the answer.

Gibbering madness

Please, for the love of gods, someone confiscate Sarah Palin’s thesaurus. I just read her rambling mess of a post about black people and hyphens and it made me want to hork up my liver. If I had any students who wrote like this I’d have to buy red ink by the bucket. This woman simply cannot write or speak without jingo and cliches.

#‎BlackLivesMatter is a Farce and Hyphenating America Destroys Us

Our prayers are with the fallen on that Thin Blue Line in Dallas. America lost heroes last night as men in uniform did their unfathomably courageous job running into danger to protect others from it. Honorable first responders deserve our utmost respect and support.

Shame on our culture’s influencers who would stir contention and division that could lead to evil such as that in Dallas. Shame on politicians and pundits giving credence to thugs rioting against police officers and the rule of law in the name of “peaceful protests.” It is a farce. #BlackLivesMatter is a farce.

Media: quit claiming the rioters are “peaceful” as they stomp on our flag, shout “death to cops!” and celebrate violence. It is sick. You perpetuate a perverted message evil men thrive on to intimidate and warp malleable minds that would believe one race matters more than another. Blood is on your complicit hands when you naively or purposefully refuse to tell of this movement’s truth.

Black Lives Matter? Yes – more than BLM “protestors” can grasp, as evidenced by their self-destructive provocateurism. Doesn’t it go without saying that Native lives matter, too? And Asian; and Eskimo; and Hispanic; and Indian… and every other race comprised of people who see clearly the agenda at play to weaken America through disunity.

Get fed up and stand up if you’re sick of being called racist when proclaiming EVERY LIFE MATTERS, black as much as white and every skin tone in between. Every innocent life – at every stage of life – on the side of good over evil, matters. Why let the damaging false narrative prevail if you know it is a lie?! Speak up! Join me in refusing to go willingly with society trying to crown deceptive political correctness the victor.

Self-descriptions that put any race in front of being an American are now used to further divide our nation. It’s time to acknowledge you’re either an American under our system of equality, law and order – and traditional patriotic spirit – or you’re not. Knock off the hyphenation of who we are. And knock off the shoulder chip if you’ve let “leaders” burden you with it through their example that sadly capitalizes on division for untoward purposes. That chip is crushing the people’s hope. My youngest daughter recently confirmed the sensibility in this when she stated, “It would be sad to call myself an “Eskimo-American” instead of just a proud American like everyone else.”

Seeing partial footage of this week’s victims’ tragic deaths at the hands of police officers is mind-boggling. It’s nauseating. Granted, early reports rarely encapsulate all the facts of individual cases, but my heart is with victims’ families as I sympathize with anyone defenseless in these situations. More so, I empathize if we find out any cop involved was in the wrong, for I abhor bad cops. I abhor police union leadership that regularly protects bad cops and discredits citizens voicing concern over bad actors in authority. I’ve been there. Many of you know my own experience with well-publicized, constant, frightening encounters and threats to my family to “bring us down” via a badge and gun. We suffered an exhausting era knowing we were defenseless against a bad cop, his union, and a gleefully politicized media never reporting the truth. Threats that included the promise we’d be pulled over for whatever reason, destroyed, and “any judge will believe the badge over the citizen.” The decade-long situation nearly devastated us. Political opponents still get off on all the situation cost us. So believe me, my personal experience won’t let me throw a blanket of blind approval over all law enforcement and those in authority. Still, last night’s disgusting acts that snuffed out officers’ lives is exponentially worse than any one bad cop, his union bosses, and the media’s verbose attempts to intimidate and falsely accuse.

So if we’re to take sides, I side with the Thin Blue Line. To side with our public servants trying to keep law and order amidst political agendas that clearly oppose that virtue is how the good guys win again. It’s the only way to ensure our best days will be ahead of us. Join me. Do not let today’s agenda redefine what it means to be an American. Do not sit still for it to fundamentally transform America.

God created us equally, and not with a spirit of fear. We’re given the spirit of POWER, love and a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7) Use it.

My translation:

Love the police without question.

Black people are evil.

Hyphens crush hope. Her daughter thinks it would be sad to admit to being a Yupik-American.

Cops are wonderful except the ones who break up the wild parties at the Palin house. But black people are worse than even unions.

Bible quote.

4.6 million people like Palin’s words, including 35 of my facebook friends, which includes one relative. Please go away, you horrible creatures.

As for the rest of you…please fundamentally transform America. It needs it.

If you, like everyone else, are playing Pokemon Go…

You need to read this. If you log in via your google account, you are giving the game total access to your email, google drive, etc. That is not acceptable. Go to your google security settings and see for yourself…and tell it no.

It’s a brilliant little game, but one thing a day of playing it has convinced me of — its implementation is crap. Buggy, inconsistent, and now also, a security risk.

I don’t understand British politics

In the US, we have buffoons trying to stumble into the highest office in the land; in the UK, all the buffoons (the ones who were rah-rah for Brexit) seem to be frantically scrambling away to avoid becoming prime minister. Farage, Johnson, Gove, all making epic pratfalls in their desperate race to avoid being tagged “it”, and now Leadsom has bailed out. That leaves Theresa May holding the bag.

I have to wonder how awful May must be to want a job even the clowns want to shirk.

Great. Twitter allows Pointless Polls

Of all the things Twitter needed to improve their service, allowing meaningless polls of your subset of readers wasn’t one of them. But there you go, you can create polls and get the biases of your readership expressed in cold, hard numbers that mean nothing at all.

Here’s an example.


Do you agree that Black Lives Matter #BLM is the new black version of the Klu Klux Klan?
80% Yes
20% No

(I think you’ll need to go to this link on Twitter.com and have a twitter account to vote.)

So here’s a guy who has a lot of racist friends, who has made an utterly stupid racist statement, and is asking all of his fucking racist buddies to validate it.

Thanks, Twitter.

Carl Zimmer is defective

But it’s all right, we all are. Zimmer has begun a series called Game of Genomes in which he has had his whole genome sequenced, and is being led by a group of scientists through the analysis. So far he’s made a good summary of the procedure, and a general overview of the state of his genome.

In my own genome, Gerstein and his colleagues discovered 13 genes in which both copies appear to be broken. I have another 42 genes in which only one copy looks like it’s defunct.

It may sound strange that my genome has dozens of broken genes that cause me no apparent harm. If it’s any consolation, I’m no freak. The 1000 Genomes Project revealed that everyone has a few dozen broken genes.

Our genomes are not finely engineered machines that can’t tolerate a single broken flywheel or gear shaft. They’re sloppy products of evolution that usually manage to work pretty well despite being riddled with mutations.

I’ve probably passed down some of my uniquely broken genes to my children. Perhaps, long in the future, one of those broken genes will become more common in humans, and end up in every member of our species. That’s certainly happened in the past. My genome catalog includes about 14,000 genes that have been broken for thousands or millions of years, known as pseudogenes. Once they lost the ability to make proteins, they simply became extra baggage carried down from one generation to the next. Thanks to a genetic roll of the dice, they ended up becoming common. Now these 14,000 pseudogenes are found in all humans today.

As you can tell, it’s a nicely written summary that doesn’t require a huge amount of scientific background to understand. Good stuff!

I played some games today

Pokeball

On the recommendation of Russell Glasser, I gave Hearthstone a whirl today. I was impressed — that is one slick piece of work. I had no idea what to do or how it worked, but it’s beautifully designed and led me through the gameplay entirely painlessly — and even with a fair bit of fun. I enjoyed it, but I don’t know that I’ll get addicted to it. I guess I’m just not into card games.

The other game I tried out today is the fad of the hour: Pokemon Go. I have never played Pokemon before; my kids were all into it on their gameboys, and they also played the card game, but I was a very bad dad and didn’t join in at all. So this thing was a complete mystery to me, and still is. Unlike Hearthstone, the explanations within the game are virtually nonexistent, and you have to just stumble around and try to figure out what the heck to do.

I finally figured out the first bit, and Mary and I went on a nice sweaty (it’s hot!) walk around the neighborhood and caught Pidgees and Weedles and a Bulbasaur and an Oddish and an Evee. Unfortunately, now I have no idea what to do with them, now that I’ve got them, because the game just assumes you’re a Pokemon pal already. If you’ve got any hints, let me know.

One nice thing is that they’re both free. I guess there’s stuff you can buy as you get further into them, but I’m so dang casual there’s probably not much risk of temptation.