Has anyone else lost all interest in celebrating the 4th of July?

I know I have. There is a lot of high sentiment in that ol’ declaration of independence, but 240+ years of this country failing to live up to them, and now deciding to just give up and abandon every noble principle expressed in it, doesn’t leave me feeling like commemorating much of anything.

This will be a good day for fasting, working, and watching the rain come down (it’s a thunderstorm day here in Morris, good for Nature for putting a wet blanket on the annoying fireworks.)

Please, stop with the goofy fads

OK, this is a weird one: getting a “pedicure” by putting your feet in a tub with Garra rufa, a small fish that then industriously nibbles dead skin away. That’s not a pedicure, for one, and two, it probably doesn’t do anything for you, although it does feed the fish, and three…your toenails might fall off, probably due to secondary infections.

The CDC has a few things to say about the practice.

  • The fish pedicure tubs cannot be sufficiently cleaned between customers when the fish are present.
  • The fish themselves cannot be disinfected or sanitized between customers. Due to the cost of the fish, salon owners are likely to use the same fish multiple times with different customers, which increases the risk of spreading infection.
  • Chinese Chinchin, another species of fish that is often mislabeled as Garra rufa and used in fish pedicures, grows teeth and can draw blood, increasing the risk of infection.
  • According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Garra rufa could pose a threat to native plant and animal life if released into the wild because the fish is not native to the United States.
  • Fish pedicures do not meet the legal definition of a pedicure.
  • Regulations specifying that fish at a salon must be contained in an aquarium.
  • The fish must be starved to eat skin, which might be considered animal cruelty.

Next step up: dunk your toes in a tank full of piranha.

What is wrong with the National Education Association?

I expect teachers to do better. I expect them to have some standards and some social awareness. So why, at the expo held in Minneapolis this year, did they allow these regressive scum to have a booth there?

That’s the NEA Ex-Gay Educators Caucus. They’re working to eliminate intolerance and discrimination against ex-gay students, teachers, and their supporters, but not so much working to eliminate intolerance and discrimination against gay students, teachers, and their supporters. They’re big pals with the Patriarchy Research Council, promote Walt Heyer, and are all entangled with conservative religious dogma. It’s a group dedicated to spreading misinformation and bigotry, and there they are, accepted by the NEA.

Here’s another group that was represented at the conference.

WTF? What is the NEA thinking? This is an anti-science group supported by Answers in Genesis!

For 17 years, Answers in Genesis has voluntarily supported the Creation Science Educators’ Caucus at the largest meeting of public educators in the world—the NEA (National Education Association) convention. It is one of the most liberal organizations in America today, promoting homosexual behavior, abortion, etc.

AiG as a ministry would not normally be allowed to have a booth at such a humanistic convention, but AiG has been invited by the Caucus to be a major part of staffing its convention booth and providing resources to be given away to public school teachers and leaders. Over the years, tens of thousands of books, booklets, DVDs, and other resources have been freely put into the hands of public school teachers, and each year hundreds of educators have been engaged by our witnessing team at the Caucus booth.

Here’s one reason this lunacy persists: money.

In all, over $70,000 worth of resources (a significant amount of the funds for this was given by special donors) including about 2,000 Check This Out DVDs, plus 2,000 other DVDs, 1,100 books, and 600 magazines were freely given to the public school teachers over the six day conference!

But there’s also another one: history. The NEA is stuck with bad caucuses because of antiquated rules.

Even more curious: The NEA Creation Science Educators’ Caucus. This one apparently was formed decades ago under earlier rules, when a caucus needed only one member to win recognition. It still has only one member, its founder, whose primary purpose is to distribute materials that argue for an alternative to evolutionary science. Tony Ramsek, a volunteer for the group—not a delegate—told me it plans to give 3,000 DVDs away at the convention. He emphasized that they’re not for classroom use: “We want to educate the educators,” he said.

Here’s an idea, NEA — join the 21st century, purge the anti-science, anti-human bullshit from your meetings, and support good education. Right now, you’re setting a terrible example. The Creation Science Educators’ Caucus is clearly a single kook being used as a tool to allow AiG to pour money and lies into the conference. Plug that leak.

So civil!

Kristin Mink confronted Scott Pruitt at a restaurant.

We deserve to have someone at the EPA who actually does protect our environment, somebody who believes in climate change and takes it seriously for the benefit of all of us, including our children. So, I would urge you to resign before your scandals push you out.

Polite, honest, and accurate. She didn’t punch him, throw his table over, or kick him in the balls, even though he deserves all of that. It was an effective protest.

If you see one of Trump’s lackeys in public, and you don’t lean over and tell them, “Resign!”, you aren’t as brave as Kristin Mink.

Make ’em cringe a bit when they’re out in public. It’s the least you can do.

There’s always an excuse

Gizmodo points out the obvious: isn’t it strange that as hand-held, reasonably high quality cameras become ubiquitous, the number of UFO photos is dropping? You can also insert “bigfoot”, “ghosts”, “chupacabra”, or “angels” for “UFO”, they’re all the same thing. You’ve got an unlikely phenomenon that you claim has a physical manifestation, and yet as it becomes easier to record things, your phenomenon vanishes off into the distance.

But don’t worry. They have excuses.

While there are still hundreds of reports each month, that data doesn’t include many clear photos. Harzan had an explanation for why so many of the UFO photos are blurry: “UFOs are basically manipulating space-time. And when they do that, it requires a high electromagnetic field. That distorts the images.”

Harzan did have some tips for anyone who wants to see a UFO. “Just being outdoors, being in a quiet place, and thinking about it tends to be one way you could attract these crafts,” Harzan said. “There appears to be some kind of a consciousness connection.”

Here’s what bugs me, then. Does this Harzan bozo now repudiate all of the old photos of lights in the sky, flying pie plates, etc.? Because their existence would repudiate his claims of UFOs being space-time manipulating objects lost in a fog of electromagnetic haze. It’s the inconsistency that kills their arguments.

Ron Paul has abandoned any attempt at plausible deniability any more

Wow.

And Ben Garrison, too. Look at those classic racist stereotypes.

I notice, also, that we’re supposed to go to Ron Paul’s photo page on Facebook to learn more about “cultural marxism”. I looked, there’s nothing relevant there, and I can’t imagine that yet another cartoon, since deleted, would be at all enlightening.

Libertarian is just another word for racist, isn’t it?

What if we planned a sneak attack and a civil war, and didn’t tell anyone?

Except Alex Jones, of course.

Somehow, we antifa/commie/liberal Democrats are supposed to fire up this war on the 4th of July — in two days — and there has been no communication at all to us cannon fodder. But Alex Jones knows all about it! Apparently, it was announced in the liberal “Elite Publications” last year, but I missed it.

Anyone know what those publications are? Because I’ve also missed out on all of those.

Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to dig up my old uniform — birks, shorts, tie-dye t-shirt, and headband — put a flower in my hair and march off to San Francisco. Or wherever the old hippies have set up a staging ground. I wonder if we can get the Dead back together to play for the Revolution?

It’s just like fishing for rocks

A meteor blew up in the atmosphere off the coast of Washington state back in March, and today the EV Nautilus is going to poke around, looking for meteorite fragments, and the search will be streamed live.

My brother lives just south of meteorite field. I should nag him to get off his lazy butt, get in his boat, and go dive for a few fragments for me. They don’t say how deep the Pacific is at the site, but I’m sure he can just rig up a magnet on a long stick and grab a few.

At least I’ll put up the video stream in the background this morning.