What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?

January 6 Tapes?

I won’t beat this dead horse too much. We got some kind of weirdly redacted release of some number of tapes.

Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.

News Flash

Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.

I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.

But the past cannot actually be changed.

It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.

And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.

As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.

And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.

So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.

Let’s Go, Brandon!!

Hey China!

Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”

You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.

Hey BiteMe!
(Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)

[Language warning]

You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.

I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.

No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.

Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.

And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.

You’re LOSING.

You LOSER.

You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.

I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $2,030.20
Silver $22.69
Platinum $909.00
Palladium $972.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $2,019.90
Silver $22.88
Platinum $923.00
Palladium $984.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

No fresh commentary this time, other than that palladium was over $1200 five weeks ago. Yikes (unless you are in the market to buy)!

Tides

After the article on Everyone’s Asshole I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I thought maybe it’d be interesting to go over all of the planets, and other objects of the solar system.

But then I realized that I’d simply be referencing tidal forces, again and again like a leftist using the word “privilege” and I didn’t want you scratching your head wondering what I was talking about. Unlike that leftist, I want to explain the concept before I keep bringing it back.

One thing to keep in mind…this has been well-understood since the 1600s.

OK, to start out with, Isaac Newton was able to write one equation, that ultimately explains the motions of the stars and planets, at about this time. And he showed that that same force is also what causes things to fall to the ground and stay there. And that force–or rather a side effect of it–causes the tides.

Later astronomers realized that the same effect that causes our tides, has a hand in causing moons to always present the same face to their primary, and even causes a lot of heating in the four large moons of Jupiter.

So here is a tidy little formula for gravity:

You have two particles, of masses m₁ and m₂. Each exerts a force, F, on the other. And that force is the product of the two masses, divided by the distance between them r, twice. Then multiply by the fudge factor G. And note that the force is in a certain direction. The force exerted by m₁ on m₂ is towards m₁ whereas the force exerted by m₂ on m₁ is towards m₂. The two forces are equal in strength but in opposite directions.

When working with distances in meters and masses in kilograms, the fudge factor is 6.674×10⁻¹¹ m³⋅kg⁻¹⋅s⁻². This is a pretty small number, so you will have difficulty detecting, let alone measuring, the force of gravity between two BBs even if they are only an inch apart.

So what about, say, the Earth and the Moon? There it gets a bit more complicated…but not as bad as it could be. The way that formula works, is that it talks about point masses. In order to assess the effect the Earth has on the Moon, you have to look at each bit of the Earth individually, assess its contribution, then add them all up to get the Earth’s net effect on the Moon. When doing this you have to remember that each bit of the Earth is in different locations so that will affect both the amount of force that bit contributes, and the direction of that force.

Yikes! It’s a big planet, and that means a lot of computations!

Newton again comes to the rescue, though! He was able to use his self-made power tool, calculus, to show that provided a body is spherically symmetrical (I’ll explain that in a moment) you can treat it as if it were a single point with as much mass as the whole thing, at the center of the actual not-a-point mass. Or in other words, you can, for purposes of figuring out what effect the Earth has on the Moon, treat the Earth as if it were a point mass at the center of the (actual) Earth, with a mass of 5.972168×10²⁴ kg.

What does “spherically symmetric” mean? It means that if you start at the center and go outward in any direction, you’ll see the same thing no matter which direction you pick. In the case of Earth, you’ll see a hot compressed core of iron for the first 1300 kilometers (very dense, a lot of mass concentrated here), followed by liquid iron for 2200 kilometers (again compressed), followed by rock the rest of the way, then a thin crust of (possibly) ocean, and then air.

It’s not absolutely perfectly spherically symmetrical, but it’s close enough, particularly given that the differences matter less the further away you are (well, that’s sort of the point of this whole post).

In fact if the Earth were a hollow shell, you’d get the same result (that too, is spherically symmetric). Or you can think of Earth as a nested set of shells, like an onion or a matryoshka doll; that’s spherically symmetric too. (In fact, that’s the way to prove this…start with a hollow shell, prove it for the hollow shell (a bit difficult), then any set of nested hollow shells should just add together (easy).)

OK so let’s give this a bit more thought, to grasp it intuitively. Imagine we want to compute Earth’s effect on you, not the Moon. Certainly the ground right where you’re standing is pulling you straight down, but what about all the other ground around you? There’s some bit of ground out there, maybe a mile away, pulling you toward it…and that’s not down, that’s nearly horizontal, just a bit below because of the curvature. And there is a lot of ground “out there” compared to the ground under your feet. Ah, but the patch of ground a mile in front of you pulls the same amount toward it as the patch of ground a mile behind you, but in almost opposite directions! The forces almost perfectly cancel each other out, except for the slight downward tilt of the forces, which is the same direction (down) for both of them, and adds up…to pointing down. Sweeping all round the horizon and adding them all up, all that’s left is a downward force. So you can hopefully see this makes sense. Then take another case: Imagine all the bits of Earth twenty miles away and two miles deep…that’s another ring of rock where all the sideways pulls will cancel, and you’re just left with a pull down, towards the center of the ring. Repeat until you’ve handled every bit of Earth, and you get a net force…downward, towards the center of the Earth.

Similarly the Moon’s effect on the Earth is computable, as if the Moon were a single point mass of 7.342×10²² kg.

So you can use that formula I gave above, after all, without having to run it zillions of times and add it all up.

That will certainly suffice (with a lot more development that I gave the results of in all those orbital mechanics posts) to explain the Moon’s orbit about the Earth, or technically, its orbit around the center of mass of the Earth-Moon system.

But here’s the key thing. The Moon, pulling on the Earth, can be treated as point mass “out there”, but the Earth being affected by the Moon can’t quite be treated as a point mass.

Imagine you are part of the Earth and the Moon is directly overhead. (If you have difficulty with this, superglue your feet to the floor and make it so.) The Earth has a radius of (roughly) 6,378 km. So you’re 6,378 kilometers closer to the Moon than the center of the Earth is. So the Moon is pulling on you just a bit more strongly than it is on the Earth as a whole. And consider some guy standing on a boat in the Indian Ocean, directly on the opposite side of the Earth [yes, I am assuming a North American audience here. Folks in Europe can adjust to South Pacific, folks in Oz can adjust to North Atlantic]. That guy is 6,378 kilometers further away from the Moon than the Earth as a whole is, and feels less force. Not only that, if you consider the difference between your felt force, and his, it’s about twice as much as comparing either one of you to the center of the Earth.

The net effect is as if the Moon is trying to pull you away from your antipodal friend. Or push him away from you, depending on how you look at it.

That differential force is the cause of the tides and is called the tidal force. Imagine that the Moon is over an ocean. The water directly under it feels more pull, and since it is a liquid, can actually respond to that force by flowing towards the Moon. It forms a hump. Likewise the Moon is exerting a net push on the water on the other side…so it too forms a hump.

People had for centuries noticed that the Moon was high in the sky during every other high tide, but that it was nowhere to be seen during the other high tides. So it was easy to dismiss any notion that the Moon caused tides. But, as it happens, it does.

OK this is already late, but I have to finish this. How does the tidal force behave?

If the Earth were somehow twice as wide as it actually is, the force trying to pull you and your antipodal buddy apart would double. In other words, the tidal force on a body (like the Earth) acted on by the Moon is directly proportional to the diameter of the object (Earth). OK, go back to Earth’s actual size, but bring the Moon in closer…to half its current distance. What’s the tidal force now? It is eight times as much. (Don’t believe me? Well, good, actually, don’t believe me! The derivation is in the Wikipedia article on tidal force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force (section titled Formulation).) In other words, tidal force follows an inverse cube law rather than the inverse square law that gravity follows.

OK, I could follow this further. But A) this is late and B) we’ll have the chance to do that anyway, in various (and directly relevant) ways as we talk about various phenomena all around the solar system.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?

A Note From Your Humble Boilerplate Recycler

I know that for the past few weeks, there’s been precious little science content for you to skim past.

It’s been one thing after another…Hopefully upgrading one of my two machines to Qubes 4.2 (from 4.1) will be the last item. On the other hand, it’s possible I’ll upgrade the other machine next weekend (but I will start after the daily posts). On the other other hand, the next upgrade should go a lot more smoothly. I’ve done a lot to automate the massive number of customizations I have inflicted on my computers. (I don’t think most Qubes users would recognize my system.)

Speaker Johnson
Pinging you on January 6 Tapes

Just a friendly reminder Speaker Johnson. You’re doing some good things–or at least trying in the case of the budget–but this is the most important thing out there still hanging. One initial block released with the promise of more…and?

We have American patriots being held without bail and without trial, and the tapes almost certainly contain exculpatory evidence. (And if they don’t, and we’re all just yelling in an echo chamber over here, we need to know that too. And there’s only one way to know.)

Either we have a weaponized, corrupt government or we have a lot of internet charlatans. Let’s expose whatever it is. (I’m betting it’s the corrupt weaponized government, but if I am wrong, I’d like to see proof.)

A Political Statement

One of my stock jokes is to say, as I head off to the bathroom or washroom or restroom, “I’m going to go make a political statement.”

It certainly seems like urinating is a good way to make a statement about the YSM, and defecating works for politicians. Or the other way around is good too, though “#1” just never seems emphatic enough.

Maybe “#1” is just being polite, and “#2” is telling the fixtures what you really think.

Anyhow, I pretty much do plan to be polite to RINOs that electioneer or fundraise. I’ll tell them, Sorry, but I need to GO Pee…

Language Warning

In the next piece I had to discuss a particular topic. Unfortunately, I couldn’t discuss it without naming it. Therefore I apologize in advance for having to do so, and apologize to anyone offended by the sight of the name.

RINO McDaniel

RINO McDaniel continues to infest the GOP. But RINO McDaniel isn’t the problem.

Let me be crystal clear on this, RINO McDaniel is a lower-than-whale-shit, piss guzzling ratfucking shit eating traitorous rancid syphillitic cunt. Her worth as a human being is substantially less than zero, any oxygen sucked into her lungs is wasted, and it would be, no matter what job she had.

I fear I haven’t been clear enough, but that will have to suffice.

But she is not the problem…or rather, she would not be a problem were it not for others. She’d still be as I have described, but we wouldn’t know who she is and would not care, because she could do no damage. She’d just be anonymous human refuse.

No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.

In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party has deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, has deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, has diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.

However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.

RINO McDaniel would be powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They want this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.

If she were to drop dead this instant, it would solve nothing as someone just like her would be elected by those same pustulous people.

According to Charlie Kirk, about 55 people voted against her, 10-12 wanted something different but were too chickenshit to do the right thing, and roughly 100 people voted for her enthusiastically, and even had the unmitigated gall to complain to Kirk about US. Fuck ’em. Rusty 12 gauge bore brushes would be too good for these arrogant pricks and cunts.

Every single one of those hundred is just as bad as she is. In other words, they are all worse than I described at the beginning of this piece. And no doubt those people in turn have people who supported them to be state party chairs and whateveritis they call the other two people from each state and territory who were voting.

It’s time to face up to the fact that the Republican party is effectively owned by the shit-eating RINOs. We’ve got more work to do, a lot more work, to make the GOP an instrument for the restoration of the United States of America. And that’s in addition to cleaning up our elections.

There’s no point in cleaning up elections just to elect ratfucking RINOs.

OK, hopefully now you will have some inkling of my true attitude towards RINOs. Sorry that words were inadequate to give you the full picture.

The Real Fascist is His Fraudulency Joe Biden*

*Or whoever has his hand rammed up that meat puppet’s ass.

Brandon (which I will use as a term for whoever is the power behind the Porcelain Throne) has thrown down the gauntlet…but in a way where most of America will never see it. The networks didn’t carry his tirade. CNN air brushed it (or whatever you call editing the red background) for its five viewers (who aren’t trapped in airports).

Luckily for me I live in Colorado, and therefore, despite my best efforts, I probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump.

Of course, for this purpose who I actually did try to vote for will be essential, and they undoubtedly know.

Come and get us, asswipes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h6ZZ28QtX4

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Small Government?

Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.

This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.

No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.

World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.

So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.

Political Science In Summation

It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).

A Few Things We Cannot Blame on His Fraudulency

I am pretty sure Joe Biden had nothing whatsoever to do with the 30 Years War that ran from 1618-1648 and probably killed about a third of the people then living in what is now Germany.

Nor did he cause the collapse of either Roman empire (Western, 476 CE, Eastern 1453 CE). Nor the ignominious failure of most of the Crusades. Nor the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1200 BCE (including the collapse of the Minoans and the blowup of Santorini).

However, my utter lack of ability to imagine how he could possibly be responsible for these things is not a valid argument against them, so I await correction if appropriate.

His Truth?

Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.

I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.

But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.

Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.

But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

(Paper) Spot Prices

Kitco “Ask” prices. Last week:

Gold $2,046.90
Silver $23.29
Platinum $917.00
Palladium $998.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $2,030.20
Silver $22.69
Platinum $909.00
Palladium $972.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

OK, the standard “line” on why gold is sliding downwards right now is that the investors are starting to conclude that the Fed is not going to drastically lower interest rates. Since they habitually chase rates of return (they’re not gold bugs nor even terribly concerned that the organic fertilizer might hit the rotating ventilation device) that’s bringing them to the dollar right now. So gold might soon find itself struggling to stay over 2000 ferns (“fern” = “FRN” = Federal Reserve Note).

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?

Speaker Johnson: A Reminder.

January 6 tapes. A good start…but then nothing.

Were you just hoping we’d be distracted by the first set and not notice?

Are you THAT kind of “Republican”?

Are you Kevin McCarthy lite?

What are you waiting for?

I have a personal interest in this issue.

This Man is Pissed!

And if you aren’t…what the hell is wrong with you?

Is This Our Anthem?

Or at least our song to march to?

I’m sure most of you know I don’t believe in “devolution” or any variant of “we’re really still in charge” and certainly not the ones that come with “They’re waiting for everyone to wake up.”

No, I don’t think the good guys are in charge. But that makes it even more necessary that people wake up.

This might be the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of our age. (Or perhaps the recent trafficking movie was it. Or maybe both.)

Certainly there seem to be a huge number of people who are finally having the light bulb turning on when they hear this song.

Joining The Herd Of Lemmings

I’ve had cause to consider a few things. Maybe we’re going about it the wrong way, and we need to ditch Trump

Yeah, NO

Trump all the way! Why? Because being hated by the people who hate him is a sign of impeccable character, that’s why.

The haters can go fuck themselves with rusty twelve gauge bore brushes. I’d prefer ten gauge but that’s kind of scarce, so…I’m willing to compromise.

The RINO’s Dilemma

The RINOs who who have burrowed in and taken over most GOP organizations, from the state down to local organizations, have quite a dilemma on their hands, and most of them have their heads too far up their asses to realize it.

OK, I’m not talking about the liberal in a Republican area, who knows they’re in the wrong party, but is there because it’s the only game in their town; they hope to capture a nomination someday, at which point they’re guaranteed to be elected…otherwise, they never will be. These people are a hazard in any heavily conservative area.

No, I’m talking about the guys who are a little bit conservative and want to do some good by going into politics, and they’re in a closely matched area, closely enough that they can join the party they are most aligned with and still have a chance. They think the Democrats…particularly the ones who end up running for office…are nuts.

They don’t think much better of the Deplorable types, either. A bunch of bumpkins whose hearts are in the right place, mostly…OK a bit extreme. But they think Deplorables can’t understand that first you have to get elected, then work within the system to change things…a slow process. They genuinely want many of the things Deplorables want…just not as much. The government is spending too much. Or they need to spend money on highways instead of welfare for illegal immigrants. But they want to work within the system to get these things done.

Or maybe they think things are pretty close to ideal right now, and they want to nail it in place.

The problem is, that means they don’t stand for anything in particular. And it shows. They’re about as unappetizing to the electorate as a puddle of dog vomit. The folks in the middle, who they think they are appealing to because they themselves are not extreme, would honestly prefer a clear-spoken radical to someone who qualifies everything they say to the point where they sound like they don’t believe anything at all.

The problem these “Mild RINOs” have, is they just can’t see that. And the reason they just can’t see that, is their entire sense of self-worth is tied up in not seeing that. In their minds, they’ve worked tirelessly for their party, to keep those crazy Democrats out…only to have to constantly fight with a small number of crazy Republicans–who are only liabilities if they end up as candidates. They’ve fought the good fight, and if they can just find the right candidate, someone with some charisma, they might stop the crazies…without being too beholden to the OTHER crazies. In the meantime it’s not working. What’s a responsible guy in politics to do?

They simply cannot understand that the Republicans can’t succeed as the party of nothing in particular. Not really in the past, and certainly not today when people are starting to realize that no matter what they do in the voting booth, the country is still about to fly off a precipice. If they did see it, they’d suddenly have two choices: Go away and let the GOP succeed, or stay and fight. But “go away” isn’t really an option, because what’s the point of having a party now owned by the crazies, win?

Well, they have a dilemma…and WE, therefore have a problem. And we would have that problem even IF they realized that they had a problem…that they were the problem.

No one ever thinks they are the bad guy. Even Epstein probably thought he was the good guy. Right up to the moment where he didn’t kill himself.

So if you ever wonder why these unappetizing dufuses cling on even when their fingernails are being left behind…that’s why. They don’t understand no one wants them, and can’t imagine that no one should want them. And oftentimes their greatest pride is in all the hard work they’ve done for the party. They’re not going to give that up; it’d be psychological suicide.

If you’ve worked with these people, there’s a good chance you like them and consider some of them your friends. But even if so…we’re going to have to give them a good, hard shove. Because America is more important than those milquetoasts’ egos.

Justice Must Be Done

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot (i.e., paper) Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,046.30
Silver $23.26
Platinum $971.00
Palladium $1,050.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $2,046.90
Silver $23.29
Platinum $917.00
Palladium $998.00
Rhodium $5,050.00

Gold went nowhere awfully fast. It declined over the week, then suddenly jumped back up Friday on account of whatever it is that’s happening in the Middle East today (apparently something to do with Yemen). Silver, very similarly. Net move almost zero. But platinum went way down this last week and palladium isn’t doing so well either.

Fuck Joe B*d*n

Due to complaints about foul language, I’ve censored the most objectionable word in the title of this section.

B*d*n, you don’t even get ONE scoop of ice cream today.

(Please post this somewhere permanent, as it will continue to be true; the SOB will never deserve a scoop.)

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?

January 6 Tapes?

Paging Speaker Johnson…this is your conscience calling you out on broken promises.

For all your high talk about your Christian moral background…you’re looking less and less like you have any kind of moral background.

If You are a Patriot and Don’t Loathe RINOs…

Let’s talk about RINOs, and why they are the lowest form of life in politics.

Many patriots have been involved with politics, often at the grassroots, for decades. We’ve fought, and fought, and fought and won the occasional illusory small victory.

Yet we can’t seem to win the war, even when we have BIG electoral wins.

I am reminded of something. The original Star Trek had an episode titled Day of the Dove. It was one of the better episodes from the third season, but any fan of the original series will tell you that’s a very low bar. Still, it seems to get some respect; at a time when there were about 700 episodes of Star Trek in its various incarnations out there, it was voted 99th best out of the top 100.

In sum, the plot is that an alien entity has arranged for 39 Enterprise crew, and 39 Klingons, to fight each other endlessly with swords and other muscle-powered weapons. The entity lives off of hostile emotions, you see and it wants a captive food source. (The other 400 or so Enterprise crew are trapped below decks and unable to help.) Each side has its emotions played and amplified by the alien entity; one Enterprise junior officer has false memories implanted of a brother who was killed by Klingons. The brother didn’t even exist.

Even people killed in a sword fight miraculously heal so they can go do it again.

The second best line of the episode is when Kang, the Klingon captain, notes that though they have won quite a number of small victories including capturing Engineering, can’t seem to actually finally defeat the Enterprise crew. He growls, “What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*”

Indeed. He may have been the bad guy, but his situation should sound familiar.

We are a majority in this country. We have a powerful political party in our corner. There is endless wrangling.

And yet,

What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?

In our case, that power is the RINOs in our midst. They specialize in caving when on the verge of victory. Think of Obamacare’s repeal failing…by one Republican vote. Think of the way we can never seem to get spending under control (and now our entire tax revenue goes to pay interest on the debt; anything the government actually does now is with borrowed money).

We have a party…that refuses to do what we want it to do, and that refusal is institutionalized. If you’ve been involved with GOP politics, but haven’t seen this, it’s because you refuse to see it. Or because you are part of the problem yourself. (If so, kindly gargle some red fuming nitric acid to clear the taste of shit out of your mouth, and let those not part of the problem alone so they can read this.)

We fight to elect people, who then take a dive when in office. But it’s not just the politicians in office, it’s the people behind the scenes, the leaders of the national, state and county branches of the party. Their job is to ensure that real patriots never get onto the general election ballot. They’re allowed a few failures…who can then become token conservatives who will somehow never manage to win (Jordan), or can be compromised outright (Loren Boebert).

That way it doesn’t actually matter who has a congressional majority. I remember my excitement when the GOP took the Senate in 1980. But all that did was empower a bunch of “moderate” puddles of dog vomit like…well for whatever reason forty years later the most memorable name is Pete Domenici. And a couple of dozen other “moderates” who simply had no interest in doing what grassroots people in their party–those same grassroots people who had worked so hard to elect them–wanted them to do.

Oh, they’ll put up a semblance of a fight…but never win. And they love it when we fight the Dems instead of fighting them. Just like that alien entity, whose motto surely was “Let’s you and him fight. It’ll be delicious!”

If you think about it, your entire political involvement has come to nothing because of these walking malignant tumors.

That should make you good and mad.

The twenty five who blocked Jordan, and the hundred people who took that opportunity to stab Jordan in the back in the secret ballot should make you good and mad.

I’ll close this with another example of RINO backstabbing, an infuriating one close to home.

In my county, the GOP chair is not a RINO. She got elected when the grassroots had had enough of the RINOs. Unfortunately the state organization is full of RINOs, and the ousted county RINOs have been trying to form a new “Republican Party” and get the state GOP to recognize them as the affiliate. I’m honestly amazed it hasn’t happened yet.

In other words those shitstains won’t just leave when they get booted out; they’ll try to destroy what they left behind. It’s an indication that they know we know how important that behind-the-scenes party power is.

So they must be destroyed. That’s the only way they’ll ever stop.

We cannot win until the leeches “on our side” get destroyed.

What power is it that feeds our battle yet starves our victory?*

We know it. What is going to be done about it?

*NOTE: The original line was actually “What power is it that supports our battle yet starves our victory.” I had mis-remembered it as feeds. When I checked it, it sure enough was “supports” and that’s what I originally quoted. On further reflection, though, I realized my memory was actually an improvement over the reality, because feeds is a perfect contrast with starves. I changed it partway through the day this originally posted, but now (since this is a re-run) it gets rendered this way from the start.

If one must do things wrong, one should do them wrong…right.

RINOs an Endangered Species?
If Only!

According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.

Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.

I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.

But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.

The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.

Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.

I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.

This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?

In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting

One of the biggest obstacles to direly-needed change is RINOs, and one of the weapons in their arsenal is the “Wasted Vote” argument.

Periodically a third party has arisen, trying to hold RINOs to account by putting pressure on them from outside of the party, since doing so from the inside has historically done very little good. But, even if you find a third party candidate who perfectly reflects your views, you’re likely to vote for the RINO anyway. Why? Because if you don’t, the Democrat might win, and that would be even worse. So if you vote for that third party (that few will vote for), you’re throwing your vote away and increasing the likelihood of the Democrat winning. (It’s half as much a gain for the Democrat, as actually voting for the Democrat would be. Not as much, but half as much. Because although you denied the R your vote, you did not flip your vote to the Democrat.)

The Republican Party Establishment knows you don’t love them. But they know you hate the Democrats worse, and they use that to continue to herd you into supporting them. With gritted teeth you cast your vote, but your vote counts the same whether you cast it enthusiastically. And the other alternative, pissing on the voting apparatus to express your actual feelings, is probably a felony.

But what if you could vote for that third party without increasing the chances of the Dem walking away with the prize?

This is what ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, can do provided it is properly implemented. (And this includes the votes, and only genuine votes, being counted honestly, of course. However, I’m going to compare it to what we have today, and pretend that is honestly done too. RCV can’t work if it’s not honestly administered, just like our current system isn’t working because it isn’t honestly administered.)

The idea behind RCV is to vote by expressing your order of preference. You could vote for the Patriot Party, then for the RINO Party as your second choice (and ignore the Democrat, the Green, the Overt Socialist Schmuckmonkey Party, etc).

What does this do? It nullifies the wasted vote argument. Your vote will be counted for the Patriot party, first, then instead of it being “wasted” when the Patriot Party loses, it ends up going to the RINO. Actually, it’s just barely possible that the Patriot Party would actually beat the RINO, if people weren’t all individually afraid to vote for it.

It’s just like the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where your fear of other peoples’ actions prevents you from doing the optimal thing–and vice-versa. As long as Job Lowe is afraid to vote Patriot because he’s afraid you’ll vote RINO, you’ll have to vote RINO because you fear that Job Lowe will, because he fears you will.

So on the whole I like RCV. It gives you a no-risk way to vote against the RINO scum, and in favor of someone who deserves your vote.

The problem is, as done here in the US, it comes packaged with a “jungle primary.” A bunch of candidates get to put their name out there, and the top four (or so) candidates get onto the “main” ballot. This gives party establishments their way around the threat of a good third party bumping them off. Because they know that few people bother with primaries, and third parties don’t have the resources to run in a primary…so they throw two or three establishment hacks into the primary and they will probably beat the third party. The result is the RINOs end up with two of the four slots in the general election, and the Dems get the other two. Now there’s suddenly no third party candidate on the ballot at all.

If we were to combine RCV with the present system where each party could nominate exactly one candidate to appear on the November ballot, or at the very least, ensure minor parties could get onto the ballot with at least one candidate regardless of the primary, we would be getting somewhere, but the establishment is smarter than we like to give them credit for. They will support the jungle primary + RCV “solution” rather than the more appropriate one-candidate-per-party + RCV solution.

It’s not RCV that is the problem, it’s the primary structure grafted onto it.

Justice

It says “Justice” on the picture.

And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.

But what is it?

Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.

Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.

Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.

—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)

Justice Must Be Done.

Trump, it is supposed, had some documents.

Biden and company stole the country.

I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2024 or 2026 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,053.80
Silver $24.29
Platinum $984.00
Palladium $1,230.00
Rhodium $4,950.00

This week, at Friday close:

Gold $2,063.20
Silver $23.88
Platinum $998.00
Palladium $1,126.00
Rhodium $4,950.00

Gold up a bit. Palladium took a $34 hit on friday, and is down over a hundred bucks after its recent climb up to last Friday’s price. Platinum took a $16 hit on Friday but still closed a bit up for the week. Gold only went down $3 on Friday. Silver down a bit this week.

This is as good a time as any to point out an interesting factoid. When we were on the gold standard (and could actually use gold coins), an ounce of gold was $20.67. No, it wasn’t worth $20.67, it was $20.67. Even if a double eagle (a bit less than a troy ounce of gold, plus copper mixed in so it would be a bit harder) were left unstruck (just a featureless disk) or wasn’t even in the form of a disk, it was $20. The government stamping it was just letting you know that it really was the requisite amount of gold.

Note that today’s gold price is 2,063.20 (that’s ask, bid is 2,062.20). Of course that’s the “paper” price; you’ll get charged more at the coin shop (one online place is charging $2166 per ounce…more than $100 over the paper price). That’s very close to the “magic number” of $2067 per troy ounce…the price at which the dollar is worth 1/100th what it was when it was tied to gold.

(Note: The dollar was supposedly still tied to gold at $35/ounce after FDR confiscated the heavy yellow stuff from the citizens, but only foreign governments could make the exchange. Which meant that if you were suspicious that maybe paper dollars were being inflated, you couldn’t cover your bets by trading them for gold money. And even just having to deal with foreign governments that we could strongarm, we still had to shut that loophole down under Nixon.)

The Hugh Janus of the Solar System

Getting the Obligatory Jokes Out of the Way

The planet is called “Uranus.” And it is the butt (so to speak) of many jokes on account of that name. Astronomers avoid the “your anus” pronunciation in favor of “YER-in-us” but that sounds like “urinous” which is just about as bad. Best to sidestep the whole thing and stop pronouncing the U with a “y” in front of it. The Greeks (who invented the god Ouranus) didn’t. So: Call it OO-rahn-us and the bad jokes go away forever.

Of course we dodged a bigger bullet than the one we took. It was on 13 March, 1781 before someone finally noticed that that one particular very faint dot in the night sky (it is barely visible to the naked eye…provided you’re far away from city lights) was not a star.

I’m not kidding about it being visible to the naked eye. Hipparchus may have put it in his star catalog in 128 BCE; it was definitely seen by John Flamsteed in 1690, who marked it in his star catalog as “34 Tauri.” (We still use “Flamsteed numbers” today.)

That person was William Herschel, and noticing that it wasn’t a pinpoint of light in his telescope, he thought at first that he had found a comet. Other astronomers were suspicious that it was something else, some daring to suggest it might be a planet. After a couple of years, Herschel finally accepted that he had found a hitherto-unknown planet. And this was an extraordinary claim…every hitherto-known planet, after all, had been known since ancient times. It had probably never even occurred to anyone that there might be more of them. Herschel actually became a celebrity for this discovery; King George III offered him a £200 annual stipend provided he was willing to move to Windsor castle.

So what to name this new planet?

Herschel wanted to name it Georgium Sidum, “George’s Star.” After King George. Yes, that King George. (This was between the Battle of Yorktown (September 28, 1781) and the Treaty of Paris–we were technically still in the Revolutionary War.)

Can you imagine the hilarity? The list today would be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, George, Neptune…Especially after it turned out that “George” rolled around on its side (I’ll explain that shortly).

But seriously, can you imagine naming a planet after that asshole?

So instead, we named it after everyone’s asshole.

An early triumph of rule by the people: we elevated the common man above mere monarchs.

OK so what is this thing?

It turns out that Uranus averages 19.2 AU from the Sun…which is to say, it “lives” 19.2 times as far away from the Sun as the Earth, and thus gets just a bit over 1/369th of the sunlight we do.

Its radius is 25,559 km (versus 6,378 for Earth). So it’s intermediate in size between Earth and Jupiter. The mass is 14.536 times that of Earth…not really intermediate between us and Jupiter (at 318 earth masses); it’s closer to us even on a logarithmic scale. The surface escape velocity is 21 km/sec (versus our 11 km/sec). It rotates once (relative to the Sun) in 17 hours, 23 minutes, and 14 seconds, versus 24 hours for Earth. It takes roughly 84 years to make one trip around the Sun.

Probably Uranus’s most distinctive feature is its axial tilt. You can look at this one of two ways: Either the pole is tilted 82.23 degrees relative to its orbit, and the planet rotates backwards, or it’s tilted 97.77 degrees relative to its orbit, and the planet rotates forwards (or “prograde”). Wikipedia prefers the former way of looking at it, I (and many real astronomers) prefer the latter. (If you look at it the way Wikipedia does, you’re defining the north pole of the planet as the one “above” its orbit, but then the sun rises in the west. Looking at it my way the sun rises in the east–that’s the definition of east–and the north pole is to your left as you face sunrise, again by definition.

Either way, this means that the planet is basically lying on its side, and so that’s where the joke about George rolling around on his side would have come from.

On Earth, our seasons are caused by our roughly 23 degree axial tilt. On one side of our orbit, the northern hemisphere is tipped toward the sun, leading to longer days and warmer temperatures, on the other side, we have shorter days and lower temperatures with the sun lower in the sky at high noon. (And in the southern hemisphere, the situation is reversed, they have winter while we have summer, and vice versa.)

With Uranus at one point in its orbit the north pole points almost directly at the Sun…so almost the entire northern hemisphere has sunlight, all day, continuously, while the southern hemisphere has night…continuously. Only a thin band near the equator has a regular day/night cycle, and in this band the Sun barely pops up over the horizon–then sweeps about 180 degrees around the sky, trimming the non-existent treetops, before it goes back down again.

This is very different from our situation on Earth; with the polar regions getting more sunlight on average than the equatorial regions…and just to make it more different, the seasons are each 21 years long!

Uranus’s appearance from a backyard telescope is as a pale green dot; its basically about the same color as rusted copper (which some people insist looks blue to them). To my eye it’s more green than blue.

Herschel himself discovered two of Uranus’s moons (though one should think that any anus comes with exactly one moon…er, never mind); three more were discovered before space flight for the 5 moons I learned about as a kid. The total is now 27.

Uranus was discovered to be surrounded by a ring system in 1977. It was found not by direct observation, but by observing Uranus pass in front of a star. We were hoping to learn something about Uranus’ atmosphere by watching the light spectrum of the star, which we did, but the surprise was seeing the star wink out five times both before and after the passage; the two patterns matched and the conclusion was that there were very faint rings around Uranus. (I’ll pause while more guffawing at tasteless jokes happens here.)

OK one more to get out of the way. There are trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide in Uranus’s atmosphere. Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) is the major reason why rotten eggs smell so bad. So yes, Uranus stinks. (Hopefully you didn’t need an astronomer to tell you that.)

In general, Uranus, along with Neptune, is considered an “ice giant” planet. Not because it has a lot of frozen ice in it, but because it’s fairly rich in the sorts of compounds that make ices, like water, methane, and ammonia, relative to Jupiter and Saturn. Or to look at it in the most sensible way, it has much less hydrogen and helium than the two big boys have.

Recent Observations/Discoveries

We’ve only ever visited it once with robot probes, and that was Voyager II in 1986. Here’s a natural color image:

This picture was taken by Voyager II as it approached Uranus, and admittedly is not terribly exciting (it’s just the picture used to make the size comparison I showed above). There’s very little visible detail; it’s an off-white cue ball. To see anything significant, you have to use wavelengths we can’t actually see.

As it turns out Uranus has insane winds and a lot of stormy weather. Here’s a timelapse of images taken by Voyager:

You can see all sorts of spots, banding, and so on, much like you have on Jupiter and Saturn.

Another major discovery by Voyager II is that Uranus’s magnetic field has multiple axes in it, instead of just one “bar magnet” inside the planet there are two or three of them.

(This is supposed to be an animated GIF; it’s not working for me.) We at first thought that this was due to Uranus’s rotating “on its side” or possibly by luck we caught it in the midst of a magnetic field reversal. But Neptune has a similar situation as we found out in 1989 when Voyager II flew by it, so that scotches both theories (the odds of both planets going through a magnetic field reversal just as we happened to visit them are pretty doggone low). We now think it’s due to a shallow layer of the planet generating the magnetic field.

Hubble space telescope has taken some pictures as well, including the first seen “dark spot” (2006)

And probably the best HST picture I’ve seen…even highlighting the dark rings:

So why did I pick this week to talk about this planet?

Well, in part it was the Hugh Janus jokes from last Thursday. I didn’t have the gumption to write this that week, so here I am doing it today. But really, it’s because James Webb Space Telescope gave Uranus some attention. (Uh, I guess that’s an opening for more jokes.) These pictures were taking with NIRcam (the Near InfraRed camera, i.e., one that uses wavelengths over a wide range…overlapping our eyes in red and orange). Of course these are all false color.

You see rings, and many of the moons. Actually, you can see a lot more moons if you get the full image instead of this cropped excerpt:

(Yes, those are mostly galaxies in the background, including a beaut of a face-on spiral at far right and an obvious edge-on spiral up and to the left of Uranus.) The five classic moons show up as bluish-purple “stars” here; many others are also in the image as we shall see below.

Here’s another picture with the moons labeled:

So…James Webb Space Telescope continues to kick ass!

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!