We've been sold LED lighting on the premise that yes, the bulbs cost more, but they last for years and use much less electricity than incandescent bulbs do for the same amount of light output. So yeah, you're paying $2.50 for a 60-watt equivalent bulb (when you could buy a four-pack of incandescent bulbs for a buck) but you save so much on electricity!
...until a random sampling of bulbs die.
The incandescent bulb is a mature technology. We know how to make them cheaply, and they last long enough that they're worth installing. But LED bulbs are relatively new. Instead of having one part that typically breaks in use (the filament) they have scores of individual LEDs plus a regulator circuit which consists of an IC, a small transformer, some capacitors, all on a PC board--and the more parts you have, the more likely it is that something will pop.
Sodium vapor bulbs are even less likely to pop, since they don't have the filament, but you get the idea.
As far as I'm concerned, though? LED bulbs are vastly superior to incandescent bulbs, with that one caveat, and worth the extra money. The only thing I don't like about them is that there's no way for them to fail gracefully. Look: if you're out of the house and an incandescent bulb pops while you're gone, there's no problem because the instant the filament goes, electricity stops flowing and the bulb is inert. With an LED bulb, though, the electricity can keep going until the thing catches fire. I saw this happen once with a fluorescent bulb. It "burned out" such that it was emitting smoke, and left to its own devices who knows what it would have done?
There's one LED bulb I'm willing to leave lit in the bunker all the time: the one over the stove. It's a small appliance bulb and it's entirely surrounded by metal and glass, so if it were to go like that fluorescent bulb did while I was out, it should be contained enough not to cause trouble. But if I need to leave a lamp on, unsupervised, I'll replace the bulb with an incandescent one.
* * *
This is something I always object to, as well.
A) They're on some sort of government starship...yet they do not wear uniforms.The real problem here is that the people that write this shit don't have the faintest clue how any ship operates, let alone one that sails under the auspices of a (presumably) military organization.
B) They're mostly twenty-somethings, for reasons which are unclear.
C) They act like teenagers. Not "19 years old and well-disciplined by a year in the Service" teenagers, but "14 year old petulant children unfamiliar with discipline, decorum, basic manners and a work ethic" teenagers.
D) There's a violent mutiny within minutes of the first hint of difficulty.
In fact, military discipline seems to escape writers on even the good shows from time to time. I wrote about that when Battlestar Galactica was still running, how one guy essentially commits mutiny and escapes unpunished, but another guy gets drunk and berates the admiral--when they are both off-duty--for something crappy the admiral did, and gets busted down to his skivvies for it.
One of my favorite lines in AV goes thus:
"Captain Wladny, please remember you're addressing a superior officer," Jenkins said mildly.Jenkins is the fleet admiral and Wladny's boss, and Wladny doesn't like something Jenkins did, and basically asks him, "What the hell do you call that shit?" And Jenkins rebuke is the perfect response to it.
What I like about this line--other than the completely calm, measured way the rebuke is delivered--is that it's what would happen if a captain got hot under the collar and sassed his boss. You never see that happen on TV. You never have some moron holler something at the captain of the ship and have the captain remind him that at all times, a certain level of decorum and deference are mandatory. No; they skip that part. Either the captain ignores the outright insubordination, or else he overreacts to it.
Star Trek: The Next Generation largely got this bit right. Riker was almost always deferential to Picard; sometimes he would get a little hot, but Picard rarely did, and at those times Picard seldom raised his voice in response to Riker (though his tone would sharpen). Most of the time, disagreements were aired out of the sight of the crew, too. It was the first officer's job to offer alternatives to the captain; but once the captain made his decision, that was it.
The funny thing about this is that I do use insubordination as a way to show how discipline has slipped a bit in the space forces. There's a scene where a character (fleet admiral of an as-yet nonexistent navy) comes aboard a navy ship wearing what could be considered an impractical uniform, and one of the captains present makes jokes about it until she is pulled aside and told, rather sternly, not to do so and to apologize at her earilest convenience.
But the "insubordination" is not people refusing to follow orders in the middle of a crisis. "Fire the phasers." "No! You called me a poop-head!" Even in the disastrous "collapse of interstellar civilization" conditions that prevail in AV, military discipline has not fallen that far.
* * *
Get woke, go broke, college edition. Fifteen students in its freshman class for 2019. It would have been 20 but one girl decided to go to a different obscure leftist college for her dual major in psychology and political science.
I can't care about this. I really can't. It's about time, in fact, that colleges began to suffer for all the anti-American shit they pull. Here's hoping this is but the first of many.
* * *
Let me remind you that Oberlin has assests totaling something like $1.1 billion. The college, having lost the defamation lawsuit brought against it by the bakery that university officials referred to as "racist", is now refusing to pay the judgement that was laid on it while they appeal the case. So the judge in the case has issued an order that the college post a $36 million bond--essentially putting the money in escrow so that regardless of what happens the bakery will get paid should the appeal fail.
I think that's reasonable.
* * *
I think they should.
We want to find out what happened with the last Democrat President. Let's look into Obama the way they've looked at me. From day one, they've looked into everything that we've done. They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let's subpoena all of his records. Let's subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else. We could do that all day long.So do it. Take the fight to them! Make them start covering their own asses! Make them run for the hills! Make them stand up and defend their records the way the GOP has always had to defend its own.
...but I'd bet that the Epstein business is going to lead in that direction, anyway, given the chance.
* * *
Feynman understood how science was done. I think if he were still alive today, he would be blasted as a "denier" after he reviewed the methods used by climatologists.
* * *
This is true, too. The people in those so-called "concentration camps" are, at any time, free to go back to wherever they came from. They don't have to stay there.
That's why they're not concentration camps. By definition, if you're an inmate in a concentration camp, you're not allowed to leave, and if you try to, you'll be shot trying to escape. There's never been a concentration camp where you could go to the leadership and say, "Look, I want to go home," and they'd say, "Not a problem. We'll get you on the next bus back to where you came from." You know, like Auschwitz, for example; someone there couldn't say, "Look, I changed my mind about this. I want to go back to Austria." They'd have laughed in his face, and probably punched him in it for good measure. Probably moved his name to the top of the "execute" list in the bargain. The Japanese-Americans in DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT'S INTERNMENT CAMPS couldn't go to the camp commander and say, "Oh, you know what? I don't like it here, and I'd like to go back to my home in Alta Vista," and get a response that did not approximate, "Too bad, slant."
But the people in the ICE detention facilities do have that option. At any time at all, they can say, "Okay, forget that 'asylum' thing and send me back." And they will be sent back.
The people in the ICE facilities are not being held against their will. They can go back to where they came from any time they want to. They don't want to. And so they must stay there until they have their preliminary asylum hearings.
Democrats, of course, don't give a wet fart about it. They want those facilities to be crowded, they want them to lack supplies, and they want as many pictures of overcrowding as they can manage. Because there's an election next year and they want to win it and they need as many illegal votes as they can possibly manufacture to do so, and they know it, and they're hoping to get the public to demand that those centers be closed so that ICE can't hold anyone for processing and have to release them into the country.
Meanwhile, though, Guatemala has thrown a wrench into that entire plan by signing an agreement that they're a "safe third country".
It means that anyone who passes through Guatemala to come to the US, seeking asylum, must first apply for asylum in Guatemala...and if asylum is not granted there, too bad; go back. The black-letter law in the US states that they can't come here after failing to receive asylum in a "safe third country".
Mexico refused to sign that agreement, of course, because Mexico doesn't want to deal with the horde of middle- and south Americans that are trying to get to the US. (And Africans. And--)
This sidesteps a 9th circus injunction against some Trump policy or another--at least theoretically--because it's the black letter law. But considering how well-enforced the existing immigration laws are? Feh.
* * *
Motherboard arrived. Mrs. Fungus and I slept in, like logs; I was up earlier but went back to bed because it's friggin' Saturday. But while I was up I went downstairs and looked over the machines I've got; and the very computer that I had been trying to resurrect in about April or so turns out to be able to accept just about any motherboard you want to install in it. I was never able to get it running; it would boot Windows, then blue screen, and I have no idea why. I do recall that it was in the shop numerous times, and for some reason it only has three GB of RAM in it, so that's probably at least part of the problem.
So this evening I expect to take my new parts downstairs and start doing my thing, and we'll see what comes of it.
The real problem here is not one of size. Every motherboard, just about, differs in how its ports are arranged. The component market has solved this by simply putting a rectangluar hole in the back of the case, and each motherboard comes with a plate that fits in that hole and covers all but the ports of that specific motherboard.
But some manufacturers build their own cases, and they make those cases to house their motherboards and no others. Way back in 2007 when I was trying to upgrade Jurai (the Gateway P3-1000 I bought in 2001) I rapidly learned I'd have to buy a new case because the Gateway case would not accept a standard ATX motherboard.
And most of the desktop computers in the basement are Gateway.
But the one I can't make work? Acer, and the back of the computer has that rectangular cutout--and so I should be able to remove the extant motherboard and put in the new A4 motherboard with its Ryzen 2200g processor. Should.
We'll see.
But before any of that, I need to hit the store for concrete adhesive and some sundries. Whee!