A Big Winner!

Maybe I'll be taking weekends off. Who knows?

Anyway, almost every morning in my email I get a couple of notices from the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes. They have four or five mailings they can do that will earn you an entry, but I'm self-limited to the main sales pitch and a search engine. The only one of the others I tried seemed to take about five minutes to finish, which is more time than I want to spend on an infinitesimal chance to win a jackpot.

The two I do take about three minutes. The search engine has a "matching number" type game the entrant plays four times (by which I mean makes one click apiece and watches a 30-second commercial), after which the entrant types something into the search window. I usually type in "(current president's name) worthless," and I have done so since I began entering sometime in 2009. If you're thinking that I, as a conservative person, might have changed my entry between January 2017 to January 2021, you did not read some of the posts before my hiatus.

Anyway, two things before I close: Awhile, I noticed a distinct change in the main entry, which is a chance to buy items from the PCH catalogue. Formerly, when one completed the three pages of stuff-you-could-get-cheaper-anywhere-else, it was somewhat implied that one must also navigate three pages of magazine subscription offers in order to make one's entry. But sometime around six weeks ago, the page that popped up when the entrant finished the merch pages said that there was no need to click anywhere else. My guess is someone reported the company, but I have no idea when because I can't find any news stories anywhere. Whatever, it shortens my entry time by about 90 seconds.

I am also an actual PCH winner. About three years ago, they mailed me a check for ten dollars. Not much? I quote the sage Geddy Lee -- "Ten bucks is ten bucks."

Lazarus?

This past week, an odd thing happened. Counting today’s self-referential post - which you’re free to not count if that’s your way of things - I’ve blogged each day since Monday.

Before this week, I’d posted twice all year. I’m not patting myself on the back, I’m just surprised it’s happened. A number of issues in ye olde personal life as well as my profession had left me not that interested in posting since apparently February 2021. I wondered if I had just passed the part of my life where I threw my thoughts into wherever thoughts go when we blog. But recently, it seems like that’s changed. Permanently? Completely unknown. 

But the post rolled out, and looking up info went smoothly. This particular cyber-homestead has been in my care since January 2008. Maybe I’m taking up residence again. If so, and you’re a former reader who found your way back, thanks. There may be plenty of action in this keyboard yet.

On Second Thought...

Yesterday I made fun of the way a woman who bought one of Hunter Biden's paintings had found herself appointed to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. I also made fun of the commission, since it focused on Eastern and Central European areas that have been extensively explored in movies that involve pale gentlemen with a fondness for red and nighttime.

I've since learned that a great deal of the Commission's work instead focuses on the preservation of things like Jewish cemeteries and memorials to Holocaust victims, as well as archives and documents relating to them. This is not by itself a bad thing. Large numbers of people who have come to the U.S. were victims of oppression by both the Nazis and Soviet-dominated regimes. Others had been smacked around by the dictators' predecessors.

So in essence, the commission's goals are not bad ones. When the bill containing it was sponsored in 1985 by then-Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and signed by Ronald Reagan, there was significant worry that the totalitarian regimes of those areas would work pretty hard to destroy the past. Because that's what dictators do, just like the Taliban blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. Yes, we kicked their tails after they moved on to skyscrapers, but as we learned when the current administration brought back the old Saigon Helicopter Shuffle in August of 2021, American tail-kickings have an expiration date.

But...it's not the government's job -- our government's job, anyway. While the description of its mission says it's to work with the State Department to help obtain assurances from other governments that these sites will be preserved and maintained, I live among a bunch of people who can tell you what government assurances are worth. There might be a ton of private donation money and nice smiles and pats on the head. But there's no way to insure some of these governments will honor any assurances unless we hang a picture of a "Your Secret Hideout" -marked ICBM in whatever language required in that president or leader's office.

While Commission members themselves are unpaid, their travel and hotel stays and meals are covered. The Commission staff average salary is $125,000. There are other staff, of course, so the total cost is probably higher than that. When created in 1985, the Commisson received no federal funds. In 1990, after Reagan was gone but while Lugar was still in office, the Commission received its first federal appropriation. For FY 2023-2024, it has available $1.03 million to spend.

The point is not saving the government money. The points are that this is not a task for government and that even an agency begun without any government expense, created by a couple of those mean old pinch-penny Republicans, will eventually start costing something. 

Things might get so bad someone would buy an ugly expensive painting just for a chance to sit at the table and listen to chairwoman Star Jones lead the meeting.

Painting Hunter

There is a to-do because the identity of one of Hunter Biden’s painting purchasers has been discovered, and she is a significant Democratic Party donor who received a presidential appointment.

The buyer is a woman named Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali and she paid an unknown sum for one of Biden the younger’s works, priced anywhere between $75,000 and a half a million dollars. In 2022, Ms. Hirsh Naftali was appointed to the United States Commission on the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, and whatever part of me is still libertarian just broke out in hives.

As Jim Geraghty’s piece notes, the USCPAH “identifies, protects and preserves cemeteries, monuments and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe that are associated with U.S. heritage. I have no idea how this works. I was under the impression that cemeteries, monuments and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe were all older than the United States. I was also under the impression, thanks to Christopher Lee, that the residents of the cemeteries in many parts of Eastern Europe are perfectly capable of maintaining them without U.S. assistance, as they leave their graves for evening strolls and, um, dinner.

What American heritage are we preserving? Was Dracula staked with a filed-down Louisville Slugger that needs a little varnish now and again? Is China sneaking some contraband O-neg to all the toothy crowd and underselling good old red-blooded American…blood?

Anyway, the question now seems to be whether or not Ms. Hirsh Naftali obtained this plum membership as a result of her purchase. The White House denies this, saying that Ms. Hirsh Naftali was recommended by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. I have a simple solution to determine this. Find out where the painting is hanging. If it’s in the guest bathroom, things look a little iffy. If it’s in the house of a least-favorite in-law who might have voted for Reagan, then it’s clearly a grift.

Gravitee, Gravitoe; What It Might Be We Just Don't Know

Ever since experiments revealed the quantum nature of much of the universe, most physicists have assumed that all of the four forces -- electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force and gravity -- could eventually be "quantized." In simplest terms, they believed that all four forces would one day be explained by quantum theory.

After many decades of theories and experiments, three of the forces are indeed explained by quantum theory -- the idea that at its most basic level, everything is made up of infinitesimal particles that work together to create the effect of a field. The only force not playing along is gravity. There have been some supposin's about why this is the case.

One is that gravity, even though it plays a very important role in everyday life, is the weakest of all the forces. Waves in all the three forces had been discovered early in the history of this research. But although gravitational waves were first proposed in 1905, they are so weak they were not actually detected until 2015. As it is so weak, the idea goes, our ability to examine it to find out if it is quantized and how so is also very weak.

There are other reasons suggested for why we have not been able to develop what is usually called a "theory of quantum gravity." But some physicists, like Jonathan Oppenheim of University College London, have offered a much simpler reason that theorists can't quantize gravity: Gravity can't be quantized.

This possibility has been around as long as quantum theory has, but it's been exiled to the fringes because it requires reality to be explained by a mix of quantum theory and classical theory. But none of the thinking going on in quantum land allows that to be true, because quantum theory's new discoveries and experiments all hinged on the idea that quantum would replace classical Newtonian physics. It explained so many things so much better that it just had to explain gravity too.

But Oppenheim offers several conundrums about what things might look like if quantum gravity is ever discovered, none of which I understand well enough to relate with any confidence. We can just sum it up by saying he believes the universe has three quantum forces and one non-quantum force.

His suggestion is, of course, about as popular as a co-ed dorm would be to a dad with a daughter in 1962: Classical and quantum don't mix, and neither do my precious princess and those slavering Lotharios in button-downs and penny loafers.

It could be interesting to see how things happen. Gravity may not be a force like the other three. Some as-yet-unknown experiment could reveal the path to quantum gravity. Or something else entirely. The goal for a scientist -- despite the language they may use to title a paper -- is simplicity. A hybrid quantum-classical universe is not as simple as a fully quantized one, but it may be as simple as it gets.

Small, as in Town

The recent Jason Aldean song "Try That in a Small Town" has caused a stink. Because some people can stretch any idea into the territory of evil thoughts, country artist Aldean is now accused of preaching the idea of lynching as a proper response to civil unrest and rioting. Most of the dust-up happened when the video was noticed, since it played scenes from recent unrest and rioting projected onto a small-town courthouse while Aldean sang about the contrast between urban and rural life. He focused on the difference between the kind of unrest and rioting recently prevalent in cities and the firm resolve to "act right" held by small town people -- specifically, "good ol' boys raised up right." CMT, the country music video channel, pulled the video from rotation because some people decided Aldean was, indeed, singing the praises of lynching. The video currently has 16 million views on YouTube and the song is one of the top downloaded tracks on several music sites.

Some folks see proof of the lynching call by the video's use of the Columbia, Tennessee courthouse - the site of the 1927 Henry Choate lynching. I don't think Jason Aldean knows that much history. While the song doesn't promote lynching, it is awful. Although Aldean is a star, few, if any country musicians of the 2050s are going to be singing a song called "Jason Aldean" the way Aldean covered the song "Johnny Cash."

Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing in National Review, points out that "Try That in a Small Town" picks up none of the small-town attributes that could actually help make our nation and culture better. She cites John Mellencamp's  "Small Town" from 1986's Scarecrow as a song that proclaims the kind of gentle, slowed-down vision of small-town life that actually counter the Instant Rage that is so easily created by people on every side of every issue at any time.

As a bona fide X-er, I'm also on board with Mellencamp's understanding of the actual virtues of small town life, although I think Alan Jackson's semi-biographical ode to his father, "Small-Town Southern Man" from 2008's Good Time, is just a hair better. Neither shows the whole picture. But which has the best potential of helping people heal the hurts society and hatred have put on them? Being "raised on ways of gentle kindness" (Jackson)? "Yeah I can be myself in this small town/and people let me be just what I wanna be" (Mellencamp)? Or "See how far you make it down the road" (Not actually Aldean because he doesn't write his songs)?

Neither Mellencamp nor Jackson dwell on the totality of small-town life (for that, check into Lora Webb Nichols photographs of her life in small-town Wyoming). And neither spend any time on the underbelly of rural life. They do in fact leave out unemployment, racism, cronyism, alcoholism and drug abuse, the sexual assaults covered up to protect the "good boys who made a mistake," and other such sins as may be found wherever there are human beings. And the way a small-town can twist such sins by everybody cementing their evaluation of a person based on the worst thing they've ever done or that everyone thinks they've done.

The virtues they extoll are not the whole picture, of course. But "Small Town" and "Small-Town Southern Man" do extoll virtues. All "Try That" does is tell you, "We'll beat your ass if you do stuff we don't think is right." That's the message that rioters and anarchists know well, and adding fuel to that fire helps nobody and nothing.

Plus, as mentioned above, it's a lousy song and it's tough to believe it took four guys to write it.