A Few Things About Architecture And Urban Planning

I. Tolkien's buildings

II. The California bungalow

III. The Arts and Crafts movement

IV. The Sears Mail-Order House

V. The 15-Minute City

VI. Bad Urban Planning

VII. Old Byzantine Architecture

IIX. New Byzantine Architecture

IX. Zoning in America

Repentance

Without comment I offer you these two stories.

News from the World

News from the Church

Judicial Review

It is June and that means the Supreme Court of the United States is announcing it's decisions. Another one was handed down this morning and that prompted one pundit I heard on the radio to opine that the Constitution does not give the Supreme Court as much power as it currently exercizes, meaning the Court does not have the power to limit or abolish the legislation passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President. In short, according to the man on the radio, judical review is an unconstitutional agrandizement of the Supreme Court that began with Marbury vs. Madison in 1803. Over the course of my life I have heard many people say the same thing, that Chief Justice John Marshal invented the power and foisted it on the American people in the Marbury vs. Madison decision, and that the Congress and the President should resist the Supreme Court's usurpation with patriotic vigor. Strangely, even the U.S. judiciary's official website goes with the Marbury vs. Madison origin story. I think this is wrong.

Just as I look to the authoress of the New Testament to expalin the New Testament, I look to the authors of the Constitution, reveranlty called "The Framers", to the Founding Fathers, and the Patriots to explain the Constitution. And among The Framers, Founders, and Patriots, three stand out as explainiers of the Constitution: John Jay, (Member of the Continental Congress, writer of the Olive Branch Petition, ambasador to Spain during the American Revolution, signer of the Treaty of Paris, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Governor of New York, and founding member and first Vice President of the American Bible Society), James Madison (colonel in the Orange County militia, drafter of the Constitution, 4th President of the United States, and respondent in the case of Marbury vs. Madison), and Alexander Hamilton (founding member of the Hearts of Oak militia, officer in the Continental Army, member of the Congress of the Confederation, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, founder of the Bank of New York which is now known as BNY Mellon Bank, founder of the New York Post, and first United States Secretary of the Treasury, and founder of the U.S. Coast Guard) After the Constitution was written, debated, and passed by the delegates it was sent to the 13 States for ratification. It was a touch and go thing as one State, Rhode Island was totally against the Constitution and several were on the fence. Many of the Founding Fathers and Patriots were opposed to ratification and lead a campaign against the ratification. But these three, Madison, Hamilton, and Jay gave themselves the task of convincing the people of New York to ratify the Constitution. They wrote a series of essays for publication in the various nwespapers in New York, that explained and defended the Constitution to the New Yorkers. The essays are now called Federalist Papers.

In Federalist Paper #78, published in the New York Packet 17-20 June 1788, Alexander Hamilton explained the judicial branch of the new Constitution, and was not ambiguous about the Supreme Court's power to define the limits of Congress's power to make laws, and that the Supreme Court is a buffer between the Congress and the People who have to live under the Congress's laws.

"If it is said that the legislative body is themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural presumption, where it is not to be collected from any particular provisions in the Constitution. It is not otherwise to be supposed, that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. It is far more rational to suppose, that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.

Furthemore, that the Supreme Court is the final barrier to legilative tyrrany, interpretting the laws pased by the Congress and judging them according to the Constitution, the Constitution being superior to any act of Congress.

If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. . . .where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental. . . [W]henever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former.

Thus we see that the authors of the Constitution considered the doctrine of judicial review to be fundamental to the Supeme Court's role in our government, and, therfore judicial review should not be though of as an arrogancy of Chief Justice John Marshall only invented in 1803.

Teaching High School in the Age of Wokeness

The HR director in the the school district I work in the most has asked me to apply for one of their vacant social science positions. It would be a lot more money (and benefits!) than I get as a long-term sub. And I would LOVE to teach American history, U.S. government, and economics. In fact, because of all of the prep-work I've done for Kathleen over the past few years I've already written all the lectures and tests I'll need if I take the job. That part would be easy. So what is the hard part? Why don't I apply for the job?

There are two problems. The first is something called the Cal TPA. It is a tool the State of California uses to winnow out people who don't agree with the pedagogical philosophy and social mission of the system. I wrote a TPA a couple of years ago and it was rejected. I could do another one, I know what they want me to say, but I think it is wrong. I think, that for teaching history, especially, that reading history and writing history (with Chicago style footnotes and bibliography) is the best way. But the state wants teachers to embrace the idea that different people have different styles of learning and to use all those styles at once, to adapt each lesson every day to every student's imagined learning style, even though there is no evidence that that helps students learn more. But the woke mob doesn't want kids to read and write real history, such as those books written by Thucydides, Julius Caesar, James McPherson, SShelby Foote, Paul Johnson, David McCullough, and Winston Churchill. But the woke mob just sees white male opressors in that list of names. The woke mob only wants Howard Zinn the plagiarizer, the communist, the liar, the perverter of the minds of children. (I do think students need to know about Zinn, but not because he is right. They need to know about him because he is influential and wrong. Very extremely wrong.)

I think that for teaching U.S. Government one must start no later than the Mayflower Compact, but preferably with Moses and Plato for one,really, can't understand The Mayflower Compact without reference to the Bible and The Laws. and deal with the English Civil War, Separation of Powers (No, it did not start with Montesquieu, but with Moses and Isaiah. But I would still have my students read Montesquieu.), John Locke's Two Treatises on Government because they are the foundation of The Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration of Independence because it it is the foundation of the Constitution, and the Constitution (article by article with accomanying readngs from the Federalist Papers for who better to the explain the Constitution than the men who wrote it?) because the Constitution is the foundation of all our laws. But the woke mob only sees white male oppressors. They (according to a recent poll, more than 90% teachers in my area) think training studendents to "change the world" a la Paulo Freire, Saul Alinsky, and Angela Davis is what they ought to be doing, not teaching them what our civilization has learned over the millenia, which is what I think teachers ought to be doing.

My economics class would start with watching two movies. Yes, this is such an enormous departure from the book-based pedogogy of the history and government classes but these are such a good movies for introducing economics and illustrating why economics is important. The movies are I, Pencil and The Road to Serfdom. From there we would talk about the history of economics beginning with Sargon of Akkad, ancient Chinese economic philosophy (special attention to Confucious since he was and reamins so infuential) and coming up through the French Physiocrats, Adam Smith (with special atention given to the impact of coastal geography on the economies of Japan and Africa),William Bradford's diary of telling of the first communist expiriment in the New World, culminating with reading the The Law by Frederic Bastiat. That would all be in the first three weeks of the semester. Then we would read through Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, one chapter at a time, culminating with an assignment to read and criticize The Communist Manifesto in 10 to 15 pages. The woke mob would freak out at this because it deals with facts of how the world actually works; how people deal with scarcity, how people make decisions to allocate time and physical resources, and how people reckon costs and benefits of economic opportunities instead of the fantasy of a state-coerced collectivest utopia.

But why do I keep saying the "the woke mob"? Well, this brings me to the second reason why I am not going to apply for the job the HR department wants me to aply for. Like a mob they act as one are irrational and dangerous. While working in the distrct I see lots and lots of indicators that I, really, would not be welcome here as a full-time teacher. First there are all the social-justice activism signs, posters, flags, and murals. The people who put up all these eblems of anti-racism, and [insert oppressed group here] pride are a mob that shouts down disagreement, that looks at the ideas I hold as true and beautiful but sees oppression and hate; their reaction being one of attack and censor. I was only here a couple of days when another history teacher told me the classroom I am subbing in had a teacher but that teacher "was never on-board with the social-justice part of the job." They got rid of him. I know the same thing would happen to me. So there is no future for me as a history, government, and economics teacher in California.

But, maybe, you suggest, a private school would hire me. I've tried that but there are three problems I keep running into:
1. All the schools I have looked at require a state teaching credential and that puts me right back in the TPA problem. (See above.),
2. They are as woke as public schools, or
3. Or they require agreement with a non-Orthodox statement of faith.

But today I came across a school that is looking for a 3 month high school history substitute. I know a couple of the founders of the school, one since I was a little boy in the early 1970s. I know one of the teachers. They are all Fundamentalist Protestants but don't require adhearance to an Orthodox-excluding statement of faith, hmmm, at least, it is vague enough that I think I can sign it. It will pay less than I make working for the government schools but I will apply. Maybe, it will turn into something good.

Gun Laws

I used to sell guns. I know something about gun laws. I have refused to sell guns to people who were intoxicated, who failed back ground checks, or just seemed a little bit weird. I have sold guns to transvetites who feared for their safety, to brand new citizens thankful for freedom, old women who lived alone and were afraid at night, to hunters who traveled the world looking for trophies, and to collectors of specific brand names or designers. I know someting about what the American people think about guns.

Over the last few days I have heard politicians making absolutely crazy statements. I have heard bans proposed for guns that don't exist. I heard the President claim that a 9mm bullet can rip a lung out of a human body. (It is physically impossible) I heard the President say that when the Constitution was written a person couldn't buy a cannon. (In reality, up until the 19th century more cannons were owned by private citizens than by the United States government. Even the Washington Post knows this, and they pointed it out over a year ago but the President keeps lying.) I hard a lawmaker describe a gun that holds a 17 cartridges as having a "high magazine capacity clip" which tells me that the lawmaker has never held a gun or read a gun operator's manual. I've heard politicians call for increased and expanded background checks instead of just enforcing the laws already on the books, such as putting the President's son in prison for lying on his background check form. I heard a congresswoman call for the banning of 9mm pistols, as though they are more deadly than 10mm, .45 calibre, .44 calibre, and .38 calibre pistols. All of this does not mean that I am opposed to changing some laws to reduce the number of murders.

Here are some facts which inform my ideas for changes to the law:

1. According to the U.S. Department of Justice "Seventy percent of violent felons had a prior arrest record, and 57% had at least one prior arrest for a felony. Sixty-seven percent of murderers and 73% of those convicted of robbery or assault had an arrest record."

2. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinguency Prevention, the young are responsible for most violent and physically dangerous crime.
2a. 28% of vandalism is commited by people under the age of 21. 12% by poeople 21-24.
2b. 26% of arson is committed by people under the age of 21. 8% by people 21-24
2c. 26% of car theft is committed by people under the age of 21. 12% by people 21-24
2d. 24% of murder and non-negligent manslaughter is committed by people under the age of 21. 17% by people 21-24.
2e. 39% of robbery is committed by people under the age of 21. 14% by people 21-24.

3. I have observed that somewhere between 10% and 30% of teenage boys hate school. I do not mean they dislike it. I mean they utterly hate it. It does nothing but tell them that they are failures and treats them like they are in prison or a mental

hospital. School turns these boys into defeatist anti-social malignancies, who have no regard for their neighbors or larger society. I hear these boys talking about illegal car racing, sideshows, getting high, and vandalism. Many of them seem to be attracted to the apparant freedom and power of gangs, whether those gangs are the Nortenos, Crips, or the Aryan Nation one thing they all have in common is that they disregard the "system" the boys experience as oppressive, and, vicariously (none of my students are actually in the gangs) make the boys feel successful.

4. Because they are legally adults 18 year olds can buy any gun offered for sale. Though some States have recently passed laws reguiring people to be 21 before they can buy handguns, those laws are sure to be stuck down by the Supreme Court on 2nd and 14th Amendment grounds.

5. Most Americans who die from guns are suicides.

6. Most mass shootings in schools are committed by boys under the age of 21.

7. If you can trust the sample survey methodology (I am always a little skeptical of statistical extrapolations.), an estimated 4.6 million American children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and unlocked.

8. According to the F.B.I.s Crime Data Explorer in 2020 there were 17,813 homicides. Of those, 662 were committed by people using only their hands and feet as weapons, and only 455 were commited by people using rifles of any kind.

So what changes would I make to our laws if I could?

1. I would do away with compulsory academic education. If kids can't stand sitting behind a desk and doing mind-numbing worksheets and struggling to learn how to do quadratic equations don't force them to. Let them train to be heavy equipment operators, electricians, farriers, or anything else that involves physical labor. The teacher unions will hate it, just like they hate vocational education in highschools now. (Just try being a master machinest and getting a job teaching high school students to be machinists. You have to stop earning money, for at least, three years and go to college to get a degree, then work six months as a student teacher for no pay, then put up with all the educational beaurocracy bullshit. This is why the school I work at has two vacant vocational education teacher position open since September.) This will help get a lot of kids out of the place that feels like prison and into a place where they can grow and achieve, and hopefully, forestall the building of resentment and desperation that results in school shootings.

2. I would ammend the Constitution of the United States to make the age of majority 21. This will free the states to outlaw the purchase of some guns or all guns by people under the age of 21. Merely keeping guns out of the hands of the young will lower the death by gun rate.

3. Require that guns be stored in a safe, even if there are no children in the house. This will keep guns out of the hands of people who do not own them.

4. Because the vast majority of murderers have a history of felony violence convictions and people under 25 make up such a lage percentage of murderers, I would sentence violent criminals to 20 years for the first offense, no matter the age. BUT (this is a big but.) change the way the prison works. Instead of just locking people into giant concrete warehouses like we do now, assign the young men 12 to 25 to prisoner brigades that live in the rough out in the deserts of Arizona or Utah. Work them hard everyday. Subject them to something similar to the harsh military life of the late 18th/early 19th century. After a few years, after the inclination to bad behavior is worked out of them, train them in more skilled jobs, such as forestry, soldiering, and construction. After 20 years, or longer if their sentence is for more than 20 years, they will will be set free, and with a good recommendation, maybe, they can stay in the prisoner brigades as cadre instead of as prisoners. And even those who do not stay in the prisoner brigades and return to freedom will be older than the prime age for committing murder.

6. Boys and girls distract each other and change their behavior to show off for each other which lowers academic performance. Also, boys and girls, on average, have different academic strengths that are displayed in divergent patters of academic success , with boys on the losing end. Therefore, to keep boys from feeling humiliated in front of girls, which is a factor in school mass shootings, I would make all K-12 schools single-sex.

7. Because an armed society is a polite society, follow the example of Kennesaw, Georgia and require every head of household to be armed. Actually, I am joking about this, kind of. It makes me wonder, why is Kennesaw so much safer than Detroit when the gun ownership rate in Kennsaw if much much higher in than in Detroit? I don't think it's because of guns. I think its because of the cultural differences between those places.

8. Though the evidence linking mental illness to violent crime is sketchy the link between mental illness and suicide is well established. Expedite hearings for temporary removal of firearms from people for mental health reasons, that they are a danger to themselves or others. But I would want them represented by a court appointed lawyer if they can't afford their own, and be able to require the government to prove within a reasonable amount of time (48 hours to a week) that they are not okay in the head. I would want that decsion made by a jury, not by judges and psychologists. And I'd require the government to prove again the danger from the person possessing guns every thirty days or return them to the owner.

These changes won't stop all homicides but it might stop a lot of them.

Hunting

Kathleen and I have had such a difficult time finding turkeys, pigs, and geese on public land that we decided to join a hunting club. We looked at a few of them but decided on a family membership in Golden Ram Sportsman' Club. The people who run it are super nice. Also, they set up their club so that there is a wide variety of fish and game. The other clubs seemed to be focuse on just one or two animals. We have our first boar hunt scheduled for September 10-12. I'm going to be using the Mauser, yes it is over a hundred years old but it is still accurate. Kathleen was going to use her shotgun but there are no copper or steel slugs available anywhere, and lead is illegal in California. So, I looked at the shelves in the ammo aisle at work to see what non-lead hunting ammo was in supply. We had more .243 WInchester than anything else, so I bought a Savage Axsis chambered for that cartridge for her to use.

Because of all the contractors, insurance adjusters, and delivery men commming into the house to deal with the destroyed bathroom and kitchen we decided to by a gun safe. The last thing we need is for a gun to be stolen and used in a crime. Becaue of my job I got a 45% discount on price of the safe. Basil helped me get it up the stairs. It was heavy but he is strong.

Basil finished taking the California Hunter Education course last week so I bought him field pants, suspenders, shirts, and a hunting vest. I still have to buy him boots and a hat.

The goal for this autumn is 12 boar, 6 turkeys (Two per person is the states limit for the autumn. We can take more in the spring.), and 3 bears. We might be able to get some ducks and geese, too but there is a drought. The state says if hunters dont shoot the ducks and geese too many of them will congregate in the little water that is left and die of disease. I am kind of torn about that. If they are under so much pressure from the drought I kind of want to give ever duck a chance to migrate through. But at the same time i don't want them to die of disease. I'm sure we won't go after them in the Delta or the central valley but we might take the boat out along the deges of San Francisco Bay. There is a similar problem with bears. The state wants hunters to kill lots of bears because the population has grown so large during the last 20 years that the biologists are worried about disease. We could legally take many more bears than three but we've never tasted bear so we don't know if we will like it. But we are sure we can use three bear skin rugs. We aren't going to go after elk or deer: They are too pretty. Neither are we going to stalk big horn sheep: Horses and mules are needed to get to them and carry them off the mountains.

Why So Many Guns?

Sometimes there will be a person who commits a horrible crime and then the news media reports the story. Often in those news reports there will be a statement such as this, "When they searched the alleged culprits house, police found an arseal of 6 guns and 10,000 rounds of ammuntion." While statements such as that are factual and should be included in a news story, that information is often used in a way that maens "nobody should have that many guns or that much ammo". Now, if all the guns were Barret Model M2A1 and all the ammo is .50 caliber armor piercing tungsten then yes, that would be strange, and possibly an indicator of mental illness. But there are reasons to have more than one gun. Here is an explanation of why a person would want several guns.

Scenario 1. Hunting for tree squirrels in a populated are with little confidence about where a missed shot might land. For that you would use a .177 calibre air gun, such as the Gamo Wildcat or the Benjamin Titan. Even though the pellets leave the barrel of these guns traveling faster than 1,300 feat per second the mass of the pellets is so little that they can only cary a tiny amount of energy, and they quickly lose velocity due to friction against the air. And when the pellet reaches the apex of it's arc and falls to the Earth it has less energy than a pea-sized piece of hail falling from a storm cloud. Additionally, these air rifles have a very short range. The pellets are not going to go very far, 100 yards max, and when they get there they will have too little energy to do anything. Their effective range, meaning the range at which they can damage a squirrel is about 30 yards.

Scenario 2. Rabbit hunting in the scrublands of the American west. A bolt action rifle chambered for .22LR cartridges, such as the CZ American. It delivers much more energy on target than the .177 calibre air rifles do, which is needed for a rabbits greater mass, but not so much energy that the rabbit is varorized, as it would be with a bullet from a larger caliber bullet. And the ammunition for this rifle is very inexpensive. Two summers ago I bought 1,500 rounds for less than $80 though, because of the election and covid, ammo is scarce now and the prices have risen dramatically.

Scenario 3. Pest control on a farm or ranch. With no cover as there is on scrubland, the rancher will not be able to get close enough to the praire dogs and ground squirrls to consistently hit them with a .22LR. That means he will want to use a gun that shoots a .17HMR, such as the Tika T1x MTR. It is designed to hit small targets out to 300 yards with a high-velocity small-calibre bullet shaped for minimum air resistence. Yes, one could use a deer rifle on praie dogs and ground squirrels but the cost of typical deer rifle ammo would be enormous compared to .17 HMR.

Scenario 4. Trap and skeet shooting. Competition rules require that the gun has no more than two rounds loaded at any time. The need for maximum reliability requires no semi-automatic shotguns. The need for maximum speed requires minimum weight and minimum time between shots. That means skeet and trap competitors want short barrels, small gauge, over-under guns, such as the 20 gauge Fausti XF4 Sport with 28-in barrels and an adjustable comb.

Scenario 5. Pig hunting in Texas. In Texas wild pigs are a serious agricultural pest and the government there wants them irradicated. There are almost no rules regarding when or how a person can kill them. If one has the money one can even ride in a helicopter and shoot them from the sky. ( I'm not making that up). Without a doubt the most popular gun to use for pig hunting in Texas is the AR-15 chambered in 5.56mm NATO. The gun's low weight, low recoil, and pistol grip allow for quick transition from target to target. So this gun is ideal for taking on sounders of 20, 30, or 40 pigs.

Scenario 6. Home defense for people living in apartments. No one wants to think about killing another person. But shooting someone might be necessary to defend your spouse or children. But what it you live in an apartment and don't want to accitentally shoot through the wall and hurt your neighbor or your own children. Well, obviousy, the first solution to that problem is don't miss your target. But everyone misses, at least, once in a while. So that rules out all rifles and hand guns. Even a .22 Short will penetrate the typical apartment wall or bedroom door with enough energy to hurt the person on the other side. But there is a solution. A short barreled shotgun loaded with "shorty" rounds. Because of the low energy of shorty rounds they can not be reliably used in semi-auto shotguns, so that leaves two good options. The first is the Mossberg Shockwave. It can hold 7 shorty rounds and because of its tiny size it is very manueverable in cramped indoor spaces. Sadly, this gun is not legal in California, where I sell guns, so I recommend Stoeger Coach Gun, the shortest shotgun legal to own in California, to my customers looking for a houshold defense gun.

Scenario 7. ISSF 50-meter pistol competition. Most competitors who hope to get to the Olympics use the Walther GSP. It is as close to perfect as an ISFF compliant pistol can get.

Scenario 8. Grizzly bear hunting in Alaska. Long shots, very few hunters, and extremly dangerous game require long range powerful rifles that are still light enough to cary on long hikes over rugged country. The gun needed for this scanario is the Winchester Model 70 chambered for .338 Magnum. It is one of the few bullets that can stop a grizzly with one shot. That's important because you do not want to have to contend with a wounded grizzly bear. You might not have time to fire a second time.

Scenario 9. Black Bear hunting in California. Black bears are dangerous but easier to kill than a grizzly bear. And in the forests of California there are more people, which means one should not use a long range rifle such as the Winchester Model 70. Rather, a large calibre brush gun, such a Henry repeater in .45-70 Government calibre. It is massive enough to not be deflected by twigs and small branches but the balistics are such that the bullet loses elevation quickly, so it does not pose much danger to hunters the next valley over if the shot misses the bear. But it will drop the bear.

Scenario 10. Goose hunting on San Francisco Bay. Geese fly high over the bay, and not every shotgun can knock them out of the sky. The gun that does shoots 3" or 3.5" ammo, not the usual 2.75" shotgun ammo. A 26" barrel, commonly used in duck and quail hunting is almost useless when hunting geese. Finaly, U.S. Law prohibits hunting waterfowl with more than 3 rounds in the gun. So, what is the best gun for hunting geese? That is hard to say. A lot depends on the ability of the shooter. A very skilled shooter, who can get off three shots and bring down three geese while two are alrmed and flying away might benefit from using a Baretta A400 Extreme Plus with 30" barrels. If the shooter is of average skill that third shot will be wasted so there is no reason to buy such an expensive gun. In that case the best gun is probably the Stoeger Longfowler with 30" barrels.

Scenario 11. Cowboy Action Shooting. The shooter who competes in this game will use three guns: A 12 gauge double barreled shotgun, such as the Stoeger Coach Gun and Longfowler (mentioned above), a lever action rifle chambered in .30-30 such as the Winchester 1873, and a single action revolver chambered in .45LC calibre, such as the Ruger Vaquero.

And that is how one person can have enough guns to scare news reporters and the people who pay attention to them.

Election Worries

I woke up this morning and checked the news. All kinds of people in the media and politics and punditry are panicking about the President not admitting he has been defeated. I think there is nothing to worry about, and I encourage all those who might be worried to consult Article 2 and Amendments 12 & 20 of the US Constitution, and 3 U.S. Code ss 1 -18) You will see that in the selection of the President there is no regard for the votes of the people . Though I think he lost the vote earlier this month and is behaving foolishly, I do think his words since Election night provide a reminder to the American people that we do not elect the President ; the Electors meeting in their Sate capitols elect the President. And Electors are chosen by the State legislatures according to the procedures established by each of the legislatures. (The legislatures of Connecticut, Georgia, Delaware, and South Carolina have all in past years forgone a vote of the people and chosen the Electors themselves.) Now, if President Trump keeps saying he won after the Electors cast their ballots on December 14 we might have a problem. Until then there is nothing to worry about. Its all just a bunch of noise from people who want to sell your eyeballs to advertisers.

First Aid Kits

Several injuries in the past month (I broke my hand a few weeks ago, I broke a toe yesterday, Kathleen got all scratched up in the pumpkin vines today, and a few other things.) have me thinking about the perfect first aid kit.  I looked on Amazon to see what they offer but they range from the almost useless (a red plastic case with five sizes of Band-Aids) to the simply bizarre (a very nice canvass bag containing gauze bandages, a Leatherman tool, and fishing hooks.)  Most of the first aid kits were very basic, and seem to anticipate getting the sick or injured person to a hospital within 5 minutes.  I think I can put together a better first aid kit.

This is what I think should be in a first aid kit.

- A triple antibiotic ointment such as Neosporin for minor abrasions and cuts and after-suture deep wound care. (Don't put it into to deep wounds.)
- A double antibiotic ointment to use on people who are allergic to neomycin, one of the antibiotics in triple antibiotics.
- Zinc-oxide cream for mild abrasions, rashes, chapped skin.  It increases the speed of healing.  It has some antibiotic properties but those are ancillary to the promotion of healing.  It is also used as a sunscreen but I don't know how effective it is.  What I do know is that my Mammy (my Dad's Mom) put it on every little scrape, rash, and cut I ever got.  Most Zinc Oxide creams come in 10% to 40% concentrations.  For example, Balmex is labeled for care of adults but only has 11%.  Desitin Maximum Strength, on the other hand, is marketed to parents of infants to treat diaper rash but it contains a 40% concentration of zinc oxide.  So, even though it has that funny smell I'd use Desitin Maximum Strength over other products of which I am aware. 
- Petroleum jelly.  A chemistry professor told me it is the same molecule our skin makes that causes our skin feel healthy, and if we have dry skin, probably, all we need is a little petroleum jelly.  (Ladies, don't waste money on expensive lotions.  Petroleum jelly is all you need.)
- A bar or bottle of pure soap.  In most cases you do not want to put antibiotics into deep wounds but you do want to clean out any dirt that is in them.  It is hard to find a pure soap. All soap needs to contain is oleic acid (usually from vegetable oil), potassium hydroxide (or sodium hydroxide), and water.  It is really difficult to find pure soap, even though almost all soaps you see for sale claim to be pure.  The best I have found in stores is Dr. Bronner's unscented.  For the first aid kit I recommend a small bottle of the liquid, just because it is hard to keep the bar soap sterile after it has been used.

- Adjustable arm slings.  Sometimes you need to elevate and immobilize your hand because you've fallen while feeding humming birds and have broken your hand.  

- Instant cold packs for breaks, sprains, or anything else that is swelling.  You can make your own, but it is easier to just buy them.
- Benadryl liquid, Zyrtec pills, and epinephrine to treat histamine reactions to things such as pollen, poison oak, and bee stings.
- Sterile pads for bandaging minor wounds.
- Cervical collar for immobilizing the neck.

- Adhesive bandages of various sizes.

- A few rolls of gauze.
- Clotting pads, Israeli bandages, and a tourniquet kit to stop bleeding.  You might be asking, why a tourniquet kit when all you need is a stick and two shoe laces to make a tourniquet?  Well, then just put those in a plastic bag, label it "TOURNIQUET" and put it in your first aid kit.

- Bottle of alcohol.

- Bag cotton balls.
- Penlight or other small flashlight

- Butterfly bandages for closing small but deep cuts.
- Sutures for closing big wide wounds.  You'll have to use veterinary sutures because human sutures can only be sold to licensed physicians. (It's a stupid law.)  But don't worry, they are still very high quality. (Watch a video on how to use them before you need to use them.)
- Hemostasis forceps for stopping bleeding while suturing.  Lets hope you never need more than three or four.
- Needle holder

- Scalpel handles and blades
- Inflatable splints to immobilize broken arms and legs.
- Kocher tweezers
- Medical scissors for cutting bandages and clothes
-A topical anesthetic for when suturing is necessary.
- Motrin, aspirin, and tylenol (one bottle of each) to control pain, fever, and inflammation.
- Though it might sound like something out of an old movie or a Sherlock Holmes novel, smelling salts are useful and should be included in the kit. They can mask a concussion but there are times when a person needs to be awake and alert to move away from danger or to help.
- Ace bandages to support sprained/broken ankles, knees, wrists, and elbows.

- A squeeze bottle of distilled water for cleaning wounds.
- Mylar emergency blanket and sugar cubes for treating hypothermia.  (FYI: When I took the California hunter education course a few years ago I learned that more hunters die from hypothermia than from gunshots.)
- It might be too big to fit in a reasonably sized first aid kit but a neck brace might be a good thing to have around after a serious fall or a car crash.
- Duct tape.  Because it works better than surgical tape.

That, just off the top of my head, is what belongs in a first aid kit.

Something that absolutely does not belong in a first aid kit is a snake bite venom extraction kit.

Be Wary

I have been working at a local high school since November; teaching U.S. history, government, and economics.  Every day I've walk into that classroom with one goal for the students; that they will learn these words and take them to heart.

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)

Tomorrow is the last day of my assignment at this school.  I hope I have succeeded with some of them.

Sri Srinivasan

It has been reported that American leftists are worried about the possibility of President Obama nominating Sri Srinivasan to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States.  I am glad they are alarmed.  But so too should be conservatives. 

Sri Srinivasan is an admitted Hindu.  Hidus are monists.  This means several things: There is no difference between good and evil, just and unjust, just and unjust, licet and elicit.   It might also mean, depending on the particular brand of monism, that there is no physical reality.  

How can someone who lacks the philosophical foundation to make decisions serve on the Supreme Court?

A Reason to be Thankful

I had a heart-warming conversation this morning.  I was talking with a member of the U.S. grand jury for the district and asked if he had ever voted to not indict.  (The prosecutors only take cases to the grand jury if the evidence is overwhelming.)  This juror said, yes, he had disregarded the judges instructions and had twice refused to indict because he thought the law was immoral.  It made me proud of the Anglo-American system of justice.  I am greatly thankful to be be living in this tradition and not in the tyrannies of other lands.





If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence...If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision.
4th Circuit Court of Appeals, United States v. Moylan, 1969



[The jury has an] unreviewable and irreversible power...to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge...The pages of history shine on instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law.
D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Unites States v. Dougherty, 1972

    'You're not concerned with the law, Members of the Jury,' I told them, 'you are concerned with justice!'
    'That is a quite outrageous thing to say! On the admitted facts of this case, Mr O'Higgins is clearly guilty!' His Honour Judge Graves had decided but the honest twelve would have to return the verdict and I spoke to them. 'A British judge has no power to direct a British jury to find a defendant guilty! I know that much at least.'
    'I shall tell the Jury that he is guilty in law, I warn you.' Graves's warning was in vain. I carried on regardless.
    'His Lordship may tell you that to his heart's content. As a great Lord Chief Justice of England, a judge superior in rank to any in this Court, once said, "It is the duty of the Judge to tell you as a jury what to do, but you have the power to do exactly as you like." And what you do, Members of the Jury, is a matter entirely between God and your own consciences....'
Horace Rumpole [John Mortimer, "Rumpole à la Carte," The Third Rumpole Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1998, p.265]

Chess and Michael Farady

About noon today my former wife called me and asked if I was near Basil's school.  He was sick and waiting in the nurse's office.   As it happened, I was just leaving one of my dealers not 3 miles from Basil's school. When I got him home I medicated him (he has an ear infection, I think.) I made him lunch, played a game of chess with him, and helped him with is chess homework (he's working on mating in 2 moves) before I went back to work.

At 4:30 I picked Anselm up at his school and we drove to Los Gatos where I visited with one of my dealers.  It was kind of a useless visit since my bank specializes in serving dealers who sell to people with bad credit and this dealership is in one of the richest areas of California.  But I still have to visit him.  Anselm sat in the car and read an electronics textbook while I was seeing the dealer.  When my meeting was over we drove to my parish for the Vigil of the Annunciation.

Anselm is a boy of ever changing enthusiasms.  He has moved from painting to wood carving to coin collecting to Rubik's cubes to ceramics to stamp collecting.   Now he is very interested in electronics. The table in his room is covered with diodes, bits of wire, circuit boards, solder, switches, batteries, speaker parts and lights.  While we were driving to church tonight he said, "Dad, will you buy me a Faraday switch?"

"Anselm, I am very poor, and I am saving as much money as possible to buy a van or a truck to live in.  I will buy you one if I am able.  But tell me what you know about Michael Farady."

Anselm said,"I know he invented the Faraday switch and the Farday cage."

"Yes, and he proved the link between light and electricity, and discovered benzene, and made the discoveries that lead to the electric motor, and is called the Father of Electronics, but do you know the most important thing about him?"

Anselm said he didn't.  So I told him.

"He was a Christian.  And it was his his faith in the rational God that lead him to make all his scientific discoveries."

"Was he Orthodox?"

"No.  There were no Orthodox left in his country when he was born.  But he believed in the Trinity and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and came back to life, and he believed the Bible.  And that is the most important thing about him.  It's why he was able to be a scientist.  There is a reason why science did not develop among the pagans.  Hindus think their god Brahman, if he is aware of the universe at all, is just dreaming it, the Buddhists are not even sure the universe exists, and the animists, such as the Chinese, worship a chaotic bunch of gods and spirits who have no order and make no sense.  You see the Chinese folk religion..."

"You mean like accupuncure?"

"Yes, that's part of it, but also fortune-telling, the black dragon, astrology, and tens of thousands of spirits and gods,   It's a crazy and unpredictable mess.  But the true God is a God of order and....

"Natural law!", Anselm interjected.

"Yes, natural law.  He is reasonable and His creation is knowable.  And it is because of Faraday's faith in God (he was a deacon in his church) that he had the theological and philosophical foundation to do science."

So we talked about God making sense, and our faith being rational until we got to church.  And at church during the vigil, when we sang the Polyeleos we smiled at each other when we sang the line "To Him who by understanding made the heavens, for His mercy endureth forever, hallelujah hallelujah".

The Right to Disagree

From Justice Scalia's dissent:

"In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. [It is to] “dis-parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo-sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race."

Disney Movies + Poor Education = Homosexual Marriage

In a few hours the U.S. Supreme Court will hear  arguments in a case that will decide if the people of California have the right, under the U.S. Constitution, to forbid same-sex marriage.  I am astounded that it is even a question.  But, I suppose, I shouldn't be astounded.  There has been a 40 year campaign to see the normalization of homosexual behavior.  The entertainment media has been full of sympathetic portrayals of homosexuals since as early as I can remember.  When I was a little boy, 8 or 9 years old, there were two television shows that had homosexual caracters: Soap and Three's Company.  I didn't know until later, probably in my early teens what the shows were about, but there they were, polluting my mind;  and polluting the minds of my countrymen.  If one watches Glee or - and here I am guessing because I do not have a television machine and only stream a few things over the internet - or other television shows, then one can witness the constant overt persuasion.

And it seems the country has been persuaded.  But why?  What has changed?  This is what I think has changed.  Two things.  The first of them is Disney.  It is Disney's fault.  They have been telling kids since the 1930s that marriage is about happiness and romantic feelings.  Prior to that, I think everyone understood that marriage was about property and children, and if one was a Christian it was also about salvation.  When did divorce laws in America begin to liberalize?  In the middle 1950s and 1960s, when those kids raised on Disney movies and other fantasies about marriage began to be legislators and judges.

Abandonment and adultery and incurable insanity had been the usual grounds for the rare divorce.  But then "cruelty" or "mental cruelty" were added.  And in in California in the 1960s up to 70% of divorce case plantiffs were asking for divorces for such cruelties as "she refuses to make dinner", and "he swears at me".  And in 1970 at the urging of lawyers and judges, Caifornia made the first "no-fault" divorce law in the United States. (A black mark on Ronald Reagans record.)   And marriage, in the pursuit of individual happiness, became completely separated from its original purpose: The generation of and provision for children.

The second thing that contributed to the acceptance of the idea of homosexual marriage is a lack of mental training.  Are you surprised I did not say a lack of evangelization, or a decline in the percentage of Christians?  Perhaps, that is what I should have said for Natural Law is an important outgrowth of Christian theology, but many of the people who favor homosexual marriage are Christians.  They think of it as unfair to forbid the happiness of marriage to people who have homosexual urges.  (There's that happiness thing again.) No, the problem is lack of mental rigor and training.

The first time I really thought about the subject was in 1988. I was witness to a man getting a "bad conduct" discharge from the Army for committing homosexual sodomy.  Of course, being a Christian, I knew what he did was wrong, but I was interested in why the United States Army cared.   So I decided to try and figure it out.

It only took a couple of days, but I reasoned out the Natural Law on the subject (I had been introduced to the concept by Francis Schaeffer), though I am sure my understanding was crude.  Later, in my mid-20s and when I joined the Conservative Book Club, I read a little pamphlet the book club sent me by Harry V. Jaffa that stated much more precisely and elegantly what I had figured out for myself a few years earlier. The worth-reading pamphlet is titled Homosexuality and the Natural Law.

So now, here our country is, poised at the cusp of complete moral collapse.  It has reached the nadir of the death spiral St. Paul described in Romans 1:18-31.    I do not think we can be a free people very much longer.  Our Constitution was not written for a wicked people, and as Benjamin Franklin predicted, we can not but now fall into despotism.

What Has Been the Impact of the Ancient Greeks on Modern People

 It might seem so basic to modern people as to be hardly worth noting, but all of science, philosophy, economics, and politics hinges on one thing written by Aristotle in his book Metaphysics – and this is in spite of Aristotle being wrong in so many of his statements about the physical world and even being held up as an enemy of reason during the Renaissance.  In essence, he said, a thing is none other than itself. Or, as moderns like to say it, A = A.  The corollary to this is that A≠ non-A.  Without this idea there would be no computers, for how could we be certain that 0 is always 0?  Imagine the chaos in the computer industry if 0 ≠1 was not absolutely and always true!  Or what if malaria was hypothermia?  How could physicians treat either of those conditions? Or what if a bridge was both strong enough and not strong enough? It is this fundamental law of knowledge that not only tells us mercury must be present in unrefined cinnabar if refined cinnabar yields mercury, but it tells us that good ≠ evil, that truth ≠ falsehood, and that freedom ≠ slavery, and that regardless of what some Hindus, modern pagans, and free thinkers wish, all is not one.

A man who lived quite a bit earlier than Aristotle, who also to this day influences the whole world was Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570-c. 495 BC).  His influence on Euclid (c. 300 B.C.) was profound, as he invented the abstract mathematical thinking upon which geometry depends, and, in the discovery of what is now called the Pythagorean theorem, laid the foundation for modern mathematics.  The skyscrapers and space voyages of the 20^th and 21^st centuries would, simply, not happen without the ability to think of numbers apart from matter, such as coins, or land, or jars of wine.  But Pythagoras' contributions to the world are not only mathematical, though they all grow out of mathematics. 

When Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (A.D. 1646 – 1716) wrote, “When God calculates and thinks things through, the world is made” he was expressing a Pythagorean idea. When a mathematician won the Templeton Prize in 2008 for offering inductive evidence for the existence of God based on math, he really won the prize for advancing once facet of Pythagorean thought: That the Divine mind is expressed in numbers, which is really nothing besides the idea that if God if is real God must be rational, and if the world is rational it is because God is rational. 

But, probably, the idea Pythagoras had that has given people the most pleasure is that of music being rational and mathematical, that the most beautiful musical notes and harmonies are those defined by simple ratios, such as 1:2 and 3:4.  Without that idea Bach's St. Matthews Passion would not be, could not be.  For Bach worked out the mathematics of the music before an orchestra ever played it. The same is true of Pacabel's Canon in D, and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah which walks the listener through the mathematical structure of a common chord progression as he sings "it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift".  Even the comedic Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain demonstrates the mathematical basis of beautiful music in its round of Bart Howard's Fly Me To The Moon, Pacabel's Canon in D, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, and the Eagle's Hotel California.  In short, there is no modern man without the ancient Greeks.  

The Smelling Tour

Anselm Samuel, Basil Wenceslas and I set out to fly kites today but, though there was a slight breeze, the wind wasn't strong enough to keep the kites up. So we went on a smelling tour of the neighborhood instead. We smelled scores of different flowers. Roses and orange blossoms. Magnolia and pine cones. Lavender and honeysuckle. Thanks to tradition derived from the ancient and venerable Roman Law XVIII promulgated by Romulus, we harvested oranges and grapefruit from trees overhanging the street. At the end of our walk the boys decided the orange blossoms and roses smelled prettiest, and sadly, our much loved California Golden Poppy smelled worst.

Obama = Carter

The President of the United States has many jobs. But one matters more than all others. He must so terrify any potential attacker that only the insane would dare attack us. Those few who do attack us he must hunt down and kill. Every time. No exceptions. If he does not protect us from foreign aggression or, failing that, destroy the aggressor who is not afraid to harm us, he violates the Social Contract that holds our all civilizations together. We obey governments because they protect us.

I have now read everything that has been made public about the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas. Presented with incontrovertible and unambiguous evidence of a foreign attack the government failed. The President failed.

Now the attacker is in the custody of the U.S. government. But instead of holding our enemy and trying him as an unlawful combatant in wartime, he is being treated like a civilian criminal in peacetime. He has been read his Miranda rights. Our enemy will be using a court-appointed and taxpayer-funded lawyer. Now every attacker knows that if they are captured alive they will receive the protection of the very laws they were trying to destroy. The President has indicated that our attackers do not need to fear us. They know the President is not going to kill them. This is the President's second failure. The President imperils the nation.

Has he been busy with health care reform, the economy, banking legislation, saving the auto industry? It doesn't matter. He sets the agenda, and the the first item on the Presidents agenda is supposed to be the physical security of the United States. It is his most important job and he failed. It is time for him to go. If he does not resign let the the people reject him in 2012.

Saturday Soundtrack: Six Days

Like some other songs in the Saturday Soundtrack series, this number comes from that record my mom bought me in the early 1970s, "40 Funky Hits".

In a nutshell this is what the song is about: We are a big country. We have powerful machines. We're willing to do what needs to be done, even if it means wrecking our bodies and skirting around the law. Additionally, the good men among us are loyal to our wives even if they aren't around and the other guys are being unfaithful.

Oh, in case you are wondering, "Georgia overdrive" is trucker lingo for putting the transmission in neutral and coasting downhills. It is illegal but a lot of fun if the hills are steep enough. On our recent vacation Athanasia exceeded 80 mph using the Georgia Overdrive on I-680. Weeeee!!!

The singer is Dave Dudley and the song was a huge enormous hit for him in 1963. In the 1980's Dudley was elected to the Teamsters union and given a solid Gold membership card.

Jerry Brown: More complicated than you think he is

IN federal courts California Attorney General Jerry Brown is opposing Proposition 8, a fundamental constitutional law created by the sovereign power of the People of California and affirmed by the Supreme Court of California. In doing this he disregards his own oath of office that requires him to defend our Law in court. But yesterday, he filed an Amicus Curae brief (.pdf) with the Supreme Court of the United States, asking that Court to hear NRA v. Chicago in order to clear up disagreement between lower courts and decide in favor of the NRA because California, unlike other States has no statutory right to bear arms. Jerry Brown does not easily fit into any box.