This is me taking twenty-two minutes out of your day, and you can thank me later:

Langewiesche (pronounced:long-gah-vee-shuh)

Glad you had a good time with the lying, hypocritical tramp. Sorry to hear she still has a career.

I've been following a Twitter discussion concerning Kyle Kashuv, a Parkland School shooting survivor, who confronted a deputy Scot Peterson who (as Kashuv tells it) did too little to protect the students and faculty during the Parkland School shooting.

It seems that, due to some imprudent text messages made nearly two years ago (where he made repeated use of the word "nigger" and called for the extermination of Jews), Harvard asked Kashuv for an explanation of his comments. Kashuv gave a well-written apology and explained that he was merely pushing the envelope, not expressing his true attitudes. Nonetheless, Harvard rescinded their acceptance and will not be allowing Kashuv to attend classes at their prestigious university.

Now, I don't much care whether Kashuv goes to Harvard or not. Neither he nor David Hogg (who has also been accepted at Harvard) have the aptitude. They would either slow down any class they attended or fail.

What I find interesting (as I have noted before) is that it's now considered virtuous to be unforgiving. Kashuv's texts were for a select audience. He didn't harm anyone, and he apologized for them.

But that just isn't good enough. And all the beautiful people who never said such naughty horrible things in their lives (that they will admit to) get to remind themselves how much better they are than poor Kashuv.

Indeed, one feminist writer threatened to run him over. Isn't that interesting? She's threatening vehicular manslaughter because someone said some naughty words. Yet, she's still telling herself that she's better than he is.

Was it Kashuv's teenaged indiscretion or his non-PC pro Second Amendment stance that angered Harvard and caused a teacher at Parkland to brand him the next Hitler.

Unlike his fellow Parkland survivor/activists - David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, and Cameron Kasky - Kashuv is not advocating for gun control.

Was it Kashuv's teenaged indiscretion or his non-PC pro Second Amendment stance that angered Harvard and caused a teacher at Parkland to brand him the next Hitler.

Nice theory to pin conspiracies on. However, Harvard's correspondence with Kashuv seems to indicate it was his intemperate remarks. Lacking evidence otherwise, it will remain only a theory.

Keep in mind, also, that Kashuv did get accepted into Harvard, despite his pro Second Amendment stance. And that teacher who hazed a student needs to lose his job.

Was it Kashuv's teenaged indiscretion or his non-PC pro Second Amendment stance that angered Harvard and caused a teacher at Parkland to brand him the next Hitler.

Nice theory to pin conspiracies on. However, Harvard's correspondence with Kashuv seems to indicate it was his intemperate remarks. Lacking evidence otherwise, it will remain only a theory.

Keep in mind, also, that Kashuv did get accepted into Harvard, despite his pro Second Amendment stance. And there was a concerted effort to get his acceptance rescinded. Even Laura Loomer involved herself in the effort.

And that teacher who hazed a student needs to lose his job.

That piece, Crid, is great. I was riveted reading it last night when I was bloody-eye tired.

The City Attorney is a man, Mike Feuer.

Something graphic artists can relate to

https://twitter.com/courtdraws/status/1055536402270609408

The Windows update part killed me.

Plastic bags and the environment.

We also need to consider the wider environmental impact of our bag choices. A 2018 study by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food looked not just at plastic waste, but also at climate-change damage, ozone depletion, human toxicity and other indicators. It found you must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less climate damage than a plastic bag.

If we use the same shopping bag every single time we go to the store, twice every week, it will still take 191 years before the overall environmental effect of using the cotton bag is less than if we had just used plastic.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-sorry-banning-plastic-bags-wont-save-our-planet/

Darth, any adult should be able to figure out that shopping in general is bad for the environment, because even second-hand goods need to be transported.

For MY basic needs, I love yard sales - and a lot of the time, I can get to them just by walking. Besides, people are always putting small boxes of free items on the sidewalks. (I recently found a half-full container of saffron.)

So, even if you don't already have a knapsack or a cotton bag, chances are you can get one through Freecycle. (Same goes for many plastic bags, but I get mine - very few, mind you - through open-air food markets, since I need them for garbage.) At least you won't be encouraging over-production.

Foulest treachery.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/18/us/alaska-teen-friend-online-plot-shooting-death/index.html

It is ableist to ban plastic straws to save the environment.

Wait! you say, You could just give plastic straws to the disabled people, and not give them to the abled people.

NO! That is ablist! It is discrimination! It is gatekeeping!!!

Fuck me, people, but shouldn't there be gatekeeping with disabilities? Whether or not you agree with the plastic straw ban... shouldn't people have to actually be disabled to use the parking space, take a service dog on the plane, etc?

When did gatekeeping become such a bad thing?

Crid, that was a great read. Thanks. Let me throw out a bit of background about air traffic control radars, so that the bit about the plane "disappearing" from radar makes a bit more sense.

Air traffic control radars use two different mechanisms to sense aircraft, known as "primary" and "secondary". The primary radar uses the classic method: it sends out a radio beam which bounces off of objects, and some of the radio energy returns to the radar's receiver. The aircraft need do nothing other than just be there in order to be sensed. The secondary radar sends out a sequences of pulses that is received by the device on the aircraft called the transponder. The transponder then in turn transmits a reply code back to the radar's receiver. There are two systems of secondary radar used in the civil aircraft world, known as "mode 3" and "mode S". In mode 3, the transponder sends back one of two replies, as directed by the radar's interrogation: (1) a four-digit identification code that is set by the pilot (usually as instructed by a controller), or (2) the altitude of the aircraft, as sensed by a barometric sensor, and quantized to 100 feet. Mode S can send back a lot more information, but no all aircraft have mode S transponders (they are expensive). However, a Boeing 777 owned by a major airline certainly would have had mode S. All of this depends on the aircraft having a functioning transponder; if the transponder fails or is turned off, secondary radar can no longer sense that aircraft.

The question is: why did the airplane completely disappear from the ATC radar displays when the pilot turned the transponder, if the primary radar was still able to sense it. I think there could have been several factors, depending on where the aircraft was in relation to the radar (I do not know where the radar was; that information tends to be close-hold by governments). Primary radar will indeed sense aircraft that do not have operating transponders. It will also sense a whole bunch of other things that aren't aircraft: buildings and towers on the ground, cars and trucks on a highway, trees blowing in the wind, atmospheric refractions, and even ocean waves. The types of radars used for air traffic control worldwide do not have the ability to sense the altitude of an object (they rely on the secondary radar to get that information from the aircraft), so they are unable to distinguish things on the ground from things in the air. Plus, the atmosphere can create "angels" which appear to be an object in the air where no object is actually present.

So radar processing systems have a whole bunch of filter algorithms to try to clean up the primary returns. One of the things they do is look at the "range rate", or how fast or slow the object is moving towards or away from the radar. (The radar cannot sense the absolute velocity; it can only sense how rapidly an object is moving towards or away from it.) If the object appears to be stationary, or if its range rate is fluctuating in a manner that would be impossible for a real aircraft, the processing system filters it out and it doesn't appear on the controller's display. The captain of MH370 may have, by design or luck, initiated that turn after cutting off the transponder such that the airplane was flying tangential to the radar at that time; hence the radar processing saw it with a zero velocity and filtered it out. Or, the radar used a broader filtering where it filtered out all primary returns that were not near an airport and didn't correlate with a secondary return. (In many countries, including all of the Western nations, it is permissible to fly at lower altitudes without a transponder, provided that the weather is "visual conditions" and they avoid the vicinities of larger airports. The assumption is that all such aircraft are flying under "visual flight rules", which means that they are themselves responsible for seeing and avoiding all other traffic, and ATC will not promise to track them or provide them with traffic warnings. Usually, ATC will take no interest in such aircraft unless they are in the vicinity of an airport.)

Another possibility is that the pilot planned his track so as to fly through the "cone of silence" of the radars whose location he knew about. ATC-type radars can only transmit radio energy up to a certain elevation angle. This means that an aircraft that flies directly over the radar, or near to it, will not be sensed once it has come within a certain range. The cone of silence, as the name suggests, is a cone shape with its point at the radar's antenna. As you go higher, the cone gets bigger. That might explain the MH370 pilot's climb to 40,000 feet shortly after turning the transponder off: he was trying to maximize the time in the cone of silence of any radars that he flew over.

Ooof, that headline:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/06/neo-nazi-who-shared-mosque-shooting-video-gets-21-months-in-n-z-prison/

Well, you can kiss your admittance to Har-Vard good bye.

https://www.redstate.com/alexparker/2019/06/18/female-track-runner-sidelined-male-competitors-petitions-department-education-justice/

shouldn't people have to actually be disabled to use the parking space, take a service dog on the plane, etc?

Yes.

That said, can you tell just by looking whom is disabled? The correct answer is no, not always.

Someone please retweet this to George Takei:

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1140990518974976000

Cousin Dave,
Thanks for the background information. That article was very interesting and your explanation helped. I do think though, that he took it up to 40,000 in order to kill everyone aboard and not to avoid the cone of silence. Sick stuff...

> Glad you had a good time with
> the lying, hypocritical tramp.
> Sorry to hear she still has
> a career.

She's always spoken highly of your work.

(She thinks you're childishly petulant and obsessive, though.)

(Seriously, why bother hating such a person?)

(It's like viciously despising an unpopular candy bar, or loathing a lesser wacky neighbor from a sitcom that only lasted from September 1971 to February 1972: Ooooh, I *hate* that 'Edgar' guy!!!)

> great. I was riveted

> that was a great read.

We must always make time for Langewiesche.

Another good one.

You might want to recharge for a couple of days first.

Finally finished your link, Crid. Traveling, so didn't have much time during the day for a detailed read. Very interesting article.