On This Day, 235 Years Ago

The Continental Army's forces in eastern Massachusetts, which were pretty much made up of New Englander militiamen and commanded by General Washington, had besieged Boston since The Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775. Vermonters had captured Fort Ticonderoga without bloodshed from a British garrison on May 10th, 1775. A twenty-five year old bookseller, named Henry Knox, went to Fort Ticonderoga. There, Knox organized and led the removal of 58 artillery pieces and supplies, weighing a total of over sixty tons, and, for several weeks during the winter, Knox commanded the transport of all of that materiel overland to Framingham, Massachusetts. There, the guns were mounted on their carriages and made ready for use.

When Knox arrived with the guns, Washington and his staff conceived of, planned and executed the overnight emplacement of the largest guns and fortification of Dorchester Heights. The overnight creation of a heavily armed fortress astonished the British officers, who likely had held the Colonials in low regard. The Redcoats first began to transport troops for an attack on the fortifications, but cooler heads prevailed and the British Army evacuated Boston on March 17th, 1776.

It was now clear to the Continental Congress that the colonies, at least New York and New England, were at war with Great Britain, and that it might be best to get on with the war. In due course, Thomas Jefferson was asked to draft a declaration of independence. He did, the wording was debated, and this is what was issued forth by the Continental Congress:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declarationof the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Dust Bowl

It seems to be returning.

Economic collapse and a dust bowl. About all we need is another Adolph Hitler to start a war in Europe.

Only this time, we seem to have a president who just wrings his hands because he can't get around the roadblock thrown up by the New Hooverites.

Pegging Ye Olde Irony Meter

This guy is probably guaranteed to be a contestant for the 2011 Darwin Awards:

ONONDAGA, N.Y. (AP) — Police say a motorcyclist participating in a protest ride against helmet laws in upstate New York died after he flipped over the bike's handlebars and hit his head on the pavement.

Own Your Own Home?

If so, based on a study of one year's worth of recordings in a single county, most of the assignments of mortgages are invalid. "Most" here means 75% were facially invalid and 9% were questionable. Nearly half of the invalid ones were fraudulent. Which means that it is not clear who owns your mortgage, who is entitled to be paid and who may foreclose on it if you don't pay.

Note that this study was done in 2010, which is well after the mortgage mess began to come to light. The banks haven't fixed anything.

Even if your mortgage was paid off and a "Satisfaction of Mortgage" recorded, there might be cause to question if the Sat was valid. The wheels are going to come off the housing market if the title insurance underwriters start to refuse to insure those Sats.

The Air Stinks

The summer air stinks around here. It smells of ozone and smog. You probably don't notice it. But on a summer day, when you fly up above the base of the clouds:

you fly where the air is cool and smooth. If you've trimmed up your airplane properly (and if it is in rig), you can just fly along without touching the controls.

But once you descend below the base of those puffy cumulus clouds, the first thing you notice is that the air stinks. You'll only smell it for a little bit before your nose adapts, but the smell is distinctive. Then, because the lower air is heated and turbulent, you have to keep correcting the airplane's flight path. A wing will be jostled up or down. You'll hit updrafts (which make birds and sailplane pilots happy) and downdrafts so that keeping to your desired course and altitude takes work. If you have passengers, they may not appreciate riding over an aerial washboard.

In the summer, when I take people up who are new to small airplanes, I do it either in the early morning or in the evening. There is no point in taking someone up and subjecting them to a miserable ride.

Not Enough, But It's a Start

Fairfax County, Virginia, may be getting fed up with their cops for gunning down people for no good reason. One of the more recent incidents ended with the shooter being fired.

The reason might be found in an earlier shooting. The family sued and when it became clear that the judge was going to allow the plaintiffs to introduce expert testimony that the cops lied about the shooting, the County settled for two million dollars, a million of which Fairfax County had to cough up.

Caturday

George has a thing about sleeping on sheets. They are his favorite place to catch a nap. When I was away recently, the guest room that I used had a single bed. George would burrow in right next to the pillow. Some nights, I'd wake up and there he was.

At home, I just flip the comforter/blanket/cat shield from the foot of the bed at the opposite side from where I sleep. He's happy with that and so am I.

Gracie tries to blend in on a couch.

Jake is trying to summon the doorman to open that door. Lots of places for him to go and sleep but a room is closed off and We Simply Cannot Have That, Now Can We?

Tapocketa-Pocketa-Pocketa

A nice looking Champ came in for a landing as I was securing my airplane.

Climate Change, or Why Long-Range Planning May Be Not For You

There is an article in the current issue of Scientific American that looks at the two previous periods of global warming.

Those two periods are now known as the Cretaceous Hothouse and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The Cretaceous Hothouse didn't result in extinctions, the PETM resulted in some extinctions. Most species adapted.

Could that play out now? Probably not. The Cretaceous Hothouse lasted for millions of years and the planet warmed up at a very low rate, basically one quarter of one ten-thousandths of a degree per hundred years. (0.000025C per century). The PETM lasted for thousands of years and the planet warmed up at a rate of a quarter of a tenth of a degree per hundred years (0.025C per century).

Now, however, the globe is warming up at a rate of at least a degree per century and may accelerate to 4C per century. There are signs that the warming rate is too fast for many of the species on the planet to adapt.

Climate change may not be solvable. It should be solvable, but it requires cooperation on a global scale and I just don't see that happening. We can all shift to driving plug-in hybrids with power generated from wind/solar/tidal plants (and burning hydrogen produced using power from those plants) and it won't make a bit of difference as long as China keeps building coal-fired power plants at the rate of one a week. And if the planet warms up enough that the Arctic permaforst starts melting, then we may have started a thermal avalanche.

Humans are conducting a global science experiment and we have no other place to go if we have triggered a catastrophe. It's as though we have been playing with matches inside a locked house.

LightSquared's Suggestion to GPS Users: Go Frell Yourselves

That is apparently the position of LightSquared, which is blaming the fact that their signals would interfere with tens of millions of GPS units on those GPS units.

Their suggestion is that we all should replace our GPS units with "better" ones (and pay for that ourselves) and get out of LightSquared's way of making a shitload of money. I gather that the FCC agrees with them, because the FCC has been in LightSquared's corner from the start.

When you get down to the core, the "fuck you if it costs you money" is basically the business model of a lot of companies: Make a shitload of money and stick society with the costs of dealing with the side effects of the business. Whether the exploding Jeep Cherokees and Pintos, BP's decades of safety and environmental fuckery, Massey Coal, or polluting the land, air and water, that is what a lot of companies do.

UPDATE: Apparently LightSquared's transmitters would fuck up hundreds of millions of GPS units.