Thursday, June 8, 2023

We are Due a Christian Revival

The US is due another Christian revival. We rely on technology to solve our problems, which is something it is not capable of doing; as Jesus said there will always be the poor. The woke theology is literally the same as Maoist theology. It wants to destroy the past by judging it by contemporary standards. Gender theology is based on the lie that if you are unhappy, there is something wrong with you, a partial byproduct of social media were people show a false life devoid of it's harsh realities. As Thoreau said, most people live a life of quite desperation, desperately seeking it's meaning (the song that is within them); the curse of being sentient is the life long search for the reason we exist. The answer can not come from human centered philosophy such a as Marxism, it can only come from recognition that life is impossibly hard and we need to seek a power greater than ours to survive it. Most psychologist will begrudgingly admit that there is a psychological need for religion, a void in our psyche that can only be filled by something greater than ourselves; this what Nietzsche meant when he described the result of eliminating God from our lives.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

— Nietzsche

Nietzsche describes the void of eliminating God and how we must become God's ourselves to fill it. But history has shown the impossibility of mankind creating it's own morality (the basis of Marxism) because it assumes a fantastical malubility of humanity that simply doesn't exist and ignores that mankind is too absorbed in itself to create it's own morality. God did not give us a moral code to control us (he did after all give us free will), instead it was to protect us from the wages of sin. IOW, God does not punish us for our sins, it is simply the result of our selfish behavior that causes more pain and hardship. We also live in a broken world were even those that try to live an unselfish life will suffer, but without God and fellowship we all suffer alone.

Shall we gather at the river?

Where bright angel feet have trod

With its crystal tide forever

Flowing by the throne of God…

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Living in a World of Gender Dysphoria/Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

The vast majority of what goes for transgenderism today is of course nothing of the kind. The basis of transgenderism is gender dysphoria, which is a psychosis; dysphoria meaning the psychic belief that some part or parts of your body that you were born with don't belong; as an example a person suffering from dysphoria might believe their left arm is a a foreign body and some have gone so far as amputing the limb. Also keep in mind that a symptom of dysphoria is clinical depression. However what passed as pseudo dysphoria today seems to fall under one of two categories. The first is depression (to date no study has shown that gender affirmation of any kind cures their depression or suicide ideations), and second a feeling of alienation which is usually directly related to social media; sometimes called the Facebook syndrome. With the Facebook syndrome, young people are led to believe that everyone else is joyful and leading a fulfilling life but them. This often combined with the symptoms of puberty which leads teenagers and young adults, experiencing the confusion and discomfort with their changing bodies,  creates a natural feeling of alienation. Add to that being an adolescent in a world where social media has caused chronic alienation,  results in the false belief they are experiencing something unique and there is something seriously wrong with them, and the woke zealots default diagnosis is of course gender dysphoria by proxy.

The second category is even more troublesome and that is parents that push a gender dysphoria diagnosis on their children. While I said parents, more accurately I should have said parent as the vast majority of parents that seeks gender affirmation for their children are single mothers. Further at least one study has shown the vast majority of single mothers seeing gender affirmation for their child suffer from a personality disorder*; the most common is Borderline Personality Disorder**. The point being these parents are wanting the attention that goes along with being a parent of a gender dysphoria child, a form Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy*** (something that should be of no surprise since Munchausen Syndrome by proxy is a symptom of a personality disorder). The primary problem here is the symptoms used to diagnose gender dysphoria in children are completely arbitrary and generally fall under the category on normal child behavior. Keep in mind that one of the main attributes of a child is their unending desire to please adults and their parents in particular. So significant is this desire that police investigators have to go to specialized schools to learn how to interview children. The reason the child is seeking the approval of the investigator and will agree with almost any premise if they believe that it will result win their approval. This was made remarkably clear in the McMartin preschool sexual child abuse investigation and trail in the 1980s, where the children agreed with the most outrageous accusations introduced by the investigators including underground tunnels and satanic torture chambers that existed only in the imagination of the investigators. The point being if a parent wants a child to be transgender, a child will more than likely agree with whatever premise the parent will offer up. IOW a child is just as likely to agree they are a dragon that lives in the body of a three foot tall little boy, as to agree they are a little girl with a penis, if a parent tells the child either is possible and/or the child believes it is something desirable by their parent.

*"A personality disorder is a type of mental disorder in which you have a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving. A person with a personality disorder has trouble perceiving and relating to situations and people. This causes significant problems and limitations in relationships, social activities, work and school."

**"People with borderline personality disorder may experience intense mood swings and feel uncertainty about how they see themselves. Their feelings for others can change quickly, and swing from extreme closeness to extreme dislike. These changing feelings can lead to unstable relationships and emotional pain...People with borderline personality disorder also tend to view things in extremes, such as all good or all bad. Their interests and values can change quickly, and they may act impulsively or recklessly."

***Munchausen by proxy -- is a psychological disorder marked by attention-seeking behavior by a caregiver through those who are in their care...  The person with MSP (usually the mother) gains attention by seeking medical help for exaggerated or made-up symptoms of a child in their care. As health care providers strive to identify what's causing the child's symptoms, the deliberate actions of the parent or caretaker can often make the symptoms worse.

There is also a third category that has nothing to do with gender dysphoria, that being transgender women (men protraying themselves as women) to compete against biological women in sports activities. The vast majority of these men appear to be frustrated they are not competitive in their chosen sport when competing against fellow men, so they announce they are actually women in men's bodies and go on to dominate women's sports. In essence this is sexual misappropriation and demonstrates that progressives have never really embraced women's rights, instead they are simply anti convention to the extreme and will latch onto any belief system (outlandish or legitimate) if it challenges the status quo. IOW, progressives only advanced women's rights until it became main stream and now they've supplanted (and are excluding) women's rights with transgender rights, pretty much eliminating 100 year fight for women's rights and simply handed those hard fought for rights over to a minority of men who can't except their physical limitations as male athletes. Almost by definition woke theology was abandoned any and all suffering of biological women, because they are seen as the enemy of transgender women (men protraying themselves as women) because they represent reality, something transgender women can not tolerate, because the reality is you can never change the sex you were born as.

Woke Theology; the End of the Morality Play

It's inaccurate to believe that love conquers all is a proper theme. Practically every thing ever written (including movies and games) are not about love, rather they are morality plays. Certainly love is a part, but the central theme is not love, it's about what love drives you to. Do you do the right thing or the wrong thing and if you do the wrong thing, do you repent (meaning change your mind) and make things right? The purveyors of woke philosophy, such as the new Disney wants to change this by presenting woke theology and transgenderism, giving up everything you know is right and pretend the world is as every person individually wants it to be, ignoring science, biology and critical thinking, because they all show the folly in such a world view where all areas of pathology are celebrated as a life choices and anything curative is viewed as hatred and labeled a phobia. In essence woke theology is just giving up on reality because it is too painful and creating a dream world to replace the harsh truths of reality and the struggle of being alive.


Thursday, March 16, 2023

"We are a decade into the largest epidemic of adolescent mental illness ever recorded.


Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest


 

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

My experience reloading 357 Sig

 The following is my experience with reloading 357 sig. A little background, the 357 sig was designed to be a law enforcement round that replicated a 357 mag ballistics; specifically 124gr bullet traveling at 1450 fps. To do this the designers at Sig Sauer necked down a slightly shortened 10mm case to 9mm (the 40 cal S&W is also based on a shortened 10mm case, and while close in length, if you neck down a 40 cal shell case it will be about half a mm too short). A 357 sig round is not that difficult to reload, but there is a learning curve. First, because it is a necked down round, it is best reloaded like a rifle cartridge (I'll explain this in more detail later). One issue that needs to be dealt with is the neck of the 357 sig case is very short, so bullet design is very important; as an example the bullet should be short (IOW "squatty" for lack of a better term) with parallel sidewalls, often referred to as "Truncated cone flat point bullets", 124gr.* That way the bullet uses the maximum inner surface of the neck of the case without being too long. Along with this, it's best not to bell or flair the case mouth prior to pressing in the bullets similar to reloading some rifle rounds with boat tail bullets. This allows you to press in the bullet without the need to crimp the shell, as crimping the shell mitigates how well the neck of the shell holds the bullet.   

 
Dies for the 357 Sig come in 2 flavors, because the 357 sig is a necked down cartridge, like rifle cartridges, most the dies only come in steel (not carbide; carbide allows for sizing shells without case lube).  Now there is a common work a round for not using case lube. Since the bottom half of the 357sig shell is 10 mm, you can use a 10mm/40 S&W carbide die to size the bottom and decap and then follow up with the 357 sig steel sizing die for the neck; because the neck is so short I've found it's not necessary to use lube with sizing the neck with 357 sig steel die. Now Dillion has a die that combines these two features, a carbide ring for the bottom and a steel portion to form the top the neck of course its twice the price of an RCBS die set and they still recommend using case lube, though it's probably not necessary.
 
One issue I ran into is the RCBS 357 sig forming die does not work well. Here we are back to sizing the case like a rifle cartridge. Most necked rifle cartridges use the shoulder of the cartridge for proper head spacing, that is how the bullet fits into the chamber, based on the length from the shoulder to the rim. This is opposed to rimless pistol cartridges that headspace on the case mouth.  RCBS die forms the 357 sig case to headspace on the case mouth, (not the neck) which after a few reloads will increase the length from the base to the shoulder so the base of the round end up ending out of the chamber so the slide wont completely close (IOW, don't use the RCBS forming die). The reason for this is every time you resize a necked shell casing it gets a little longer. If the die is designed to head space on the shoulder, it will keep the shoulder position relative to the shell base the same. However if the die is designed to headspace on the case mouth, the shoulder position relative to the shell base will lengthen farther every time it is formed, until the slide will not be able to close on the round. Yes, like a rifle case you will need to trim the the 357 sig case to length, but if the distance between the shoulder and rim is too long, trimming the mouth of the shell will not solve the fitment problem
 
 Powder wise, 357sig is not real picky as long you can load enough in the relatively small shell. I have used Unique (not recommended but will work), Accurate #7/#9, Power Pistol, Silhouette and Blue Dot; a big positive about 357sig is the increased pressures lead to most powders burning very clean and due to the limited case capacity it is rare you will find a load that will allow a double charge.
 
When I first decided to reload for 357 sig, I bought some RCBS 357 sig dies. The RCBS dies have a ball mouth expander in the forming decapper die, but not a separate expander die, which it tunns out is for food reason. When I first started loading 357 sig I used the 357 mag expander die, but I found using a flaring/ bell style expander die is problematic because it mitigates the how securely the necked of the shell holds the bullet. This is because a 357 mag flare die is designed not to just bell the top of the shell, but to open a channel, which reduces the short necks ability to hold onto the bullet. What I eventually ended up with is a hybrid Lee/ RCBS forming die, using a Lee carbide 10mm forming die, but replacing the Lee decapper pin with the RCBS expander ball decapper pin. What this does is forms the die with the headspace at the shoulder, and opens the case mouth enough for a 124gr truncated cone flat point bullet to be pressed in without and further expansion of the case mouth. This is important due to the issues explained in the following paragraph.
 
Another issue that plays into the forming and loading of 357sig rounds is something called rebound deformation. As I mentioned, it better to not use a belling or expansion die when pressing in the bullets of the 357 sig due to the short neck, this is less of an issue with a longer neck  or straight wall shells because there is more surface to hold the bullet. The reason is, expanding a shell and then crimping the shell around the bullet compromises the friction that holds the bullet in the case, due to rebound deformation. When brass is deformed or sized with a die, it rebounds, meaning it expands or contracts larger or smaller than the die, depending on whether you are expanding or constricting the shell. Because of this when you bell or flare open the end of the shell to accept the bullet, the walls of inner surface of the shell that holds the bullet will no longer be parallel, which comprises the holding strength of the inner sidewalls. Usually with other calibers this only affects a small portion of the interface between the bullet on shell, but because the 357 sig neck is so short, anything that mitigates this interface is problematic.This issue can cause what is called "bullet setback" or extraction, where recoil changes how the depth of bullets in shells of the rounds in the pistol magazine. This is why I replaced the decapper in the Lee 357 sig die with the expander ball from an RCBS 357 sig die. This ball expander is actually less than .9mm/ .355 (I believe it is .353"), which makes it easier to press in the bullets without using a more extreme expander die. I have found that using the RCBS expander ball holds the bullet better than expanding the mouth of the case and then crimping it closed. Bullet setback/extraction in a 357sig round is enough of a problem that most manufacturers fill the entirety of the case with powder and/or use a bullet adhesive/sealant, but when using the expander ball without crimping I have not had any problem with setback or extraction.

*There are some other bullets out there including a JHP/ notched 147 gr 9mm bullets that were fairly easily to load without belling the case mouth.



Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Why Hydrogen Cars Are Silly and Why Using Hydrogen as a Battery May be the Holy Grail of Renewable Energy

Elon Musk has said hydrogen cars are silly and this is why he's right. First there are two basic types of hydrogen cars, one in which a car's internal combustion engine is fueled by hydrogen similar to a propane fueled vehicle and the other is a hydrogen fuel cell cars, which is an electric car that used hydrogen to create electricity. Using hydrogen as a fuel for an internal combustion still relies on the extreme inefficiency of any 4 stroke engine and without the energy dense properties of gasoline, meaning it would need much larger quantities of hydrogen to operate. 

So let's first look how hydrogen is obtained. Pure hydrogen is very rare on earth, so it has extracted from water, which is one of earth's most stable molecules. There are two methods, one uses electrolysis and the other steam. The electrolysis method is very energy dense, meaning it takes almost as much electricity to extract the hydrogen as the amount of energy potential in the hydrogen itself (and of course most electricity is still produced using fossil fuels), this is why this process is not usually used commercially. The steam method is more efficient but again fossil fuels are used to create the necessary heat, so it's a renewable resource either. A hydrogen cell takes hydrogen and runs it through a hydrogen converter or cell, that converts back it into electricity and water. And while wind and solar electricity can be used to extract hydrogen from water, currently such renewable energy resources are overtaxed just trying to keep up with the current demands of the electrical grid and with standard power plants being shut down and no new ones being built, and with ever increasing demand for electricity in general, there not a whole lot of extra electricity available for making hydrogen for cars, let alone money to create the necessary infrastructure.

So hydrogen cars are silly because of the process of extracting hydrogen from water using electricity (electrolysis)  and then using a hydrogen cell in the car to convert the hydrogen back into water (hydrolisys) and electricity is incredibly inefficient. No matter how sophisticated the hydrogen technology becomes, simply using the electricity that would be used to extract hydrogen from water to propel an electric car will always be more efficient. As an example it takes 50 kWh to extract 1 kg of hydrogen, this is enough to drive a hydrogen cell car about 100 km. OTOH a 50 kWh charge will likely propel a Tesla Model 3 about 230 km. The reason is due to the energy loss of extracting hydrogen from water and then converting the hydrogen back into water and electricity, the 50 kWh is reduced to less than 25 kWh of real world useable electricity. These figures are often debated because the overhead of hydrogen production by electrolysis and then reversed back into electricity is based entirely on the quality of the devices. While you will often see efficiency data much higher than this, they are usually referencing extraordinarily efficient laboratory devices used under very controlled conditions, while the devices commonly found in operation, for this process, such as in hydrogen cell vehicles are far less efficient. 

It's also a misnomer that the explosive danger of hydrogen is even similar to that of gasoline. In it's natural state gasoline is a liquid and while highly flammable is not explosive unless it's vaporized with a very narrow margin of percentage of oxygen to be explosive. Hydrogen OTOH in it's natural state is an extremely explosive gas with a very wide margin of percentage of oxygen to be explosive. Further because of it's properties it is cost prohibited to store hydrogen as a liquid in small quantities, unlike propane or natural gas, so it would be transported in cars in it's most volatile state.

Now that is not to say electric cars are the answer either. As many have said electricity is only clean at the users end. Right now the US is on the verge of a dire electricity shortage that will probably bring electric car mandates to a screeching halt. Michael Shellenbuger (the scientist who oversaw the renewable resource infrastructure in California in the 1990s) explains that the electrical grid requires electricity as needed which is the fatal flaw of renewable wind and solar. The problem is there is no way to store the excess electricity from wind and solar, so at night or when there is little wind, the grid can be starved of electricity. Imagine then, when tens of millions of electric cars being plugged in at night to recharge their batteries for the morning commute at very time all the solar farms stop producing electricity (you can build as many solar farms as you want, but they still can't produce electricity at night). Wind and solar require large areas of land, usually in the desert, which is hundreds of miles from large population areas, this require s a large investment in infrastructure simply to get the electricity to users in far off cities that have the greatist demands for electricity. Building wind and solar farms are also having a devastating affect on the desert ecology, eg wind turbines are the now the leading cause of the deaths of predatory birds. Solar farms builders have been unable to prevent the whole sale deaths of endangered desert tortoises as they clear the desert floor for their solar array.  Until the powers that be realistically plan and build the necessary infrastructure for a tripling of electricity demand, hybrid and gas powered cars will be around for a long time to come. 

Now this does bring up the point, why not build  hydrogen generating plants at solar farms? That way when solar farms are working at maximum efficiency on clear sunny days, they could divert the electricity not demanded by the electrical grid into hydrogen. Then when the power grid is in need of electricity, day or night, they could convert the hydrogen back into electricity, in affect creating a hydrogen battery to store electricity that is usually wasted when there is no demand for it by the power grid. Yes it's still inefficient in regards to lost electricity as a result of the conversation to hydrogen and back to electricity, but in this case the electricity was literally being thrown away, so any means of storing it is better than it being completely wasted. I have not seen this mentioned anywhere, but it would seem to me to be the answer to the inconsistent production of electricity that is the current fatal flaw of renewable energy, however it still doesn't address the destruction of the desert ecology, that pretty much seems to be the inevitable unintended consequence of renewable energy. 

Monday, April 4, 2022

Liberals; the Definitive Creators of Unintended Consequences.

Jordon Peterson brings to light that most ideas for change are bad. The main reason is we forgotten why we do things they way we do. Liberal Progressive believe not only that change is good but needs to be done continuously, without any thought of why what they want to change is being done the way it is being done; the end result is almost always a disaster of unintended consequences for which they take no responsibility. Further they are intellectually lazy, or simply don't care because they are agenda rather than result driven. A typical example is the constant false rationalization that correlation equals causation. In it's absurd form, they would say that carrots cause heart attacks, because the vast majority of people having heart attacks eat carrots shortly before their heart attack; this of course ignores that carrots are a staple in most diets, and nothing at all to do with heart attacks. In a more subtle way the same can be said for sending people to jail for so called minor crimes. Data correlation tells us that those sent to jail for theft crimes generally emerge more antisocial than when they went in. The Liberal Progressive would say we should than not send thieves to jail. The problem is that theft is antisocial by definition, so without punishment, the same person will continue to steal and become still become more antisocial; at least when the thief is in jail they are not continually re-offending, until their crimes become serious enough to warrant incarceration. Further, the lack of punishment for theft encourages others to commit theft as well.  In other words the unintended consequences of not addressing theft crimes, is the criminals will continue to offend with impunity, meaning whether incarcerated or not, they will still become more antisocial, with the addition of creating many more victims and it will result in massive increase in others taking up thievery. Of course the left now measures success only in the term of equity and since criminal behavior tends to be overrepresented by minorities, the view fewer incarcerations as a success unto itself, regardless of the harm and wholesale destruction it does to society. 

There are those that claim that theft is a form of reparations, again from a world view based on equity. Even if this were true, the unintended consequences of that is entirely regressive, as the end result will be lawlessness in the poorest of communities and a massive increase in retail costs. This of course goes along with defund the police, which is another regressive policy that is only popular with those that live in otherwise protected communities and do not face crime on a daily basis; in other words, the poorest among us. While decades of indoctrination has convinced urban blacks that the are the constant victim of police violence and anti-black racism, they also know that the police are the only barrier between them and violent crime committed almost entirely by other blacks. Murder is so prevalent in Black communities, it is one of the primary causes of deaths of young black men. liberal Black activists often rationalize away black on black crime, saying white criminals generally victimize whites also; what they conveniently ignore is blacks are victimized by blacks at ten times the rate of whites by white criminals). Yet it is so ignored by Democrats and the mainstream press, that the moment the suspect of a mass shootings and/or killing or violent act is identified as black, all reporting is immediately stopped, just as all black on black crimes are never reported on, no matter the body count or the viciousness of the crime. To the black communities, regardless of how much they hate the police, they still want their presence in as large numbers as possible, as without them they are without any protection from the violent black gangs that otherwise control the segregated ghettos controlled solely by Democrats, they are forced to live in.