Brilliant Westphalian chemist Robert Bunsen died in Heidelberg at the age of 88. Bunsen was a co-discoverer of rubidium and caesium, and is also known for his work with Gustav Kirchhoff on the observation that each element emits a light of a characteristic wavelength. He had never married, and lived for, and was loved by, his students.
Last edition:
Today In Wyoming's History: July 2: 1874 7th Cavalry left Ft. Abraham Lincoln to scout the Black Hills.
The 7th Cavalry, with a number of native scouts, left Ft. Abraham Lincoln bound for the Black Hills in what is recalled as the Black Hills Expedition.
The expedition was economic in part, in that it was to look for gold in the Black Hills, and military in part, in that it was to look for suitable fort locations. Its organization was as follows:
The table of organization for the 7th Cavalry for the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 was as follows.[15]
Field and staff officers:
Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, 7th Cavalry.
Lt. Colonel Frederick D. Grant, 4th Cavalry and acting aide
Major George A. Forsyth, 9th Cavalry commander
First Lieutenant James Calhoun, 7th Cavalry adjutant
First Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith, quartermaster
Second Lieutenant George D. Wallace, commander of Indian scouts
Cavalry companies
Company A - Captain Myles Moylan and Second Lieutenant Charles Varnum
Company B - First Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodgson
Company C - Captain Verling Hart and Second Lieutenant Henry M. Harrington
Company E - First Lieutenant Thomas M. McDougall
Company F - Captain George W. Yates
Company G - First Lieutenant Donald McIntosh
Company H - Captain Frederick W. Benteen and First Lieutenant Francis M. Gibson
Company K - Captain Owen Hale and First Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey
Company L - First Lieutenant Thomas W. Custer
Company M - Captain Thomas French and First Lieutenant Edward Gustave Mathey
Medical staff
Dr. John W. Williams, chief medical officer
Dr. S. J. Allen, Jr. assistant surgeon
Dr. A. C. Bergen, assistant surgeon
Engineering
Captain William Ludlow, chief engineer
W. H. Wood, civilian assistant
Mining detachment
Horatio Nelson Ross
William McKay
Scientist
George Bird Grinnell
Newton Horace Winchell
A. B. Donaldson
Luther North
Photographer
William H. Illingworth
Correspondents
William E. Curtis, Chicago Inter-Ocean
Samuel J. Barrows, New York Tribune
Sygurd Wiśniowski, New Ulm Herald
Nathan H. Knappen, Bismarck Tribune
Last edition:
The scientific Harriman Alaska Expedition left Seattle for the coast of Alaska.
Last prior edition:
Thomas Aquinus died on this day in 1274. He was a proponent of the major Catholic school of thought, natural theology, and the father of a school of thought known as Thomism after him.
French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced his government's decision to implement the Tout-nucléaire ("Total Nuclear") plan for all electricity in France. The goal was to accomplish this by 2000. The goals were mostly met.
The US could easily do this, but it would require a scientifically educated public that wasn't easily swayed by raving BS, an overall problem that confronts the US on every level currently.
Last prior:
Kamala Harris says when she talks to parents on the campaign trail, one of their top concerns is that their daughters won't have access to abortion in college
Charlie Spiering, summarizing a recent Kamal Harris interview.
I come from a sufficiently well-educated family such that my grandmother, Agnes, on my mother's side, had attended and graduated from university.
If you consider that she was born in 1891, that's quite the feat.
Now, I'll admit that my father was the first one to attend university on his side of the family, but his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, had all been successful businessmen at a time at which you didn't need a college education to be one, or even a high school education for that matter. My father's father, who I never met, was universally regarded by those who knew him as extremely smart.
Indeed, I once was stopped on the sidewalk by an elderly lawyer who knew my father and his father, who asked about the family. My son must have been in high school at the time, and the odd question "is he extremely smart. . . " like all of the members of the family.
I often, frankly, feel that I'm on the bottom end of the family intelligence pool compared to my own father and my kids.
No real college parents anywhere have, as one of their top concerns, that their daughters won't be able to commit infanticide, unless they've drunk so deeply of the left wing Kool-Aid they're perusing brochures from The Young Pioneers.
Democratic campaigns for the Oval Office, or Democratic campaigns in general, are not smart.
They're about as dumb as can be.
From 1914 until 1980 the Democrats were masters at coalition building. The party kept hardhat workers, urban Irish Catholics, Hispanics, and the entire South together, which was frankly quite a feat. It supported unions and working class families, and generally was pretty pro farmer. It had a left wing, but it also had a conservative one as well. Starting in 1968, when it embraced American battlefield defeat to a degree, and then in 1973, when it took the bloody abortionist hand, it took a turn toward the left, and as it did that, it dumped democracy like a hot rock in favor of an imagined Platonic body of robed elders who would tell the people what to do, and they'd like it.
Absolutely everything about the current Democratic message is wrong, including some things that shouldn't be regarded as wrong, but which are in the current political atmosphere. One thing that's definitely wrong is the concept that infanticide is a winning ticket. It isn't. The Democrats have read single issue matters on ballots here incorrectly. Maybe in that'st the only thing on a ballot, you get the voters only concerned about that to come out. Otherwise, people aren't going to vote that way.
Moreover, if Harris is really being told this by the parents of college women, it's because she's talking to the most liberal parents imaginable, and they're going to say crap like that no matter what. Moreover, the college educated are largely voting for Biden already. Biden/Harris need to get votes that they don't already have. The college educated have largely already left the GOP.
What's left of the electorate that is in the GOP is made up of the working class, small business owners (some college educated), and residents of rural regions (including quite a few well-educated ones in those areas). They don't believe "diversity is strength", they aren't interested in tolerating non "Judeo-Christian" religions, or gender mutilation, and they feel that their lives and livelihoods are threatened by out of control illegal immigration. They love their regions, but they're largely incapable of believing in climate change in spite of the evidence. They quit listening to scientist and social scientist of all types because they were lied to about some things, and therefore don't believe any of it. They listen to Evangelical pastors who tell them what they want to hear, and who make their massive departures from Christian doctrine irrelevant by not mentioning them (ever hear any of them criticize Trump for living in an adulterous relationship, which by conventional Christianity he is? Or of an Evangelical Church refusing to marry two people who have been married before?)
When I first started practicing law, a firm partner, a true Christian gentleman, told me about litigation that "this isn't a nice game". It isn't. Politics is even less so, and you have to be smart about it.
There's 0 reason that the Biden/Harris ticket needs to mention abortion at all. Where that's been an issue, they had no role in it. And they're driving Democrats away right now who are Catholic, which includes the Hispanic voters they imagine they'll be gaining. And their absolute incompetence on the border is in fact a good reason to vote against them. A competent ticket would shut up on abortion and would make a very serious effort on the border.
Obama, it might be noted, had a very controlled border. And while he was President before Dobbs, he didn't say much about abortion either.
He won twice.
Pointing out that more IRS agents punishes the wealthy, not the middle class, would help too. Pointing out that Trump has been a personally immoral man, might as well. Pointing out that he was the one who surrendered to the Taliban would as well.
And parking Harris somewhere would be a good idea, if not dumping her entirely.
And that's where you have to say thing that re uncomfortable.
Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President in 1928. He would have won, but he was Catholic. Yes, that meant a lot of the electorate was bigoted, but it also meant that the Democrats weren't smart in running him.
They would be now, but Smith wouldn't be a Democrat any longer. He'd likely be an independent. He wasn't willing to compromise on his Catholicism, like Joe Biden has, and he wasn't a liar of any kind either.
Kamala Harris is like Al Smith in one fashion. She reminds bigoted voters who they hate. She's a lawyer (regular people hate lawyers), she's the child of two immigrants (MAGA people don't like immigrants), one of whom was Indian and the other Jamaican, making her a "person of color" (a lot of MAGA people really don't like people of color, let alone immigrant people of color), she's married to an entertainment lawyer (oh, oh) who is Jewish (again, MAGA people like Israel, but Jews. . . ) and the children of the couple are from his first marriage, meaning she has low parent street cred.
Are any of those items a reason not to vote for Harris? Absolutely not. Her policies are a reason not to vote for Harris. But will some MAGA people vote for Trump for these reasons? You bet they will, and in a race this close, in a handful of states that matter, that's a problem.
I don't know who would be a better VP candidate. Amy Klobuchar strikes me as one who would be better in every fashion. If you could find an American Christian Levantine politician (and there definitely are some) they'd be absolutely perfect, particularly if the choice was a woman. But what I am saying is that in a race with democracy itself on the ticket, choosing to go with a candidate this old for President, and a VP who is so disliked, is just dumb. And emphasizing the aspects of your campaign that the populist right hates, even if they do so wrongly on some of them, and the nervous middle aren't comfortable with, isn't very smart either. Having the disliked person, even if the dislike is immoral, who people fear might end up President isn't very smart, either.
This isn't a nice game. Sometimes choices have to be made in the candidates and the strategy that aren't very palatable. A lot of Republicans will do what Cynthia Lummis admitted to doing in 2016 as to Trump, and "hold her nose and vote". The Democrats should hold their noses and make some smart choices.
But they will not.
Sigh. . .
FWIW, this article refers to James P. Owen’s "Cowboy Code of Ethics" that the legislature enshrined into law, even though it wasn't written by cowboys, or even by Wyomingites.
This is what happens when you leave the doors open.
The first residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a government constructed town dedicated to the Manhattan Project, arrived.
The Battle of Wickham Anchorage on Vangunu concluded in an American victory.
The island today retains a small population of subsistence farmers.
Head of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach engaged in an argument with Adloph Hitler over ending the war, which he urged. The 36-year-old German Army veteran remained in his position, but Hitler would never speak to him again.
Schirach was born to a father who was a retired German cavalryman and a mother who was an American expatriate. Indeed, three out of four of his grandparents were Americans, and he learned to speak English at home prior to learning to speak German, which he did not until age 6.
He was head of the Hitler Youth early on, but did serve as an infantryman early in World War Two, winning the Iron Cross. He then served as Gauleiter of Vienna and was associated with the deportation of the city's Jewish population. He'd be sentenced as a war criminal for that following the war, being released in 1966. He died in 1974 at age 67. His wife, who had been the daughter of Hitler's photographer, divorced him while he was in prison.
Schirach serves as a disturbing example of a German who did not come from Nazi oriented roots, but who was corrupted into it as a very young man.
Stage Door Canteen, with a huge ensemble cast, was released.
I've never seen it, but it seems to be well regarded, or perhaps fondly recalled.
On Twitter I saw a photo somebody posted of a sign in Washington D.C., in a hallway, which said "There are two genders, male and female, trust the science", praising it.
And I agree with the statement.
Knowing the underlying politics of the person who posted it, somebody replied: "But we shouldn’t trust science on Covid and vaccines, correct?!"
An excellent point.
The science goes where it goes, it cares not about right and left, and people caring about the science have not the option to ignore that.
The Warner Brothers Company incorporated, formed by the four brothers Wonsal, Jewish immigrants from Poland, and in Jack's case Canada, who anglicized their last name, as was typical at the time.
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The first of five Hawaiian biological surveys known as the Tanager Expedition commenced. They were named after the USS Tanager, a minesweeper, which was used in the effort.
The Tanager was later assigned to the Philippines and was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 4, 1942.
Hitler told the Chicago Tribune that he didn't intend to march on Berlin and overthrow the German government.
The guest, early on, makes a comment about the beginning of the 20th Century, end of the 19th, and mentions "archeology was new". I thought I'd misheard that, but he mentioned it again, and added sociology.
He explained it, but it really hit me.
Archeology, and sociology, in fact, were new. Many academic disciplines were.
Indeed, that's something we haven't looked at here before. People talk all the time about the decline of the classic liberal education (at a time that very few people attended university), but when did modern disciplines really appear?
Indeed, that's part of what make a century ago, +, more like now, than prior to now. Educational disciplines, based on the scientific method in part, really began to expand.
So, we can take, for example, and find the University of Wyoming recognizable at the time of its founding in 1886.
But would Princeton, as it is now, be recognizable in 1786?
And interesting also how this effected everything, in this case, the Church's look at its liturgy.
But also, everything, really, about everything, for good and ill.
The first use of the revolutionary VT fuse in combat occurred when the USS Helena shot down a Japanese dive bomber with a projectile equipped with the fuse.
Designed for surface-to-air and ground to ground use, the VT used radar to detonate when close to the target. The Navy's use came first, as it was feared that the fuse would fall into enemy hands if used in ground combat. Amazingly, use by ground forces of the joint British-American fuse would not come until late 1944 when it was deployed during the Battle of the Bulge. There was some reluctance to use it even then, but its revolutionary features were never discovered by the Germans or Japanese.
The fuse is widely used today.
Gen. Kenneth Walker led a heavy bomber raid on Rabaul to hit Japanese shipping, the presence of which the US was aware of due to decoding of Japanese radio transmissions. Eight Japanese merchant ships and two destroyers were hit during the raid by B-17s and B-24s. Gen. Walker's aircraft, in which he was riding as an observer, was brought down by Japanese antiaircraft fire, and he was killed.
Walker was 44 years old at the time of his death. Born in New Mexico, he grew up in Denver, Colorado in a home maintained by his mother, as his father left the family. He attended a variety of schools in Denver. He entered the Army during World War One and was commissioned as an airman in 1918.
The Department of Agriculture ordered that 30% of all butter production be reserved for the Armed Forces.
George Washington Carver, prominent American scientist and African American, died at approximately age 78.
The Red Army continued to advance in the Caucasus. British paratroopers and commandos took the high ground near Mateur, Tunisia. Free French forces advanced in southern Libya.
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I don't do this every year, and usually when I have, it's been tongue in cheek.
This will try to be, partially, but this one is more serious than most. Indeed, for the most part, there's no jest in this at all, and I'm going to do it in a different format, partially for that reason.
Donald Trump need to retire and go away.
Based on something I read the other day, in his personal life he nearly has. As the limelight fades away, he's spending a lot of his time at a nearby golf course he owns, rather than at Mar-a-Lago.
Even Theodore Roosevelt, the Old Lion, reached a point where he really didn't care about politics anymore, and that included his very last run for office. The fire had gone out. It'd dangerous to compare Roosevelt, who was a highly admirable man, to Trump, who isn't, but that seems to be happening.
Reportedly Trump's favorite film is Sunset Boulevard, which I've never seen, but which is reportedly a masterpiece about a fading silent film movie star. Trump, according to the article I read, will rarely pay any attention to anything, including films, but he loves Sunset Boulevard and will sit through it even after having seen it a zillion times.
That tells us something.
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Gracefully fading away is hard to do. Truman did it, I'd note. Jimmy Carter seems to have done it. Douglas MacArthur did it, and the odds were against it.
Of course, Trump's problem is that he's disgraced himself and soiled his legacy.
Anyhow, he really ought to simply keep making that golf course trip and leave everyone alone, for the good of the country, and for the good of what little dignity he has left.
I noticed this morning that Elsie Stefanik is taking all sorts of flak due to a Washington Post expose. There's a lesson to be learned here, but it's probably too late for her to benefit from it. She could still learn from it.
Elon Musk needs to go back to South Africa, and whatever immigration loophole that was exploited to allow him to come in to the country and take up U.S. citizenship needs to be examined.
I can't think of a single qualification that Musk may have legally met to enter this country permanently. Somebody ought to look into that, and if he really didn't meet it, his citizenship should be revoked as a fraud and whatever person assisted this process looked into. And I feel the same way for all of the entertainment figures that hang around in this country as well. Go back.
Whatever weird, weird, loophole in our immigration system let Musk come in needs to be fixed. South Africa can use him. Go home, Elon.
Harriet Hageman and Chuck Gray won their elections, fair and square, but based upon the lie that something was wrong with the last election.
Now that they're in office, they have a lot to make up for, given that.
One thing they both can do is stop feeding the bogus rage machine. The other thing they ought to do is to admit that times are changing and the concept of hanging on to the 1970s economy, which we've only had in this state for the last 50 years, not forever, is dying.
Hageman, also, who is no dummy, ought to do some serious introspection before raising her right hand, once again, and swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. She's done that at least once, and yet she was willing, although not at first, to boost a lie in favor of somebody who was willing to, and is stilling willing to, usurp that same Constitution. Gray probably has taken a similar oath upon becoming a legislature, but I don't know him, and I frankly hold him to a lesser standard.
Hageman when a large number of her fellow bar members reminded her of her duty to tell the truth advanced a really wild fantasy regarding that. If she believed that, she needs to spend about a week in the hills, perhaps with Thoreau, or perhaps with the Book of Tobit. It'd do her good.
The Grand Old Party in Wyoming needs a serious shake up, I'd note, but it's not going to happen. The Democratic Party of Wyoming needs one as well. At this point, that's only going to come through Independents, I'm afraid. My Resolution, therefore, is for them. I hope, and hope they resolve, to take over the state's politics. The Democrats have become so mired in left wing goofiness, there's nearly no saving them.
Interestingly, the Libertarian Party, nationally, recently seems to have taken a step to the middle. Maybe there's hope for them yet.
There's a huge percentage of the country that need to resolve that science is not its enemy, and Newsmax is not the place to get the news. If the news just fuels your preformed beliefs and, simultaneously, makes you mad, you need to get your news somewhere else. Actually, what you need to do, is get the news.
Vladimir Putin needs to go to confession, and then go to a monastery. I'm not joking. Russia needs to join the modern, democratic, world. The Russian Orthodox Church needs to end its schism with the rest of the Orthodox, and the Eastern Orthodox need to end their schism with Rome. This has gone on too long. The German Catholic Bishops, for their part, need to end their drift into wherever they are going.
Something needs to be done regarding the condition giving rise to an epic level of attempted migration into the United States. If conditions in Central America are that bad, we need to figure out why, and do something about it immediately.
In large part, in many ways, we all need to look forward, by looking back. Being perpetually angry doesn't serve any interest at all. Pretending it's 1973 won't either. Turning to grifters, caudillos, snake oil salesmen, and those selling anger won't work.
We all know that. It's doing something about it that seemingly is difficult. But once we get moving, momentum is a force until itself.
Speaking of 1973, left wing American economists like Robert Reich need to realize that they continually espouse another economic option, and then pull back to the current one. They're basically in the position of being a concerned stranger walking up to a desperate drunk in a bar, giving him a temperance lecture, and then suggesting he switch to beer. That's not going to cut it in an economy that truly needs adjusting.
On a minor notes, would people on Twitter stop using this stupid cartoon for points they're trying to make:
There are all sorts of version of this, and they're all hideous and bad. Whatever you think you are trying to prove this way, you are not.
An addendum.
Let's start 2023 with some basic consensus on proved things. If we do, we'll have a productive year.
If we don't, it suggests that we really prefer blinding ourselves to truth and arguing for sport/self-satisfaction.
And that would certainly merit a sense of pessimism.
Okay, first of all, some lingering political things.
Donald Trump lost the election. Believe whatever you want about who should have one, whether the electoral college makes any sense, whether we're a republic or democracy (as if the two are mutually exclusive), but he lost.
There's no point in arguing otherwise, unless you just like arguing, much like the fellow I know who insists the Women's NBA "isn't a sport". Why, well because a 50-year-old overweight guy who couldn't play basketball against a junior high team can safely take that position for self-satisfaction. Same here. Trump lost, and arguing that he won at this point is really just insisting the opposite isn't true.
Vaccinations are safe. We really don't need to argue about this anymore, but we really don't need to be arguing about vaccinations in general.
Note that I didn't limit this to the COVID-19 vaccination. People out there who don't vaccinate their kids for things we haven't seen for years, only to have the kids get ill, are acting criminally. If there's one thing we have COVID-19 to thank for, and I don't believe it is, it's that it shut people up like Jenny McCarthy on this topic.
Let's resolve to follow the science on stuff, no matter how scary that may be, or how much that impacts our self interests, or our narcissistic desires. If that leads to "you know, what I want isn't okay", or "my own impulses aren't ordered", well, so be it.
Let's also resolve that the end point of being a human isn't to be a consumer.
Let's completely skip altering our natures this year. Whether that's dying our hair some color it isn't, or inflating our boobs, or changing our gender, or whatever.
Feel that you really want to be in touch with who you really are? Well, be who you really are, and that starts with the body nature gave you and all that means.
Face the basic fact that you are going to die. Hopefully not soon, but you will. And that's okay, as long as you are in the right place when you die. Eating the All Kale Diet won't stop it. Don't accelerate it, please, we need you around, but we need you who you are, and as part of us, as we really are.
Don't be mean. I've come to realize that there are certain people who revel in being mean. Don't be one of them. Don't take joy in other's suffering, or inflict it in them. Meanness, I'd note, is often masked in arrogance, or self-righteousness, or even ignorance.
Don't follow the mean, either. If somebody seems perpetually pissed off, there's something wrong in that.
Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life; wherefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.
St. Philip Neri.
Mehr mensch sein.
Lex Anteinternet: How to loose friends, make enemies, make a bad arg...: Our friend here again. As we previoulsy noted, a Morganucodon, our great, great, great. . . . . grandmother or grandfather. Really. You...
Well, hold a circus and performing elephants will appear
And that's just what's happening at the University of Wyoming in regard to the saga of Rev. Schmidt and his poorly thought out approach to arguing on whether transgenderism is real or not. GOP politicians, from that party that adopted the elephant to remind people that they'd seen it in the form of the Civil War, have appeared in the form of legislative members of the "Freedom Caucus" and, of course, Chuck Gray.* The letter was written, in fact, by his successor in office, Jeanette Ward, recent arrival from Illinois.1
Let's recap this a bit.
Rev. Schmidt has been maintaining a table in the UW Student Union in which he has books to the effect that evolution is a fib and that Dr. Fauci is some sort of misguided personage.
Rev. Schmidt called out a person who is undergoing some sort of "gender reassignment" by name, noting that it's contrary to how God created humanity.
That latter item is correct, even if Schmidt is wrong on the fossil record and Dr. Fauci, but the apparent approach, which is based directly and perhaps even solely on his religious views, and which was very forward, was always more likely to create a flap and repel people rather than convince them.2 A wise way to approach this would have been to argue biology and science, rather than religion, but Schmidt took the latter approach and is now preaching on campus, which perhaps he always did.
UW, faced with an issue not of its own making and certainly not of its desire, booted Schmidt out of the Student Union.3
Now members of the Freedom Caucus, that body of legislators whose name would suggest they are Libertines, but whom are not, have entered the fray, accusing UW of squelching Schmidt's right to free speech.4 Given their entry and the presence of such notables as youthful Stolen Election Gray and Illinoisan Ward, who presumably have real tasks to do in their elective offices, this will become all the more circus like. Gray, of course, needs a new issue now that the Stolen Election Myth has gone down in flames and crashed all over the GOP outside of Wyoming, and Ward always campaigned from the extreme right, claiming she had to leave Illinois so that her youthful progeny didn't have to wear masks in school, among other things.
Sigh. . .
Nobody is going to talk the science at all.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when people claiming to be transgendered here would have simply been ignored, thereby being treated exactly the way they claim they want to be. Likewise, Rev. Schmidt would have been ignored, even at UW, of an earlier era also. Students wearing flannel and hiking boots would have simply walked on by.5
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Prior Related Threads:
Centuries ago, when I went to the University of Wyoming, there were no tables for people advocating things in the Student Union. The Union was smaller than, and frankly we mostly just passed through it on the way to somewhere else. The bookstore was in the Union, but it was actually diagonally across from the enormous book store that is now in the Union. Current students would be shocked to see how small the union was.
On rare occasions something might happen in the union, but it would actually have to be held somewhere else in one of the various rooms in the building. I recall going to an international students bake sale there, for instance. And I saw the film Risky Business with a girlfriend in the ballroom once, so they obviously showed movies there on occasion.
But mostly we just passed through it on the way from the lower campus to the upper campus.
Now the much expanded union has tables in it, and various organizations will set up a display. The times I've been in there, and I still get down to UW on occasion, it's been student organizations of one kind or another. Most people seem to pass through ignoring them, which is predictable.
Apparently, however, groups from outside the university are allowed to set up there as well.
I frankly don't know what I think about it, but I don't think I like it in general. This post, however, isn't really about that, but about one person whose been maintaining a booth there.
That person is the minister of a certain protestant church in Laramie. I know where the church is, as I once had a friend who lived near there. Oddly enough, it's not a church that I've ever posted a photo of at our Churches of the West blog.
This has hit the press as the minister put up, amongst other things, a large at a booth he maintains in the Student Union which stated:
God created male and female
"_________________" is a Man.
Now, obviously, the "________________" had the name of a student on it.
So, apparently, the minister sought to point out that a student who apparently is in some aspect of the current "transgender" spectrum, for lack of a better way to put it, is a man, as he was born male.
Which brings us to this. Rev. Schmidt (okay, I named him) is correct, "___________" is in fact a man. And, yes, God created us male and female.
And this is just about the worst way to go about arguing in opposition to the transgender trend there is. Schmidt is hurting himself, his cause, science, and Christianity in general.
Regarding science and Christianity, I'll note right away that Rev. Schmidt's table makes it clear that he's from that non-Apostolic branch of Christianity which is oddly opposed to science to start with. Apostolic Christians endorse science, and take the position that science and Faith can always be reconciled, and science serves to illuminate the grandeur of God's creation. We don't oppose, for example, the theory (and at this point it's a theory in name only, it's actually a fact) of evolution. Schmidt does, based on one of the books on his table.
Schmidt's table was adorned with books taking on all sorts of things in the photos, including taking on Anthony Fauci and, as noted, evolution. I'm pretty sure, based on that, that Schmidt would be one of the protestants who regard Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which make up the overwhelming number of Christians on Earth, in horror or at least disdain.
I'll get back to that in a moment, but I mention it here as having a booth in a hall that tells people that something is contrary to a religious tenant works fine if you are engaging in a debate with fellow Christians. So, for example, if this Reformed Baptists minister seeks to take on American Episcopalians, that argument makes sense, although it certainly could be done in a more articulate fashion. But if you are engaging the public at large, and not knowing who your audience is, that argument is going to fall flat and with quite a few, actually push them away from Christianity, to the extent that objecting to the reality of the fossil record and feeling that Anthony Fauci is a bad guy isn't already achieving that.
So all it really serves to do is to make a guy who is tainting Christianity feel like he's advancing it when he's not.
Which takes us to St. Paul.
Chances are that Rev. Schmidt like St. Paul and thinks St. Paul would be in his corner here. St. Paul was a tough guy, and he had a lot to say about improper sexual conduct, including homosexuality and men dressing like women. St. Paul makes people today squirm and they avoid him. One lesbian minister here in Casper actually dismissed St. Paul entirely on these matters in a radio interview, saying "well that's just St. Paul's opinion".
That's not the way that Paul presented it. No, not at all.
But consider this:
Paul’s Speech at the Areopagus.
Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said:
“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.
For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.
He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.”
And so Paul left them.
But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Ch. 17, Acts of the Apostles.
Now, that's interesting. Paul entered a new area, full of non-believers who had never even heard of Christ, and what did he say:
“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.
For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.
Well, he didn't do what Rev. Schmidt is doing. He didn't go in and insult the unbelievers and assume they knew the entirety of the Christian message and point fingers at individuals ones of them, a la John Calvin. No, he engaged them on common ground.
Here the common ground is science. But chances are that Rev. Schmidt can't engage there.
The science of transgenderism is that its not supported by the science. A person's gender is actually present in the DNA of every single cell of their body. Humans, like all mammals, are male and female, and nothing else, right down to every single cell in your body. Surgery and drugs aside, that remains the case. It cannot be changed.
And hence our great grandmother and grandfather to the nth degree, the Morganucodon again. Yes, male and female we were created, but not 4,000 years ago, but millions of years ago. As we noted when we brought our cute little dinosaur egg eating progenitor up before:
The way it really works, of course, with mammals, which we are, is described here in Wikipedia:
Anyhow, we've noted this story, and this science, before:
So there's the reality of it, which can be brought up in a scientific way to students who, at the end of the day, are just that. Scientifically, the gender is baked in the cake and beyond actual changability. All the genetic behavior that goes along with that is baked in too. Therefore, the current transgender trend and story, which is largely confined to adolescent females who are in the ADHD scale, and who are white and from affluent families, is a sociology and psychological trend, not a biological one. A person need not bring up God at all in this discussion.
Indeed, the evidence there is distressing in the extreme. As noted, transgenderism is most female, not male. It's mostly white, not black or Hispanic. It's mostly in well-to-do sections of society, and it exhibits itself mostly amongst those female adolescents who have ADHD or something on "the spectrum". It's appeared suddenly in White Europeans and European Americans as once one member of a clique claims it, it tends to rapidly spread in that clique. Most of the members of the demographic cohort, moreover, have tended to have been exposed to a fair amount of pornography
And hence the most logical explanation of its spread. It's spreading in a wealthy European culture. Starting in the 1960s, we started to jettison the culture itself, leaving it without moorings, as we became wealthier. Pornographers, including Hugh Hefner, were prosecuted for their actions as late as the 1970s, but that's now stopped completely, save below the age line of 18. We've steeped children in it, and earlier this past week, a news story broke of a school official somewhere exposing grade school children to implements of what would have been regarded as deviant behaviors not long ago. Indeed, the recent series on Playboy magazine revealed that when the young women working for Playboy clubs were exposed to the same behavior as part of after work gatherings, they were traumatized, so rare and so disgusting was it regarded as being.
In short, what the young females in the category are doing, psychologically, is fleeing from the role of female in regard to sex. They're not seeking to really change gender, they're seeking to opt out of what they think is the universal adult norm. They don't want to engage in endless sex as an object, they don't want things shoved up their butt, and the like.
Who can blame them?
This doesn't cover all of this, of course, and it doesn't explain sexual dysmorphia as to males, . . exactly. But what it does do is this. Scientifically, transgenderism isn't a thing. So what we're seeing is something else that's not of biological origin.
And not once did we have to mention religion in order to engage in that discussion, now, did we?
Of course, what we did have to do is to reference evolution and biology, and in doing that we're referencing a genetic evolution that's 210,000,000 years old, long before our species, which is at least 250,000 years old, and probably twice that old, came about. And that isn't going to be something a fellow who probably thinks the world is 5,000 years old and that evolution is some conspiracy by scientists is going to be keen on. So instead, he's taken to the campus and is reading from the Bible.
St. Paul, in his letters, wrote a lot about Christian conduct and what barred a person from the doors of Heaven. But he was writing to Christians when he did. Going into Areopagus, he complimented them on their religious faith, non Christians and even non Jews that they were.
You students, I see that in every respect you are very scientific.
For as I walked around looking carefully at your buildings, I even discovered an some dedicated to biology.
Of course, you have to grasp that you aren't speaking to your own audience in the first place. And you can't reject vast tracks of reality in order to proclaim other aspects of it either, and be convincing. And in an era in which resources are so freely available, you might have to go back and take a look at what those early Christians were doing, including St. Paul, a Bishop in the Catholic Church.
Related Threads:
So, even though we reported this yesterday, and used the National Archives as the source:
Scientists working on the Manhattan Project achieved the world’s first man-made, controlled nuclear chain reaction on 12/1/1942. Afterwards, they drank a silent toast to recognize the historic moment. The Chianti bottle’s basket bears their signatures.National Archives, with a link to the photo of the Chianti bottle, which in its original form, as here is called a fiasco.
That it was Chianti, an iconic Italian table wine, is curious.
Every other source claims this happened today.
The December 2 date is clearly the correct one, and for that reason, every December 2 is World Nuclear Energy Day.
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The famous journal, The New Yorker notes:
So their conclusion?
Well, I don't know, as I couldn't get past the paywall. I think I know the answer, and I'll get to that in a moment.
Mostly I'm posting this, however, due to the stupid anti-scientific comments that followed the Twitter article.
Witness:
Nov 7
Replying to @NewYorker
Wonder how many were vaccinated- i think that's an honest and fair question no one is willing to ask
Mark Yerger@yerger224
Replying to @HoltonMusicMan and @NewYorker
its fair to ask anything. it is a fact that this all occurred during the Trump presidency! its fair to ask what his administrations involvement was in all this. yet he continues to evade this issue. I havent seen any denials or documents showing me otherwise.
Well played Yerger.
The same dipshittery appears in this comment:
BiancaD 🇺🇦🌻🤪❣🐷@rigbydan
Nov 8
Replying to @NewYorker
How many were vaccinated, since it was now confirmed that those of us who said the vaccine affected our cycles were proven correct?
Janice's Magic Wand@leighleighmw
Nov 8
Replying to @rigbydan and @NewYorker
There was no vaccine available to children under 12 in 2020.
Again, good, if obvious, comment there to the apparent memory impaired and scientifically bereft BiancaD.
And:
Nov 8
Replying to @NewYorker
One reason is the hormones in the milk. I always bought organic milk and my daughter did not have early puberty like some of her friends.
Lone Stranger@LoneStr06411351
Nov 9
Replying to @Persona49820853 and @NewYorker
You got taken for a ride, then. Pediatric associations have firmly established the actual reason in the vast majority of situations is abundant nutrition. Puberty is delayed in environments of food scarcity. Which predominated much of human history until the last 100 years.
And that is exactly it.
In reality, the onset of puberty ages for girls isn't getting depressed due to hormones in your GMO cheese or mystery chemicals in your Blue Bunny, it's because human beings, or at least girls (one poster raises the good point that these stories seem to omit boys) are genetically programmed for lower onset of puberty ages in times of:1) high nutrition and 2) low physical output.
What were people doing during the pandemic?
I submit to you, they were sitting at home, eating.
In a state of nature, if girls are sitting around eating, their genes think "wow, we're in a super abundant period right now. . . move her up on the reproduction scale".
Now, I'm not claiming that's a good thing, but I am claiming that it's obviously the opposite of this?
Nov 8
Replying to @NewYorker
Does that indicate our future ability to reproduce is questionable?
Lone Stranger @LoneStr06411351
Lone Stranger, did you skip biology class? Girls going to puberty earlier has the polar opposite effect.
Sheesh.
And that's why it's not a good thing.
What this is really evidence of is; 1) too much food, much of which is high calorie bad food, and 2) too little exercise.
Feed girls real food and get them involved in physical activity, the onset age will go up.
Better yet, get them out hunting and fishing, and learning how to produce their own food, and the onset age will go up, their health will improve, and the few who will be taken advantage of will decline in number.
Or, as noted:
Depends. In mammals at least the drift is to delay reproductive capability in times of stress or famine, so as to limit the population numbers straining already critical shortages.
When nutrition is abundant & ubiquitous is when sexual maturity manifests earlier.
Rage quitting this timeline@kesskessler401
