A new spin on the story.

 So the letter written by the legislators now surfaces.  Here it is:

This does shed a new light on it, that being that a person with male DNA is apparently living in a sorority, and also having already revealed his own name, according to his, publicly in celebration of being admitted into a sorority.

Rev. Schmidt's approach, as previously noted, was guaranteed not to solve this problem, but frankly it is a sign of how disordered and illusional our society has become that this is all going on, and it makes hsi approach less aggressive than it otherwise seemed.  The press didn't do a good job on reporting the background on this matter, which would presumably have started with the significant fact that a genetically male person, made to have a female appearance, most likely, only through the aid of pharmaceuticals, was living in housing reserved for women.  There is reason to be concerned about a person with male DNA living in female housing, and likewise the "explore" your sexuality comment is concerning.  And with the added information, Rev. Schmidt did not reveal the name, but rather referenced it, the name having already been revealed by the individual himself, apparently.

At some later era, people will look back on this one as exhibiting a certain sort of insanity on all sorts of things.  This will come after all the lawsuits on the topic, which is undoubtedly coming.

Lex Anteinternet: Just another day in the Big Top

Lex Anteinternet: Just another day in the Big Top: Lex Anteinternet: How to loose friends, make enemies, make a bad arg... : Our friend here again.  As we previoulsy noted, a Morganucodon, ou...

And now we hear from a noted law commentator, as reported in the electronic Cowboy State Daily.

Limited Public Forum  

The policy UW used to justify its action may not be enough from a First Amendment standpoint, Eugene Volokh, First Amendment professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Cowboy State Daily. 

The author of the textbook “The First Amendment and Related Statutes,” Volokh specializes in First Amendment law.   

Government entities like the university are not constitutionally obligated to allow various kinds of speech within their buildings, Volokh said. However, once the entity decides to hold a public forum, the First Amendment right to free speech then extends to people inside the building, though it may be limited by the entity’s existing policies.   

Those policies must be specific and viewpoint neutral, said Volokh, adding that the tabling policy UW referenced in Schmidt’s suspension letter appears too vague to justify suspending his tabling privileges. 

Well as noted by this noted law commentator:

3. There might be a lesson in here in what happens when you convert a building from what was essentially offices, ancillary rooms and a bookstore into one that's a place for loitering of all types.

Just another day in the Big Top

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&#3...

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:

How to loose friends, make enemies, make a bad argument, and discredit everything you stand for. The Transgender issue and a minister in Laramie.

Footnotes:

*I'm going to cite the Jimmy Akin citation rule here and ask why reporters don't upload a link to what they're writing about?  Given as this is about a letter, and give that if we are reading about it, we can read, why don't they upload it so we can read it ourselves?

1. There is absolutely no way in any earlier era in which an Illinoisan who just arrived would have been elected to anything whatsoever in the state.  Yes, that's provincialism, but sometimes provincialism is warranted.

For that matter, Gray couldn't get elected at first either, and in no earlier era would he have been elected Secretary of State.

2. And indeed this has sparked a counter student reaction, as was predictable.

Students can reliably be counted on to support any left wing cause, and pretty much always have.  Communist spies of the 40s and 50s had been recruited out of campuses in the 20s and 30s.  In the 30s, British university youth, who later defended the skies over the UK, publicly declared they wouldn't fight for Britain.  People, who lament the treatment of Vietnam veterans today, protested the war in the 60s.  Shoot, when I was at UW in the 80s nobody would ever say a good word about Ronald Reagan, who is now regarded by many as a hero.

There have been all sorts of students sign petitions on this matter, and not in the way that Ward and the Libertine, um no, the Freedom. . . um no, that doesn't seem right. . . oh, whatever it is, Caucus would like.  And in a recent Trib article students proclaiming unconventional gender orientation, probably some of whom discovered that recently and will find it transitory, stated they were in fear, which if they are is probably because any hype tends to cause fear.

So Schmidt has managed not only to convince, he's done damage, as we said he was doing.

3. There might be a lesson in here in what happens when you convert a building from what was essentially offices, ancillary rooms and a bookstore into one that's a place for loitering of all types.

4.  Is there any word more misused by movements than "freedom"?

5.  A Palestinian protest at UW that occurred only shortly before I went there reportedly received that treatment.  Students simply walked around it.

I don't recall any protests at all while I was there.  While I was in law school, a big march by an out-of-state organization aimed at homosexuals resulted, fairly predictably at that time, in a big counterprotest by local residents who wanted the other group to just shut up and go away.  I recall that surprising non-natives, but not natives, as the ethos of the state at the time was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone".  When people weren't called on to "celebrate" conduct they didn't support, or even were repelled by, they were pretty tolerant.

How to loose friends, make enemies, make a bad argument, and discredit everything you stand for. The Transgender issue and a minister in Laramie.

Our friend here again.  As we previoulsy noted, a Morganucodon, our great, great, great. . . . . grandmother or grandfather. Really.  You'll have to read below to get the point.  By FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15356075

I'm not going to post names, as that is what really go this thing rolling in the first place, in some ways.  What I will  note is that when I say "minister", I am referring to a protestant minister and, as will become clear, what used to sometimes be called a "fundamentalist" protestant minister.

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:

A zygote (from Ancient Greek ζυγωτός (zygōtós) 'joined, yoked', from ζυγοῦν (zygoun) 'to join, to yoke')[1] is a eukaryotic cell formed by a fertilization event between two gametes. The zygote's genome is a combination of the DNA in each gamete, and contains all of the genetic information of a new individual organism.

In multicellular organisms, the zygote is the earliest developmental stage. In humans and most other anisogamous organisms, a zygote is formed when an egg cell and sperm cell come together to create a new unique organism. In single-celled organisms, the zygote can divide asexually by mitosis to produce identical offspring.

Zygote. By Nina Sesina - File:Zygote.tif, CC BY-SA 4.0,

That's how your gender is assigned.  Sperm and egg meet, zygote is formed, and your DNA starts rolling.  Your gender is determined, not assigned, by your DNA.

More particular than that, however, is that your DNA is determined by a long line of evolutionary influences going back to the first life.  Young earther's aside, you go way, way, back in evolutionary terms.

As we've noted before, our species supposedly goes back about 150,000 years, which probably means it goes back 250,000 to 500,000 years. We almost always get that wrong.  

Anyhow, we've noted this story, and this science, before:

Human beings are mammals and mammals.  Of the mammals, primates have the highest sexual dimorphism by quite some measure.  Members of the Homo genus, moreover have the highest sexual dimorphism of the primates.  It's basically off the charts in the animal kingdom.  If you were a space alien and popped down on this planet with no prior knowledge of our species, you'd assume it was two different species the way that you'd note that cattle and sheep are two different species, and one of the things you'd probably note is that one of the species had quite a different body from from the other, and that other was fascinated with it the way that cats are with catnip mice.  The dimorphism extends to our physical bodies in an off the chart fashion, and it also, like it or not, extends to our psychological makeup.

Part of that is that human beings, our species, Homo Sapien Sapien, has the highest sex drive of any member of the primates. So we are the pinnacle, for good or ill, in this category. We're extremely unusual in terms of a mammal, including a primate, in that both males and females are attracted to sexual intercourse outside of the females reproductive receptivity.  Men are, moreover, off the charts on this, and interested pretty much at any time, if the conditions arise.

Your "general assignment", it's tempting to say, was determined 210,000,000 when the first Morganucodon's, the very first known mammals, began to produce cute little babies, but even that really wouldn't completely be true.  It would be true that the path was up and running and, frankly, accelerating as an evolutionary strategy. Warm-blooded, smart, and male and female, they were off and running on raiding reptile eggs and making a general nuisance of themselves to the taxonomic order that had dominated for millennia.

Of course, even earlier than that, around 250,000,000, mammals started to evolve out of reptiles, and reptiles were also male and female, and go back over 300,000,000 years.

In other words, the male and female thing is really baked in.  It goes all the way back, and as mammals came on, "la différance" increased in fashions that matter in many mammals, and in particular in primates, and particularly in primates amongst the genus homo, of which you, dear reader, are a member of.

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:

Genetics I: After all the propoganda, this is what actually matters.

Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries that aren't.

Cis

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Friday Farming: New UW Extension Publications Estimate Economic Impact of Removing Federal Grazing

In a word, it would be far-reaching:

New UW Extension Publications Estimate Economic Impact of Removing Federal Grazing

None of which kept a Cheyenne newspaper I'd never heard of from claiming basically that ranching is irrelevant in regard to the state's agriculture, the sort of headline that causes even people not otherwise inclined to distrust the press and suspect it has an agenda to do just that.

The Tribune, I'd note, did much better with its headline.

The Studies, as posted on the UW Ag Extension site, can be found here:

	Economic Impacts of Removing Federal Grazing Used by Cattle Ranches in a Three-State Area (Idaho, Oregon, and Wyoming) Publication #: B-1385.4 Publication Type: Bulletin Date Published: 08/18/2022 Publication Author(s): David T. Taylor, John Tanaka, Kristie Maczko

	Economic Impacts of Removing Federal Grazing Used by Cattle Ranches in Oregon Publication #: B-1385.3 Publication Type: Bulletin Date Published: 08/18/2022 Publication Author(s): David T. Taylor, John Tanaka, Kristie Maczko

	Economic Impacts of Removing Federal Grazing Used by Cattle Ranches in Idaho Publication #: B-1385.2 Publication Type: Bulletin Date Published: 08/18/2022 Publication Author(s): David T. Taylor, John Tanaka, Kristie Maczko

Economic Impacts of Removing Federal Grazing Used by Cattle Ranches in Wyoming Publication #: B-1385.1 Publication Type: Bulletin Date Published: 08/18/2022 Publication Author(s): David T. Taylor, John Tanaka, Kristie Maczko

Note, that's a direct copy from the UW Ag extension website.

I'd note that part of the ongoing angst of our age is the real boneheaded effort to remove agriculture from the public lands.  It would end up developing those lands, as if areas like Ft. Collins or Denver are somehow a better thing for nature.  The people who advocate such things haven't really thought them through

Going Feral: Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources to receive $1,000,000 Grant.

Going Feral: Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources t...: 

Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources to receive $1,000,000 Grant.

Wyoming's Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources received an $1,000,000 to establish an Intentional Wildlife Conservation Chair.  The purpose is to boost the pursuit of careers in that area.

The fund will be named for John L. Koprowski , Dean of the school, following his retirement.

Monday, September 10, 1922. UW "kidnapping"

The Soviet Union introduced universal male conscription, starting at age 20.

The Reserve Officers Association was formed in the US.  Originally an organization made up of reserve officers who had served in World War One, it's now an association that includes reservists of all ranks.

Lithuania introduced the Lita as its currency, replacing German currency it had been used.

1922 10 Lita banknote.

A now passed UW tradition was practiced.

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck to Retire.

Today In Wyoming's History: Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck to Retire.: 

Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck to Retire.

Bob "Butter Bob" Beck of Wyoming Public Radio, a giant in Wyoming radio, will be retiring in October and moving to Syracuse, New York with his fiancé.  He's been at the University of Wyoming based radio station since 1988.

He has covered Wyoming via radio longer than any other broadcaster.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Four

From a handbill at a University of Wyoming protest, photo by MKTH.

March 27, 2022

Russo-Ukrainian War

In a typical year, the Wars and Rumors of Wars thread last the entire year.  Not this year, we're on to the fourth edition, and the war in Ukraine is the reason why.

Let's start with the situation on the ground, and the status of that is this.  Over the last week, the Russians lost ground.

March 27, 2022

By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

While it would probably serve to compare this to the map last put up in the prior edition of this tread, we'll simply note here that the Russians lost a lot of ground in the north.  But they also lost it in the south. From the appearances of things, the Ukrainians are mounting a relief effort on Mariupol, and they've made up a lot of lost ground.

As we noted yesterday:

March 26, 2022

Russia declared yesterday that its goal in the war had been to take all the Donbas region and that the larger offensive was just a diversion, a claim that's fairly obviously baloney.  More likely, this signals an effort to recast the war in that light, perhaps to the Russians themselves, in an effort to declare victory and potentially wind the operation down in light of the difficulties it has been facing.

The announcement is quite significant, however, as it signals the war has likdly entered a new phase with Russian forces going, at least temporarily, into a defensive posture.

Russian forces have ceased offensive actions near Kyvi and gone on the defensive.  Ukrainian forces have been on the offensive there in recent days.

The BBC reports that the Russians have lost a total of six generals in the war in Ukraine.  In contrast, the United States lost 12 generals during the long Vietnam War, and one in Afghanistan.

Quite frankly, this war has been amazingly revealing regarding Russia and its military capabilities.  The West has consistently overestimated the fighting capacity of Russia, dating back at least to World War One, and it very obviously did so again.  The Russian Army was widely assumed to essentially be the Red Army with a new name, and that in fact may be its trouble.

The troops are bottom of the barrel conscripts, armed for the most part with outdated equipment. Russian tanks, always thought to be beyond reproach since the truly excellent T-34 and other late World War Two Soviet tanks, are junk.  Their design thesis, which emphasized low profile and low weight, proves to have been spectacularly in error.  That the Russians are now ceasing the offensive gives strong evidence of this.  Ukrainian infantrymen repeatedly destroying Russian tanks with shoulder fired missiles as if they're opening cans with a can opener can't be ignored forever.

Ukraine's military, in contrast, has had a decade of Western assistance and is evolving into a Western army.  President Zelinskyy pointedly noted this last week when, addressing NATO, he noted that he didn't ever want to hear again that Ukraine's army isn't up to NATO standards.

Zelinskyy has begged for heavier Western weapons, and frankly in my view he should be given them.  Western nations maintain thousands of older weapons that, frankly, are better than those which are first line for the Russians.  In terms of armor, stored M60 and late M48 tanks are pretty clearly better than the Russian ones, as the late use of M60s in Iraq by the Marine Corps demonstrated.  Assistance now needs to emphasize offensive weapons, of which we have a fair number of older stored models.  As Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pointed out, even a small percentage of our newer ones would be significant assistance to Ukraine.

In the long run, that assistance would be assistance to Russia and the world as well.  Putin cannot survive defeat in Ukraine, and it's questionable whether he can survive what has, in effect, been a massive military failure.  In 1990, it looked for a time as if Russia would evolve into a real democracy, something that Russian democrats have struggled to create since the late 1800s.  Under Yeltsin, it was on its way, until Putin, dragged it back.  If Putin falls, Russia may fall into democracy, at long last.

March 28, 2022

Ukraine signaled yesterday that it would consider as a negotiation result for an end to the war, or a ceasefire, a Russian withdrawal to that territory Russia occupied prior to the war and an official neutral status for Ukraine, with that neutrality guaranteed by outside powers.

Russians are laying mines in the areas that they have dug in at, north of Kyiv.

President Biden in a speech stated that Putin could not remain in power, a statement that was walked back by the administration nearly immediately thereafter.

On the weekend shows, Face The Nation had really good analysis of the state of the war, something television and the news in general frequently does not.

March 30, 2022

While the claim was greeted with nearly universal skepticism, the Russians claim that they are pulling back from the area around Kyiv in a show of good faith.

March 31, 2022

Declassified US intelligence reports indicate that Putin is being misled by his own advisors on the progress of the war in Ukraine.  Putin has reportedly become very isolated in general, and his advisors apparently fear telling him the truth.

Russia has kept up strikes on cities in spite of its promise to pull back.  US defense analysis feel that Russia is merely redeploying its forces to the east, but that may fail to give credit to the level of attrition that forces around Kyiv have sustained which may, in fact, make them incapable of being redeployed.

Ukraine hit targets inside of Russia with artillery yesterday for the first time in the war.

President Biden promised Ukraine 500,000,000 in additional aid.

March 31, 2022 cont:

Ukrainians have retaken Chernobyl.

Russian soldiers who were at Chernobyl are now sick with acute radiation poisoning.  Several days ago it was noted that they had dug into radioactive soil.

Russian Air Force planes armed with nuclear weapons violated Swedish airspace on March 2, interrupting a joint Swedish/Finnish exercise.

April 1, 2022

It seems relatively well established that Ukrainian helicopters raided an oil storage facility at Belgorod today. Belgorod is north of Kharkiv, in Russia.

The odd thing is the Russians are complaining about it.

What kind of weird mindset do you actually have to be possessed of in order to invade a neighboring country, and bombard its cities for days, and then be shocked, amazed, and upset, when they cross your border and wipe something out?

The more amazing thing, I suppose, is that the Ukrainians have recovered the initiative to this extent and that the Russians are doing so badly that their border, at least in this instance, is now porous.

April 2, 2022

Ukraine has now pushed the Russians out of the areas that they had taken near Kyiv.

April 2, 2022

By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

In the east, an offensive had recaptured an area in the northeast all the way to the Russian border.

In the south, the Russians have gained ground west of the Dneiper.

The Pentagon is warning of a major Russian offensive in the east being imminent.

Withdrawing Russian forces are mining some of the areas they are withdrawing from.

Ukrainian Generals Naumov Andriy Olehovych and Kryvoruchko Serhiy Oleksandrovych, both of whom had intelligence roles, have been cashiered from the Ukrainian Army under allegations of treason.

April 3, 2022

Former United Nations chief prosecutor for war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Carla Del Ponte,  has called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Maks Levin (Максим Євгенович Левін) Ukrainian press photographer, was killed by Russian soldiers while covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine where he had recently been documenting Russian war crimes.

April 5, 2022

North Korea v. South Korea.

North Korea's Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, issued a statement in which she declared that North Korea is prepared to eliminate the South Korean military. This followed a South Korean statement the other day that labeled North Korea as the enemy and declared that South Korean is capable of taking out the North Korean military in a preemptive strike. 

The war in Ukraine has to be unsettling to North Korea in that its military is based on the Soviet model, as are their weapons, both of which are failing at an epic rate right now.

April 5, 2022, cont:

Russo Ukrainian War

The Czech Republic has been and is sending T-72 tanks to Ukraine.  It's considering repairing Ukrainian tanks inside the Czech Republic.  Other rolling equipment is being sent as well.

April 6, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War

President Zelenskyy basically called the United Nations out on the carpet yesterday, pointing out the irony that an organization in which Russia has a veto can't really stand for its principals.  He asked for the UN to reform itself, and to aid Ukraine.

This situation map has changed dramatically in the last view days.

April 6, 2022

By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

The war is now concetrated in the east and southeast, with the Russian offensive in the north not only halted, but all Russian gains eliminated due to Ukrainian counteroffensives and successful defensive operations, resulting in Russian withdrawals.  Defense analysts repeated warn that Russian forces are redeploying, which may be correct.  Ukrainain forces are also redeploying, however, and have much shorter interior lines.  My guess is that Russian forces will be completely pushed out of the northeast in the next few days.

An open question is the extent to which Russian forces are actually being withdrawn as they've been destroyed to teh level of being combat ineffective, something that has received little attention.  The units in the north were engaged in heavy combat since the start of the war and may be so seriously depoeted in men and equipment that they cannot be reconstituted and returned to combat quickly, if at all.

Russian forces in the southeast have regained ground that they'd earlier taken but were pushed out of last week.

The Russians have been hitting Odessa with missles which has led to speculation on whether they intend to attempt to land there, although I doubt that they will.

As Russian forces have withdrawn, evidence of rape and murder, including the murder of women and children, has been coming forth.  This has been a hallmark of the Russian forces since the late Second World War and is something that has been mentioned here already, but which has now appeared in several other venues, including written ones, and on Face The Nation.  It's difficult to explain how this seems to have become such a feature of Russian forces, but its now been noted that not only was this a feature of their behavior in the late Second World War, but also in their more recent actions in Chechya.  It's now been perpetrated against Ukrainians, which takes it to a new height, in a way, in that during the Second World War it was somewhat excused as actions taken in revenge for German atrocities on Soviet soil, and in Chechnya it was basically ignored as that conflict was basically ignored.  Now, however, Russian soldiers are murdering members of a culture whose invasion was presented as one to "liberate" a people that Putin claims are really Russians.

All this gets back, of course, to yesterday's speech by Zelenskyy and an earlier statement by President Biden.  The question of how Putin can remain in control of one of Russia, which has now invaded a neighbor and whose troops have engaged in rape and murder, is a good one.  And how the UN can maintain legitimacy with Russia in the Security Council is as well.

April 11, 2022

Russo Ukrainian War

April 11, 2022

By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141

Northern and Northeastern Ukraine have now been liberated from Russian control and the war, right now, is about the east and southeast.

Alexander Dvornikov, age 60, has been placed in commanad of the Russian effort.  He has prior combat command experience from Syria.  It is widely speculated that the Russians shall commences a renewed offensive in the east to consolidate their gains there.

The Russians hit a train station a couple of days ago in a missle strike, killing up to fifty civilians.  One of the missles was marked "for the children".

Congo

The rebel group M23 from areas that it recently took in the eastern part of the country so that negotiations could take place.  The group lead a rebellion in 2014.

April 11, 2022, cont.

Russo Ukrainian War

Russia, by requiring payment in rubles, is now regarded as having defaulted on its foreign debts.

Last Prior Thread:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2022. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition, Part Three

Related threads:

A minor and disturbing example of how quickly war changes things. The singing of Sofia Shkidchenko.

Does this not cry out for further involvement?

Lamentations

Sunday Morning Scene: March 25, 2022. On the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. An Act of Consecration To the Immaculate Heart of Mary. АКТ ПОСВЯЩЕНИЯ НЕПОРОЧНОМУ СЕРДЦУ МАРИИ. АКТ ПРИСВЯЧЕННЯ НЕПОРОЧНОМУ СЕРЦЮ МАРІЇ.

Blog Mirror: Over 450 Companies Have Withdrawn from Russia—But Some Remain. Yale School Of Management

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part IX. The Russo Ukrainian War edition.

Poster Saturday. Russo Ukrainian War Poster Art

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXX. The Russo Ukrainian War Edition.

Poster Saturday. Living by the sword.

The Russo Ukrainian War. Russian Generals

A Daily Reading

Ash Wednesday 2022. A day of fasting and prayer for Peace.

Some observations on the war in Ukraine

Ukraine is crying out for help and has been for some time. . .

What will a war between Ukraine and Russia mean for everyone else?

Tuesday January 4, 1972. The HP-35 introduced.

It was Hewitt Packard's first scientific calculator.

Priced at $395, over $2,000 in today's money due to absurd inflation, it was aimed at a specialized market.

It was also, quite obviously, the shape of things to come.

More on the HP-35.

I've never been very good at math.

I'm not sure why, I wish I was.  I'm better than some, but when I get into more advanced math. . . well I'm just not great.

My father, on the other hand, was great at math.  And my grandfather on his side, who died long before I was born, was so good at math that he helped my father and his siblings with their high school calculus even though he'd left school at age 13.

My father tried to help me, but to no avail.

I first had a calculator at some point in junior high, so calculators must have come on really quickly.  Mine was a Casio.  It worked for years and years, but by the time I was in high school it had apparently already become obsolete, as my next one was some sort of Texas Instrument.

Not the really great Texas Instrument, which I wouldn't have really needed anyhow.

My last year of high school math was when I was a junior.  It was geometry and I struggled in it.  Later on, you couldn't have gotten away with only three semesters of high school mathematics, but I did then.  I had my TI in that class, but it never worked right after I dropped it out of my Jeep one day upon coming home from school, and it spent a cold night on the driveway.  No matter, I didn't take any more math in high school anyhow.

Then at Casper College I had to make up essentially an entire high school mathematics curriculum in one semester.  I did it, but it was awful.

We weren't allowed to use calculators in that class.

My next one was a statistical calculator that we could use in statistics at the University of Wyoming.  It was a great calculator, and that was a great and fun class.

At UW, as a geology major, I had to take through, if I recall correctly Calc 3.  I did it, but I still can't say that I'm very good at really advanced mathematics, sadly.

A couple of interesting items. . .

 to ponder.

View from the S H Knight (geology) Building in 1986.

Recent research has indicated that humans reached the Faeroe Islands at least 300 years prior to the Vikings doing so.

This doesn't surprise me a bit, and apparently it's been more or less known for some time, and its what I would have expected, but new studies, involving obtaining DNA from the bottom of a lake, has proven it conclusively.

Evidence of really old sheep defecation was found down there.  Maybe sort of gross sounding in a way, but really cool nonetheless.  So not only was early colonization much earlier than guessed at, but it was true colonization.  I.e, we know about this place and we're bringing our sheep.

Really cool, in my opinion, is that part of the groundbreaking research was done by Dr. Lorelei Curtin of the University of Wyoming. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's Department of Geology and Geophysics, of which I'm a graduate.

She specializes, I'd note, in climate research and another study just out notes that global cooling seems to be brought about by global warming. Something I was taught when a student in that department some 35 or so years ago.

Graduates of the other department that I'm a graduate of, the College of Law, have not pegged me out on the pride meter much as time has gone on, but the Department of Geology and Geophysics is different.

Well, go Pokes.

I'll note this as well. The Vikings first settled Iceland starting in 874 and Greenland around 980.  I'm guessing that the last date is correct, but I'll bet that somebody was on Iceland by 874. Rather obviously, the Vikings weren't great at recording who exactly was where they went, when they got there, as the Faeroe Island discovery more or less proves.

The University of Wyoming, October 1908.

University of Wyoming.  October, 1908.

Averting Disaster

Back in July we ran this:

Lex Anteinternet: Facing economic reality. The disaterous neglect o...:  Big news at the University of Wyoming: UW Proposes Transformation in Light of Budget Reductions, Changing Needs So the university is going ...

Well, through careful reorganization and internal budget cuts, the big layoffs are being avoided.  No departments are being eliminated either.

This is certainly good news, but it is surprising in context.