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Tuesday, May 17. 2022

Virginia school district considering suspensions for ‘malicious misgendering

The Certainty Trap. The solution to our broken political conversation won’t be found in censoring ‘misinformation’ but in recognizing the profound limits of our own beliefs

Confessions of a Social-Justice Meme Maker. I made pretty pictures that helped keep people enraged and mobilized. Then I asked myself: ‘Why am I doing this?‘

Guaranteed Income Idiocy Easily Scales To Infinity, Actual Free Money Doesn't

Peter Doocy Leaves Karine Jean-Pierre Gasping for Air After Simple Question on Inflation

Buffalo Shootings: Glenn Greenwald for the Defense

Tucker Carlson Responds to Charges He Inspired Buffalo Shooter, Makes His Critics Look Like Childish Ghouls

Death by a thousand cuts: where is the west's Ukraine strategy? The pounding, daily western narratives on 'Ukrainian wins' and 'Russian losses' underpins the lack of an actual, cohesive Grand Strategy against Moscow

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 07:30 | Comments (42) | Trackbacks (0)

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FCPS tries to boast of how good they are, but they are really quite poor in many ways. It's the worst combination of stereotypical rural southerners, combined with the inflated egos of bureaucrats.

I think VPI is a great school, but if you look at the grades for incoming freshmen, you will see very high GPAs, with somewhat lower SAT/ACT scores compared with peer institutions in the midwest.

IOW, FCPS inflates grades to inflate teachers' egos and satisfy ignorant parents.

#1 DrTorch (Link) on 2022-05-17 09:14 (Reply)

No offense but the one thing Fairfax is NOT is a bunch of "stereotypical rural southerners". The view most of us have in Red VA is that Fairfax is full of carpetbaggers working for the Federal Government. If we could give it to DC or the People's Republic of MD we would in a heartbeat.

#1.1 John Fisher on 2022-05-17 09:24 (Reply)

You might be surprised at the mix that is Fairfax County. Especially teachers who move in to the area looking for high salaries.

#1.1.1 DrTorch (Link) on 2022-05-17 13:05 (Reply)

The actual grand strategy the West had on Ukraine was to throw it to the Russian wolves while evacuating the oligarchs from Kiev and keeping Russian fossil fuels flowing to Europe. For better or worse the Ukrainians toasted that strategy by fighting instead of surrendering and the West has been scrambling to catch up ever since. Keep in mind that before the Russian invasion the Germans would only let humanitarian aid fly though German airspace to Ukraine. That tells you all you need to know about Western 'strategy'.

At this point one of Tom Clancy's supporting characters said it best.
Admiral Josh Painter: This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

#2 John Fisher on 2022-05-17 09:21 (Reply)

Karine Jean-Pierre is an embarassment and demonstrates the idiocy of IdPol DEI job placement. To think these schmucks get a paycheck for shucking and jiving.

#3 Joe B on 2022-05-17 09:22 (Reply)

Another (inevitable) affirmative action failure. Is there anyone who could honestly believe that such a dim bulb would have gotten such a high-visibility job if she weren't black? What are we supposed to do now, ignore the fact that she's failing at it?

#3.1 Hairless Joe on 2022-05-17 09:35 (Reply)

I don’t know, I think she perfectly encapsulates the entire ‘leadership’ of this country. She is a reflection of the utter ineptitude that seeks to rule over us with an iron fist. It’s been my experience that incompetent people don’t pick competent people as underlings.

Thanks for the laugh: The combination of Yiddish with African-American lingo. It’s probably racist, hate-speech. We’ll be thrown into the camps.

#3.2 B. Hammer on 2022-05-17 10:04 (Reply)

Netherlands to ban fossil heating by 2026, make heat pumps mandatory

QUOTE:

The Dutch government intends to ban new fossil fuel-centric heating system installations as of 2026, while introducing the mandatory use of heat pumps or connections to heat networks.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/netherlands-to-ban-fossil-heating-by-2026-make-heat-pumps-mandatory/

I guess the Dutch pols can argue that they will be reducing their reliance on natural gas imports AND fighting global warming. It's a twofer.

The little people having to pay ever higher utility bills is of no concern to them.

#4 feeblemind on 2022-05-17 09:27 (Reply)

Well, the Netherlands is about the same latitude as Newfoundland, although its climate is more temperate. I wonder what heat pumps run on? I'm sure every single Dutch citizen is going to puff up with virtue as they shiver and watch the news about all the new coal-fired power plants in India and China.

#4.1 Aggie on 2022-05-17 10:31 (Reply)

Aggie: I wonder what heat pumps run on?

Most of the energy comes from the temperature differential, either between the ground and the home or between the inside air and the outside air. Modern heat pumps are about 2-3 times as efficient as direct heating options, even in colder climates.
https://sealed.com/resources/winter-heat-pump/

#4.1.1 Zachriel on 2022-05-17 12:22 (Reply)

No - That's how heat pumps work, not what they run on. They run on electricity. And they work with fair efficiency in warm climates, such as the southern USA. Their efficiency advantages diminish in more temperate climates where there is colder weather. So it is not terribly likely that they will end up being the best choice for the Dutch. But then, the Dutch seem to enjoy their self-imposed miseries, don't they?

Now, my heat pumps are equipped with supplemental electrical heating strips, which use electrical resistance to produce heat. It's the least efficient way to do it. If I was hooked up to a gas main, my supplemental heat would be from gas, because it's more efficient. Note that, even in a warm climate like Texas, the heat pump does not provide enough heat exchanging capacity with its own process to heat the home without supplemental devices.

#4.1.1.1 Aggie on 2022-05-17 13:50 (Reply)

Heat pumps have their issues, but the issues you highlight are due to poor design by the American manufacturers. After all, they had fossil fuel furnace and boiler businesses to protect. Better designed systems are already out in the mini-split segment that can heat down to the -20s.

Where you run into trouble is how they throw systems into homes without proper design or insulation. The high heat fossil fuel systems just burned more fuel to overcome the heat loss.

But air-source heat pumps most common in the US do have lower efficiency starting just above 32F due to the need to defrost the outdoor coil due to frost build up.

#4.1.1.1.1 JK Brown on 2022-05-17 14:14 (Reply)

Yes, that's interesting. My home is very well insulated but has lots of (supposedly energy efficient double-paned) windows for the view, which compromises energy efficiency. Still, I do better than my neighbors on the electric bill - I installed 20+ SEER units when we built. I've had a geothermal-type heat exchanging system before, the kind that has a below-ground circulation loop, but I wasn't impressed with it. A lot of maintenance, and dubious benefits compared to other tech at the time. No doubt these have improved too.

But my point is, I think that heat exchangers are still not terribly likely to be a good solution for the Dutch. Even if they venture into geothermal systems, where will the wells go? The majority of Belgium's population is urban. Where to sink the wells for a 100 year-old apartment complex with 500 people, for instance? What will the long term effect be with a high density of geothermal wells in an urban setting? Ripping the boiler heat out of these will not be easy, cheap, or low impact. But as I said, the Dutch love their self-imposed miseries.

What it means is you get more heat out than the energy you put in. . Now by Jiminy, that's a development. Does this mean the Supreme Court has repealed Émilie du Châtelet's Law of Conservation of Energy?

#4.1.1.1.1.1 Aggie on 2022-05-17 18:41 (Reply)

Its magic! I have customers here in Michigan that have been interested but the initial cost is usually prohibitive . All have expressed the fact a backup will be required as a factor. Money talks when you have a choice.

#4.1.1.1.1.1.1 Bb on 2022-05-20 20:06 (Reply)

Aggie: That's how heat pumps work, not what they run on.

What it means is you get more heat out than the energy you put in.

Aggie: Their efficiency advantages diminish in more temperate climates where there is colder weather.

Older systems were ineffective below 0°C, but newer systems work well even in below freezing weather.

See Zhang et al., Application of an air source heat pump (ASHP) for heating in Harbin, the coldest provincial capital of China, Energy and Buildings 2017:

#4.1.1.1.2 Zachriel on 2022-05-17 15:21 (Reply)

"More heat out than the energy you put in"--and you expect anyone to take seriously the technical conclusions you claim to have drawn from the links you post, which you clearly don't even read, let alone understand. Do please go away.

#4.1.1.1.2.1 Texan99 on 2022-05-18 08:18 (Reply)

Texan99: More heat out than the energy you put in

T: "The fan is hardly moving the air."
Z: "Open the window. There's a nice breeze."
T: "That would violate the second law of thermodynamics."

#4.1.1.1.2.1.1 Zachriel on 2022-05-18 09:08 (Reply)

Notice that (((Quibble-DickZ))) still won't acknowledge their error.

#4.1.1.1.2.1.1.1 Zachinoff on 2022-05-18 21:02 (Reply)

Sure, and luckily it doesn't take any energy to keep the car moving, no need to count that in the equation when you're scaling up your "free cooling" system.

#4.1.1.1.2.1.1.2 Texan99 on 2022-05-19 07:24 (Reply)

Texan99: Sure, and luckily it doesn't take any energy to keep the car moving

Huh?

#4.1.1.1.2.1.1.2.1 Zachriel on 2022-05-19 08:57 (Reply)

A heat pump delivers 2-3 times as much heat as the energy used to drive the heat pump.

#4.1.1.1.2.1.1.2.2 Zachriel on 2022-05-19 09:13 (Reply)

Notice the (((Quibble-Dicks))) didn’t have an answer to your question.

#4.1.2 Zachinoff on 2022-05-17 12:45 (Reply)

Yes, it's comical to see her try to answer technical things. But she never owns her ignorance or her lies. And all while she's trying to open other peoples' minds b/c we're so ignorant.

#4.1.2.1 DrTorch (Link) on 2022-05-17 13:07 (Reply)

Heat pumps are devices like your A/C condenser outside your home. Electric power of course. Simplistically they are engineered to reverse the coolant flow such that the cool from your home is exhausted out of your house while heat from outdoors is brought into your home. It’s required that the outdoor temp be above 32° F (0° C) to be effective. During hot weather the coolant flow is reversed to exchange the cool are into your home naturally.

#4.1.3 Franknbean on 2022-05-17 12:58 (Reply)

Franknbean: Electric power of course.

The energy can be from most any source. Natural gas is not uncommon. Suppose you could use hamsters, though most everyone is moving to electric.

Franknbean: It’s required that the outdoor temp be above 32° F (0° C) to be effective.

Modern heat pumps can operate efficiently down to 0°F.

#4.1.3.1 Zachriel on 2022-05-17 13:07 (Reply)

"Modern heat pumps can operate efficiently down to 0°F."

As the owner of a new modern heat pump, this is complete bullshit. It struggles mightily in the cold and at 0 it's virtually useless.

#4.1.3.1.1 Eeyore on 2022-05-17 23:22 (Reply)

Keep in mind that most of the energy comes from the temperature differential, so a heat pump will be more efficient than direct heating.

#4.1.3.2 Zachriel on 2022-05-17 13:24 (Reply)

At least that is what heat pump manufacturers claim.
If you know anyone that uses heat pumps to warm their houses they will tell you they use supplemental sources when temps fall below freezing.

#4.1.3.2.1 Zachinoff on 2022-05-17 13:33 (Reply)

But she read it on a web site, so it must be true!

I enjoy having natural gas heat, definitely feels more comfortable.

But then I'm also not an emaciated wrestler (far from it!) living in a northern clime. Still, given a choice, I'd choose CH4 regardless. Home always feels warmer than w/ electric sources.

#4.1.3.2.1.1 DrTorch (Link) on 2022-05-17 14:12 (Reply)

My experience is that homes with heat pumps have HIGHER utility bill than those thaat don't.

Since the idea for heat pumps in the Netherlands is coming from the Central Planners and not from The Market, I think it is a pretty safe bet that this will result in higher, not lower heating and cooling bills.

#4.1.3.2.2 feeblemind on 2022-05-17 13:38 (Reply)

feeblemind: My experience is that homes with heat pumps have HIGHER utility bill than those thaat don't.

QUOTE:

Today's heat pump can reduce your electricity use for heating by approximately 50% compared to electric resistance heating such as furnaces and baseboard heaters. High-efficiency heat pumps also dehumidify better than standard central air conditioners, resulting in less energy usage and more cooling comfort in summer months. Air-source heat pumps have been used for many years in nearly all parts of the United States, but until recently they have not been used in areas that experienced extended periods of subfreezing temperatures. However, in recent years, air-source heat pump technology has advanced so that it now offers a legitimate space heating alternative in colder regions.
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-systems

The coefficient of performance is typically 2-3. See Chua et al., Advances in heat pump systems: A review, Applied Energy 2010.

#4.1.3.2.2.1 Zachriel on 2022-05-17 15:28 (Reply)

Heat pumps (properly applied) will produce more heat for a given input of electricity than direct electric heating will, because some of it comes from the outside of the house. They will generally be more expensive than e.g. gas heat, simply because if you burn gas to make electricity, the energy conversion is far less than 100% (much of the energy goes up the generating station's smokestack, is lost in the wires, etc).

Here in southern NJ heat pumps are often designed to extract heat from the groundwater, which we have a lot of. That water is always about 55 deg F year round. Water has a tremendous heat capacity, far more than air, so in principle the machines can work at optimum efficiency. Of course that won't work in places where the groundwater is absent or too deep to be readily accessible.

There is no rational reason to use heat pumps unless natural gas is not distributed in your area, or government idiots have arranged to make it uneconomical to use.

#4.1.3.2.2.2 Hairless Joe on 2022-05-19 10:21 (Reply)

The US has their own version of this as the NYC Housing Authority has mandated heat pumps to replace the steam heating systems.

Historical tidbit- Post-1918 Pandemic, engineering books advised that steam heating systems should be sized to heat the home on the coldest day of the year, with the windows open and the wind blowing. It was to meet the demands of the Fresh Air Movement that advised sleeping with the windows open. They also removed double glazed windows to single pan to facilitate air infiltration like those country folk.

Then the 1970s came along and all those buildings were energy inefficient.

#4.2 JK Brown on 2022-05-17 14:26 (Reply)

The Wests Ukraine strategy resembles the Biden Afghanistan strategy. Hope for positive media coverage while bumbling down the road of money laundering and inevitable strategic failure.

#5 indyjonesouthere on 2022-05-17 10:41 (Reply)

The Certainty Trap is the result of the sad fact that the college graduates rarely become educated

QUOTE:

[G]etting educated is getting an inkling of the immensity of our ignorance.
---Karl Popper (1969)

Spending four or more years passing tests does not "educated" make. In the past, the college student was exposed to educated people in the form of their professors, but that is increasingly rare these days. If you don't walk out of college knowing that you know very little about the world as a whole, you aren't educated.

QUOTE:

The idea is, of course, that men are successful because they have gone to college. No idea was ever more absurd. No man is successful because he has managed to pass a certain number of courses and has received a sheepskin which tells the world in Latin, that neither the world nor the graduate can read, that he has successfully completed the work required. If the man is successful, it is because he has the qualities for success in him; the college "education" has merely, speaking in terms' of horticulture, forced those qualities and given him certain intellectual tools with which to work—tools which he could have got without going to college, but not nearly so quickly. So far as anything practical is concerned, a college is simply an intellectual hothouse. For four years the mind of the undergraduate is put "under glass," and a very warm and constant sunshine is poured down upon it. The result is, of course, that his mind blooms earlier than it would in the much cooler intellectual atmosphere of the business world.

A man learns more about business in the first six months after his graduation than he does in his whole four years of college. But—and here is the "practical" result of his college work—he learns far more in those six months than if he had not gone to college. He has been trained to learn, and that, to all intents and purposes, is all the training he has received. To say that he has been trained to think is to say essentially that he has been trained to learn, but remember that it is impossible to teach a man to think. The power to think must be inherently his. All that the teacher can do is help him learn to order his thoughts—such as they are.

Marks, Percy, "Under Glass", Scribner's Magazine Vol 73, 1923, p 47

Jordan Peterson speaking on free speech gets to the very heart of what college used to develop in students. That is the ability to internally debate, usually in words, an issue to break it down and find insight into it. Without free speech there is no ratiocination, only automatic, memoriter thought.

#6 JK Brown on 2022-05-17 11:42 (Reply)

"One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed-up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience" — Thomas Sowell

#6.1 Erasmus on 2022-05-17 11:49 (Reply)

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain

#6.1.1 Aggie on 2022-05-17 14:00 (Reply)

That's (((zachriel's))) philosophy of life.

#6.1.2 DrTorch (Link) on 2022-05-17 16:14 (Reply)

I've said for years that the push to get every kid into college is just cargo-cult mentality. Notice that college graduates do better financially over their lifetimes and assume it's the piece of paper that does it rather than assume that the same traits that lead one to do well in college lead one to do well in business.

#6.2 Jerryskids on 2022-05-17 19:24 (Reply)

Re: Guaranteed Income Idiocy Easily Scales To Infinity, Actual Free Money Doesn't

It should not surprise us that the left would promote the idea of guaranteed income. It has been tried in several cities all over the world and failed each time. Just like socialism and communism has been tried over and over and failed. The left still has the hubris to believe they can do it right this time even though they are not curious enough to even get past their slogans and learn first, that it failed and second, why it failed.

#7 mudbug on 2022-05-17 12:02 (Reply)

We'll never finish proving this to people who can't learn. The bulk of the population can choose to support generously a small fraction of the unluckiest--the very ill or disabled--without cratering the economy and impoverishing everyone. But it bothers people that "only a few" are getting help, so they imagine that the solution is for a smaller and smaller slice of society should bleed itself dry to support a larger and larger majority. The majority who'd like to be permanently on the take have never understand what induces the minority to produce, so they can't make real to themselves that you can really kill the golden goose. They're gobsmacked by the ensuing Venezuela or Zimbabwe every time.

I suppose if they could learn they wouldn't always have to try to find a way to be on the take.

#7.1 Texan99 on 2022-05-18 08:30 (Reply)

Speaking of learning, I've really got to learn to use "preview" to catch typos before I post. An edit feature would be so nice.

#8 Texan99 on 2022-05-18 08:31 (Reply)

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Tuesday, May 17. 2022

Tuesday morning links