This story doesn’t say if the over-voltage would have knocked out older style electric meters (non-smart).

The surge was enough (in terms of voltage and duration) to overwhelm/jump across: (a) additional transformers “downstream”, (b) the homes’ main circuit breaker and (c) the individual circuit breakers and (d) go on to blacken wall receptacles.  So I would suppose that a surge that large would still have blown out the older “dumb” meters too. (more…)

1. All American children used to grow up hearing the story of how little George Washington cut down a cherry tree, then confessed to the deed by saying, “I cannot tell a lie.”

2. It is generally agreed among historians, even those not disposed to tear down the reputations of the Founding Fathers, that the cherry tree story was an invention of Parson Weems.

3. Therefore, George Washington almost certainly did not exist, and we need to stop hurting people by making such a fetish of honesty based on fairy tales like these.

Q.E.D.

For all of you, not for me.

(more…)

[Following are the final two paragraphs from James Thurber’s “Sex Ex Machina” which first appeared in The New Yorker, March 13, 1937.]

I should like to end with the case history of a friend of mine in Ohio named Harvey Lake. When he was only nineteen, the steering bar of an old electric runabout broke of in his hand, causing the machine to carry him through a fence and into the grounds of the Columbus School for Girls. He developed a fear of automobiles, trains, and every other kind of vehicle that was not pulled by a horse. (more…)

There is no way, period, that any lasting settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians—including one that requires the painful removal of a substantial number of Israeli settlements from the West Bank—will be credible without third-party backing. The United Nations is useless for this purpose, so the only creditable guarantee is an alliance of Western nations led by the United States. Here, the death of Pax Americana is taking its toll. The Israelis and the rest of the world know that the United States will not be a credible guarantor of any peace so long as President Obama remains in office. Such is the legacy of American foreign policy in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, and the Ukraine.

Thus Richard Epstein.

Whose book on constitutional law, The Classical Liberal Constitution, is superb. And thus almost too damn depressing for me to finish reading.

I could hear His Majesty cackling over the paper even before I emerged from the kitchen with his breakfast pancakes and porridge.

(more…)

It has long occurred to me that a non-member participating in Mormonism, to whatever degree a non-member is able to participate, would be better off than were he to participate in other Christian denominations as a lay member.  I put this forth as a postulate. And invite others to help me develop it into a theory.

Discuss.

The Independent reports on a detailed genetic study of the British population. Many historic and prehistoric demographic events show up, but some don’t:

“Other major events in history, such as the Roman invasion and occupation between 43AD and 410AD, the large-scale invasion by the Viking Danes in 865AD and the subsequent establishment of Danelaw, as well as the Norman invasion of 1066, cannot be seen in the genetic profiles of Britons today.

“This probably reflects the fact that often major cultural shifts are carried out by relatively few people within an elite who do not leave their genetic mark on the conquered masses, said Sir Walter Bodmer, the veteran population geneticist who first had the idea of the study.”

Something worth remembering the next time DNA and the Book of Mormon comes up.

His Majesty was almost creepily cheerful this morning.

(more…)

(A phrase used in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice to exclaim the wisdom evidenced by a character acting as a judge. I believe it can be used to describe any person exhibiting much wisdom aside from strictly judicial wisdom.)

If you haven’t done so, please hie thee over to the Millennial Star blog and read this series of posts by Meg  Stout:

The series begins here: http://www.millennialstar.org/a-faithful-joseph/

A summary of the above here: http://www.millennialstar.org/faithful-joseph-digest/

and here: http://www.millennialstar.org/why-i-am-not-persuaded-joseph-smith-had-sex-with-plural-wives/

And this comment on a different subject: http://www.millennialstar.org/commandments-not-a-few-and-revelations-in-their-time/comment-page-1/#comment-148576

Is now planning a Potemkin village. No, really.

His Majesty: “No competent bureaucrat would be that honest.”

Bruce Charlton is thinking deeply about the Atonement. He is working out alternatives to the customary belief that Christ took on the punitive consequences of sin for us and to the customary liberal notion that the atonement was fundamentally an act of symbolic engineering to excise our retrograde belief in sin and guilt. Charlton thinks he’s found one. (more…)

Versus privacy.

This would be problematic even if people didn’t lie and game the system.

His Majesty: “I must meet this Glenn Reynolds. We seem to think alike at times.”

His Majesty was wearing a sour face when he came out to breakfast this morning.

(more…)

I did a search for “BYU” on Twitter on Saturday night to look for articles about the Cougars’ thrilling basketball victory over Gonzaga.* Instead I got a steady stream of 17- and 18-year-old Mormon kids either celebrating getting into BYU or lamenting their rejection letters. It’s that time of year. (more…)