Undersea Volcano Sets New Size Record

Scientists confirm existence of largest single volcano on Earth

Covering an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the State of New Mexico, Tamu Massif is nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars, placing it among the largest in the solar system
...
Located about 1,000 miles east of Japan, Tamu Massif is the largest feature of Shatsky Rise, an underwater mountain range formed 145-130 million years ago by the eruption of several underwater volcanoes.

That puts it at just about the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary.  Something else for the dinosaurs to have worried about

Until now, it was unclear whether Tamu Massif was a single volcano, or a composite of many eruption points.

By integrating several sources of evidence, including core samples and data collected on board the JOIDES Resolution, scientists have confirmed that the mass of basalt that constitutes Tamu Massif did indeed erupt from a single source near the center. The results appear today in a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Tamu Massif is the biggest single shield volcano ever discovered on Earth,” says lead paper author Will Sager of the University of Houston. “There may be larger volcanoes, because there are bigger igneous features out there such as the Ontong Java Plateau. But we don’t know if these features are one volcano or complexes of volcanoes.”

So it's the largest volcano on earth, unless we find another bigger one that's been hiding.  Ain't science grand?

Tamu Massif covers an area of about 120,000 square miles.

By comparison, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa–the largest active volcano on Earth–is a mere 2,000 square miles, or less than 2 percent the size of Tamu Massif.

To find a worthy comparison, one must look skyward to the planet Mars, home to Olympus Mons. That giant volcano, which is visible on a clear night with a good backyard telescope, is only about 25 percent larger by volume than Tamu Massif.

It does not appear that the volcano is active now or has been in the geologically recent past, which is likely a good thing, as that much volcanic activity in a short period would surely have  deleterious consequences on the earth's atmosphere and climate.

Seen at Watts Up With That.

Rule 5 Saturday - Czech Again - Petra Němcová

In the course of preparing to regal you with the talents of two other Czechoslovakian models, Paulina Porizkova and Daniela Pestova for Rule 5 posts I found another Czech beauty.  Apparently, Czechoslovakia is to models as central Asia is to barbarian hordes; a great place to start.

Petra Němcová (Czech pronunciation: [ˈpɛtra ˈɲɛmtsovaː]; born 24 June 1979) is a Czech model, television host, author, and philanthropist. Injured in Thailand by a tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, while her fiancé the photographer Simon Atlee was killed, Němcová is the founder and chair of the Happy Hearts Fund.

I don't think I ever heard about her being injured by the tsunami before; see, this is educational.

Atlee had drowned, and Němcová suffered a broken pelvis and serious internal injuries, but she managed to hold onto the top of a palm tree, reportedly for eight hours, until she was rescued by Thai civilians and airlifted to an inland hospital nearby. Němcová spent three weeks in a Thai hospital, and then flew home to the Czech Republic, where she spent an additional three weeks in the hospital.

That's pretty impressive actually.  A lot of stronger and fitter people didn't survive.

Putin on the Ritz

Putin's crass display of decadence as he hosts 'Marie Antoinette' ball for Obama and world leaders

World leaders were greeted by a lavish display from Vladimir Putin at Russia's G20 summit today with a decadent ball which felt a world away from the realities on the ground in Syria.


Women dressed in elaborate Marie Antoinette style costumes met the world's most powerful men and women in a display which seemed to be a celebration of luxury at the Peterhof Palace in St Petersburg.

The images were somewhat removed from the kind of photographs the leaders will be poring over tomorrow when they discuss evidence of the horrifying chemical attacks in Syria which killed 1,400 innocent civilians including children.

What a bunch of Debby Downers in the press.  Don't they know boys just want to have fun?

I wonder what message the photographer was trying to send here?

Say what you like about Putin, but he knows how to put on a show.

New York Times Blames Job Losses on Porn Pause

Pointing at Pornography for Job Losses

Employment in the motion picture and sound recording industries plunged in August, for a loss of 22,200 jobs. It was the sector with the biggest losses last month, and also represented the largest monthly decline since the Labor Department started keeping track of jobs in the industry in 1990.

Some have attributed the job losses to the X-rated film industry. After an H.I.V. scare, the industry temporarily shut down around the time that the Labor Department conducts its monthly survey.

They always have an excuse for the "unexpected" bad news in the economy.  It couldn't possibly be due to the  policies of the incumbent president, the one they relentlessly campaigned for, and refused to report on objectively.

Does this mean that consuming porn is good for the economy?  Because, you know, I'm ready to make that sacrifice.

Wombat-socho has the The Other McCain's weekly Rule 5 roundup at "Rule 5 Sunday: Tied To You" right on schedule.

Wind Industry Seeks Permission to Kill More Eagles

Wildlife groups, wind industry meet on eagle permit rule

Wildlife advocates and proponents of wind energy visited the White House, meeting with the Obama administration over a regulation that would extend the length of permits that allow energy companies to unintentionally kill protected eagles.

Last week, representatives from four conservation organizations and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) got together with administration officials to talk about the rule, which is currently under review at the White House’s regulations office.

Though two-dozen high-level advocacy and government representatives were present, they weren’t able to pound out a final consensus on the disputed regulation.

I'm not surprised; they have entirely different points of view.  The conservationists hate energy and love wildlife, the wind industry just the opposite.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has developed a regulation that would extend the length of those permits from five years to 30. That rule is now under review at the Office of Management and Budget and should be released shortly.

30 years?  Are you kidding?  They don't think they can solve the problem for 30 years?  If they write the permit that way, they won't even try hard for 25.

Link found via Hot Air.

Women Cause Weight Gain

Fat Lesbians, the American Crisis

Why are lesbians fat? Or, why are fat women lesbians? Is correlation causation? This profound scientific mystery demands an answer, and you can’t have science without a federal research grant:
The federal government has spent $2.2 million studying why three quarters of lesbians are obesedespite sequestration-mandated budget cuts that critics warned could “delay progress in medical breakthroughs.”

The National Institutes of Health awarded an additional $682,873 to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the study on July 17. The project had received previous grants of $778,622 in 2011, and $741,378 in 2012. Total funding has reached $2,202,873.
The project has survived budget cuts due to sequestration, which the NIH warned would “delay progress in medical breakthroughs.” . . .
“Obesity is one of the most critical public health issues affecting the U.S. today,” the grant’s “public health relevance” statement reads. . . .
“It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women,” the project’s abstract states. “In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males.”

Wait a minute — both lesbians and heterosexual males have obesity issues, compared to either straight women or gay men?
EXPOSURE TO VAGINA CAUSES OBESITY!The science is settled. That will be $2.2 million, please.

I say it shows that women make people fat.  But I'm not fat; I'm just "well nourished."

Too Good to Be True

Good looking woman asks men to have sex...



So what happen when...

Cosmic Ray/Weather Link Passes Experimental Test

Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory of clouds and global warming looks to be confirmed

Researchers in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are hard on the trail of a previously unknown molecular process that helps commonplace clouds to form. Tests in a large and highly instrumented reaction chamber in Lyngby, called SKY2, demonstrate that an existing chemical theory is misleading.

Back in 1996 Danish physicists suggested that cosmic rays, energetic particles from space, are important in the formation of clouds. Since then, experiments in Copenhagen and elsewhere have demonstrated that cosmic rays actually help small clusters of molecules to form. But the cosmic-ray/cloud hypothesis seemed to run into a problem when numerical simulations of the prevailing chemical theory pointed to a failure of growth.

Fortunately the chemical theory could also be tested experimentally, as was done with SKY2, the chamber of which holds 8 cubic metres of air and traces of other gases. One series of experiments confirmed the unfavourable prediction that the new clusters would fail to grow sufficiently to be influential for clouds. But another series of experiments, using ionizing rays, gave a very different result, as can be seen in the accompanying figure.

Simulating what could happen in the atmosphere, the DTU’s SKY2 experiment shows molecular clusters (red dots) failing to grow enough to provide significant numbers of “cloud condensation nuclei” (CCN) of more than 50 nanometres in diameter. This is what existing theories predict. But when the air in the chamber is exposed to ionizing rays that simulate the effect of cosmic rays, the clusters (blue dots) grow much more vigorously to the sizes suitable for helping water droplets to form and make clouds. (A nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.)

Nature also seems to be doing this experiment for us in the upcoming years.  The current sunspot cycle, #24, is proving to be a dud, as the sun's magnetic field and is declining to unheard of levels since the age of modern instrumentation.  As the solar magnetic field declines, more cosmic rays will strike the earth's atmosphere.  If this indeed produces more clouds, the earth will likely experience another cooling period like the Maunder and Dalton sunspot minimums.

Virginia Bids Offshore Wind Power Site

Dominion Virginia Power wins first Va. offshore wind energy auction

Dominion Virginia Power won the right to develop the first wind energy farm off the Virginia coast in a federal lease auction Wednesday with a bid of $1.6 million.

Fully developed, the 112,799-acre lease could generate 2,000 megawatts, which would be enough energy to power more than 700,000 homes, according to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

 If nothing else, this emphasizes the low energy density of wind power.  112,799 acres makes it 176 square miles, far bigger than a city with 700,000 homes.  By way of comparison, the local nuke plant, Calvert Cliffs, produces 1700 megawatts, and occupies about 2000 acres, a little over 3 square mile, of which 380 are developed for the plant site itself, and the remainder undeveloped.

The Doomsday Prank

and TV ad.

Great Moments at the EPA

I saw this"Drudgetaposition" this morning, after seeing the articles separately yesterday and today:

Gold miners near Chicken cry foul over 'heavy-handed' EPA raids

When agents with the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force surged out of the wilderness around the remote community of Chicken wearing body armor and jackets emblazoned with POLICE in big, bold letters, local placer miners didn’t quite know what to think.

Did it really take eight armed men and a squad-size display of paramilitary force to check for dirty water? Some of the miners, who run small businesses, say they felt intimidated.

Others wonder if the actions of the agents put everyone at risk. When your family business involves collecting gold far from nowhere, unusual behavior can be taken as a sign someone might be trying to stage a robbery. How is a remote placer miner to know the people in the jackets saying POLICE really are police?

Miners suggest it might have been better all around if officials had just shown up at the door -- as they used to do -- and said they wanted to check the water.

But that's not nearly as much fun as dressing up like a SWAT unit and intimidating people.

Former senior EPA adviser Beale expected to plead guilty in $900,000 pay fraud

Over the past 12 years, John C. Beale was often away from his job as a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency. He cultivated an air of mystery and explained his lengthy absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work, including for the CIA.

For years, apparently, no one checked.

Clearly, whatever his job was a "senior advisor" was so important noone could tell whether he was doing it.  Either that, or it only took a part time person to do it (which is entirely possible).

Now, Beale is charged with stealing nearly $900,000 from the EPA by receiving pay and bonuses he did not deserve. He faces up to three years in prison.

Beale, 64, who was a senior policy adviser in the Office of Air and Radiation, is expected to plead guilty at a hearing scheduled for Monday at U.S. District Court in Washington.

“This is a situation where one individual went to great lengths to deceive and defraud the U.S. government,” said EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson.

In both cases, the chutzpah of the agency is on display. 

Control Yourself

A mildly funny, slightly homophobic (I think) lingerie ad...



It ain't much, but it's what I got today. Via Theo's.

Linked at Proof Positive in the weekly "Best of the Web Linkaround."

Flying Things at the Beach

Georgia and I met Joel and Red down at the beach for the customary walk this morning.  The wind is up since yesterday from the north, and the waves show it.  We had a substantial cool down over night; this morning our thermometer showed 59.  Fall is coming.

 Red behaving like a lab.

There was lots of flying activity.  This is another juvenile Bald Eagle from the one we saw yesterday, with a more irregular pattern.  He's probably at least a year younger.

 And the adults were out as well.

There's was a good article in the Bay news today about how the Chesapeake Bay Eagles are doing so well they're running out of living space, fighting with each other and starting to eat significant amounts of other birds.  Just like in the good old days...

Something else flying.  I don't know what this was all about, but this Navy helicopter did a relatively low and slow circle over us twice.

While not flying here, this Summer Azure gave me a decent shot at his top surface. That's rare in my experience.

Georgia declined to make a second pass down the beach, but she posed for a picture for facebook while waiting.

Nope, No Hypocrisy Here

A Good Question

from Stacy McCain.


Can We Just Have the Air Force Drop Cable TV News Anchors on Syria?

It will degrade their capabilities, just they do for us.

Morons Should Not Build Electric Guitars

A Good Picture of Hillary Clinton

Click to embiggen.

Thanks to Pete. Wombat-socho has the The Other McCain's weekly Rule 5 roundup at "Rule 5 Sunday: Tied To You" right on schedule.

Fracking Threatens to Starve Chesapeake Beaches

For the past two years we've been listening to environmentalists whine about the various negative effects of fracking, potential (if never realized) water pollution, burning faucets (that burned before fracking ever started, reducing the price of natural gas and making it the fuel of the American future (we don't don't want that when we can have unicorn farts), jobs for rough men, and so on.  Now, environmentalists have discovered a new threat that fracking poses to the environment.  By raising the price of sand (supply and demand and all), it threatens to slow down or even stop beach replenishment along toney beaches from the Hampton Virginia, to the Hamptons in Cennecticut

Buckroe Beach replenishment: Cost of sand increases with demand

As swimsuit-clad families flocked to Buckroe this summer, they have been visiting a beach partially built by sand from an unlikely source: North Carolina.

The sandy beaches lining the Chesapeake Bay are both magnets for tourism and shields against surging storms, making them an integral part of coastal communities.

In turn, tax dollars are used to maintain and expand beaches, whether it's through dredging offshore shoals, building rock groins or in some cases, hauling in sand from out of state.

The city of Hampton used federal grant money to pay for this beach replenishment

Localities forced to buy sand from suppliers — as Hampton had to do to replenish Buckroe Beach in late 2011 — are finding prices for the material have increased dramatically in recent years.

Demand for silica-based sand increased 14 percent in the past year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The price followed demand, rising to $44.78 per ton, an 82 percent increase from 2005.

Generating that demand is the increased use of hydraulic fracturing — often called "fracking" — by energy companies to extract natural gas from underground rock formations, according to the USGS. According to the USGS, nearly 60 percent of the sand consumed throughout the country in 2012 was used for fracking.

In 2013, nearly 26 millions tons of sand was used for hydraulic fracturing, well-packing and cement mixtures. That total almost exceeds the total amount of sand consumed by all industries just five years ago, according to the USGS.

The demand associated with hydraulic fracturing has increased so rapidly that new mines have been opened to supply the material. As approval of the fracking process expands, so will the demand for sand.

Energy companies won't use sand straight from coastal beaches because it may not meet industry specifications. But sand mined from suppliers that could have been used on beaches is being redirected to hydraulic fracturing sites.

It's just fine with me if the cost of beach replenishment become untenable due to fracking.  Beach replenishment is the classic case of pouring money down a hole.  Beaches will grow where they nature means them to be, and will disappear when nature no long intends them to be.  Attempts to add sand to a disappearing beach, without making any changes which will cause the sand to stay are doomed to failure.  If a municipality chooses to waste it's money on such a foolish that's between it an it's citizens.  Just don't ask me to pay for it with federal dollars.
 

Best Boat Ad Ever

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/mld/boa/4042912615.html

Wombat-socho has the The Other McCain's weekly Rule 5 roundup at "Rule 5 Sunday: Tied To You" right on schedule.

Look What the Wind Blew In!

Joel and Red are back from the Great Northern Waste (Bar Harbor, Maine).  It was a little bitter-sweet, as Skye wasn't there to greet them (and reject Joel's treats).  We caught up to the extent we needed to; Joel mostly knows what's going on here from the blog, and I've followed him on Facebook.

It was a lovely, breezy day; not much good for butterflies, but excellent for the birds.

An Osprey, who dived just a hundred yards of so from us, and, uncharacteristically, failed to get a fish

A juvenile Bald Eagle, who may not know how to bully an Osprey into dropping it's lunch.

In Which Our Favorite Redneck Goes Surf Fishing

Wombat-socho has the The Other McCain's weekly Rule 5 roundup at "Rule 5 Sunday: Tied To You" right on schedule.

Yesterday This Won the Internet

From the Other McCain: Funniest Thing on the Internet Today




OK, so it only had about 4,500 hits when I found it, but you'll make it 5,001.  I know you will.

Of course, this is theoretically possible; the signal moving out from Earth at 1 lightyear per year (sort of by definition), so that by 2265-2269 AD, the date span of the original Star Trek, it would be found on a spherical region some 252-276 light years away from Earth.  Easily within the USS Enterprise's range. I guess.

Labor Day 2013 at the Beach

It was mostly overcast this morning as we left for the beach.  It's warm, about 80 F, and the humidity is only moderate.  The wind was negligible, and what there is is from the west.

Some families seem to have set up residence on the beach for they.

 A woman rescues a fishing rod from the Bay.  When I talked to her, she said a big fish (likely a cow nosed ray) ran all the line off it,  pulled it out of the holder on the beach, and into the Bay.  Apparently it got stuck on the sand bar and the line broke.  She's lucky to have found it.  A little fresh water, and the rod and reel will be as good as new.

Happy Labor Day!

Don't labor too hard.  It's gotten better.

Svendsen - "Men Scything" - 1896

Spencer - "Wash Day" - c1918

Spencer - "Repairing the Bridge" - 1913

Shuttleworth - "Building the Bridge" - 1918

Ponsen - "Repair Gang" - c1930

How About Some Irish Dancing?

With Katy Perry and Cheryl Cole

How to Humiliate an Osprey

Actually a very nice "photo-essay" on Osprey Research by the Bay Program, but some of the photo's are amusing:

"Let's not, and just say we did"

"I guess she was serious!"

"No, I am not cute, I'm magnificent!"

"Not Again!"

"So, when is the next appointment?"

This Won't Buff Out Either!

D.C. police hit a boat tied up at a dock on the Potomac River:

Maryland Record Bass Caught Up the Road

12-Year Old Breaks 30-Year Maryland Largemouth Bass Record

According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Colton Lambert, 12, caught a Maryland record largemouth bass while fishing at a farm pond in his hometown of Huntingtown on July 31. The fish was 11 pounds, 6 ounces and measured 26 inches in length with an 18-inch girth.

Now that's a nice largemouth!

Colton was fishing with his father and younger brother at approximately 7:30 p.m. when he thought his line was caught on something. “All of a sudden something started to move very quickly and broke the surface and took off, peeling line off the reel,” he said. “It was really hard to control and reel in; when I finally slid it up on the shallow bank, my dad started getting all excited.”

Sounds a lot like the story of the current record holder for largemouth bass, 81 years ago, when George Perry caught a largemouth reported to be over 22 lbs in Georgia.

His father knew this was the biggest largemouth bass he had seen. They put the fish in a large bucket of water and the next day took it to Tyler’s Tackle in Chesapeake Beach, an Award Center for the Maryland Fishing Challenge. It was weighed on the certified scale of the store’s adjoining seafood market. Colton caught the fish using a spinning rod loaded with an 8-pound test line and a Texas-rigged weightless worm.

 Good job, Colton.  Now, don't go thinking every fishing trip is going to end that way.

Sunday, 9/1/13 Beach Report

Yep, another fine beach day.  A little warmer than yesterday, not as breezy.

What's that?!

Georgia found this massive crocodile tooth, on of the largest we've ever seen.  It's pretty worn, there's not much of the original tooth surface left, but it's still a rare prize.

One of the local boys tries to catch some bait.

 A Marsh Hibiscus, also known as Rose Mallow or Swamp Cotton (Hibiscus moscheutos).  A freshwater marsh plant, this one is growing in a drainage ditch.

One of the neighbors goes out for his daily row.  He's goes pretty much rain or shine, even in winter if there's no ice.  The skiff is pretty good at shedding water, and it takes our Chesapeake chop quite nicely.

On the Importance of Picking the Right Major

From The Other McCain:

Hilarity ensued Monday after @Andria_XX complained that social-media criticism of Miley Cyrus included “bodyshaming/slutshaming” and “heteropatriarchal crap.” Readers will recall that Andria has an “Honors BA in Social Justice and Peace Studies” and is pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies. So . . . how’s that going?

While my motives for choosing Oceanography and Biology as joint majors way back when might have been a little suspect (I didn't exactly expect to swim with dolphins, like every other major in Marine Biology, I did have a long standing interest in fish), somehow, some way I learned to like math, a learned a lot of biology, chemistry and physics and made a career out of it.

While having a master's degree in "gender studies" might make you eminently qualified to find fault with men in all things, you've probably lost most of your potential employers.  Welcome to the Obama jobs boom.

When Fairy Tales Go Wrong

One of the nicest childhood memories is how every fairy-tale we heard would always end in words “and they lived happily ever after”. But what if these fairy-tales were continued past this line, and we could learn what actually happened to the beautiful princesses and their knights? Photographer Dina Goldstein imagines what their lives could’ve gone like in her award-winning “Fallen Princess” photos series.

See the rest.

WAPO Columnist Pro Pedophilia

Ensconced in the WAPO's editorial pages this morning was this column by Betsy Karasik on how we should rethink the charges of statutory rape when a High School or Middle School teacher has "consensual" sex with one of his or her students prompted by the lenient sentence Judge G. Todd Baugh gave to Stacey Dean Rambold.  An excerpt:

I’ve been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relations with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word, even if society would like to embrace the fantasy that a high school student can’t consent to sex. Although some feelings probably got bruised, no one I knew was horribly damaged and certainly no one died.

Wow, just wow... However, this outburst earned her take downs by at least 3 influental bloggers:

First Stacy McCain: Washington Post Publishes Jailbait Apologist (Ain’t I Done Told You So?)

...Her rhetoric — “utter hysteria . . . fantasy . . . delusional” — is deliberately dismissive. All who disagree with Betsy Karasik are irrational, or are too stupid to understand that “vast and extremely nuanced continuum” of which enligthened people like herself are aware.

It’s not as if you couldn’t predict that such arguments would be made as our culture slid slowly down the slippery slope. In April 2002, I published an article with the headline, “Promoting pedophilia; Attempts to legitimize adult-child sex on rise,” and there were people then who said that such concerns were irrational.

In January of this year, Rush Limbaugh warned about “a movement to normalize pedophilia,” and was mocked by Soledad O’Brien.

Well, here we are in August, and the Washington Post is publishing columns advocating the legalization of student-teacher sex...

 Ann Althouse was briefer, and perhaps more concise: "Washington Post’s ‘second look at statutory rape’ click-trolling inspires #WaPoPitches."

"Is the Washington Post getting into Slate’s business of click-trolling, or do the paper’s editors really think it’s time for a national conversation on sex between teachers and underage students?"

 Finally, she got under Ace's skin, and got a nearly unprecedented two takedowns in the same day:


The Washington Post Adopts Slate's Outrage-Trolling Business Model: Hey, Maybe Teachers Should Rape Their Underage Students

...NAMBLA just emailed me: "She gets it! It's all about protecting the Children from damaging messages about repressing their desires to have sex with adults and society's hypocrisy!

This is what we've been trying to say!

Finally! Someone has the guts to say it!"

"Many teenagers are, biologically speaking, sexually mature."

And hot. Don't forget hot.

And also unspoiled and unschooled in the ways of love. Easily manipulated and shaped into one's preferred sexual forms.

Which, let's face it, are just other words for "hot."

"Pretending that this kind of thing won’t happen if we simply punish it severely enough is delusional."

No one pretends this, idiot. No criminal law on the books pretends that if we just outlaw a thing, it will all magically stop. (Except for gun-control laws, of course.)...

And then later in the day, with a little more time to reflect get outraged:  Quick Update on Betsy Karasik, The Woman the Washington Post Humiliated By Publishing Her Idiotic Babblings In Order to Troll for Outrage-Clicks

Someone pointed out to me her website-- she quit being a lawyer in order to become a painter.

If you don't remember Betsy, she embarrassed herself by fulminating at the Washington Post that statutory rape by teachers of minor children was no big deal and no one dies so why are you being such big meanies about Love, anyway?

Below, most of her page explaining her Art.

At various points in the text, I will intersperse a picture of one of her actual, real, honest-to-goodness paintings.

In 1998 I walked away from a "successful" career as a litigator in order to paint.

Also walked away from a "successful" understanding of the proper use of quotations marks.

Nah I get it, whatever, she's trying to say that's what "Society" deems "successful."

But I sorta don't think she was that successful at it, or even that "successful."

I work at my Dupont Circle home/studio in Washington, D.C., in the company of three cats and, on occasion, the elusive and multi-talented EMT, musician and environmentalist, Bob Fener. I am largely self-taught, although I have studied with several very gifted Washington area artists including Annette Polan (portraiture), Patrick Kirwin (realism and illusion), and Mary del Popolo (color).

Like most artists, I paint because I have to; the paintings are lined up inside my head demanding to be realized.

Yes, she paints cats, mostly... As they say, read the whole thing. Read all the articles, you know you want to.

My own experience with this issue?  As you may know, my father was a High School teacher while I was growing up, and he was had helped to start a law school with several of his fellow teachers (as weird as it sounds, it worked, and the school still exists), so I knew many of them personally. In my senior year, one of the other teachers in the law school and in a position of authority, and coincidentally, my literature teacher, had an affair with a student who was a friend of min, let's call her Wendy.  While Wendy may have been 18 (could'a, don't know for sure), this affair did not do her psyche any good.  As far as I know, no one knows about this but a small circle of students and the teacher.

Should my lit teacher have gone to jail?  Maybe not.  But if she had been 14?  Damn Straight!

That Won't Buff Out!

Found at Althouse.