Fishing Mattawoman

Trevor has been desperately begging to go snakehead fishing, so I arranged a trip with Capt. Dave Snelling, Capt. Mike's new (since laast year) partner at Indian Head Charters, for an afternoon/evening Snakehead/Bass fishing trip on Mattawoman Creek, a tidal creek on the Potomac River south of Washington DC.

Trevor came directly from church, and he was so excited that when he changed clothes, he forgot to take off his church shoes.  We arrived around 3 PM, and after an early dinner of chicken and ribs, provided by Capts. Dave and Mike, we set off. Great barbecue, by the way.

We spent the first several hours hunting Snakeheads with frog imitations among the lily pads. None were caught. although we had a couple blow ups that might have been bass or snakeheads.  Snakehead fishing has been poor this year.  Mike believes that the prevalence of pseudo-commercial bow hunting for restaurants has taken a toll on the population

 Mattawoman Creek is on of the true gems of the Chesapeake, a wild creek a few minutes downstream by boat from Washington DC. A tidal creek, the ebb and flood of the tide makes all the difference in

It was a while before I put the first fish on the boat, but eventually they started hitting with some regularity on various baits.

Eventually the sun went down, and the fishing really started.  We got several hits more after sunset, although Trevor lost all his fish before the boat.  I blamed his church shoes.

Including this one, that Capt. Dave charitably said might be the biggest of the year to date.  It struck a frog imitation right off the edge of the lily pads.

Alas, no Snakeheads.

Ban the Pill - Save the Fish!

Intersex fish found in Pennsylvania rivers spur search for chemicals

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection has begun an extensive sampling of chemical contaminants in response to the discovery of intersex fish in three of the state's rivers, a department spokeswoman said. Male fish carrying eggs were found in the Susquehanna, Delaware and Ohio river basins, a sign that the water may be tainted with chemicals, the U.S. Geological Survey found in research released Monday.

Amanda Witman, a DEP spokeswoman, said the agency is testing two tributaries of the Susquehanna River: Juniata River and Swatara Creek.

The number of fish affected and the severity was surprising.- Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist and lead author of the USGS study. The USGS research said that two fish species, smallmouth bass and white sucker, were exhibiting intersex characteristics due to exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals — hormones and hormone-mimicking chemicals that caused the male fish to produce eggs.

 Hormones; is there anything they can't do?

"The sources of estrogenic chemicals are most likely complex mixtures from both agricultural sources, such as animal wastes, pesticides and herbicides, and human sources from wastewater treatment plant effluent and other sewage discharges," said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist and lead author of the USGS study.

Estrogenic chemicals disrupt the endocrine system, which regulates the release of hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. This interferes with the fish's ability to reproduce.
. . .
In the Pennsylvania survey, Blazer and colleagues collected fish from 16 sites in the Susquehanna, Delaware and Ohio river basins. Intersex males were found at every site where smallmouth bass were collected and their condition was generally worse in places just downstream from wastewater treatment plants, the researchers found.

Hmm, just downstream of sewage treatment plants, where I wonder could hormones come from in sewage treatment plant?

Bass seem especially prone to becoming intersex when exposed to estrogenic compounds, the study found. The researchers also sampled white suckers and redhorse suckers. Redhorse suckers didn't have any intersex characteristics, but the team found an egg cell precursor, or stem cells that could potentially develop into eggs, in the blood of some white suckers.

Note the lack of emphasis of on what is the probable source of a significant amount of the estrogenic compounds in the water, birth control pills consumed by women, which are excreted in their urine, and pass, essentially unaffected.  You can't even write that in a newspaper for fear of being tagged with the "war on women" meme.

Mind you, I'm not really advocating banning the pill in the Chesapeake drainage (although, clearly the EPA could do so, if they really wanted to, based on their claimed mandate).  But if there were even the slightest hint that this problem were due to the disposal of fracking water, you could be sure that newspapers and environmental NGOs would be calling for the immediate end of fracking.

Oh wait, they already are.

And if more women were sports fisherman, there might also be increased interest in really finding a solution to the problem. So take your wives, girl friends and daughter fishing; it's good for the fishes.  But take your wives and girlfriends on different trips.

Wombat-socho has the father of all Rule 5 posts "Rule 5 Sunday: On The Beach" up at The Other McCain.

Hoop de Doo!

Hula Hoop cam at Burning Man Festival, 2012:



I remember when Hula Hoops were a new thing (thanks, Wham-o!), but the neighborhood girls didn't act like that.

Wombat-socho has the father of all Rule 5 posts "Rule 5 Sunday: On The Beach" up at The Other McCain.

That's One Way to Fish

It looks a little muddy to me.

Beach Report, July 5, 2014

Another gorgeous post-tropical storm passage day at the beach.  75 and clear skies, a moderate north wind, no humidity.  Is it really summer?

Our own beach was sparsely occupied when we arrived at 11 AM.

 But Calvert Beach was getting good use.

Despite all the fireworks shot off last night, this was the only piece of July 4 debris we saw today. The people who do the fireworks generally clean up well, and this year was no exception.

So far, this is a lousy year for butterflies (cold winter?) but this one plant was clearly drawing in the Cabbage Whites today.

We tried to pick a couple of servings of Jewel Berries for tonight's dessert, but someone had beaten us to them, and we only got about 1 cup of semi-ripe ones.

A big fossil rock.

John and Irene stopped us to ask questions about the area, and we spent a long time telling them about sights to see in the area.

I don't know what she was looking for in the Kudzu, but I hope she found it.

By the time we finished, our beach was a little more occupied.

Rule 5 Saturday - Portuguese Princess - Sara Sampaio

This weeks Rule 5 special spectacular goes for Sara Sampaio, a Portuguese model, and one of the highlights of the 2014 SI Swimsuit edition.

In 2013, she appeared in the first edition of the year of the Portuguese GQ, where she was presented as the "eighth wonder of the world". 

Close enough.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the 150th weekly "Sort Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links post. And don't forget to check out GOODSTUFF'S 146th Blogging Magazine edition with beer girls and Olivia Munn. Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

Fireworks at the Beach, July 4, 2014

Time for the annual Fourth of July fireworks down on the beach.  This year, the usual supplier for Long Beach was not present (perhaps scared off by the post-Arthur wind, which proved not to be a big issue), so most of these fireworks are from Calvert Beach, a short walk north.

This was good in one sense, that the fireworks were mostly far enough away that the whole display fit the screen, but I did miss chasing the big explosions overhead.

Remember, this is not a "government sponsored" event. This is individual citizens celebrating the independence of the country, illegally (although, our local cops come to watch, too).

The Beach in the Wake of Arthur

Around 10 AM the clouds parted and the sun came out. Despite a high tide, and 20-30 mph winds, the cool(er) dry(er) air on the back side of Arthur made it a delightful day on the beach. If you have to have a hurricane, this was about the right distance to be from it.

The view from Charlie's steps, so you can see how far out the surf really reaches. That's Georgia down looking for teeth at the stream edge.  No luck today.  Maybe after the wave subside.

This luck dog got to come to the beach today.

The last cloud band from Hurricane Arthur moving away.

The Pill: Two Generations from Development to Entitlement

More Hobby Lobby material from Stacy McCain: Sex, Science, Nature and ‘Choice’

Four years ago, I wrote a 4,000-word essay called “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday,” which included this observation:

The Pill fostered a prevalence of the belief that sex without pregnancy is normal. This utterly unnatural idea is the foundation of the Contraceptive Culture.
Throughout human history, recognition of the natural connection between sex and procreation was fundamental to society’s laws, customs, attitudes and behaviors in regard to relationships between men and women. These traditions had varied from place to place, and shifted slowly from time to time, but in all times and all places, social norms had been founded on the understanding that sex and pregnancy were intrinsically linked. Indeed, from a strictly biological perspective, reproduction is the sole purpose of sex.
The Contraceptive Culture, by contrast, is based on the negation of what we may rightly call natural sexuality. . . .

You can (and certainly I wish you would) read the whole thing, because so few Americans now have any memory of life before the advent of the Contraceptive Culture, the origin, history and goals of which are generally distorted by academics and the media. For example, it is often claimed or implied that the development and promotion of oral contraceptives in the 1960s was undertaken in order to “liberate” women; in fact, this project was funded by billionaires (especially David Rockefeller) who were fanatically devoted to a eugenics-influenced vision of population control. . .

I take issue with Stacy on some of his science, certainly in biology almost everything has multiple functions, including sex.  In addition to reproduction, it is essential in pair bonding (marriage, if one dares use word neutrally anymore).

Being even older than Stacy, I remember the advent of the birth control pill well (they showed up on our kitchen sink when I was a teenager)  and watched the changes in society as a consequence. For years, people debated how they would effect society (if the changes observed are related, probably negatively), and whether or not they were generally safe.  We have, without really resolving those issues (safety is debatable), skipped right to the point that the debate is now whether or not any women is entitled to free pills as a consequence of breathing.

So here we have a court decision, brought about as a consequence of an ObamaCare mandate, which says simply that an employer may refrain from providing insurance coverage for certain types of birth control. That’s it — no one is being forbidden to purchase birth control, nor are any forms of birth control going to be outlawed by this decision. It is strictly a question of whether the federal government has the authority to mandate insurance coverage for birth control. Yet to judge from the reaction of some liberals, the Surpreme Court has unleashed the Sex Police upon us, and we are on the verge of a return to the Dark Ages, when people were expected to pay for their own birth control. It’s as if liberals believe birth control is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Obamacare Schadenfreude Fireworks

See the complete weather report in the post below this one; I just hope the storm blows by in time for fireworks at the beach this evening.

The outrage of the the day is the confluence of two scandals, the Obamacare enrollment debacle and the Veterans affair wait list scandal. It seems that the administration took workers out of the VA application system and into Obamacare enrollment:

In another indicator of how low a priority veterans have with this administration, a whistleblower in Atlanta has revealed that VA employees were switched from processing VA applications to those of the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare.

Scott Davis told the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

“We don’t discuss veterans. We do not work for veterans. That is something that I learned after working there. Our customer is the VA central office, the White House and the Congress. The veterans are not our priority. So whatever the initiatives are or the big ticket items, that is what we focus on.”

He later appeared on the Neil Cavuto show and claimed that 17,000 applications for VA Healthcare were destroyed. He also said they’re “also looking into a backlog of over 600,000 pending applications for VA Healthcare.” Davis said the applications were purged as a way to deal with pressure from Washington D.C.

 As quipped by Ace:

Sometimes, in your Socialized Medicine Future, your health is going to be less important than servicing the current political needs of the Rulership Class.

You're just going to have to get used to this, peons.

By the way, the D.C. Circuit might nuke ObamaCare tomorrow (Which would have been yesterday, so I guess the ruling is still pending:

Remember the Halbig case? If not, catch up right now by re-reading this post from January, written after a D.C. district court judge ruled in Obama’s favor. O-Care is a famously complex law but the lawsuit that could end up demolishing it is surprisingly simple. In a nutshell, there’s a line buried deep in the statutory text that says federal subsidies for insurance premiums will be available to anyone who buys a plan on “an Exchange established by the State.” Question: Does Healthcare.gov, the exchange built by the federalgovernment after 34 states refused to build their own exchanges, qualify as an “Exchange established by the State”? Or do only state exchanges qualify? If it’s the latter, then millions upon millions of people who’ve signed up for O-Care through Healthcare.gov since October in the expectation that Uncle Sam will be paying part of their bill are in for a nasty surprise. The only fix that’s available (unless His Majesty tries some executive gambit, of course) is for Congress to amend the statute so that subsidies are available on the federal exchange too, but what are the odds of the House GOP agreeing to that? If the D.C. Circuit, which is set to rule any day now on the appeal of the earlier ruling, sides with the challengers against O, consumers will be forced to either come up with the money for their premiums themselves or drop their coverage. And if most of them choose to drop coverage, leading to a mass exodus of healthy people from various insurance risk pools, suddenly the White House is facing a death-spiral problem where hiking premiums on the remaining enrollees is the only way to pay for all the sick people still in the pool. That’ll lead to more dropped coverage, which means even higher premiums, and then it’s spiralmania.

It’s a magic bullet, aimed right at the heart of ObamaCare. What will the D.C. Circuit do?
. . .
It’s impossible for me to believe that the Supremes generally and John Roberts specifically, having eaten boatloads of crap from the right for upholding ObamaCare on the challenge to the individual mandate, are now going to pull a “never mind” and torch the whole thing because of a drafting ambiguity, but hope springs eternal for separation-of-powers aficionados like Turley. So much for the legal angle to all this. Here’s the political angle: What happens if the D.C. Circuit does nuke the subsidies eligibility for federal-exchange consumers? Would the House GOP even consider a bill reinstating those subsidies in exchange for other concessions of some kind? Before you say “hell no,” bear in mind that there’ll be a lot of voters out there PO’d that they’ve just lost their sugar from Uncle Sam and a lot of Democrats whispering to them that they could have that sugar back if only the damned Republicans didn’t want to see them suffer. Plenty of hay could be made before the midterms. Phil Klein, who has more faith in Boehner and crew than me, thinks there’s no way House Republicans would dare cave on subsidies, certainly not before SCOTUS has ruled on this at least. Hopefully he’s right — emphasis on “hopefully.” But maybe it’s all moot: If the GOP held out and refused to reinstate the subsidies, His Majesty would be tempted to issue some sort of dubious executive order (say, right around November 1st) proclaiming that the subsidies will be reinstated under HHS’s authority. That might be illegal, but even if it is, what’s anyone going to do to stop him? And even if there is a way to stop him by suing him over it, how will that stop him in time to prevent him from reaping the benefits at the polls on election day? Gulp.

Some paragraph breaks might have helped, even if they were only cosmetic. And speaking of hurricanes and death spirals:  Insurers seeking double-digit ObamaCare premium hikes in NY

Insurance firms participating in New York’s ObamaCare health exchange are seeking double-digit hikes for patient medical premiums in 2015, new figures reviewed by The Post reveal.

The average hike sought by insurers for individual plans is 12 percent—but a number of firms serving large numbers of patients want to boost individual premiums by nearly 20 percent.
. . .
The proposed rate increases call into question one of the goals of the Affordable Care Act — curbing runaway health-care costs.

Hey, New York. You voted for it. Enjoy in (we in Maryland deserve similar sympathy).

From the folks at Reason: Selling Obamacare: The weird, misleading propaganda behind the federal health care law

It might seem odd that Joanna Coles, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, was invited to the White House for lunch. After all, why would the most powerful person in the world bother meeting with the editor of a publication that specializes in hot summer sex tricks and the year's most dangerous diet? Particularly on May 2, 2014, when just about every important political journalist was in town for the White House Correspondents Dinner, the annual gala where pols and press rub shoulders and bond over bottomless booze.

It's a long one; but if you're into such things, read the whole thing. Government by propaganda. Goebbels would have loved it.

Revising (Or Correcting!) The Declaration Of Independence

The past is not dead. It is not even past, as earnest historians (presumably progressive) attempt to revise the Declaration of Independence. From the Times:

Every Fourth of July, some Americans sit down to read the Declaration of Independence, reacquainting themselves with the nation’s founding charter exactly as it was signed by the Second Continental Congress in 1776.
Or almost exactly? A scholar is now saying that the official transcript of the document produced by theNational Archives and Records Administration contains a significant error — smack in the middle of the sentence beginning “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” no less.
The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., concerns a period that appears right after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the transcript, but almost certainly not, she maintains, on the badly faded parchment original.
That errant spot of ink, she believes, makes a difference, contributing to what she calls a “routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document.
The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says. But as intended by Thomas Jefferson, she argues, what comes next is just as important: the essential role of governments — “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — in securing those rights.
“The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said. “You lose that connection when the period gets added.”

The story reviews her very impressive detective work and concludes with her perspective:

“We are having a national conversation about the value of government, and it does get connected to our founding documents,” she said. “We should get right what’s in them.”

Oh, brother. Progressives are about to enter their Blue Period and righties are about a week away from being labelled 'period deniers'. . . 

Yeah, I know, not a word about Obamacare or schadenfreude, but read on:

IN OTHER NEWS: A timely surprise for libs was found in a recently discovered version of Lincoln's handwritten Gettysburg Address:

...testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure without national single payer health care.

Who knew?

Have a Happy 4th!

Arthur Update

At this time, Hurricane Arthur has passed over the Outer Banks, North Carolina with 100 mph winds, and is proceeding up the East Coast out to sea as predicted.

Winds here are 25ish sustained with gusts to 30, and still increasing. It's overcast, but not raining, although it must be raining not too far to the south. A little more rain wouldn't hurt. From the looks of the animated storm, we should soon be on the back side, and the winds should start to subside. Models predict it will continue offshore, passing off Cape Cod sometime early this evening on its way to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Celebrity Fourth of July Quiz

A quick Fourth of July quiz. Can you name the flag-wrapped celebrity (without cheating)? Answers below the fold.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the 150th weekly "Sort Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links post. And don't forget to check out GOODSTUFF'S 146th Blogging Magazine edition with beer girls and Olivia Munn. Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

A New Theory for the Origin of Yeti

A few days ago, this abstract showed up on Dienekes' Blog and I've been trying to find a hook.

Altitude adaptation in Tibetans came from Denisovans

Altitude adaptation in Tibetans caused by introgression of Denisovan-like DNA

Emilia Huerta-Sánchez et al.

As modern humans migrated out of Africa, they encountered many new environmental conditions, including greater temperature extremes, different pathogens and higher altitudes. These diverse environments are likely to have acted as agents of natural selection and to have led to local adaptations. One of the most celebrated examples in humans is the adaptation of Tibetans to the hypoxic environment of the high-altitude Tibetan plateau. A hypoxia pathway gene, EPAS1, was previously identified as having the most extreme signature of positive selection in Tibetans and was shown to be associated with differences in haemoglobin concentration at high altitude. Re-sequencing the region around EPAS1 in 40 Tibetan and 40 Han individuals, we find that this gene has a highly unusual haplotype structure that can only be convincingly explained by introgression of DNA from Denisovan or Denisovan-related individuals into humans. Scanning a larger set of worldwide populations, we find that the selected haplotype is only found in Denisovans and in Tibetans, and at very low frequency among Han Chinese. Furthermore, the length of the haplotype, and the fact that it is not found in any other populations, makes it unlikely that the haplotype sharing between Tibetans and Denisovans was caused by incomplete ancestral lineage sorting rather than introgression. Our findings illustrate that admixture with other hominin species has provided genetic variation that helped humans to adapt to new environments. Link

In short, and without the genetic garbage, it would appear that a gene that encodes for high altitude adaption, and appears in high frequency in the Tibetans is the result of early interbreeding between anatomically modern humans and Denisovans, a prehistoric species of hominid known only from a few finger bones from Siberia, but whose complete DNA record has been determined from those bones. Thus, it seems likely that the gene originated in Denisovans and was transferred to humans via interbreeding.

It came to me today, that perhaps this means that Denisovans may be the origin of the Yeti myth. Did the Tibeten forefathers encounter a residual population of Denisovans living in the Himalayas with the EPAS1 gene, and lead to the "man bear" myth. Did a few acts of interbreeding with the "yeti" bring the genes that make the Tibetans master mountain men into the human gene pool? It's fun to speculate when you don't actually have to prove anything.

Let's go a little further with our speculation.  Do a few residual pockets of Denisovans cling to life in some of the out of the way places in the world to this day. If so, by now, they've certainly discovered that human populations are generally not in their best interests, and being advanced hominids, they're nearly as intelligent as humans, and would go to great lengths to stay concealed from humans. Did they also cross the Berengian isthmus, and give rise to a race of Sasquatch in American?

Probably not, but, God, it would be fun if it were all true.. . .

Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

Get Down Off That Hobby Lobby Horse

As referred to me by Wombat-socho's sort of daily "Live at Five: 07.03.14", Megan McArdle answers some of the lefties complaints about the Supreme Courts recent Hobby Lobby decision, giving a closely held corporation the ability to not fully comply with Obamacare's administratively imposed contraceptive mandate.

Answers to All Your Hobby Lobby Questions

A few selections:

1) What can stop a company from arguing that it is against the owner's sincere religious beliefs to pay workers a minimum wage?

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act is not a blank check to religious groups to do what they want. The law says that the religious belief must be sincerely held, and also that the government can burden the exercise of that belief if it has a compelling state interest that cannot easily be achieved in any other way. That's why no one has successfully started the Church of Not Paying Any Taxes, though people have been trying that dodge for years.

Well, darn it, there goes that one.

3) But Hobby Lobby buys stuff from China, which has a horrible one-child policy that forces abortions!

We're in pretty complex moral territory here, but everyone -- EVERYONE -- is at least remotely commercially associated with something they find appalling. Almost no one extrapolates out their moral beliefs to the most stringent possible application, else those of us who believe that charity is a moral obligation would be forced to sell everything we own until we were as poor as the poorest peasant. . .

There's a whole list of "gotchas" that need dispelling, but this gets to the heart of them. Without throwing away all of human civilization and eating shoots, roots, leaves, and civilized people's pets, it's pretty damned hard to get away from indirectly doing business with people whose practices you find abhorrent.

7) Why does the Supreme Court think corporations are people? Isn't that obviously ridiculous?

The Supreme Court does not think that corporations are people in the sense that you mean -- the Supreme Court will not be ruling that Wendy's has a Title IX right to play college sports. But we extend corporations many of the rights that people get because otherwise the results would be horrifying: The government would have the right to shut down the presses at the New York Times; search Google's servers without a warrant whenever they liked; tell churches (usually organized as corporations) what they could believe; deny nonprofits the right to organize protests; and otherwise abridge fundamental human rights.

On the other hand, I'd love to see Republican administration try to enforce the "no opinions" corporate mandate that liberals seem to think applies to selectively chosen corporations applied to the New York Times, the Washington Post and MSNBC, to name just a few.

10) What if your employer decided it didn't want you spending your salary on IUDs because they're paying for it?

Why does so much of this argument end up in ludicrous hypotheticals? First, no employer that we know of does this; second, they couldn't do this, because of health-care privacy laws; and third, if they tried to argue from RFRA, the Supreme Court would not side with them, because again, the liberty promised under RFRA is balanced against other interests, not absolutes. RFRA has been around for 20 years, and we haven't legalized, say, pedophilia.

Because, shut up!

12) What if my employer says it has a sincere religious belief in human sacrifice -- can he kill me?

Yes. If your employer has a deeply held religious belief in human sacrifice, they can strap you in a cage, reach into your chest with their bare hands to pull out your still-beating heart, then drop the cage into a fiery pit. It’s a tough break, but from time to time, the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots. Sorry about that.

Can we get Megan on the Supreme Court?

At The Beach on the Advent of Arthur

As anyone with access to TV or the internet knows, the first tropical storm of the Atlantic Hurricane season, Arthur, has formed off Florida and blossomed into a full blown, if so far minimal, hurricane off the South Carolina coast. The consensus of the hurricane models is that, after whacking the Outer Banks on July 4, the storm will pass us by comfortably out to sea some time the same day on its way to an engagement in Nova Scotia. However, one errant European model has it running directly over us. . .

It certainly feels like tropical storm weather here. It was already 80 F and muggy under mostly cloudy skies when we got up. However, we're still expecting a line or two of thunderstorms from the north later, part of the cold front that's expected to push Arthur out to sea.

We made it to the beach around 11 AM and enjoyed a short walk. It was still mostly cloudy, and the wind from the west didn't reach down over the cliffs to give up much respite from heat and humidity.

This Great Blue Heron insisted on fishing in front of us on the way home, until squeezed between us and other beach-goers it decided to fly around to the empty side.

Some local kid (possibly aided by a father) made a home build swim platform and anchored it in shallow water near the north jetty.  Kind of ingenious, it is filled with quart soda bottles for flotation. I've blurred out the telephone number on it so you won't be tempted to call and ask for building instructions.

Since it's a relatively short beach report, I'll add a few photos from the garden, after we returned. First this dragonfly, welcome for its mosquito eating propensities.

A Cabbage White butterfly (female, according to the double spot on the forewing) trying to sip from our sage while in flight, like a humming bird. One thinks of butterfly wings as rigid, but still photos of them in flight often show the wings quite bent.

Slap Happy!

Hmm, they really seem to get into it. Which reminds me of this study which I saw on Instapundit a few days ago:

Utah research: Human face evolved to take a punch

The human face evolved to withstand being hit by a fist, two University of Utah researchers contend, expanding on their controversial theory that human hands evolved to punch.

A protruding jaw, a thick brow ridge above the eyes, robust bones around the nose and upper jaw and large molars and premolars are defining characteristics of early human ancestors examined by David Carrier and Michael Morgan for a study published Monday in the journal Biological Reviews.

Carrier, a biologist, and Morgan, a physician, link the sturdy bone structures of these hominins to a violent human history, challenging the prevailing theory that the bone structure evolved to help crush a diet of nuts and seeds. "Turns out when humans fight, the primary target is the face," Carrier said. "It’s what people strike at. The vast majority of the injuries that occur in fractures [from interpersonal violence] are localized in the face."

The coauthors chiefly focused on the anatomy of skulls from a type of hominin that dates back 2 million to 4 million years ago in eastern Africa. "The teeth were very big," Carrier said. "The mandible and the bones of the upper jaw become more stout, more robust. They’re thicker; they’re bigger."

The jaw muscles would have absorbed some of the energy of a punch and reduced the risk of fracturing or dislocating the upper and lower jaws, their study said. "The activation of the jaw and neck muscles stiffens the connection between the head and body, decreases acceleration of the brain upon impact and therefore reduces the risk of concussion," their study said.

Morgan said it makes sense to develop structural traits to protect the most valuable human asset — the brain. And the skeletal structure of the face was too large to develop for diet alone, they contend.

Midnite Music - "Nobody to Love"

Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

Virginia Governor Seeks to Revive Climate Fears

Va. gov revives climate change panel, cites threat

Gov. Terry McAuliffe has resurrected a state climate change panel to come up with ways to blunt the impact of rising seas in highly vulnerable Virginia.

McAuliffe said Tuesday he’s restoring the climate panel, dormant for the past four years, to deal with the “growing threat” of climate change to the state’s coastal communities, among the most threatened in the U.S.

McAuliffe said the state has an opportunity to be a leader in finding creative ways to mitigate climate change.

I just checked my wallet; how about you?

Climate scientists have long warned that rising seas pose a serious threat to the Virginia coast, in part because land is sinking around the Chesapeake Bay from the meteor that gouged out the estuary eons ago. But they’ve complained their warnings have not been heeded.

That's because climate scientists have been warning about a problem that, simply put, isn't getting any worse.  Look at this graph of sea level from Sewell's Point Virginia, which shows absolutely no increase is sea level rise since the beginning of measurements (longer records from Baltimore et al show the same rate of sea level rise since the before the turn of the 20th century

Yes, the sea is rising, and the land in the mid-Atlantic is sinking, as land settles back into the meteor crater, and as we withdraw fresh water from the spongy ground.

One year ago, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science submitted a report to state lawmakers on the consequences of rising seas along the coast. In Hampton Roads, including cities such as Norfolk, flooding is commonplace during major storms and is expected to worsen over the next 20 to 50 years.

The VIMS report anticipates a sea level rise in Virginia of roughly 1.5 feet during that time period.

4.4 mm per year, over a 50 year span yields 8.7 inches of sea level rise.  For their prediction to come to pass, an extreme increase in the rate of sea level rise would have to occur.  Yes, you have paved over salt marshes that would have kept up with sea level rise. But it's unlikely, if even if global warming climate change climate variability continues at its current rate, that any substantial increase in this rate will happen.

The report also says 26 percent of Virginia Beach’s land mass could face flooding over the next 50 years, waterlogging 289 miles of roads in the tourist city.

The report called for the state to coordinate planning efforts, review local governments’ authority to address projected flooding risk and enable them to do so, and determine by urgency areas for flood mitigation, among other measures.

More money needed to be able to give to friendly interest groups.

Obama White House Continues War on Women

Male-female pay gap remains entrenched at White House

The White House has not narrowed the gap between the average pay of male and female employees since President Obama’s first year in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of new salary data.

The average male White House employee currently earns about $88,600, while the average female White House employee earns about $78,400, according to White House data released Tuesday. That is a gap of 13 percent.

In 2009, male employees made an average of about $82,000, compared to an average of $72,700 earned by female employees — also a 13 percent wage gap.

When challenged on why the administration persists in maintaining this pay gap, the White House wisely keeps its mouth shut, but the press offers the kind of explanation that would raise feminist hackles (do feminists have hackles?) if offered by the CEO of a leading business:

One of the key reasons is that more men hold the higher-paying, senior jobs in the White House, and more women hold the lower-paying, junior jobs.
. . .
Obama has made pay equity a central cause this year. He has pushed for hiking the minimum wage in part because it would especially benefit women, and he is advocating passage of legislation that would give women more opportunities to learn whether they are being paid a wage in line with their male peers.

Obamacare Schadenfreude, 7/2/14

A hot, steamy day here, and things to do later, so I should get this one out quick:

Another Security Breach for Obamacare

A Romanian attacker hacked the Vermont health exchange’s development server last December, gaining access at least 15 times and going undetected for a month, according to records obtained by National Review Online.
CGI Group, the tech firm hired to build Vermont Health Connect, described the risk as “high” in a report about the attack. It also found possible evidence of sophisticated “counter-forensics activity performed by the attacker to cover his/her tracks.”

The report says that no private consumer information was stored on the hacked server, and that CGI Group had “verified that no additional servers [that may store private data] communicated with any of the identified attacker IP addresses.”

But Michael Gregg, the CEO of the cyber-security consulting firm Superior Solutions, says it’s possible the hacker went on to access other parts of Vermont Health Connect, covering his tracks and remaining undetected to this day.
. . .
The hacker gained access because the default password to the development server was never changed (in violation of guidelines laid out in the state’s official policy) and because access to the server was not restricted only to users who were known and approved.

But don't worry, you're personal information is safe in the hands of the government. Just ask Lois Lerner. They'll only give it to friendly liberal NGOs for political purposes.

2.6 Million "unresolved" problems remain in Obamacare enrollments:

In case anyone wonders, that comes to about a third of all the enrollments claimed by the White House in the initial open-enrollment period for ObamaCare. Three months later, significant data discrepancies exist, so much so that these consumers may not have health-insurance coverage at all, according to the HHS Inspector General:

The Obama administration has been struggling to clear up data discrepancies that could potentially jeopardize coverage for millions under the health overhaul, the government’s health care fraud watchdog reported Tuesday.
The Health and Human Services inspector general said the administration was not able to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems in the federal insurance exchange from October through December 2013.

What kind of "unresolved problems are we talking about here?"

Most of the issues dealt with citizenship and income information supplied by consumers that conflicted with what the federal government has on record, the report said.

If citizenship is an issue, some substantial number of those sign are probably illegal immigrants, and I'm sure the administration will be strongly pushing to allow them to continue on the dole. For the rest, many people are likely going to be surprised by an additional tax bill when their subsidies disappear, or turn out smaller than they expected, and that "affordable health care" turns out not to be so affordable after all.

Health-care exchanges are not properly ensuring applicants’ eligibility, probe finds

The new health insurance marketplaces run by the federal government and some states are not checking carefully enough that Americans who apply for health plans qualify for the coverage and federal subsidies to help pay for it, according to federal investigators.

A pair of reports, issued Tuesday by the Department Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, conclude that “internal controls” for evaluating applications were not always effective at verifying people’s Social Security numbers, their citizenship, and whether they are eligible to buy health plans through the marketplaces because they cannot find affordable insurance elsewhere.

Guideline Calls Routine Pelvic Exams Unnecessary

Doctors should stop performing routine pelvic exams, a key component of regular physicals for women, an influential medical group said Monday.

There is no evidence that such pelvic exams are useful and plenty to suggest that the procedure provokes fear, anxiety and pain in many women, the American College of Physicians said in a new practice guideline for doctors.

The college’s guideline was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and was accompanied by an article reviewing the scientific evidence. The recommendation applies only to routine checkups for healthy women, not to women who visit the doctor’s office with medical complaints or who are pregnant.

As noted by Instapundit; with Obamacare, we'll soon be seeing a lot more "routine" health checks eliminated in a drive to save the funds in health care for administrators salaries.

First Obamacare Casualty? Woman in class-action lawsuit against Xerox dies

The Las Vegas woman died Monday, less than two weeks after her family went public with details of how enrollment trouble through the Nevada Health Link insurance exchange kept her from getting treatment in January for an aggressive brain tumor.

Rolain was one of about 150 Nevadans suing Nevada Health Link contractor Xerox for enrollment mixups that left them without the health insurance they paid for.

Rolain is the first to die of complications from an illness that her family said went untreated for lack of coverage. But observers close to her case say she may not be the last, because others are in similarly urgent situations.

Catholic TV gets emergency stay after Hobby Lobby decision:

Late yesterday, the first fruits of the Hobby Lobby decision fell into the lap of EWTN, the Catholic satellite television station which has fought the HHS mandate into the appellate court. Today would have been the first day that EWTN would have to start paying ruinous fines for refusing to provide free contraception and sterilization in its health insurance coverage. Fortunately, the Eleventh Circuit granted a stay not long after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby:

In a resounding victory for religious freedom, today EWTN was granted last minute relief from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, one day before the world’s largest religious media network would be forced to violate its deeply help religious convictions or pay crippling fines to the IRS on July 1.
After the district judge recently issued a disappointing ruling against the global Catholic media network, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Pending that ruling, the Becket Fund urged the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit to step in to protect EWTN from being forced to provide contraceptives and potentially life-terminating drugs and devices that violate its Catholic teachings. Thanks to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision today to grant temporary emergency relief to the Catholic network, EWTN can now freely practice what it preaches while it pursues its claims in court.

One imagines heads exploding among the left wing like power line transformers in an ice storm.

Need Less Drama in Your Life?

Probably works, too, given the sedative effect.

Castles Made of Sand...

Fall into the sea, eventually:

Today is the 1st Anniversary of my retirement from my position at the Smithsonian Institution as a Research Scientist.  People ask me if I miss work.  No, I don't miss getting up a 6 AM 5 mornings a week, I don't miss the hour up and hour back drive on Rt. 4 and,  I don't missing writing proposals to do marginal science for government agencies and industries to pay my salary and those of my technicians. Hopefully, the financial guy is right, and our retirements will outlive us...

It was also the day of the annual Smithsonian picnic, and as a member of the band, I dutifully got up an hour earlier than my usual 8 or, uh, whatever, and met the band for our annual gig at the picnic.  It went off well, all things considered. I messed up the choruses on "Uncle John's Band", just like Bob Weir, but nailed the solo in the bridge, so that was better than break even.

I made it home late, but after dinner, Georgia suggested we walk the beach.  It's downright warm and muggy today.  We're near the peak temperature of summer here.  Another couple of weeks and it should start to cool again.

Obamacare Schadenfreude - Hobby Lobby Wins, Obama Loses

There's a lot of digits being spent of this, but I suggest you read Ann Althouse's summary:

. . . The Court found a substantial burden to the religion of the owners of the businesses in being required to facilitate what they see as abortions or to pay fines that could be as "as much as $1.3 million per day, or about $475 million per year, in the case of one of the companies."

Under the statute (RFRA), that substantial burden triggers strict scrutiny, and the Court assumes for the purpose of the opinion that the HHS regulations have a compelling interest, because is so easy to say: Even if the interest is compelling, HHS hasn't used the least restrictive means for serving it.

HHS has already put into place a system for contraceptive coverage for religious nonprofit corporations, and it gave "no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections."
. . .
If HHS would just give the religious for-profit corporations the same accommodation it already gives to the nonprofit religious corporations, the effect on women employees "would be precisely zero."

Less rigorous, but more fun, you might also enjoy Ace's take:

It occurs to me that the Left is attempting to create a system wherein there are two different classes of citizenship, one fully possessed of its right to speak and act politically, the other whose rights in this regard are sharply curtailed.

That's obvious, that's not the interesting part.

Here's the interesting part, I think: The Left, were it to have its way, would forbid anyone who is not primarily in the business of politics (or working for the government or university) from exercising their full political rights.

If you work in any other industry, your rights are substantially reduced.
Think how much this proposed rule would benefit the Left, were it fully accepted. (It is 85% accepted at the moment.)

The only people who would be permitted to speak on political issues, or at in accordance with their social/cultural/religious/political principles, would be the Political Class Itself, which is of course largely "progressive."

Shopkeeper? Nope, you're not a professional of the political class. Shut up. You have no right to run your business asyour conscience dictates.

Baker? You're not a professional in the political class. Shut up and bake the cake.
And so on. By choosing an economically-productive trade which is not politics, you have ceded most of your rights in the political sphere, per this line of thinking.

The people who retain their full rights are the artists, the academics, the media class, the union officials, the teachers and other civil servants, and all the various functionaries of the permanent DC lobbying/think tank class.

There is one more:  I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ACA

Below I will resurrect but five of my own specific predictions about the ACA, contrast them with what many advocates had said, and review what subsequent events have shown.
#1: States will make a variety of decisions with respect to expanding Medicaid.

What I predicted: “In contrast with some statements made by both supporters and opponents of the ACA, the complexities of these decisions suggest that states should be expected to make a wide variety of policy choices.”

Advocates’ claims: “All these states will opt in. Every one.” (Jennifer Granholm) . . .

What has happened: As of June, 2014, the Kaiser Family Foundation lists 27 states (including Washington, D.C.) as “implementing expansion,” 21 as “not moving forward at this time,” and 3 in “open debate.”

#2: Expanding Medicaid will cost the states money, in part because of the “woodwork effect.”

What I predicted: “Projections indicate that... covering newly eligible individuals as well as increased numbers of those previously eligible (but yet uncovered) would add substantially to state budget costs. Effective (federal support) rates associated with expansion will be lower than those expressly provided for in the ACA because of the ‘woodwork effect’ of previously eligible individuals being brought under Medicaid.”

Advocates’ claim: ...The move to greater insurance coverage would likely result in substantial savings for state and local governments. Rather than harming the budget situation of the states, health insurance reform would improve it.” (CEA, Obama White House)

What has happened: “At least a couple of states have already cited higher-than-expected costs... This graph from a December 2012 NASBO report shows how Medicaid has been taking a greater portion of state general funds, while education spending has decreased.”

#3: The ACA will significantly worsen the federal budget deficit.

What I predicted: “The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted in 2010 will significantly worsen the federal government’s fiscal position relative to previous law...

Advocates’ claim: “According to the official Administration and Congressional scorekeepers, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit: its costs are more than fully paid for.” (White House Blog)

What has happened: Two months after my study was published, CBO’s next long-term budget outlook clarified explicitly that I was correct: CBO’s baseline comparison that appeared to show the ACA reducing the deficit did not reflect how it changed actual law: “Projections in this report are consistent with a statutory requirement that CBO, in its baseline projections, assume that benefit payments will continue to be made after trust funds have been exhausted, even if there is no legal authority to make such payments.”

#4: Expanding health insurance coverage will increase health service consumption and costs.

What I predicted: “The same report found that the uninsured received only about 55 percent of the total medical care received by the insured population and that, if covered, per-person health spending for the uninsured would increase by 39 percent...

Advocates’ claim: “It is deficit-neutral; it bends the cost curve; it covers 30 million Americans who don't have health insurance... to make sure that people are getting the care they need and the checkups they need and the screenings they need before they get sick—which will save all of us money and reduce pressures on emergency rooms all across the country.” (President Obama)

What has happened: “As the health-care law expands Medicaid to cover millions more Americans, a new Harvard University study finds that enrollment... significantly increases enrollees' use of emergency departments.”

#5: There was a substantial risk that cost savings projected for several ACA provisions would not fully materialize.

What I predicted: “The legislation employs comparatively uncertain cost-saving measures as budgetary offsets for comparatively certain cost-increasing provisions... The proceeds of such cost-savings cannot safely be spent until they have verifiably accrued.”

Advocates’ claims: “$750 billion in reliable revenues and savings... $145 billion saved... by phasing out overpayments to... Medicare Advantage... $69 billion in penalties paid by employers and individuals who choose not to purchase insurance... $32 billion raised by taxing very expensive (“Cadillac”) health insurance policies...

What has happened: The employer and individual mandates have not been enforced and there is mounting pressure for repeal. Planned Medicare Advantage cuts have been scaled back. The Cadillac plan tax has not yet taken effect and labor unions are mobilizing against its implementation.
. . .
While we cannot erase past policy mistakes, going forward we should make better use of predictive information widely available to lawmakers, press and public, than was done in the case of the ACA.

These same points have been made time and time again in Obamacare Schadenfreude posts.

Midnite Music - "Missing You"

Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.