The Well-Regulated Militia

Amendment II, ratified December 15, 1791:

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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Last Saturday, my daughter and I spent the day at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. Our republic is 243 years old, and we still cannot agree on what the above amendment to our constitution really means. I’m not a constitutional scholar or an attorney, so I’m not going to fix this here (and you probably won’t either).

The shooting in El Paso happened while we were at the museum, relearning about the sacrifices that different people, in culturally different colonies, had to make together (as Ben Franklin’s 1754 image suggests) to begin this experiment of a self-governing republic… a representative democracy.

The political cartoon largely credited to Benjamin Franklin, which first appeared in his Pennsylvania Gazette, May 9, 1754.

After the immediacy of the horror Saturday, the same tired talking points emerged, either on television or social media. And we now live in a time where you can get whatever argument you want validated; an unfortunate drawback of the information age is the prevalence of bad information.

So let me say this up front. If you want a gun, or even a few guns, to protect yourself, your family, your property, your farm, or your ranch… you should be able to have them. I hope you have the sense to learn how to operate them correctly and keep them away from children. If you want to hunt, you should be able to do so. In fact, I love it when my brother-in-law brings me ground venison at Christmas.

But that’s not what this is about.

The question at hand is this: “Is there anything we can do about this problem?”

The answer is certainly not to take away everyone’s guns.

But that’s what the Democrats want, Sean!

No. They don’t. You’ve let influential blowhards in the media or in politics (or perhaps behind a pulpit) convince you of that. And your response smacks of sloppy and poorly thought-out paranoia.

Yes, they do, Sean! They want to disarm the population and install a socialist state!

No. You’ve lost the good sense God gave you. You are letting people ignite your otherwise well-buried fears and insecurities.

Well what do you expect when we’ve removed God from all traces of public life?

Spare me your arrogance. Spare me your smug self-righteousness. It is not the job of the government, or you for that matter, to tell me how or when to worship. I’m rather tired of hearing such a simplistic and cowardly argument tossed around.

There are people (mostly men) who pervert Christianity and its scriptures to build personal wealth and to maintain power. The examples are numerous and go back centuries, and it goes on to this day.  The people I know who do not follow a religion walked away from it for just this reason. It wasn’t because they were lost. It was because they grew tired of how people in power abused it. This is a country of 300 million people. Not everyone needs the same theology as you. Go twist scripture for your own benefits on your own time.

Guns don’t kill people. We need to punish the criminal, not the gun. We are punishing the responsible gun owners.

Yes. We need to punish the criminals. Yes, people need to be held accountable for their actions. But what level of weapon is enough to defend yourself? You don’t need an assault rifle. Are you just that delusional? Or worse, does it just make you feel more like a man? Go back and read the first few words of the Second Amendment: A well-regulated militia.

It’s not a free-for-all. Regulation is spelled out in those first few words.

Criminals don’t obey laws.

You can’t even be serious. Why have any laws to begin with? To dissuade us from our darker nature. Humans repeatedly make poor snap judgements. Easy access to this level of weaponry only invites problems.

But Sean, all these violent video games…

Again, you are being lazy.

No other Western country has this problem. Not Canada, not Great Britain, not Germany, not Australia. They have the same video games, they have people with mental illness, and if anything, they are far more secular than the United States.

This is a uniquely American problem. Too many of us are too hard-headed to learn how other Western nations have dealt with this level of weaponry. Too many are too stubborn to have the courage to mold other ideas into a solution that improves the situation while still preserving individual liberties.

What about personal responsibility?

There are mentally ill people in this country who have been teetering on the edge. Some for a long time.

When the chief executive repeatedly uses the power of his office to denigrate and dehumanize others, it justifies the feelings of these ill people. Enough so that they act upon them. Words matter. This is not policing of thought or forcing political correctness, this is dangerous. The current executive has done this over and over during the last several months. He sows this hatred and violence, and he does not care. No, he didn’t pull the trigger, but he motivated the shooter.

But Antifa…

Stop it. You’re changing the subject. The current executive is an individual who is supposed to represent all citizens of the United States. There is no reason to support him any further. He is a reckless, power-hungry demagogue who has benefitted from Russian interference in our elections.  There is no comparison.

***

Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Based on the testimony of Robert Mueller, Obstruction of Justice would be my charge.

***

At the end, this is about fear.

Older Americans, generally Christians who are of European descent, have held power for the entire history of the republic. And world history has shown that ethnic groups who have long dominated in government will not suddenly begin to share power. On the contrary, they will dehumanize others and fight to the teeth as soon as they feel threatened by something remotely out of their comfort zone. Witness the madness in some of them at the election of our republic’s first mixed-race president. We have seen many of them wrap their fears around their faith and the flag, denigrating those who dare to question them. Taunting others like bullies on a middle-school playground, insisting theirs is the only right way for the republic.

It’s not. History will remember them as it does George Wallace. Don’t be George Wallace.

Hatteras

Hatteras Forecast – made Wednesday evening, June 26. Update coming Thursday evening.

Overview:

• A good week. Highs generally in the 80s, lows in the 70s.
• No sign of a washout this week.
• Small chance of scattered showers/thunderstorms on Sunday… then again Wednesday night, Thursday, and Friday, but no reason to change any plans.
• Typical high summer humidity, although a small easing of the humidity on Monday and Tuesday.
• Water temperatures 75-80.
• Sunrises around 5:55. Sunsets around 8:20.
• New moon on Tuesday. Great stargazing.

Saturday travel: Mostly sunny, hot and humid. High in the low 90s, 80s on the Outer Banks.

Sunday: Mostly sunny… isolated showers or thunderstorms late in the afternoon or evening. High 86. Wind SW increasing to 5-15 mph in the afternoon. Waves 1-3 feet. High tides at 5:55 am and 6:33 pm. Low tide at 11:57 am.

Monday: Mostly sunny and windy. Turning a little less humid. Daybreak temperature 74. Afternoon high 84. Wind NNE 10-20 mph with some higher gusts. Water a few degrees cooler. Waves 2-4 feet. High tides at 6:45 am and 7:20 pm. Low tide at 12:45 pm.

Tuesday: Sunny. Daybreak temperature 74. Afternoon high 86. Least windy day of the week. Wind SSE 5-10 mph. Waves 1-3 feet. High tides at 7:35 am and 8:08 pm. Low tide at 1:35 pm.

Wednesday: Sun and clouds. High humidity returns. Daybreak temperature 78. Afternoon high 88. Wind SW 5-15 mph. Waves 2-4 feet. Scattered showers and thunderstorms Wednesday night. High tides at 8:26 am and 8:57 pm. Low tide at 2:25 pm.

Thursday and Friday: Sun and clouds. Humid. Isolated showers and thunderstorms. Daybreak temperature 78. Afternoon high 88. Winds generally SSW 5-15 mph. Waves 2-4 feet.  High tides 9 to 10 am and 9:30 to 10:30 pm. Low tides around 3 to 4 pm.

 

 

Hurricane Florence Update – Sunday afternoon (Sept 9)

3pm, Sunday, September 9, 2018

There has been no fundamental change in the thinking of Florence.

Watching the satellite imagery suggests a hurricane that has begun the process of strengthening rapidly.

There will be two major impacts. The initial hit on the coastline… with wind damage and coastal flooding from the storm surge. This looks like it will be somewhere between Wilmington, NC and Cape Hatteras… but areas south to Myrtle Beach and north to Virginia Beach still cannot be ruled out as the initial hit.

This will probably happen on Thursday… leaning toward afternoon or night. But 12-24 hours of wiggle room should be considered.

Likewise, it will very likely be a Category 3, 4, or possibly a 5 at coastal impact (aka landfall). Everything we understand about hurricane intensity indicates a rapid strengthening should take place between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon. I would not get too hung up on small fluctuations in intensity, say bouncing back and forth between a 3 and 4 or a 4 and 5, as there is nothing to suggest a miraculous weakening would happen before landfall.

While the strongest winds are concentrated in the wall of clouds and rain around the eye of the hurricane (the eyewall), damaging winds usually are found at least a few dozen miles away from the center, so please do not focus solely on the point of impact.

After the initial landfall, the storm will turn north through central North Carolina and into Virginia for Friday and into the weekend (Sep 14-16). While still having some 40-50 mph winds by then, the devastating wind impacts from the storm will probably subside by Saturday. Nonetheless, at least scattered tree damage would probably happen in central NC (Raleigh, Greensboro), and into southern Virginia (Roanoke to Richmond)… and perhaps farther north toward Staunton and Fredericksburg.

This leads to the second impact, which often gets lost in the runup to landfall… inland flooding.

There are very worrisome indications that the storm center will stall somewhere over Virginia or North Carolina Saturday and Sunday and then slowly drift back toward the coast… or perhaps back out to sea. However, that is still 7-10 days out. And the storm will continue to weaken as it drifts, so the wind threat will be long gone.

But as mentioned above, the storm is not a point, the rain from these post-landfalling systems extends far out from the center, and the rainfall pattern is NOT symmetric around the center. So there is much uncertainty about precise rainfall estimates next weekend. Having said that… it could mean historic flooding for Virginia. Flooding would first hit streams and creeks Friday and Saturday…. and then into the state’s larger rivers Sunday and into the following week.  Is it definite? No. But there is a very serious flooding risk developing for Virginia, and it should be taken seriously.

Specific to Virginia… how much rain? Over the course of 3 days (Friday through Sunday), 5-10 inches is a conservative estimate… probably highest in the areas west of I-95 and toward the West Virginia state line. More disturbing is that some of our more reliable computer simulations suggest 12-16 inches of rain covering several dozen square miles in the western part of the state. Imagine encircling an area that includes Danville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Staunton, Covington, Roanoke, and Blacksburg. This would be devastating to the James River (all the way to Richmond) and the Roanoke/Staunton Rivers. But the Shenandoah (and ultimately the Potomac), York, and Rappahannock Rivers would also be at risk.

It is my hope that in the next day or two, there is some trend in the simulations away from this phenomenal rain idea for Virginia, so there is still another day or two to refine the forecasts. But these are the kind of figures that make me think about the James River flooding from Agnes in ’72 and Camille in ’69.

Below is a map of Virginia River basins. Know where the heavy rain is falling, ’cause this is where the water ends up.

I have also enclosed one rainfall totals simulation below (from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting), indicating the total amount of rain between now and 8am Monday morning (17th). Do not focus on the specific amounts in small numerical print. The broad area of very heavy (purple) rain is what is most troubling. This particular simulation was from 8am Sunday, Sept 9. A quick review of the data shows that 80-90% of that rain would come from Florence. Again… it is one simulation, but it does underscore that there is a legitimate risk of a once-in-a-generation flooding scenario for Virginia.

On a personal level, I will not be able to spend as much time as I would like on the analyses of the storm in the coming few days. Find a trusted meteorological source in your area. I encourage you to listen to his or her words and the tone in his or her voice. Do not get caught up or distracted by flashy television graphics or fanciful wording from news anchors. Do not fall for click bait on the web. Some trusted media colleagues that I have known for a long time… John Bernier, Jim Duncan, Andrew Freiden, Brent Watts, Will Stafford, Jeff Lawson, Aubrey Urbanowicz, Travis Koshko. And the National Weather Service offices in Blacksburg, Wakefield, and Sterling are staffed by good people who live in their communities and know their areas well. Follow them online.

Sean

PBS NewsHour – Hurricanes and Climate Science

Thanks to the folks at PBS NewsHour for inviting me to discuss hurricanes and climate science on Labor Day weekend.

Moby’s Memoir and Alternative Histories

I bought tickets to see Sting and Peter Gabriel last winter, and to my surprise, an introductory subscription to Rolling Stone came with them.

Paging through the magazine, I came across an ad for Moby’s memoir, Porcelain. I only knew his music from his popular CD Play, but the advert made me curious, as it discussed his personal struggles leading up to that CD’s release.

I enjoy memoirs from popular musicians that discuss what their lives were like before they made it big. Sting’s Broken Music and the early parts of Sammy Hagar’s Red were page turners. But those artists became huge. Although Moby has had a successful career, he has not attained stratospheric pop star status. As a result, I imagined I could relate to Moby in a way that was far removed from Sting or Sammy.

I downloaded a free preview of the book out of curiosity. One page into the prologue, I was hooked. Moby is only 4 years older than me, had been an awkward and skinny kid, and watched his hair line recede rapidly during his 20s. But the passage that grabbed me described his childhood in 1976 as the son of a financially struggling single mother, riding along with her in her Chevy Vega.

I instantly remembered the fall of 1976 when my single mother, my sisters, and I briefly lived in a small apartment in Harrisonburg. I was a few months shy of my 7th birthday. Mom was working toward a degree at James Madison University that would lead to a better job to support us. And at the time, she drove a forest green and very unreliable… Chevy Vega.

We did not last in Harrisonburg very long. Within a couple of weeks, I casually ventured off with a new friend and his parents for a few hours without telling my mother, which of course, panicked her to no end. A few days later, I let a kid borrow my bicycle, and I never saw him or the bicycle again. Mom, my sisters, and I went back to Richmond a few weeks into the experiment. Mom continued her course work at John Tyler Community College.

A few years ago, on one of my numerous trips along Interstate 81, I diverted into Harrisonburg and found that apartment complex. It was occupied and functional, but not in good condition at all. Eerie.

When I reached my 30s, Mom would occasionally tell me how lucky my sisters and I were to have turned out as well as we did. Perhaps even blessed. The odds had been stacked against us: three kids who had not even reached school age when our mother made the agonizing decision to divorce my father.

Over the past few years, I have thought more about what Mom had said. I sometimes think that if 2 or 3 decisions had been made differently by the adults in my family before I reached my 10th birthday, my life may have gone in a very different direction.

With that backdrop, I began to read Porcelain as a potential alternative history of myself. What could’ve happened?

Moby relives the ’90s in Porcelain. Living in an abandoned factory in Connecticut. The struggle to find work. DJ’ing questionable clubs in New York City. Drug use all around him. His time as an alcohol “enthusiast”, only to go sober and start drinking again. Discordant relationships with high-risk emotionless sex. Deep depression.

I will not profess to be a saint, but his memoir gave me insight into a dark world that I suppose I knew was out there, but I have never had to face. So yes, I have been fortunate. It reminded me that there are people living lives that I simply cannot imagine. They are beyond the scope of my experience. I have occasionally had the opportunity to glimpse into to some of those lives, but I had no true frame of reference to comprehend them.

The constant in the book and with me was the early relationship with his single mother. Moby reminisced about laughing and listening to the Bee Gees on the AM radio with her, recounting some of the brighter moments as she struggled through single parenthood. I remember much the same, telling my mother how cool it was that Cheeseburger in Paradise was sung by a guy named Jimmy Buffett… my 8-year-old brain thinking Buffett and buffet were closely related. Moby summarizes what I think we both felt:

I loved my mom. She was one of the smartest and funniest and most interesting people I’d ever known. But growing up with her had never been normal.

Indeed. Mom had to make tough decisions about educating us. The school year following the failed Harrisonburg experiment found me being bused into inner-city Richmond for 3rd grade. Four months and a head of lice later, I was living with my grandparents to get into the Chesterfield County schools. The homesickness set in within a few days, and I was back at home with Mom. Despite the cost, she enrolled me in a private Christian school for the rest of the school year. A few weeks later, I was nearly expelled for swearing.

But I was lucky. No drugs. No hard alcohol in the house.

Moby alluded to it late in the memoir: how his early childhood struggles still haunted him and many others into early adulthood. It took me years to understand how the things I experienced early in my life color the way I see the world even today.

Perhaps I’ll write something when I’m 50, but I can’t imagine my stories will have quite the impact as what I read in Porcelain. Wow.

Opening the Ears to Prince

My brother from another mother, Matt Lanza, does sum it up well.

We watch the passing of these pop/rock performers, and for many of us, we watch another little piece of our youth go with them.

Prince was different. Which, of course, is obvious.

The first song I heard from him was 1999 in late 1982. As a 13-year old living through the height of the cold war, and living in an area of the country in which some people seemed infatuated with the End Times, the subject matter resonated with me.

But I was largely an album-oriented-rock (AOR) kid at that time with a bit of new wave streak. I was more likely listening the The Police, Men At Work, or The Cars. So I didn’t warm up to Little Red Corvette or even When Doves Cry. At least not right away. However, when the second single from Purple Rain hit the radio in 1984, it changed some things.

The guitar solo at the end of Let’s Go Crazy screamed rock and roll. So much so, that it got substantial airplay on the local AOR station that I listened to religiously, XL-102 in Richmond. One of the teachers in my high school even asked a group of us at the lunch table one afternoon, “Is he trying to be the next Jimi Hendrix?”

Likewise, the opening monologue of that song spoke to me… as I’m sure it still does to many… about the internal struggles of life.

Sign O’ The Times resonated as well. A straightforward commentary on life in the middle 1980s.

Is it silly, no?
When a rocket ship explodes and everybody still wants to fly

Some songs you remember at precise instances of your life. I remember that one coming on the radio while I was in a pensive mood on the way to my senior prom. One of those moments of adolescence when you realize that some the biggest steps of your life are just around the corner. I would go to Penn State 4 months later in a leap of faith, hoping to walk down a path to make my career choice a reality.

In time, I grew to appreciate his musicianship, and enough of my naivete faded away that I finally understood Little Red Corvette. Of course other songs weren’t so subtle, smashing the listener over the head. I still remember a former girlfriend trying to embarrass me by making me listen to Darling Nikki in 1988.

A few years later, in graduate school, 7 hit the radio, and again, while no one could accuse me of being a massive Prince fan, I admitted to my roommate that there were certain songs of his that I just thought were incredible.

Prince made me open my ears to other styles of music. And taught me to enjoy them as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Star Wars, Snark, and Climate Change (Global Warming Episode VI)

A long, long time ago, our home planet more resembled Hoth, the ice planet in the Star Wars universe. While Earth was not entirely blanketed in glaciers, large sheets of ice covered North America, Europe, and Asia. This was during the peak of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago.

At that time, the average temperature of Earth was only about 5.5°C (10°F) lower than the middle 20^th century. The atmospheric carbon dioxide level was 180 parts per million (ppm), less than half of the level today. More striking, the sea level was 400 feet (120 meters) lower than today.

For comparison… some present elevations above sea level:

• Raleigh, NC:   435 feet
• Richmond, VA:   166 feet
• Philadelphia, PA:   30 feet

But subtle changes in Earth’s orbit altered how the planet absorbed solar energy, and there was shuffling of ocean circulations. By themselves, these were not enough to drive Earth out of its glacial state. However, they did lead to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to 280 ppm, warming Earth and helping make it the hospitable place we enjoy today, more along the lines of Endor, the forest moon where the Ewoks made their stand in Return of the Jedi.

Ominous approach of the fictional Death Star toward the peaceful planet of Alderaan (otherwise not featured in this article… but shown for dramatic effect…’cause it looks similar to Earth… don’t ya think?).

Human emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, have increased dramatically over the last century, dwarfing the natural cycle. The concentration is at 400 ppm and climbing, which is the primary reason that the average global temperature has risen about 1°C (1.8°F) since pre-industrial times. This type of rise took several centuries to occur naturally, yet it has occurred in the last hundred years due to human activities.

From the Climate Central office. Simulations of sea level rise in Sydney, Australia after 2°C of warming and 4°C of warming.

While no one expects Earth to turn into the desert world of Tatooine (after all, that planet has two suns), further carbon dioxide emissions will create more planetary warming through the end of the century and beyond. The amount of warming will determine how much more ice is lost at the poles, and thus, how much further global sea levels will rise, with big differences for each degree of warming.

Fictional spaceship from the author’s favorite Mel Brooks film.

So. Have a nice day.