Jim Dunn & Associates

10/25/2024

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.”
–Hermann Hesse

10/24/2024

I just came to the realization that as an adult, buying Halloween candy is like paying your dues for all the years of free candy you took from people. I my case, that is a substantial debt.

10/22/2024

Facts are pesky little things:
Courts Agree: Fraud by Voters at the Polls is Nearly Non-Existent

 The Fifth Circuit, in an opinion finding that Texas’s strict photo ID law is racially discriminatory, noted that there were “only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20
million votes cast in the decade” before Texas passed its law.

 In its opinion striking down North Carolina’s omnibus restrictive election law —which included a voter ID requirement — as purposefully racially discriminatory, the Fourth Circuit noted that the state “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in person voter fraud in North Carolina.”

 A federal trial court in Wisconsin reviewing that state’s strict photo ID law found “that impersonation fraud — the type of fraud that voter ID is designed to prevent — is extremely rare” and “a truly isolated phenomenon that has not posed a significant threat to the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections.”

 Even the Supreme Court, in its opinion in Crawford upholding Indiana’s voter ID law, noted that the record in the case “contains no evidence of any [in-person voter impersonation] fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.” Two of the jurists who weighed in on that case at the time — Republican-appointed former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and
conservative appellate court Judge Richard Posner — have since announced they regret their votes in favor of the law, with Judge Posner noting that strict photo ID laws are “now widely
regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention.”

10/06/2024

When we embrace humility, we accept our own limitations — both the acknowledgement that we humans are limited and can’t know everything and the admission that our own views themselves have limits and are likely flawed. Most of us are completely wrong about a few things, and a little bit wrong about almost everything else. None of us knows perfectly.” -Daryl Van Tongeren

08/14/2024

Warning: Nerd Post
Some of my dear friends are adamant climate change deniers!
These friends especially believe concerns about the great coral reef in Australia are a hoax. I judiciously read their posts which often lack scientific evidence, or contain cherry-pick quotes from articles that mislead the reader. That, of course, is their right.

Because climate change, the arts in education, and human rights continue to be my top three areas of personal exploration and commitment, I very occasionally will venture into the political fray with science based evidence. This article is well done and especially compelling. I challenge my friends who believe the Great Choral Reef is not in danger to rake a look. As always, I will faithfully read your reply.

https://rdcu.be/dQV76

03/06/2024

If you have a place to stay, eat healthy food and drink clean water, have a mobile phone, you can travel on the internet and you graduated from a college or university, you're in a small privileged group. (In the category of less than 7%)

OUT OF 100% OF THE WORLD'S PEOPLE, ONLY 8% CAN LIVE TO 65 YEARS OLD.

02/29/2024

LEAP YEAR FACTS:
Numbers, history, and lore exist to keep the months in sync with annual events, including equinoxes and solstices
It’s a correction to counter the fact that Earth’s orbit isn’t precisely 365 days a year. It takes about six hours longer than that.
Not every four years is a leap year. Adding a leap day every four years would make the calendar longer by more than 44 minutes. And thus, it was decreed that years divisible by 100 not follow the four-year leap day rule unless they are also divisible by 400.
In the past 500 years, there was no leap day in 1700, 1800 and 1900, but 2000 had one. In the next 500 years, if the practice is followed, there will be no leap day in 2100, 2200, 2300, and 2500.
The next leap years are 2028, 2032 and 2036.
Eventually, without leap yeara, major events like when farmers plant and how seasons align with the sun and the moon would get out of whack. In a few hundred years we would have summer in November. Christmas will be in summer.
Ancient civilizations used the cosmos to plan their lives, and there are calendars dating back to the Bronze Age. They were based on either the phases of the moon or the sun, as various calendars are today. Usually, they were “lunisolar,” using both.
The Roman Empire under Julius Caesar was dealing with major seasonal drift and introduced his Julian calendar in 46 BCE. It was purely solar and counted a year at 365.25 days, so once every four years an extra day was added.
But there was still drift because there were too many leap years! The solar year isn’t precisely 365.25 days! It’s 365.242 days.
The Julian calendar was 0.0078 days (11 minutes and 14 seconds) longer than the tropical year, so errors in timekeeping still gradually accumulated.The Julian calendar was the model used by the Western world for hundreds of years.
Enter Pope Gregory XIII, who calibrated further. His Gregorian calendar took effect in the late 16th century. It remains in use today and isn’t perfect or there would be no need for leap year. But it was a big improvement, reducing drift to mere seconds.
The Pope stepped in because Easter was coming later in the year over time, and he fretted that events related to Easter like the Pentecost might bump up against pagan festivals. The pope wanted Easter to remain in the spring.
It’s Pope Gregory and his advisers who came up with the really gnarly math on when there should or shouldn’t be a leap year.
If the solar year was a perfect 365.25 then we wouldn’t have to worry about the tricky math involved.
Bizarrely, leap day comes with lore about women popping the marriage question to men. It was mostly benign fun, but it came with a bite that reinforced gender roles.
European folklore places the idea of women proposing in fifth-century Ireland, with St. Bridget appealing to St. Patrick to offer women the chance to ask men to marry them.
Nobody really knows where it all began.
In 1904, syndicated columnist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer, aka Dorothy Dix, summed up the tradition this way: “Of course, people will say ... that a woman’s leap year prerogative, like most of her liberties, is merely a glittering mockery.
The pre-Sadie Hawkins tradition merely perpetuated stereotypes. The proposals were to happen via postcard, but many such cards turned the tables and poked fun at women instead.
Advertising perpetuated the leap-year marriage game. A 1916 ad by the American Industrial Bank and Trust Co. read thusly: “This being Leap Year day, we suggest to every girl that she propose to her father to open a savings account in her name in our own bank.”
There was no breath of independence for women due to leap day.
Being born in a leap year on a leap day certainly is a talking point, but it can be a a paperwork pain. Some government forms declared what date was used by leaplings for such things as driver's licenses, whether Feb. 28 or March 1.
Technology has made it far easier for leap babies to jot down their Feb. 29 milestones, though there can be glitches in terms of health systems, insurance policies and with other businesses and organizations that don’t have that date built in.
There are about 5 million people worldwide who share the leap birthday out of about 8 billion people on the planet.

01/02/2024

In a quiet college town beside a great river, there lived a remarkable woman named Loreta. She was 104 years old, and a pillar of wisdom, kindness, and boundless love in the community. Mrs. Loreta was dedicated to teaching, nurturing, and caring for children. To that end, she started the town’s very first preschool

Mrs. Loreta’s Little Tots Preschool was a guiding light for generations of youngsters, offering them not just daycare, but also unwavering support and compassion long after they had grown up and started families of their own.

Loreta’s hands had wiped away countless tears, her arms had held a thousand hurts, and her teaching had launched generations of children with a firm knowledge of what it meant to be affirmed and loved. “Nana,” as she was called, held the dreams of countless children deep within her heart.

As she gracefully aged, Loreta’s health began to decline. She went to live in a nursing home. Almost daily her daughter Kathy came to visit. Nana grew old, but she was surrounded by her memories and the thoughts of the children she cherished. Parishioners of her church revered Loreta for the depth of her kindness and the legacy of care she had built. They kept Loreta in their prayers.

One quiet afternoon not too long ago, Loreta peacefully passed away. Her son and two daughters were at her side. The news of her death spread swiftly throughout the church and town. A sense of loss and a feeling of grace permeated the community. They knew they had lost not just a caretaker of children, but a mentor, a trusted friend, and an unending source of warmth and care. Maybe, they had even lost a Saint.

As the word passed on social media, unknown numbers of children and parents, each with their unique stories and experiences, recalled the lessons Mrs. Loreta had taught them. She had imparted wisdom through the kind of life she lived, kindness through her actions, and the resilience of faith through her unwavering spirit.

In their grief, the children and parents realized that Loreta’s legacy was not just in the years she lived but in the lives she had touched. Her teachings and her faith had found a home in their hearts that guides them now on their journey. They came to know that her passing after so many years was not an end, but the continuation of her legacy within each of them.

The stories go on in us.

01/02/2024

This is so much fun!

Discover the world's latest news in a visually compelling way with PaleBlue.News, your go-to data visualization tool.

01/05/2023

Cool!!!

The comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is believed to have traveled billions of miles from the most distant region of the solar system — and this will likely be the only time it's visible from Earth for thousands of years.