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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, March 20, 2004
Kerry Brings Out The Big Guns of Endorsement From the British Guardian: Noam Chomsky, the political theorist and leftwing guru, yesterday gave his reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party's presidential contender, John Kerry, calling him "Bush-lite", but a "fraction" better than his rival.If you don't know who Noam Chomsky is, let's just say that his fame as a professor of linguistics doesn't necessarily mean that he knows anything about the real world. Here's an interview that gives you something of where this prominent Kerry backer stands: QUESTION: Why do you believe it was unlawful for the United States to fight back against a foreign attacker?Chomsky is also a very skilled predictor of the future, as this article from just before the start of Gulf War II demonstrates: U.S. linguist, author and human rights activist professor Noam Chomsky said that the Kurds in northern Iraq would suffer seriously from a likely war in Iraq, emphasizing that hundreds of thousands of people would desert the region during the war, semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. More About Bush Supporters "Threatening" Gore's Family I had mentioned previously a pack of nonsense (at least) that I received as spam from an Eric Smith creature. Among the claims he made was that Bush supporters had "threatened" Vice President Gore's family during the dispute over the 2000 election. I pointed out that Smith's own source didn't support that claim. I have now updated that entry to include an eyewitness account of the demonstrations. Lobsters Smarter Than Assumed This article from the Christian Science Monitor reports on studies of lobster populations--and the amazing discovery that only 6% of lobsters who enter a lobster trap can't get out. They are quite a bit smarter than lobstermen assumed. Personally, lobsters have always made me think of an alien life form from the 1960s Outer Limits TV series. Gun Control Advocate Explains Why He Has a Carry Permit The editorial page editor for the Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette really thinks that Ohio issuing concealed weapon permits is a bad idea: Most disturbingly, the increase in carry guns is further evidence that efforts to slow America's rush to become an armed society have largely failed.On the same day, he explains why he has a concealed handgun permit: With some apprehension, I have contributed to the frightening increase in the number of Americans permitted to legally carry a gun.I've added emphasis to this amazing statement. There used to be a statement that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. It sounds like Tracy Warner is a gun control advocate who has figured out that all his high ideals about how bad guns didn't survive a dose of reality. UPDATE: Here's the newspaper article that outed Tracy Warner, gun control advocate and concealed carry licensee: You might be surprised at who's licensed to pack heat in Allen County.To the credit of this article, it does a reasonably fair job of showing that licensees aren't just paranoid or suffering from Walter Mitty fantasies: Jordan and Freeland didn't return phone calls seeking comment. Warner said he obtained his about four years ago after he began receiving death threats, including one that had "a disturbing reference to my family and a description and the location of my house. I wanted to have an option."A reader pointed me to this blog that first provided these links. Awesome Chromacor I'll still be gushing for a while about the combination of the Chromacor and my 5" refractor. Seeing conditions were better last night; I was able to go up to 286x on Saturn--and the image was just beginning to soften, largely because of turbulence. I could see one brownish cloud band about 30 degrees from the equator--and what I think are some of the fainter satellites nearer the planet. Jupiter did better at 190x, and here there was more detail visible than I could ever hope to draw. The cloud bands across the planet (at least four dark bands) were not even stripes, but tremendously irregular and complex, with swirls at the edges that I could not quite resolve, but that I could tell were present. There was only the faintest hint of chromatic abberation--so little that I was not always sure that I was seeing it. And all this from my backyard, which is suburban, light polluted, and suffering the turbulence of cooling concrete! If the sky clears, I'll go to the Boise Astronomical Star Party tonight, where I have a decently dark sky, twenty miles east of Boise. Labels: telescopes Friday, March 19, 2004
French Reality An amazing statement by the French Foreign Minister: "We have to look reality in the face: we have entered into a more dangerous and unstable world, which requires the mobilization of the entire international community," de Villepin said.What does he call mass murder, torture, and rape? Or does he believe that because these were done by the Iraqi government, they don't qualify? I think de Villepin has missed the really important dividing line: 9/11. Pee Wee Herman: Another Counterexample Homosexuals keep insisting that the creeps interested in little boys aren't homosexuals. Yet we keep getting news stories like this one: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Paul Reubens, who won fame as children's television star "Pee-wee Herman," pleaded guilty on Friday to a misdemeanor charge of possessing obscene material and was sentenced to three years of informal probation that requires him to stay away from children.We have a pretty good idea what his preferences are with adults from that unfortunate incident in the adult movie theater in 1991. If homosexuals want to argue that most homosexuals aren't interested in sex with children, fine. I am inclined to believe that. But this pretense that there is no intersection between homosexuality and pedophilia is just nonsense. UPDATE: A gay reader points out that Pee Wee Herman isn't really a pedophile because: 1. He didn't have sex with a child. 2. Pedophile should only be used to refer to those interested in sex with pre-adolescents. He also points to this more "complete" description of the events in the Viilage Voice. Go ahead and read it yourself; doing their best to justify Pee Wee Herman's enormous collection of 1950s and 1960s pornography (most of it gay), some of which involves clearly underage children, this article actually added to my nauseated reaction to Pee Wee Herman. This is really sad, because Pee Wee's Big Adventure was one of the most fun films that I saw the year it came out. Age of consent laws are definitely arbitrary. Why 18? Some states set the age of consent at 17. There's no bright line definition of this, except, perhaps whatever age we define as adult (able to make contracts, no longer subject to parental authority). Certainly, different cultures can legitimately come to somewhat different agreements about what is an appropriate age. There are certainly very mature 17 year olds and very immature 20 year olds. Fine. All of this is true. But: a 12 year old, by the "pedophilia should only be used to refer to those interested in sex with pre-adolescents" definition, is ready for sex with adults. Nope. Anyone that thinks that hasn't spent enough time with kids that age--and even 13, 14, 15. The vast majority are easily manipulated, and often suffering from the full consequences of the hormonal chaos that is puberty. Homosexuals keep telling me that they are just like everyone else, except for who they love. If so, they should stop making arguments for why minors are ready for sex with adults as soon as secondary sex characteristics arrive. In the straight community, adults who go after 12 and 13 year olds are rightly regarded as, at best, immature, but mostly as exploiters. Don't You Just Hate It When The Servants Get in the Way? The "I'm John Kerry, and I'm looking out for average Joes" theme just isn't working too well, with news coverage like this: Dem presidential candidate John Kerry called his secret service agent a "son of a bitch" after the agent inadvertently moved into his path during a ski mishap in Idaho, sending Kerry falling into the snow.Look, I know that you have to be rich to get elected President of the United States. I know that Bush is another rich guy, too. But he's not pretending to be an average American--although Bush fakes it a lot better than this spoiled gigolo, John Kerry. Note to ACLU: If You Don't Like What You See, Change the Channel At least, that's what the ACLU says when someone is offended by something that is being broadcast on public airwaves. In Duluth, Minnesota, those narrowminded sorts at the ACLU can't bear to look at a block of stone that is far less offensive to the vast majority of Americans than Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." Mayor Herb Bergson signed a City Council resolution Wednesday that would settle a lawsuit by removing the monument. But Bergson said he has been told that advocates of keeping the monument where it is are circulating a petition to override the council's vote.Sorry, but the community is already "divided" on this issue--although I would suspect that in even in Minnesota, the divide is probably about 65-35 against removing the stone. In an editorial Wednesday, the Duluth News Tribune urged the council to stick with its 5-4 vote to settle the case. Losing in court would mean paying the legal fees of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union (MCLU), which could cost the city $25,000 to $90,000, the newspaper warned.So why is it better to knuckle under to the ACLU, who is the organization that is insisting, "remove that offensive material, or we'll sue"? What's interesting is how many of these "offensive" monuments there are sitting in public places around Minnesota, and how little problem they are--except for those prudes at the ACLU. At least five other Minnesota cities have Ten Commandments monuments on public property.Just as a reminder what the ACLU stands for--besides hiring apologists for terrorism: "We would hope these cities and counties move them to private property," Samuelson said. "They really don't belong on government property. They know that. They are quintessentially a religious document, basically for Christians."Perhaps Mr. Samuelson is unaware of this, but there is another religion that holds the Ten Commandments in considerable esteem. Doubtless, Mr. Samuelson is unaware of this other religion, many of whose adherents around the country have joined with Christians in opposing removal of the Ten Commandments. I can be pretty sure what would happen if a Minnesota public school ordered a Muslim girl not to wear a head covering, for fear of offending others. Samuelson would have his briefs exposed faster than the young lady's hair. Thanks to How Appealing for the link. The Michigan Constitution's Ban on Capital Punishment A lot of people don't know it, but the Michigan Constitution contains a prohibition on capital punishment. Contrary to what you might assume, this isn't a modern liberal do-gooder requirement. I've read that what is only described as an unpleasant execution in Michigan Territory shortly before statehood caused the state constitutional convention to explicitly ban it. I don't know what they meant by "unpleasant." Hanging was less than exact science. Too little weight, and the condemned man's neck wouldn't break; he would just slowly strangle. The hangman would put some weights on the little guys to make sure the neck broke. Too much weight, however, would sometimes take the head off the body. I wouldn't have believed that this was possible, but I've seen a picture of an Old West hanging that had this result. If I recall correctly, this was one of the arguments that the defendant made in State v. Rupe (Wash. 1984)--that because of his weight, he would lose his head, and this constituted cruel and unusual punishment. (The decision itself is a bit more delicate, and doesn't directly address why Rupe thought hanging was cruel and unusual.) But so what? He would be dead anyway by then. As much as it rankles a lot of people in Michigan that their state constitution prohibits capital punishment, that's the way things are. A state constitution is a contract, in a sense, between the people that ratified it, and future generations. Some people, especially on the left, find the entire notion absurd, that future generations are bound by a document written in another time, in different circumstances. If the "contract" is too restrictive, there is a solution: amend it. Supporters of the death penalty have tried--and failed--to get the required votes in the Michigan House of Representatives to put repeal of Art. IV, sec. 46 on the ballot. There is a bit of a crowd that thinks it is "cool" and "courageous" for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to have found a right to same-sex marriage where no such right was ever contemplated. Ditto, for the U.S. Supreme Court finding a right to homosexual sex in the Constitution, completely contrary to the clearly stated views of every legislative body in 1789 (ratification of the Constitution) and 1868 (ratification of the 14th Amendment). Imagine how upset that same crowd would be if the courts decided to take this same devil may care approach to Michigan's constitutional ban on the death penalty, and decided that it doesn't really mean what it says, or that it is old news, and not relevant to conditions today. At this point, you are going to argue that the text of Art. IV, sec. 46 is very clear: you would have to be dishonest to pretend that it doesn't prohibit capital punishment. I would agree. The courts, however, aren't limited by the text of the Constitution. They look at historical evidence (when it suits them) to "clarify" what that text means. Sometimes this is necessary, when there is uncertainty as to the meaning of a word. What did the Framers mean by "press" or "speech"? What rights did the ratifiers of the 14th Amendment understand to be included by the term "privileges and immunities"? These are legitimate questions, because the words of the text carry meanings of another time. At other times, the courts engage in severe pretzel logic to come to the conclusion that they want, and the historical evidence is either distorted, twisted, or just made up (as in Lawrence). So here's my annoying question for the day: use the same quality of reasoning that concludes that "right of the people to keep and bear arms" protects the right of the states to keep militias--but not law-abiding adults to own guns, or that concludes that what was a felony everywhere in 1789 and 1868 (homosexual sodomy) is now a constitutionally protected right, and see if you can find some rationalization for why "No law shall be enacted providing for the penalty of death" really doesn't prohibit the death penalty. I'm sure that some of the more clever law students out there can probably find some way to "understand" it in a sufficiently post-modernist way that Justice Kennedy would be proud. Thanks to How Appealing for the link to the Detroit Free Press story. UPDATE: We'll take a page from the playbook of those who argue for a very narrow reading of the Second Amendment. "Capital punishment, back when Michigan's first constitutional convention met, was a cruel and gruesome business. They would certainly not have objected to the more humane methods that we use today, in our more enlightened society, such as lethal injection. Therefore, Art. IV, sec. 46 really only prohibits capital punishment by hanging and other painful and gruesome methods. Our society has changed, and the Michigan Constitution, being a living document, must recognize the very different conditions and circumstances today." But Consider The Competition... From Reuters: PARIS (Reuters) - Want to stay fit and healthy? Two top French nutritionists are telling people to go for a Big Mac and keep their fingers off the traditional French quiche.Hey, I like McDonald's (occasionally), and I like Quiche Lorraine (occasionally). What's the key word for anyone's diet? Occasionally. A bit of self-restraint goes a long ways, with food, with sex, and with the accelerator pedal. That Asteroid That Passed By At least some of the news accounts are claiming that had it hit, no problem: If it had hit Earth it probably would have broken up in the atmosphere. Its shock wave could have been strong enough to break windows on the ground, but nothing like the disastrous climate-changing effects that could result from the impact of an asteroid more than a half-mile in diameter, Chesley said.Wait a minute. It's the same size as the asteroid that excavated the Canyon Diablo Meteor Crater, and killed or wounded large animals in a 24 kilometer circle. Now, it's true that stony meteors don't have that structural integrity of nickel-iron, and they sometimes break up on entry--but even broken up, these individual chunks would still be a significant hazard. When you see a shooting star, you are looking at an object the size of a grain of sand to perhaps pea-sized entering the atmosphere 80 to 100 miles up. An object the size of your fist will be a fireball. As object as big as your head will actually hit the ground. Here's an example of what happened when a 12.5 kilogram meteor (smaller than your head) hit a Chevrolet Malibu in 1992. This 30 meter asteroid weighs 111,259,409 kilograms, or about nine million times the kinetic energy. (Volume of a sphere is 4/3*pi*(r^3), and iron is about 7870 kg/cubic meter.) UPDATE: Over here, someone says that the asteroid would have only been going 16,000 mph, not the 45,000 mph of the Canyon Diablo Meteor. If so the energy release would have been much smaller, because kinetic energy goes up with the square of the velocity. My recollection from physics class at USC (where I had a marvelously good freshman physics professor; she had the unlikely name of Intriligator), was that unless under power, an object falling into a planet has roughly the same terminal velocity (until it hits the atmosphere) as the escape velocity. I pulled the physics text from that class (Halliday and Resnick) off the shelf, and the description of escape velocity calculation seems to confirm that. An asteroid that is in an orbit that crosses our orbit will have a similar velocity to Earth. (I'm pretty sure that's true, and if I weren't so tired, I could probably still derive this from Kepler's Second Law and the law of gravitation.) An asteroid with velocity at an angle to our orbit will have some ugly trig function combination of escape velocity and the asteroid's velocity (I think). Is there a astrophysicist in the house? UPDATE 2: A reader points to a JPL website indicating that the velocity of this asteroid relative to Earth was 8 km/sec. As I mentioned above, an object falling in approaches escape velocity. Since it missed us, it obviously had enough energy to avoid being pulled all the way in. Nonetheless, even at 8 km/sec., that's enough energy to do more than rattle windows. We Finally Learn Which Foreign Leaders Support Kerry After first insisting that many foreign leaders would prefer him to win, Kerry refused to identify them. Now, one of them has identified himself: Kerry has been criticized by Republicans for claiming that some foreign leaders would like to see him elected to replace President Bush. He didn't give any names.And who is this guy? You remember: "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today, the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."John Kerry may set a new record for how rapidly a liberal Democrat's candicacy for President self-destructs--before the convention! Thursday, March 18, 2004
The Apochromat Owners Are Going To Turn Purple (Not Green) With Envy I received a threaded diagonal today, screwed in the Chromacor, set up the telescope, and aimed at Jupiter. Seeing wasn't great, largely because the moisture in the air was beginning to turn to fog, but the violet and green fringes on opposite limbs of the planet that I saw a few nights ago (signs of inadequate collimation of the Chromacor)--completely gone. Jupiter is as color-free at 286x as it would be in an apochromat. I can see (I think) more detail at 190x than I could a few nights ago with the Chromacor--and definitely more than with the uncorrected scope. I plan to take it to the Boise Astronomical Society star party Saturday night, where we have much darker skies--and then I should see what this scope can do! I have spent about $1000 so far--about a fifth of what an apochromat of equivalent aperture would cost. I do not doubt that my scope is still inferior in mechanical quality, and perhaps even in optical quality--but from what I have seen under comparable skies, the difference in image quality is not dramatic. Labels: telescopes I Never Cease To Be Amazed At The Left's Stupidity Or Dishonesty I just received this email: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEYou'll notice from the phone number and email address that he doesn't even live here. (please distribute widely.)Oh, I shall, so that everyone can see the dishonesty of the left. This from a guy who doesn't even live in the U.S.? While Americans take second and even third jobs just feed their families, the Bush Administration has poured America's wealth into the greedy hands of defense contractors and tax-dodging megacorporations, notorious companies like (#1 Bush donator Kenneth Lay's) Enron or Cheney's wartime ripoff-artists at Halliburton.There must be a lot of very rich people in America; the lines at restaurants (and I don't mean McDonald's) are becoming quite annoyingly long around here on Friday nights. Everywhere I turn, I see new cars. There are still people out of work, although fortunately, new unemployment claims are down to where they were on January 13, 2001--before Bush took office. Our environment, safety, economy, national security, labor protection and Constitutionally-guaranteed rights have all been gutted and left to die in a worker-hostile economy.Ah, now we get to the guts of this guy's concern: labor unions. Yes, because the Republican Party has always been very good at getting people like me to find $50 or $100 or $150 per election cycle--and there are vast numbers of us. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, relies on the contributions of millionaires and billionaires, who can only give $2000 per election cycle to an election campaign. Their workaround is for billionaires like George Soros to personally contribute $10 million to the unseat Bush effort. If there were anywhere near as many millionaires as there are ordinary Americans, Bush wouldn't have quite this "unfair" advantage. And they are fighting dirty, just as they did in 2000, when they purged Florida voter rolls(2), rioted to stop recounts(3), barred citizens from voting (ibid) and even threatened the Vice President and his family on their front lawn (4).You might almost think from the footnotes that there is something significant to these claims. Footnote 2? An article about how the Florida government enforced the law against convicted felons from voting. Boy, that is "dirty" indeed. Footnote 3a is a broken link. Footnote 3b says nothing about rioting, or barring citizens from voting. Footnote 4? It was broken, but I figured out what it was supposed to point to. It's a reprint of a National Review Online article by David Frum which describes what actually happened--because he was there. They did not threaten the Vice President's family. If in doubt, look at what Kristen Gore said: WALTERS: Do you remember the crowds outside screaming?This guy is either a liar, or incapable of reading. This year, through gerrymandering, data theft from Congressional computers, impeachments and recess judicial appointments, they are trying to consolidate their unprecedented power.If the data isn't protected, it isn't theft. The Democrats failed to secure data on publicly owned computers. Accessing it is theft? Impeachments? What impeachments? Recess judicial appointments--why that has never been done before, ever! The Constitution provides for it--there's a reason. And they have a special election-season surprise in store for us as well -- as the AFL-CIO argued before the Supreme Court last December(5), the Bushites have MADE IT A CRIME FOR THIRD PARTIES TO CRITICIZE THE PRESIDENT OR SAY THINGS TO INFLUENCE THE ELECTION during the election's most critical phase:This is where I stopped reading. The "Bushites" did this? No, the Democratic Party for years has been screeching that we needed a campaign finance reform law to stop people from saying nasty things about elected officials--and finally, after all these years, they got what they wanted. Congress including most Democrats, and some Republicans, passed an absurd and to my mind, unconstitutional law, Bush signed it. The law is too broad, but it prevents third parties from using corporation, union, or non-profit organization money to promote any candidate, Republican or Democrat or even Green. It is not specific to the President, nor does it prohibit criticizing public officials. This guy is a completely ignorant fool, or a liar. Or maybe both. UPDATE: I received an irritated email: From my point of view, anyone who tries to say that one spammer speaks for "the Left" such that his stupidity and ignorance can be rationally ascribed to everyone with liberal political beliefs, is either a completely ignorant fool or a liar. Or perhaps both.Take a good careful look above. I did not use the word liberal anywhere in this entry. I consistently used the term "leftist." Liberalism is actually a rather different ideology. Liberals, at least for the few months after 9/11, recognized that we were at war with an ideology that threatened them as well, and even today, many liberals (at least the ones not running for president) remain committed to the triumph of the broad notion of a free and open society. We might disagree about what are the right limits of such a society, but there is a core of shared values. The left has no such commitment to a free and open society. Their hatred of capitalism is so strong that they don't mind if Islamofascism wins. Am I being unfair to leftists? I get the most incredible crap. I get long, carefully written, dishonest garbage that equates Hitler to Bush, making historically inaccurate statements--and statements that are clearly not made out of ignorance, but intentional falsehood. Example: one of these essays claimed Hitler wasn't much of a public speaker until after he was elected, and was given speech lessons. Nope. Hitler was a powerful public speaker--that is how he rose to the top of the National Socialist German Workers Party shortly after he showed up to spy on them. That's how he took a tiny, utterly irrelevant political party and made it into one of the major political parties of the Weimar Republic. The left (defined as socialism and communism) has no moral or intellectual credibility. None. It is a movement that at least could claim ignorant good intentions a century ago. The left has had its chance to demonstrate the merit of their ideas, in the Soviet Union, in the People's Republic of China, in Cuba, in Cambodia. They have made the worst of laissez-faire capitalism look pretty decent by comparison, and even authoritarian, non-laissez-faire capitalism (Wilhemine Germany, for example), doesn't have the mountains of skulls to point to that most of the leftist utopias have managed. UPDATE 2: And here's the response from Eric Smith. I don't ordinarily post email with the sender identified, but this guy deserves all the embarrassment possible. I've edited his coarse language: The fact that kids used to tease you and beat the ****out of you because you were called "clayton" and looked rather fishlike cannot be erased from your psyche by sporting a manlyeasque spiffy beard or ****ting on people who sincerely want to effect positive change.UPDATE 2: I received a note from an eyewitness to the supposed "threats" to Vice President Gore's family. Jerome Sternstein, a retired history professor, kindly allowed me to reproduce his description of the demonstrations in question: For what it's worth, I was in Washington visiting one of my daughters at the time and I went to the residence and took photos of the event. Unfortunately, they aren't digital and are in some box I haven't looked through for for four years or I'd send them to you. Labels: Iraqi WMDs A Gallery of the Democratic Party No, really, all on one page! (And yes, amazingly enough, it is worksafe.) Devastating Memo From Justice Scalia About Recusal It's long, but like most everything Scalia writes, it is very clear. He also demonstrates that the Sierra Club has a very severe procto-cranial insertion problem. Having failed to find any similar cases where Supreme Court justices recused themselves (and missing at least two very similar cases that Scalia found where previous Supreme Court justices did not recuse themselves): The core of Sierra Club’s argument is as follows:The Sierra Club thinks that newspaper editorials are the American public, worse, those editorials are "factually challenged," misidentifying how the Vice President and Scalia got to this hunting trip, how long he was there, who their hosts were, and many other serious problems.“Sierra Club makes this motion because . . . damage [to the integrity of the system] is being done right now. As of today, 8 of the 10 newspapers with the largest circulation in the United States, 14 of the largest 20, and 20 of the 30 largest have called on Justice Scalia to step aside . . . . Of equal import, there isno counterbalance or controversy: not a single news-paper has argued against recusal. Because the American public, as reflected in the nation’s newspaper editorials, has unanimously concluded that there is an appearance of favoritism, any objective observer would be compelled to conclude that Justice Scalia’s impartiality has been questioned. These facts more than satisfy Section 455(a), which mandates recusal merely when a Justice’s impartiality ‘might reasonably be questioned.’” Motion to Recuse 3–4.The implications of this argument are staggering. I must recuse because a significant portion of the press, which is deemed to be the American public, demands it. Many of them do not even have the facts right. The length of our hunting trip together was said to be several days (San Francisco Chronicle), four days (Boston Globe), or nine days (San Antonio Express-News). We spent about 48 hours together at the hunting camp. It was asserted that the Vice President and I “spent time alone in the rushes,” “huddled together in a Louisiana marsh,” where we had “plenty of time . . . to talk privately” (Los Angeles Times); that we “spent . . . quality time bonding together in a duck blind” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution); and that “[t]here is simply no reason to think these two did not discuss the pending case” (Buffalo News). As I have described, the Vice President and I were never in the same blind, and never discussed the case. (Washington officials know the rules, and know that dis-cussing with judges pending cases—their own or anyone else’s—is forbidden.) The Palm Beach Post stated that our “transportation was provided, appropriately, by an oil services company,” and Newsday that a “private jet . . . whisked Scalia to Louisiana.” The Vice President and I flew in a Government plane. The Cincinnati Enquirer said that “Scalia was Cheney’s guest at a private duck-hunting camp in Louisiana.” Cheney and I were Wallace Carline’s guest. Various newspapers described Mr. Car-line as “an energy company official” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), an “oil industrialist,” (Cincinnati Enquirer), an “oil company executive” (Contra Costa Times), an “oilman” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), and an “energy industry executive” (Washington Post). All of these de-scriptions are misleading.But hey, these are journalists. We can't expect them to get verifiable facts right. The Rich Are Different From You and Me When they get ready to run for President, they sell their Italian mansions: Sen. John Kerry sold his foreign mansion in Italy just weeks before he announced a run for the White House in January of 2003, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.Yeah, just an ordinary working Joe like you and I, Senator Kerry. Just Plain Bigotry, I Tell You Professor Volokh has decided that student efforts to exclude the American Red Cross from Western Oregon University, because they discriminate against gay men in accepting blood (as required by federal) are ludicrous: The folly, I think, needs no further explanation.Oh yes it does! After all, most gay men aren't HIV+. Professor Volokh in the past has insisted that gay men aren't really that much more promiscuous than straight men. Yes, it's true that gay men are much more likely than straight men to be HIV+--but why should HIV- gay men be discriminated against, just because they are gay? How prejudiced! How bigoted! The courts should remedy this immediately! The federal government's discrimination against gay men is certainly a form of prejudice: making the assumption that while not all gay men are HIV+, they are disproportionately so, and even those who are not yet HIV+, are much more likely to be in that latent stage where their blood is tainted, but they are not yet testing positive. (Of course, the same discriminatory policies apply to IV drug users, those who have lived in certain countries for more than three months, and those who have been pierced or tattooed in the last year.) This is really no different from why the Boy Scouts of America refuses to have gay Scoutmasters. Yes, a relatively small number of gay men are interested in sex with boys. Most gay men either aren't interested, or know that this is forbidden fruit. But just like the problem of HIV infection of the blood supply, the consequences are devastating, and the risk from this group is disproportionate relative to their numbers. Thanks to Considerettes for the original story about this. (Warning: first examination of Considerettes suggests an excess of rational thought goes into that blog.) The "Hate Crime" That Wasn't David Bernstein blogs about a convenient "hate crime" at Claremont-McKenna College, where the new president is trying to drag a relatively middle of the road college (yes, there a few left) to the left: It seemed an outstanding stroke of luck for the administration when, in the midst of a push for greater "tolerance" and "diversity," a visiting left-wing faculty member's car was vandalized. Windows were smashed, tires slashed, and racist and anti-homosexual slogans spray painted on the professor's car.Except: two witnesses saw the "victim" doing the vandalism. This isn't the first time, of course, that an anti-homosexual "hate crime" has turned out to be lies: MORGAN HILL -- The alleged abduction and sexual assault of a gay man left bound and gagged along Highway 101 in Morgan Hill last week was a hoax, Santa Clara County sheriff's officials said yesterday.And this example: In 2001, a gay student at the College of New Jersey confessed to sending death threats to himself and a gay student group. He was suspended from campus during the investigation and charged with a felony on suspicion of filing false police reports and harassment.While I can't find it online, there was at least one lesbian pastor in San Francisco in the late 1990s who reported being attacked, vile things written on her face, etc.--and then, as the evidence that she had done it herself mounted, she finally recanted, and left town. One of the reasons for these false reports is obvious: it provides political advantage to homosexuals to claim that they are the victims of such crimes. Indeed, a "hate crime" against lesbian Regan Wolf was successful in getting South Carolina to pass a "hate crimes" law--and then it turned out that she faked it: Regan Wolf, a South Carolina woman who told police in 1998 that she had been tied up and whipped because she is a lesbian, has been fined $125 for filing a false report.There are certainly hate crimes being committed against homosexuals. But how many? As this testimony from a Congressional committee points out, there are economic motivations as well, and there are reasons to suspect that the number charged as false reports is way too low: One reason the arrest and conviction numbers may be suppressed is that both law enforcement and insurance companies generally are hesitant to press cases of fake hate crimes unless the evidence is overwhelming. To falsely accuse a real victim of hate would be the gravest injustice, compounding the hurt and damage already suffered. And no insurance company wants to be on the wrong side of a civil trial decision accusing it of dealing in bad faith with a hate crime victim.UPDATE: Here's a link to a much more detailed account of the sequence of events, including the name of the "victim." Labels: fake hate crimes A Very Close Approach A 30 meter asteroid is going to pass by the Earth this afternoon at a distance of 26,500 miles. According to this report, some people on Earth should be able to see it with good binoculars. That's way too close for comfort: A small near-Earth asteroid (NEA), discovered Monday night by the NASA-funded LINEAR asteroid survey, will make the closest approach to Earth ever recorded. There is no danger of a collision with the Earth during this encounter.My recollection from my readings about the Canyon Diablo meteor crater in Arizona was that it was excavated by a roughly 30 meter nickel-iron asteroid, and killed everything around it for many miles. (The nickel-iron meteors recovered from the area aren't really chunks of the original; they are what happened when the nickel-iron vapor froze.) UPDATE: More details about the collision. Yes, I had the size right: Fifty thousand years ago a huge boulder crashed into the desert flatlands in what is now Arizona leaving behind a bowl-shaped hole 4,000 feet wide and 570 feet deep. A study published in the journal Science concludes the stone that came in from space that day was a nickel iron meteor 100 feet in diameter and weighing 60,000 tons, traveling at speed of almost 45,000 miles an hour.Just to give you some idea of the magnitude of the effects, I've included the map mentioned above: 
If you are traveling through Northern Arizona, let me recommend that you visit the crater. This is one of the few really important natural geological formations under private ownership and control--and I can honestly say that, other than cost (which is a bit higher than a National Monument), I can't see that they have done anything worse than the government would have done. The money that the government spends on searching for these Near Earth Asteroids is money well spent. It is a free rider problem in economics, of course. Many of the world's countries contribute neither money nor manpower to the problem. But so what? It benefits us not to get hit unawares. Positive Signs for the Economy--Especially About Jobs I think the constant screeching about jobs by Senator Kerry--and his staffers at the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN, is going to turn out to have been a serious blunder in another six months: The Labor Department said first-time claims for state unemployment insurance benefits dropped by 6,000 from the prior week to 336,000 in the week ended March 13 -- well below Wall Street analysts' forecasts and the lowest for any week since 316,000 reported on Jan. 13, 2001.The article goes on to warn that the increase in the producer price index (what manufacturers pay for stuff) portends an increase in consumer prices: Analysts warned there was a risk wholesale prices could begin bleeding through to the consumer level, putting a damper on consumer spending while also potentially obliging Federal Reserve policy-makers to reconsider how long they can keep interest rates at 1958 lows.The rising producer price index suggests that manufacturers are so busy gobbling raw materials to build stuff that they are driving up prices--and this will soon lead to more employment. I think the Americans who are out of work aren't going to be too terribly upset about rising interest rates, if they have jobs. Obviously, if interest rates rise enough, it starts to impair interest-rate sensitive industries like housing and cars--but housing hasn't been hurting of late, because of these low interest rates. If Senator Kerry keeps up his remarkable ability to sound stupid--he voted for the post-Iraq war military funding bill, then against the bill on the final vote, so this isn't really a NO vote--Bush is going to clean his clock in November like Daddy did to Dukakis. Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Interesting Article About the Return of Wolves to Wisconsin The most interesting part of this is that the wolves just came back, without a major government program to make it happen: In their quiet way they have shown that wolves do not need pristine wilderness to be successful, that they do not necessarily need a highly managed reintroduction program, as used in Yellowstone, and that they can increase their range without stirring conflict among wolf proponents and opponents.I know that a lot of people are very quite nervous about the reintroduction of wolves, both for personal safety reasons, and because they predate on livestock. If you are worried about wolves, you should also worry about dogs (more common, more aggressive, and far more common), and the occasional two-legged animal. Be armed, be prepared. If you are worried about your livestock, you might need to fence the wolves out. I know that would be expensive, but there are some advantages to not messing with the ecosystems too much. I keep hoping that if wolves return to urban areas of California, we might finally be able to persuade the morons in charge in Sacramento to change to a "shall-issue" concealed weapon permit law. An Amazing Artifact Is For Sale You know who Clyde Tombaugh was? The discoverer of Pluto, back in 1930? Offered for sale: This 16-inch telescope was Clyde Tombaugh's biggest effort. Although the mirror was completed around 1944, heavy work on the metal superstructure did not begin in earnest until about 1957 and the telescope finally saw first light in Las Cruces around 1960. Its primary system is a 16-inch f/10 mirror hand-ground, figured, and completed by the discoverer of Pluto himself. The mirror is outstanding; during the early 1980s, Tombaugh and David Levy used an 8mm eyepiece (which gives a magnification of 524) to observe the spokes in Saturn's rings with it.What makes this sale especially poignant is who is offering it: Patsy Tombaugh c/o David Levy Labels: telescopes Reasons To Keep Your Guns Properly Secured Please: properly secure your firearms to prevent them from being stolen, from being used against you by a burglar whom you walk in on, or worst of all--a child in your home get distraught and thinks that this is going to be better than the alternatives: JOYCE, Wash. -- A 13-year-old boy shot and killed himself in front of about 20 classmates in this small Olympic Peninsula (search) town Wednesday, sheriff's officers said.I don't think much of "trigger locks" because any reasonably smart kid with access to power tools can defeat them, but even the locking cabinets you can buy at Wal-Mart for $40 will probably deter a suicidal kid enough to help. Do you have children? Read this checklist of the signs of depression. Print it out. Keep it where you think of it often. Too many adolescents sink into the pit of depression, and the parents don't even notice. What was causing this kid's depression? It might have been the girl who rejected him; it might have been bullying at school; it could be that he got caught doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing, and thought that there was no point in living. I have very, very painful memories of being 13, 14, and 15. Everything seems so dramatic and permanent at that age--suicide is what is really permanent, but it is so difficult to see that at the time. Yes, you need to "gun proof your child" to avoid accidents, and to make sure that they understand the seriousness of firearms. But that won't prevent a suicide. Making all the guns go away won't stop the suicides; it just changes the method. Being alert to the signs of depression is what will make the most difference. Need Suggestions For A Romantic Weekend Trip Our 24th anniversary is coming up; I am in something of a quandry for where to go with the wife. I'll describe the ideal; you tell me what you know of that sorta fits! 1. Within two hours drive of Boise--okay, may 2 1/2 hours if it's really cool. 2. A place that is forested--or at least not high desert, but not deep in snow, either there or on the road to it. If it has good access to something really scenic, all the better. 3. Ideally, a bed and breakfast, Victorian or some reasonably good simulation. Iraq's New Constitution This is a very thoughtful analysis of the structure of the new government--and how it relies on division of powers to prevent both Shiite majority oppression of the minority, while still giving the majority enough power that the Sunnis and Kurds can't completely frustrate legitimate desires. Will it work? I don't know. But you'll get a lot more detail from this account than any of the mainstream media provide. You can read an English translation of the text here. There is a reasonably decent set of guarantees of individual rights starting at Article 10. I am a little disappointed with Article 17: It shall not be permitted to possess, bear, buy, or sell arms except on licensure issued in accordance with the law.Some of this reflects the current instability. However, the Hussein government had pretty strict gun control laws that did not apply to the thugs that actually ran things. I suppose that this is the best that can be expected under the circumstances. .The first Weapons Control Order issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority back in May was actually pretty decent, considering the circumstances. You could keep small arms in your home. The most recent revision, however, seems to require a license to keep small arms. I'm disappointed, but not surprised, and I can't particularly blame the CPA for wanting to have a little more control over this situation while crazy people are daily shooting at our soldiers. Walter Williams on Iraq's WMDs His most recent column includes not only the quotes from prominent Democrats who believed in 1998 that Hussein was a threat to the U.S.--because of his WMD programs--but also points out that similar fears drove the Manhattan Project: By mid-1940, the "evidence" became so promising about Germany’s nuclear-weapons program that British and American scientists judged it imprudent to continue to publish new results. Further research in the United States and Britain was done in secret to prevent German scientists from using the findings to develop an atomic bomb of their own for use in the war then underway. Labels: Iraqi WMDs "Why Do They Hate Us?" Thomas Sowell is almost always interesting, and is full of fascinating statistics. This recent column does a fine job of illuminating a question that seems to confuse liberals hopelessly: Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world. In medieval times, Europe lagged far behind the Islamic world in science, mathematics, scholarship, and military power.Well worth reading in full. |
