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Clayton Cramer's BLOG
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).
Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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Saturday, November 27, 2004
The Matthew Shepard Story on 20/20 Friday Night
I was really quite startled by it--and even more so that part of the mainstream media did this story. The Matthew Shepard story, at least as it was portrayed in 1998, was that a couple of blue collar rednecks beat to death a 21 year old gay college student in a gay-bashing crime.
As 20/20 portrayed it, the story is far different. Two men were sentenced to life in prison for murdering Matthew Shepard: McKinney, and Henderson. Henderson apparently did nothing except tie Shepard to the fence, and failed to stop McKinney from committing a robbery and a horrifying beating. The actions of McKinney and Henderson were strictly a matter of robbing what seemed like an easy victim, so that they could get more meth--not a "homosexual panic" as McKinney's attorney argued in court. Indeed, 20/20 interviewed a man on-screen who said that he knew that McKinney was bisexual, because the two of them had been sexually involved.
Shepard was a bit complex of a person, also. According to 20/20, Shepard was HIV+, depressed (understandably enough), and a regular participant to the meth scene, and apparently knew McKinney before this crime took place.
Most startling of all, however, is what 20/20 told us about Shepard's past. According to 20/20, not only had Henderson been subject to childhood abuse, but Shepard had been raped by three men while he was in high school, while on a trip to Morocco. Oddly enough, there was no discussion of Shepard's sexual orientation before being raped. I wonder why?
There are really two stories here. One is how gay activists, with assistance from McKinney's attorney, managed to turn what appears to have been a robbery and murder fueled by meth, with both killers and victim part of the meth culture, into a "homophobic" crime.
One night, before the gray blanket rolled in over Boise, I drove up Idaho 55 toward Horseshoe Bend and turned left onto the summit road.
The Milky Way was breathtaking, and stars were as numerous as grains of sand on a beach. I've talked to Boiseans who can remember when the sky was almost that dark here. Wouldn't it be nice to have those dark skies again?
This doesn't have to be expensive — it can even save us money. A lot of businesses and individuals are wastefully lighting up the night sky; few traffic accidents or crimes take place 100 feet in the air.
Light fixtures that allow light to go out and up, instead of down, are wasting both electricity and money.
Compare a flashlight to a light bulb; the flashlight uses far less energy, because the beam is directed to a specific point. All this wasted energy is a crime against both the environment and a business' bottom line.
For streetlights, one alternative is a "full cutoff" light fixture that directs almost all light to the ground. I've talked to officials in both Boise and Eagle governments, and I am pleased to report that they are aware of this issue. New city streetlights are usually full cutoff fixtures — and I'm told that the older, wasteful streetlights in Boise (the "cobra head" design) will be upgraded as they wear out.
Streetlights aren't the only cause of this wasteful illumination of the night sky. Parking-lot lights, even full cutoff fixtures, create a problem when light bounces off the ground back into the sky.
I understand why many businesses (car dealerships, for example), like their properties brightly illuminated.
During night business hours, it makes the lot more inviting to customers; after hours, it may reduce theft and vandalism by making anyone on the lot clearly visible to passers-by.
Still, I find myself wondering if the after-hours lights have to be quite that bright.
It would certainly be a worthwhile experiment for a car dealer to reduce after-hours lighting for a few months — or perhaps use motion detector security lighting controls. Boise isn't Los Angeles; it is hard to imagine that reducing the lighting is going to dramatically increase vandalism and theft.
For new construction, the International Dark Sky Association has a Web page (www.darksky.org/fixtures/fixtures.html) showing commercially available full cutoff fixtures.
A few dollars more per fixture now would more than pay for itself in reduced electricity costs over the lifespan of a commercial development. (A 250-watt light that is aimed down does a better job than a 400-watt light that goes everywhere.)
Even businesses that cannot afford to replace existing light fixtures should consider whether they can safely reduce outdoor illumination by reducing the wattage of existing bulbs, using motion-detector lighting controls, or using timers to shut down lights after hours.
Almost every business would like to find a way to increase profitability — and what better way than to save the environment and bring back the beauty of the night sky at the same time?
Clayton Cramer, of Boise, is a software engineer by day, amateur astronomer by night. His Web site is www.claytoncramer.com.
"I didn't blindly go out to murder someone. I tried to do everything the right way. But there was nothing else left for me to do. I did shoot him, make no mistake. I have to accept responsibility. But if the system fails you, what do you do?"
Hoath, 55, is an imposing presence. A former roofer from Essex, he left England for Denmark after falling in love with a Danish woman who became his wife. Now suffering from a lung disease, which he says has been diagnosed as terminal, his breathing is laboured when he arrives in the prison waiting room, holding his Danish legal books in a carrier bag and some coffee on a plastic tray.
...
It was out of fear for his daughter's life that Hoath says he killed Andersen, a man he barely knew, whom he had met while fishing in Jutland, northern Denmark, where he lived with his family. Andersen, 63, a former lorry driver, had suggested they go fishing for eels one summer evening and, to Hoath's eternal regret, he took his daughter, then nine-years-old, with him.
"It was the biggest mistake of my life. We went to a lake to catch eels, it was early evening. He went to get a torch from the car, which was parked on top of a steep bank, and took my daughter with him.
"When she came back she was very quiet but I didn't think anything of it. A few days later I had been out fishing again but when I got home my wife told me there was a problem."
Hoath's daughter told her parents that Andersen had assaulted her. Hoath immediately went to the police. When they tapped Andersen's name into their computer, he said the police told him: "Your daughter is very, very lucky".
Hoath discovered that Andersen was a convicted paedophile who had spent 18 months in jail for abusing a child a few years before. He assumed the police would act. At first they told him there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
They did, however, decide to charge Andersen five days before his murder but had not done so at the time of his death. The police did not tell Hoath of their intentions.
Hoath says Andersen kept calling his home and parking outside his house, taunting and threatening him and his daughter. He claims Andersen told him: "I will get her again. You can't always watch her." It was more than Hoath could stand.
There have been a few cases like this, in places where child molestation is regarded as a not very serious crime (like California).
Do you remember Ellie Nesler? Back in 1993, she went into a courtroom and shot to death "twice-convicted child molester Daniel Driver, 35, five times in the head as he faced seven molestation charges, including one related to her young son." Now, for those who don't regard child molestation as a "serious" crime (and I hear occasionally from people who argue that it shouldn't be a crime at all), it is instructive to look at what happened to Ellie Nesler's son since then:
Eleven years after Ellie Nesler pulled a gun from her purse in a courtroom and gunned down the man accused of molesting her 12-year-old son, police are hunting for her son, now 23, and a fugitive on a attempted murder charge.
...
Police say William Nesler, 23, severely beat neighbor David Davis, 45, early Sunday, less than an hour after being released from jail for having beaten Davis a month earlier in a fight over tools.
...
Nesler is well known to police - he was booked on 18 separate cases over five years as an adult and has a juvenile record - but he is also known to the public, because of his mother's vigilante act.
You don't suppose that there is a connection between what happened to him as a child, and what has happened since? posted by Clayton at 1:32 AM permalink
Humor
A reader told me about a joke out of Playboy:
Why are the Ten Commandments banned in public buildings? Because signs saying THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, and THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS create a hostile work environment in buildings full of lawyers, judges, and politicians.
A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.
Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.
"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.
...
Williams asserts in the lawsuit that since May he has been required to submit all of his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to Vidmar for approval, and that the principal will not permit him to use any that contain references to God or Christianity.
Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' "The Rights of the Colonists" and William Penn's "The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania."
"He hands out a lot of material and perhaps 5 to 10 percent refers to God and Christianity because that's what the founders wrote," said Thompson, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, which advocates for religious freedom. "The principal seems to be systematically censoring material that refers to Christianity and it is pure discrimination."
Now, there might be more to this than what Williams' attorney is telling us. It is conceivable that Williams had been handing out historically inaccurate materials, and the principal imposed prior restraint on him for that reason. Over at FreedomSight, Jed Baer is pointing out there are ways in which Williams could be in the wrong on this:
I have to allow for the possibility that this teacher has used these materials to promote Christianity, and that would be unacceptable. But it doesn't sound that way, and the school officials aren't commenting. If this teacher is distributing only those historic documents, or excerpts from them, which contain references to God, then he's the one who has screwed up. But still, I just can't see barring distribution of any of the historic documents from the birth of our Nation.
From my experiences with California public schools, and the fierce anti-Christian bias that is rampant in them in the Bay Area, I don't find Williams' complaint at all implausible. posted by Clayton at 1:21 AM permalink
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
More Evidence Of Bush's Bias In Favor of Corrupt Big Business
The Securities and Exchange Commission and Time Warner Inc. are nearing agreement on a deal in which the media giant would pay about $750 million to settle wide-ranging allegations of accounting irregularities at Dulles-based America Online Inc.
As part of the agreement, neither Time Warner nor its AOL division would admit or deny SEC allegations that AOL improperly pumped up its revenue and profit before and after the high-flying Internet firm bought Time Warner in 2001, according to people familiar with the settlement talks.
Bill Clinton, on the other hand, would have invited Steve Case to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, and make a six figure contribution to the DNC.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - American International Group Inc. (AIG) said on Wednesday it agreed and pay $126 million in penalties to resolve federal probes into whether it helped two companies fraudulently inflate earnings.
AIG, the world's largest insurer by market value, also agreed to accept an independent monitor to review deals made over the last four years.
The company did not admit or deny wrongdoing.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice are investigating certain products AIG sold to PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC), Pennsylvania's largest bank, and Brightpoint Inc. (CELL), a cell phone distributor.
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad I missed the era of institutionalized celebration of Christianity in schools. Back when my Jewish father went to public school, it wasn't unusual for the kids to have to sing hymns like "Onward Christian Soldiers."
Even when I was growing up — under the modern rules that require religious music to be presented in a secular setting, as an expression of tradition rather than a devotional exercise — it wasn't always easy being a Jewish kid in the chorus. The Christmas songs went on about Jesus, while the Hanukkah music usually got no deeper than "dreidel, dreidel, dreidel."
But now, the need to appease the ACLU's hatred of Christianity has reached this level:
THE people of South Orange and Maplewood, N.J., where I went to high school, are going to find some thing missing from their towns next month — the sound of schoolchildren performing holiday music. The district has banned students from performing music related to any religious holiday — defeating the purpose of the schools' traditional "holiday concerts."
It's a terrible loss, for the town and the kids.
...
For a 14-year-old, just looking at the swirling and overlapping musical notes was daunting. But I learned those songs and got a better education in sight-singing than I could ever have gotten from the pop fluff normally given to public-school choral students. A few years later, that education would help me pass an audition to enter New York University's music-business program.
Performing in front of the townspeople, I also learned something about the power of inspirational music to bring people together. I knew that the lyrics about the Messiah weren't about my religion's Messiah. Yet I couldn't help but be moved at how Handel's intensely beautiful music, sung by teenagers in intricate four-part harmony, had such an uplifting effect on the listerners, many also not Christian. It was an awesome thing to sing the opening notes of the "Hallelujah Chorus" and see the entire audience rise as one.
This year, those townspeople are going to stay in their seats — that is, if any but the parents bother to go. The school district's fine-arts chairman, Nicholas Santoro — claiming to have received complaints over religious music in the schools — has banned true holiday music. Out are Handel, the Jewish hymn "Ma'oz Tzur" and "Joy to the World." In are generic seasonal tunes like "Winter Wonderland" and "Frosty the Snowman." From the sublime to the mediocre.
They are at it again. What is it with Maryland? This was the state that used to require teachers to read the Lord's Prayer at the start of every school day (struck down, sensibly enough, by the courts as a violation of the First Amendment). Now, they are destroying history in their zeal to remove God from public life:
Young students across the state read stories about the Pilgrims and Native Americans, simulate Mayflower voyages, hold mock feasts and learn about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups.
But what teachers don't mention when they describe the feast is that the Pilgrims not only thanked the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, but repeatedly thanked God.
Thanksgiving is usually taught as a part of social studies and emphasizes cultural immersion.
"The Pilgrim Story is read in Spanish and English," said Alfreda Adams, principal at Mills-Parole Elementary School in Annapolis, where 70 Hispanic students attend. "We make sure that we celebrate all cultures."
School administrators statewide agree, saying religion never coincides with how they teach Thanksgiving to students.
The Mayflower, Pilgrims, Native Americans become enduring symbols to students before the week-long hiatus they are granted each year to spend time with their families.
Look, I know Maryland is a blue state, and they are therefore obligated to falsify history to make the ACLU happy. But does it have to be this blatant? posted by Clayton at 9:42 PM permalink
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations (news - web sites) is investigating about 150 allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. civilian staff and soldiers in the Congo, some of them recorded on videotape, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
The accusations include pedophilia, rape and prostitution, said Jane Holl Lute, an assistant secretary-general in the peacekeeping department.
Lute, an American, said there was photographic and video evidence for some of the allegations and most of the charges came to light since the spring.
"We are shining a light on this problem in order to determine its scope, and we will not stop there," Lute told a news conference.
LITTLE ROCK, ARK. - President Clinton's new $165 million library here was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen.
The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week.
Democrats spent much of the presidential campaign this year accusing President Bush of improperly close ties to Saudi Arabia. The case was made in Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11," in a bestselling book by Craig Unger titled "House of Bush, House of Saud," and by the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Kerry."This administration delayed pressuring the Saudis," Mr. Kerry said on October 20. "I will insist that the Saudis crack down on charities that funnel funds to terrorists... and on anti-American and anti-Israel hate speech."The Media Fund, a Democratic group whose president is a former Clinton White House aide, Harold Ickes, spent millions airing television commercials in swing states with scripts such as, "The Saudi royal family...wealthy...powerful...corrupt. And close Bush family friends."
Perhaps as a result, the Saudi donations to the Clinton library are raising some eyebrows. Mr. Unger said he suspects that the Saudi support may have something to do with a possible presidential bid by Senator Clinton in 2008.
I've done a bit of work over the years writing firmware--the code that goes into a EEPROM or similar device, as distinguished from software that gets loaded from disk. This type of development is often referred to as "embedded development," and is really quite different from normal software development. It has to be very reliable; you can't expect the customer to exit the program a couple of times a day, so if you forget to free up any resources that you aren't using, it will come around to bite you.
Implant Software - Embedded Software Engineer, Medical Devices, Class III
Experience with pacemakers or defibrillators is required!
One of the leading manufacturers of Class III medical products for the heart, located near Portland, Oregon, is looking for an embedded Software Engineer to work on Implant devices.
The implant software development group is looking for an embedded software engineer to design and develop pacemaker software. The end product must run in a very low power environment with a very high degree of reliability.
If the product requires rebooting as often as Windows typically does, the customer is history. posted by Clayton at 1:05 PM permalink
Love is addictive, and a robot girl you could completely control would love you and never do anything to hurt you... but it's a misshaped fantasy. Such love would be just an illusion, no matter how real it felt. Falling into a trap like that would be no different than a heroin addict's permanent ecstatic torpor....
Isn't the point of love that someone chooses to be with you?
Williams then links (indirectly) to this interesting piece about the allure of the most extreme forms of Islam:
But why kill Theo Van Gogh, of all the people who have expressed hostility to radical Islam? Perhaps it was mere chance, but more likely it resulted from his work’s exposure of a very raw nerve of Muslim identity in Western Europe: the abuse of women. This abuse is now essential for people of Muslim descent for maintaining any sense of separate cultural identity in the homogenizing solution of modern mass society.
In fact, Islam is as vulnerable in Europe to the forces of secularization as Christianity has proved to be. The majority of Muslims in Europe, particularly the young, have a weak and tenuous connection to their ancestral religion. Their level and intensity of belief is low; pop music interests them more. Far from being fanatics, they are lukewarm believers at best. Were it not for the abuse of women, Islam would go the way of the Church of England.
The abuse of women has often, if not always, appealed to men, because it gives them a sense of power, however humiliated they may feel in other spheres of their life. And the oppression of women by Muslim men in Western Europe gives those men at the same time a sexual partner, a domestic servant, and a gratifying sense of power, while allowing them also to live an otherwise westernized life. For the men, it is convenient; interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, almost the only openly hostile expressions toward Islam from British-born Muslims that I hear come from young women, some of whom loathe it passionately because they blame it for their servitude.
Religious sanction for the oppression of women (whether theologically justified or not) is hence the main attraction of Islam to young men in an increasingly secular world. This explains why a divide often opens between brothers and sisters in the same European Muslim family; the sisters want liberty, but the brothers enforce the old rules. They have to, or the whole gratifying system breaks down.
There must be some reason this toxic stew of medievalism and murder has such a hold on people.
Sex can't explain everything, no matter what Freud thought, but it sure can explain a lot.
I've blogged in the past about the hazards of polygamy (and Islam doesn't have a monopoly on polygamy). I suspect that this may be another facet of the reason that some strains of Islam turn out to be so brutal. Once you get used to abusing someone that you ostensibly care for, it's not so difficult to abuse someone you don't even know. posted by Clayton at 11:53 AM permalink
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Getting The Message in the Netherlands
Depressing article, but at least the population of the Netherlands seems to be getting the message:
GEERT WILDERS, the Dutch MP and controversial critic of Islam, has two policemen by his side even when in his high-security parliamentary office in case someone tries to decapitate him. Each day, he does not know where he is going to sleep that night, as he is taken from safe house to safe house in a convoy of armoured cars.
He was taken into hiding when police investigating the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh on November 2 uncovered a network of radical Muslims with advanced plans to kill Mr Wilders, and other “enemies of Islam”. A video circulating on the internet offered 72 virgins in paradise to any Muslim who beheaded him.
“My life has changed completely. I am sleeping very badly. To think that someone plans to kill me is something that no person would have a good night’s rest about,” he said. “Even though I have this protection, I am afraid. Even when I am on the floor of the parliament, I don’t feel comfortable.”
The maverick parliamentarian, a former speech-writer for Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch European Commissioner, rose to prominence with his denunciations of radical Islam. Seen as the heir of Pim Fortuyn, the assassinated anti-Islamic populist, his critics call him a far-right racist, inflaming the passions that led to a spate of mosque burnings after Van Gogh’s murder. His supporters claim that he is telling the truth about radical Islam that others refuse to face up to.
His hardline message is proving popular with the Dutch electorate, whose attitudes have hardened so much in the past fortnight that, according to one survey, 40 per cent hope that Muslims no longer feel at home in the Netherlands. On Monday he will set up his own political party. Opinion polls suggest that it would be the country’s second-biggest, getting 15 per cent of the vote or 23 seats of the parliament’s 150.
Right Wing TechnoPagan comments on my concern about the decline of reading, and points out that arithmetic (much less higher math) also seems to be on the way out, and mentions an Isaac Asimov story titled "A Feeling of Power":
It was set in a future in which no one remembered how to do math. Not just calculus or algebra, but even the basic operations in a four-function calculator. Calculating machines were everywhere. You just punched in numbers, and out came the answer. (After he wrote that story, he wrote his book on how to use a slide-rule, just in time for the thing to become obsolete.) His publisher commented, "I can't believe people would ever forget how to do math." I've encountered any number of kids (and adults!) at fast food places who obviously never learned.
And the art of teaching math has declined. My "adopted niece" is in middle school now, and her teachers have never required that she learn the multiplication tables. Because her teachers never required it of her, she didn't listen to her parents and grandmother when they told her she needed to memorize them.
He also points that my pet peeve about how evolution is taught is not just that aspect of science, but a bit broader:
It's presented to kids in schools as Revealed Truth, if not Holy Writ. My response is that it's not confined to that particular branch of science. Indeed, all science is taught that way.
The problem here is that very few teachers, especially in the lower grades, really know science. If a student asks how we know people evolved from apes, or how we know matter is made up of atoms, or even how we know the world is round, very few teachers can answer the question. (Try the round world question on a grade school teacher some time. Better yet, try after memorizing the arguments on some flat earth society web site. See how well the teacher deals with the objections to the round earth theory.)
You will get no argument from me on this! The best defense is that in the lower grades, there's a lot of rote memorization to get kids competent in certain basic skills: reading, writing, arithmetic. If you can't do those, and do them pretty competently, most everything else you try in the higher grades is going to be laborious and clumsy.
I really would like every elementary school teacher to be smart, well-educated, and competent to answer the basic questions above. But realistically, that's not what an elementary school teacher does. She (or increasingly, he) is trying to keep a bunch of kids who regard school as "day care with books" to stay in their seats, listen for more than five minutes without throwing something at the kid in the adjoining seat, and do the rote memorization required to master a few basic skills. Expecting them to understand science well enough to answer the questions from the smart kids in the class is expecting way too much.
You may say that rote memorization is a really bad thing. I have seen math professors insist that rote memorization of arithmetic rules is not a good way to teach it--that if student understands the theory behind arithmetic, they won't have to memorize the rules. Of course, these are math professors--the sort of person for whom everything up through calculus was obvious, and who didn't understand why the rest of us struggled a bit with these classes.
Now, I think that Right Wing Technopagan's concern is that evolution should not be singled out for criticism, because this Revealed Truth approach to science is used in all the other sciences as well. It is because there is a sizeable fraction of the population (perhaps a majority) who disagrees with evolution that evolution in particular becomes a political fight. If most Americans had strong opinions about how history is taught, we would be having the same fight about that, too. posted by Clayton at 11:22 PM permalink
Peter Charles Hoffer's Past Imperfect
Professor Hoffer's new book about scandals involving historians (including Bellesiles) is Past Imperfect. He was on C-SPAN's Booknotesthis evening, discussing the recent scandals that have embarrassed the history profession--and as Hoffer explained, the more that troublemakers go looking, the more examples they find in many professions of plagiarism. I was pleased to hear Hoffer identify me as the first person to raise questions about the Bellesiles fraud, and Hoffer pulled no punches on this. The only mistake was that Hoffer identified me as an electrical engineer. At least he correctly identified that my MA was in History--a mistake that many of Bellesiles's defenders could never seem to get right.
Transcripts aren't up yet, but I expect them soon. posted by Clayton at 11:17 PM permalink
Illegal Aliens Crossing into Canada
Not sure where this news report first appeared; it arrived by email:
Canada Deals With Bush-Dodgers
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.
The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O'Reilly.
Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.
"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"
In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields.
"Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."
Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border, and leave them to fend for themselves.
"A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."
When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.
In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border.
Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.
"If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get
suspicious about their age," an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.
"I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"
In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said. "We're going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."
UPDATE: I'm told that Joe Blundo wrote this, and that it appeared in the Columbus Dispatch, November 16, 2004. posted by Clayton at 11:01 PM permalink
Star Party Last Night
The Boise Astronomical Society (like many similar organizations around the United States), puts on educational efforts called "star parties," sometimes associated with schools, sometimes anywhere that we can find a decent place to set up our scopes. These are opportunities to get the general public to look through telescopes, and see the wonders of the night sky. I have done a few of these over the years, and it is always a good opportunity to get people to think about astronomy, and appreciate the beauty of the night sky. I have never done a star party in such frigid weather. It was 28 degrees when I packed up at 10:00 PM.
The event was at the Idaho Botanical Gardens, and we had a nice turnout--about seven telescopes set up, several big sets of binoculars on tripods (including some 30x100mm monsters), and perhaps 75 or more visitors who braved the weather. I took my Photon Instruments 5" refractor with the Aries Chromacor corrector--and it mightily impressed quite a few people. The guy set up next to me had a Televue Genesis, an older apochromatic refractor which is the predecessor to Televue 101. He agreed that the Photon/Chromacor combo was just about color-free--and I could hear a little envy at how little it cost, compared to a Genesis. (The Genesis still has some advantages with respect to weight, length, and astrophotography potential.)
One surprise to me is how many members of the general public are startled by what they can see through a small telescope. The gasp reaction from looking at the Moon at 286x power was quite predictable. I guess most people expect that you need an observatory scale of telescope to get this level of image; perhaps most people are used to looking through the crummy little refractors that places like Wal-Mart and Sears have traditionally sold.
One couple showed up with a Meade 4.5" reflector that they had bought several years ago. They have made little use of it, largely because they didn't have anyone to help them along, and have now joined the BAS. Everyone gathered around to help the newbies. My impression of this Meade telescope was that it isn't a leap up from the crummy little refractors that Wal-Mart sells. The mirror might be just fine, but it uses the Japanese eyepiece standard of 0.965", and the eyepieces that came with it were all Huygens--which is a fine eyepiece design--for the nineteenth century. Huygens eyepieces combine poor eye relief with narrow field of view, as you might expect, since the design is named for the seventeenth century astronomer who came up with it. Oddly enough, the focuser looked like it could be pretty easily converted to accept 1.25" or perhaps even 2" diameter eyepieces, if you had the right parts.
The equatorial mount was also an example of overly aggressive cost-reduction engineering. At first it appeared that the mount had so much slop in it that there was no way to make it work correctly, until I discovered that putting the counterweight shaft and weight on the mount corrected the problem. It's a weird design--but doubtless very cheap.
I get frustrated when companies with good to very good reputations for their serious telescopes, like Meade, sell stuff like this. Telescopes like this are only marginally more than toys, and probably turn 90% of budding amateur astronomers off the hobby.
