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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 ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, December 11, 2004
Branching Out If you know someone with a Losmandy GM-8 telescope mount, you might want to tell them about this little gadget that I have started manufacturing in my garage. The GM-8 mount is an excellent equatorial mount for telescopes up to about 30 pounds--nicely machined, and amazingly enough, still made in the United States (at least, until California decides to seceed from Jesusland). The only "problem" (in quotes because it isn't really a deficiency, but a missing feature) with the GM-8 mount is that it doesn't come with wheels, so if you want to set up your telescope, you either need to be strong enough to pick up the mount, the tripod, and the telescope (typically about 70 pounds total), or you need to take the telescope off the mount, disconnect the cables, take out the three screws holding the mount to the tripod, then carry each of these parts out to where you are planning to set up. This is typically a 5-10 minute process--perhaps more at the end of your observing session, when it is now dark, cold, and you can't find one of the three screws that holds the mount to the tripod. So my solution was to put wheels under it--which is a bit harder than it looks--at least, to do it elegantly. Unlike the competing product, which is general purpose, large, heavy, and costs $179.95, what I am making is specific to the GM-8, weighs less than two pounds, and has an introductory price of $40 plus shipping. There are many thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of Losmandy GM-8 mounts in use, so I am hoping that this can turn into a small money maker. As my son-in-law observed over Thanksgiving, "Why, this could make tens of dollars!" Well, let's hope it's bit more than that. Labels: telescopes Friday, December 10, 2004
Prime Minister Berlusconi Acquitted I wanted to believe the best about him, since he has been a staunch ally of the United States in the War on Terrorism. An Italian court found him innocent on one charge, and declared that the statute of limitations had expired on the rest. Why Would You Make Up a Story Like This? I saw this news story yesterday, and thought, "how awful." Now the soldier admits that it didn't happen: When Army Sergeant Dennis Edwards spoke at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School last month, 100 students listened in rapt silence as he told chilling tales of battlefield horror in Iraq and criticized President Bush's motives for going to war.I would love to know the context of him telling this tale. It can't have made him look either good or heroic. Good News It may upset Hollywood, but teens seem to be getting the message: Fewer teens are engaging in sexual activity than in the past, and those that do are more likely to use contraceptives, the government said Friday.More teens are choosing to wait, and even those that aren't waiting are being more responsible about it. Odds & Ends For Sale I am upgrading my wife's laptop, and my desktop, an HP Pavillion N3402. Sometime in the next week I will have available for sale a 64MB RAM module (yes, that's why it runs Windows ME so slowly) and a 4.3 GB hard drive. I know that they work in a Pavillion N3402, and they may work in a number of other laptops as well. These aren't high value items, but I hate to throw away a coupld of pieces of equipment that work, and that someone else may be willing to pay $10 or $15 plus shipping to get. If you are one of those people who are running an HP Pavillion N3402 with only 64MB of RAM--here's your chance to double the RAM, and probably dramatically speed it up. I also have a 64MB DIMM (168 pin) from an eMachines Tower 466is. (Don't laugh--it's fast enough for what I do, most fo the time.) I'm replacing with another 128MB DIMM shortly, in the hopes of improving performance a bit. Mental Illness & The Mass Murder in Columbus I've mentioned repeatedly that the swing from the 1950s--when an adult in Florida was institutionalized just on the say-so of his parents--to the current situation, where mentally ill people get no help until they kill someone--has gone too far. This recent mass murder in Columbus has a lot of mentall illness fingerprints on it: The man who shot former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and three other men to death at a nightclub was obsessed with the popular heavy metal band and made bizarre accusations against it, a onetime friend said in reports published Friday.Okay, not so bizarre by itself. But: He later told Brey that he planned to sue Pantera for stealing his identity. Brey and friend Dave Johnson said Gale's behavior frightened them and they distanced themselves from him several years ago. But other friends said they never considered Gale capable of violence.There's nothing here that clearly establishes a history of mental illness--but I can't believe that the Marine Corps cut this guy in 2003 because they didn't have a job for a 6'3" tall guy to do. Thursday, December 09, 2004
It Reads Like An Anti-French Joke But unfortunately, it isn't. If you recently flew from Paris, and you were wondering what that block of plastic in your suitcase was...: France's interior minister called it "scandalous." The Figaro newspaper called it ridiculous. But the bottom line Monday, four days after gendarmes at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle International Airport planted explosives in an unsuspecting passenger's suitcase, was that nobody yet knows where the explosives went. Cutting Nylon With a Table Saw I've started on my manufacturing project, making some prototypes, and I've discovered one great difference between delrin and nylon: delrin doesn't char or melt when you run it through a table saw; nylon does, just a little. It's a bit unattractive. Any suggestions on solutions to this? Cut it wet, perhaps? Is there a better tool choice for making a 30 degree cut? This is just for prototypes; if I get hundreds of orders, I'll have everything cast, instead of having to cut, drill, and tap. Humor It's concerning the announced merger of two major institutions: Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hanukkah will merge. An industry source said that the deal had been in the works for about 1300 years. While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah was becoming prohibitive for both sides. By combining forces, we're told, the world will be able to enjoy consistently high-quality service during the Fifteen Days of Chrismukah, as the new holiday is being called.There's more. Labels: humor The New Red-Diaper Babies If you don't know what "red-diaper babies" refers to, it means the enormous number of children raised in the United States in the middle of the last century from deeply committed Communist families--of which there were many among the intellectual classes (and even a few among the proletariat class). This article by David Brooks (the token conservative at the New York Times), talks about how the split between red and blue America is at least in part a divide about having children--that Americans who believe in the sacrifice of having children, often based on religious beliefs, are moving to places suited to raising kids: All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.Yeah, like Boise. Where I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were pretty typical: two kids. Those who had more than two were either desperately poor (and thus heavily subsidized by the government), or quite unusual. Moving to Boise was very startling--suddenly, three or four kids is quite common, even among well-educated, middle class people. Pearl Harbor: Military Conspiracy Interesting article in the Scotsman about a Japanese professor's efforts to clear his father's name: For years, the blame for what President Roosevelt described as an "unprovoked and dastardly attack" and an act of "treachery" was put on Japanese diplomats in Washington, who had allegedly failed to pass on a message breaking off peace talks until 40 minutes after the attack. The ACLU's Campaign To Protect Terrorists I know that slippery slopes are a real problem, but this latest campaign by the ACLU makes the black helicopters/blue helmeted UN soldiers crowd look sensible. The scenario is that a guy tries to order a pizza delivered, and the clerk at the other end has access to his voting record, what he has recently purchased at the store (condoms, 48 pack), clothing size, employment history, and lots of other personal details because of a government program called "MATRIX." (No word on whether Neo is running the ACLU's campaign against it.) According to news reports and internal documents, the Matrix (which stands for “Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange”) is an effort to combine state government records, such as driver’s license information, with commercially available data to create a vast database capable of compiling and analyzing a profile of every American.Now, if the ACLU wanted to suggest that the government was going to abuse its control over all this information, I could at least understand their concern. But the claim of this stupid pizza delivery scenario is that the government is going to make all this information available to private businesses. Look, the government already keeps an enormous amount of information on all of us. I'm not thrilled with this situation, but I at least recognize what the real hazard is--and it's not Round Table or Domino's conspiring with my health insurance company to keep me healthy. It's a government agency, or individual members of that agency, misusing that information in a criminal or civil investigation. But a serious discussion of the risks of that misuse would inevitably lead to a serious discussion of the hazards that terrorism poses to the United States--and the ACLU does not dare launch a serious discussion of the dozens of successful criminal prosecutions of terrorists around the United States since 9/11. "More Irish than the Irish" A very sad essay by Patrick Cox about the way in which ethnic identity traps not just Irish-Americans and Muslim Americans into backing crazy people, but even groups you don't think much about (unless you live here in Idaho): Though no one was killed, ETA's most recent terrorist acts went so far toward vindicating Aznar's premature but justifiable suspicions, Walter Cronkite might have blamed Karl Rove. It also put pressure on supporters of the Basque separatist movement to condemn terrorism, and cast a spotlight on a kind of tribal psychology that leads some to tolerate acts that they would denounce utterly if committed by people outside their gene pool.Cox goes on to point out that not only is ETA opposed by the majority of Basques in Spain, it is a movement based on revolutionary Marxist thinking that the vast majority of Basques in Idaho would run away from, screaming. But the need to be more Basque than the Basque in Europe, like the need of Irish-Americans to be more Irish than the guys in the Emerald Isle, tends to make otherwise sensible people do really stupid things. Sexual Orientation & In Utero Drug Use I'm not quite sure that I believe this claim, but it is still interesting: Women who take slimming and thyroid pills during pregnancy are substantially more likely to have homosexual children, according to research.The study "traced the mothers of more than 5,000 American and Canadian students and members of gay and lesbian support groups, looking for links between prescription drugs taken during pregnancy and the sexual orientation of their children." Now, I can imagine some other correlations that would be worth considering. For example, were mothers taking diet pills disproportionately single mothers, and their daughters were therefore at increased risk because of stepfathers and live-in boyfriends? (Biological fathers are much lower risk of molesting their children than stepfathers and live-in boyfriends.) They also found evidence that some drugs have the opposite effect during pregnancy, reducing the probability of homosexual offspring. Mothers of heterosexual males were 70 per cent more likely to have taken drugs to combat nausea than those of male homosexuals.Still, it's worth examining. It has been obvious for some time that homosexuality is not a healthy alternative lifestyle. There are all sorts of bizarre behaviors, especially among homosexual men, and if this is some sort of damage caused by drug use during pregnancy, it might explain quite a bit. Self-Defense In Britain: Don't You Dare! Nice piece over at Belmont Club about the current concerns in Britain about self-defense, and why it is dangerous: Dr. Ian Stephen "an Honorary Lecturer (Forensic Psychology) at Glasgow Caledonian University" and "a consultant to forensic psychology television series Cracker" gave some advice to British householders on the appropriate way to handle a home invasion. The advice was given in response to heightened public fears caused by the murder of British financier John Monckton. Burglars tricked him into opening his door by impersonating mailmen. He was killed in the hallway of his multimillion-dollar home. His wife, Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley, was stabbed so hard her ribs were broken.The expert advised victims to engage in "active passivity" so that they don't get sent to prison for hurting the criminals. Belmont Club goes on to point out that George Orwell captured this insanity well in 1984. Like Bad Science Fiction I'm sure that Instapundit is to go to be hailing this brave, new world. It just makes a chill go down my spine: In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.UPDATE: The more I think about this, the more sympathy I have for the villagers storming Dr. Frankenstein's castle with torches. Labels: cross-species breeding Interesting Change Of Heart From ABC News: NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.Flew credits the intelligent design school's arguments for persuading him: Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.Oddly enough, Flew's change of mind on this doesn't seem to be related to imminent death, since he does not believe in an afterlife. Labels: intelligent design Wednesday, December 08, 2004
War Isn't Just Heroes and Flag-Draped Coffins In one sense, this article is really good news: 90% of U.S. casualties are surviving their wounds, partly because of body armor and Kevlar helmets, and partly because of innovative military surgeons. But the costs for those surviving are high: For every American soldier killed in Iraq, nine others have been wounded and survived - the highest rate of any war in U.S. history. It isn't that their injuries were less serious, a new report says. In fact, some young soldiers and Marines have had faces, arms and legs blown off and are now returning home badly maimed.Make no mistake about it; the dead are sometimes the lucky ones. Let's not forget the enormous sacrifices that our men (and a few women) are making in this war. Along with the substantial physical consequences, there are some serious mental traumas that go with warfare also. I don't know whether to completely believe this story, since at least some of the people working in this area probably have their own axe to grind about the war, but I would not completely discount this story just yet: U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.If this war can infect the Middle East with the democracy virus, it will have been worth it. Preventing Iraq's government from supplying WMDs to terrorists (for which there was good reason to be concerned) is worth it. There aren't many other reasons that are good enough. Oil Prices Again An article about Saudi efforts to prevent OPEC from cutting production makes an interesting point that I should have thought about--and that I have not seen mentioned in any of the previous news stories about rising oil prices: Crude prices are still nearly 30 percent above the start of the year after strong demand growth in China and the United States strains supplies.A big chunk of the dramatic rise in oil prices has been the fall in the value of the dollar, relative to other currencies. I have a friend who imports stuff from Britain to sell in his shop here in Boise, and not surprisingly, the fall of the dollar has hit his business hard. I feel sorry for him, but the fall of the dollar has also greatly strengthened the position of American manufacturers, both for export sales, and because it reduces competitive price pressure from foreign suppliers. Sunday, December 05, 2004
It's My Birthday At least, it is now December 5, where I am. I'm 48. Enjoy being young. There aren't too many good things about being this age. With a little care, you can have enough money that almost anything material that you want is within your grasp--except that you still have to go to work and sit in the occasional six hour meeting where it is bad form to fall asleep from boredom. There must be some other good sides to being 48, but I can't figure out what they are right now. My daughter is 20, and she has turned out all right--in spite of some very painful years and a lot of tears. She is married to a very nice young man who treats her well. My son is 16, and he is driving me crazy right now, but I suspect that he will get past this stage, too. My wife and I are coming up on 25 years of marriage, and when I look around me at the shattered marriages--and the shattered children that come out of most of them--I'm glad that we are still together. I have published five books, and somehow, I will get this sixth one published, somewhere. My work has been cited in a Rhode Island Supreme Court decision, and a federal district court decision. I guess that's more than most writers can say. I have written software that processed Voyager's telemetry data, so I guess that I can say that I contributed, in a small way, to expanding our knowledge of the universe. I have done my best to contribute the political debate in this country concerning gun control, and had a small influence on it. I have done a small amount of teaching, influencing at least a few kids. It would be nice to do some more. That will probably happen, one of these days. My job right now? I write software, largely in ksh (which is to real programming what pornography is to romance), that helps to test great steaming gobs of laser printer firmware before we stick a fork in it and call it done. For some reason, this just doesn't give me any great sense of accomplishment. I have a very, very few close friends, only one of which, my wife, lives within a day's drive--and I am not at all happy about that. In the larger scheme of things, I think I understand why Alexander the Great wept, because there were no more worlds to conquer. I suspect that one of these years, I will be rich enough to go do something that really matters--something that makes the world a better place. At the moment, I don't know what that is. Oh well, it's time to get some sleep. |
