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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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Friday, February 11, 2005
Huge Telescope I bought a 17.5" reflector this evening, at an auction run by the Boise Astronomical Society. It has an interesting history to it. Apparently, many years back, a number of families in one neighborhood here in Boise pooled their resources, and built a telescope for their kids. It is a classic Dobsonian design using a Coulter mirror. Eventually, the kids grew up, lost interest in science, and the original reason for this optical cannon went away. So they gave it to the Boise Astronomical Society. I just bought it for $625. It needs a little work. The mirror cell (originally of wood) got wet, and became unusable. So I'll have to either fabricate one, or buy one (probably less than $200, from what I can find). The finder diagonal is broken. Perhaps fixable, if not, cheap to replace. Most of the wood is actually pretty decent. Coulter's later mirrors were sometimes decent but often not--but the area where mirror deficiencies become more apparent is at high power. Something like this makes most sense for low power observation of galaxies, anyway. It is a monster. We borrowed a friend's expedition--and even with both seats down, I was pressed against the windshield in the front passenger seat. I couldn't even put on my seat belt. First step after I get the mirror cell replaced: casters on the bottom! Labels: telescopes Deduction, Not Tax Credit I mentioned a couple of days ago my surprise at how generous the Idaho tax code is with solar power. A careful reader (or at least more careful than me) pointed out that the statute refers to a deduction from income, not a tax credit. BIG DIFFERENCE. A deduction lowers your taxable income. Since the highest marginal tax rate for Idaho's state income tax is only about 8%, a $5000 deduction (the maximum allowed) would mean about a $400 reduction in tax liability--assuming that you were entirely in the highest marginal tax bracket. The use of photovoltaics might still make some sense, but it isn't a slam dunk anymore, but something that will require some careful analysis. Why Do So Few Stories Like This Involve Straights? Especially if homosexuals aren't really that much different than heterosexuals? Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- New York City doctors have discovered a previously unseen strain of HIV, which appears to be resistant to three of the four types of anti-viral drugs that combat the disease, and progresses from infection to full-blown AIDS in two or three months, the health department said.Multiple partners, unprotected anal sex, meth--and by someone in his 40s, when you would expect this sort of irresponsible juvenile behavior would be in the past. I know that this is going to make me unpopular in some circles, but does anyone besides me find it worrisome that one of the common (although not necessarily majority) expressions of male homosexuality--the guy whose mannerisms are that of an immature child--fits well with this sort of irresponsible behavior? It really struck me when I was in Boston last week how many pairs of men I saw at dinner, or walking together, where one of the men was acting in this stereotyped way that suggests that they emotionally froze somewhere in early adolescence. (Think of the gay character in Airplane! but toned down a good bit.) For a number of years, when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, the only spokesmen that the gay community could seem to find for television interviews fit into this offensive stereotype. This is a stereotype that makes homosexual men look bad to the general public--and yet, they continued to use guys suffering from this mannerism. When I look at the evidence that suggests that there is a causal connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult homosexuality--and I see this bizarre evidence of frozen immaturity, especially after visiting the town where Father Shanley and a number of other priests had been having their way with early adolescents (overwhelmingly males) for decades--well, I don't find this it difficult to see this as an explanation for at least some homosexuality. Labels: child sexual abuse Is Affirmative Action Actually Just a Tie-Breaker? One of the arguments long advanced by proponents of affirmative action is that meeting AA goals isn't a quota system; at most, when two equally qualified candidates for a job exist, giving the job to a member of an historically underrepresented group means that the job still went to a qualified applicant. Looking at race, ethnicity, sex, is just a "tie-breaker." So now we have the interesting case of Professor Ward Churchill, who was hired as a professor in the ethnic studies department, and who claimed that he was an Indian when he was hired: Churchill's original 1978 application to the school for a position as a lecturer in Native American studies included a completed federal affirmative action form, on which he claimed "American Indian" ethnicity, according to records obtained Thursday by KHOW radio talk show host Dan Caplis through open records law requests to CU.There is some argument about whether the university can fire him for lying about his ethnicity: "If he is not Native American, if he lied about his ethnicity to get a job in the Equal Opportunity program, I think they would fire him on those ground alone," Caplis said.Churchill's attorneys, unsurprisingly, are claiming that it doesn't matter if Churchill really is an Indian or not: Darold Kolmer, one lawyer currently representing Churchill, said "I have no idea if he's Native American."I would guess that CU probably can't find a single instance in their history of firing someone for lying about their ethnicity--Indians are about the only ethnic group where you could tell a lie about being one, and it wouldn't be immediately obvious that you were lying. I couldn't claim to be black, and not be laughed out of the building. I couldn't claim to be Asian-American, without being obviously a liar. On the other hand, there are a lot of people out there who are part-Indian--and you might have a little trouble telling if they are or aren't. My best friend is 1/16th Indian, and therefore has a stronger claim to being an Indian than Professor Churchill, but you would never mistake him for anything but white. A co-worker had an Indian grandfather, but I would never have guessed that, if he hadn't told me. My physician, when I was growing up, was 1/4 Indian, and there was just the faintest hint of it in his face--much like the father of my best friend, who was 1/8th Indian. Lawyers who aren't working for Professor Churchill seem a bit more realistic: Denver lawyer Craig Skinner, whose practice includes employment law, was not so sure.Yup. Ah, Yes, Michael Moore's "Moral Equivalent of the Minutemen" Hard at work again, liberating their nation from occupation: BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque northeast of Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens, a police official and witnesses said, while masked men sprayed gunfire into a crowd at a bakery in a mostly Shiite neighborhood in the capital, killing 11 people, police said.When is Michael Moore going to apologize for this mischaracterization of these slime? Bill Moyers Apologizes There's a false quote that has been floating around for some years, claiming that Reagan's Secretary of the Interior James Watt told Congress that there was no need to conserve natural resources, because Jesus was coming back soon: Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."Bill Moyers, of course, fell for this false quote, hook, line, and sinker, because it fits with his bizarre misunderstanding of Christianity, and used it. The quote is bogus, and Moyers, has now apologized to Watt for using it. Here's the actual text of what was said that the left has (as usual) altered and rewritten to fit their agenda: Rep. Jim Weaver, D-Ore: Do you want to see on lands under your management, the sustained yield policies continued?Unfortunately, Bill Moyers is what passes for an intellectual in leftist circles these days, and I fear that his apology won't catch up with his false statement about James Watt. Thursday, February 10, 2005
Broadening the Product Line Along with making the caster assemblies for the Losmandy GM-8 mounts ($40 plus shipping is the introductory price):  I have now expanded into making a larger set for the Losmandy G-11 and Celestron CI-700 mounts. (The CI-700 was a private label version made by Losmandy.) These are $80 plus shipping.  I have learned a lot about working with nylon--and the future, I am going to use only Delrin. Delrin machined more like aluminum; nylon requires a lot more cleanup of the worked surfaces afterwards. I Didn't Know That You Could Do That Barehanded I think that breaking off this relationship was a good idea--but better done by phone, I think: LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman was sentenced to two and a half years in jail Thursday for ripping off her ex-lover's testicle with her bare hands during a drunken brawl after he refused her sex. Have You Ever Wanted To Be A Molecular Biologist? Don't you wish you could do something to help solve the mysteries of diseases such as Alzheimer's and CJD? Now you can! You may be familiar with the SETI@home project, which uses distributed computation to do signal analysis. Now there's a similar project using the untapped computational power of all those PCs out there to do distributed computational research on protein folding. For those of you with PCs that spend many hours a day doing nothing more exhausting than running a screen saver, and that have permanent Internet connections, here's your chance! At various times I've run the SETI@home screen saver on my home computers, but this is a little more direct of a benefit to mankind, I would say. Scalping Idaho doesn't have a lot of violent crime, but when we have it, boy, it's weird--and no, the person wielding the scalping knife isn't a Native American: A Caldwell woman accused of brutally scalping a 16-year-old Nampa girl at Kirkham Hot Springs in January and then avoiding arrest for about a month is being held in the Ada County Jail.Yesterday's newspaper account was pretty circumspect about the nature of the relationship between Dahle and the victim, although this isn't that big a town--my son knew some of what was going on, and finally, in the delicate way that liberal newspapers must do, alluded to the sexual relationship between the woman and the victim: Dahle has a history of "seeking out vulnerable teenagers and exerts psychological, emotional and sexual control over them," Braddock said earlier this week. Environmentalist Objections to Solar Power & Wind Power I mentioned the very generous Idaho tax credit to a co-worker who recently retired from the Air Force, and he told me an interesting tale of what happened when the Air Force decided to replace some unreliable diesel generators in a remote radar site at the base of the Owyhee Mountains. Sandia Corporation, several government energy research agencies, and the Air Force were going to come up with an environmentally friendly solution to the problem of not having any electric power available with 30 miles. The plan was to use photovoltaics and wind power. This particular site had plenty of sunlight, and plenty of wind. But then the Snake River Alliance found out about this plan, and stopped it from happening. They objected to the wind generators, because they might kill birds. They objected to the photovoltaics. When the Air Force put up mountain bluebird birdhouses (so that they wouldn't nest in their equipment), the Snake River Alliance objected to that, and insisted that the Air Force remove them immediately--even though there were active nests in those birdhouses. It became apparent that the Snake River Alliance wasn't particularly concerned about the environment. They just didn't want the military to be in their area. Of course, you read their purpose statement, and you can see that environmentalism (as with many environmentalists) is just a means to an end: The Snake River Alliance is an Idaho-based grassroots group working through research, education, and community advocacy for peace and justice, the end to nuclear weapons production activities, and responsible solutions to nuclear waste and contamination. Solar Power One of the limitations of photovoltaic systems is that it takes a fair amount of unobstructed flat space to generate enough electricity to operate a typical house--and to store enough to last you through the evening and night. I am still very skeptical of the cost-effectiveness of photovoltaic systems, but the costs, unsurprisingly, are dropping. Unlike many buyers, I don't necessarily need a very efficient system in terms of watts per square foot, but it needs to be cost effective: watts per dollar installed. The eleven acres that I bought, however, have pretty decent southern exposure, and if I had to turn two acres of it into a photovoltaic farm to provide enough power to run the house, and charge the batteries up for the night--and perhaps for a couple of cloudy or rainy days--well, I've got the room to do it. Winters at 44 degrees north aren't going to produce enough consistent sunlight to get by without being on the grid for at least part of the year, but I am at least tempted to consider the possibilities of having an on-grid photovoltaic system. It would also be nice to see the meter run backward, assuming that Idaho electric utilities have a buyback program. I also see that Idaho has a very generous (unnecessarily so, in my opinion) tax credit for installing solar power equipment. At least the way that I read it, you get to deduct 40% of the cost of the equipment in the first year from your Idaho state income tax, and 20% per year for the following three years, with a maximum deduction of $5000 per year. If I spend $20,000 on a photovoltaic system, I will owe no state income tax for four years, and my out of pocket costs will be $3,000 (because of exceeding the first year deduction limit). It is hard to imagine that I can't find a system that will cover its $3,000 in just a few years. UPDATE: This company, which seems to be primarily catering to the California trade, offers a two kilowatt peak power system, with it appears all the equipment required to connect to the grid, for $10,282. They are careful to emphasize that there is a standard method for measuring output power (PTC), but report that field measurements using the STC methodology would be more like 1.7 kilowatt peak output. Now, that peak output requires a bright sun. Here in Idaho, in summer, you get about 15 hours of sunlight, and the sun at its zenith is about 67 degrees above the horizon. My guess is that only about 6-8 hours of that will be bright enough to produce that much power. In winter, the sun at zenith is down at about 20 degrees above the horizon, and the days are much shorter--about five hours in the miserable days around Christmas. It might be only an hour or two of sunlight sufficient to produce peak output--maybe not hitting peak output at all. Still, when we aren't home, and after we have gone to bed, our house in winter is consuming about 400 to 500 watts (refrigerator, heater fan, a few computers, one or two lights). When we are home, running washing machine, dryer, oven, television, the consumption goes way up. Still, it is possible that the three kilowatt system (for $14,759) would make us self-sufficient in summer, and perhaps late spring and early fall, and produce enough to sell back to the power company that the rest of the year (when we would still be producing some power) would come out as a wash. UPDATE 2: A careful reader noticed that the Idaho Code provides not for a tax credit, but a deduction. Big difference. It's still nice to have, but a $5000 deduction means about $450 savings on my taxes. This isn't such an obvious decision anymore. Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Excuse Me, Your Underwear Is Showing One of my readers was angry about a bill like this being introduced: RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) -- Virginians who wear their pants so low their underwear shows may want to think about investing in a stronger belt.My first reaction to a bill like this is, "Don't you have something better to worry about?" But my second reaction was to remember why this became fashionable. I remember reading a very upset black person complaining about how what had started out as a sign that you were fresh out of jail--because you aren't allowed to have a belt in jail--had become a fashion statement. Imagine if MTV decided to do for sheets and hoods what it did for this sort of fashion statement, and ran music videos hours a day in which bands performed in KKK robes and hoods. More realistically, if MTV started running music videos where bands were dressed up in stormtrooper uniforms. There is absolutely no question in my mind that they would become very cool, especially because they would upset Mom and Dad. What do you suppose the reaction of liberals would be? Maybe they wouldn't try to criminalize it--but they would certainly be upset. To Say That I Am Disappointed... I read articles like this and I find myself agreeing with Mark Twain's famous saying, "Before God made the idiot, first he made the school board for practice." SUTTER, Calif. - The only grade school in this rural town is requiring students to wear radio frequency identification badges that can track their every move. Some parents are outraged, fearing it will take away their children's privacy.There is some misinformation going on as well, with parents concerned about radiation hazards from the badges. No, that won't happen. I just can't imagine that schools the size of Sutter, California, really need to use this method to take attendance. Cloud Cover Pictures Useful for amateur astronomers, and just plain cool, is this animation of cloud cover for the lower 48. Great Understatements HP's board gave Carly Fiorina, CEO, the boot: Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) on Wednesday ousted Chairman and Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, the architect of a controversial merger with Compaq Computer that never produced the results she promised.Yeah, that's an understatement. Sources inside the printing division report that you could hurt whoops of exultation as engineers arrived this morning, and reached the email announcing Carly's removal. In addition, you could hear this familiar refrain in some parts of the buildings: Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!Emails also encouraged employees not to let productivity be too badly impaired by celebrations. Tuesday, February 08, 2005
The Seegars Case As many of you are aware, a suit challenging the District of Columbia's ban on possession of handguns not registered as of 1976 has been working its way through the courts, and the D.C. Court of Appeals has upheld the District Court decision that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the law, because they had not been prosecuted. There are a lot of issues concerning whether plaintiffs can challenge a law before it has been enforced against them. In other circuits, the precedents agree that a preenforcement challenge to a law does not run into a standing problem. Even in the D.C. Circuit, the precedents agree that a preenforcement challenge is okay for certain conditions: For preenforcement challenges to a criminal statute not burdening expressive rights and not in the form of appeal from an agency decision, our circuit’s single post-United Farm Workers case appears to demand more than a credible statement by the plaintiff of intent to commit violative acts and a conventional background expectation that the government will enforce the law.What makes "expressive rights" more important than the right to self-defense? Why does it matter if this is "an appeal from an agency decision"? There might well be good reasons why agency decision appeals are treated differently from prospective criminal enforcement. But distinguishing "expressive rights" from others? What makes that special? Chilling effect on free speech? What about the chilling effect on the right to defend yourself? For that matter, the courts have allowed "preenforcement challenges" to the federal statute prohibiting partial-birth abortions, which is a criminal statute, not "an appeal from an agency decision," and does not involve "expressive rights" except for some truly warped and evil definition of "expression." I can go along with either not allowing "preenforcement challenges" or with allowing them--and perhaps even the distinction between those plaintiffs who have a credible chance of being prosecuted, versus those against whom prosecution is unlikely--but the majority's hairsplitting about this smells like an opportunity to avoid confronting the problem that the DC law violates an explicit guarantee of a right to keep and bear arms. So, how to challenge this law? Someone--and preferably, someone squeaky clean--has to violate the law without violating any other law. You can't lawfully buy a pistol in DC, and a DC resident can't lawfully purchase a pistol outside of DC. A DC resident who already owns a pistol (as one of the plaintiffs does) needs to bring the pistol into the District, or someone who lives outside DC with a pistol needs to move into the District. Then, something happens like this, from the case People Ex Rel. Darling v. Warden of City Prison, 139 N.Y.S. 277, 154 App. Div. 413, 414, 415, 419, 29 N.Y.Cr. 74 (1913): The relator notified the police that he had a pistol in his house without a permit. Thereupon a captain of police went to his house and found a loaded revolver and some loaded shells in a small cabinet in the bedroom adjoining the parlor. He asked the defendant why he kept the revolver there and defendant said he preferred not to answer the question. The captain asked if defendant had a permit, to which he replied no. Whereupon the captain placed the relator under arrest and took him before a city magistrate, charging him with a violation of section 1897….Of course, remember that the New York courts upheld the Sullivan Law. Firing Professor Ward Churchill I haven't been comfortable with the notion of firing Professor Ward Churchill because of the scurrilous essay he wrote calling the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns." But I am not at all uncomfortable firing him for academic fraud and perjury. First of all, he claims to be an Indian--part of how a guy without a Ph.D. became not only a professor but a department chair at a major research institution. But his claims of being at least partly Indian have been pretty thoroughly debunked by this article in Indian Country Today: The Oneida Indian Nation, which has historic ties to nearby Hamilton, issued the following statement:Churchill has apparently engaged in academic fraud as well: This is a work in progress that I am making available due to the current interest in Ward Churchill’s writings. I show that Churchill has committed research fraud, and very possibly committed perjury as well. This article analyzes Churchill’s fabrication of a genocide. Churchill invented a story about the US Army deliberately creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan people in 1837 by distributing infected blankets. While there was a smallpox epidemic on the Plains in 1837, it was entirely accidental, the Army wasn’t involved, and nearly every element of Churchill’s story is a total invention. My goal here was to show how and why Churchill engaged in such blatant fraud, and why no one has challenged him on it until now.Perjury? Churchill first advanced his tale of the Mandan genocide in 1992, in the context of “a brief supporting a motion to dismiss charges” against Churchill and other activists, who were being tried for having disrupted a Columbus Day parade in Denver the year before. In Churchill’s trial brief, he claimed immunity from the state laws under which he was being prosecuted. Churchill made the argument that protesting the parade was tantamount to combating genocide, and was thus his legal duty under international law.This isn't the only example of this sort of dishonesty: Similar charges have been leveled against Churchill by University of New Mexico law professor John Lavelle, a Native American scholar who has documented what appear to be equally fraudulent claims on Churchill's part regarding the General Allotment Act, one of the most important federal laws dealing with Indian lands. (Lavelle also accuses Churchill of plagiarism).So how does he get away with this? Because dishonesty in the pursuit of the leftist agenda is acceptable to a lot of academics. The way in which Bellesiles's similar frauds were justified, rationalized, and explained away by a number of prominent American historians--until the evidence was impossible to ignore anymore--is part of this same little game of intellectual dishonesty that pervades the academic community today. Monday, February 07, 2005
Boston's Back Bay I was rather taken aback by looking at a modern map of Boston, and comparing it to historic maps of the place--it isn't the same! I asked around, and did some searching when I got home, and indeed, the "Back Bay" section is so named not because of what it faces onto, but what it used to be. It is filled, and in a bad earthquake (yes, Boston has had big shakers in the past), a lot of those charming brownstones are going to be in big trouble. A reader tells me that MIT is also built on fill, on the other side of the Charles River. Amusing Reminder of What the Real Perversion Is In San Francisco The Pink Pistols--a gay gun rights group--is opposing the handgun ban initiative coming up shortly: Brian DiCrocco, a Republican who formerly served in the U.S. Air Force, had just recently learned how to shoot. Edward, a self-described "libertarian, anarchist, socialist" with a "small arsenal" of guns at home, didn't want to give his last name. In San Francisco, being out about gun ownership is in some ways more difficult than being out as gay, he said with a laugh.Yup! There's no question which will get you the cold shoulder faster in the Bay Area. As usual, San Francisco county government is run by dishonest morons: But San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, one of the ban's supporters, said he isn't swayed by that logic.However, arguing against the initiative in question--which completely bans handgun ownership--isn't arguing for "unlimited handguns." Ammiano has put up a strawman of extremism in order to defend the real extreme position--a complete ban on handguns in San Francisco. Plummeting Long-Term Interest Rates I was horrified to see 30 year Treasury bonds down to 4.4% yesterday morning--but this news story explains why: The US dollar rose to a three-month high against the euro on Monday amid further signs that market sentiment is warming towards the greenback, temporarily at least.So what are they buying, exactly? Central banks are using the dollars that they are buying to buy long-term Treasurys as part of that effort--but this is a very expensive action for these central banks to take. If you buy bonds of any sort at a very low yield, and interest rates rise, the capital value of those bonds in their native currency will fall. On the other hand, if you expect the dollar to rise (as it is doing), it won't matter that the capital value of those bonds is falling, if you bought them with Euros, and the dollar rises faster relative to the Euro than the capital value of the bonds drops in dollars. You might see your Treasury bonds drop from $140 to $120 because of rising interest rates--but if you bought them for 107.69 Euros ($140 at 1.30 Euros to the dollar), and the Euro drops from $1.30 to $1.10 in value, even at $120, it would still be worth 109 Euros. As long as the dollar rises relative to the Euro faster than the value of those bonds drops in dollars, they will still break even or come out ahead. This is the sort of stuff that makes some people rich, some people poor, and just gives headaches to those who hate doing arithmetic. Sunday, February 06, 2005
History: Holding Paul Revere's Hunting Gun & Pocket Pistol I know that some of you read my blog just for the history. I went to Boston to be part of the audience at Professor Kevin Sweeney's presentation of a paper about gun ownership in the Connecticut Valley 1640-1800. I can't really give any details of Sweeney's paper yet (it is still in the "request comments and corrections" phase), but I can say that it is astonishing what happens when an historian looks for data, and then draws conclusions, rather than doing it Bellesiles-style, where you draw the graphs and then look for data points that can be squeezed to fit the curves. As I mentioned a few days ago, Professor Sweeney's probate inventory data, while much more complete than mine (and with very useful analysis, such as age stratification), comes to roughly similar conclusions to mine about gun ownership rates and valuation in seventeenth century America. What was very gratifying was what happened when I arrived at the Massachusetts Historical Society presentation at 5:18 PM, just as they were getting started. For those outside the academic community, let me explain that at an event like this, it is common for the presenter of a paper (which has been circulated to attendees in advance) to give an overview of his work, and then one or two "discussants" with expertise in the subject area present their suggestions and criticisms. In spite of the presence of the word "cuss" in "discussant," discussants are generally careful and gentle in how they critcize a paper. I suppose if a paper were really, really outrageous (say, denying that the American Revolution took place, or insisting that Robert E. Lee was actually a Chinese-American because of the last name), the discussants would be a lot less gentle. The moderator explained the sequence of events; Professor Sweeney would present his paper, then a discussant (Professor Lisa Wilson of Connecticut University, an expert in use of probate inventories) would go next, followed by questions from the audience. The moderator then asked everyone to go around the room, and identify themselves. As soon as I said my name, there was a distinct buzz--and the moderator asked me to move up to the table--and now I was the second discussant! It was an honor to be recognized as being sufficiently important to this topic to have this happen. It was a very nice feeling to finally be at the Big People's table, instead of stting with the other little kids. As I had mentioned a few days ago, my observations and criticisms of Sweeney's paper were primarily related to assumptions that he was making about the level of armament among non-whites and non-males, as well as some terminology issues: "fire arm" has a very specific and narrow meaning into the early nineteenth century, often excluding civilian weapons, such as rifles or "fowling pieces," the ancestors of the modern single-shot shotgun. Friday I spent digging through various manuscript sources, such as the account book for Massachusetts colony for the years 1714-16. It is a heady feeling to be gently and carefully turning the pages of a document that old. Around noon, the curator pulled some interesting odds and ends out of storage. While more in the, "Wow! I really held this!" category than the useful research I did in the manuscript section, I did learn something by holding some of these odds and ends. One of the artifacts was Paul Revere's fowling piece. It had been converted to percussion cap at some point in the nineteenth century, but it was still an awesome feeling to hold a weapon that an American revolutionary might have used for duck hunting--or even Redcoat hunting. While I have read that militiamen preferred hunting weapons such as this over the muskets that the law required them to own, because of weight, this was simply a fact on the page. Holding this gun in my hands, and aiming it, really emphasizes how different it was from a military weapon, such as a musket. In modern terms, imagine the difference between a .22 rifle and an M14. You know which you would prefer to have in your hands for combat, but for sporting uses, that .22 rifle is a lot more pleasant. Another artifact I held was a musket used to "encourage" Governor Andros to resign his commission in 1689, and return to Britain. Another was the lockwork out of the gun used to kill King Philip, aka Metacom, ending King Philip's War. The gun was apparently parted out by the family that both sons would get part of this historically signifcant weapon. I also held one of Paul Revere's pocket pistols--an astonishingly compact and light handgun, comparing favorably with pocket pistols today in size, although, obviously, not in firepower. Another pocket pistol I held was one presented to Captain John Paul Jones by Congress in 1776. The sense of history from holding this relics is quite powerful. I'll be discussing history of a more personal nature next, with my visit to the family plot at Duxbury. UPDATE: Oh yes, there was quite an amazed and amused reaction at the seminar when I mentioned America's first firearm product liability suit--in 1645--and that one of my relatives, a gunsmith, was a witness for the plaintiff in that suit. If you want to know more, read this article that appeared in Shotgun News, November 19, 2001, 18-19. Boston Traffic I was told that it was best to take a cab from the airport, and not try to navigate Boston traffic. But hey, I grew up driving in Los Angeles, and Philadelphia traffic, while a little frustrating, was tolerable. I should have listened. Boston traffic is inexcusable--and I am told that it is greatly improved, now that the construction project known as the Big Dig is largely complete. Boston has everything going against, from the standpoint of traffic congestion. Most of the city was built before the automobile; the urban area covers at least four peninsulas, three rivers, and a bay. One of the traditional techniques for improving traffic flow--extensive use of alternating one-way streets--may actually aggravate the problem of driving. The intersection of so many different road grids means that making a right turn, going two blocks, then another right, two more blocks, then another right--often fails when you run into a conflicting grid, or a river. This is not theory, unfortunately. I was attempting to get from Storrow Drive to Boylston Drive, and I was in the right lane. This was not a right turn only lane, but the taxi driver behind me kept honking, trying to force me to make a right turn a couple of blocks earlier than I needed. I'm a pretty accommodating person, and I became tired of the honking. Also I have a natural sympathy for some guy who, if he is lucky, is making about $6 per hour in exchange for risking holdup or murder, so I made a right turn that I didn't want to make. I figured that I would go make a grand circuit, and return to Storrow Drive. Nope. By the time I was able to finally get headed the right direction again, I was across the Charles River in Charlestown. It also appears that there is either a distinct inability to properly place road signs in Boston, or there is a dark conspiracy to mislead drivers into crossing bridges to pay unncessary tolls. Fortunately, I left my hotel early for Logan Airport. Several alternative routes to the airport were closed by Suffolk County sheriff's deputies, and signs placed too late (and sometimes not at clearly indicating which way to go to the airport) roughly tripled my travel time and distance. (Environmentalists, take note: tripling the drive time usually means tripling the pollution.) While waiting for the shuttle bus from rental drop-off location to airport, a number of others complained about the poor signage--and some of the other whiners, judging by their accents, were locals. Let me emphasize that this isn't just a guy from Boise who isn't used to urban traffic. I grew up in Los Angeles; spent much of my life navigating San Francisco Bay Area freeways; and I've driven in crowded urban environments like Philadelphia, recently. Boston really needs to get its act together on road signs. Boston drivers were, like urban drivers almost everywhere, aggressive and rude. My wife complains that Boise drivers drive as though they have nowhere particular that they need to be--the light turns green, and drivers very leisurely get under way through the intersection. In some cases, the desire to not be aggressive means that a Boise driver might clobber you out of hesitancy to take the right of way--but I'll take that over having to effectively play chicken to merge into traffic. All over Boston and the South Shore of Massachusetts Bay (where the road signs and the drivers were much better), I noticed signs reminding you that state law requires you to give right of way to pedestrians. I can't tell if the problem is that Bostonians can't (or won't) read the signs, or that they figure that since pedestrians ignore WALK/DON'T WALK signals (and stoplights), that it is okay to ignore pedestrians who do actually obey these safety devices. I'm used to seeing taxi drivers aggressive with other vehicles in big cities. It is almost like a comic book in New York City--to the point where I wonder if taxi drivers there have any collision deductible at all on their insurance. In Boston, taxi drivers were even worse than private drivers in their aggressiveness towards pedestrians. I saw one cabbie Saturday night come very close to running down a pedestrian on Boylston--this cab was relying on the flashing of lights and horns to force his way out of turn through an uncontrolled intersection. Recommendation: if you need to spend a couple of days in Boston itself, plan on taking a taxi to and from Logan Airport, and walk or use a taxi to get around the city. It is a very compact, very walkable place (although perhaps not wise to do so after 10:00 PM). Unless you are going from end of Boston to the other, the combination of bad traffic and difficult parking mean that walking will only be a little slower than driving--and far less frustrating. I stayed at the Fairmont Copley Square--a nicely updated 1912 hotel, within about six blocks of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The hotel where I stayed: 
Boston Weather A couple of stories from my youth. Quite a number of friends and acquaintances from high school went to MIT. I should probably have applied there; I might not have gotten in, and even if I had, my less than sterling skills in higher math would have probably either caused me to transfer to a less demanding school, or to have changed to a major requiring less math--but you never know what might have happened. (By the way--I don't know how MIT ended up with the location it has--but that location facing south on the Charles River across from Boston is dramatic and beautiful. That would definitely be a tie-breaker for anyone considering Caltech or Harvey Mudd. Sorry, no picture: it was too late in the day when I got that idea in my head.) At the time, Massachusetts seemed a long, long ways away from home in Santa Monica. Like a lot of kids who grew up in mild poverty, I was pretty intimidated by the larger world about which I knew relatively little, and I was reluctant to tackle such an dramatic change. My friends who did go to MIT, however, told me about Boston weather, and compared to California, it sounded pretty intimidating. One friend, a gal with whom I was hopelessly smitten at the close of twelfth grade (but definitely too smart for me), told me the pickup line that one guy at MIT used to find out how sexually liberated a young lady was; I will not repeat here. It did involve a feather and tickling, and if she reacted with shock or anger, he would explain that she had heard him wrong, "I said, 'Boston sure has lousy weather.'" Another friend who went off to MIT insisted that compared to Southern California, Boston didn't have bad weather, but weather at all. The first two days I was in Boston I was reminded that humidity really makes a difference. Boston temperatures were about the same as Boise, but it was a wet cold, and all the more miserable for it. Friday evening the skies cleared, and Saturday was cold blue sky. Very nice change, even though the mounds of snow everywhere still made it a bit risky to walk on the streets, and my adventure in Duxbury (still to be described) gave me a chance to see how long it takes for a rental car heater to dry out wet socks. I confess that eastern Massachusetts scenery has it all over Boise scenery: the forests; the frozen rivers--some of them quite substantial bodies of water, such as the Charles River. Of course, thirty miles north of Boise, Idaho has pine forests that are different, but on a par for beauty with eastern Massachusetts. Still, once you leave the urban area of Boston, Massachusetts scenery has a lot to recommend it. Boston Politics Yes, Massachusetts is a Blue State--but I get the impression, from my limited driving around the place, that Boston is by far the most leftist part of the state. (Oddly enough, there were Bush bumper stickers present on a fair number of cars in Boston--perhaps a sign that, unlike certain other parts of the country, Bush supporters here were not intimidated by leftist vandalism, as was a problem in some other urban areas.) Boston was awash in cars with "Bush Lied" bumper stickers, and amazingly enough, some of them were on cars that could have been owned by poor people. Of course, most of the time, they were on cars that a member of the proletariat would only be driving until the police had a chance to run the license plate. One bumper sticker said, "Quit your whining; start a revolution." I was at first a little unsure whether this was a provocation along the lines of: "Go ahead--get violent, openly engage in treason--that will be the end of you." After looking at the other leftist bumper stickers on this particular car, I concluded that no, this was a leftist who wanted other leftists to bell the cat (as in Aesop's fable). Either that, or he had started the Revolution--and no one noticed. I drove down to Duxbury, southeast of Boston, and just a little north of Plymouth, to visit the graves of some distant ancestors. (More about that later.) As I drove south, I noticed an awful lot of roadside signs welcoming back particular soldiers and Marines, presumably from duty in the Middle East. They were handmade, and it was gratifying to see that just an hour's drive from "Quit your whining; start a revolution" there were people who still felt pride in family members for whom words like "duty" and "honor" can be said with respect to military service--and with no embarrassment or irony. I find myself wondering what the direction of causality is with leftist politics and rude, selfish people. Do people become leftists because they are projecting their greed and selfishness onto others? Or are they leftists because they live in an urban environment where greed and selfishness are the only values that have survival value? I'm not sure which. I do know that once I reached those parts of Massachusetts far removed from Boston, people were as friendly and helpful as I have learned to expect in Idaho. I'm Sure The Race of Those Refused Permit Renewals Is Just a Coincidence Yeah, and when pigs fly: It was the faces of three disillusioned and angry residents that told a story in the lobby of Brookline District Court earlier this week.It gets worse from there. Thanks to the Massachusetts blogger mASS BACKWARDS for the link. |
