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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Randy Barnett's Favorite Constitutional Opinion Sentence
Professor Randy Barnett (who lost the Raich case before the U.S. Supreme Court) describes this statement from Justice Thomas's dissent in Kelo as his favorite constitutional opinion sentence: "Something has gone seriously awry with this Court?'s interpretation of the Constitution."
He proposes T-shirts and mugs. If someone makes the mug, I'll take one! This is one of those clever uses of understatement sort of things.
More Content
I have added "Gun Safety Regulation in Early America," which appeared in the November 1, 2004 Shotgun News to the popular magazine articles page.
Very Good News!
No surprise that you aren't seeing it on TV or in your local newspaper--although oddly enough, the New York Times is reporting it: In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer.
Winds of Change has a very detailed, multisource article, well worth reading in full about the evidence that the Iraqi terrorists are engaged in substantial internal warfare between Sunni Iraqis and al-Qaeada jihadists from other countries.
"Red on red," he said, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire.
Marines patrolling this desert region near the Syrian border have for months been seeing a strange new trend in the already complex Iraqi insurgency. Insurgents, they say, have been fighting each other in towns along the Euphrates from Husayba, on the border, to Qaim, farther west. The observations offer a new clue in the hidden world of the insurgency and suggest that there may have been, as American commanders suggest, a split between Islamic militants and local rebels.
A United Nations official who served in Iraq last year and who consulted widely with militant groups said in a telephone interview that there has been a split for some time.
"There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."
The nationalist insurgent groups, "are giving a lot of signals implying that there should be a settlement with the Americans," while the Jihadists have a purely ideological agenda, he added.
Why is this good news? If Iraqi insurgents are killing jihadists or vice versa, that's terrorists that can't kill Coalition forces. One of the factors that assisted Franco in winning the Spanish Civil War was the fight between the Communists and the Anarchists in Barcelona, when the Communists attempted to disarm the Anarchists. If your enemies are fighting each other, they don't have resources to fight you.
Vietnam Is Not Iraq
This article in USA Today quotes some reservists serving in Iraq who know--they were in Vietnam as regulars: Browning, 56, of Paradise, Calif., and Weatherhead, 57, of Elk Grove, Calif., are grandfathers. They first flew combat missions in Vietnam, before most of the soldiers in the current Army were born. They and others their age are here with the National Guard's 42nd Infantry Division, which includes some of the oldest soldiers to serve in combat for the modern U.S. Army. Few soldiers or officers in the military, other than the service's top generals, are as old.
Thanks to Citizen Smash (recently returned from that part of the world as a reservist) for the link.
If there are parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, these graying soldiers and the other Vietnam veterans serving here offer a unique perspective. They say they are more optimistic this time: They see a clearer mission than in Vietnam, a more supportive public back home and an Iraqi population that seems to be growing friendlier toward Americans.
"In Vietnam, I don't think the local population ever understood that we were just there to help them," says Chief Warrant Officer James Miles, 57, of Sioux Falls, S.D., who flew UH-1H Hueys in Vietnam from February 1969 to February 1970. And the Vietcong and North Vietnamese were a tougher, more tenacious enemy, he says. Instead of setting off bombs outside the base, they'd be inside.
"I knew we were going to lose Vietnam the day I walked off the plane," says Miles, who returned home this month after nearly a year in Iraq. Not this time. "There's no doubt in my mind that this was the right thing to do," he says.
...
Miles says the biggest difference he saw was that, over time, Iraqi civilians grew more positive toward U.S. forces. He says he saw more people smiling and waving near his base here than there were 10 months ago when he arrived.
1st Sgt. Patrick Olechny, 52, of Marydel, Del., an attack helicopter crew chief and door gunner in Vietnam from March 1971 to February 1972, says the most important difference to him is the attitude of the American public.
"Vietnam was an entirely different war than this one," he says. The basic job of flying helicopters is the same, but the overall mission now is clear when it wasn't then. "We thought in Vietnam we were doing the right thing, and in the end it didn't seem that way," he says.
Now, "the people in the United States respect what the soldiers are doing," says Olechny, who still fills in at the door gunner position when he can get away from his administrative duties.
Browning, recently back from two weeks of R&R in the USA, says he was overwhelmed by the reception he got stateside: More than a hundred people met the airplane to help the soldiers and wish them well. "I can't tell you what, as a Vietnam vet, that means to me," he said.
Senator Durbin
I didn't have anything to say about Senator Durbin's offensive and false equivalence between the Nazis and Gitmo, because it was so obviously absurd that only a Michael Moore fan could take it seriously. But I did see this amusing description of the Senator from Illinois on Michael Williams' blog: Senator Durbin the Turban
Cute, but it gives Senator Durbin too much credit for knowing who he is working for.
Ignorance of history, I fear, is what drives the left's current obssession with equating Gitmo interrogation techniques with the Gulag Archipelago, Auschwitz, and next week, I would guess, the Spanish Inquisition. I would not want to be at Gitmo, being interrogated. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun. It also isn't, by any of the accounts that I have read, the torture chamber to which ignorant leftists keep comparing it.
There are allies of the U.S. who are, based on reports that seem credible, engaged in torture of terrorists that we have turned over to them for "interrogation." I am not happy about this--but that isn't Gitmo. Furthermore, leftists who insist that we shouldn't be imposing our values on other cultures need to be consistent, and either stop whining about what other cultures do to terrorists, or acknowledge that there are universal definitions of right and wrong--and they apply on both sides of the fence between Gitmo and the rest of Cuba.
Gun Control Advocates Acknowledge Police Can't Be Trusted With Guns
There are times that I am convinced that gun control advocates support a police state. Then I see items like this, that suggest that they aren't even that realistic: BALTIMORE -- Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. yesterday initiated a state program to license retired police officers to carry concealed handguns, making Maryland one of the first states to implement new federal laws expanding gun rights for retired and off-duty officers.
On the second page of the article: Leah Barrett, executive director of the gun-control group CeaseFire Maryland Inc., said allowing officers to carry a gun anywhere at any time is "essentially dangerous."
Now, I have my objections to this law, both because it violates the federalism principle, and because it only applies to retired police officers. There might be an argument on Second Amendment grounds for requiring every state to recognize carry permits from other states, or even for allowing all legal residents who are not otherwise prohibited from owning a gun, to carry a gun. I am also realistic enough to know that police officers aren't dramatically better trained or dramatically more careful with guns than the general population. But I do know that gun accidents are really pretty rare, and when they happen they are usually:
"We have too many guns in this country and too many people carrying them," she said. "Accidents happen."
FOP Lodge No. 3 President Lt. Fred Roussey stressed that only experienced and trained officers can get the carry permit.
1. Hunting accidents.
2. Involve teenagers or children who have obtained unsupervised access to a gun.
3. Involve alcohol or other intoxicants.
4. Disproportionately involve people with significant criminal histories.
Worrying about retired police officers having gun accidents is absurd.
Thanks to Bitter at the Bitch Girls blog for the link.
My Generation Missed So Much
And it makes me a little concerned about this generation: "This is not just a game," German scientist Klaus Mathiak concludes in a new study of the brains of video game players.
This is one of the reasons that we wouldn't let my son play first-person shooter games when he was young. There's plenty of evidence that suggests that violent entertainment causes small increases in average levels of aggression--and I would not be surprised if violent entertainment in which you play an active role would be even more of a problem.
The University of Tubingen neuroscientist analysed the brains of men aged 18 to 26 who are avid players of "first-person shooter" games. These are the most popular game category for young men: The players assumes the role of a character in a violent world, seeing his surroundings through that character's eyes, and blasting away at all the bad guys who try to kill him.
It was a small study: Just 13 men, who play video games for 20 hours a week on average.
Mr. Mathiak put the men in an MRI machine. They lay on their backs with their heads in the scanning device and their hands free to work the controls of a violent video game. (They had to find their way through a bunker, killing attackers and rescuing hostages.)
As they played, the machine recorded which parts of their brains were active while the rockets and bullets flew. This is called a functional MRI -- one that covers brain activity, not just the brain's physical structure.
As each player entered a dangerous parts of the game, his brain "lit up" with activity in a brain area associated with aggression, called the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex.
This high level of activity shows the players has a feeling of reality and "being there," says a summary of the research by the University of Southern California, which worked with the German team.
But as the fighting actually began, there was a drop in activity in another part of the brain -- the amygdala.
This is an emotion centre, where a person feels empathy with others, among other things.
Mr. Mathiak's conclusion: It's possible that reinforcing the circuits the brain uses to respond to a crisis with aggression, even violence, may prime the brain to act the same way in real life. After all, to the brain the video game itself seems to be real.
As well, the brain becomes accustomed to switching off -- or at least dulling -- feelings of empathy for others.
Past studies of young men who love these games have found higher levels of aggression, but haven't come up with a direct cause-and-effect explanation for it.
The State of the Economy
When I saw the Fox News report about the increase in durable goods orders in May, I was temporarily unnerved. A rise in durable goods orders generally means the economy is growing, and that often means the Fed will have to raise interest rates to keep inflation in check. This more detailed account, however, gives me less reason to be concerned: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New orders for long-lasting U.S.-made goods leaped by a larger-than-expected 5.5 percent in May on a large gain in civilian aircraft orders but orders fell outside of transportation, a government report showed on Friday.
It's nice to see airplane sales doing well, since I would expect a lot of those are exports, but demand-pull inflation isn't normally driven much by aircraft sales. The decline in durable goods orders in other sectors would suggest that the economy is, if not weakening, at least not racing ahead. This would suggest that the Fed will not be under as much pressure to raise interest rates. Not surprisingly, 30 year Treasury bond yields remain at a modest 4.242%.
Excluding the volatile transportation category, orders for durable goods -- big-ticket items meant to last three years or more -- slipped unexpectedly by 0.2 percent, the Commerce Department said. It was the third decline in the last four months for that category.
Analysts were expecting all durable goods orders to rise 1 percent and for orders excluding transportation to gain 0.5 percent.
One of these days, the Fed's efforts at raising long-term interest rates are going to pay off. When that happens, a lot of speculative investments in housing are going to sour, and bankrupt a lot of foolish and sometimes greedy people. But for now (and tomorrow, but no bets on next year or even next month), the low-interest rate party continues!
UPDATE: As of 4:00 PM Mountain Time, the 30 year Treasury bond yield is down to 4.215%. You know, it seems like I can't lose for winning (to reverse a severe cliche). If interest rates go down, my existing house and my new house go up in value, as do the current market value of my bonds. If interest rates go up, it hastens the day when I can convert my collection of short-term bonds into long-term bonds, and I can retire.
There is one down side to a prosperous economy, however, that became apparent Wednesday when my wife and I tried to get a quick meal at Wendy's on the way to the building site: the lines were so long!
Throughout history, wealthy people have regarded poverty as a good thing, because it means that there's no shortage of desperate poor people interested in working cheap as butlers, cooks, and housekeepers. (And also traditionally, the master of the house or his worthless sons took full advantage of the maid's fear of losing her job to extract additional horizontal labor from her.) I guess I am not surprised that so much of the limousine liberal set is unconcerned about high tax rates destroying the economy--why should they care, as long as it increases the number of servants available to them?
Michael Yon's Reporting Is Astonishing
There is a very long report "The Battle for Mosul Part III" that I can't even begin to summarize. There is so much here that you aren't going to find out by watching television news, or reading the mainstream media. A couple of excerpts that I found especially interesting and descriptive: During one late-night sweep in Isla Zeral, Lt. Dan Kearney entered a house where a man asked for help with his five-year-old daughter. She is five years old and her name is Rhma Taha Ahmed and she is afraid of the soldiers, but the father asks the Americans to slow down and look at his daughter. Rhma hid her face while her dad showed her fingers and toes to Lt. Kearney. Her nails were receded and there was blood-blistering, her fingers and toes were tones of red and purple. SFC Joel Lundak called a medic who checked Rhma's vital signs and said she seemed to have a heart condition.
For those who want to fantasize that the "insurgents" are Iraqi patriots:
Her father produced papers from a doctor, medical records of a sort, and the interpreter said the documents reported that Rhma has an inoperable congenital heart defect. She will die slowly and painfully. Lt. Kearney calls for Captain Paul Carron, the B company commander, who looks at Rhma and decides to do something. As it happens, a journalist named Sandra Jontz was riding along with Deuce-Four on this mission, and Sandra decides to do something, too. She snaps pictures and takes notes.
...
Today is the day Sandra Jontz's story about little Rhma and her heart condition will hit the streets. While a scandal-starved media is about to feast on the 7-course "desecration of the Quran" meal, Sandra Jontz's story is quietly tucked inside the latest edition of the Stars & Stripes. Despite her story being nearly hidden from view, it gets enough spotlight to generate offers of real support. When the story and photos run, medical professionals from coast to coast in America jump on it, offering to fund or provide free treatment.
...
The good news prompts a return visit to Rhma's house from CPT Paul Carron and his Bravo Company men; only now, instead of being afraid of the soldiers, she is merely shy, and her mother says that when the soldiers are away, Rhma says, "The Americans are going to take care of me."Three Algerian homicidists arrive in Mosul. Two of them had flown from Tunis, Tunisia to Damascus, Syria. They kept the airplane ticket stubs, then made their way via the Jihadist equivalent of the underground railroad: walking through the Syrian countryside, hitching rides, taking buses, and staying at a series of safe houses which they are conscientious enough to document. They keep a diary. After about 30 days of adventure traveling, the three reach a safe house in Mosul.
There is a powerful descripton of the death of an American soldier, because of our unwillingness to endanger women and children--unlike Michael Moore's heroes:
...
It was just after midnight when the man who had said, "For me to give the locations of these two men would be treason"—led Deuce-Four to the house—"However, if death comes to greet you at your door, introduce him to your brother," where, SMASH, the soldiers rushed in. At first the Algerians were silent, their eyes noticeably bloodshot. They appeared sedated, reflexes on a time delay, as if they had just used opium. The three "martyrs" had been traveling for about thirty days before sneaking into Mosul. Since their arrival 48 hours earlier, apparently they had been hanging around, doing drugs, killing time, you know, just waiting to explode.
...
The owner of the house was a known mortar cell leader. The best thing about insurgent cell leaders is their meticulous record-keeping. No slaves to posterity, rather, their detailed notes of terrorist activities and videotapes of their operations, serve as proof for payment. Many insurgents simply work for hire. The man's diary contained entries dated all the way back to the fall of Baghdad—including their successful attacks against Iraqis and Americans, and also those that failed, carefully noting the reasons for the failures. Comparing the entries with actual SIGACTs would later verify the accuracy of this record, and seal the fate of Mosul's answer to Capone's bookkeeper.
No one had the time that night to scour the diary in Arabic, but had they read the entry for May 17th they would never have lowered their guns. For there it was, plain as the ink on the page:May 17th: Praise Allah, 3 Algerians have come to my house today. 2 are willing to do whatever it takes and be martyrs. 1 is in search of his brother.
The four men had been taken into separate rooms. My neighbors, John Welch and Erik Ramirez, each took Algerians into rooms, while LTC Kurilla had the third. Two other soldiers stayed with the Iraqi cell leader. LTC Kurilla had one Algerian jacked up against a wall and began questioning him—the man was strangely and completely sedate, clearly under the influence of drugs. When he began talking, both interpreters noticed his foreign accent immediately and they started shouting to the Americans, "These men are foreigners!"
As if hit with buckets of ice water, all four men snapped to life and began struggling against the soldiers. The three Algerians went rabid, and the one with Ramirez slipped out the flex-cuffs Ramirez had just put on. Too close for rifles, this was hand-to-hand combat. The soldiers with the Iraqi man quickly subdued him, but the "martyrs" put up a better fight.
Ramirez is powerful, and threw his Algerian to the ground. The man continued to fight wildly until Ramirez's knee smashing the back of his skull knocked him out. The Algerian with Welch in the other room was not yet cuffed when he started to fight, but Welch knocked his man out with punches.
But the "martyr" that LTC Kurilla had jacked against the wall by the collar with his left hand, simply reached down with his mouth and grabbed a hunk of Kurilla's left forearm and began to rip as he punched at Kurilla, scraping his nose. Kurilla responded by punching him in the face three times and taking him to the ground.
Meanwhile, with Ramirez's guy unconscious, he rushed into the room where Kurilla was fighting and smashed the guy in the face three more times until he went limp. With the four captives in a more docile state, Deuce-Four headed back to base. All in all, the night was a pretty good haul. Nine raids and 13 catches, including the three Algerians, two of whom were willing to blow themselves up with a vest bomb or in a car bomb, not caring who they killed as long as they were able to use their bodies as instruments of death.The danger American soldiers face on these raids is exacerbated by their great reluctance to use force when there are civilians around, compounded by the fact that there are children in nearly every home, including the homes of the insurgents. The average American soldier will do just about anything to avoid knowingly hurting a child, and will seldom even use flash-bangs (stun grenades) because of possible effects on children in the closed rooms.
Read it all. These segments were especially moving, but all of it is astonishingly well-written and informative.
Hot information comes in that a high value target is at a specific house nearby. There is radio chatter as the Battle Captain in the TOC communicates with the Recon platoon on a quick plan to hit the house and the one next to it. Within minutes, the Recon soldiers roll up to the homes, drop ramps, and burst into the bottom floor. They rush in and begin securing the rooms on the bottom floor, where they detain three men, while other Recon soldiers flow up the stairs.
Benjamin Morton is part of Recon's raiding patrol. He lives directly across from me on base. Everyone calls him "Rat" because he saves everything. Rat moves upstairs, training his rifle above him. Rat's the #1 man, in the most dangerous position. Two enemy men are hiding on the balcony, and one has an automatic weapon with a large drum of ammunition. As Rat comes round the corner, the insurgent sticks the weapon around the balcony corner and fires a long burst of about twenty rounds. Four bullets strike Ben Morton. His buddies come behind him and throw a flash-bang into the room, and return fire, catching a bed ablaze with tracers. They pull Rat out and call for medics. Despite everyone's valiant efforts, Benjamin Morton does not survive his wounds. Had they thrown grenades first, three women and four children would have died alongside the four men who were captured or killed that night. The men were elements of a car bomb cell.
Why Was It Wrong To Remove Saddam Hussein From Power?
I found this interesting description in Michael Yon's journal of his visit to the Persian Gulf: An Army medic who was part of the Coalition force that liberated a Kuwaiti hospital told me that when they first entered the nursery, there were dead and dying infants strewn about the floor. Tossed from their "cradles," their heads had been crushed under the boots of Iraqi soldiers, a parting shot as the Iraqi Army fled from real combatants.
You can see why the left is so disgusted with our lack of respect for Saddam Hussein's sovereignty.
How Corrupt Is Liberalism?
The Daily Kos, one of the premiere leftwing Democrats, is hailing the Kelo decision: As first glace, you may think that giving private homeowner property to a private corporations is a bad thing. And it very well might be in many cases. However, if the Court had ruled differently and NOT allowed local governments to do this, it would have been a disaster for local governments to build for the community (including when the purpose is to help the environment, build affordable housing, create jobs, etc.). It would have sacrificed needed community power at the hands of the sort of property-rights extremism frequently displayed by right-wing libertarian types.
What calls itself liberalism today is actually closer to fascism than anything else.
More Recent Articles
Added the following new articles to the popular magazine articles page:
"Concealed Carry on University Campuses," Shotgun News, July 10, 2004, p. 11.
"Take Him To Detroit!" Shotgun News, August 1, 2004, p. 11.
"Lawsuits Against Concealed Carry," Shotgun News, August 20, 2004, p. 11.
"Publishing Lists of Permitholders,"Shotgun News, September 1, 2004, pp. 20-21.
"New Jersey Concealed Weapon Permits," Shotgun News, October 1, 2004, p. 9.
"The Henry Family of Gunsmiths," Shotgun News, October 20, 2004, p. 9.
"After The Election," Shotgun News, November 10, 2004, p. 9.
"Persuading Other Gun Owners,"Shotgun News, December 1, 2004, p. 9.
"The Hatred After the Election," Shotgun News, December 20, 2004, p. 9.
"Illinois Does Two Things Right," Shotgun News, January 1, 2005, pp. 22-23.
"Showing Their True Colors," Shotgun News, February 1, 2005, pp. 20-21.
"The Department of Justice Issues an Opinion," Shotgun News, March 1, 2005, pp. 20-21.
"Integrity & Real History," Shotgun News, April 1, 2005, pp. 22-23.
"Counting Gunsmiths in Early America," Shotgun News, May 1, 2005, pp. 24-25.
House Project: The Foundation Forms Are In
I drove up there this evening. Yesterday was unpleasantly warm, but today was wonderful. It was 83 degrees as I drove home from work, but it's a dry heat, and not at all unpleasant, especially with the top off the car and wind blowing through my hair. Driving to the property was even more lovely, with the sound of the engine, and my compilation CD of oldies.
Here are some pictures of the forms (remember that in most browsers, you can right-click on the picture and say "View Image" to blow the picture up to full size):
Here's the equipment of the company that set up the forms, and I guess is going to pour the concrete. (Do I get a discount for featuring their company name and phone number? I guess not!)
It is going to take a long time for me to get bored with this view to the north:
In spite of a lot of pretty hot days, and no recent rain, the hills remain green:
Little Boise Grows Up
I walked up to the front door of my credit union yesterday, and there was a sign that said, "No Hats, No Sunglasses, No Hoods" with appropriate illustrations and the circle slash on top. The flyer indicated it was from the Idaho Credit Union League, and it isn't difficult to figure out why: all of these items are commonly used to defeat bank surveillance cameras.
It really is a shame that Boise is growing fast enough--and with the wrong sort of people--that this becomes necessary. I wonder how long before the ACLU files suit against it on the grounds that it discriminates.
Islam, Homosexuality, & Liberalism
A reader pointed me to this interesting article, and observes: Ann Coulter famously remarked along the lines of "Liberals finally decided to respect religion...but why did they pick Islam?"
The article points to a fairly bizarre confrontation between a conservative lesbian lawyer (yeah, they do exist) and the Islamic Thinkers Society: On the evening of July 11, 2004, Kristine Withers walked down 37th Avenue, a main drag in Jackson Heights, Queens, and passed what had become a familiar sight: a group of tables set up on the sidewalk by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a local group of militant Islamists. On the tables, copies of the Koran and books espousing the group’s strict religious beliefs shared space with tracts on Zionism, pamphlets on the dangers of homosexuality, and signs bearing messages like "Your Terrorists Are Our Heroes."
The rest of the article discusses the increasingly difficult situation that Islam's fierce disapproval of homosexuality is creating for leftists, who fawn all over Islam because they are America's enemy (or to be more precise, a lunatic fringe of Islam is America's enemy) and because being multicultural is so cool--but now must confront that Islam, even those who are not about to fly jets into buildings, make James Dobson and Jerry Falwell look like ACLU members:
Ms. Withers, who identifies herself as a lesbian and a political conservative, was offended by the group’s message. The Islamic Thinkers Society had become a regular feature at local gay-pride parades, where they’ve called for the castration and death of gay men, according to several witnesses who spoke to The Observer. But Ms. Withers said it was as much the anti-American messages as the anti-gay ones that riled her up.
"To me, it’s synonymous with the Nazis recruiting on 42nd Street during World War II," she said of her antagonists.
So, in another installment of the then-yearlong series of hostile exchanges between her and the group, she decided to do something. At one point in the exchange, she told the dozen or so bearded young men who make up the group that the prophet Muhammad was a pedophile. They called her a "Christian bitch," by her account. Then she knocked over a sign and stepped on it. Two young bearded men, members of the group, pulled the sign out from under her, sending her flying to the ground.
Soon, police arrived and took a statement from Mohamed Bahi, a student at Queens College who told The Observer that he is not a member of the group. Ms. Withers was charged with incitement to riot and four other counts. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown assigned the case to the unit of his office that handles bias crimes, though Ms. Withers argued that the Queens District Attorney was going after the wrong person for bias.But to New York’s gays and to some of its Muslim leaders, the scene in Jackson Heights bears a worrying similarity to communal conflicts that are challenging the idea of tolerance across Europe, with particular flashpoints in Holland and Scandinavia. There, young immigrants and the children of immigrants have been drawn to a more radical Islamic ideology than that of their parents. On the extreme fringes, these young men have committed acts of violence against Jews and gays, and in a case that shocked Europe, one young Dutchman of Moroccan origin murdered the filmmaker Theo van Gogh in an Amsterdam street.
Yup. The left seems intent on disarming the West in a struggle with groups whose notion of compromise is lcastration of homosexuals and burkhas for all women.
"It’s almost a cliché to define it like this, but in the end it’s a question of whether you can tolerate intolerance," said Leon de Winter, a Dutch novelist who has written on the Van Gogh murder. "We are defending the openness, the diversity of this society against tendencies from other cultures, in which this kind of openness which we celebrate is being regarded as a threat."
In this conflict, gays have become canaries in the ideological coal mine. Western liberals have tended to cut Muslim groups slack on their ideological pronouncements, in part out of sympathy with some of their causes—the insurgencies in Chechnya and the Middle East, for example—and in part out of a sense that anti-Muslim sentiment in the West is a more pressing problem than anything Muslims themselves might do.
But the rise of gay bashing on European streets has pushed the question of tolerance a step further and led some to question their reflexive defense of a put-upon minority. It has also opened up a heated debate within the gay community, and among liberals in general, over whether the proliferation of intolerant strains of Islam requires liberals in the West to take a harder line on issues like immigration and assimilation.
Just Like You and I...Except For Who They Love
From the San Francisco Chronicle: This Sunday in a Wells Fargo bank parking lot near San Francisco's City Hall, August Knight will demonstrate for any adult who cares to stop by what it's like to be flogged -- and enjoy it.
Yeah, yeah, I know, there are straight people into this sort of thing, and I would guess that most gay people are not. But tell me, those of you who insist that there is no connection between sexual orientation and childhood sexual abuse: do you suppose that it is just a coincidence that this crowd for whom pain, humiliation, and sexual pleasure are so intimately connected is disproportionately homosexual? Can you see why someone whose first sexual experiences involved force, pain, coercion--and yet might also have experienced some level of sexual arousal (as sometimes happens during rape), might end up identifying sex with pain and humiliation as an adult?
An Oakland hairstylist by day and co-owner of a South of Market dungeon popular with the whip-cracking crowd by night, Knight, 46, is an ambassador of kink. She and about 70 other volunteers will staff Leather Alley, one of the fastest-growing niches at the annual San Francisco Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and Celebration.
On a splash of asphalt on Grove Street will bloom a place for what leather aficionados call "vanilla" types -- i.e., everyone else -- to learn about flogging, spanking, boot blacking and other staples of the subculture known as BDSM (a condensed acronym for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission and sadomasochism). The "ambassadors" will answer all their questions.
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Since the demonstrations are rated at least PG-13, they are staged behind a curtain that is parted only for those over 18. But they will be miked this year, so demonstrators can tell the audience what they're feeling throughout the experience, and afterward.
Organizers and participants say the growth of Leather Alley since its pride debut a decade ago mirrors the evolution of BDSM culture here and elsewhere. While pride celebrations in other cities offer similar displays, San Francisco's is believed to be among the largest and most diverse.
In 1995, Leather Alley was just a 10-by-10-foot booth run by a few friends -- and most participants were gay men. This year, the Alley will feature two dozen leather and BDSM organizations and a dozen booths and canopies. Now, organizers say, just 60 percent of Leather Alley's visitors are men, and 30 percent are straight.
Though statistics are few and far between, a 1990 Kinsey Report study estimated that between 5 percent and 10 percent of Americans dabble in the leather arts -- everything from lightly restraining their partners to a bedpost to a little fantasy role-playing to building a leather sling in the den. Then there's boot blacking -- where one is sexually titillated by polishing boots and other leatherwear.
Why Democrats Should Support the Flag Amendment, and Republicans Should Sit On Their Hands
One reader suggested that the practical effect of a constitutional amendment banning flag burning is that there would be an epidemic of it in protest, and then asks where we are going to find prison space for them all. I'm not even sure that there is a need for such a law (for reasons that I will explain shortly), but if such a law is passed, the appropriate punishment is a fine, not jail time.
There is this amusing web site on the subject of flag burning with some slightly rude language.
If you think about it for a minute, the ways in which Democrats and Republicans have lined up on this amendment makes no sense politically. Flag burning discredits the leftists who do it, because of emotional reaction that it promotes. Democrats should want some way to stop the left-wing of their party from engaging in these antics, because it makes the Democrats look like they hate America. Republicans should sit back and allow flag burning because it causes a patriotic, jingoistic frenzy in a very large number of Americans--and makes them even more hostile to the Democratic Party because of the actions of a few spoiled rich kids. That Republicans and Democrats are taking positions contrary to their political interests inclines me to think that both sides are taking their positions out of genuine conviction--not simple political advantage.
A reader asks a question which I have rephrased a bit. If I go into South Central Los Angeles, and spend the afternoon addressing every person passing by with the N-word, is that constitutionally protected free speech? In the event that I survived long enough for a police officer to arrest me for "disorderly conduct" or "disturbing the peace," would I not have a valid basis for arguing that the law in question is just as much a violation of the First Amendment as burning an American flag? Or do the rules all change when it involves racial epithets?
Impearls Is A Blogger Almost As Interesting As Me!
A splendid collection of items!
1. Visually stunning elevation map of Mars.
2. A picture of a frozen lake in a crater on Mars.
3. Who built Hadrian's Wall? Impearls reproduces a picture of a plaque that lists names of the builders, recorded on the wall in 122 AD.
4. A long (probably exceeding fair use) quote from A History of Private Life, pointing out that sexual hangups aren't a Christian invention, and that classical civilization was, by some measures, even more taboo-ridden about sex than we are today. Even the area in which it is widely believed that classical civilization was more open-minded--homosexuality--was merely different. This conforms to what I have read in a number of other sources: homosexuality was okay as long as you were only taking advantage of little boys or your social and economic inferiors.
I'm adding Impearls to my blogroll today. (I will adding a few others shortly who have made the request.)
The Flypaper Strategy
This blogger links to several reports that suggest that even the BBC is beginning to recognize that the flypaper strategy--of attracting deranged jihadists from all over the world to Iraq to blow themselves up--is making the rest of the world safer.
This isn't great for the Iraqis, who are bearing the enormous burden of civilian and police deaths, but if the jihadists are intent on mass murder, I would prefer it somewhere far away from the United States. Unfortunately, I don't see any alternative; there is no reasoning with the jihadists.
James Lileks Channeling Dave Barry
Except Dave Barry is still alive... but it does sound like something Dave Barry would write. Anyway, read this in full. It is really funny! Q: What is Gitmo?
A: Contrary to what some suggest, it does not stand for "Git mo' Peking chicken for Muhammad, he wants a second portion." It stands for "Guantanamo," a facility the United States built to see if the left would ever care about human rights abuses in Cuba. The experiment has apparently been successful.
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Q: Why can't the prisoners be given trials?
A: Because civil libertarians might injure themselves as they race to defend the "terrorist suspects" and collide in the airport jetways. Because the left seems to think the detainees were arrested for the crime of "being swarthy in Afghanistan," and there are no such specific charges in the U.S. criminal code.
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Q: Wow. This is bad.
A: It is. It's worse than Waco, because at least those people aren't suffering anymore.
Q: When did they build this place?
A: After Sept. 11, 2001.
Q: That date seems familiar for some reason. Did something happen?
A: Not really. You can roll over and go back to sleep.
Once Again, The Liberals On The Court Show Their Contempt For the Constitution
Everyone and their brother is blogging about this abomination, Kelo v. City of New London (2005). The liberal end of the Court upheld the City of New London condemning private property so that it could be sold to a private corporation to "revitalize" a decaying part of the city. The plaintiffs challenged this as violating the Fifth Amendment guarantee that private property would only be taken for public purposes.
The opinion of the Court is relying on a bunch of precedents that take the position that "public use" should be construed quite broadly--even when the immediate and probably greatest beneficiary of the taking is a private business. The precedents are embarrassing cases, from a time when corporations weren't content to buy what they wanted--they insisted on having the government take it for them from people that weren't prepared to sell--or at least, not at a price that the corporation was prepared to pay.
If you aren't a property owner, consider this analogy: you believe that you labor is worth $10 per hour. You aren't prepared to work for less. A corporation decides that your labor is essential to what they are doing, but they aren't prepared to pay you $10 per hour--so they have the government draft you, and pay you a private's wages--and assign you to work for that corporation, arguing that the corporation's products would enhance the overall economy. You would properly recognize that you had been enslaved.
My contempt for the liberal end (or is that the back end?) of the Court grows everyday. There are rights that are explicitly contained in the Constitution, such as this guarantee about private property only being taken for public use--and the Court rationalizes a way around it. The same bunch, however, finds a right to have homosexual sex--a right that is, at best, implicit. What's the point of a written Constitution if the rights that are explicitly there get ignored, and rights that no one bothered to get approved by Congress and ratified by the states, are upheld?
A few weeks back, the liberals on the Supreme Court (plus, inexplicably, Justice Scalia) told us that federal marijuana law applies in the Raich case because drugs that are grown and used at home affect interstate commerce, and if we aren't happy about it, we the people can use the democratic process to fix this problem. But the same hypocrites decided in Lawrence that the completely implicit right (one contradicted by the historical evidence) to have homosexual sex is so important that the people can't be trusted to make laws.
These same liberals find that the First Amendment protects virtual child pornography--but not political advertising. There seems to be nothing beyond the imagination of the liberals on the Supreme Court, intent on becoming an unelected superlegislature.
A few months back, Professor Randy Barnett was full of optimism about some sort of libertarian revolution going on at the Supreme Court. Of course, there is nothing of the sort happening, and it was obvious at the time. The liberals on the Court think homosexuality is really cool, so they struck down a law that they didn't like. They may feel the same way about marijuana, but the liberals recognized that much of federal regulation of business, gun ownership, and a swarm of other liberal warm and fuzzies would be endangered by striking down federal enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act.
Here the liberals had a pretty clear example of a too cozy relationship between corporations with political influence and a local government. Rather than recognize and deplore the sleazy history of the precedents on this, and take the side of the individual against a wealthy and well-connected corporation, the liberals chose to violate the original intent of the Fifth Amendment, so as to preserve governmental power.
There is no convincing common thread to these decisions. Stare decisis? In Kelo, sure, but not in Lawrence. A results-oriented concern about governmental power versus individual rights? In Lawrence, but not in Kelo or McConnell et. al. v. Federal Election Commission et. al. (2003). A scrupulous respect for original intent? Clearly not the case in Lawrence, or McConnell, and arguably not in Kelo. Deference to the people and their elected representatives? Sure, in Kelo and McConnell, but not in Raich or Lawrence. This is simply the liberal end of the Court imposing its desire to write the laws.
Flag Burning Amendment
I've never understood the importance of this measure--to either side. I think the Supreme Court decided this matter wrongly, because it decided that a very symbolic form of speech--burning the flag--is protected by the First Amendment. Somehow, this not terribly articulate and both literally and figuratively inflammatory act is protected speech, but political advertising is not--or so the Court decided when it upheld the McCain-Feingold measure.
Instapundit isn't happy that the House has time to consider and pass this measure. I guess along with seeing no pressing need for this amendment, I also don't see any pressing argument against it. Expressing your political opinions by burning the American flag is right up there with using a certain four letter word as every part of speech (verb, noun, adjective, conjunction): you could, but wouldn't it be better to find a more articulate way to express yourself?
Unlike say, a constitutional amendment that banned antiwar protests, or that allowed arbitrary searches of cars, or banned virtual child pornography (which is protected by the First Amendment, according to the Supreme Court), or defining marriage as one man, one woman, this really doesn't do anything. How often does anyone burn a flag in the U.S.? Is this particular action really so incredibly important to free speech that Democrats feel a need to get self-righteous about it?
There are times that I wonder if the Democrats have any idea how silly this makes them look. The flag burning matter is an emotional, even somewhat irrational matter to most Americans, and insisting on keeping it protected when there is no real injury caused to our freedoms by banning it makes them look really out of touch and unpatriotic. That flag burning doesn't do any real harm is rather beside the point; it also doesn't do any real good for public debate.
Treasury Yields
As of right now, the 30 year Treasury yield is 4.245%--a bit of a drop over the last few days. This is good news for those waiting to lock mortgages, and with houses we need to sell sometime in the near future.
Islamic Bank
This news story reports on something which is probably a good thing: PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Muslim bankers and regulators announced plans Wednesday to set up a global Islamic bank by next year that could rival Western lenders and to chart a 10-year blueprint to bolster growth in the Islamic financial sector.
Okay, fine. The goal is to improve the economic conditions of Islamic nations--which are desperately poor. Unfortunately, one of the core problems impoverishing Islamic nations isn't going to change:
The Bahrain-based Albaraka Banking Group will take a 10 percent stake in the $1 billion bank to be known as the Emaar International Group, said Saleh A. Kamal, chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions, which proposed the project.
Other key shareholders are the Islamic Development Bank, which is the financial arm of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Conference, and Malaysia's Islamic Bank, Kamal said.Officials have said the bank will operate in keeping with Islamic laws, which means no interest would be paid or charged on deposits and loans.
Medieval Christianity operated on this same rule, defining usury as any lending at interest--and this stifled economic development quite seriously.
Here's a simple truth: why would you lend someone money without interest? A loan involves some risk, unless the person you are lending it to is going to put it in the bank...which doesn't pay interest. You might as well keep it in the bank for yourself.
The prohibition on usury meant that until the late medieval period, if you needed to borrow money, you typically had to borrow it from Jews, who weren't subject to the threat of excommunication for usury. This played some part in creating anti-Semitism...and created an incentive for heavily in debt borrowers to arrange for a riot that burned out the Jewish section. Dead people have a hard time getting their money back.
By the late medieval period, various ruses had been developed to get around the prohibition on interest, such as granting a portion of the profits of the business for which the money was borrowed, and other more arcane methods of paying interest while being able to claim that it wasn't interest. (Is this where points on your mortgage came from?)
By the eighteenth century, the concept of usury had changed from "interest" to "unreasonable interest." What constituted a lawful rate varied with time: Parliament under Henry VIII set the maximum at ten per cent per year; subsequent Parliaments reduced the rate until it was six per cent by the middle of the seventeenth century. [Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, ch. 9] In Colonial America, loans were commonly made at six per cent per annum, simple interest, because interest compounded daily isn't much fun to calculate with pencil and paper. In addition, the quality of arithmetic instruction left much to be desired. If you have an interest in the methods used for doing arithmetic in those days, Patricia Cline Cohen's A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (University of Chicago Press, 1982) is a must read.
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations addresses the problem of interest being unlawful, and observes that such laws actually increase the interest that borrowers pay (even if it is paid under some other name): In some countries the interest of money has been prohibited by law. But as something can every-where be made by the use of money, something ought every-where to be paid for the use of it. This regulation, instead of preventing, has been found from experience to increase the evil of usury; the debtor being obliged to pay, not only for the use of the money, but for the risk which his creditor runs by accepting a compensation for that use. He is obliged, if one may say so, to insure his creditor from the penalties of usury. [Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book II, ch. 4]
While there are factors at play, the prohibition of interest in Islamic nations has almost certainly not prevented the lending of money at interest, but rather, made the actual rate that borrowers pay, in one form or another, much higher, both for this reason, and because it dries up the supply of money available to lend.
The ACLU's Double Standard
Charles Krauthammer's column in the Washington Post a few weeks ago is pretty devastating in its criticism of the civil libertarians all ga-ga over Gitmo. He points out that while there were very serious allegations--most turned out to be nothing, or close: The self-flagellation has gone far enough. We know that al Qaeda operatives are trained to charge torture when they are in detention, and specifically to charge abuse of the Koran to inflame fellow prisoners on the inside and potential sympathizers on the outside.
Most importantly, Krauthammer points out the hypocrisy of the ACLU and its concern about "cultural sensitivity":
In March the Navy inspector general reported that, out of about 24,000 interrogations at Guantanamo, there were seven confirmed cases of abuse, "all of which were relatively minor." In the eyes of history, compared to any other camp in any other war, this is an astonishingly small number. Two of the documented offenses involved "female interrogators who, on their own initiative, touched and spoke to detainees in a sexually suggestive manner." Not exactly the gulag.The most inflammatory allegations have been not about people but about mishandling the Koran. What do we know here? The Pentagon reports (Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, May 26) -- all these breathless "scoops" come from the U.S. government's own investigations of itself -- that of 13 allegations of Koran abuse, five were substantiated, of which two were most likely accidental.
You see, the ACLU's concern really isn't cultural sensitivity. Their concern is that Bush might actually be successful.
Let's understand what mishandling means. Under the rules the Pentagon later instituted at Guantanamo, proper handling of the Koran means using two hands and wearing gloves when touching it. Which means that if any guard held the Koran with one hand or had neglected to put on gloves, this would be considered mishandling.
On the scale of human crimes, where, say, 10 is the killing of 2,973 innocent people in one day and 0 is jaywalking, this ranks as perhaps a 0.01.
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Even greater hypocrisy is to be found here at home. Civil libertarians, who have been dogged in making sure that FBI-collected Guantanamo allegations are released to the world, seem exquisitely sensitive to mistreatment of the Koran. A rather selective scrupulousness. When an American puts a crucifix in a jar of urine and places it in a museum, civil libertarians rise immediately to defend it as free speech. And when someone makes a painting of the Virgin Mary, smears it with elephant dung and adorns it with porn, not only is that free speech, it is art -- deserving of taxpayer funding and an ACLU brief supporting the Brooklyn Museum when the mayor freezes its taxpayer subsidy.
I Am Proud To Be Insulted By This Guy
Brian Leiter is a professor who complains about how the academic community is on the side of what he considers incipient fascism: the Bush Administration. There's a guy who blogs over at the Volokh Conspiracy under the pseudonym Juan Non-Volokh, because he doesn't have tenure. While not really a conservative, Juan doesn't engage in the leftist intellectual goosestepping that is safest for non-tenured faculty.
Anyway, Juan Non-Volokh pointed out Leiter's claims about fascism in America really don't fit the historical evidence. I pointed out the same--and that that the modern American political movement that best fits the definition of Fascism (from Mussolini's quotes), is progressivism--not the Bush Administration.
Anyway, Leiter is now engaged in a campaign to find out who Juan Non-Volokh is, and to "out" him: So who is Juan Non-Volokh? I intend to find out and to post that information here in due course. I welcome your help...and I promise to keep my sources secret!
It is pretty clear that Leiter regards Juan's opinions as something that should be used to revoke tenure if Juan ever gets it: Mr. Non-Volokh gives as the reason for anonymity concerns about getting tenure. I confess I wonder about the prudence of that rationale: I would think a tenure process deprived of the information that the candidate had been writing about legal matters for years on a very public website would be invalidated once that information became known.
Juan had quoted something that I had observed in an email to him, and Leiter decides that it is time for gratuitous insults in the midst of his highly italicized, exclamation marked, and generally furious posting: Putting that aside, Mr. Non-Volokh is now reduced to quoting the pathetically dumb Clayton Cramer (how dumb? almost anything on his blog will do, but start here).
The amazing thing is that Leiter has pointed to a lengthy blog entry where I cited a number of serious academic works that suggest that there is a connection between child sexual abuse and adult sexual orientation. You can disagree with my conclusions if you want--but if this the best example that Leiter can find of "the pathetically dumb Clayton Cramer," he's going to have to work a little harder.
By the way: Professor Leiter, from my experiences, is close to the average academic. Juan has good reason to be concerned about being "outed" before he has tenure. The academic community is astonishingly narrow in what it considers acceptable thinking, and this is no surprise. Professor Leiter's intent on "outing" Juan really shows how little room there is for disagreement among "progressive" academics.
A Story Too Good To Be True
From Ethiopia: ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.
Unbelievable? Here's the explanation, which sounds almost as unbelievable as the rest of this charming story:
The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa (search).
She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.
"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.
"If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.
"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn't eat her," Williams said.
New Articles Up
I've gotten quite a bit behind in putting newly published articles by me on my web page. Here are two recent ones that may be of interest.
"Duty to Retreat," Shotgun News, June 1, 2005, 22-23.
Recent actions from courts in New York and the Florida legislature concerning the duty to retreat rather than use deadly force.
"What Is A Felony?" Shotgun News, July 1, 2005, 24-25.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that people convicted of murder, rape, and terrorism in foreign courts are allowed to own guns in the U.S.--but Americans convicted of odometer fraud are not.
I promise to get some of the other articles published in the last year or so up there , soon.
Backup Generator
I'm planning to have a backup generator for the house. My experiences with electric utility reliability in California is that you can't really can't on them to provide power. We lived in the middle of a city, and we became used to 30 minutes outages almost monthly--and occasionally, outages that ran into hours. One weekend, Pacific Gas & Electric was unable to supply us with electricity for 15 hours straight.
Here in Boise, electric power is more reliable, but we have had several power outages lasting tens of minutes to as much as a couple of hours. I fear that out in the wilderness, it will be less reliable. The case that has me most worried is loss of electric power because of wildfires taking down lines. That is the case where it is imperative to have electric power to keep water pumping from the well into the 1400 gallon cistern, and then power to keep the water pressurized, so that we can use it for fire suppression. (It is also nice to have enough power to read, watch TV, and cook a meal.)
Consequently, our current plan is to have a switch that lets us go off-grid, and a backup generator. The obvious way to do this is to use an LP gas generator, since we already have an LP gas tank that will be supplying the furnace, oven, and water heater. In addition, I really don't like storing quantities of gasoline around the house--it is basically a bomb waiting to go off. We store a little for the lawnmower, but I don't expect to have a lawn to mow up there, and gasoline, if it is allowed to sit for more than six months as a stretch, I understand disassembles itself and turns into a varnish on the inside of an engine. This is not a good choice for a generator that you want to keep as a standby.
The difficulty is that LP gas generators are less common, and more expensive than gasoline generators. I have read that we should have a minimum 5000 watt generator to get the well pump started. (Once under way, they are apparently less demanding.) I have a number of choices in that size for gasoline generators under $1000. It is looking closer to $2000 for LP gas generators that size.
For roughly $1000 difference, I suppose that I could keep a few gallons of gasoline around, and since a standby generator is only useful if you are sure it works, once a month we could switch over, run the generator for an hour to make sure that it works, and to keep the gasoline fresh in it. We might keep only a gallon or so in the tank, figuring that if there is a power emergency, we would refill the tank from a five gallon can. If worst comes to worst, we can siphon gasoline from our cars to refill the generator.
The House Project
We went up there last night, to see how the project was progressing. It was hot and muggy in Boise--but quite pleasant at the property, perhaps 75 degrees, and the wind was blowing.
The culvert (the little pipe that lets water pass under our driveway at the edge of our property) is in:
It was actually dusk when we arrived, so I brightened up some of these pictures to make them more enjoyable. The excavations seem to be complete, with sticks in the ground. That house up the hill, next to the airstrip is actually huge. It is what I would have built if I were as rich as most people I used to work with. (Sniff, sniff, try not to sound too envious.) Apparently the forms will be put in place by the concrete guys:
This is looking south, towards the neighbor's house we want to hide by moving that mountain of dirt on the right into a berm:
There are some big basalt boulders left. This was about 18 inches or more across. I didn't try picking it up:
The next picture may still be loading, if you have a slow connection. I didn't want to shrink this image down, because it came out rather well, of the Moon rising over Bogus Basin ski resort. This was shot with an HP Photosmart 812--a completely inadequate camera for this sort of thing, but you can still make out some detail:
Looking north down the Payette River, into Horseshoe Bend. This is the view from the master bedroom, the family room, the kitchen, and probably the observatory for Big Bertha: 
Another shot of the Moon, a little later:
Some of our neighbors don't seem to believe in leash law. (Yes, those are horses.)
The appraisal came in--$282,000. This is a bit lower than I expected (although about $20,000 more than we will spend on land, improvements, and house), partly because two nearby houses were sold at foreclosure--and one of them, as far as I was concerned, should probably have been bulldozed, and a new house built. This is enough that I won't have to come up with any money out of pocket to keep it at an 80% LTV (Loan to Value) to avoid paying Private Mortgage Insurance. The low appraisal may actually be an advantage, if Boise County uses the same comparables to figure the taxes.
We need to go out and sign some paperwork for the power line easement for Idaho Power tomorrow--and because the mortgage company isn't quite done with their paperwork, we need to write a $2398 check to get Idaho Power to schedule a date to drop the 12.5 kV line into the power trench, and plant the transformer next to the house. I expect that this is the only check that I will be writing throughout this entire process. (This is also about $1500 less than the initial estimates, so I am reasonably happy.)
Minuteman Project Forces ACLU Chapter To Suspend Operations
But not for the reason you think: Operations have been suspended for the Las Cruces chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union after state ACLU officials learned that one of its board members, Clifford N. Alford of Organ, also is a leader of a Minutemen group in New Mexico.
When even ACLU chapter board members are part of this movement, it really shows how widespread support for enforcing our immigration laws really is.
“The suspension of the chapter was a technical move to make certain that the Minuteman claiming to be an ACLU chapter board member no longer had authority to act or speak on behalf of the ACLU,” said Gary Mitchell, president of the New Mexico ACLU board of directors. “We will not tolerate racism and vigilantism in the leadership structure of our organization. They (the Minuteman Project) are repugnant to the principles of civil liberties and the mission of the ACLU.”
Alford recently announced that he would lead a group termed the New Mexico Minutemen in patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border between Santa Teresa and Columbus. A second group, aligned with the Minuteman Project and led by a Farmington man, then said it also would begin patrols in New Mexico. The two leaders have since met and reportedly plan to work together.
Peter Simonson, executive director of the New Mexico ACLU, said the suspension was needed because of Alford’s affiliation with the Minuteman Project and the ACLU.
“We denounce both Minutemen efforts and we denounce Clifford Alford,” Simonson said. “The ACLU believes that both of the Minutemen projects are absolutely antithetical to the principles of civil liberties.”
Alford said Monday that state ACLU officials have not talked to him about his affiliation with the Minuteman Project.
“They’ve never talked to me, period, about the views of what we’re trying to do,” Alford said. “They’ve tried character assassination with me, they’ve done all kinds of crazy things.”
Broadband Service
It turns out that the brother-in-law whose daughter's wedding I attended last Saturday has DirecWay satellite broadband service at his farm, and for the same reason that I am looking at: the farm is far enough out that there is no cable TV cable passing by, DSL is impossible because of distance, and there are not yet any wireless broadband services.
His experience matches that of others that I have talked to: latency (the time it takes for a request to climb 22,300 miles to the satellite, then go back down 22,300 miles to the base station) makes performance a little funky. If you are downloading large files, performance is decent--not much inferior to cable modem or DSL. The average web page, however, because it involves large numbers of individual transactions, isn't blindingly fast. Uploads are faster than dialup, but not spectacularly so.
Of course, what's the alternative? It turns out that he expects to get wireless broadband service offered to him in the next several months, so rather than him sell the equipment back to DirecWay, I may just buy it from him, and have them install it at my place. The rates are not impressive, but still far better than dialup for download, and better than dialup for upload.
Of course, there might be wireless broadband service in place by the time I am ready to move in--at least I can hope so.
Constitution Writing
You would almost think from reading this account by one of the Iraqi bloggers that there is something going on in Iraq besides quagmire, death, and pointless suffering: Constitution fever!
It is an article of faith in some circles that Iraqis aren't capable of doing democracy. I think they are selling the Iraqis short.
Public conferences and sessions in Baghdad and other provinces seem to be endless nowadays; municipalities, NGOs and forums are all very excited about Iraq's top topic which is writing the Iraqi constitution and they obviously don't want to miss the chance to take part in the historic event.
Such activities play a good role in educating the population and activating the concept of public involvement in the state's decisive steps through organizing sending the people's suggestions and thoughts to the authorities and making sure they're being considered.
During the past week, we were able to count a good bunch of interesting activities:
An advisor of the state ministry for women's affairs announced that the ministry will be holding its 2nd annual conference that would be dedicated to the issue of women's role in writing the constitution as well as providing constitutional education to Iraqi women so that they would be aware of their rights and duties in a constitutional state.
The conference will be attended by 14 foreign judicial personalities and is sponsored by the UNICEF.
Justice, At Last
If there is anything that best typifies the gap between the cult of Southern gentility and the reality of lynchings, it is the savagery that the KKK used to intimidate civil rights activists: PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (AP) - Forty-one years to the day after three civil rights workers were beaten and shot to death, an 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of manslaughter Tuesday in a trial that marked Mississippi's latest attempt to atone for its bloodstained, racist past.
The level of violence involved in many of these crimes--not just murder, but the intentional infliction of suffering like something out of the medieval period--is just appalling. It is one of the reasons that while most Northerners initially ignored the problems going on in the South, they couldn't ignore it forever. There comes a certain point where you see this level of barbarism and you say, "Enough."
The jury of nine whites and three blacks took nearly six hours to clear Edgar Ray Killen of murder but convict him of the lesser charges in the 1964 killings that galvanized the struggle for equality and helped bring about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
It is not surprising that the Old South relied heavily upon restrictive gun control laws to maintain its control. Klansmen would have been quite a bit less willing to do what they did if they had to worry about getting shot.
A friend of mine, Don Kates, was a civil rights attorney back then. Don wasn't a fool; he carried a gun when he went there. A more idealistic fellow who went with Don started out convinced that the moral rightness of their cause was all the protection that he needed. Six months later, Don tells me, they met up again. The reality of intimidation and violence had caused a sea-change in attitude; Don's friend had now gone off the deep end, yammering about the need to arm for a revolutionary overthrow of the government.
Idealism is a wonderful thing, but remember that an ounce of experience is worth a pound of theory.
Association Health Plans
I mentioned last September an effort by the Bush Administration to provide opportunities for small employers to bundle together into Association Health Plans, so that they would have large enough pools to get competitive rates: According to this web site promoting what they call Association Health Plans, small businesses are subject to state regulation right now, and this is supposedly much more onerous than being able to operate under ERISA's requirements. Moving AHPs under ERISA would allow small businesses to pool emmployees across state lines, gaining the advantages that large employers and labor unions have right now with group health insurance.
I also mentioned that people with financial interests in keeping employees of small businesses from getting group health insurance, such as labor unions (who provide group health insurance as a benefit of union membership), insurance companies, and the AMA, were trying to stop this.
Now I see that Instapundit is carrying blog advertising that claims: Congress is now considering a plan to create federal Association Health Plans. AHPs will hurt your healthcare by taking away your right to appeal denied claims and access to basic services like mammograms and cancer screening. Send a Free Message to Tell Congress to Stop AHPs, Healthcare That Hurts!
This is just dishonest. The goal of the AHP statute is to put these under federal regulation, allowing these plans to cross state lines, and provide group health insurance. The beneficiaries of AHPs are going to be the employees who don't have group health insurance right now. They are either uninsured, or they are paying individual insurance plan rates. When you look at the list of organizations that are running this dishonest ad, it is largely labor unions and "Consumer/Advocacy Groups".
You know, I like the revenue that comes from blog advertising, but I would not accept a dishonest ad like this one from ProtectYourHealthcare.org. I suspect that Instapundit didn't look at this ad very carefully before accepting it.
What Is Fascism?
I see that leftists are playing the Fascist card to describe Bush and the emerging conservative majority in America. Odd. But what Fascists described Fascism as sounds a lot closer to the leftist view of the individual's position relative to the government. All the quotes below are from Mussolini's The Doctrine of Fascism: Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man in his historical existence. It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose from the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people.
Meaning that classical Liberalism (the supremacy of the individual over governmental power) was rendered obsolete because the government became a tool of unlimited democracy.Therefore, for the Fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people.
Can anyone think of a better description of the progressive agenda than this? Everything belongs to the government, expressing the will of the people. The Fascist State, the highest and most powerful form of personality, is a force, but a spiritual force, which takes over all the forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. It cannot therefore confine itself simply to the functions of order and supervision as Liberalism desired. It is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual.
This is a very progressive statement--that the government is not, nor should it be limited, to "the functions of order and supervision."
Here is Mussolini echoing the progressive view that prosperity and affluence are meaningless--even evil--compared to the higher aspirations of social justice: Socialism, being thus wounded in these two primary tenets of its doctrine, nothing of it is left save the sentimental aspiration -- old as humanity -- towards a social order in which the sufferings and the pains of the humblest folk could be alleviated. But here Fascism rejects the concept of an economic "happiness" which would be realized socialistically and almost automatically at a given moment of economic evolution by assuring to all a maximum prosperity. Fascism denies the possibility of the materialistic conception of "happiness" and leaves it to the economists of the first half of the eighteenth century; it denies, that is, the equation of prosperity with happiness, which would transform men into animals with one sole preoccupation: that of being well-fed and fat, degraded in consequence to a merely physical existence.
Here is Fascism expressing the liberal contempt for majority rule (expressed in the Lawrence decision, for example): After Socialism, Fascism attacks the whole complex of democratic ideologies and rejects them both in their theoretical premises and in their applications or practical manifestations. Fascism denies that the majority, through the mere fact of being a majority, can rule human societies; it denies that this majority can govern by means of a periodical consultation...
Fascism also shares the elitism that is the core of both liberalism and progressivism in America: [I]t affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men, who cannot be levelled by such a mechanical and extrinsic fact as universal suffrage.
And here we have the Michael Moore paranoia of conspiracies: By democratic regimes we mean those in which from time to time the people is given the illusion of being sovereign, while true effective sovereignty lies in other, perhaps irresponsible and secret, forces.
Here's Mussolini's most clearly leftist statement: If the nineteenth was the century of the individual (Liberalism means individualism) it may be expected that this one may be the century of "collectivism" and therefore the century of the State.
Is there anything that more clearly identifies where American conservatism and libertarianism differs from Fascism--and where Fascism is most clearly a form of progressivism?
How The Right-Wing Is Killing Americans, One At A Time
Michelle Malkin linked to this obituary in a Tucson paper. It does not appear to be a satire, even though it reads like one: Corwyn (Cory) William Zimbleman
A legend in his own mind, apparently.
Tucson, AZ (formerly of Champaign, IL)
Age 53. Born April 18, 1952 to the late Willard and Gilda (Ebert) Zimbleman, died June 10, 2005. Throughout his life Cory was an extraordinary artist. His artistic talent and imagination would bring awe to all who viewed his work.
...
Having never gained the recognition he deserved in his own lifetime his family hopes to publish a book of his works.An avid atheist, he studied the bible and religion with more fervor than most Christians. He had strong political opinions and followed Amy Goodman's radio broadcast "Democracy Now." Alas the stolen election of 2000 and living with right-winged Americans finally brought him to his early demise. Stress from living in this unjust country brought about several heart attacks rendering him disabled.
Stop Me Before I Drink Again!
Over at Classical Values, Eric Scheie is ruminating about freedom, and those who seem to be too stupid to handle it. One point that he makes: Years ago, when the AIDS epidemic was relatively new, there was a hue and cry to close down San Francisco's bathhouses. Obviously, anonymous promiscuous sexual intercourse is a great way to contract the disease, and the bathhouses certainly made that easier. Intelligent and rational gay men simply stopped going to the baths, or if they did go they no longer engaged in risky behaviors. I was as much a libertarian then as I am now, and I was against bathhouse closure for the same reasons that I am now -- and for the same reasons I'm against banning guns or breeds of dogs. Governments should not limit personal freedom because some people abuse it.
Yup! This was a person with a very dangerous addiction--and this is a very common response. Jack London's autobiography John Barleycorn opens by explaining that he voted to give women the vote in California in 1911 in the hopes that women voters would pass Prohibition--and save him from his need to drink. It didn't happen soon enough, and London's death was clearly related to his life-long alcoholism.
But what I'll never forget is one particularly helpless patron interviewed on television as he was entering a San Francisco gay bathhouse establishment. After admitting to being a regular, he stated emphatically that the government should shut the place down -- because he couldn't help going there! That scared me then, and it scares me now.
Another point that Scheie makes, however, I have to disagree with, after linking to my piece about Rev. Fred Phelps rather bizarre and interesting history as a liberal lawyer: Nutcase or not, Phelps is doing a fine job of helping people who'd love to take away freedom.
He is? I don't think there's a social conservative of any prominence who thinks that Phelps is doing them any good at all. If anything, Phelps is an embarrassment--a man so filled with hatred and with such astonishingly poor instincts for how his act plays, that he certainly helps the ACLU raise money. Even those who would like homosexuality illegal, or at least pushed back into the closet, roll their eyes in amazement and disgust at his frothing hatred.
"U.S. Radicals"
Here's an important news story, and one that contains some important and disturbing information--but look at the way in which AFP wire service has used derogatory and I would even say misleading language: US radicals blow their tops over volcano movie as Darwinism debate rages
"Radicals"? "Ultraconservative"? My experience is that Creationists are generally not really any more conservative (in a political sense) than the rest of the population. In any case, these terms are quite derogatory.
Pressure from ultraconservative religious groups has prompted some theaters equipped with the high quality panoramic IMAX screens to cancel showings of several movies which refer to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Some politically powerful religious groups dismiss the theory, despite its widespread acceptance throughout the rest of the world.
Even worse, the actual content of the news story doesn't fit this lead: Since the beginning of this year, numerous movie theaters in highly religious states in the US south have refused to show documentary films like "Cosmic Voyage," "Volcanos of the Deep Sea" and "Galapagos" named after the islands Darwin used to showcase his theory.
Maybe there are "ultraconservative" organizations behind this, but the news story doesn't report that. It suggests that the Museum of Science and History responded to test audience dislike--some of which included Creationist criticism.
The films crimes? Mentioning the idea that the Universe is the product of a "Big Bang" explosion or that the origin of life is in the oceans.
"Volcanos of the Deep Sea" has prompted some radical religious conservatives to blow their own tops.
...
Earlier this year, the Museum of Science and History of Fort Worth, Texas, refused to show the volcano film after a screening for a test audience.
"At the time, we had better choices that scored better in our screening tests," said Margaret Ritsch, the museum's Director of Public Affairs.
She admitted, however, that some people had made comments about the theory of evolution.Blocking scientific movies from IMAX theaters is only one part of the creationists' agenda; they also promote their own films that document their theory of a cosmos-crafting higher intelligence.
Ah, so evolutionists are upset that their point of view is not being shown in some IMAX theaters (and I agree that this is wrong), but they are upset that an opposing point of view is being shown at the Museum of Natural History.
"The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe," is one such film, based on work by University of Iowa astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez.
Stirring outrage from the scientific community, the Museum of Natural History at Washington's world-famed Smithsonian Institution agreed to show the movie.
One of the signs that you don't really believe that your position is strong enough to win the debate is that you don't want the other side's position given an equal opportunity. I would love for all sides (atheistic evolutionists; theistic evolutionists; Young Earthers; Old Earther Creationists; Intelligent Design advocates) to participate. I don't expect that a fair and open debate is going to win many people to the Young Earth position. I think that the Intelligent Design advocates will persuade many people to avoid getting too arrogantly certain about atheistic evolution. Above all, all sides need to recognize the importance of remaining open to careful examination of their assumptions, and the value of serious and intelligent criticism.
Bill Cosby Causing Trouble Again
There's a detailed report from Gateway Pundit of Bill Cosby's talk at Harris Stowe State College--one of those schools that are now called "historically black" colleges. (This means: state governments were prepared to waste vast quantities of money setting up completely separate colleges so that white students wouldn't have to mix with black students.) Gateway Pundit links to this surprisingly positive news story about the event: A whirlwind of commentators declared Cosby's comments everything from racist stereotypes to a much-needed moment of honesty. Some found kernels of truth in his statements but wished he'd stayed positive instead of publicly airing dirty laundry that seemed to give racists more ammunition.
Bill Cosby is doing something here that has been needed for a generation. The Quakers used to call telling people in power that they were doing evil, "Telling Truth to Power." Cosby is telling truth to dysfunctionality--demanding that blacks in America hold themselves to a higher standard than liberals have demanded. Cosby isn't saying that racism isn't a problem--but he is saying that whining about racism won't fix problems that are largely self-inflicted.
While Cosby didn't hesitate to call people out Monday night, the focus of most of the night was on solutions.
Many African-Americans start out with words like "at-risk" and "disadvantaged" attached to them solely because of the color of their skin, Cosby said. It's up to parents and other elders in the community to erase those words.
"There's no dis here," he said while touching his cheek. "There's advantage."
Cosby was joined on stage by a number of role models and positive examples who had erased those words, from a former state teacher of the year to a boy who turned away from a gang and chose going to school and studying.
"Ladies and gentlemen, St. Louis, the revolution is in your neighborhood," he said. "The revolution is on your block. The revolution is in your mind."
Cosby told people to hold their leaders accountable. He told parents to get sober and pick up their kids from grandparents who are raising them. He told teachers to have tough talks with the parents of their students. He told fathers to return to rejoin their families, even if they didn't have money, because their love and presence are needed more than a paycheck.
"There are things happening here that are of epidemic proportion," he said.
Interesting Last Names
There are last names that are amusing, when you look at the person's occupation: Cardinal Sin of the Philipines. There is a Doctor Docter (a physician) here in Boise, and the superintendent of public schools in Los Angeles was also named Doctor; because he had an Ed.D., he was addressed as Dr. Doctor.
There are names that make you wonder if someone's parents were having just a little too much fun. A friend reports that when he first moved to San Francisco, there was a Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the phone book. (No word on what his specialty was.)
There are names that just make us laugh, because they sound funny--and we wonder, would a certain fellow have risen to chancellor of Germany if his father had kept his birth name of Schickelgruber? Somehow, "Heil Schickelgruber" makes me want to laugh.
There are names that just make you scratch your head, and ask, "How in the heck did one of your ancestors get that name?" For example, Priscilla Feral is "President, Friends of Animals." If you don't see the humor: "feral" refers to domesticated animals that have returned to the wild.
Yesterday, as I wandering the halls at my employer, I saw a nameplate that indicated this guy's last name was "Human." Whoa! How did that happen? It sounds like the name that you might get if you lived on a planet where the distribution of sentient beings was like the saloon scene in the first Star Wars movie.
UPDATE: A reader shared the following: When I first found out about zabasearch, I started typing names in. My personal favorite result:
UPDATE 2: Another reader reports:
There was an "Elvis Presley" listed as living at the corporate headquarters of Genentech here in the bay area. (maybe a clone?)
On a more disturbing note, there was an "Adolpho Hitler" somewhere in Maine; his birthday was listed as 1912. I figure it's either a white supremacist that changed his name at some point, or a very stubborn man. (Could be a fake name for getting 12 records for a penny from BMI, I suppose; one never knows where the data comes from.)Lakewood NJ Police dept has (or had, its been 8 years) a Sgt. Justice on the force. The big question then was if he were promoted to Capt, would he get a cape too.
UPDATE 3: Everyone has an example of this! Another reader: The last time that I saw Sarah Dockter, she was talking about working on her Ph.D., but the one that takes the cake in my book was a grad student at MIT who was also a teaching assistant there in the 1980s. His name was "Simian Grader." Oh, old pal Jennifer Hoff married her
Say the two names quickly, and go like on the H.
long-time pal Michael Beatin. The wedding nuptial in the Los Altos Town Crier read "Beatin-Hoff." I just found it, and now it has a comma.
Why African Genocide Is Ignored
Dave Kopel's column in the Rocky Mountain News makes the argument that the mainstream news media are ignoring genocide in Africa: Speaking at Kent Denver School last Saturday, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright bemoaned what she saw as lack of American support for sub-Saharan black Africa (The Denver Post, June 12). The same criticism might be leveled at the media, for its neglect of African events. A June 14 commentary headline in The Christian Science Monitor asked, "In Congo, 1,000 die per day: Why isn't it a media story?"
Kopel goes on to discuss not only the Darfur genocide, but the imminent mass starvation being engineered in Zimbabwe, and argues that even if the masses aren't particularly interested in what is going on in Africa, the mainstream news media have a moral obligation to bring these horrors to public attention:
The Monitor noted that absence of reader interest is the standard explanation. After all, newspapers have a finite amount of space for foreign news. If readers care more about elections or government intrigue in, say, the United Kingdom or Israel than they do about similar events in Africa, it is reasonable for newspapers to give readers what they want. Meanwhile, the Web site StrategyPage reported on June 3 that "Zimbabwe is about ready to explode in a nightmare \[of] mass murder." StrategyPage explained that Zimbabwe is suffering a famine as a result of the Robert Mugabe dictatorship's destruction of the nation's agriculture. People in the cities have been surviving only by buying food on the black market, which the dictatorship has destroyed in the last month by bulldozing huge urban areas, sending refugees into the countryside. The StrategyPage report concluded: "The government seems determined to starve its enemies to death. . . . This story will only get reported after the dead are buried."
Very true, but I think there's one more reason why the mainstream news media have been largely ignoring this story: there's no way to blame Americans or white Europeans for these disasters. Guilt feelings about imperialism and being white are so dominant on the left that a story that lacks a "hook" that blames us just doesn't get their attention. The mainstream news media are quite prepared to publish (often uncritically) implausible claims about 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, but they are completely uninterested in genocides that are killing comparable numbers where the killers are black, or Arab.
In the last month, the Post has covered Zimbabwe with a Washington Post article on food aid (June 2), while the Rocky Mountain News offered a five-paragraph editorial (June 3) and a two-paragraph news item (June 15). Better than nothing, but hardly adequate considering the magnitude of the crisis - especially since none of the articles get to the point about Mugabe using starvation as an tool of state policy.
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Determined readers can find African genocide news if they look hard enough - at the sources compiled by the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, or at the Web site of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. But news about genocide ought to be as easy to find - indeed, as inescapable - as news about Michael Jackson or the Denver Broncos.
Fan Mail
From a grad student: Also, thank you soooo much for writing the book "Black Demographic Data, 1790-1860: A sourcebook." I checked that out from the library at NCSU and found it so helpful to my research that I purchased last fall. Wonderful book.
August Sky & Telescope New Products Showcase
I understood that they were going to be including the products that I sell in that, and Saturday, I received an email from a reader asking for ordering instructions. This must be one of the first readers to receive his copy, so I can only hope that this is the beginning of an avalanche of inquiries that will keep me busy filling orders.
UPDATE: And an order on Monday, also.
House Building Project
Part of why our builder is willing to do this house for us on a cost plus basis (his cost plus 10% profit, which comes to about $79 per square foot) is that we are doing a lot of the legwork in selecting fixtures, cabinets, etc. Today we spent at Franklin Building Supply, picking out kitchen and bathroom cabinets, windows, interior and exterior doors.
Previously we picked lighting fixtures, switches (including motion detector wall switches) at Grover's and flooring at a floor coverings place whose name I have forgotten.
What is very interesting is how rapidly you can spend a lot of money to get very little advantage. The tile that my wife picked out? The retail price is $0.99 per square foot (I think our builder pays about 30% less). I can't say that the $5.99 per square foot tile was dramatically better looking, nor did it feel dramatically more durable.
We considered wood interior doors today--but when Rhonda found out that wood doors were in the $275-$550 range, while painted doors were about $70--she immediately decided that they didn't look that good. There are eight interior doors in the house--figure going to wood would add about $2400 to the cost. In addition, once you have wood doors, you want the moldings around them to be wood--and that adds up quickly as well.
A Dungeons & Dragons Wedding...
The wedding we attended in Portland this last weekend. Okay, that's not quite correct--but it wasn't too far away!
The bride and groom apparently met playing D&D, and the wedding was an interesting mix of medieval and eighteenth century costuming for the bridal party (all of which the bride made herself).
The rings were designed by bride and groom, and made with the assistance of a professional jeweler, over a period of a couple of years.
The ceremony itself was a New Age sort of thing, pretty touching in its own, non-religious way. (Then again, almost any wedding above and beyond having an Elvis impersonator officiating at a Las Vegas wedding express chapel is pretty touching.)
One odd little reminder that traditions persist even when the source has gone away is Morning Has Broken. To those who think of this as "Cat Stevens," the song is much older than Cat Stevens, and is an explicitly Christian song. We sang this at my sister Susan's wedding in 1977--and again at her first daughter Kim's wedding in 1995--both of which were Christian weddings. Mary & Joshua did likewise for a wedding that was definitely in the New Age tradition.
Anyway, I had a chance to talk to the groom a bit more. He is actually working on his Ph.D. in chemistry. His current research is related to computational chemistry and the problems of free oxygen atoms impacting orbiting objects, and doing nasty things to insulation. Think about this for a second: a free oxygen atom is far more reactive than an oxygen molecule--and these atoms are drifting up from planet Earth, and getting slammed into at 18,000 miles per hour, so there's enormous kinetic energy added into the chemical opportunities. This is a free oxygen atom with attitude.
As My Son Likes To Say, "Drugs Are Bad For You"
From a news story about a federal capital case underway in Vermont: Defense lawyers hope Fell's background of neglect and abuse will help persuade jurors to spare Fell's life if they find him guilty of murder.
Quite a number of people that I talk think that the drug laws are irrational, or aren't justified because the harm is primarily to the drug user. I'm afraid not. Drug laws might not be the most effective way to accomplish a desireable end, but they aren't irrational, and drug abuse, while it is primarily a "victimless crime," leads with great frequency to crimes that have victims.
Fell started drinking in the third grade and began using cocaine, marijuana and LSD soon after, according to court documents. He was abandoned by his father at 10 and by his mother three years later. A doctor who evaluated him called Fell "the most drug-abusing and chronically intoxicated individual" he had ever evaluated.
King was abducted when she arrived for work at a Rutland supermarket. She was bludgeoned to death as she prayed and pleaded for her life in New York state. Fell and Lee were arrested three days later in Arkansas driving King's car.
Ibogaine
I had mentioned last year an astonishing news story about a mild hallucinogen that seems to cure opiate, cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine addictions with one dose. I mentioned this over dinner at a wedding, and my daughter, who has been studying drug addiction at the University of Idaho was skeptical. (When I say, "studying drug addiction at the University of Idaho," I mean taking classes--not majoring in "Drugs of the Western Hemisphere" like some of her fellow students.)
I did a little more digging, and found that there is indeed considerable scientific research on ibogaine. One study indicates that it inhibits morphine self-adminstration in rats and attenuates withdrawal symptoms. Another study indicates that "rodents trained to drink alcohol lost interest in the substance--an effect that lasted for weeks." It does appear to work at reducing methamphetamine and nicotine addictions in rats--although with significant risks associated with brain damage. There seems to be lots of research being done right now to find a way to use ibogaine, or some derivative, to cure addiction without causing brain damage.
Economic News
The leading economic indicators index fell 0.5% in May. What are leading economic indicators? These are the measures of the economy that economists believe indicate what is likely to happen in the next six to nine months: hence "leading" as distinguished from "trailing."
If interest rates were low, this would be a rather worrisome matter, but because the economy has been growing for the last year or two--and the Fed has been raising interest rates to keep an overheated economy from causing inflation--this is probably a good thing. It means that the Fed will probably have the option of keeping interest rates steady or at least rising very slowly, without fear of inflation running away from them.
