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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Antiwar Activist Threatens Someone's Life; Gets Shot
For the most part, law-abiding people do not suddenly draw a gun and kill someone. It does happen, although not very often--and this is an example. (If you want to see how often a gun gets used in self-defense against scum--see here.) You will notice that it was an opponent of the Iraq War who drew a pistol and threatened the life of someone else--and was shot to death as a result: PRESTONSBURG - The Iraq war has been a divisive issue in America for more than two years now, but a shooting at an Eastern Kentucky flea market this week might have marked the first time a dispute over the war has resulted in a death.
There's no word in the article on whether Moore and Smith had concealed carry permits.
A quarrel between two firearms vendors at a Floyd County flea market on Thursday allegedly led both men -- described as "good friends" -- to draw guns. Douglas Moore, 65, of Martin, who supports the war, shot and killed Harold Wayne Smith, 56, of Manchester, who opposed it, investigators said.
Moore was questioned at the Floyd County Jail, but he was released without being charged after Kentucky State Police said it appears he acted in self-defense.
Evidence in the case will be presented to a Floyd County grand jury, said Commonwealth's Attorney Brent Turner, who said the episode might mark the first death in the United States resulting from a dispute over the war.
Both Smith and Moore maintained gun-trading tables at the Bull Creek Trade Center near Prestonsburg, and witnesses said they began arguing over the war early Thursday morning.One witness, Sam Hamman of Prestonsburg, told The Floyd County Times that the two men always carried guns and bickered frequently about the quality of guns, knives and the war.
By all accounts, both men had good reputations. But the closing paragraph of the article is just so absurd:
"Harold was talking about the 14 people that were killed in Iraq the other day and Doug said that just as many people were killed on the highways here," Hamman told the paper.
...
Another witness, Chuck Newsome, said yesterday the Sept. 11 attacks also were included in the argument, which quickly escalated into an altercation and then to a kind of showdown in front of the market's snack stand.
After a scuffle, Newsome said he saw Smith stand beside the snack shed, pull a small pistol out of his pocket, cock the hammer and say, "I'm going to blow your ... brains out."
Witnesses said Moore pulled a .38-caliber pistol from his pocket.
"Doug was just quicker," Harold Hannah of Salyersville said.
Newsome said he heard a pistol shot and assumed Smith had fired, but then saw blood spatter near Smith on the snack stand.
Coroner Roger Nelson said Smith was shot once in the upper left side of his chest. Witnesses said he stood for about five seconds before falling on the paved walkway.Kathleen Smith said the two men had been friends for many years after meeting at a trading event.
But Smith wasn't prepared to disagree with Moore--he pulled out a gun and threatened to kill someone for supporting the Iraq War. How tragic. How stupid.
"They had had discussions over the same thing (Iraq) before," Lipps said.
She said her father "had different opinions than everybody. He felt it was wrong that all of these young people were losing their lives over what was going on. It was just a political disagreement, like a whole lot of people have."
The House Project: Preparing To Pour Flatwork
I promised some more pictures. Here you can see that they have been putting in the rebar for where the concrete subcontractor (Jim's Concrete Work) will be pouring the patio.
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Here's the back of the house, a bit more exterior siding in place, where the big patio will be poured.
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To avoid pouring vast quantities of concrete for the patio on the east end of the house (where the hill slopes away) we used some of the scrap from excavating the hill to build up the ground. Because this is fill, I am all the more pleased at the plans to use reinforcing bars.
Click here to enlarge
Last house entry.
Other Sources of Embryonic Stem Cells
This article mentions that it appears that placentas (which carry no ethical problems with their use for research purposes) also appear to contain stem cells that can be used in place of embryonic stem cells: University of Pittsburgh researchers have discovered that one type of cell in the human placenta has characteristics that are strikingly similar to embryonic stem cells in their ability to regenerate a wide variety of tissues.
I blogged two days ago about the many alternative sources of embyronic stem cells that don't create any ethical problems, and let a lot of prominent bloggers know about it. Some of them are bloggers who clearly think that the current federal limitation is just horrible--and yet here I provided an excellent large quantity source of embryonic stem cells--and the silence was deafening. Even on this placental development (which Instapundit can't really ignore), he is sounding a cautionary note.
The cells, called amniotic epithelial cells, potentially could be used to produce new liver cells to treat liver failure, or new pancreatic islet cells to cure diabetes or new neurons to treat Parkinson's disease.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, which are obtained only by destroying human embryos, these cells can be extracted from the same placentas that now are routinely discarded after birth. They thus could be a non-controversial alternative to embryonic stem cells.
You might almost get the impression that some people who are screeching about the importance of using embryonic stem cells from abortions are more interested in justifying abortion, than in getting a source of embryonic stem cells.
See here for a discussion of the limitations of other sources of stem cells.
Water Softeners
I've tasted the water--it has enough mineral content (probably iron, from looking at the stains in toilets in another house in the area) that a water softener sounds like a good idea. But I understand that there are home water deionizers available as well. Anyone have any detailed knowledge of pluses and minuses? A Google search shows vast numbers of web pages, all from people trying to sell me something.
UPDATE: It sounds like I should probably wait for the mineral content tests to come back from the lab before I get started. Most water softeners will remove dissolved (ferrous) iron, but there are limits to how much they will remove.
The brownish red slime that you see in toilets? That's apparently not iron oxide deposits, but an iron-eating bacteria--and one that needs calcium to live. I suspect that I am going to find that we have hard water with iron.
Ferrous iron can be removed with a green sand filter, but ferric iron clogs those sort of filters.
I am suspecting that I am going to need a couple of different mechanisms to do the job of making the water clean and tasty.
Last house entry.
Biopsy Results, Confronting Death, & Hectoring The Construction Workers About Sunscreen
The biopsy from my shoulder came back; it's just scar tissue. I tend to form keloid scars (although not as gross as the ones that you can see by searching Google images for them), and so this may have caused the dermatologist to be a little overcautious when he looked at it.
My wife and I have been trying to straighten up my father-in-law's finances and make arrangements for long-term care for his wife--who is in that difficult stage where she isn't completely competent, but neither is she obviously incompetent.
I've discovered that Medicare doesn't pay for medical treatment outside the United States, except for emergency care in Canada or Mexico. Since she wants to move in with her sons, who are U.S. citizens living in Canada, this complicates things a good bit.
I called Schwab to find out about opening an account for her with power of attorney, so that I can manage her finances for her--and I was just overjoyed with how helpful and understanding the guy on the phone was about all this.
My father-in-law is declining rather quickly. I dropped in on him yesterday when I ran down to the state capitol to file a DBA statement for ScopeRoller, but he was asleep--and did he look miserable, even asleep. I doubt that he is going to be around a lot longer.
My father died rather suddenly of a heart attack. This was difficult; there were things that I suppose that I would have wanted to say to him, had I realized that he would be dead so soon. He was only 66, and I was 19. On the other hand, I'm sure that he didn't suffer anywhere near as much as my father-in-law is suffering. I was present during one of my father's heart attacks, so I know that they are very painful, but the indignities and pain that go with dying of cancer are spread out over a much longer time.
I went up to the property today to approve the layout of the patio forms, but to quote Cool Hand Luke: "What we have here... is a failure... to communicate." Apparently the patio forms won't be set until Monday. (Pictures of the continued progress this evening.)
This is the first that I have seen of the construction workers, and several of them were white guys with skin tanned darker than many black guys. I asked a couple of them if they used sunscreen, and explained about my father-in-law's upcoming passing, and my sister's big scar from skin cancer. At least one of them seemed to take what I said seriously.
How Unfortunate
The promises to "Move to Canada is Bush wins" turned out to be empty blather: In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada's main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north.
But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election.
MP Galloway At It Again
MP Galloway is at it again. As Instapundit likes to say, "He's not antiwar; he's on the other side": During a tour of the Middle East, Mr Galloway spoke of "poor Iraqis" using the most basic weapons to write the names of their towns "in the stars".
If you want know how insanely tolerant Britain has become of dissent in wartime, consider what would have happened if an MP in the days after D-Day had spoken of how the German Army was defending Europe from the barbarism of Britain and America.
The Respect MP accused the UK and America of "raping" Baghdad and said the US was losing the war.
...
"I said countries occupied by UK and US troops are being raped by them. Jerusalem and Baghdad are in the hands of foreigners who are doing their will.
"The people stirring up hatred for our troops are those who put them in Iraq, not the likes of us who want to bring them home to their families.
"The people who put our troops at risk are the people who put them abroad."
Mr Galloway's Respect party stresses that it and the Bethnal Green and Bow MP condemn suicide bombings, whether in London or the Middle East.
Any loss of civilian life is profoundly wrong, says the party, but it blames the US-UK coalition for turning Iraq into a war zone by their invasion.
Mr Galloway claimed the insurgents were ordinary Iraqis defending their country against "foreign invaders".
"It can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs and they are defending all the people of the world against American hegemony."
The House Project: Garage Framing & A Water Story
We were up there Sunday afternoon. At first glance, there wasn't a lot more progress. But now the garage framing is in place.
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The external layer just under the siding is now in place.
Click here to enlarge
Of course, you never know when your big earthmoving equipment might go on a rampage, so you do need to leash it.
Click here to enlarge
Seriously, there were several severe wind storms last weekend that caused some of the framing to fall. Remember that the roof joists provide much of the structural integrity of a house.
I think I mentioned a while back that we weren't getting water out of the faucet, even though the water tank was high enough that it should have worked just fine. The builder decided to replace the eight foot water pipe on which the faucet was mounted with a four foot pipe. He removed the eight foot pipe--and now water was coming out at a very high flow rate. Perhaps there was air bubble or something defective with that pipe. Then he notice that he had brought a four foot pipe with the wrong diameter--so now he was getting thoroughly soaked, because the four foot pipe slid right inside the fitting.
After reinstalling the eight foot long pipe, there is now no problem getting water to come out. We now have confidence that we will have no problem getting water to flow even without power.
I do need to start looking at fire sprinklers. I've decided not to bother with these foam fire suppression systems--what I need is a conventional sprinkler system with an air temperature sensor that turns on one sprinkler circuit. My guess that a 110 degree air temperature would be a good sign that a wildfire has reached the property, and at that altitude, I'm not worried about any other conditions producing that kind of heat.
Windows are supposed to be installed Friday; "flatwork" (patio, garage floor, garage aprons, and the pad for Big Bertha) is supposed to be poured on Monday. Roof joists perhaps end of next week!
Previous house entry.
Only In America: The Human Dairy
My first reaction to this story is to be appalled--the ultimate example of mothers too busy to take care of this themselves: A US firm is looking to commercialise breast milk by selling it to hospitals for the treatment of sick babies.
But in reading the story, I can see some real advantages here as well, and not just commercialism run rampant:
Prolacta Bioscience, a small company just outside Los Angeles, also wants to carry out research to develop breast milk-based therapies.
Breast milk, with its minerals, digestive enzymes and antibodies, has long been credited with keeping babies healthy and boosting intelligence.
But experts said it would put pressure on mothers to sell their milk. But Prolacta is aiming to buy donated breast milk from independent milk banks and hospitals across the US, pasteurise it and sell it back to hospitals to treat low-birth weight babies.
Fascinating. The pursuit of profit means that Prolacta would have a strong incentive to fully investigate all the different components of human breast milk, and find out what those components do, and how.
It is also looking to supply it for babies with heart defects, who need surgery and are at risk of infection, and children who are being given chemotherapy for cancer.
And the firm wants to analyse the different components of breast milk - there are more than 100,000 although scientists only know what a few thousand do - to see if breast milk therapies can treat disease common to newborn babies.
What Passes For Deep Thinking In Academia
Don't get me wrong--there are still people in the humanities doing serious and important work--but this article really captures some of the self-important idiocy that too many academics are willing to accept. You know that something has gone terribly wrong when you find yourself agreeing with Noam Chomsky about politics: A half-century ago theorists in departments of literature debated such topics as the relation of scientific truth to the sort of truth made available by great literature. Now that topic is no longer raised, not because answers have been found but because the reigning consensus holds that "truth" is an empty concept, that there is no such thing as "literature," let alone "great literature," and that the meaning of any piece of writing--or "text"--is unstable at best.
When I look at this crime against clarity by Bhaba and attempt to convert this into a jargon-free equivalent, I think of the appendix to 1984, where Orwell explains what would happen if you tried to translate the preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
...
Theory has tried to deconstruct science in a similarly misleading way. The philosopher Thomas Nagel observes that theorists invoke quantum theory and relativity "to show that today even science has had to abandon the idea of an objective, mind-independent reality." But, he curtly remarks, "neither theory has this significance."
...
Kwame Anthony Appiah observes that when Susan Gubar, a leading academic feminist, raised questions about the state of feminist theory she "found herself condemned, astonishingly, as a troglodyte, perhaps even a racist." Ironically, Theory may harm the very politics it purports to defend. Noam Chomsky finds it "remarkable" that leftist intellectuals, with their attacks on rationality, "should seek to deprive oppressed people not only of the joys of understanding and insight, but also of tools of Enlightenment." Meera Nanda laments that when postcolonialists repudiate the "objectivity" and "universalism" of science, they give "aid and comfort to Hindu chauvinists who display many symptoms of fascism."
For most people outside the academy what is most striking--and most puzzling--about Theory is the prose in which it is couched. To take an example offered by contributor D.G. Myers: Homi Bhaba, a major theorist, refers to "the desperate effort to 'normalize' formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality." (Whatever that may mean.)It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.
Perhaps this isn't perhaps quite fair; often, these jargon-rich academic sentences, when translated into clear English, turn out to be thoughts so remarkably pedestrian that you start to understand the need for obfuscation. The theorist Luce Irigaray asks more clearly, though not more cogently: "Is E=MC² a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possibly sexed nature of the equation is not directly its use by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest."
I would like to think that Luce Irigaray is being quoted out of context, or that this absurdity was intended as satire--but I've read enough of this trash that academics have written with great earnestness that I am inclined to believe that this example was deadly serious.
Need Credit Card Merchant Account Services Recommendations
I'm getting serious. Someone sent me a check made out to ScopeRoller instead of Clayton E. Cramer, so I had to go file a DBA form with the Idaho Secretary of State at lunchtime, and then open a checking account in the name ScopeRoller.
I've had a few sales inquiries for ScopeRoller that didn't go anywhere because I couldn't accept a credit card. There are a bunch of companies out there that provide credit card merchant services--any recommendations? I'm not expecting huge volume at first--perhaps $300-$500 a month in sales, and then ramping up into millions of dollars a week! (excuse me, I'll calm down now), so low startup cost is a reasonable tradeoff for higher costs per transaction.
An Ethical Source of Embryonic Stem Cells
I blogged yesterday about the research question concerning embryonic vs. adult stem cells. As I woke up this morning, it suddenly occurred to me that there is an ethical source of embryonic stem cells that no pro-lifer would consider immoral, and that would satisfy all the research needs of the scientific community.
Pro-lifers (and even a number of people like myself who would like to see abortion a bit more limited than it is now, without making it completely illegal) object to the "harvesting" (nice euphemism) of embryonic stem cells from abortions because it allows abortion doctors and women having abortions to justify the procedure on the grounds that, "It helps scientific research." A lot of Americans really don't want anyone encouraging or justifying abortion.
Advocates of embryonic stem cell research claim that unless we do research with embryonic stem cells, we really won't know if adult fat stem cells can do the job or not. President Bush's current rules allow embryonic stem cells and their descendants already "harvested" as of 2001 to continue to be used--and the claim is that this isn't enough. I don't know enough about the science to know if this is correct or not, but I am prepared to believe that claim, unless someone can prove to me otherwise.
There are several sources of embryonic stem cells, however, that provide no ethical problems: non-elective abortions; miscarriages; and deaths of pregnant women. Ectopic pregnancies are one example of a non-elective abortion, and even the Catholic Church recognizes that this is legitimate. Since there are about 100,000 ectopic pregnancies a year, this is a vast number of sources of embryonic stem cells.
Miscarriages also produce embryonic tissue--and since a miscarriage is not an intentional act of killing the embryo, there is no ethical problem is using this tissue for research. I couldn't find a figure for the number of miscarriages annually, but I would be surprised if it isn't in the hundreds of thousands.
At any given time, there are hundreds of thousands of American women who are pregnant. Unsurprisingly, there are on any day hundreds of pregnant women who are killed in car accidents, murders, falls from ladders, or other circumstances where the embryo or fetus can't be saved. These are also legitimate sources of embryonic stem cells.
There is no shortage of embryonic stem cells that satisfy the legitimate scientific research needs--and yet do not involve the ethical concerns about encouraging or promoting abortion. Instead of fighting over whether to use embryonic stem cells from abortions, why not simply use all of these sources that do not have any ethical difficulties?
I can see why some might be concerned about where embryonic stem cell research might take us. For example, imagine that the scientists doing this research find a way to fulfill all the promises that Al Gore and John Edwards made last year: a cure of paralysis; for cancer; for Alzheimer's--in short, the miracle cure. Would this lead to an increase in demand for embryonic stem cells? It certainly would, and I could see a serious debate about whether to use aborted embryos and fetuses in making this miracle cure. I would come down against this--but that isn't the question before us right now. We do have an ethical source for embryonic stem cells for research purposes.
UPDATE: See here for a discussion of the limitations of other sources of stem cells.
Do You Have Experience With The osCommerce Open Source e-Commerce Package?
My web hoster, hostrocket.com, uses the osCommerce open source package for supporting eCommerce on their servers. I am running into a few annoying problems (I'm not sure yet if they qualify as bugs, features, or pilot error), and I am hoping someone else has already gone down this path. As a friend observed some years ago, and it almost as true for "open source" stuff: "Free university software is too expensive to use." (But that was before Microsoft had made their stuff expensive, unreliable, and clumsy.)
Anyway, I'm getting ready to make ScopeRoller.com into a real serious e-commerce battle station, including accepting credit cards. Yes, I've decided that I can either make this thing into a viable business, or hope that my job doesn't end up in Shanghai.
Adult Stem Cells
Instapundit is crowing about a report that says that adult stem cells don't turn out to be capable of differentiation: There's still a lot of stem-cell science to do before people can claim that one approach or another is clearly the best. Which is why we should be doing the science.
It turns out, however, that the report that made Instapundit so happy is astonishingly shallow--and perhaps means quite a bit less than Instapundit would like to mean.
Much of the promising research on adult stem cells are actually adult fat stem cells--and according to this article from the National Institute of Health, there are actually many different types of adult stem cells. The report that Instapundit points to talks about bone marrow stem cells as those there is only one type--and there isn't just one type of bone marrow stem cell: The notion that the bone marrow contains stem cells is not new. One population of bone marrow cells, the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), is responsible for forming all of the types of blood cells in the body. HSCs were recognized as a stem cells more than 40 years ago [9, 99]. Bone marrow stromal cells—a mixed cell population that generates bone, cartilage, fat, fibrous connective tissue, and the reticular network that supports blood cell formation—were described shortly after the discovery of HSCs [30, 32, 73]. The mesenchymal stem cells of the bone marrow also give rise to these tissues, and may constitute the same population of cells as the bone marrow stromal cells [78]. Recently, a population of progenitor cells that differentiates into endothelial cells, a type of cell that lines the blood vessels, was isolated from circulating blood [8] and identified as originating in bone marrow [89]. Whether these endothelial progenitor cells, which resemble the angioblasts that give rise to blood vessels during embryonic development, represent a bona fide population of adult bone marrow stem cells remains uncertain. Thus, the bone marrow appears to contain three stem cell populations—hematopoietic stem cells, stromal cells, and (possibly) endothelial progenitor cells (see Figure 4.3. Hematopoietic and Stromal Stem Cell Differentiation).
In short, there's a lot of reason to suspect that the account that made Instapundit so happy is desperately shallow in its explanation--and perhaps it is only bone marrow stem cells that are failing to do any good.
...
Hematopoietic Stem Cells. Of all the cell types in the body, those that survive for the shortest period of time are blood cells and certain kinds of epithelial cells. For example, red blood cells (erythrocytes), which lack a nucleus, live for approximately 120 days in the bloodstream. The life of an animal literally depends on the ability of these and other blood cells to be replenished continuously. This replenishment process occurs largely in the bone marrow, where HSCs reside, divide, and differentiate into all the blood cell types. Both HSCs and differentiated blood cells cycle from the bone marrow to the blood and back again, under the influence of a barrage of secreted factors that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, and migration (see Chapter 5. Hematopoietic Stem Cells).
HSCs can reconstitute the hematopoietic system of mice that have been subjected to lethal doses of radiation to destroy their own hematopoietic systems. This test, the rescue of lethally irradiated mice, has become a standard by which other candidate stem cells are measured because it shows, without question, that HSCs can regenerate an entire tissue system—in this case, the blood [9, 99]. HSCs were first proven to be blood-forming stem cells in a series of experiments in mice; similar blood-forming stem cells occur in humans. HSCs are defined by their ability to self-renew and to give rise to all the kinds of blood cells in the body. This means that a single HSC is capable of regenerating the entire hematopoietic system, although this has been demonstrated only a few times in mice [72].
...
Two kinds of HSCs have been defined. Long-term HSCs proliferate for the lifetime of an animal. In young adult mice, an estimated 8 to 10 % of long-term HSCs enter the cell cycle and divide each day. Short-term HSCs proliferate for a limited time, possibly a few months. Long-term HSCs have high levels of telomerase activity. Telomerase is an enzyme that helps maintain the length of the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, by adding on nucleotides. Active telomerase is a characteristic of undifferentiated, dividing cells and cancer cells. Differentiated, human somatic cells do not show telomerase activity. In adult humans, HSCs occur in the bone marrow, blood, liver, and spleen, but are extremely rare in any of these tissues. In mice, only 1 in 10,000 to 15,000 bone marrow cells is a long-term HSC [105].
Short-term HSCs differentiate into lymphoid and myeloid precursors, the two classes of precursors for the two major lineages of blood cells. Lymphoid precursors differentiate into T cells, B cells, and natural killer cells. The mechanisms and pathways that lead to their differentiation are still being investigated [1, 2]. Myeloid precursors differentiate into monocytes and macrophages, neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, megakaryocytes, and erythrocytes [3]. In vivo, bone marrow HSCs differentiate into mature, specialized blood cells that cycle constantly from the bone marrow to the blood, and back to the bone marrow [26]. A recent study showed that short-term HSCs are a heterogeneous population that differ significantly in terms of their ability to self-renew and repopulate the hematopoietic system [42].
Why, you ask, does anyone care? Adult fat stem cells don't involve any ethical problems. Embryonic stem cells do pose some potential difficulties. Imagine a world in which abortions are performed specifically to get embryonic stem cells, and you can see why a lot of people are uncomfortable with this.
Larry Niven wrote a wonderful series of short stories (and a couple of novels) in which the desire for organs for transplant leads to a society in which the state "parts people out" as a method of execution. What starts as an attempt to make use of condemned criminals soon leads to less and less severe crimes becoming capital offenses, just to meet the demand for parts. Now, I don't think that Niven's dystopian vision is going to happen in our America--but there are credible reports that the organs of executed Chinese criminals have been sold for transplant--and this report suggests that some of these "criminals" were members of the disapproved Falun Gong cult. Yet another report says that China is executing people for pretty minor crimes to create a supply of organs for transplant: Amnesty International asserts that the Chinese government is performing executions to expand the organ trade from executed prisoners. According to witnesses in China, criminals are regularly examined to select matches for waiting patients.6 “One prisoner, during his seven year jail term, told how he saw numerous prisoners being medically prepared for organ removal. On the night before the execution, the prison staff would take blood samples.”7
I've never been a fan of capital punishment, but the prospect of turning it into a money-making venture increases my concerns.
Respecting Precedent
Supreme Court nominee Roberts says what the liberals want to hear: WASHINGTON (AP) - John Roberts pledged Tuesday to respect established rulings if confirmed to the Supreme Court, saying judges must recognize that their role is "not to solve society's problems."
Oh yes, it is very important to follow precedent, isn't it? Except that there are plenty of precedents that, if followed, would have liberals hopping mad. The obvious one is Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), overturned by Brown v. Board of Education (1954). A less obvious one would be Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) overturned by Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
...
Roberts provided responses to a broad array of questions involving work history, political ties and views on judicial activism. His thoughts on that subject are considered critical to gauging his position on overturning the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
"Precedent plays an important role in promoting the stability of the legal system," Roberts wrote. "A sound judicial philosophy should reflect recognition of the fact that the judge operates within a system of rules developed over the years by other judges equally striving to live up to the judicial oath."
I understand the reasoning behind stare decisis; there's a lot to be said for stability in law, because it makes it possible to do long-range planning. If the precedents are wrong, what value is there to erecting more wrong precedents on a bad foundation?
Melanoma
I had a few people asking me to summarize what I found out in response to my question about melanoma spreading throughout my father-in-law's abdomen. The answers I received from doctors were not encouraging. Melanoma is a cancer that starts in the melanocytes--the cells that make melanin: Because most of these cells keep on making melanin, melanoma tumors are often brown or black.
One of my physician readers sent me a gruesome picture of a melanoma wrapped around a kidney. (I won't share it with you.) The problem is that while melanoma is often distinctive (because of the color), it gets into everything it touches, and in the advanced stages, grows very rapidly. In this respect, it is much like Microsoft's products, except that you can't do the equivalent of formatting the hard drive and installing decent software with the human body.
Dr. Luker Sees The Light
A while back, I expressed my opinion that the history profession had a serious integrity problem: But I no longer have any illusion that these "professional standards" are adhered to by the vast majority of history professors teaching in the U.S.
I didn't say that all historians had a problem; nor did I say that a majority had a problem (although I admitted that how I phrased it meant that it was easy to see how others might read it that way). It doesn't mean that the vast majority are failing; it means that less than a vast majority are meeting those standards.
Dr. Ralph Luker became quite offended, claiming that I was tarring the whole profession for the offenses of a very small minority of historians.
Well, what do you know? Dr. Luker has apparently seen the light--that the problem isn't just a tiny minority. See this open letter to the big dogs at the Organization of American Historians: I've been a member of the Organization of American Historians for about 35 years. For all those years, it has been a center of my professional identity and pride. Its Journal of American History has kept me apprized of the latest research in my field and its conventions have been opportunities for re-union with professional colleagues whom I've cherished for many years. Unlike some other historians, I'm not deeply estranged by the OAH's "political correctness" nor have its occasional follies, such as shifting conventions from one undesireable location to another at the last minute, undone my loyalty. In the last three or four years, however, I have begun to wonder if it has become the place where Offences Are Honored.
Dr. Luker then goes into a discussion of the problems of these various historians: plagiarism, and in the case of Christine Heyrman (Bellesiles's doctoral dissertation advisor), Dr. Luker claims that her book Southern Cross is not so different from Bellesiles's Arming America:
...
In 1996, the Journal of American History published Michael Bellesiles's article, "The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760-1865." It was awarded our Binkley-Stephenson Prize for the best article of the year in the Journal. There's no need to rehearse the painful saga of what happened thereafter. Before it was over, however, his book, Arming America, won and lost the Bancroft Prize, his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, withdrew it from publication, and Bellesiles lost his tenured position at Emory University. No reputable scholar any longer believes that his 1996 article will bear close scrutiny, but the OAH and its Journal of American History are the only institutions that still honor Bellesiles's research trajectory. There's been no official repudiation of the article, no official acknowledgment of its deep flaws, and no withdrawal of the Binkley-Stephenson Prize. Why is that?
Cases #2: The Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Lectureship Program began in 1981. Over the years, it has offered local institutions across the country the opportunity to present lectures by distinguished historians on topics of their special expertise. The lecturers, in turn, donate the modest honorarium of at least $1,000 to the OAH. Beyond that, the local institutions are responsible only for transportation and housing expenses. Nearly 300 of my professional colleagues now participate in that program. It is considered an honor to do so. I was looking over the list of the OAH's Distinguished Lecturers the other day and was delighted to see the names of many truly distinguished historians. In truth, however, it's a fairly mixed lot: Paul Buhle? Christine Heyrman? Ann Lane? What violations of standards of historical practice and professional ethics must one commit in order to be called "distinguished" by OAH authorities these days?As I pointed out two years ago, her book even made errors of the kind, if not the depth, that would make Bellesiles notorious: highly prejudicial definitions of the subject, misusing ellipses to give quotations a meaning the opposite of what they actually said, and major errors in quantitative charts in the book's appendices. The errors in simple addition ought to embarrass a high school graduate. Just as virtually all of Michael Bellesiles's errors were in the direction of his controversial thesis, virtually all of Christine Heyrman's errors vastly understated the crucial role that African Americans played in making an evangelical South.
Anyway, Dr. Luker seems to be claiming that there is a pretty widespread problem of integrity among historians--and their professional standards organization, the OAH--is failing to take seriously the notion of professional standards.
Welcome to the club, Dr. Luker.
Oh yes: Dr. Luker pooh-poohed my suggestion that the difficulties I am having getting my book Armed America published were the result of blacklisting by a profession more interested in promoting dishonesty than history. Instead, he suggested that it was a "dog." I put the first five chapters up here, and asked him where it barks. I'm still waiting.
Here's an ugly thought: the profession has become so controlled by the faction that lies or excuses lies--people like Bellesiles, John L. Larson, editor of the Journal of the Early Republic, and the leadership of the OAH--that the profession of historian no longer exists in any meaningful sense. But how seriously would anyone take them if instead of having the impressive title, "Professor of History," they used the more honest title: "Professor of Political Propaganda"?
Oh Dear, George Bush Supports A Diversity of Opinions
Quick, call the Thought Police! I've never been very sympathetic to the Creationists, who pretend that they are teaching science at the school board, while proclaiming their efforts as evangelistic outreach when they send me fundraising letters. The Intelligent Design advocates, however, make some interesting critiques of Darwinian evolution. At a minimum, Intelligent Design criticisms keeps biology teaching intellectually honest, instead of the dogmatic, "revealed truth" approach that more than a few secondary science teachers use. Now, Bush has taken the position that there's a place for more than one point of view in science class: WASHINGTON — President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.
Instapundit quotes this guy approvingly in comparing the Intelligent Design critique to other belief systems:
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both ideas, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.
"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."1. The earth is actually a bowl sitting on the back of elephants. Hey! If its good enough for the Hindus, why not us?
Anyone that thinks that the questions that Intelligent Design is raising about evolution are comparable to various Creation myths hasn't really bothered to read any of the Intelligent Design criticisms. One of my readers, a Ph.D. who teaches in a medical school, made this thoughtful observation about the struggle.
2. The God Manitou took pity on a mother bear who had lost her cubs while swimming across Lake Michigan and turned the cubs into islands (the Manitou islands) and the mother into a sand dune (Sleeping Bear Sand Dune). The Ojibwa’s believe it…I did too until I was about 5 years old.
3. NASA really didn’t go to the moon. The moon walk was done on a Hollywood sound stage.
Unlike the Creationist advocates, who were usually working outside their field of expertise (for example, mechanical engineering Ph.D.s), Intelligent Design advocates such as Professor Michael Behe are working in their area of expertise. Behe is a Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University. Scott Minnich is a professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho. To claim that Intelligent Design is at the same level as various Creation myths (including the Genesis account) is simply not accurate.
Bringing Back The 30-Year Treasury
Interesting news story. Back in October of 2001, the Bush Administration stopped selling 30-year Treasury bonds because the government didn't need them; we had such big surpluses that they were retiring debt, instead of increasing the debt. Now, the Bush Administration is apparently going to start issuing 30-year Treasurys again: In a nod to Wall Street pressure, and facing large budget deficits that followed a recession, stock market collapse, tax cuts and huge war costs, the Treasury Department said in May it was considering bringing back the 30-year bond to give the government more borrowing flexibility.
Now this is very interesting to me. What happens if the supply of long maturity Treasury bonds increases? That should drive down the price of existing long bonds. What happens when the prices of bonds fall? The yield rises.
Analysts say traders and dealers, who normally watch the Treasury's quarterly refunding statements to learn the size of upcoming auctions, will focus instead Wednesday morning on the long bond's expected return.
...
The Bond Market Association said last week that issuing bonds would help shield the government from rising financing costs as interest rates rise.
The industry group also said a reinstated 30-year bond would attract those seeking safe investments with good rates of return, including a growing number of retiring Americans, and bring in traders looking to swap long-dated instruments.
I know that Alan Greenspan has been distressed for some time that the Fed's continual raising of short-term interest rates wasn't having much effect on long-term interest rates (although the 30-year Treasury bond yield as of 1:24 PM Mountain time is 4.530%--a bit up from a month ago). This might be the way of forcing long-term interest rates to rise, and cool off some of the excess frothiness in the real estate market.
I warned you all a couple of weeks ago that the time to lock mortgages had come. I wonder if the recent rise in 30-year Treasurys was because a lot of the big bond investors had an inkling that new 30-year bond sales would drive up rates.
I Have An Interesting Problem To Solve Involving Canada
My father-in-law and his wife had the movers come in and pack everything in Orange County a couple of weeks ago, and put it in storage there. Because they were moving to Idaho, he had them pack two handguns.
It now seems a near certainty that he will not be unpacking this stuff--that after he passes on, probably in the next month or so, the entire collection of their stuff will go to his wife's sons' place in Canada.
The problem is that the guns were not explicitly marked on the packing manifest--and may not have been marked on the boxes themselves. We have a pretty good idea which boxes likely have the handguns, because they were in the den, but to fly down to Orange County to search those boxes for the handguns would be expensive in both time and money. It also doesn't make sense to ship all the boxes from the den to Idaho, because it is possible that they were put into boxes from some other room because...well, you've seen movers pack a house before, haven't you? We had some movers who packed our kitchen garbage when we moved from Irvine to San Jose! I am a little reluctant to ask the storage company to go through their stuff, looking for two highly concealable firearms.
Obviously, we can't just ship this load of stuff to Canada. Yes, Canadian Customs probably does not inspect every box load on every moving van, but it would be a serious criminal offense to send this shipment across the border--potentially causing serious legal problems for the recipients of the load. Any suggestions on a solution? I can't believe that this is that unique of a situation.
Cow Pollution
This is an interesting story about air pollution in the San Joquain Valley in California--and the culprits, claim the air pollution control district, don't honk, they go "Moo!" California's San Joaquin Valley for some time has had the dirtiest air in the country. Monday, officials said gases from ruminating dairy cows, not exhaust from cars, are the region's biggest single source of a chief smog-forming pollutant.
Not everyone is buying this claim, including (predictably) the dairy industry, and the scientist whose work formed the basis of the claim:
Every year, the average dairy cow produces 19.3 pounds of gases, called volatile organic compounds, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District said. Those gases react with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone, or smog.
With 2.5 million dairy cows — roughly one of every five in the country — emissions of almost 20 pounds per cow mean that cattle in the San Joaquin Valley produce more organic compounds than are generated by either cars or trucks or pesticides, the air district said. The finding will serve as the basis for strict air-quality regulations on the region's booming dairy industry."Science is supposed to guide this regulation, not fairy dust," said Michael Marsh, chief executive officer of Western United Dairymen, a lobbying group that said it was considering a lawsuit to block regulations based on the new finding. "It's impossible to capture emissions that scientists can't even detect."
At the risk of being a trouble maker--maybe the problem is that there are too many people in California. Even the cleanest technologies (and there's nothing clean about a cow) become a problem when the population density gets too high. If California's population were a little more evenly scattered, instead of heavily concentrated in eight of its 58 counties, this wouldn't be such a problem. (Click here for a map of California counties; I'll bet that most of them are completely unknown to you, because they are practically empty.) As the article points out, the population growth in Southern California is driving dairies from there into the San Joquain Valley.
Air-quality regulators defended their estimate as a conservative one based on the best available research. But it was criticized by some scientists — including one whose work was used by the district to arrive at the figure.
"If you closed all the dairies in California tomorrow, you would not see much of an impact on ozone formation," said the scientist, Frank Mitloehner of UC Davis, who was hired by air-quality officials to study cow emissions and now contends his findings were misconstrued.
"We really don't have the science to back this number up," he said.
"I Wasn't Here That Year"
Many years ago, we knew a couple that were recovering drug addicts. He had replaced one addiction with another one--fishing. If you knew what he spent on fishing gear, and the mildly destructive effects it was having on his marriage--you would understand that I am not being jocular about this.
Anyway, at one point over dinner I made some casual reference to Neil Armstrong's Moon landing. He had this confused look on his face until we explained it. His excuse for having missed one of the most astonishing events of the twentieth century was that he was deeply involved in drug addiction that year: "I guess I wasn't here that year."
Anyway, I read this news story about copyright infringement for a wildly popular 1965 song, and I found myself wondering, "Why did this take so long to make it to court? Were you not here that year?" SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court has rejected a lawsuit charging 1960s psychedelic rocker Country Joe McDonald with copyright infringement for his 1965 protest song "Fixin' to Die Rag," which became a rallying cry for opposition to the Vietnam War.
Yeah, I would say waiting 36 years to file suit is "too long a delay." What was Babbette Ory smoking?
In a decision made public on Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from Babette Ory, who said McDonald's song infringed on jazz standard "Muskrat Ramble," credited to her father, Kid Ory.
Ory sued in September 2001, claiming that "Fixin' to Die Rag" was similar to and infringed on "Muskrat Ramble." Kid Ory, who recorded with jazz great Louis Armstrong, died in 1973.
The appellate judges upheld a lower-court decision saying there was too long a delay in bringing the copyright lawsuit and awarded McDonald his attorney fees. Ory obtained copyright to "Muskrat Ramble" in 2001.
I Never Saw Woody Allen's Bananas...
But I suspect that it wouldn't be able to top the real-life North Korean leader: North Korean propaganda is ripe with the amazing achievements of its Dear Leader. The highly controlled state also closely monitors its citizens to make sure they do not speak out against Kim or challenge his rule.
Most political leaders are surrounded by yes men, I suspect, but the level of fawning from Kim's sycophants must set a new record.
Kim pilots jet fighters, pens operas, produces movies and accomplished a feat unmatched in the annals of professional golf by shooting 11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played.
Biopsy
The dermatologist looked at the odd little indentation in my skin on my back, and decided that it would be best to biopsy it--just to be sure. The painkiller is beginning to wear off now, and I can feel the stitches.
Thirty Day Notice
My father-in-law was given thirty days by his doctors yesterday. He's taking it rather well--certainly better than his wife. I may be a bit busy these next few weeks helping to get his finances in order to take care of his wife. She is ten years older than him, with beginning Alzheimer's; she will need some assistance in managing her money.
Which Is More Important? Multiculturalism Or Homosexuality?
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has taken on the case of a computer programmer who has been told that being asked to be removed from future offensive email qualifies as intimidation and harassment: WAYNE, N.J., July 20, 2005—William Paterson University in New Jersey has convicted student employee Jihad Daniel of “discrimination” and “harassment”—without due process—for describing homosexuality as a “perversion” in a private response to a professor’s unsolicited announcement of a university event that promoted a positive view of lesbian relationships.
Here's the email that Mr. Daniel was responding to, and here's his very polite request to be left off future such emails.
“William Paterson’s punishment of Mr. Daniel is a direct attack on freedom of speech,” remarked David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which intervened on Daniel’s behalf. “For the university to convict a student of ‘harassment’ for sending a single, non-threatening e-mail dangerously trivializes real harassment.”
Now, if Mr. Daniel were a Christian, there would be no question for the left to consider: he would be stoned to death in the campus quad for being intolerant. But since Mr. Daniel's first name is "Jihad," I rather suspect that he is Muslim. (I mean, what Christian would name his son "Jihad"?) This creates a real problem for the left: is honoring Islam and multiculturalism more important? Or suppressing differing thoughts?
The university, of course, decided in favor of punishing Mr. Daniel for his polite request to not be included in future emails promoting a sexual behavior of which he disapproves.
There can be no freedom in a society where homosexual activists run things.
Is Homeland Security Finally Figuring This Out?
They are arresting large numbers of gang members on immigration charges: WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities arrested 582 alleged gang members over a two-week period, officials said Monday, targeting an estimated 80 violent groups they say have spawned street crimes across the country.
Is the implication of "criminal charges" that the immigration violations aren't crimes?
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the gangs "a threat to our homeland security and ... a very urgent law enforcement priority."
Investigators picked up most of the offenders between July 16 and July 28 on immigration violations for being in the United States illegally. Seventy-six face criminal charges, ranging from illegal possession of a firearm to holding fraudulent documents.The crackdown is part of ICE's ongoing "Operation Community Shield" campaign, targeting gang activity with other federal and state authorities. So far, ICE has made 1,057 arrests as part of the sting.
Promises, promises! Let's see if you are serious.
More than half of them have been members of MS-13, a street gang rooted in Central America where members have been known to behead enemies and attack with grenades and machetes. Federal officials estimate between 8,000 and 10,000 MS-13 members live in 31 states _ the majority of them in the country illegally.
"We're just getting started," said ICE investigations chief Marcy Forman.
The problem of illegal immigration is a lot larger than just a bunch of violent thugs, but if I had to pick going after this crowd--or a bunch of illegal immigrants whose greatest fault is that they drive down wage rates--well, that's not a hard call to make.
Cancer Question
My father-in-law is in surgery at the moment. We had occasion to take him to the emergency room Friday evening, which led to some pretty startling discoveries. It turned out that the melanoma has spread throughout his pelvis, around his intestines, and is now compressing his only kidney and preventing proper kidney output through the ureter to the bladder. (My father-in-law's older brother, not a twin, was born with three kidneys; my father-in-law was born with only one. I would love to understand the DNA encoding responsible for this.)
The emergency room doctor did not pretend to be an oncologist, but he did say that these sort of cancers often do a very thorough job of spreading into other tissues such that it is sometimes hard to remove the cancer without impairing healthy tissues. I'm curious (since I know that there are a few doctors that read my blog): does a melanoma that has spread inside have a distinctive appearance, such that surgeons can at least remove the bulk of the cancer? Obviously, it isn't going to cure my father-in-law, but I would think that removing a sizeable tumor would at least take pressure off the other organs, and give him a little respite from his pain for a few months until the cancer grows back.
I haven't had occasion to visit an emergency room since we moved to Boise. My wife was rather apprehensive, since our experience with emergency rooms has been entirely Californian, and Friday and Saturday nights tend to be pretty crazy, what with gunshots, knifings, traffic accidents, uninsured parents bringing in their very sick toddlers. To my surprise, even though my father-in-law's problems were not terribly urgent, he was in seeing a doctor at St. Luke's Friday night in about ten minutes, including time spent with insurance paperwork.
Paging Secretary Mineta, Paging Secretary Mineta
Secretary of Transportation Mineta is responsible (irresponsible?) for the decision after 9/11 to make sure that airport screeners didn't engage in ethnic profiling. This meant that if you were a 70 year old woman, born in the United States, you had the same chances of being carefully searched as a 25 year old named Mohammed from the Middle East. Fortunately, Britain, for all its faults and multiculturalist nonsense, isn't run by complete fools: Security sources have reportedly told The Times newspaper that a third group, believed to be made up of British-born Muslims, was on the verge of staging an attack on the Tube system last week.
UPDATE: a New York City Democrat is now saying that the state ban on "racial profiling" has to go:
The men are thought to be of Pakistani origin, and have links with the Leeds-based terrorist cell which carried out the July 7 bombings which killed more than 50 people.
...
British Transport Police have been targeting specific ethnic groups for "intelligence-led" stop-and-searches as part of their heightened security measures.
BTP Chief Constable Ian Johnston said that his officers would not "waste time searching old white ladies".Dov Hikind (search) charged that it's "insane" to look for bombs in the bags of "75-year-old grandmothers," adding, "The FBI and authorities have a good idea of who is going to commit terrorism. They all look similar, but everyone is terrified of using the word 'racial.' "
Well, I can see why Muslims might not support it. I do not doubt that it will feel invasive and unfair. But you know what? When a woman sees a strange man behind her in a lonely place, she engages in "sexual profiling"--assuming that she has more to worry about from a man than from a woman. Unfair? Darn right, but completely sensible.
The Brooklyn Democrat said the NYPD's 10-day-old tactic of randomly checking bags — without regard to race or ethnicity — at subway entrances may be politically correct, but it won't save lives.
"There is a terrorist profile for a potential suicide bomber, and it's not the 75-year-old grandmother . . . who has an oversized tote bag firmly tucked under her arm" said Hikind, who called random searches "insane."
Instead, he argued, police should be stopping and searching "people of Middle Eastern descent," with particular focus on young men and women.
"Every case of recent terrorism has been committed by individuals [from a] Middle Eastern country," he said.
"There are certain things you do in wartime that you don't do in peacetime," said Hikind, noting that he has voted against racial profiling in the past.
Conceding that racial profiling by police currently is illegal, he said he will introduce legislation to remove that prohibition, adding he hopes Muslims will support it.The NYPD, whose random searches began after subway bombings in London earlier this month, quickly rebuffed Hikind's proposal.
Of doubtful effectiveness? Okay, if 30% of the population going into New York City subway stations were Middle Eastern in appearance, they might be right. But when you concentrate your resources on the 1% of the population from which 90% of the hazard is likely to come, that's a very effective strategy. That's why when the police are looking for a child molester, they start out by checking registered sex offenders. Yes, the molester might well be someone without a previous criminal history, but the odds suggest that your resources should be spent on those most likely to be violators.
"Racial profiling is illegal, of doubtful effectiveness, and against department policy," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
UPDATE 2: I see that Charles Krauthammer's column of July 29th says almost exactly the same thing. I guess unless you are hopelessly stupid, this is like obvious.
Citizenship & Military Service
One of the advantages of becoming a Roman soldier was after 20 years of service, you acquired citizenship--a very valuable status, because it gave you a number of protections under Roman law. I was amused to see this description of the advantage in this Lincolnshire website: Roman citizenship was greatly valued: non-roman soldiers would be given citizenship on retirement after 20 years, for example. It was valued as highly as the 'green card' for American residence is today. Also, citizenship also removed the liability to torture in criminal investigations.
You will recall that the Apostle Paul used his Roman citizenship to his advantage in the Book of Acts. Remember that Rome was an Empire--not everyone who was within its domain was a citizen.
The French Foreign Legion has a similar history of granting citizenship in exchange for military service. "Foreigners by birth, the legionnaires have become Frenchmen by the blood they have spilled."
The notion that citizenship and military service are intimately tied is not new, nor is it unknown in American history. As Secretary of War Henry Knox's 1790 plan for the militia observed: That every man of the proper age, and ability of body, is firmly bound, by the social compact, to perform, personally, his proportion of military duty for the defence of the state.
You get much the same idea in Heinlein's Starship Troopers--that citizenship was limited to those who were willing to put their lives at risk for the common good.
It is therefore heartwarming to see Michael Yon's ever worthwhile blog discuss these members of the U.S. military taking the oath of U.S. citizenship--because they are citizens of other countries: Across Iraq, I keep running across American troops who are not Americans. Many of these soldiers and Marines are working towards attaining U.S. citizenship while in uniform, under fire, in Iraq.
Of course, you don't have to join our military to become a U.S. citizen--but talk about a level of commitment you wouldn't find from a lot of Americans who had the good fortune to be born here.
I was privileged to witness the award ceremony for 12 new American citizens in Deuce Four recently. I hope America makes them feel welcome. If the folks at home could see what these people are doing in Iraq, they would make these special troops feel as honored guests. But now, better yet, they are honored citizens, giving life to the concept of active citizenship.
...
Deuce Four's newest Americans:
Front row Left to Right
SPC Saroth Muth (Cambodia)
SPC David Floutier (England)
SPC Hugo Juarez (Mexico)
SPC Evans Martin (Antigua)
SPC Octavio Rodriguez (Mexico)
Back row Left to Right
SGT Ringsey Khin (Cambodia)
SPC Abdel Phipps (Jamaica)
SGT Collin Campbell (Trinidad)
SPC Bosco Jerez (Nicaragua)
SPC Jose Alvarado (Honduras)
SPC Moises Medina (Mexico)
Shakespeare Isn't Porky's
Dave Kopel has the same criticism of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival that I have of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival: The only real weakness of the production is one which is recurring problem for CSF: the tendency to push Shakespeare’s robustly bawdy scripts far over the edge of vulgarity. For example, Olivia’s pompous servant Malvolio is tricked into believing that Olivia has written him a love letter with the line “some have greatness thrust upon them.” When Malvolio declares his love to the astonished Olivia, as he repeats the “thrust upon them” line, he thrusts his crotch at her face. Please. There’s still supposed to be a difference between Shakespeare and Porky’s.
This has been a recurring problem with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival as well. As I observed a couple of years back: Shakespeare's plays often have a bawdy side to them, but the changes in slang mean that much of this goes right over the heads of a modern audience, both adults and kids. This being Family Night (when children under 6 are admitted), the actors, I guess, were afraid that there wouldn't be enough offensive sexual content if they played it straight. Helena expresses her devotion to Demetrius with
I am unsure whether this need to vulgarize everything is because the acting business is awash in leftists who feel the need to offend the majority, or because the acting business is awash in members of a subculture that isn't aware that there's more to life than sex. Subtlety has some real virtues, you know.I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
Helena gets down on all fours, and starts to wiggle her rear and thrust back in a manner that was clearly intended to be sexually suggestive. The Pyramis & Thisby scene at the end has Thisby speaking the lines about "My cherry lips have often kiss'd thy stones" to the actor playing the wall--while down on her knees, face up very close to the actors groin.
There were several similar examples of what would be mildly risque motions to an adult audience, but in an audience that they knew was going to be awash in kids?
Owning Machine Tools Does Not Make You A Machinist
I've started actually experimenting with this Sherline minilathe that I bought used through eBay. It wasn't terribly complete (nor was it represented as such): it has a three jaw chuck, one cutting tool, the tool holder, the bed, and the tailstock. What I don't have is a live center, and some of the more specific tools (such as the one you use for making a clean cut across a turning object).
I am also thinking of buying the riser blocks that let you turn larger diameter objects, by putting the tailstock and headstock higher above the bed. In theory, I can turn a 3" object on this--in practice, I can only face (use the tool to make a smooth right angle face on one end) a 3" object right now.
Anyway, this evening's fun and games included taking a piece of round scrap and facing both ends of it. It was only approximately a cylinder; the two ends weren't perfect right angles, and they were irregular. One end is now perfect; the other end is a right angle, but not quite as smooth as it should be.
Anyway, the next step is to start combing the catalogs from LittleMachineShop.com (which caters to minilathes) and Sherline. I don't think the machinist that I am using to make some of the parts that end up in ScopeRoller products is going to be out of work in the next few weeks.
