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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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An Ugly Reminder About The Core Problems in New Orleans
There have been a number of troubling reports of children being raped who were staying in the New Orleans Superdome, and there's no question that women were being raped by their fellow "victims" in there. This morning, Geraldo Rivera on Fox reported that there were two dead bodies near him: one a man who attacked someone with scissors, and was shot to death; the other a guy who attempted to rape a 13 year old, and was shot to death. At least the aggressors didn't get away with their crimes (which contrary to current leftist blather, were not George Bush's fault) in those cases. From the New Zealand Herald (quoting a former New Zealander now working for New Orleans Police Department): "There's shooting. The thugs inside, they have come outside. They are running up and down, disturbing people with impunity. They know we can't cross the road and engage them because we don't know where their cohorts are. We are so vastly outnumbered, especially at night," said Mr Gourlie.
I can't believe that the savages committing these crimes don't have long criminal histories. Unfortunately, New Orleans suffers from the problem of most big cities--an unwillingness to recognize that violent criminals need to go to prison and stay there.
There has also been murder and rape. In one awful case, a 15-year-old girl had suffered both, her body stuffed into an oven with her throat slit.
Why Wasn't New Orleans Completely Evacuated?
There's a lot of reasons.
Some career criminals didn't leave, I suspect, because they were looking forward to the chance to loot the city.
I would expect that many of the mentally ill (of which New Orleans, like any big city, has a lot) did not leave because they either didn't get the message, or were too fearful to accept transportation even if it had been offered.
Some stayed because they were hospitalized.
Some stayed because they didn't see any need for it--New Orleans has been hit by hurricanes before.
Some stayed because they didn't have anywhere to go if they left New Orleans.
Some stayed because they either didn't have a car, or they didn't have a large enough car to get the whole family out. I read one news account where this poor family had a Chevrolet Cavalier--but more than five people, and they were worried about being ticketed for not everyone belted up. (If that sounds silly, remember that poor people, and especially poor black people, tend to be quite fearful of the police, and sometimes with good reason.)
This last group is what makes this story so disturbing. It turns out that there were plenty of buses that could have been used by the New Orleans government to evacuate people in this last category before the hurricane struck--and had they done so, it would not only have saved lives, it would have saved money as well. Junkyard Blog has a bunch of pictures of these buses that were allowed to be destroyed, rather than used for evacuation: With the improved resolution we count 255 buses in that one lot. That means at a capacity of 66 on board, 16,830 New Orleans residents could have been evacced out in one trip. Even if you have a lower capacity per bus, say 50 per bus, you're still getting nearly 13,000 out in one run. In an emergency mandatory evacuation, you could probably get away with putting more than 66 on each of those buses.
Maybe there was some good reason why these buses weren't used to evacuate poor people from New Orleans before the hurricane, and it is very possible that many would have refused evacuation, anyway. Mayor Nagin's administration has a lot to answer for about this.
When we said that the buses are now expenses instead of assets, this is what we meant. Not only are those buses ruined, their disuse resulting in lives lost, but now they're spilling oil and gas out into the already polluted water. A spark near that slick could cause yet another fire and a whole new set of explosions.
"A Criminal Will Just Take The Gun Away From You"
It is an article of faith among gun control advocates that no one--but especially women--shouldn't have guns for self-defense because "the criminal will take your gun away from you while you are hesitating, and use it on you." I say "especially women" because gun control advocates so often presented it in "women are too soft and weak to defend themselves" terms.
I remember one of the made for TV movies of the early 1980s pretended that it was being open minded about gun ownership, with a sociopath stalking a woman. Her boyfriend the airline pilot carries a gun when he flies, and of course, encourages her to get a pistol to protect herself from the creep. Of course, when the creep threatens her, she draws the gun--and of course, can't shoot him. At the very end of the movie, she of course is disarmed by the creep; the boyfriend gets shot by him; only the police save the day.
An old friend of mine, Andy Freeman, used to offer gun control advocates $50 for any example that they could find of a civilian woman being disarmed by a criminal of her gun, and having it used on her. The last that I had heard, no one had earned that $50 yet.
Here's one of those stories, from the March 18, 2005 Decatur (Alabama) Daily that reminds you that even with all the odds stacked against her, here's a woman who was quite prepared to defend herself--and the story is pretty funny, too: Investigators captured two suspects Thursday, charging Bernard Obrian Driskell, 19, and Tavarius Learon Gladney, 17, with the March 9 home invasion.
Decatur investigator Jeremy Hayes said Thursday that Driskell, Gladney and a third man were armed when they kicked in the door at Tinisha Octavia Allen's 407 14th Ave. N.W. home about 11 p.m.
"Allen was in her living room," Hayes said. "She grabbed her pistol and shot Driskell twice in his chest. They were bumping into each other like Larry, Moe and Curly trying to get out of her house."
Charley & The Chocolate Factory
My wife rather liked the 1970s Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Gene Wilder's Willie Wonka was bizarre, but not in a terribly sinister way--although I've always that the tale was too dark to be a children's movie, and too juvenile for adults. In some respects, Gene Wilder's version was like one of Grimm's fairy tales--too dark for my notion of a children's story, but that has a lesson about what happens to ill-behaved little brats. No surprise--Grimm's fairy tales were intended to scare children into not being stupid. ("Go out into the Black Forest by yourself, and look what might happen to you!")
The new movie, on the other hand, seems to have Johnny Depp's Willie Wonka channeling Michael Jackson. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but the parallels are really amazing.
Willie Wonka makes a pile of money making something that people want; so did Michael Jackson.
Willie Wonka becomes fearful of industrial spies taking secrets from his gargantuan factory, and cuts himself off the world, becoming more bizarre by the moment. Michael Jackson has some unfortunate "incidents" and becomes more bizarre in his public behavior.
Willie Wonka, as part of cutting himself off from the outside world, replaces his local employees with Oompa-Loompas. Michael Jackson has his own little entourage that is just a bit more normal than Oompa-Loompas.
Willie Wonka, at least outwardly, likes children--but once they get into the factory, bad things start to happen to the kids--but Willie Wonka manages to rationalize these bad things as not being so bad. Michael Jackson....well, enough said.
Willie Wonka's chocolate factory is beautiful in a strange, very child-oriented way. Neverland: Ditto.
Willie Wonka had a traumatic childhood at the hands of monstrous father. Michael Jackson apparently ditto.
Near the beginning of the movie we see a display disturbingly similar to Disneyland's "It's a small, small world" ride that sings Willie Wonka's praises. I found myself wondering if Neverland might have robots like Disneyland's "Mr. Lincoln Speaks" singing Michael Jackson's praises, and I've just missed news coverage of this.
Like any movie made by Tim Burton, it was stylish and fascinatingly strange. Charlie lives in a house that looks like what might happen if Disneyland had a Victorian Povertyland section. This house gives an entirely new meaning to "extended family."
This was not a good use of my two hours.
My Contempt Is Getting Greater By The Moment
This account from the Guardian (a left-wing British paper) tells me that at least some of the problem is the savagery of the "victims": When National Guard helicopters attempt to land supplies in the parking lot, waiter Bob Vineyard joins a self-appointed ground crew attempting to set up a safe perimeter. The crowd surges past them with an almost feral intensity, and the chopper crew is forced to take off.
Perhaps because this description would indicate a complete inability to think beyond the next ten seconds?
The soldiers drop cases of water and self-heating meals from 10 feet in the air. Many of the bottles burst on impact, the precious water left to evaporate in the hot sun.
``We would have had a whole helicopter full of food if you had stayed back!'' Vineyard shouts at the crowd, with disgust. ``Hey, y'all. I did my best.''
Carl Davis wonders why someone can't just truck the food in and hand it out in an orderly fashion. Rather than taking comfort in the food drops, he finds the process insulting, demeaning.
``They're giving it to us like we're in the Third World,'' he spits. ``This should never have happened. It didn't happen in Iraq, and it didn't happen in the tsunami.''
Great First-Hand Account of Gun Self-Defense in New Orleans
From the Boston Herald: I was standing on the front porch with a shotgun keeping an eye on things. I could hear people breaking into houses right around the corner. We knew. We knew we had to get out. There was no police presence. The people are just going crazy. There doesn't seem to be any authority at all.
...
We had to make two trips in the canoe to get the cats and the dogs and the people we were with to get to higher ground. We saw fires and looting going on. If we didn't keep on moving and stay away from some people I feel like we would have been in trouble.
Earlier today, a man came up to me. I think he wanted the canoe. He saw I was armed and gave up.
We happened to pass this mall and people were looting it.
People told us the police went in there so they started shooting at the police. So the police left. They (looters) just set the place on fire. We saw it burning and we saw the fire department not even going near the place because the looters were going nuts.
I Believe That This Young Man Will Use The Necessity Defense
Someone tired of waiting for the government to rescue him and others, and took the law into his own hands: Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.
And yes, there is talk of prosecuting Gibson for theft. The necessity defense--that he broke the law to save lives--would seem admirably suited to his defense. That is, if prosecutors are stupid enough to charge Gibson.
About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.
The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.
"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."
Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.
"I just took the bus and drove all the way here...seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."
The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.
Relief Efforts
I'm contributing to the Salvation Army, which is providing assistance to both victims and first responders on this crisis. You can make a contribution here. This assumes, of course, that their web site ever stops getting so many hits that it can respond. I guess we can regard this is as a positive sign--that their donation website is too busy to respond!
I Don't Believe This Claim About New Orleans Cannibalism
For one thing, it has only been four days: It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive. Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
If it only takes four days without food to reduce New Orleans residents to cannibalism, I'm afraid that the problem is far more serious than I thought--and it is a problem of savagery.
And if you are wondering: this claim about black cannibals in New Orleans is coming from a black civil rights activist.
Things Are Much Worse In New Orleans Than I Thought
This CNN account is shocking: Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.
And yet the same report tells us:
One New Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks.
"It's a war zone, and they're not treating it like one," he said, referring to the federal government. ...
The officer hitched a ride to Baton Rouge Friday morning, after working 60 hours straight in the flooded city. He has not decided whether he will return.
He broke down in tears when he described the deaths of his fellow officers, saying many had drowned doing their jobs. Other officers have turned in their badges as the situation continues to deteriorate.
In one incident, the sergeant said gunmen fired rifles and AK-47s at the helicopters flying overhead.
He said he saw bodies riddled with bullet holes, and the top of one man's head completely shot off.Lt. Gen. Russel Honore was directing the deployment of National Guard troops -- expected to number 1,000 -- from a New Orleans street corner.
Actually, it does sound like it might be as bad as Iraq. It would appear that with the vast majority of civilized people having left New Orleans before the hurricane, a Lord of the Flies situation developed, with the criminal class now dominating the remaining population.
...
CNN's Barbara Starr, who is traveling with the three-star general, said Honore is "very determined to keep this looking like a humanitarian relief operation." ...
"A few moments ago, he stopped a truck full of National Guard troops ... and said, 'Point your weapons down, this is not Iraq,'" Starr reported.
The whining liberals are screeching about talking about law-abiding people shooting looters will just make things worse. It doesn't sound like there is somewhere worse to go.
The anarchist wing of libertarianism talks a lot about spontaneous order developing out of chaos. It is certainly true that civilized and sensible people, in the absence of government, are quite capable of developing reasonable and voluntary ways of dealing with common problems--even in a disaster. But this presupposes "civilized and sensible people" are in such a large majority that they are the dominant influence. What happens if savages are 20% of the population?
Proof That Middle School Students Write Screenplays
And not even particularly bright middle school students.
I am going to rant and rave about how incredibly bad Sci-Fi Channel's original movies are. I'm ranting and raving because I am tremendously resentful that someone pays people to make movies that are not only this dumb--but don't even have the saving grace of appealing to a mass audience. I have no experience writing screenplays, but I know that I could do a better job than this.
Warning: spoilers for a very bad movie; some detailed descriptions of some gruesome scenes in this incredibly bad movie.
One of these days, the Sci-Fi Channel is going to have a movie made for it that will be worth watching. So far, I am absolutely astonished at how tremendously bad these efforts are. I was bored out of my wits this evening, so I watched Pterodactyl, which was made this year. Tragically, this is right up there with half a dozen other Sci-Fi originals in how bad it is--right down there with Plan Nine From Outer Space, but lacking the camp.
Look, I'm not a stickler for accurate science in a sci-fi movie. I'm not even demanding that Sci-Fi original movies be consistent in their bad science. I am not demanding that they have good special effects--the original Star Trek series had terrible special effects, but because the stories were often thought-provoking, and sometimes showed some real human drama, I could ignore that.
I would just like the screenplays to be written by someone with some knowledge of:
1. Adults.
2. Real people, instead of juvenilely written stereotypes.
3. A sufficient knowledge of geology to laugh at the stupid volcano matte.
Pterodactyl starts out with all these hopeless stereotypes. There is the Earnest Professor of Paleontology--just good looking enough to make you think of Sam Neill in Jurassic Park--but because he is a Serious Scientist, he is only interested in objects that are millions of years old. Serious Scientists have no romantic or erotic attraction to the opposite sex--and certainly not to the beautiful and smart woman who is....
The Pretty Female Grad Student--but not a bombshell, and unlike the other females, she doesn't dress sexy or even attractively because then she wouldn't be a "serious" scientist in training. After many years of working for Earnest Professor, she finally gets across to him at the start of their fossil hunting trip that she would like their relationship to be unprofessional--and of course, being an Earnest Professor, he could never think of such a thing (but of course, this changes by the end of the movie).
There is the Big Bosomed Blonde Bombshell Undergrad Airhead (think Clueless but without the humor). She is completely and utterly useless, and her knowledge of paleontology is down below the Special Ops soldiers we meet later in the film. And you ask yourself, why has Earnest Professor brought not only undergraduates from the United States to help on this dig in Turkey--but an undergraduate who knows effectively nothing about paleontology?
There is Nerdy Undergrad Guy--whose dress, glasses, and mannerisms bring to mind Revenge of the Nerds--but it isn't funny. He's what a middle schooler would stereotype the smart kids at his school as--when they grow up.
Big Bosomed Blonde Bombshell, of course, has to strip off her shirt and shorts to go for a swim--by herself, in a lake in a country that she doesn't even know. (A Muslim country at that, where her swimsuit would probably get her either arrested, or raped.)
Earnest Professor is carrying a revolver on this expedition. While I appreciate that at least the screenwriters didn't feel the need to throw in anti-gun propaganda, do they really think that Earnest Professor was able to fly into Turkey with a handgun, and not have it confiscated?
The Special Ops guys are just a bit too stereotyped as well--right down to the female member of the team (yeah, right!) who seems to have spent too much time modeling herself on the very macho female Colonial Marine in the movie Aliens. But of course, since the movie was made by middle schoolers, she has a body that would shame a Vegas showgirl, and even olive drab can't hide it.
The Special Ops guys get involved early on with killing pterodactyls (after Big Bosomed Blonde Bombshell gets picked up and dismembered). But unlike real Special Ops, they can't seem to call in air support or even helicopter evacuation because of the "sensitivity" of the mission. They are arresting what seems to be a thuggish terrorist leader at the request of the Turkish government--but they can't call in air support for fear of offending...who? The Turkish government?
Pterodactyls are definitely a bit big to bring down with .223 and handgun ammunition--although Earnest Professor is blazing away repeatedly with that revolver. I think we see him reload once--and even then, this guy must be carrying ten or fifteen speedloaders. His shooting is remarkably accurate for someone who isn't aiming the gun--not even slightly.
Of course, real soldiers would have at least a few rifle/grenade launcher combos, and a grenade would solve the pterodactyl problem quite well, and perhaps open the plot up to some more subtle or interesting problem. So...no grenades. Instead, the soldiers have this bizarre rocket launcher that you aim by putting on the virtual reality helmet, look at the target, and then fire--and the tracking system makes the rocket fly in loops, go around mountains, etc. before finally reaching and hitting old Leatherlips. But of course, they don't have very many of these wondrous rockets. This way, our screenwriters can figure out how to create tension.
There's a lot of blood spurting, especially when the pterodactyls take someone's head, and leave either the body, or grab just the upper part of the body, leaving everything from the waist down. Now remember: the people are just standing there--and the swooping pterodacytl grabs the head or upper body, and the body just breaks apart. This can't happen. It is grossly unrealistic (along with very gross). Realism can be disgusting, but this isn't even realism.
Later we see one of the soldiers who has been grabbed and taken back to the pterodactyl's nest to feed the babies. He's been there, injured, and subject to baby pterodactyl ripping for at least 30 minutes, maybe more. They have ripped his abdomen and chest open, and they are pulling out organs to feed upon--and he is conscious, and expressing some discomfort. Not only was this an unnecessary scene, but it was utterly impossible.
At this point (or perhaps several paragraphs back), you are probably asking yourself, "Why does Clayton watch such bad movies, and why does he care so much?" For one simple reason: someone is actually being paid to write screenplays this bad, and someone else is actually being paid to make movies this bad. I know that I can do a better job.
I think that almost anyone who has spent more than a few months with adults could do a better job of creating real characters--not stereotypes. You don't have to know a great deal about our military to see the glaring holes in this film's weaponry. Anyone with any knowledge of guns would see the incredible flaws in Earnest Professor's handgun use--as well as his apparently unlimited supply of ammunition that he is carrying around.
Pterodactyl is, in my experience, pretty representative of Sci-Fi Channel's original movies. I would hope that films of this tremendously low caliber indicate nepotism at work. The alternative is that someone at Sci-Fi Channel just blows money for no particular reason.
Shooting Looters
There's a discussion going on about the legality and morality of shooting looters over at Volokh Conspiracy. David Kopel doesn't have a problem with it; Orin Kerr is upset about this: In response to David Kopel's post below, my own view is that encouraging vigilante groups in New Orleans to "shoot on sight" whoever they believe is a looter without a valid necessity defense is tremendously dangerous. Such an approach would only help undermine the social order by turning New Orleans from a looting zone into a shooting zone.
In the comments section, some are saying that the term "looter" is insufficiently precise to distinguish several activities going on in New Orleans.
A "looter" is someone stealing property without the threat of force. If they use the threat of force (as some are doing, in order to steal drugs from hospitals), then they are not "looters" but robbers.
Robbers should be shot, preferably by those under threat, but if by someone else, there's no moral or legal problem. A robber has already announced that he considers the victim's property more valuable than the victim's life by threatening violence. The robber is therefore in no position to assert that the robber's life is more valuable than the victim's property.
I can't see a strong moral argument for shooting looters--but at least if they are stealing non-necessities under these circumstances, I can't see a strong argument against it, either. If someone is stealing food or other necessities of life, under what are necessarily extreme circumstances, I'm not even sure that I can be very critical of their actions.
If they are stealing non-necessities (such as televisions or jewelry) under such circumstances, they have announced loudly to all that the law of the jungle now applies: what Hobbes called "the war of all against all." They really don't deserve the protections of the law anymore, and shooting such a looter as an encouragement to civilized behavior by the rest doesn't seem particularly absurd.
Meth Problems
I blogged a while back about how meth is not like a lot of other illegal drugs, and those who are discounting the problem are making a serious mistake. I still think that education is the most effective way to deal with drug abuse problems and their consequences, but meth isn't heroin, which isn't marijuana, which isn't alcohol. I'm pleased to see Mark Kleiman, who is about as far from me politically as it is possible to be, and who has significant expertise in this area, agreeing with me, and making many of the same points, with considerably more detail.
Cooking With 7-Up
James Lileks, the author of The Gallery of Regrettable Food (which I very much enjoyed, and I encourage you to buy) has a marvelous collection of pages from a 1950s cookbook--telling you all the wonderful ways that you can and should use 7-Up. No, not in desserts, but mixed with milk, in salad dressing, and for cooking ham.
Like everything Lileks does in this area, the pages themselves will make you roll your eyes as you wonder what was in the water in the 1950s, but Lileks' commentary is very funny, although sometimes just a little crude.
Mortgage Rates Drop Again
Yesterday, my credit union informed that the 3/1 ARM zero point mortgage rate had fallen from 4.625% to 4.5%. Today the rate has fallen to 4.375%. This is good news, at least for me.
Hurricane Katrina
I haven't had much to say about this, but the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog is unsurprisingly getting entries in the aftermath.
I own a few guns--actually enough that I can't immediately tell you how many rifles and handguns are sitting in my gun safes. Living in big city Idaho (I mean, as big city as any place in Idaho can be), it is surprisingly easy to rationalize not owning a gun at all. What need is there for a gun in a place like this? It isn't like anyone is going to try and hurt you here. (Of course, this place isn't California.)
Then I see disasters like this, and it reminds me how thin a veneer civilization really is. It doesn't take much of a disruption in services and law enforcement to turn New Orleans into what Hobbes called the state of nature, "a war of all against all." A similarly disruptive natural disaster in Boise might reduce our population to a level of savagery equivalent to what New Orleans was like before the hurricane.
Proof Positive of John Roberts' Unfitness For The High Bench!
He denied that he was a member of the Federalist Society--but now we know he was a member of the Columbia House Record Club! (Ya gotta click over to see this, just for the picture!)
Advertising ScopeRoller
I had John Hamel do a nice animated GIF advertising banner for me a few days ago, with the intention of running the ad on the Sky & Telescope web site. I will probably still do that at some point--but the ad would cost me about $330 for 20,000 impressions--and I wasn't sure how many of those readers would be Losmandy mount owners.
Google has an advertising program called AdWords; the first block of advertising that you see at the top of this blog is an example of it. It uses keyword selection to pick on which sites any particular ad runs. Sometimes keyword selection causes some inappropriate or not very successful advertising selections. If I blog about homosexuality, and use the word "gay," there's a good chance that a gay dating service ad will appear at the top--and for the most part, this isn't exactly the best choice for a place to advertise products for gay people. On the other hand, for those pages that have historical content, AdWords often does a spectacularly good job of picking ads for history books.
Anyway, here's the cool aspect of AdWords: other than paying $5 for a setup charge, the only time I pay for advertising is when someone clicks on the ad to go visit the ScopeRoller website. If thousands of people see my ad--but never click over--it costs me nothing. If someone is sufficiently interested to click over, there's a good chance that this is someone that might be interested in my product.
The pricing is very clever. You can select a priority for placement of your ad by specifying a maximum amount that you are willing to pay per click--from as little to a penny per click, to whatever amount makes sense. As you increase what you will pay per click through, it increases the frequency with which pages that have matching keywords or phrases will display your ad--and it gives you an estimate of the number of customers that will see the ad. I discovered by experimenting a bit that there was no advantage to paying more than $0.20 per click for one set of keywords, and a bit less for another.
You can also set a maximum daily budget--as soon as you have spent $2 for the day on a particular ad campaign (to use a silly example), it stops showing ads. This helps you to avoid someone intentionally clicking tens of thousands of times on your ad but never buying anything, and driving you into bankruptcy.
The keywords and phrases that I am using are all related to the Losmandy and CI-700 mounts, and so they aren't appearing a lot. Yesterday I only had 31 impressions, and none of them clicked through--but it didn't cost me anything, either.
The House Project: Starting To Roof
We went up there today partly to confirm that we received the correct jetted tub. (The builder was expecting something doublewide--this is deep, and intended to sit facing each other.) But while were there, we took some pictures of the roof trusses--all of which are now in place.
Here you can see the interior arches as well.
When I look at them--while do I think of the ribs that make up the ceiling of a cathedral? (Okay, this isn't quite that grand.)
Here you can see that they have started to roof at one end of the house.
Here are the shower stalls, shower/tub combo, and jetted tub stacked up in the garage.
Just a little picture of the inside of the shower stall.
The back driveway has a rather odd swirl, perhaps from running some piece of machinery over it. I'm hoping this gets fixed during the final finish of the concrete.
The electric meter is now moved from its temporary position to the permanent breaker box.
And the ugly pole where the meter was temporarily has now been removed, leaving only the ugly transformer box.
Another view of the roof from the water cistern hill. As we were walking up the hill--a red fox ran up the hill within 25 feet of me. Our duck is going to require an appropriate protective enclosure!
Oh yeah, the propane tank is waiting to be buried. To Rhonda, it reminds her of an off-color version of the title gadget of Yellow Submarine, so she gives an appropriately nautical salute.
Last house entry.
What's The Right Adjective To Describe This Person?
The average member of this group: has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry...
So, what adjective would you use to describe this person? A few more clues:
Okay, give up? Middle class? Black? College student?
No, the adjective is "poor."
The report from the Heritage Foundation goes on to point out that there are people in this group who are what you would normally think of as "poor." About 10% of poor people don't even have a phone (unlike the 25% of poor people who have cell phones and answering machines).
Perhaps the government's definition of "poor" needs some work.
Thanks to Michael Williams for pointing me to this report.
Lead Poisoning
I've mentioned in the past the importance of dealing with lead poisoning because children exposed to it are in danger of retardation, and even adults are more likely to become violent or aggressive from lead poisoning. I've mentioned these problems and suggested solutions here, and here.
That black kids are more likely to end up exposed to lead in older buildings is obvious--and it doesn't take a genius to wonder if some of the noticeably worse performance of blacks on intelligence tests and much higher murder rates by blacks (largely of other blacks) might be connected to this lead exposure problem. There's also some reason to suspect a connection between childhood lead exposure and schizophrenia.
Michael Williams is now blogging about the problem that Mexican candy has very high lead levels in it--and the obvious health implications for children growing up in Hispanic subcultures in the United States.
Roof Trusses Up
The builder tells me that the roof trusses are now all in place; he hopes to have at the roof on this week, so that they can get the mechanical components (plumbing, heating and air conditioning) installed.
My Ability To Predict The (Near) Future is Vindicated!
Well, sort of. I mentioned yesterday that my credit union's mortgage rate had again fallen to where I had locked it a few weeks ago, and I would not be surprised if I would have an opportunity to take advantage of the one-time float-down option. Sure enough, as of this morning, the rate is now below where I locked it--4.50% with zero points instead of 4.625%.
Do You Have Experience Opening The Case on an HP Pavillon N3402 Notebook?
I removed all the obvious screws--and it was like there were one or two more holding the case on to the motherboard. The external video connector is a little loose. For a while, it was unreliable with an external monitor (but giving an interesting set of colors, all wrong). Now it won't feed an external monitor at all. I suspect that this connector is loose and could be either soldered back to the motherboard (worst case) or may just need to be screwed down to some chassis--but I can't get the case open!
Unfortunately, for all that Best Buy advertised Geek Squad, in practice, if I take it in to them in Boise, they have to ship it to Seattle. This is my wife's computer; she can't be without it for a week.
UPDATE: It took a few emails back and forth to HP customer support, but they finally were able to give me a link to an HP N3000 service manual that explains this--but not on HP's website.
I Guess They Turn Off The Mind Control Rays For Porn
The British government, much more liberal and open-minded than reactionary Amerikkkans, is getting ready to ban downloading of "violent and abusive pornography" from the Internet: LONDON — The British government is proposing to ban the downloading and possession of violent and abusive pornography from the Internet, a minister said Tuesday.
I find myself generally in agreement with the Supreme Court's decision in Miller v. California (1973) which concluded that obscenity was not protected by the First Amendment, and the definition of obscene was:
Home Office Minister Paul Goggins (search) said the government felt a duty to prevent cases such as the murder of Jan Longhurst, a 31-year-old teacher killed in 2003 by a friend who was obsessed with violent pornography found on the Internet.
However, he said there was no proof that certain kinds of images would arouse violence in everyone.
"We know from that particular case, the horrendous case of Jane Longhurst, who was brutally murdered by Graham Coutts, that these images do have an impact, do feed the fantasies in certain individuals," Goggins said.
"We believe it's our responsibility to prevent that from happening."(a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest..., (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Now, there might well be a point where narrow-minded bluenoses get out of control about censorship, such that serious and important topics related to sexuality can't be discussed or examined in movies, books, or on the Internet. A visit to the adult channels of your cable TV receiver (or the spam collector of my email inbox) suggests that we are probably at least a few weeks away from that threshold--perhaps even months away from that terrifying moment.
Anyway, all of this to make this snide remark about one of the Britons fighting the British government's proposal: Chris Evans of Internet Freedom, a pressure group, said users should be free to chose what they see.
I guess all the money spent on advertising is just wasted--it doesn't influence anyone, does it? Or, as some cheeky person suggested with respect to television shows and the commercials between them, "Maybe they just turn off the mind control rays when the commercial ends."
"There is no evidence that watching violent images causes people to carry out violent acts," Evans said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. television.
The Yield Curve Inversion Is Coming Soon!
The first time I used the phrase "yield curve inversion" to a friend, his reaction was, "That sounds like a dangerous nuclear physics experiment involving plutonium." (Okay, this says something about the unique nature of my friends.)
Yield curve inversion means that short-term bonds have a higher annualized yield than long-term bonds. Sometimes it means a recession is coming. The last time this happened, in the mid-1990s, it meant that balanced budgets were coming, and I think that is what this one means. (Usually this indicates that it is time to buy long-term bonds. I waited a bit too long last time to buy bonds, but still did very nicely because of it.)
As of 3:35 PM Mountain time, the 2 year Treasury bond has a yield of 3.938%; the 10 year Treasury bond yield is 4.094%. The yield curve hasn't inverted yet, but it is getting very flat.
Why Greenspan May Be Worried About Irrational Exuberance in Housing
Long-term Treasury yields are falling. I didn't want to contribute to the irrationality, but they keep falling. A couple of weeks back, the 30 year Treasury bond was yielding above 4.5%--now (1:50 PM Mountain time on Tuesday) we are at 4.327%, which is lower than yesterday, which was lower than Friday.
Not surprisingly, my credit union's mortgage rates (at least for the 3/1 ARM) are back down to where they were when I locked my loan for the new house. I have the option of a one-time floatdown before funding the loan, and I am beginning to wonder if that may turn out to be something that I will be doing.
This good is for those of who have not sold our current homes, and good for those who want to buy a home and get a decent mortgage rate.
Talking to my realtor last night, she is investigating the possiblity that the recent sale above $300,000 in our neighborhood might actually be the second sale of that house in the last two months, since it was originally offered more than a month ago for sale by owner at $295,000. Is it "flipping" if the second sale takes place in another month?
The Boise Housing Market
I mentioned yesterday that Greenspan is concerned about housing prices being unsustainable--and why I think Boise probably isn't at that point.
Overheard in the gym last week: one engineer just remarried, they didn't need two three bedroom, two bath houses--so they sold his, in five hours. A 3000 square foot house went on the market very recently in our neighborhood listed at $305,000. In two days, it was sold.
I don't think the market is that outrageously priced here yet. Here's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in my zip code, 1940 square foot, built in 1971, offered at $135,900.
More so than in California, housing prices reflect differences in school districts--even though the difference between the best and the worst public schools in the Boise area is not all that dramatic. The worst public schools in Boise would compare favorably to all but the very best public schools in California.
More Evidence That The Bush Administration Protects Big Business
From Reuters: NEW YORK (Reuters) - Big Four accounting firm KPMG agreed to pay a $456 million fine in a settlement with U.S. authorities over past tax shelter sales, officials said in a federal court hearing on Monday, avoiding an indictment of the firm.
It just amazes me how many leftists screech about how the Bush Administration and Republicans are pro-big business--and yet so many of these criminal investigations have taken place under the Bush Administration--and often have involved actions that took place during the Clinton Administration.
As part of the settlement, KPMG, one of the world's four largest accounting firms, will accept outside supervision by an independent monitor.
The pact avoids a criminal indictment of KPMG that accounting industry experts said could have destroyed it in a possible replay of the March 2002 federal indictment that led to the downfall of former top accounting firm Andersen.
I won't claim that the Clinton Administration didn't care about accounting shenigans (although that might be true). It is clear, however, that whatever sympathy Bush and friends might have for big corporations, it isn't preventing huge fines for violations of the law.
Scientific Method & Conservatism
Todd Zywicki statistically examines the claims being made that there is no discrimination against conservatives in academia. While careful not to overstate how strong the evidence is on this (because of a limited number of data points), he points out that this is not a plausible claim.
One of the most outrageous and bigoted claims that the left is making to justify the nearly complete absence of conservatives in the academy is: Third, many conservatives may deliberately choose not to seek employment at top-tier research universities because they object, on philosophical grounds, to one of the fundamental tenets undergirding such institutions: the scientific method.... Furthermore, cultural conservatism, as revealed in antipathy toward gay rights, the women's movement, and abortion rights (among other things), has been shown to stem in large part from an embrace of Christian fundamentalism as a dominant worldview. Fundamentalism, by definition, is an absolutist, "faith-based" allegiance to a particular dogma, the veracity of which is considered beyond question or argument. Such worldviews are (again, by definition) antithetical to the philosophy of science, which permotes reason and evidence as the determinants of truth.
Sarcasm mode on. Oh yeah! When I need to debug a programming problem, instead of examining inputs and outputs, stepping through the program line by line, and then figuring out which is the most likely cause of the failure--I just pray for my program to be healed, and it is! Sarcasm mode off.
Zywicki points out that if this were the case, then the hard sciences--math, physics, chemistry--should have even a greater political disparity than the social sciences and humanities, where scientific method is seldom used. While conservatives are still far less common in the hard sciences than in the general population, the gap is less dramatic there than it is the humanities and social sciences.
Some of the claims that the left is making to justify what is pretty obviously employment discrimination are just embarrassingly insulting. I fear that many academics haven't met a conservative since they moved out of the house.
Randy Barnett On The Ninth Amendment
Professor Barnett's latest paper on which he seeks comments can be downloaded here. I am not impressed; you can read my comments here.
The core difficulty with Barnett's paper is what is wrong with almost everything Barnett writes on this topic: he has an ahistorical understanding of the Framers. Contrary to Barnett's belief in a Presumption of Liberty, the guys who wrote our Constitution were not libertarians.
While James Madison was ahead of his time in recognizing that majorities can and do abuse minorities, for most of the Framers, the big concern with the federal government was that it was too far removed from the people. While some of the state constitutions reflect a concern about the dangers of the state government getting out of hand, other state constitutions not only granted astonishing powers to the state legislature, but required them to exercise these very antilibertarian powers. As an example, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 required the legislature to pass laws mandating church attendance and providing for tax funding of churches: Art. III. As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffcused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God and of the public instructions in piety, religion, and morality: Therefore, To promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies-politic or religious societies to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.
There are state laws throughout this period that make it a crime to commit adultery, sodomy, limiting sales of alcohol, licentious books, and in general, showing that there was nothing proto-libertarian about the early Republic.
And the people of this commonwealth have also a right to, and do, invest their legislature with authority to enjoin upon all the subject an attendance upon the instructions of the public teachers aforesaid, at stated times and seasons, if there be any on whose instructions they can conscientiously and conveniently attend.
From the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 (and Pennsylvania is one of the more libertarian of states in that time): VIII. That every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and therefore is bound to contribute his proportion towards the expence of that protection, and yield his personal service when necessary, or an equivalent thereto: But no part of a man's property can be justly taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of his legal representatives: Nor can any man who is conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms, be justly compelled thereto, if he will pay such equivalent, nor are the people bound by any laws, but such as they have in like manner assented to, for their common good.
The best that you could hope for, if called to military service, was to claim that you had a religious objection, and pay for a substitute.
Maryland's 1809 statute greatly reduced the penalty for sodomy (from hanging): 8th. Every person duly convicted of the crime of sodomy, shall be sentenced to undergo a similar confinement for a period not less than one year nor more than ten years, under the same conditions as are herein after directed.
There was not a Presumption of Liberty in the early Republic.
UPDATE: Professor Barnett and I seem to be arguing past each other: The evidence does show, I think, that the rights "retained by the people" was a reference to individual natural rights (and that these rights were best understood as "liberty rights"). Perhaps here is a way to formulate the individual natural rights model of the Ninth Amendment that will clarify it for Clayton: The Ninth Amendment extended the same protection against federal abuses of other liberties as the Second Amendment extended to the individual right to keep and bear arms.
I am not disputing this--but what "other liberties" does this include? The Second Amendment, whatever problems there might be with this dependent/independent clause question, at least is clearly referring to "right of the people to keep and bear arms." What rights does the Ninth Amendment protect? This is where I find his paper unclear. Yes, he agrees that the Ninth Amendment is a protection only against federal power--but asserting that a federalist understanding of the Ninth Amendment is also a protection of individual rights against the states (as he seems to be saying) isn't right.
As long as the states retain all power not delegated to the federal government, and not protected by the Ninth Amendment (one form of the federalist argument), or protected through the Fourteenth Amendment, individual rights are subject to whatever limitations the state legislature may impose that do not conflict with the state constitution.
Uh, Oh: Greenspan Isn't Happy!
Fed Chairman Greenspan isn't happy with some of you irrationally exuberant home owners: In a pre-retirement speech to fellow central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Mr Greenspan said that people were investing in houses as if they were a one-way bet, not allowing for the risk of price falls. He said “history had not dealt kindly” with investors who kept ignoring risks.
Perhaps that is what this is all about--trying to scare some sense into the people that are buying homes on this nonsensical assumption that house prices are a one-way street.
...
Traders said that Mr Greenspan’s comments were reminiscent of his 1996 inveighing against “irrational exuberance” on the stock market, for fear that a crash there would hit consumers and push the economy into recession. When the share price bubble finally burst, Mr Greenspan cut Federal interest rates to 1 per cent, triggering the flood of cheap loans for housing. He fears that rate increases set in train as the economy recovered could throw the housing market into reverse and suggested that the twin deficits would now restrict his room to manoeuvre if a house price downturn hit spending. Asset prices were, he complained, driving monetary policy more than ever before.
Share traders were also worried by an unexpectedly sharp fall in the University of Michigan consumer confidence index, a small but influential barometer, which fell for the first time in three months. The expectations index slid from 88.5 to 76.9.
Rob Carnell, of ING Bank in London, said that Mr Greenspan’s warning was an eerie reminder of a successful campaign last summer by Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to “use rhetoric rather than interest rates” to cool an overheating homes market. Britain has avoided a crash thus far.
Here in Boise, housing prices are still flying upward--with houses in our subdivision finally breaking through $300,000. (For those of you who live in California: these aren't shacks, we have indoor plumbing, and our mouse aren't round-shouldered by the crowding.)
There are enough good jobs moving into the area that I suspect that these prices are supportable--unlike some parts of California and Florida. For example, one local employer has an H-1B visa application right now because they can't find a lawful resident of the U.S. able and willing to take a job here as an electrical engineer--and the salary is in the range $101,000 to $144,000 a year.
Still, there are some people engaged in some risky purchases in Boise. My realtor tells me that out of state investors are buying brand new houses three bedroom two bath tract houses here, paying for gardeners--and leaving the houses empty. The theory is that next year, these houses will be worth a lot more than they are worth now, and it is better to have the house vacant for a year just to be able to say, "New, never lived in." This may well work, but these investors are definitely taking risks.
Road Trip: The Sawtooths, Redfish Lake, And A Final Resting Place For Richard's Ashes
Looking out over Redfish Lake into the Sawtooth Mountains, which are part of an ancient batholith.
And the stream near Redfish Lake where Rhonda released his ashes.
Road Trip: Minerals & Trees Along The Payette River
We drove to Redfish Lake to scatter my father-in-law's ashes. On the road through Garden Valley to Stanley, we found the Idaho that most of you are probably imagining, with pine trees, mountains, and white water rivers.
The Payette River cuts through basalt and granite in this area--and trees that can dig down through basalt are pretty hardy plants.
Here's an interesting tree that is both silver and green, depending which way the wind is blowing the leaves. I suspect that some of my readers can tell me what it is.
I'm not sure what these berries were, but since I wasn't sure if I could eat them safely, I didn't.
Modern geology starts with James Hutton, who examined the cuts through hills for canals. You can learn a lot by looking at the modern equivalent, the road cut. This set of pictures show a series of intrusions of various rock types. The pinkish stuff, we think, is feldspar, based on the color and the manner in which the rock breaks, and that is next to veins of granite, which is a metamorphic rock that includes feldspar. The grayish-green mineral has us mystified. 
I'm not sure what this mineral is, but is it pretty! Nice collection of colors.
The House Project: Roof Trusses
We went up to the new house on our way to Redfish Lake. The crane to left the roof trusses into place arrived on Friday, but our builder apparently didn't schedule enough time to get all the trusses in place--or perhaps it took longer to get each truss secured as well as he wanted. In any case, the crane left after two hours for another job, so it will be Tuesday or Wednesday before they are back to finish the job.
When I was up there last, I didn't notice this apparently temporary outlet coming out of the circuit breaker box. It is hard to imagine an electrician came up to put in one outlet. Perhaps it spontaneously generated itself.
Last house project entry.
