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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Friday, September 09, 2005
Encouraging Retaliation I am just horrified. People that sign a petition related to gay marriage are about to be publicly "outed" -- with their names and addresses published on the Web, so that every ignorant yahoo out there can threaten them for exercising their right to petition the government. But no, this isn't a bunch of right-wingers trying to intimidate supporters of gay marriage: A pair of gay activists are raising the stakes in the fight over same-sex marriage, vowing to post on the Internet the name and address of anyone who signs a petition to ban gay marriage and civil unions in Massachusetts.Oh yeah, and if a pro-life group put up a website listing the names and home addresses of abortion doctors, but claimed, "We want you to open up communication with them," I would believe that, too. Thursday, September 08, 2005
Feeling A Little Better Sleep is a wonderful restorative. This is good; the order for ScopeRoller products from Spain now has a British order as well that I need to fill. House Project: Electrical, Mechanical, Raptors We went up Wednesday evening to go through the house with the electrician and tell him where to put light fixture, how many outlets (above and beyond what the code requires), light switches, etc. The electrician is also our neighbor down the hill, which is certainly convenient. Driving up Sunburst Road, it looks more and more like a house.  Click to enlarge You can see heating and air conditioning vents beginning to appear.  Click to enlarge Getting ready for the furnace and water heater.  Click to enlarge The windows are in! Ansco is the maker; these are a low-E glass, with about 58% transmission, the rest is reflected back out to keep the house from overheating in summer.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Roofers hard at work, apparently without fear of falling.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Here you can see the vent for the kitchen.  Click to enlarge Yesterday, tubs and showers were in the right rooms, but they weren't permanently placed yet.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Raptor overhead!  Click to enlarge The builder asked me if we want to spend an extra $1000 to insulate under the floor--apparently not required by code in our county (yet). Since we are going to have tile floors, and it gets cold in winter, I'm sure that it will pay for itself in several years of reduced gas bills. I went up there today to resolve a question about shower stall placement in bathroom three, and I wish that I had brought my camera. There was a swarm of plumbers and roofers at work, and the LP tank was being dropped into the ground. One guy was dressed too nicely to be construction, so I asked if he was a building inspector. It turns out that he works for the insulation contractor. I asked him about the building code requirements: R-38 for the roof, and R-19 for the walls. I asked him what it would cost to go to R-50 for the roof--and since it was only about $420 more, I told him to go for it. My guess is that it will pay for itself in reduced heating and air conditioning costs in five years--and she that was about right, in this climate. The last house project entry. Labels: house project The Older I Get... The more miserable a common cold makes me feel--and how quickly it does its dirty deed. This one took me from feeling okay--yesterday afternoon--to the "must sleep, even though my son is playing drums two rooms away" state--this afternoon. (He didn't know that I had come home sick, and I was too weak to get out of bed to tell him that I was here.) Maybe once the new house is built, I will become a full-time telecommuter, so that I am not exposed to everyone's germs. Howard Hughes's obssession looks less and less silly all the time. Or does that indicate that I am getting more and more silly with time? Interesting Account of Air National Guard Operations This was forwarded a couple of times before it got to me, through a co-worker. (I've fixed a few typos and cleaned up the formatting a bit.) This is an e-mail that a friend of mine who's ex-Air Force (was a C-130 Roger Baldwin, the ACLU, & Civil Liberties I mentioned yesterday that Professor Volokh had blogged an astonishing collection of statements by Roger Baldwin, who founded the ACLU, about the Soviet Union. Professor Volokh has now put up an image of an article by Roger Baldwin in Soviet Russia Today, vol. 3 [Sept. 1934], p. 11. Here's some choice sections from this absolutist defender of civil liberties: Proletarian Liberty in PracticeI've long thought that the ACLU was irrationally idealistic. Certainly, Roger Baldwin wasn't. The defense of civil liberties, to Baldwin, were a means to an end--and if "suppression of opposition" and the brutality of the secret police were necessary to that end--oh well! I'm not convinced anything is different with the ACLU today. Racism in the Aftermath of Katrina Martin Luther King, Jr., once called 11:00 AM Sunday morning the most segregated hour in America. I don't know if that was really true back then, but I'll take his word for it. It certainly isn't true now--generally, churches that I have attended are better racially integrated than most companies that I have worked for--and these haven't been lily-white companies, either. Here's a collection of photographs showing volunteers and evacuees. A lot of churches across America have stepped up to the plate to help the evacuees, and what I am seeing is a reminder that the days that Dr. King complained about are gone. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. [Galatians 3:26-28] A New Definition of "Extreme Right-Wing" Governor Schwarzenegger announced that he would veto a same-sex marriage bill passed by the California legislature, and his reason for it was that five years ago, a majority--a rather strong majority at that--of California voters passed an initiative defining marriage as "one man, one woman." So what was the response of advocates for the bill? "Clearly he's pandering to an extreme right wing, which was not how he got elected," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, one of the bill's sponsors.Proposition 22, which defined marriage as "one man, one woman" received a Yes vote from 61.4% of the voters at the March 2000 election. So I guess in gayspeak, 61.4% of the population of California--one of the most liberal states in the nation--are "extreme right wing." UPDATE: Professor Volokh linked to this, but wasn't too happy with my use of the term "gayspeak." It was an intentional parody of the Orwellian "newspeak." If a spokesman for the most important gay rights group in California (other than the Democratic Party) decides to redefine a huge majority of the electorate in one of the most liberal states as "extreme right-wing," it just screams for a parallel to 1984's attempt to redefine reality by twisting language. UPDATE 2: Someone commenting over at Volokh Conspiracy pointed out that many voters did not vote yes or no on Proposition 22. Very true. I think we can safely assume that if someone chose not to vote on Proposition 22, they didn't care very strongly about the question of same-sex marriage--not enough to vote NO on a measure that was intended to prevent gay marriage. UPDATE 3: The number of March voters who didn't vote on Proposition 22 turned out to be pretty tiny, however. There were 7,627,690 votes cast in the presidential primary; for Proposition 22, 4,618,673 voted yes, and 2,909,370 voted no. That means that 98.7% of the voters expressed an opinion. What Failed in New Orleans? Fat Steve's Blatherings argues that the City of New Orleans largely implemented their hurricane evacuation plan--but that the plan was that if you didn't have a car, or a way to hitch a ride, tough luck: There've been a lot of reports about New Orleans failing to implement its own disaster plans, especially about how the didn't use the buses it had available to get people without cars out of the city. These claims are only partially true.If he is correct about this, it would appear that the New Orleans government either had no idea of how severe this was going to be (in which case, why tell everyone with cars to evacuate?), or simply didn't care what happened to the poor, the mentally ill, the homeless, and the hospitalized. If you want to blame the federal government for failing to pre-position emergency crews for this, or for failing to respond quickly enough after the hurricane struck, well, we can argue about how well this was planned. But it appears that if there was someone who "didn't care if black people died or not," it would appear to have been the City of New Orleans government that best fit that description. Oh, and here's a sharp piece of parody, concerning all those school buses that New Orleans city government chose not to use for evacuation, so that they would available to pollute the floodwaters instead. Wednesday, September 07, 2005
A Machining Aha! Moment I was trying to fall asleep, considering the various emails I received in response to my last machining perplexity, and I had one of those Aha! moments, rather like Kekule solving the benzene ring problem. (Okay, he didn't really solve it, but he started organic chemists on the path to solving it. And no, my revelation wasn't quite as important.) The problem is that I can't hold a cylinder in a three jaw chuck and turn the entire length of the cylinder to a particular diameter without reversing it in the chuck. Reversing the cylinder doesn't put it in exactly the same position as it was in before. It is close--perhaps within .001 inches or less--but turning the diameter again leaves a palpable ring where you stop turning the cylinder on the second pass. I contacted Sherline, to ask if they had a tool that would allow me to screw the cylinder onto a threaded stud that screwed onto the headstock. Nope. The stock that I am turning is too large to fit through the headstock. The solution came to me as I tried to fall asleep. I turn a holding cylinder of plastic that fits into the three jaw chuck, then drill and tap a 3/8"-16 hole through the exact center of the holding cylinder. I relieve the underside of the holding cylinder so that a 3/8"-16 bolt goes through the hole--and threads into the workpiece. (This may require a lockwasher between the holding cylinder and the workpiece to prevent it from loosening while turning.) The holding cylinder occupies the entire space of the jaws in the three jaw chuck, so I can advance the turning tool down the entire length of the workpiece, with no danger of hitting the jaws of the chuck--and with no need to reverse it. My manufacturing procedure then becomes: 1. Cut a 1.25" piece of Delrin from the long piece of 1 1/4" cylinder. 2. Put the workpiece in the three jaw chuck to face end A. (To "face" means that you are making the end a perfectly flat, 90 degree angle from the cylinder walls.) 3. Reverse the workpiece in the three jaw chuck to face end B. 4. Put a center drill in the tailstock chuck. 5. Make a center hole in end B. 6. Put a 5/16" twist drill in the tailstock chuck. 7. Make a 5/16" hole in end B. 8. Tap the hole to accept 3/8"-16 bolt. 9. Screw the 3/8"-16 bolt through the holding cylinder into end B. 10. Put the holding cylinder in the three jaw chuck. 11. Turn the workpiece to 1.23" diameter. This sounds like a lot of steps, but the trick to any sort of machining is division of labor. Adam Smith's description of pin making in Wealth of Nations (1776) talks about a division of labor by workers, but for machining, it can be division of labor for operations. You don't make one item, going through all eleven steps above, because each time you change a drill, you are spending valuable time. Instead, you perform step #1 thirty times, then step #2 thirty times, and so on. This allows you only spend time performing steps #4 and #6 (changing drills) once for all thirty pieces. Fluent In Spanish? ScopeRoller needs two very short instruction sheets translated, a total of about 1100 words. If you can help me out, contact me pronto. The Case For Free Television Time For Political Ads From Germany: BERLIN (Reuters) - A fringe German anarchist party has outraged national television audiences with its election campaign television spot -- a video montage of booze-fuelled chaos, syringe needles and men cavorting with topless women.And to think that there are people that want the same thing here! I Think Tide Works Better But not everyone shares my preferences in laundry detergent: LONDON (Reuters) - A British Muslim convert charged with plotting acts of terrorism had socks with traces of explosive in his luggage when he was arrested in France, prosecutors told a court Tuesday. Why Is Gasoline Expensive Right Now? Partly because there are only 149 refineries in the country--and no new ones have been built since 1976. (The environmentalists won't allow it.) Not surprisingly, we have to actually import 10% of our gasoline, because we don't have the refining capacity in the U.S. to refine all the crude oil we need. Reason has an article here about who is preventing the building of refineries. Just for those who weren't paying attention in economics class: retail prices are not set (at least, directly) by wholesale prices. Retail prices are determined by what people are prepared to pay. Here in Boise, gasoline at the Albertson's at Eagle & Macmillan is typically eight to ten cents a gallon more expensive than the Albertson's at Five Mile Road & Ustick, which is only four miles away. They are both in the same city, so there's no regulatory difference, and transportation cost differences are trivial--perhaps .0000001 per gallon difference. The stations are owned by the same company, and they are selling the same product. What makes the difference? The one at Eagle & Macmillan is near HP, and on a state highway headed towards McCall. It gets a lot more traffic, and because of its proximity to HP, much more affluent traffic. These are people that can afford to pay more, and the prices are set to "clear the market." What does "clear the market" mean? The station manager (or more likely, someone at corporate) raises the price if the station is starting to run low on gasoline, and lowers the price if he isn't selling gasoline fast enough to refill his tanks when the tanker truck shows up next. They probably won't cut the price to a point where there is no profit on every sale, but in a community this wealthy, that's not usually a problem. The price is set based on demand--not on the cost of doing business (at least, not directly). If the supplier raises the wholesale price of gasoline by ten cents a gallon, it doesn't mean that the station can just automatically add ten cents a gallon to the retail price. If consumers tolerate paying the extra ten cents a gallon, the station will raise the price regardless of whether the wholesale price went up, stayed the same, or went down. There is no direct connection between the wholesale and retail prices. There is an indirect connection, however. What happens if the wholesale price goes up thirty cents a gallon, and the station now loses money with every gallon it sells? The station can try raising the price--and see a big reduction in sales, as people decide, "I really don't need to drive to McCall this weekend." More likely, if the wholesale price goes up enough to wipe out the station's profit margin, and it looks like this situation isn't going to change, the station will probably close down. (I'm old enough to remember when gas stations were a lot more common than they are now.) Generally speaking, if the wholesale price to one station goes up, the wholesale price to other stations goes up as well. If there are still consumers willing to pay $3 a gallon for gasoline, then every station is free to raise their retail price to that level. In short, higher gasoline prices are present because consumers aren't willing to change their habits--they consider $3 a gallon gasoline to still be better than the alternatives, such as walking, bicycling, not driving to McCall for the weekend. If you want to see gasoline get a lot cheaper, the only practical solution is for there to be more gasoline available to sell than there are consumers willing to buy it. That means we need either more refineries, making more gasoline, or we need fewer consumers gulping gasoline in vast quantities. I know of a person who commutes about 30 miles each way by enormous truck to work--and is now starting to pay $90 each time he fills his tank. I believe that this will be self-correcting in the very near future. He will either buy something with better mileage, find a job closer to home, or a home closer to work. The ACLU's Interesting History Regular readers of this blog know that I am no fan of the ACLU--at least, in its present form. It is an organization that, post-Skokie, has often taken positions that are contrary to its own traditional notion of civil liberties (for example, anti-discrimination laws for homosexuals take precedence over freedom of association, as in the Boy Scouts suits). It has argued (successfully, to the idiots that control the Supreme Court) that virtual child pornography is protected by the First Amendment--even though it is very clear that this would have been unlawful in every state when the states ratified the First Amendment. It has ignored parts of the Bill of Rights that are uncomfortable for the overwhelmingly leftist makeup of its membership (such as the Second Amendment). It has taken a position on the meaning of the establishment clause that is contrary to the historical evidence of what Congress and the states meant for it to do. In some cases, you wonder if the ACLU has any shame at all--such as lawsuits claiming that the sight of a Ten Commandments monument in a public park causes the plaintiff "physical pain." (And the judge accepted this clearly false statement, instead of reminding the plaintiff about the perjury statute.) Perhaps most insidiously, it has claimed that some things are constitutionally protected civil liberties whichwere felonies in every state when Congress passed the Bill of Rights. It has done likewise in claiming that minors have a constitutional right to have sex with adults--which in practice, means that adults have a constitutional right to manipulate minors into sex. (I think it is no coincidence that the Kansas case in which they made this argument involved a homosexual adult having sex with a minor.) I've seen some bizarre claims made about the ACLU's history, but because they came from what I regarded as slightly nutcase sorts, I didn't take them too seriously. Now I see Professor Volokh--who just doesn't seem to understand why I hold the ACLU in such contempt--making claims that are even more bizarre: This post is about one such item, which I think is emblematic of three not uncommon errors in some liberal circles: A tendency to overextend constitutional norms from government action to private action; a tendency to overlabel action as McCarthyism or close to it; and a tendency to miss the real threat that Communism posed in its heyday.Read the whole thing--and then read the comments. Some of them just make me roll my eyes in astonishment. Monstrous Stories This news account just makes you shudder: State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded-out nursing home in Chalmette, just outside New Orleans. She said the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds. And more than 100 people died at a dockside warehouse, waiting for rescuers to ferry them to safety, said Rep. Charlie Melancon, whose congressional district includes the area.My first reaction is anger at the nursing home staff--but my second reaction is to think of what they were thinking, as the flood waters rose, and there was no one to evacuate these elderly people, many of whom were probably going to die soon anyway. The core problem was that the city's evacuation plan was either insufficient, or not carried out properly. And the same report tells me that here's a crowd that needs to be shot on sight: Meanwhile, firefighters battled blazes around New Orleans - an emerging threat in a city where the water pressure is too low to fight fires and where many people are using candles because of the lack of electricity. At the same time, workers returning to restart essential services came under sniper fire.UPDATE: Elsewhere in that story is one of those statements that would normally make you ask, "Delirum tremens, schizophrenia, or LSD?" But in the bizarre, Hieronymus Bosch-like world of New Orleans, this doesn't seem impossible or even unlikely: Several residents said they heard Nagin's latest order on portable radios and were reluctantly complying. Tuesday, September 06, 2005
The Atrocity Stories Are Now Getting Confirmation National Guard soldiers being quoted: Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.Race was definitely an issue in what happened, no question. From a BBC account: Jamie Trout 22, from Sunderland, was among 50 tourists stranded in horrific conditions in the devastated city.And this account from the Australian newspaper The Age: NINE Australians witnessed a rapid descent into hell inside the New Orleans Superdome as they sat trapped inside for four long days and nights.I'm sure that this did wonders for their view of black Americans. You Gotta Read This One! Sean Penn, good leftist actor, demonstrates his concern for the suffering of New Orleans, and his generally high competence: Movie star and political activist Penn, 45, was in the collapsing city to aid stranded victims of flooding sparked by Hurricane Katrina, but the small boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.Gateway Pundit has a great picture of Sean Penn trying to bail out his rescue boat. Over at Hog On Ice there is a more technical explanation of Penn's failure--and the point well made that this was a publicity stunt, not a serious effort: It had to be the drain plug, because boats don't just "spring leaks." And Penn continued on his way after the problem was fixed, which shows it was a leak that could be fixed very quickly. That's a drain plug, all right. Oh Dear! More Intolerance of Diversity There's a university. There's a professor of astronomy. There's a professor of "religious studies." They don't agree about this intelligent design thing--and one of them claims that the other one is trying to create a hostile work environment because of his research. Want to guess which one is the intelligent design advocate, and which one is circulating petitions that supposedly cause the "hostile work environment"? An astronomy professor at Iowa State University who is nationally known for his research on intelligent design says the school has a phony view of diversity when it comes to the subject of the origin of life. Labels: intelligent design The Divine Retribution Idea There are people in New Orleans who are now partial to the idea that what has happened was some sort of judgment for being a sinful city: Yesterday Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco called for a state-wide day of prayer. "As we face the devastation wrought by Katrina, as we search for those in need, as we comfort those in pain and as we begin the long task of rebuilding, we turn to God for strength, hope and comfort," she said. Meanwhile, New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas after witnessing the horrors first hand and hearing talk of Sodom and Gomorrah commented, "Maybe God's going to cleanse us."If you find this idea offensive or ridiculous--ask yourself if the ideas popular in leftist circles that this was a punishment of the U.S. for the war in Iraq, or not signing the Kyoto Treaty, any less offensive. It would appear that the corruption and incompetence that is at the core of Louisiana government (and has been that way for decades) played a part in how insufficiently New Orleans was evacuated. While it appears that some of the worst news reports may have been exaggerated or even made up, it does not seem that there is any serious question that savages took over New Orleans after the hurricane--even firing on workers trying to repair the levees. You can't run a society based on the idea that there is nothing right or wrong without some people starting to take that seriously--and operating as though there is nothing right or wrong. Some Of The More Outrageous News Stories Are Beginning To Smell I've updated this discussion of the problem of values to point out that there is now serious reason to question whether the more horrifying stories that have appeared about the aftermath of Katrina really happened. Randall Robinson has now retracted his obviously absurd claim about black cannibals in New Orleans. (Of course, I pointed out that it was absurd when it first appeared.) UPDATE: See my more recent blog entry that confirms that except for the cannibalism, the atrocity stories are turning out to be true, with National Guardsmen showing some of the bodies to reporters, and eyewitness accounts that are sickening in the racism it revealed. The left won't much care, however, because the racism was going "the right direction." Monday, September 05, 2005
An Interesting New Piece of Malware I still don't approve, but I must confess, it will be amusing to watch liberals fight two impulses: 1. Should I be angry that this virus is preventing me from engaging in my unknown and unknowable deity-given right to watch porn? 2. Should I just accept it because it is part of their culture? From IT Week: ecurity experts today issued a warning after detecting a malicious Trojan horse which tries to interrupt the surfing of adult websites by displaying messages from the Koran. It Isn't About Race It's about values. Here's a rambling blog entry that, if you are prepared to put up with some mildly coarse language and a desperate need for an editor, makes some very good points. There's nothing terribly quotable there, but his essential point is that a lot of leftists are claiming that if you had sent a bunch of white, middle class conservatives to the Superdome in New Orleans, that they would have behaved just as badly as the poor largely black people that ended up there. Nope. Indeed, we are seeing examples of how poor people in New Orleans managed to work together to rescue neighbors, provide for the common defense against the thugs, and in general, look out for themselves. What happened in the Superdome--by some accounts, with children as young as seven years old being raped--is an indication that a lot of people who ended up at the Superdome should have been sent to prison some years ago, and left there. Few people without a criminal history just wake up one morning and say, "I'm having a rough day because of the flood, so I think I'll go destroy the innocence of a seven year old, perhaps give her an STD in the process, and probably cause substantial internal damage." I think I can say, from my reading of the characteristics of violent criminals, that such a monster doesn't make it to 21 without a substantial criminal history. UPDATE: Some journalists are beginning to report that attempts to verify these horrifying accounts suggest that they may not be true. The Guardian, for example, reports: There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre.Michelle Malkin points to this story by Alenda Lux that suggests that someone at Reuters is being a little...creative...in their coverage: Reuters, and no other media outlet besides Reuters, has a story about National Guardsmen and Police slaughtering kids in New Orleans that is so outrageous it beggars disbelief. I Really Like Machining Delrin And I am beginning to reach the point where I can call myself an very low grade amateur machinist, not just someone playing with a lathe. I wanted to make a cylinder of Delrin that was 1.240" diameter and 1.00" long from a piece of Delrin 1.252" diameter and 1.20" long. I knew that each rotation of the screw would move the carriage .050". I rotated the screw four times, more or less, and got a 0.98" length cylinder. A similar change to the cross-slide handwheel should give me a piece about 1.24" diameter; I actually ended up with a piece 1.23" diameter. The only area that is still a source of frustration is that I am still holding the workpiece in a three jaw chuck, so I can't turn the entire length of the workpiece at once. I have to turn it down to the jaws, reverse the piece, and resume the process. This gives me roughly the right diameter--but only roughly, because three jaw chucks are necessarily imprecise, and you don't end up with it in exactly the same position each time. Unfortunately, Sherline doesn't make a lathe dog big enough to hold this piece, and the only other solution that seems to make sense--a wood turning point to hold the piece in place--doesn't work for what I need to do with this piece afterwards. I think the right solution is some sort of adapter that allows me to place a threaded screw on the headstock, and thread a hole in the workpiece. (I have to have a threaded hole in one end anyway.) I guess I'll call Sherline tomorrow and see if they have anything like this--perhaps a standard fixture that lets you put a screw exactly in the center of the faceplate. I've been experimenting with brass, aluminum, and UHMW until now, and Delrin is so much nicer! It is softer than brass or aluminum, so it cuts more easily. At the same time, it is harder than UHMW, so the cutting tool leaves a much smoother, more consistent surface when facing or turning. Labor Shouldn't Be In Short Supply As I was watching news coverage of the rescue operations, I was struck by something: how much of the labor moving water and food was being done by soldiers. I know that many of those who were stuck in New Orleans were elderly, and others are just children, but why don't we see large numbers of these refugees involved in moving relief supplies? This is just a little disturbing. You might almost get the impression that the reason so many were stuck in New Orleans when the hurricane hit was a certain unwillingness to do anything for themselves. "A Criminal Will Just Take The Gun Away From You" Part 2 I mentioned a few days ago that a recurring gun control argument is that law-abiding people--especially women--shouldn't try to use a gun in self-defense because a criminal will just take away your gun, and this make things worse! It is a fascinating insight in the gun control mentality--that only criminals can use guns, and even worse, women are "the weaker sex" lacking the mental toughness to shoot a criminal who is threatening them with rape, death, or the combination of the two. One of my readers brought to my attention this interesting news story from the July 20, 2005 Savannah Morning News where, instead of the criminal disarming the victim (something that happens quite rarely, except to police officers), two different victims disarmed the criminals--and used the guns against those criminals: The Chatham County Grand Jury on Wednesday indicted three men in two, unrelated cases have something in common. In both, the victims took away the accused robbers' guns and turned them on their assailants.Of course, the vast majority of violent crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs (because of their disinhibiting effects), so perhaps we should not be surprised if the victims managed to disarm the criminals. Now, I'm not recommending that you make a habit of taking guns away from criminals. It does suggest that criminals sometimes lack the lightning reflexes required to shoot you before you get your own gun out. I know someone who used to demonstrate this with a couple of cap guns. He would have the skeptic hold one cap gun, knowing that my friend was going to draw the other cap gun from concealment, and fire it. From what he told me, the guy playing the criminal seldom managed to fire it before my friend would draw and fire his cap gun. Sunday, September 04, 2005
House Project: Second Round of Water Tests I had mentioned that the first water tests indicated very high lead levels: according to the test results, .100 mg/L. Anyway, the second set of results, after draining the water tank and refilling from the well, gives .015 mg/L of lead (or 15 micrograms per liter)--the EPA action level for lead in public water supplies. This is still a bit higher than I would like to see, so I guess that I will be buying reverse osmosis units for the kitchen and bathroom sinks. (There is apparently no whole house filtering system for lead that produces enough water.) I am tempted to install a whole house particulate matter filter first, and run the tests one more time. If this lead is in a fine particular form, I won't need the reverse osmosis filters. Labels: house project Volunteers in New Orleans Geraldo Rivera on Fox News this morning was showing something that the left isn't going to admit is happening--because it won't fit into their "Amerikkka is a racist nation that hates black people" theme. White guys from upstate Louisiana are driving down to New Orleans, dropping their boats into the water, and going searching for people to rescue. (Oh yes, heavily armed--they know that they are going into potentially dangerous areas.) At least all the film that Fox showed involved white guys rescuing black people. From Rivera's account, there are lots of these volunteers going around to save complete strangers. The city has a total of three boats available to do this--and two of them are of action because of mechanical problems. |
