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Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
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Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
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The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
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Global Warming & Solar Change Contributions
This article summarizes a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters: The new study is based in part on Columbia University research from 2003 in which scientists found errors in how data on solar brightness is interpreted. A gap in data, owing to satellites not being deployed after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, were filled by less accurate data from other satellites, Scafetta says.
Notice that word "minimally" in there. Since we don't really have a clear understanding of the connections between solar output, surface temperatures, and consequent natural processes that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (for example, the carbon dioxide/limestone interaction), perhaps a little more humility is in order from the Kyoto Treaty proponents.
The Duke analyses examined solar changes over 22 years versus 11 years used in previous studies. The cooling effect of volcanoes and cyclical shifts in ocean currents can have a greater negative impact on the accuracy of shorter data periods.
"The Sun may have minimally contributed about 10 to 30 percent of the 1980-2002 global surface warming," the researchers said in a statement today.
Many questions remain, however. For example, scientists do not have a good grasp of how much Earth absorbs or reflects sunlight.
"We don't know what the Sun will do in the future," Scafetta says. "For now, if our analysis is correct, I think it is important to correct the climate models so that they include reliable sensitivity to solar activity. Once that is done, then it will be possible to better understand what has happened during the past hundred years."
So These Are The Out of Town Real Estate Speculators
This San Diego guy describes how he is currently putting down deposits on houses being built here in Boise, and explains the risks involved, and how to avoid them.
Unfortunately, my realtor tells me that there are a lot of out of towners doing this in Boise right now--and I fear that he doesn't fully understand the extent that what he warns about, has sucked him in: Make sure the area is experiencing actual population and job growth. You want to ensure that the price growth isn't just fueled by rampant investor speculation. if so, when it comes time to sell, you won't have any buyers.
Yes, we do have actual population and job growth--but the price inflation seems excessive for that growth. Maybe all the speculators are just bidding up the prices for each other? To quote a song of some years ago, "Who's zooming' who?"
Interesting Comment About What Has Taken Over The Democratic Party
Right Side of the Rainbow (a right-of-center, gun owning, gay Texan--talk about someone who could meet all of his likeminded peers in a phone booth) links to an especially unpleasant set of comments over at Democratic Underground: If Republicans lose, these people will govern you
I fear that the last few years has done something very worrisome to the Democratic Party--knocked many of the centrist (often corrupt) activists out of dominant positions. The "Bush = Hitler" crowd seems to be increasingly important, not only because they are the millionaires providing the money, but also the committed sorts prepared to work hard to elect people like Governor "I have a scream" Dean.
As sick as I sometimes am of my party and of its big-spending, anti-federalist, illegal-immigration-ignoring ways the alternative terrifies me.
Republican governance has proved costly, unprincipled and incompetent. But its not psychotic.
ADHD Drug Warning
The FDA is requiring a pretty serious warning label--what is called a "black box warning" on one of Eli Lilly's drugs for treating ADHD: WASHINGTON (AP) - The Food and Drug Administration warned doctors Thursday about reports of suicidal thinking in some children and adolescents who are taking Strattera, a drug used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
My wife was startled, when she was teaching elementary and middle school, how many kids were labeled ADHD. The article above went on to mention that 7% of kids are believed to be ADHD.
Manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. announced that a black-box warning will be added to the drug's label in the United States. Such a warning is the most serious that can be added to a medication's label, and similar warnings will be added to the drug's labels in other countries. The company said a study showed instances of suicidal thinking were rare.
In a statement, the FDA said it "is advising health care providers and caregivers that children and adolescents being treated with Strattera should be closely monitored for clinical worsening, as well as agitation, irritability, suicidal thinking or behaviors, and unusual changes in behavior, especially during the initial few months of therapy or when the dose is changed."
Eli Lilly said it provided the FDA results from a Strattera clinical trial of 1,357 patients that found five youths taking the medication reported having suicidal thoughts, while none of 851 patients taking a placebo reported having any. One young person taking Strattera attempted suicide, the company said.
I think back to my childhood--and my wife had the same experiences--there were very, very few kids who had the symptoms of ADHD when we were young. Now it seems to be epidemic. Our suspicion is that a lot of what schools label ADHD is really PDDD--Parental Discipline Deficiency Disorder. As one parent told a teacher friend of my wife, "I've given up on trying to make him behave. That's your job."
There's no question that small children--especially little boys--are full of rampaging energy, and getting them to stay on a task involving sitting at a desk is often a struggle. But my wife noticed that a lot of the ADHD kids were coming from extraordinarily screwed up home situations. Not just divorced homes (that's the norm where we lived in Sonoma County), but situations where the biological father was not allowed to take the child; where the mother was clearly in chaos herself.
Another point worth mentioning: the Papolos' book The Bipolar Child points out there is substantial overlap between bipolar disorder and ADHD. WebMD mentions studies that attempted to identify adults with both; it would appear to be a pretty common combination, and bipolar disorder aggravates ADHD. I wonder if some of the kids being diagnosed as ADHD might actually be bipolar; manic phase bipolar, especially in a child, can be easily confused with an attention deficit.
A lot of these serious, but not psychotic mental disorders, are similar enough to be confusing. A relative of mine was misdiagnosed for a number of years, including schizophrenia. (Here's an example of the complexity: extreme forms of bipolar disorder in mania phase can include schizophrenic-like hallucinations, although this is somewhat rare.) He was eventually correctly diagnosed as bipolar disorder (which runs in our family), put on Welbutrin under the pretense that it was to help him quit smoking--and he experienced a dramatic recovery.
If you have a child who is full of energy, sharp as a tack, defiant, precocious, intent on being in charge of every situation, and the school is suggesting ADHD--I would suggest that you get at least a second opinion about this from a child psychiatrist. I would also recommend that you read the Papolos' book The Bipolar Child. There's a lot of grief that you may saving yourself by understanding what you are confronting, and understanding it very early.
Everything California Seems To Follow Us Here
First the other Californians moved to Idaho.
Then the traffic jams started.
Then some of the nice small town feel of the place--with people being so friendly and strange teenagers being polite to you--started to evaporate.
Then the housing started to get expensive (although still cheap by California standards).
Now: earthquake swarms in a town about 90 minutes north of here! A cluster of earthquakes south of Cascade has been shaking items off shelves and jolting residents out of their sleep this week.
Oh, but the news story ends with one very un-California aspect:
"The dog starts barking every single time," said Armen Mannschreck, a high school English teacher who lives near Clear Creek. A temblor Tuesday night _ the strongest so far _ sent a bowl crashing to the floor from a dresser in Mannschreck's house.
It also set the cabinet doors swinging at the home of Linda Jarvis, another Clear Creek resident who is regularly awakened by middle-of- the-night quakes these days. Jarvis said she's often felt tremors in the 19 years she's lived at her home _ but only in the last week have they been strong enough to get her up in the night.
"The cat wakes up; my cabinet doors in the kitchen go open and closed and I have mortar coming out of the brick on my fireplace outside," Jarvis said.
Residents of the Clear Creek area, about 10 miles south and southeast of Cascade, have been calling seismologists to report feeling several earthquakes a day, said Idaho Geological Survey geologist Bill Phillips. IGS instruments have been recording from 50 to 100 earthquakes per day around Clear Creek in the last week. Sean Christian, an eighth grader at Cascade High School, was woken up by a temblor that shook his Clear Creek home Tuesday night.
"It was a big shaking and it almost knocked my dad's guns out of his gun cabinet," said Christian, who is 13.
Everyone Hates Karl Rove
Not just Democrats, who imagine Karl Rove behind all dark conspiracies--especially the ones where Democrats shoot themselves in the foot. Ann Coulter hates Karl Rove too. After listing a number of situations where President Bush has assisted liberals to defeat conservatives: Karl Rove is Bob Shrum with a good cause. (Shrum has run eight presidential campaigns; number won: 0, number lost: 8.) Bush calls Rove the "architect" of his 2004 victory. In 2004, America was at war and the Democrats ran a gigolo to be commander in chief. The nation hasn't changed so much since Reagan was president that the last election should have even been close.
One thing that I keep reminding people of is that Bush really isn't very conservative. That's a source of frustration to Ann Coulter, obviously, and irritation to me.
Whenever the nation is threatened by external enemies, the only way Democrats can win a presidential election is with another Watergate. And yet Bush nearly lost the last election. He would have lost, but for the Swiftboat Veterans also dissed by Bush.
The "architect" of victory was nearly the architect of Bush's defeat when he advised Bush to come out for gay civil unions one week before the election. In terms of generating enthusiasm, this was the campaign equivalent of a teacher assigning homework late on a Friday afternoon. Judging by the results of more than a dozen elections where gay marriage was on the ballot last year, gay marriage is about as popular in this country as a day celebrating Hitler's birthday would be. (It is even less popular than the idea of John Kerry as commander in chief in wartime!)
If Ronald Reagan were running today, Rove would have Bush endorse Reagan's opponent. Establishment Republicans all pretend to have seen Reagan's genius at the time, but that's a crock. They wanted to dump Reagan in favor of "electable" Gerald Ford and "electable" George Herbert Walker Bush.
Newsweek reported in 1976 that Republican "party loyalists" thought Reagan would produce "a Goldwater-style debacle." This is why they nominated well-known charismatic vote magnet Jerry Ford instead.
Again in 1980, a majority of Republican committeemen told U.S. News and World Report that future one-termer George "Read My Lips" Bush was more "electable" than Reagan.
I suppose the reason that I am merely irritated by this is that I do not share Ann's view that a firebreathing conservative would be a runaway winner in national elections. It is true that on some issues, Americans are generally quite conservative--gay marriage, for example, as Coulter observes, is something that even many Democrats look upon with distaste. On the other hand, state after state repealed their sodomy laws because there is a bit of a libertarian streak in America: "I don't much care about what you do in private; just don't make me pay for it, watch it, or require me to give any official approval."
Another reason that I don't think America is the firebreathing conservative place that Ann wants to believe is that there's a lot of millionaires in this country--more than five million of them--and I can't imagine more than a few of them voting for a conservative, especially one that wanted to lower income taxes. Remember that if you have a net worth of say, five million dollars, income taxes are optional; you buy municipal bonds, live on your $250,000 a year income, and owe no income tax, either state or federal.
I suppose that this is how liberal Democrats felt when "I did not have relations with that woman" sat in the Oval Office. They knew (or should have known) that a serious liberal was unelectable, and it was better to get 2/3 of the pie, rather than demanding everything--and get nothing.
Corvettes, Tires, and Wear
When Big O replaced my front tires yesterday, they pointed out that the insides of the tires were markedly more worn than the rest of the tire, and suggested a four wheel alignment. This would cost $90.
Ordinarily, I would have said yes, but because the wear pattern was identical on the two tires, and because it was only really severe because I had gone a bit past the intended service life of the tire, I delayed a decision until I had a chance to gather a bit more data.
It turns out that at least the C5 generation of Corvette intentionally has strong negative camber to improve cornering, and this wearing out the front tires on the inside is normal. While some Corvette owners (and apparently at least one dealer) prefer to adjust the camber to zero degrees, I read this interesting discussion of camber adjustment for the Corvette that inclines me to leave it alone.
In case you are wandering what camber is: here's a nice description with drawings of camber, caster, and toe and the significance of each of these for wheel alignment. Camber, caster, and toe are rather like pitch, yaw, and roll (which define the X, Y, and Z motions of an airplane). They define the positioning of the tire relative to the suspension components in three dimensions.
The Horror Stories From New Orleans
The more I think about this, the more troubled that I am. There were news stories that were not terribly precisely sourced--and some involved, "I heard" or "Others said" but there were a lot of news stories like this one that quote National Guardsmen, who are identified, and make specific claims of things that they had seen: 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.
This isn't a rumor, or a "I was told" or "She said." This is a claim that National Guardsmen who are named told the reporter that they had seen these atrocities that the authorities are now flatout denying.
"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.
"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.
Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. "It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.
This account from the Australian newspaper The Age again quotes people that were present and who have claim to have seen very serious crimes taking place: "I haven't been to hell, but now I think I saw it inside that stadium," Anthony "Bud" Hopes, 32, of Brisbane, said.
These are not just rumors spread by irresponsible figures like Mayor Nagin. These are directly quoted, attributed statements--in some cases, to people with official responsibilities for enforcing order.
...
"There were gangsters, thugs, rapists, child molesters, anything you want to put in there, it was in there. They were molesting children that we saw. If girls from our group walked to the toilet they were felt up and filthy comments made to them. It was horrible, terrible."
I no longer know what happened in the Superdome. Either a number of people told reporters complete lies--that they had seen 30-40 bodies in the freezer when they hadn't--or someone is telling lies now. Either the National Guardsman who described two people murdered--one beaten to death, the other a little girl whose throat was slit was grossly wrong--or this news account which has been widely circulated, is wrong: "I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalled the doctor saying.
I can see reasons for reporters to make up these stories: it was all about getting Bush.
The real total?
Six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the handoff of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice.
I can see reasons for officials in Louisiana to spread rumors or even make stuff up: more money from Washington because Americans feel guilty about not getting there in time to prevent these horrifying events. Perhaps they didn't realize that these horrifying stories would reflect badly on the people that elect them.
I can't quite see why the tourists and the National Guardsmen would make up these horrifying stories of things that they claimed to have seen.
I can also see a reason why New Orleans officials might be interesting in making all this unpleasant discussion disappear. These crimes would indicate that perhaps a small number of monsters in the Superdome were prepared to do horrible things to others, but this doesn't necessarily speak badly about the people of New Orleans. There are creeps in every city.
But if the evacuees in the Superdome were really so depraved that they would not collectively stop children from being molested in plain view, then there is something truly depraved about a significant fraction of the population there. Think about it for a minute: if you and a few hundred of your peers were in a location like this, and you saw someone molesting a child, even a complete stranger, what would you do? I know that most every adult man that I know would walk over, and grab the molester. If the molester was lucky under such circumstances, he would be beaten to a pulp.
As I said: I don't know what happened. I do know that some of these horrifying news accounts were not presented as "We have heard" or "Someone said" but actual identifiable persons, quoted, named, and describing eyewitness experiences. I think there is a legitimate reasons for Congressional inquiry. Were the witnesses accurately quoted? (Reporters, in my experience, aren't very good at that.) What really happened with these reports?
The press spends a lot of time pretending that it is some sort of superhero, with the First Amendment emblazoned on the front of its tights, instead of a big red "S". I want to know if the professional journalists are as careful as they claim to be, or if some of this reporting was massaged for political purposes.
More Fun Machining
I needed to center a 3/8"-16 threaded hole in a Delrin cylinder. The first couple of times that I did this, it worked great. I put the workpiece in a 3 jaw chuck, faced each end, and then used a center drill in the tailstock to make a small hole. Then I used a 5/16" twist drill in the tailstock to enlarge the hole, and then used a 3/8"-16 tap. The first two times that this worked well, I was doing this to a cylinder that was only about 3/4" long.
Then I tried to center a hole in a 3" long cylinder, using the exact same approahc and tools--and it didn't work. The hole was way off--about .05" difference from one side to the other.
Possible sources of difficulty:
1. I know that twist drills are intrinsically less accurate than center drills. Should I look for a 5/16" center drill to make the pilot hole for the twist drill? Or should I start with a twist drill the diameter (or slightly smaller) than the pilot hole of the center drill, and gradually move up in size?
2. Is it possible that that the 3 jaw chuck can't hold a piece of Delrin that long without high speed rotation causing it to wiggle slightly off-center? Is the solution to drill the center drill and/or twist drill at very low speed?
UPDATE: I have been told to try using a steady rest to prevent wiggle.
The Restraining Order Against New Orleans
Here's the memo asking for the restraining order against their gun confiscation.
One Million Million Dollar Homes
This article reports that there are now more than a million million dollar homes in the U.S.: For the first time, there are more than 1 million owner-occupied homes in the United States worth $1 million or more, according to a Census Bureau survey published late last month.
Here in Boise, a million dollar home is still a pretty amazing piece of real estate--usually a very large house on a big chunk of land. On the other hand, the house that I am building north of here will probably appraise for $290,000 to $320,000 when it is done in several weeks--but in Sonoma County, where I used to live, it would be at least one million dollars, and perhaps because of the views, closer to two or three million dollars. (You don't generally find such houses of only 2300 square feet on 11 acres in Sonoma County.) You pay a lot for having too many millionaires as your neighbors--and you pay a lot less for a house by living somewhere like Boise, where millionaires aren't a dime a dozen.
Once a symbol of unusual wealth, million-dollar dwellings now seem like a dime a dozen in some places. San Francisco alone has more than 20,000 of them. There are another 46,000, or so, in Orange County, Calif.
In Manhattan, even someone with a million dollars in their pocket can't buy luxury. The average price for an apartment in all but Harlem and the boroughs northern tip climbed above $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2005, said Gregory Heym, chief economist for Terra Holdings, an owner of real estate brokerages in the city.
...
The surge in high-end prices has happened quickly. The Census Bureaus 2004 American Community Survey found 1,034,386 homes worth at least $1 million in 2004, compared to 595,441 in 2002 and only 394,878 in 2000.
There's Only One Way To Think
Those narrow-minded reactionaries aren't prepared to accept a diversity of viewpoints--everyone must be propagandized to the one true philosophy: On Sept. 21, David Parker was scheduled to go on trial in Lexington, Mass., for an incident that resulted from him disputing the 'right' of a local public school to introduce his then-5-year-old son to the issue of homosexuality.
Can you imagine the media uproar if a school district had given kindergartners materials that asserted that "homosexuality is wrong" and a parent showed up to request that his son be left out of these sessions?
...
On Jan. 17, Parker's son brought home a Diversity Bookbag from kindergarten. It included "Who's In a Family?" which depicts same-sex parents alongside others.
By law, Massachusetts's schools must notify parents before discussing sexuality with children. The unnotified Parker immediately emailed the principal of Estabrook Elementary to say he didn't wish his son to be taught that same-sex families are "a morally equal alternative to other family constructs."
Parker espouses tolerance: the right of others to make peaceful choices. But he rejects "diversity" defined by the demand that he validate a particular choice through approval or acceptance.
On April 27, Parker was arrested for criminal trespass when he refused to leave school property without an assurance of parental notification of lessons with sexual content in the future. He is now barred from school property, which precludes him from attending events open to other parents or being a voice on school committees.
The difficulty we are confronting is that there is a faction that believes that they are right, and those who disagree with them are wrong--and are prepared to use their control over the schools to propagandize our children to accept our point of view.
Hitler was asked shortly after he became Chancellor if he was concerned about his political opponents, and his response was that he wasn't too worried; he had control of the schools, and the generations growing up would be taught what to believe. As it turned out, he was right. A generation of Germans grew up who were fanatical, who had no problem running concentration camps, and were prepared to die for Hitler's "master race." Some things never change.
Durable Goods Orders For August Way Up!
It seemed a little odd that the Fed raised interest rates this last time with the Katrina disaster apparently sapping the life out of the economy. The August durable goods numbers (an important leading economic indicator) suggests that the Fed correctly identified the direction of the economy: WASHINGTON New orders for big-ticket manufactured products rose in August at the fastest pace in three months, providing a reassuring sign that American factories are not headed for another slump.
The Commerce Department said that orders for durable goods, items expected to last at least three years, jumped 3.3 percent after falling by 5.3 percent in July. Analysts had been expecting a rebound but the rise was far better than the 0.8 percent advance they had forecast.
The big drop in July had raised concerns that the manufacturing sector, the hardest hit sector in the 2001 recession, could be in danger of falling into another slump.
But analysts took heart not only from the size of the rebound but also the fact that it covered a number of key categories.
"The really good news is that the strength is broad-based, with hefty gains in metals, computers, electricals, machinery and aircraft," said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, a consulting firm in Valhalla, N.Y.
Alcohol & Guns Don't Mix
Of course, alcohol doesn't mix with any technology that gives you mechanical leverage: CANTON - William T. Dailey III came out of his apartment with an AK-47 in his hands.
I received an email from a reader yesterday asking if conservatives had learned anything from alcohol prohibition. My response was that I wasn't sure, but Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign and efforts to get employers to drug test employees showed that they had learned that reducing demand was more effective than reducing supply.
He fired it once in the air, then hopped into the back seat of the car to join his friends.
He was ready to head off into an Alliance neighborhood to shoot some black people. His friends weren't too keen about having the high-powered weapon in the car. They argued with him to put it away.
Matthew E. Meiring, who was sitting in the back seat with Dailey, even grabbed at the weapon, and at one point -- for some reason -- put the barrel of the gun into his mouth.
Dailey wouldn't give up the gun, though, and the group of four friends started driving into Alliance. The three passengers were intoxicated, the result of drinking a 12-pack of beer and a fifth of 110-proof vodka.
Passenger Benjamin Briner was scared. ``My God,'' he thought, ``what's about to happen here? Is this guy really going to go out and shoot whoever he sees?''
The crew was silent as the car turned onto South Liberty Avenue.
Then the gun went off.
Dailey was dead.
The barrel was in his mouth. The bullet had passed through the back of his neck and shattered the rear passenger window of the 2005 Chrysler Sebring.
...
Defense lawyer Jeffrey Jakmides argued that Dailey, 19, shot himself by accident, and he painted the victim as a gun-loving racist.
``William Dailey isn't dead because Matthew Meiring improperly handled a firearm in the vehicle,'' Jakmides said. ``William Dailey is dead because he improperly handled a firearm in that vehicle.''
The lawyer noted there is no evidence that shows Meiring ever had the gun fully in his possession. Dailey didn't like anyone touching his guns, Briner testified.
Jakmides said that Briner and Catich would have known if Meiring had taken the gun from Dailey and aimed it at him.
He said Dailey's blood-alcohol level was 0.20 percent at the time of his death -- more than double the state's legal limit of 0.08 percent.
Jakmides also said a urine sample taken from Meiring showed his alcohol level was 0.30 percent. ``That's just not intoxicated, ladies and gentlemen. That's blind drunk,'' he said.
Articles like this one cause me to ask, "Have advocates of decriminalization of drugs learned anything from these sort of tragedies?" The advocates of drug laws aren't just bluenoses out to prevent people from having a good time. They are attempting to prevent these intoxicated-based tragedies from becoming more common.
You can argue that marijuana would replace alcohol, with no net increase on stupidity-induced tragedies. We really don't know for sure, but I sure wouldn't want beer to get any cheaper, and marijuana, if legal, is likely to make beer seem expensive. (It is a weed, after all.)
You can argue that attempts to prohibit opiates move private tragedies into problems of drug trafficking, and I would agree. On net, opiate prohibition is probably more destructive than legalization--but don't forget that we are mostly moving the damage around, we aren't ending it.
Tires
I mentioned a few days back that it was time to replace the front tires on the Corvette--actually, a bit past time to do so. After asking around in the Internet newsgroup alt.autos.corvette, I ordered up two Michelin Pilot Sport A/S tires in my size, 245/45YR17 ZP, from Tire Rack, for installation by their local installer here in Boise. (In this case, Big O Tires on Main Street.)
In case you have ever wondered what all those numbers mean that describe tires--in this case 245/45YR17 ZP: 245 is the width of the tire; /45 is the aspect ratio (the tire height is 45% of the section width); Y means that it is safe for extended use at 186 miles per hour; R means it is a radial; 17 is the diameter of the wheel that the tire goes on; and ZP is Michelin's term for what Goodyear calls a "runflat." You can drive for many miles on the tire with no air, at reasonable speeds, without damaging it.
The Corvette uses runflats because in the pursuit of ultimate performance, the front tires are on 17 inch diameter wheels, and the rear tires are on 18 inch wheels. This means that even if you wanted to waste the limited interior space of the car on a spare, you would need two spares: one for the front wheels, one for the rear. Instead, Chevrolet elected to use runflats for all but the very highest performance Corvette (the Z06) as a way to save space. The downside is that runflats usually ride a bit more harshly than conventional tires, usually somewhat noisier, and they are priced higher as well.
I haven't been happy with the noise level of the Corvette since I bought it. My wife is so unhappy with the noise level on concrete that she really doesn't like to go on trips in it. At least part of why I replaced the Goodyears when they wore out on the front is that a number of Corvette owners have noticed that the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S is substantially quieter than the Goodyear runflat that comes standard on the car.
I wasn't expecting a big improvement from replacing the front tires; most of the tire noise on concrete comes from the rear tires, which have an enormous resonance chamber in the rear. I measured an average of 92 decibels on concrete headed to Big O, and 91 decibels on concrete headed back. I wouldn't consider a one decibel reduction significant, since I wasn't on the exact same patch of concrete, and tires at the end of their lifetime are different from tires at the beginning. Still, I did notice some improvement in ride quality--the Michelins are definitely less harsh. When the time comes to replace the rears, I will probably put Michelins there as well.
To give you some idea of the price difference: the Goodyears were on special at Tire Rack for $273 each; the Michelins were $223.
Just A Coincidence, I'm Sure
This may be too disturbing for those with sweet and gentle souls (those who haven't lived in the San Francisco Bay Area).
There are things so bizarre that I'm not even sure if I can call them a moral failing so much as a sickness: RICHMOND, Va. A Richmond man referred to by police as a "person of interest" in the disappearance of a Virginia Commonwealth University student was arraigned Monday morning on child pornography charges.
Ben Fawley, 38, was arraigned on 16 counts of child pornography. Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Mike Jagels said investigators found evidence in Fawley's computers of at least 30 movies depicting sexual acts with children between 10 and 14 years old and as young as 1 to 2 years old.
Great Moments in Correlation Analysis
One of the great hazards when doing correlation analysis is to assume that correlation indicates causality. If you find that A is present, and so is B, it is tempting to assume that A causes B. But it could also be that B causes A--or perhaps there is some underlying causal factor C that causes both A and B. It could even be a coincidence that A and B are both present. There are methods for showing that the correlation of A and B is not likely to be coincidence, but there is still the problem that you may have not considered all the possible factors that may explain why both A and B are present.
So here we have this paper that has apparently been published that compares the United States to other "prosperous developed countries" and concludes that high rates of social problems in the U.S. are caused by the disproportionately religious beliefs of the population: RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
So what other countries is this guy comparing us to? The article isn't terribly specific, but it appears to be Britain, Japan, and a number of European countries. There are, of course, no other significant differences between the U.S. and those other countries.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.
It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.
Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its spiritual capital. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.
The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.
In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.
From my own research, I can tell you that there are substantial differences in murder rates within the U.S.--and if you compare the white non-Hispanic murder rate of the U.S., it is quite comparable to Western Europe--places that on average, are white, and non-Hispanic. Nearly all of the difference in murder rates between the U.S. and other "developed countries" is in the black and Hispanic population of the U.S.
I'm sure that others will pick apart the other socially destructive behaviors that the paper uses as markers, and point out the numerous ways in which the U.S. is different from Japan and Western Europe. I would like to say that I am amazed that something so obviously junk science would get published in a scholarly journal--but I am really not surprised. Academic standards evaporated when the left seized control of the ivory tower.
Victor Davis Hanson On The Corruption of the Academy
It's a long piece, with examples of how university presidents have given into the deranged victimology crowd that runs many universities today. I don't mean that they are a majority of the faculty; just that a loud and vicious cadre can achieve its goals if it doesn't let decency or honesty get in the way.
As usual, it is long, detailed, and very well-written--I would encourage you to read it in full--especially just before the next vote for more bonds for your state university. There a couple of interesting items that I thought it worthwhile to excerpt to pique your interest. One is about the new chancellor of UC Santa Cruz: But Chancellor Denton has her own shortcomings. They do not revolve around mere impromptu remarks, nor have they been trailed by public apologies and task forces. Yet in its own way her controversy goes to the heart of the same contemporary race-and-gender credo that governs the university, enjoying exemption from normal scrutiny and simple logic.
It must be rough to relocate on a combined salary of $467,000.
Before her arrival, Ms. Denton arranged the creation of a special billet--ad hoc, unannounced and closed to all applicants but one: Ms. Denton's live-in girlfriend of seven years, Gretchen Kalonji. Most recognize this as the sort of personal accommodation--old-boy networking, really--that Ms. Denton presumably wishes to replace with affirmative action, thus ending backroom deals and crass nepotism.
But if race and gender--what we now refer to as "diversity"--are to be taken seriously, one wonders whether there was not a qualified African-American or Latina woman who could at least have been interviewed for the lucrative UC position. After all, Chancellor Denton herself praised UC Santa Cruz for its "celebration of diversity." And earlier, she insisted that "it is really shocking to hear the president of Harvard make statements like that," i.e., statements that ever so gently questioned the diversity shibboleth. Consider the reaction had President Summers arrived at a public, tax-supported university and arranged for his live-in girlfriend to have lifelong employment in a specially created job, complete with a subsidized move into a rent-free home.
And a six-figure salary: Gretchen Kalonji's unusual position pays $192,000 a year. Now, it happens that Chancellor Denton--whose salary is $275,000--was granted $68,750 to subsidize the move into the rent-free University President's House. But Ms. Kalonji, too, received a grant for expenses incurred during her "transition" to the Santa Cruz campus--$50,000, in fact.
The decision to pay $120,000 in public money for moving expenses to a couple with a combined salary of $467,000 can be defended, perhaps, but one group was certainly outraged: the university's maintenance staff, secretaries, and blue-collar workers. UC Santa Cruz's workers had not received a raise in three years. Yet in response to questions about her controversial partner accommodation--and the message that it sent to less-fortunate others on the campus--Chancellor Denton did not sound like a woman of the Left. "It's a typical practice," she explained in an interview with the local Santa Cruz Sentinel, "in the corporate world or academia." As if turning for support to the suspect world of capitalism was not enough, Ms. Denton also sought the sanctuary of victimhood, of someone at the mercy of red-state yahoos: "We got caught in the middle of national forces, gay marriage, red-state/blue-state issues and a state ruling. It's a hot item right now, and it heightened the tension. I was kind of surprised at the San Francisco Chronicle coverage saying 'lesbian lover.' It seemed more like a tabloid headline."
I always wondered why so many faculty were prepared to tolerate not only pretend academic departments ("ethnic studies" for example), but also to have filled so many tenured positions with people whose political agitation took precedence over scholarship (and yes, I mean people like Michael Bellesiles). Professor Hanson has some inside knowledge of the process: For some two decades, I often watched entire departments of 50-something white male philosophy and English professors, themselves often hired ABD ("all but dissertation": a graduate student who hasn't finished his thesis) in the booming job markets of the 1960s--and who subsequently became mostly unpublished and undistinguished classroom teachers--take it upon themselves to hire only minorities and women, lecturing passed-over young white males about the need for diversity. These entrenched and often mediocre senior professors did everything for the cause except take early retirement, though many advised the perennially exploited part-time instructors to "move on" or "get a life."
Well, that explains quite a bit, if that was the way things actually worked.
Eleven Catholics Priests...
No, it's not the start of a joke: CHICAGO Eleven priests suspected of sexual misconduct with minors more than 20 years ago have been barred from clerical work, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago said Monday.
They should have been barred from breathing instead. (Okay, that was a cheap shot.)
The men cannot present themselves as priests, engage in public ministries or act as an agent of the archdiocese, although they have not been removed from the priesthood, said Chancellor Jimmy Lago.
I try, very hard, to understand why the Catholic Church was so forgiving for several decades of pedophile priests. I can somewhat understand that the Church for a long time was so focused on forgiveness that it didn't realize that they were played by some of these creeps.
But that was then; this is now; and the Catholic Church's eyes can't still be shut. I am hard pressed to see why these eleven priests shouldn't be defrocked, and sent out into the cold streets of Chicago to live.
Molesting kids is a bad thing; for a clergyman to use his office to do this is even worse; to justify their actions to the victims (as some pedophile priests have done) as a spiritual action adds a new level of evil.
Women & Gun Self-Defense
Generally, most civilian gun defense use involves men, defending themselves from other men. A little more rarely, it is a woman defending herself from a man. Here's a real strange one: a woman defending herself from a female armed robber: An Albuquerque woman faces armed robbery and child abuse charges after she allegedly tried to rob an Albuquerque bookstore but was stopped by a clerk at the store.
A criminal complaint says Victoria Weathers pulled out a knife and tried to rob Dons Paperbacks.
The clerk, Elizabeth Johnson, complied at first as Weathers allegedly poked her in the stomach with the knife.
But when Weathers tried to leave, the complaint says, Johnson pulled a handgun from her leg holster and ordered her to stop.
No Lie Too Outrageous
There's a guy who is appearing at antiwar protests claiming to be a Republican ashamed of his own party. His name is Jeb Eddy. There's one little problem: Wizbang says: The only problem is that he's a complete fraud.
And then lists his political contributions over the last few years--all to Democrats. Just to be sure, I went to OpenSecrets.org and looked up Jeb Eddy of California. Sure enough: every political contribution that Jeb Eddy has given (going all the way back to 1998) is to Democratic candidates and Democratic organizations. There isn't a single one to a Republican or even non-partisan organization. (Click here to see 2004 and 2002 contributions by Jeb Eddy; here to see 2000 and 1998 contributions; here to see that were no 1996 or 1994 contributions.)
Now, this sort of dishonesty isn't new. Back in early 2004, the musician Moby had this to say about how Democrats should swing the election to defeat Bush: Moby suggests that it's possible to seed doubt among Bush's far-right supporters on the Web.
At the time, I pointed out that you shouldn't believe everything that get in email from supposed Republicans, for this very reason. At about the same time, I started receiving emails from people who claimed to be "lifelong Republicans" and "conservatives" concerned about Bush's Iraq policy. What I found interesting is that the more questions I asked them, and the more I read their responses--it was apparent that they were neither Republicans nor conservatives--and didn't even know enough to be able to fake it well. They were raving leftists, who thought that they were smart enough to lie about their political orientation, and get away with it.
"You target his natural constituencies," says the Grammy-nominated techno-wizard. "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion.
"Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, 'What's all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?'"
Moby didn't claim that he believed the abortion story.
It makes you wonder, doesn't it, if the reason that the left is so focused on calling Bush a liar has something to do with projection? This crowd can't be bothered with telling the truth about even something as trivial as their party affiliation.
Not surprisingly, this flaming leftist is a wealthy person who lives in Palo Alto. Who else but a millionaire can afford leftist policies?
The Constitution As Genie in The Lamp
Professor Volokh is gathering himself all sorts of personal insults for pointing out that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had defended all sorts of bizarre and extreme positions back in the 1970s, when she worked for the ACLU--and yet Republicans still allowed her appointment to the Supreme Court without making a big stink about it. Previously, Volokh has pointed out that Ginsburg supported lowering the age of consent to 12 in federal territories and properties. Now he is pointing out that Ginsburg appears to have argued that prostitution is Constitutionally protected: These [federal] prostitution proscriptions are subject to several constitutional and policy objections. Prostitution, as a consensual act between adults, is arguably within the zone of privacy protected by recent constitutional decisions. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
Similarly, she seems to have argued that polygamy statutes are unconstitutional: This section [48 U.S.C. §1461] restricts certain rights, including the right to vote or hold office, of bigamists, persons "cohabiting with more than one woman," and women cohabiting with a bigamist. Apart from the male/female differentials, the provision is of questionable constitutionality since it appears to encroach impermissibly upon private relationships. [Endnote: Cf. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 439 (1972).]
This is no surprise; the ACLU today argues that polygamy is a Constitutional right, and one that they intend to protect through the courts, as a logical extension of Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
Now, there might well be legitimate public policy arguments about whether prostitution should be illegal or not; Nevada's experience suggests that legal and regulated prostitution is more effective at dealing with the problems of pimps and STDs than the current strategy of complete illegalization.
It is at least an interesting argument as to whether laws prohibiting polygamy are good or bad; I strongly support such laws, because of the destructive effects that it has when a small number of wealthy men monopolize the supply of women.
Nonetheless, whether such laws make good sense or not is completely different from the question of whether they are Constitutional. What I find disturbing in reading through the comments that various readers have made about this subject on Professor Volokh's blog is to what a large extent the U.S. Constitution has become a genie in a lamp: wish for what you want, abuse the document a bit, and a genie (wearing black robes) will grant your wishes.
The Constitution defines roles and responsibilities for both federal and state governments. There are some areas where the Constitution and its amendments clearly limit the authority of the government (slavery isn't lawful; requirements for search warrants or probable cause; freedom of speech; freedom of religion). There are other areas where the Constitution clearly grants authority to the government (provide for a national defense; regulate interstate commerce).
Much of the legitimate conflict comes down to definitions: is someone growing wheat (or marijuana) that never crosses state lines engaged in interstate commerce? Did the Framers intend for freedom of speech to cover all speech, even the vulgar, slanderous, and that which provokes violence? Is animal sacrifice a protected expression of "freedom of religion"?
For the most part, the Constitution leaves the states free to pass whatever laws they deem appropriate for the public welfare. These laws may make sense; they may be stupid--but simply because someone finds a law stupid or ineffective does not make it contrary to the Constitution.
This Is Your Wakeup Call, America
The traditional explanation for the sort of behavior that this news story describes is that the deprivation and want of ghetto life makes animals out of kids like this. Please explain why it is that these victims of deprivation and want used their camera cell phones to send pictures of the crime. Even I don't have a camera cell phone. Four Central Florida middle school students were arrested Monday for allegedly ripping off the clothes off classmates and then snapping photos with their cell phones, according to a Local 6 News report.
The media is soaking boys in a culture that says that girls are sexual objects, available for the use of whatever pimp can get their hands on them. There comes a certain point where the results of what the entertainment industry produces is destructive enough that something has to be done. I'm not sure what, exactly, but this is completely out of control.
Investigators said the boys, ages 12, 13 and 14 years old, attacked the girls Friday at Tavares Middle School in Lake County, Fla., in the back of a school bus. The boys then allegedly groped the girls and took pictures of them.
Cell phone video allegedly showed one of the girls screaming for help while the boys touch her breasts, according to the report.
Police said the attack continued after the boys got off the bus when they pulled another girl by her hair. When she fell, detectives said they put their hands up her skirt.
Media Racism As The Cause?
The Los Angeles Times discussion of the reports of horrifying crimes in the Superdome has a pretty searing indictment of the news media, and suggests that race had something to do with it: Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.
I don't find this hard to believe as an explanation. I suspect that racism is actually quite a bit more common among the very liberal news media than they like to admit. Still: I find myself wondering why it is that the most outrageous claims were being perpetuated by black public officials (like Mayor Nagin) and black civil rights leader Randall "cannibalism" Robinson? Why is that this account by a couple of law professors upset about how badly white America is treating black refugees repeats similar stories from the Astrodome?
...
Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome, roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless, and dozens of bodies being shoved into a freezer at the Convention Center.
Hyperbolic reporting spread through much of the media.
Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an "alert" as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of "robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness."
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Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.
"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."
Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.
Something is still not right here.
This Isn't A Typical News Story From Around Here
Largely because of the make of stolen car: At about 5:40 p.m. Thursday, Garden City police went to Auto Access at 5225 W. Chinden to check for a stolen Ferrari. When they arrived, they discovered Michael Widner, 26, sitting alone in the car.
What? They didn't charge him with littering?
Police said when Widner tried to escape, a private citizen blocked the exit. That was when Widner, police said, rammed a police car, jumped out of the Ferrari through an open T-top and forced officers to chase him on foot into an irrigation canal.
Widner was taken into custody for Grand Theft by Possession, Resisting Arrest, Aggravated Battery on Law Enforcement, two felony warrants, Carrying a Concealed Weapon, and Destruction of Evidence. Widner was booked into the Ada County Jail and will be arraigned at 1 p.m. today at the Ada County Courthouse.
Whenever I Start To Feel Old...
I read a news story like this: When the surviving members of a World War II fighter squadron hold their reunion in Boise this week, old friends likely will swap stories of camaraderie, heroism and romance.
And suddenly, I feel young!
The 434th Fighter Squadron was one of three comprising the U.S. Air Corps' 479th Fighter Group. Created to hasten the end of the war in Europe, the group was cited for playing "a major role in dealing the much vaunted German Air Force devastating blows from which it never fully recovered."
Some of the squadron's pilots were among the war's best known aces an elite distinction only a small percentage of fighter pilots earned, by shooting down a minimum of five enemy planes.
...
Former 1st Sgt. Henry Randall, the only squadron member who lives in Boise, was in charge of everything from KP duty to paychecks when the group was based in southern England in 1944-45. Randall wanted to be a pilot, but a hearing problem kept him out of flight school.
When he was growing up in Weiser, Randall's parents had spoken fondly of Scotland, and a three-day pass from his duties at Wattisham Airfield gave him a chance go there. He spent the first night at a family home in Newcastle upon Tyne, in northern England not far from Scotland. People there opened their homes to servicemen. But his visit didn't sit well with the youngest member of the family, a 17-year-old captain in the British National Fire Service Bomb Disposal Division.
"She said hello and then went to talk to her mother," Randall said. "Fortunately, I couldn't hear what she was saying."
She remembers as if it were last week:
"I came in and saw him sitting in my father's chair at the dining table, having a cup of tea. Nobody sat in my father's chair. I don't think I'd have let the king sit in my daddy's chair.
"I went in and asked my mother what that Yank was doing there. I didn't care how far away from home he was. He wasn't going to sit there if I had anything to do with it."
Randall vacated the chair.
He saw the girl again that evening, though, dressed in a kilt while demonstrating the basics of playing catcher at a baseball game. His three-day pass ran out, but not his memory of the girl in the kilt.
It was 300 miles from Wattisham to Newcastle upon Tyne. To save travel time, Randall asked Olds, the budding air ace and future general, to fly him there on weekends when he had passes.
...
Two months after the inauspicious beginning with her father's chair, the first sergeant and the girl in the kilt were married. Now 61 years, two children and three grandchildren later Henry and Ann Randall, 87 and 82 respectively, are co-hosting the Boise reunion.
Why I Get Angry At The ACLU's Campaign...
To turn pedophilia from a crime into a Constitutional right. The news story below involves an adult and a bunch of girls. It does not appear that any of them were the victims of forcible rape. The middle school and high school? They are less than a mile from my house; my son attended the middle school, and now attends the high school. This is not an abstraction: A former Meridian School District teacher serving life in prison for rape and having sex with underage students in the 1980s is up for parole this spring and one of his victims said she can't believe that he could be paroled.
I keep making this point--and the advocates of lowering or abolishing the age of consent keep pretending otherwise--kids overwhelmingly lack the emotional maturity to recognize manipulation by a skilled adult predator.
Shadra Bruce, now 34 and living in Reno, said she is concerned that a parole investigator is recommending that former Lowell Scott Middle School and Centennial High School science teacher Dan Campbell be released from prison, and his other victims aren't fighting to keep him incarcerated. Bruce said she hasn't been able to contact the other two women; the Idaho Statesman was not able to contact them.
"(Campbell's parole investigator is) saying he behaved in prison well, there are no teenage girls in there," Bruce said earlier this week. "It was his education and position of authority that he used to betray the trust of his community. Over time, his victims just got younger and younger. We need to keep the young girls in our community safe."
Campbell was sentenced to the Idaho State Correctional Institution in Boise in 1991 after pleading guilty to two counts of rape and one count of lewd and lascivious conduct for having sex with three of his underage students.
Bruce said Campbell targeted her as an eighth-grader and groomed her over several years into a sexual relationship as a high school student. She says society shouldn't risk that happening again to any other girls.
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According to court records, Campbell's offenses date to 1984 when he started approaching female students to lure them into sexual relationships. Two girls later had abortions at his urging, according to court records.
Campbell was a popular science teacher at Lowell Scott Middle School and later Centennial High School and a nationally known wrestling coach.
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At least two of the girls sued the Meridian School District in 1992, claiming district officials knew or should have known about Campbell's "sexual tendencies toward minor females." The results of the lawsuits were sealed; the terms of any settlement are not known.
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"It started when I was a student in the 8th grade ... I'd be taking a test, and he would be massaging my shoulders," Bruce said. "He would tell me stuff like, 'you can't trust your parents.' He'd tell me he loved me. He was the coolest guy I knew ... he was the only one I trusted."
Bruce said she began a sexual relationship with Campbell as an upperclassman in high school and that it ended about the time she graduated.
Several weeks later, she told Campbell she was pregnant; she said Campbell ordered her to have an abortion and threatened to harm her family if she didn't.
"And I thought I was the only one. ... I found out later there were other girls," she said. "When detectives called me and told me what was going on, I freaked.
"It's so easy now to look back and see how he was messing with my head," she said. "I am a much healthier person right now, but it took a long time."
Bruce said she and the two other victims involved in the court case were ostracized by portions of the community after the arrest.
This Is So "Duh!"
John Lott and Mario Villarreal point out that a recent commission appointed to look into the problem of voter fraud suggested that requiring a photo ID before you can vote would substantially solve this problem--and the responses of some Democrats make you wonder how much of a vested interest they have in maintaining a system of voter fraud: ON Monday, a bipartisan commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter and ex-Secretary of State James Baker surprised most observers and agreed that Americans should be required to have photo IDs to vote. In fact, though the American debate over this is vitriolic, photo IDs are commonly used to prevent voter fraud across the world.
I really don't like the idea of requiring people to have IDs, but I like even less the idea of "Vote early, vote often." You may remember the brief concern last year when Milwaukee--a city with 382,000 registered voters--asked the state to supply them with 938,000 ballots for the general election.
Democrats often don't buy it. Howard Dean recently claimed that the Republican push for voter IDs is "a new Southern strategy and a new Jim Crow." Others have claimed that the requirement would victimize Hispanics, African-Americans and the poor. (Proponents answer that the IDs will actual prevent voters from being improperly challenged.)
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Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a hero of the civil-rights movement, waxed apocalyptic over the recent Justice Department decision (required under the Voting Rights Act) to allow Georgia's photo-ID to go ahead: "This decision takes us back to the dark past of literacy tests and other insidious devices that were carefully devised to hamper the participation of all of our citizens in the political process."
Huh? Americans are overwhelmingly used to presenting a photo ID. You need it to start a bank account or cash a check, drive a car or board a plane even, if you look too young, to buy cigarettes or beer. Modern society relies on it.
The concern about Hispanics being discouraged from voting seems misplaced. Most notably, you have to show photo ID to vote in Mexico. And while Georgia allows voters to use any of six different types of photo IDs, Mexico inists on an official voter ID with a photo and a thumbprint.
Powerful Editorial in the Wall Street Journal About Katrina Rebuilding
It points out that the vast quantity of money that Congress is being guilt-ridden into appropriating for rebuilding is going to among the most corrupt states in America: "We're getting a lot of calls" on emergency aid abuses, reports Gen. Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. Last week, police officers found a treasure trove of food, drinks, chainsaws and roof tarps in the home of Cedric Floyd, chief administrative officer for the Jefferson Parish suburb of Kenner. Mr. Floyd is one of several city workers who will likely be charged with pilfering.
I am pleased to report that my representative in the House was one of eleven members with the good sense and courage to vote against the Katrina relief bill.
Despite assurances from President Bush, "the government is fighting this war [on waste] with Civil War weapons, and we're just overwhelmed," Joshua Schwartz, co-director of the George Washington University Law School's procurement law program, told Knight Ridder. Democrats are already scoring political points. Rep. David Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is lamenting the lack of accountability in the aid package. He is calling for "the beginning of some new thinking" on how to handle disaster relief.
Put bluntly, the local political cultures don't engender confidence that aid won't be diverted from the people who truly need and deserve it. While the feds can try to ride herd on the money, here's hoping folks in the region take the opportunity to finally demand their own political housecleaning. Change is past due. Last year, Lou Riegel, the agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans office, described Louisiana's public corruption as "epidemic, endemic, and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt."
Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of elected officials per capita convicted of crimes (Mississippi takes top prize). In just the past generation, the Pelican State has had a governor, an attorney general, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted. Last year, three top officials at Louisiana's Office of Emergency Preparedness were indicted on charges they obstructed a probe into how federal money bought out flood-prone homes. Last March the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered Louisiana to repay $30 million in flood-control grants it had awarded to 23 parishes.
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It is the city's dysfunctional police force that needs immediate attention. Lt. Gen. Steven Baum, chief of the Pentagon's National Guard bureau, lamented the poststorm "disintegration" of the force. City residents have long endured men in blue who not only fail to fight crime but sometimes engage in it, with more than 50 officers going to prison in the past dozen years, two of them to death row. When one police district was caught altering its data, Chief Eddie Compass said, "I don't need an outside agency coming in. I think we have proven that we are capable of taking care of our own house."
An Interesting Explanation for Canada's Failed Gun Registry
The Winnipeg Sun has a report indicating that the existing scandal in which government funds were given to ad agencies that did very little--so that they could contribute money to the Liberal Party--may be small potatoes compared to the billion dollars Canadian spent on Canada's gun registration program. (Original estimated cost: $2 million Canadian.)
I had assumed all this time that the problem with this program was really gross incompetence, but the Winnipeg Sun article gives the impression that something a bit more corrupt is being done with the money.
Captain's Quarters is suggesting that this waste of money may have even a darker motivation: Like most gun-control programs, it has done little to remove weapons from the hands of criminals, making the overall effect of the registry more onerous on law-abiding gun owners. It also cost much more than the Liberals acknowledged at the initiation of the program; the registry has drained finances from other law-enforcement efforts.
If so, perhaps incompetence wasn't the issue at all--just a very devious and clever way to prevent the RCMP from doing its job. There were allegations that the AdScam matter had some organized crime involvement; I guess that I am not surprised that the left here holds up Canada as an example of what they want the U.S. to be.
Some Conservatives will say that this was the entire point of the Gun Registry all along. The RCMP, which administers the Gun Registry, has the only law-enforcement portfolio to independently investigate the Canadian executive. In the Canadian political system, the executive comes from Parliament and does not have checks or balances as the American executive does in Congress and the judiciary. The only such check comes in a no-confidence motion, which a majority party can easily squelch, or in the national law-enforcement agency of the RCMP. However, burdened by an underfunded mandate in the Gun Registry and the loss of high-ranking professionals over the last few years, the RCMP no longer has the resources nor the clout to exercise that check on executive power.
What happened as a result? Some would point to Adscam, which put a lot of money into the pockets of Liberal Party backers as well as the Party itself.
Give Me The Fish And No One Gets Hurt
The Observer (a British paper) reports on some of the missing from Katrina: It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
I find it interesting that they are now using sleeping darts. Once upon a time, the dolphins were armed with snout-mounted firearms (presumably contact weapons only--water slows bullets down very quickly).
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.
...
Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.
'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?'
...
The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.
Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy's, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.
With Time Off For Good Behavior...
A Spanish court has convicted an al-Qaeda cell leader of his involvement in the 9/11 attacks--although not of the most serious charge of being an accomplice to murder. The prosecutor had requested a sentence of 25 years--per victim: Prosecutors had accused Yarkas, a 42-year-old Spaniard of Syrian origin, of the more serious charge of being an accomplice to murder and requested a jail term of nearly 75,000 years - 25 years for each of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the suicide airliner attacks in 2001.
Instead, Yarkas was sentenced to 27 years for conspiracy to commit murder. Oh yes, an al-Jazeera reporter was also convicted: Twenty-one others also stood trial, but on charges not directly related to Sept. 11. Of those, 16 were convicted of belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization and five were acquitted.
Gee, do you suppose that's al-Jazeera's job? The search for truth?
One of the 16 was Tayssir Alouny, a correspondent for the pan-Arab TV network Al-Jazeera. He was convicted of collaboration and sentenced to seven years in jail.
Al-Jazeera condemned Alouny's verdict.
"It was a black day in the history of the Spanish justice," Al-Jazeera news editor Ahmed al-Sheik told the broadcaster from Madrid. "We were all shocked because everyone expected Alouny to be freed. It is a regrettable event in the history of international journalism when a journalist who sought the truth becomes the accused."
How To Annoy A Liberal
Have them read this New York Times article about how the best and the brightest of women going to elite colleges are planning to be full-time mothers: Cynthia Liu is precisely the kind of high achiever Yale wants: smart (1510 SAT), disciplined (4.0 grade point average), competitive (finalist in Texas oratory competition), musical (pianist), athletic (runner) and altruistic (hospital volunteer). And at the start of her sophomore year at Yale, Ms. Liu is full of ambition, planning to go to law school.
I guess this was so horrifying to the liberal elite that represent a big part of the New York Times readership that the reporter wrote a companion piece explaining her research--and to my pleasure, she didn't just go out looking for interesting quotes--she sent out surveys, and found that this "motherhood comes first" sentiment was widespread.
So will she join the long tradition of famous Ivy League graduates? Not likely. By the time she is 30, this accomplished 19-year-old expects to be a stay-at-home mom.
"My mother's always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time," Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. "You always have to choose one over the other."
At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.
There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.
Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.
Michael Williams has some interesting commentary on this article also, pointing out that providing an intellectually enriched environment is about the best thing that you can give a child.
I've long been upset about the way in which highly intelligent parents for the last two decades have put careers ahead of childrearing--with the result that the children of upper half of the bell curve in intelligence are largely going into daycare provided by the middle or the bottom of the bell curve. Yes, I know that there are daycare providers out there who do it because they love children, and are very smart, very capable people. These, in my experience, are the exception.
The Horrifying Reports of Violent Crimes in New Orleans...
Are largely evaporating, it seems: After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Back on September 6, I quoted a number of news stories with horrifying first-hand accounts, quoting identifiable eyewitnesses. I am deeply troubled by this: either reporters were making stuff up, or they were quoting liars--and multiple liars who told roughly similar stories of what was going on in the Superdome--or there's a coverup going on now. Either way, this doesn't speak well for the journalism profession.
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.
At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.
UPDATE: This account from a couple of Houston law professors claims that rape and child molestation is a big problem at the Houston Astrodome (where many of the evacuees from the Superdome ended up). The blog is titled "White Washing the Black Storm: We Are Watching," and the subtitle talks about "the real treatment of black Americans"--which makes me wonder: are the evacuees awash in savages committing crimes against their fellow evacuees--and one may presume were doing likewise at the Superdome? Or is this just another variant of the "black people have been reduced to cannibalism" claim that a civil rights activist made, and then recanted?
I am reaching the point where I wonder who is telling the truth. Are there a lot of monsters among the evacuees? Or are leftists making stuff up to generate sympathy for the victims?
Recent Fiction I've Read
Michael Crichton's Prey and Timeline, and Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South.
I enjoyed both Prey and Timeline: Timeline because it is about a subject on which I have some expertise--history--and because I rather enjoyed the movie of it. Some of my objections to the movie are nicely handled in the book: how in the heck do our time travelers manage to understand 14th century Norman French (which was probably as far from Middle French as Quebecois is from Parisian French)? There's a technical explanation, and wouldn't have taken so much effort to spend 30 seconds in the movie to tell us. Still, Timeline suffers the flaw that many of Crichton's novels do--weak character development. The cynic would suggest that when you already know who is going to play each character in the movie version, you don't really need to develop the characters.
Prey, on the other hand, did a pretty credible job of painting flesh and blood characters--and it is, I think, the first Crichton novel I've read that is written in the first person. This is a bit more challenging for a novel than writing it in third person, but unsurprisingly, it worked quite well.
I also found Prey satisfying because I've worked in startups before, and I've worked in Silicon Valley technology companies (although it has been a few years). Crichton captured some of the sense of excitement--and some of the pressure to succeed. I will say, however, that to the credit of Don Green and George Hawley, who led a couple of the startups in which I worked, things never reached these extreme levels of greed, "gotta succeed no matter what the personal cost" as the startup that is at the core of Prey.
Prey is part of Crichton's continuing policy--which appeared in Terminal Man and a bit more bluntly in Jurassic Park--of reminding us that there are risks involved when we get too full of ourselves with new technologies. Now, nanotechnology fans likes Instapundit will doubtless pooh-pooh the disaster that forms in Prey--but I think Crichton's point is not that this particular set of events will happen, but that we shouldn't get too arrogant in assuming that we have forseen all the possible risks of a new technology.
I've read Turtledove's The Guns of the South before--but I read it again because my wife is thinking of assigning it as sort of a fun, "read this before we start reading the serious Civil War literature" for an upcoming class. There's a lot to recommend it; Turtledove captures some of the complexities of understanding the South's multiple motives for the war, while still keeping you aware that without the dispute about slavery, the war would not have come--in spite of the Marxian-libertarian fusion fantasies that some have today on the subject. (Yeah, ordinarily Marxian and libertarian ideas don't fuse--you should get a matter/antimatter reaction instead of fusion, but for some odd reason, some libertarians have imagined the antebellum South as some proto-libertarian society--while a certain strain of Marxians have insisted on seeing the North's interest as purely promoting capitalism.)
I guess what also impresses me is how well Turtledove paints characters, not only of the famous and powerful (Richard E. Lee, Lincoln) but of ordinary Confederate grunts. His descriptions of the conditions under which they live in the field are very similar to my great-great-great-grandfather's diary entries--although being a Union soldier, he wasn't starving or wearing rags.
Diet Aids
We were watching one of the semieducational channels tonight (I think Discovery Channel), and it seems to have been Freak Show Night. The first show was about a woman who weighed something above 600 pounds, and not surprisingly, had some serious health problems. She needed a special ambulance to pick her up and take her to the hospital.
But she was downright normal compared to the next show, "The Half Ton Man." This poor guy weighed 1077 pounds, couldn't roll over by himself, couldn't get out of bed. The ambulance crew had to remove a wall of his house to get him out.
His wife claimed not to have noticed how bad his situation had become. I suppose he would have starved to death, if not for his loving wife, who kept him supplied with his 12,000 calorie a day diet. Oh yeah, after he left the hospital, he insisted that he didn't really much more than the average person--his genes just made it hard for him to lose weight.
I've mentioned one of these superobese tragedies before here, not to make fun of these--there's nothing funny about these situations--but to highlight the seriousness of enabling self-destructive behaviors. I mentioned last year a 480 pound woman who died while emergency workers tried to remove her from a couch where she had been resting for six years. Her body had to be surgically removed from the couch--her skin had merged into the fabric.
Anyway, as you might expect, this was a powerful diet and exercise aid. I'm thinking the weather has becomes sufficiently cooperative for me to start bicycling to work again.
The third show in Freak Show Night was about this Egyptian child born a couple of years ago with two heads, joined at the crown. Each head had a working brain and nervous system. I couldn't stand to watch this, because I know what the final outcome was.
The House Project: I Can See The Light At The End Of The Tunnel!
Or is that a sewer pipe?
I went up there this afternoon to see how it was progressing. The septic tank guy was there on Saturday, and here you can see the excavation for the tank, about 150 feet down the hill from the house.
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Here's the drain pipe leading down the hill from the house.
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Here's where the drain pipe leaves the house. 
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The fitting coming up to sidewalk level is there because lots of people up there own RVs, and it is convenient to have a fitting that lets them drain directly from the RV tank into the septic. We don't own an RV, and I can't imagine that we ever will, but it only added $25 to add this fitting, and perhaps a future owner will find it helpful. It also looks like it might make it simpler for a plumber to snake the line.
I'm not sure what this little piece of concrete is all about.
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It is either part of the septic tank system (based on its location), or it is a Cubist reinterpretation of R2D2. [UPDATE: I'm told that this is the distribution unit that directs output equally to the different leach field lines.]
Here's the backup generator, still waiting to be hooked up and located (probably out at the edge of hill, to reduce noise). It is rated at 7 kW (when running on LP gas), with automatic switchover in the event that we lose grid power, and it starts itself automatically every week to make sure everything is in good working order.
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The furnace seems to be completely installed.
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Again, the view out the front is about the worst view we have. (It will get better once the scrap is cleaned out and the grass goes in.)
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Unfortunately, the house now has temporary construction doors--and the locks are now actually operational, so I can't get into the house--reduced to peeking in the windows, like some sort of Construction Peeping Tom!
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This interesting effect was because the reflective surface of the glass acts as a mirror--and these were the parts that I wasn't able to shade.
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The construction crew seems to be clearing out some of the space on the west side of the garage, so that we can have a walkway over there.
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The roof shingles are on top, waiting to be hammered into place.
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Last house project entry.
Baby Forces Sale of Baby
I don't normally post links to other people's "for sale" ads unless there is something truly astonishing about the item, or something entertaining about the ad itself. But I feel so sorry for this guy: imminent arrival of a child forces him to sell his cherished 2000 Corvette. There's a whole bunch of pictures here, but this one should give you a taste for this beauty:
This is the last time I'll be posting, I have an offer from a dealership
He ran this on September 23, so I guess if you don't contact him by September 26th, it is too late.
that I'll be taking in the next 3 days if I don't get any response:
Price: $25,000
2000 Corvette Coupe: 25100 Miles
Black Exterior
Oak Interior
6 Speed Manual
Smoked glass removable roof panel
Magnesium upgrade wheels
Brand new tires
Heads up display
Dual zone climate control
Memory package
Sports seats
Z51 Performance suspension kit
All recalls have been done: Notably the column lock and seatbelt recall
Car will come with an extra front magnesium wheel with used tire.
Car will come with a brand new nose mask / bra and a car cover
Car will come with Cags skip shift installed
Car with come with tail light louvers installed
Car has never been involved in any kind of a wreck and has been garaged kept
it's entire life.
Selling the car because I now have a child.
Pictures can be found here: http://209.198.149.220/vette/
Car is located in Cedar Park, TX
Contact Kevin @ 512-826-1575 or corvette@austin.rr.com
