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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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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).
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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Scott Adams on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design It rather surprises me: I’ve been doing lots of reading on the subject, trying to gather comic fodder. I fully expected to validate my preconceived notion that the Darwinists had a mountain of credible evidence and the Intelligent Design folks were creationist kooks disguising themselves as scientists. That’s the way the media paints it. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The truth is a lot more interesting. Allow me to set you straight. (Note: I’m not a believer in Intelligent Design, Creationism, Darwinism, free will, non-monetary compensation, or anything else I can’t eat if I try hard enough.)And my oh my! He was right! I used to understand when the Young Earthers would get frustrated, nasty, and vicious. (Well, okay, that's just Ken Hamm.) But now it seems to be the defenders of the True Church of Darwinian Evolution (which doesn't include all evolutionists) who are having a little trouble keeping their tongues in check. Labels: intelligent design Avian Flu & Pigs Instapundit has linked to this obscure newspaper that talks about avian flu that appears to have jumped to pigs in Hunan Province in China: Chinese officials revealed that pigs have tested positive for bird flu in Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, where a bird epidemic is raging and one human death, possibly from bird flu, has already occurred, reported Phoenix TV on November 10. Hunan Province Bureau of Agriculture officials tested samples of pig oral secretions to assess the possibility that bird flu was responsible for the death of a 12-year old girl on October 17th. The girl was cremated the same day that she died, and her ill brother is still in quarantine.The article includes a picture from March of last year where a "mysterious disease" caused a lot of pig deaths. Obviously, the concern is that if avian flu can jump to pigs, it could jump from there to humans. I've seen discussion of the fact that pigs are a lot closer to people genetically than birds, and there's nothing that I know that would cause me to discount that. However, this article in the International Herald Tribune discusses those deaths, and denies the reports that the pigs have got it: Wadia said WHO experts were preparing to travel to central China's Hunan Province early next week to assist an investigation into whether bird flu killed a 12-year-old girl and sickened two people last month in cases originally ruled not to be H5N1.I don't know that there's any need to panic, but jumping from birds to pigs to humans is a plausible path. That is, after all, how the 1918 influenza pandemic reached us: 1918 flu pandemic originated in pigs, study finds House Project: Lighting Fixtures, Countertops Apparently when we picked out lighting fixtures at Grover's Pack and Pay in Boise several months back, we didn't give them the detailed list of stuff that our builder would need--so we had to FAX that over to Grover's on Friday. They didn't have everything in stock, but they had most of it. To speed up the process, because there was a real possibility that the electrician would be back from elk hunting in time to get started Saturday, we picked up everything that was ready Saturday morning at Grover's and delivered it.  Click to enlarge It just barely fit. Most of the painting has been done in the evenings, and we noticed a couple of rooms that, in the cold light of day, need a bit more painting, so we whined to the builder. We also discovered that the counter tops we picked out at another store seem not to have made it onto the order list. I'm not sure if that was our fault or theirs, but my wife noticed that the selection and pricing was better at Lowe's. Our builder already has an account at Home Depot, however, and the selection there was even a little more attractive. We had originally planned to use laminates for the countertops, but after more examination of the choices and prices, we decided on Corian for bathrooms two and three, and one of these cultured quartz stone surfaces that looks like granite (okay, granite on acid) for the kitchen and the master bedroom. Our current house uses a granite tile on the kitchen counters which, while quite dramatic, requires a bit more maintenance than the cultured stone surfaces--and is harder to keep clean, because of the grout between tiles. This cultured stone surface is a single sheet cut to dimension, and three centimeters thick. Oh yeah, here's one of the lesser views from our house, of Bogus Basin ski resort to the east.  Click to enlarge Last house project entry. Labels: house project Think How Upset His Opponents Were It's California, so don't be surprised at who gets elected: RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The winner of a school board election didn't campaign, attend forums or even go to any school board meetings before the vote — because he was in jail.Don't laugh. In 1981, I ran for Santa Monica City Council. There were 12 candidates on the ballot. Four were backed by Tom Hayden & Jane Fonda's organization (the hard left, called Santa Monicans for Renters Rights); four were backed by a group called the Santa Monica Citizens Congress, that claimed to support rent control, but was funded by landlords (and generally would have been considered liberal in any other part of the U.S.); and there were four of us too clueless to realize that in this election, the losing side was going to spend $500,000--for a city council race! As it happened, the vote turnout for us four lost ones declined as we went down the ballot. There is a certain level of randomness to a lot of voting. Civil Liberties Take A Back Seat To The More Important Parts of the Liberal Program mASS BACKWARDS (a blog devoted to Massachusetts' rather backward politics) reports that the mayor of Boston has decided that random searches of cars entering the state will solve their problems. I found it so hard to believe that the mayor of one of America's most liberal cities would propose something this clearly contrary to ACLU doctrine that I had to go read it myself: Pointing to the rising number of shootings in Boston, Mayor Thomas M. Menino is calling for a “handgun summit” in New England and raised the possibility of random police searches of cars crossing into the state to intercept illegal weapons.Why not random searches of cars crossing the state line for illegal drugs? Perhaps they could require everyone entering the state to stop for fingerprinting and background check? I'm sure that would catch a few people with outstanding arrest warrants, too. Of, maybe you could check to see if this person is legally in the country, while you are at it. Don't these politicians have even a clue about that funny scrap of paper they keep in the National Archives? Canadian Border Guards: Not Trusted With Guns I mentioned some months back that amazingly enough, Canadian border guards aren't trusted with guns--and the two country commission trying to improve border security suggested arming them. (It isn't just the civilians that Canadian liberals don't trust.) The Shekel reports that Canadian border guards recently walked off the job because it wasn't safe--they still aren't armed: The Canadian Border Guard personnel walked off the job yesterday protesting the fact that they are not allowed to be armed at the border checkpoints. I can find no written articles on this, my source was solely a radio report. House Project: Topless Cabinets We ran up to the house last night to make some last minutes decisions about countertops and backsplashes for the jetted tub and the kitchen sink. There are cabinets in the kitchen and vanities in two of the three bathrooms--but all lacking tops, of course. The kitchen:  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Looking down into the island where the cooktop goes, I don't see where the downdraft exhaust exits the building. Bathroom three is tiny, and has a correspondingly tiny vanity.  Click to enlarge We have long felt that too much space is wasted on a huge master bathroom. We may have gone a bit far the other direction!  Click to enlarge Utility room sink cabinet.  Click to enlarge Last house project entry. Labels: house project The Iraqi Quagmire Considerettes calls the situation in the Middle East a quagmire--but for the other side: Zarqawi has killed his countrymen and people of his own religious group in this bombing. He now has those people protesting in the streets against him. On Anderson Cooper last night, the Queen of Jordan noted that he killed innocent Muslims, and thus this was a sin against Islam. Friday, November 11, 2005
Richard Cohen As Porkbuster I haven't had much to say about the Porkbusters project that a number of bloggers have pursued. They seem to be doing a nice job of it, and unfortunately, pork barrel politics are completely non-partisan, because the masses like to be rewarded for breathing. The pigs must be putting on their leather flight jackets and goggles when a liberal Democrat like columnist Richard Cohen suddenly discovers that there is a lot of stupidly spent money in the federal budget. Ah, but he discovered it in a Republican's bailiwick, so I guess I'm not surprised. Still, I can't complain when Cohen does something good for the wrong reason: The statue of Stevens will note that he was the first senator in American history to take himself hostage. His threat to resign -- an action of vast indifference to all of mankind with the possible exception of the 50 people on Gravina Island -- would have deprived the Senate of a reverse Gold Rusher, someone who came down from Alaska to mine for gold in Washington. His speech, in which over and over he bemoaned the pitiful nature of his state's modest road system, made no mention of how Alaskans pay no state income tax and are awarded a piece of the state's oil revenue. The state is No. 1 in per capita federal aid, which is a tribute of sorts to Stevens's ability to game the system at the expense of us all. Pat Robertson Again But unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be satire, but an actual news story. When you can't tell satire from reality for Pat Robertson, it's time for him to take a lower public profile, I think: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.What sort of disaster is he expecting to strike the town? To fit with the theme of the election, everyone mutates into newts? ("I got better.") Bush Stops Turning the Other Cheek And it's about time. For more than a year now, the left and political opportunists in the Democratic Party (as distinguished from a lot of Democrats who put national interest above partisanship) have been spreading the claim that Bush lied about WMDs to get us into a war in Iraq. I've repeatedly pointed out here that the evidence is very clear: if WMDs were not present in Iraq in 2002, Hussein did a very effective job of pretending otherwise. The final Iraqi Survey Group report shows that there was certainly good reason to believe that if WMDs were not present in 2002, Hussein had kept all the people and capabilities together with the intention of resuming production and development upon the end of sanctions. Furthermore, he kept his own generals believing that Iraq had WMDs. Even if most of the world's intelligence services were wrong--and Iraq had disposed of nearly all of its WMDs by 2002--this was not intentional deception by the Bush Administration, but the problem of intelligence agencies (and not just in the U.S.) that were originally developed for the purpose of gathering information about the Soviet Union and its allies--a far easier task than doing so in Iraq. I have wondered for some time why Bush hasn't done a better job of defending his actions. Perhaps he assumed that because the Senate Intelligence Committee had agreed that there was no evidence of pressure on the CIA to reach a particular conclusion, and that Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV's claim that Bush lied about yellowcake, were wrong. San Francisco's Handgun Ban A handgun ban is really dumb. San Francisco's Preparation H (excuse me, Proposition H--Preparation H can be useful) is dumb raised to the dumb power. The brief that a couple of my lawyer acquaintances wrote challenging the law is full of examples of why morons shouldn't write laws--even morons on the other side! It didn't actually ban all handgun possession in San Francisco. It only banned handgun possession in San Francisco by San Francisco residents. This means that someone who has a business in San Francisco but doesn't live there can legally keep a handgun at his place of business. It means that if I visit San Francisco, and my handgun is unloaded until I get in my hotel room (at which point I can lawfully load it)--that's not illegal. But you San Franciscans are in a world of hurt. Gun control laws usually have all sorts of exemptions written for police officers. Preparation H (for where this measure should be placed) only exempts police officers from the ban while in the performance of their official duties--so they can't have a gun with them off-duty--and it isn't legal for them to transfer the gun to the police department when they go off-duty. Nor, it appears, may a police officer transfer his gun to the departmental armorer. The department may not issue guns or ammunition to its officers--the drafters of Preparation H forgot to provide for this. It gets worse. If a police officer seizes a handgun used in a crime, he apparently can't transfer it to the police department, or the district attorney's office for use as evidence at trial. That means no forensic examination of the gun; no handling of the gun by either district attorney or defense attorney at trial--those are transfers, prohibited by the law, and with no exemption. There was no exemption for historical collections, so a number of museums in town are going to have to remove their collections of historic handguns. There's a lot more--enough for me to write my next Shotgun News article and have no problem filling up my column. The title will likely be something like, "Why San Francisco Needs to Hire Morons To Write Its Gun Control Laws." Mark Morford Gets His Just Desserts I mentioned a really bizarrely nasty column by Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks back--the one where he insulted a family in Arkansas because they had too many children. Not more than they could afford--but more than a self-righteous liberal like Morford believes that anyone--especially a white Christian--should have: It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land.The essence of Bay Area liberalism is that there is nothing right or wrong--except for Christians, Republicans, and white people (leading to much guilt, since Bay Area liberals are overwhelmingly white). And now, Mark Morford is writing with anger about someone taking liberalism at its word--and operating as though destroying someone's car and not even leaving a note is a bad thing: Of course you were going way too fast, and you apparently made it halfway down the block before you realized -- did you even realize? -- you were careening at a savage angle and suddenly WHAM! you slammed into the little Honda Civic parked on the side of the road, just behind my car, and you were going so fast you slid right off the Honda and crashed even harder into my brand-new and barely driven hot-as-love little Audi A3, a split second later. Oh yes you did.Now I understand his upset. The third day that I had my new Mitsubishi Galant, my wife wanted to drive it to school. Fine. It wasn't just a door ding that someone put into it. The scratch was deep, and very long--long enough that I am quite sure that one of the students, many of whom are profound advocates of the doctrines expressed in the slogans discussed below, must have intentionally slammed a car door into the Galant. The scratch was huge. But for Morford, the quintessential liberal columnist to be upset.... How judgmental! How focused on material possessions! How convinced he is that the destruction of property is somehow...wrong. And yet the entire essence of Bay Area liberalism can be boiled down to the slogans that I used to see spray-painted all over the city, and which represented a rather loud faction of the Sonoma State University student body: Meat is Murder! Dairy is Rape! Property is Theft! Why Am I Not Surprised This Happened in the Bay Area? Pure evil combined with not too smart: MARTINEZ -- The Martinez Police Department reports that a 22-year-old resident was arrested Tuesday for allegedly offering her four-year-old child for sex.I recall hearing some years back that one of the cocaine abuse hotlines put up a billboard in Silicon Valley that simply said: "Need Cocaine? Call" and then the hotline number. And they got calls from people trying to buy cocaine. National Propaganda Radio Reported This? And Instapundit, as much as he is "deeply unimpressed" with Intelligent Design critiques of evolutionary theory, admits that this is scientific McCarthyism. It's time to start carrying an umbrella, to deal with the results of the pigs relieving themselves as they fly overhead. From NPR: Richard Sternberg, a staff scientist at the National Institutes of Health, is puzzled to find himself in the middle of a broader clash between religion and science -- in popular culture, academia and politics.The letter from the Office of Special Counsel is here. Look, being persecuted and retaliated against isn't proof that Intelligent Design is correct, but the evolutionary establishment's foaming at the mouth suggests that ID has hit a nerve that "Creation science" never did. That's because Intelligent Design has a few proponents who are legitimate scientists, working in the fields of biochemistry and microbiology--and some of its criticisms are very powerful. Labels: intelligent design Thursday, November 10, 2005
Son of a Friend of a Friend Reports From Iraq This is mostly about weapon systems that work, that don't work, and a grunt's eye view of the situation. I can only vouch for the integrity and identity of the person that sent this to me, but he received it from someone he went to school with, and I presume this would indicate that it is for real. I've edited some of the saltier language a bit. If you aren't interested in weapons, skim through for a discussion of the tactics and the bad guys: Hello to all my fellow gunners, military buffs, veterans and interested guys. A couple of weekends ago I got to spend time with my son Jordan, who was on his first leave since returning from Iraq. He is well (a little thin), and already bored. He will be returning to Iraq for a second tour in early '06 and has already re-enlisted early for 4 more years. He loves the Marine Corps and is actually looking forward to returning to Iraq. Journalists I had some unkind things to say about the journalism profession a few days ago, when I compared the average journalist to a pig. This was unfair. Pigs, at least, can be turned into ham, bacon, pork roast, pork chops, and footballs. A reader who blogs here, responded: It's wonderful that, here in America, we have found gainful employment The White Phosphorous Lie The left's newest lie is that the U.S. used white phosphorous on civilians in Iraq. Over at the Daily Ablution, there's a detailed examination of the claims--and evidence that it is utterly false, primarily because white phosphorous burns not just the skin, but the clothes as well--and the left is claiming that the injuries in the supposed documentary show burned skin, but unburned clothes. One of the leftist journalists pushing the story chose to respond to Daily Ablution--without ever discussing the actual factual question: does white phosphorous burn flesh but leave the clothes unburned? A New Meaning Of "Civil Disobedience" If you don't read Little Green Footballs often, you should. You discover amazing items like this new definition of "civil disobedience" in an article in USA Today: The riots in France that started in the Parisian suburbs are ringing alarm bells throughout Europe. These incidents of civil disobedience should serve as lessons to neighboring countries on how not to treat a minority population.I was under the impression that civil disobedience carried the notion of peaceful resistance to an unjust law--not burning cars, buildings, and beating people to death. But I guess I just have to get with the modern definition of "civil disobedience." I suppose next that we will discover that 9/11 was "aggressive civil disobedience." The Genocide Has Ended In Darfur The targeted population is gone: It looks as if the realists have won the day in the matter of Darfur. Or, to phrase it in another way, it looks as if the ethnic cleansers of that province have made good use of the "negotiation" and "mediation" period to complete their self-appointed task. As my friend Johann Hari put it recently in the London Independent: "At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There's only one problem—it's drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill."This really has received very little popular press--and for a not very surprising reason. The bad guys are Muslims (as are the victims). To show you how effective the left has been on confusing the masses, one of my wife's students a term or two back wrote a paper about what was going in Darfur--and about how Christians were exterminating Muslims. There are no Christians involved in this genocide, as either genocidal monsters or as victims--but the left's continual drumbeat about how Christianity and the Republican Party is the source of most of the world's problems, and how Muslims are victims, had confused this student to the point that she had apparently read multiple accounts of what was happening in Darfur--and the only way that it fit into the left's "Christians bad, Muslims victims" framework was to read that the victims were Muslims and the monsters were Christians. More Evidence That Alcohol Can Be A Bad Thing--But Not A Sufficient Explanation The bulk of this news story is far too disturbing to quote. Suffice it to say that after murdering a teenager, they used his head as a bowling ball--and when arrested, blamed it on their drinking: Mr Jones, who repeatedly broke down and cried during the interview, told detectives the three were "mates" and were drinking at a table in the back yard of Mr Roughan's home in the Brisbane bayside suburb of Sandgate at dusk on March 29.I've seen people do some pretty dumb things when drunk. I've read of people doing some pretty depraved things when drunk. If "quite a bit to drink" were the fundamental cause of this problem, and the depraved behavior has some sort of linear relationship to alcohol consumption, I guess each of these guys must have drained a backyard in-ground pool worth of beer to explain what they did. Thanks (I think) to Random Numbers for bringing this to my attention. Oil Drilling In Places You Wouldn't Expect... No, I don't mean in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. You are probably aware that moderate Republicans persuaded the rest of the party in the House that they should strip out a provision for oil drilling in the ANWR. After all, there's no shortage of oil, and it isn't as though we have any reasons to not import it from the Middle East, right? Michelle Malkin has a nice collection of upset letters from readers, who wish that there were a few conservatives in the Republican Party. I fear that quite a few House Republicans believe that if they make environmentalists happy, that instead of writing $1000 checks to the Democratic Party, or voting Green or Democrat, that they will suddenly turn Republican. Yeah, and if Republicans embraced gay marriage and partial-birth abortion vast numbers of hard-left Democrats will vote Republican in the next election. (Let me sell you this bridge, too.) No, this story about oil in places you don't think about is a bit closer to home than Alaska: LEXINGTON, Ky (AFP) -- The Appalachian mountains are buzzing with the sounds of oil drilling.The important point here is that all this oil drilling isn't being done because of patriotism, or concern for their fellow Americans, but because the currently high price of oil makes it very profitable to do so. All the screeching about oil prices from the Democrats (and those Republicans who think that being Democrat Lite will make them popular) ignores an important point: high prices are encouraging new production--and from places where the money isn't funding terrorism. Wednesday, November 09, 2005
House Project: Cabinets Going In! I spoke to my builder this morning. He confirmed that except for some touch-up work in the master bedroom and my office, the interior painting is done. The cabinet installers were in today, and may be done tomorrow. We are working on details of counters (the vendor where my wife carefully picked selections seems to have lost the information) and backsplashes for the jetted tub and kitchen sink. These are the sort of details where I don't have an opinion--even a weak one. I just let my wife call the shots on color and shapes, since she has much better taste than I do. We are still looking for a solution for how to surround the tub--and yet still have access to the pump, in the unlikely event that it ever needs repair or maintenance. Oddly enough, the makers of this jetted tub haven't a clue about access--they say that just about everyone just tiles it all over, on the assumption that it will never require maintenance. This seems unlikely to me, but then again, I'm one of those guys who uses screws or hex head bolts, not nails. One possibility is to use greenboard (the water resistant form of wallboard) with tiles mounted on it, and then a wooden trim piece at the corner that uses two screws to mount the trim piece--and the trim piece holds in the greenboard-mounted-tile surround panel. We still have not received an estimate for the sprinklers. The only guy my builder could find wanted about $3900 for what is really a tiny lawn area. The sprinkler guy that we used at our current house seems to have a much less exorbitant notion of the value of his time, and he did a good job, so we are having him come take a look as well. There's definitely need for more road mix, both to even out some areas where water is collecting, and to enlarge the area in front of the house where people will park. (Since we have effectively no friends in Boise (we've only lived here about four years), this is a source of considerable humor between the builder and me--the enormous parking lot that may never get used!) I also heard from the appliance store--somehow I managed to ask them to spec a GE Profile front-loading washer (saves water, generally cleans the clothes more thoroughly) and a GE Profile top-loading dryer (didn't know they made them). We straightened that out quick enough. Last house project entry. Labels: house project The Rifkin Contrarian Index Fund Instapundit points to this list of apocalyptic environmental and economic predictions by Jeremy Rifkin going back more than a decade that did not come true. In looking over the list, I am startled not just by how many failed to happen, but by how many turned out to be exactly opposite his prediction: In his 1995 book, The End of Work, Rifkin predicted that automation, mechanization, and computerization would cause massive unemployment within America in the near future. Reality check: Unemployment is lower now than it was in 1995. A columnist for the Financial Post remarked in 2003: "Who can forget the jeremiads of that great intellectual flim-flam man, Jeremy Rifkin, whose book, The End of Work, said it all. And what ensued? The greatest bout of job creation in post-war history!"It makes me wonder if there might not be a way to make a very nice pile of money by seeing what Rifkin is predicting today and then investing in financial instruments that will benefit from the reverse of Rifkin's prediction. Sad Commentary About The Change in America There's a discussion going on in the comments section at Dr. Helen's blog about the school shooting in Knoxville yesterday. One especially sad comment: JimT said... San Francisco: Can We Expel Them From The United States? Not only did they pass a handgun ban--a ban that the San Francisco Police Officers Association opposed--but they passed an advisory initiative that the city would "oppose" although not prohibit military recruiting in the public schools. Texas Constitutionalizes Definition of Marriage I would prefer that what should be statutory definitions not be written into a state constitution, but the left's insistence of misreading equal protection clauses as guaranteeing same-sex marriage gives us no choice in the matter. Early returns show 74% of Texas voters voting to amend the state constitution to define marriage as a man and a woman. University Offers Health-Insurance Benefits For Gay Faculty Members Not such a big deal, really, since many public universities do so. But this is a Jesuit school: Gay and lesbian faculty and staff members at Georgetown University are saying a rhetorical “amen” to new guidelines that will provide health insurance for their same-sex partners, starting January 1. More and more colleges each year provide some benefits for gay professors’ partners, but the trend is notably less evident at Roman Catholic institutions, making Georgetown’s move significant.Ignatius Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) must be rolling over in his grave. Labels: homosexuality More About Breasts Not Bombs I mentioned this bunch of loons a few days ago. A friend in the Sacramento area tells me that there protest got lots of coverage--in spite of having nothing intelligent to say, and asks me: Why is it that some batty old lady taking off her shirt can getBecause journalists, as a profession, are pigs? Politically Very Clever There's an organization called GrassFire.org that generally promotes social conservative causes. I've had some wariness of them because it seems like they are as busy raising money as affecting public policy. Admittedly, you can't do one without the other. There's the famous saying by Jesse Unruh, a California politician fast fading from popular memory, "Money is the mother's milk of politics." They are currently pushing a proposal that I don't particularly agree with, but that I confess is quite clever in how it is phrased, and what its likely effects would be if passed. The proposal is modeled after an Indiana law that requires abortion providers to orally inform the pregnant women of the availability of ultrasound imaging auscultation of fetal heart tone services. The law also stipulates that the pregnant woman has the right to choose to view fetal ultrasound image and hear the auscultation of the fetal heart tone. This law is a solid model for expanding women’s right to choose during the abortion procedure. It ensures that women will have access to information that abortion providers often rely upon to develop the diagnosis of pregnancy, determine gestation and ultimately perform an abortion. This is medical information that every woman has a right to know.In short, it would require abortion doctors to give the pregnant woman the option of hearing the heartbeat of that "blob of fetal tissue" and to see an ultrasound image. There's no question in my mind that many a woman who might have bought into the idea that this isn't a baby, but just "a mass of cells," growing in her body (you know, like a cancer), will change her mind after she hears the heart beating, or see what will look like a very, very tiny baby. In short, imposing such a requirement on abortion doctors would likely reduce the number of abortions--and not surprisingly, abortion doctors aren't going to be happy seeing all that revenue walking out of the clinic. The language describing the heartbeat and ultrasound as "medical information" that a woman "has a right to know" is really inspired politics. It really isn't "medical information" in any real sense, as far as I am concerned--but it will certainly cause something of a pause in the decision of at least some women. I have a bit of a problem with this proposed law for a couple of reasons: 1. Federal regulation of something that is currently a matter for state regulation--medical care. Just like Roe v. Wade (1973) stepped into an area that under the U.S. Constitution has always been a matter of state regulation--public health and morals. 2. It is a little misleading to call it "medical information." Of course, there's no shortage of misleading terminology involved in this matter. I'm not sure if it is a private organization or an Idaho state agency, but there are ads on bus benches around here that are aimed at discouraging smoking, and they have a slogan that parodies the way in which smoking advocates use the pro-choice argument. It says, "It's not a choice, it's a lung." I guess the local pro-choice crowd didn't get all the way to the end of the sentence, because I notice that one of these bus bench signs has been vandalized locally so that you wouldn't know that it is about smoking at all. Still, I admire the cleverness of what GrassFire.org is proposing--a nice peace of political sloganeering. Labels: abortion Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Things That Don't Scale: ScopeRoller Manufacturing Experiments You are probably aware (or at least, should be aware), that lots of objects don't scale up or down the way that you expect. There's a reason that eight foot long ants that can pick up automobiles (as you might expect, if ants were eight feet long) don't exist. It is this amazing thing called the square-cube law. If you double the length of an object, and change no other design characteristics, its surface area quadruples, and its volume (and therefore its weight) octuples. That ant's muscle attachments have gone up with the square of its increase in linear dimension--but the amount of mass involved in moving those muscles has gone up with the cube of the increase in linear dimension--so it is no longer so amazingly strong for its size as the ant you can step on. If you have any question as to whether this is a good thing or not, go watch the 1950s science fiction classic Them. This is also why the smaller and less oxygen-demanding insects can get by with surprisingly unsophisticated systems for distributing oxygen through their bodies--the surface area of the breathing tubes in the thorax is, relative to the total number of cells, huge. An eight-foot long ant couldn't get enough oxygen distributed to all of its cells without the complex system of lungs and blood that us larger creatures use, or a vastly more complex breathing tube system. This square-cube law applies in all sorts of unexpected ways. Mars has a much smaller diameter than the Earth--about 45% of Earth's diameter. This means that Mars has about quite a bit less material inside it, relative to its surface area than the Earth--and is probably why Mars is a dead planet--there's more surface area relative to the contents to let heat leak out. I've been selling this clever (if I do so say myself, as do my customers) Quick Release Toe Saver gadget for Losmandy mounts. I'm starting to look at making versions of it for other equatorial telescope mounts, and my first experimental victim was a Celestron CG-4. The same design doesn't work here, partly because the diameter of the plastic component that holds the quick release pin is much smaller, and so there's a bit less rigidity to the part. The other problem is that instead of a 3/8"-16 threaded stud, I have to use an M6-1.0 threaded stud, which has much smaller threads relative to the diameter of the stud. The total surface area grabbing onto plastic is quite a bit smaller. The "let the counterweight slam down the shaft under gravity" test caused the plastic carrier to separate from the threaded stud--not because it stripped the stud out of the plastic, but because the plastic flexed enough for the threaded stud to slip out--even though it is a tight fit under ordinary conditions. I may have to go with either a single piece of Delrin for this, or make it out of brass or aluminum, to avoid the problem of flexure under dynamic load. Labels: telescopes Mars Well, that big orange dot that appears a bit larger than the stars in the late evening--and that is not twinkling--is Mars. I trained my 5" refractor on it this evening, and for incredibly short periods of time, I could see detail--and then the atmosphere would start burbling again. I look forward to having the new house complete--there's no concrete within several miles of me to disturb the atmosphere. Boise City Elections As expected, it wasn't a huge crowd turning out to vote. My wife and I voted about 7:45 PM, and there was no line at all. As of 10:34 PM, the Idaho Statesman is reporting that two of my three choices for city council are leading; Brandi Swindell is definitely far behind Jordan. House Project: Interior Painting Complete? I'm not sure. We went up there this evening, and all the windows and door frames were masked, and it appears that everything had been painted--at least one coat, perhaps more--hard to tell.  Click to enlarge Capturing color with any camera can be a struggle, especially with artificial lighting. The walls really aren't white, but bone (and the toilets and bathroom sinks have been ordered in bone as well). The dining room is the only exception--it is a light pink--much less pink than it appears in this picture!  Click to enlarge Cabinets, toilets, sinks, vanities, and carpets are next! Oh yes, we were up there about 7:00 PM, so it wasn't utterly dark yet--and the Moon is just reaching first quarter, so it is still putting out a lot of light--and we could just make out the Milky Way running through Cassiopeia. That's dark! Last house project entry. Labels: house project Monday, November 07, 2005
What Were They Thinking? This is far too much like playing Russian Roulette: BANJA LUKA, Bosnia (Reuters) - A hand grenade being used instead of a ball in a game of catch exploded early on Saturday killing three youths in this Bosnian town, police and news agencies said. Boise City Elections One aspect of California that I do miss is the sample ballot that the state mails out, letting you know where your polling place is, and showing all the candidates and initiatives. In state wide elections, the sample ballot even gives you the arguments for and against the initiatives, and in local elections, many counties provide candidate statements as well. Here in Idaho, you are on your own! You need to find out where your polling place is, and hope that enough information is available from public sources to figure out who to vote for, and why. Fortunately, the Idaho Statesman provides a list of statements by candidates for these local races. I had already mentioned my intention to vote for Brandi Swindell, primarily because she was prepared to lead the fight against removing the Ten Commandments monument from Julia Davis Park. I have now decided how to vote on the other candidates for City Council. (Remember that Boise elects city councilmembers at large.) For seat 2, the choice is Vern Bisterfeldt (the incumbent) and Mark Seeley. On a number of rather significant issues, Mark Seeley has no opinion--and every answer he gave he somehow managed to turn into a question about homelessness. Now, homelessness is a serious concern, but it isn't the only concern, and in Boise, not even the most important. We have a problem with homeless people here, but perhaps because of how severe the weather is, it isn't the huge problem that it is in most big cities. Also, Bisterfeldt was prepared to vote to leave the Ten Commandments monument in place: I don’t believe the city should allow itself to be held hostage to threats from outside sources. On seat 4, Jerome Mapp (the incumbent) vs. Jim Tibbs. I've heard one of Tibbs' ads; he is definitely focusing on the importance of transparency with respect to the shooting death last year that still hasn't been resolved by a coroner's inquest. Tibbs is a retired police officer, and I suspect wants it resolved because he knows what most of us ca |
