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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Amitai Etzioni's Blog
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Michael Williams -- Master of None
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A Group Blog By Iraqis
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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Promoting children being raised by their own parents
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Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
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Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
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A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
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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Neocon Blues
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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.
First of all, you’d be hard pressed to find a useful debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design, of the sort that you could use to form your own opinion. I can’t find one, and I’ve looked. What you have instead is each side misrepresenting the other’s position and then making a good argument for why the misrepresentation is wrong. (If you don’t believe me, just watch the comments I get to this post.)
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.
The deputy head of the Bureau of Agriculture in Hunan Province, Ou Daiming, said that this was the first time pigs have been tested for the virus in Hunan Province. The results have already been reported to the Ministry of Health, and random pig testing is taking place in nearby villages. So far, officials say they have found no other inflected pigs.
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:
Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that is easily passed from human to human, sparking a possible pandemic.
...
Agricultural officials in Hunan denied reports Thursday by Hong Kong newspapers that the H5N1 virus was confirmed there in pigs, which can catch both bird flu and human influenza.
Experts fear that the virus could mutate if it infects pigs that are also carrying human flu virus.1918 flu pandemic originated in pigs, study finds
WASHINGTON (AP) - The 1918 influenza virus that killed more than 20 million people worldwide originated from American pigs and is unlike any other known flu bug, say researchers. They warn that it could strike again.
...
Taubenberger said his team sorted through 30 specimens before finding enough virus in the private's lung tissue to partially sequence the genes for hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, two key proteins in flu virus.
''The hemagglutinin gene matches closest to swine influenza viruses, showing that this virus came into humans from pigs,'' said Taubenberger.
The finding supports a widespread theory that flu viruses from swine are the most virulent for humans.
Most experts believe that flu viruses reside harmlessly in birds, where they are genetically stable. Occasionally, a virus from birds will infect pigs. The swine immune system attacks the virus, forcing it to change genetically to survive. The result is a new virus. When this new bug is spread to humans, it can be devastating, said Taubenberger.
Two other flu viruses spread all over the world since 1918 - Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 - and both mutated in pigs.
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. 
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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.
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Last house project entry.
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!
Randy Logan Hale won 831 votes in Tuesday's election, securing one of three open seats on the Romoland School District Board in a community about 70 miles north of San Diego.
"This is wild, he'll be glad," said his wife, Penny.
Hale, 40, was returned to prison in September for violating his parole on 1998 convictions for spousal abuse and drug possession, the California Institution for Men in Chino said, and is due to be released Feb. 15. He declared his candidacy in August.
...
Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside, said Hale may have gotten votes because he was at the top of the ballot.
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?
...
Menino, speaking a day after his landslide re-election over Maura Hennigan, said guns are no longer just coming to Boston from the South. Weapons are filtering in from New Hampshire and other abutting states, he said.
He raised the potentially explosive issue of random searches as a remedy.
“How are guns transported across state lines? We have to spot-check the cars that come across state lines. What’s the mechanism? I’m not a public safety official but I think we have to get these folks together,” Menino said.
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.
Yes, the Border Guards you interact wiuth at the Canadian Border are not allowed to carry guns, they have to call for police backup if threatened. However, the border guard personnel is allowed to refuse "dangerous work" so they walked off the job yesterday for at least some time.
The Border guards have likewise walked off on 5 other occaisions this year, typically when warned that a dangerous and armed fugitive was heading their way.
Oh, Canada, you're not taking border security, or the security of your border guard personnel seriously, are you?
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
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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.
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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!
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Utility room sink cabinet.
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Last house project entry.
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.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a real quagmire, and al-Zarqawi is the one up to his armpits in it.
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.")
Robertson, a former Republican presidential candidate and founder of the influential conservative Christian Broadcasting Network and Christian Coalition, has a long record of similar apocalyptic warnings and provocative statements.
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.
You hit it hard, didn't you? You must've really been moving, to cause this much damage. You crushed the rear quarter panel from behind and slammed my car with such force you actually shoved its 3,300 pounds forward and sideways about four feet, slamming my car not only into the curb and damaging the wheels and axles and probably the frame, but also shoving it into the car parked just in front, thus mangling the front end, too.
Ah yes, it was quite a punch. You couldn't have nailed it better if you were aiming for it. A near-perfect hit-and-run, wasn't it?
But wait, something was wrong. You weren't moving. You were stuck! A sympathetic witness who lives in the apartment just above the grisly scene tells me she looked out her window immediately after you hit and says you slammed my car so hard your heavy chrome bumper actually got wedged into my car, and you had to jam your whale of a vehicle into reverse and tear yourself out in a mad tangle of scraping metal and plastic before speeding away, drunkenly, like the mad lurching demon you so very apparently are.
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.
Police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding a posting on Craigslist that was soliciting for prostitution.
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.
Sternberg was the editor of an obscure scientific journal loosely affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, where he is also a research associate. Last year, he published in the journal a peer-reviewed article by Stephen Meyer, a proponent of intelligent design, an idea which Sternberg himself believes is fatally flawed.
"Why publish it?" Sternberg says. "Because evolutionary biologists are thinking about this. So I thought that by putting this on the table, there could be some reasoned discourse. That's what I thought, and I was dead wrong."
At first he heard rumblings of discontent but thought it would blow over. Sternberg says his colleagues and supervisors at the Smithsonian were furious. He says -- and an independent report backs him up -- that colleagues accused him of fraud, saying they did not believe the Meyer article was really peer reviewed. It was.
Eventually, Sternberg filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from reprisals. The office launched an investigation. Ultimately, it could not take action, because Sternberg is not an employee of the Smithsonian.
But Sternberg says before closing the case, the special counsel, James McVay, called him with an update. "As he related to me, 'the Smithsonian Institution's reaction to your publishing the Meyer article was far worse than you imagined,'" Sternberg says.
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.
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.
Jordan spent 7 months at "Camp Blue Diamond" in Ramadi. Aka: Fort Apache. He saw and did a lot and the following is what he told me about weapons, equipment, tactics and other miscellaneous info which may be of interest to you. Nothing is by any means classified. No politics here, just a Marine with a bird's eye view's opinions:
1) The M-16 rifle : Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it's lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits can't be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.
2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): .223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of []. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly. (that's fun in the middle of a firefight).
3) The M9 Beretta 9mm: Mixed bag. Good gun, performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns for self-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm: Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.
4) Mossberg 12ga. Military shotgun: Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect.
5) The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 Nato (.308) cal. belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!!). Thumbs up. Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts 'em down. Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.
6) The M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun: Thumbs way, way up. "Ma deuce" is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their [] in the dirt every time. The most coveted weapon in-theater.
7) The .45 pistol: Thumbs up. Still the best pistol round out there. Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on one. With few exceptions, can reliably be expected to put 'em down with a torso hit. The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45's are being re-issued en masse.
8) The M-14: Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment, and they love the 7.62 round.
9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle: Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers ( we actually stop a lot of them) and barricaded enemy. Definitely here to stay.
10) The M24 sniper rifle: Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in .300 Win Mag. Heavily modified Remington 700's. Great performance. Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it that a Marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar province has actually exceeded Carlos Hathcock's record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.
11) The new body armor: Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs. and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round. The bad news: Hot as [] to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees). Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the [] about the "old" body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IEDs was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn't make any difference at all in most cases.
12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment: Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers. More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We've all seen the videos.
13) Lights: Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal lights are Surefires, and the troops love 'em. Invaluable for night urban operations. Jordan carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it.
I can't help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordnance are 50 or more years old!!!!!!!!! With all our technology, it's the WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants!!!! The infantry fighting is frequent, up close and brutal. No quarter is given or shown.
Bad guy weapons:
1) Mostly AK47's The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM belt fed light machine guns are also common and effective. Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like []. Undisciplined "spray and pray" type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. (Iran, again) Fun fact: Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let's just say they know better now.
2) The RPG: Probably the infantry weapon most feared by our guys. Simple, reliable and as common as []. The enemy responded to our up-armored humvees by aiming at the windshields, often at point blank range. Still killing a lot of our guys.
3) The IED: The biggest killer of all. Can be anything from old Soviet anti-armor mines to jury rigged artillery shells. A lot found in Jordan's area were in abandoned cars. The enemy would take 2 or 3 155mm artillery shells and wire them together. Most were detonated by cell phone, and the explosions are enormous. You're not safe in any vehicle, even an M1 tank. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing our guys do over there. Lately, they are much more sophisticated "shape charges" (Iranian) specifically designed to penetrate armor. Fact: Most of the ready made IED's are supplied by Iran, who is also providing terrorists (Hezbollah types) to train the insurgents in their use and tactics. That's why the attacks have been so deadly lately. Their concealment methods are ingenious, the latest being shape charges in Styrofoam containers spray painted to look like the cinderblocks that litter all Iraqi roads. We find about 40% before they detonate, and the bomb disposal guys are unsung heroes of this war.
4) Mortars and rockets: Very prevalent. The Soviet era 122mm rockets (with an 18km range) are becoming more prevalent. One of Jordan's NCOs lost a leg to one. These weapons cause a lot of damage "inside the wire". Jordan's base was hit almost daily his entire time there by mortar and rocket fire, often at night to disrupt sleep patterns and cause fatigue (It did). More of a psychological weapon than anything else. The enemy mortar teams would jump out of vehicles, fire a few rounds, and then haul ass in a matter of seconds.
5) Bad guy technology: Simple yet effective. Most communication is by cell and satellite phones, and also by email on laptops. They use handheld GPS units for navigation and "Google earth" for overhead views of our positions. Their weapons are good, if not fancy, and prevalent. Their explosives and bomb technology is TOP OF THE LINE. Night vision is rare. They are very careless with their equipment and the captured GPS units and laptops are treasure troves of Intel when captured.
Who are the bad guys?:
Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the Muslim world (and Europe). Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.) , and then travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the Euphrates River that we've been hitting hard for the last few months. Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in "sacrifice squads". Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters. (they have been fighting the Russians for years). In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.'s, the police forces and the Army. The have had a massive spy and agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 80's. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago.
Bad Guy Tactics:
When they are engaged on an infantry level they get their asses kicked every time. Brave, but stupid. Suicidal Banzai-type charges were very common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice 8-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing AKs and RPGs directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time. (See the M2 and M240 above). Jordan's base was hit like this often. When engaged, they have a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand. Instead, we call in air and that's the end of that more often than not. These hole-ups are referred to as Alpha Whiskey Romeo's (Allah's Waiting Room). We have the laser guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast movers, mostly Marine F-18s, are taking an ever increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all. Fun fact: The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45-50 thousand. That is why we're seeing less and less infantry attacks and more IED, suicide bomber [].
The new strategy is simple: attrition.
The insurgent tactic most frustrating is their use of civilian non-combatants as cover. They know we do all we can to avoid civilian casualties and therefore schools, hospitals and (especially) mosques are locations where they meet, stage for attacks, cache weapons and ammo and flee to when engaged. They have absolutely no regard whatsoever for civilian casualties. They will terrorize locals and murder without hesitation anyone believed to be sympathetic to the Americans or the new Iraqi govt. Kidnapping of family members (especially children) is common to influence people they are trying to influence but cant reach, such as local govt. officials, clerics, tribal leaders, etc.).
The first thing our guys are told is "don't get captured". They know that if captured they will be tortured and beheaded on the internet. Zarqawi openly offers bounties for anyone who brings him a live American serviceman. This motivates the criminal element who otherwise don't give a [] about the war. A lot of the beheading victims were actually kidnapped by common criminals and sold to Zarqawi. As such, for our guys, every fight is to the death. Surrender is not an option.
The Iraqis are a mixed bag. Some fight well, others aren't worth a []. Most do okay with American support. Finding leaders is hard, but they are getting better. It is widely viewed that Zarqawi's use of suicide bombers, en masse, against the civilian population was a serious tactical mistake. Many Iraqis were galvanized and the caliber of recruits in the Army and the police forces went up, along with their motivation. It also led to an exponential increase in good intel because the Iraqis are sick of the insurgent attacks against civilians. The Kurds are solidly pro-American and fearless fighters.
According to Jordan, morale among our guys is very high. They not only believe they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of 20-1 and then see [] like "Are we losing in Iraq" on TV and the print media. For the most part, they are satisfied with their equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria. The Iranians and the Syrians just cant stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent US bases there).
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
for the illiterate, the innumerate, and the feeblemended. It's regrettable that we employ them in critical professions like broadcast journalism.
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.
By some reliable estimates, the Sudanese government or "National Islamic Front" has slain as many as 400,000 of its black co-religionists—known contemptuously as zurga ("niggers")—and expelled perhaps 2 million more. This appalling achievement has been made possible by a very simple tactic: The actual killers and cleansers, the Arab janjaweed militias, are a "deniable" arm of the Sudanese authorities. Those authorities pretend to negotiate with the United Nations, the United States, and the African Union, and their negotiating "card" is the control that they can or might exercise over said militias. While this tap is turned on and off, according to different applications of carrot and stick, the militias pretend to go out of control and carry on with their slaughter and deportation. By the time the clock has been run out, the job is done.
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.
"We'd all had quite a bit to drink," he said.
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.
Most of the 900 or so wells drilled in Kentucky this year won't produce more than a barrel or two of oil a day. But with prices around $60 a barrel, those little wells are pulling in big profits, especially when they also pump natural gas.
With oil prices now double what they were two years ago, the U.S. Congress has called hearings to address charges of "price-gouging."
The pinch at the pump is causing some economists to warn that consumers will have to reduce discretionary spending while the rising price of heating oil has raised concerns that some people won't be able to heat their homes this winter.
But for Kentucky cattle farmer Billy Carroll, 70, who has two oil and natural gas wells on his property that he leased out in exchange for an eighth of the profits, it means retirement is a lot easier than he had expected.
"The gas well sure has been good to me because I don't have to feed it," he said as he leaned against his truck parked beneath a mountain speckled with fall colors. "I don't do anything. Just get the check."
Two of Carroll's sons also have wells on their farms and many of his neighbors would like to get in on the boom. The problem is there aren't enough rigs to drill them.
"There could be more wells being drilled in Kentucky but because the industry has been depressed for so long there has been a lack of drilling rigs and a lack of skilled labor," said Brandon Nutall, a geologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey, a state agency charged with analyzing and cataloguing natural resources.
Nestled among Kentucky's famed coal mines are about five billion barrels of oil reserves, Nutall said. Most of the oil is in small fields that sit relatively close to the surface, which makes for cheap drilling and long production cycles.
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.
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...
In the late 40's I walked to school with a friend who brought a rifle to school every Wednesday. The high school rifle range has since been converted into a day care for the students' children.
This is progress?
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.
Last Tuesday, Spiros Dimolitsas, senior vice president, announced that the President’s Executive Committee approved a policy to expand medical insurance to “a new category of individuals, legally domiciled adults (LDAs).”
The policy states that faculty and staff members who are eligible for benefits will have the option to choose a coverage plan for themselves and either a spouse or one LDA. The LDA must be either someone “with whom the person has a close personal relationship and is financially interdependent, or a dependent blood relative such as an elderly parent or grown child.”
For an LDA to be eligible, employees must live with the individual and he or she must not otherwise have access to group health care coverage.
“We reviewed many issues in formulating this policy and believe that expanding our current offerings in this way will increase access to quality health care benefits to more members of the Georgetown University community in keeping with our commitment as a Catholic, Jesuit University to respond to the human needs of others,” said Dimolitsas in a letter to faculty members announcing the additions.
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 get
Because journalists, as a profession, are pigs?
more neurons (and other unmentionables) moving than a very wise thinking man of honor an integrity? Something is seriously wrong.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Two youths aged 19 and 20, one of them from neighboring Croatia, were killed instantly while a 20-year-old woman died on her way to hospital, police said. Her sister was slightly injured but two other youths suffered serious injuries.
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 can see--it was a tragedy, but when a teenager points a rifle at a police officer, and refuses to put it down, it is a good assumption that the gun is loaded.
Mapp also voted for removing the Ten Commandments monument from the park. His response was, shall we say, a bit ingenuous: Some have been concerned about the relocation. The Ten Commandments is now in a more visual place at its new location at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, which is across the street from the Capitol Building.
Tibbs, on the other hand, while not directly saying what he would have done, expresses a concern that should have been apparent to all: The public should have had an opportunity to express their opinion fully during an open public meeting. Unfortunately, it appears the situation was polarized due to a Council who had already made up their minds. This atmosphere erodes public confidence with the appearance of a wink-and-whisper decision-making process.
On the question of whether to put a new branch library bond on the ballot, Tibbs shows a shocking level of sense: My concern is why is the City spending the money for a special election in February of 2006 when they could include the issue in the November 2005 election or the May 2006 election.
Of course, the reason for having a special election is that it makes it more likely that only those who are very interested in the result will vote.
For seat 6, Maryanne Jordan (incumbent) vs. Brandi Swindell is an easy choice. Jordan still won't admit tht voting to remove the monument was a mistake. Swindell also shows a healthy respect for the masses: I don’t believe that assessing the need for more libraries is something for the Council to unilaterally decide. I won’t support this measure unless the voters approve it via ballot initiative. $30 million is just too much money to borrow without getting their input. We need to put the question to the people of this city and let them answer. I’ll abide by whatever they decide. Allowing voters to decide whether or not they want to raise their own taxes is a critical part of self-government and self-determination.
Can Segregation Really Be Lawful?
There's a school district that plans to shuffle all the black boys into their own school--and no, this isn't a news story from 1955 Alabama: CHICAGO, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The Chicago school district plans to open an all-boys high school primarily for black teenagers.
Justice Thurgood Marshall, who represented Linda Brown in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), must be turning over in his grave.
The Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men must be approved by the Board of Education this month, the Chicago Tribune reported.
...
Urban Prep would be located inside Englewood High School. Backers say it is aimed at a group that has the lowest graduation rate of any in the city.
"We're going to take our students where they are and help them gain admission to college and succeed once they are there," said Tim King, the founder of Urban Prep. "Clearly there is a high need for figuring out how to serve these kids academically."
Not Quite Sure What "Engaged" Means In This Context...
But the article from Inside Higher Education seems to see it as good: nalysis of this year’s National Survey on Student Engagement sheds light on how the religious and spiritual behavior of students correlates with their engagement and progress. A major conclusion, according to its researchers, is that students who frequently engage in spirituality-enhancing practices also participate more in a broad cross-section of collegiate activities.
The article goes on to tell the professoriate not to get too worried because most of the students have some sort of religious beliefs:
“The bottom line is that these students are more engaged across the board than average students in range of interesting activities,” says George Kuh, director of the survey as well as the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. “They do a variety of things that are known to be positive contributors to the overall college experience.”
In fact, students who participate frequently in spirituality-enhancing activities tend to exercise more, attend cultural events more often, and are more likely to perform community service. They also report being “somewhat more satisfied” with college and have a more positive view of the out-of-class environment. Researchers offered a broad definition of spirituality, including everything from regular attendance at religious services to private meditation.Koh says that many in academe have stereotypes of religious and spiritual people that could lend to skepticism of the survey’s findings. “Faculty members often worry that students who arrive at college with religious beliefs are preconditioned to resist a ‘liberal learning’ curriculum and may graduate without seriously re-examining their beliefs and values,” he says.
Sad to say, for more than a few professors with whom my wife and I have crossed paths (and occasionally, crossed swords), the function of a "liberal education" is to denigrate everything Western, specifically Christianity.
But analysis of survey data indicates no evidence that spiritual practices have negative effects on other desirable activities, such as studying, level of reflection, or extracurricular involvements.
“Students today are engaged and very interested in some of the larger questions involving the meaning and purpose of life — interior aspects of development,” says Jennifer Lindholm, project director of the Spirituality in Higher Education Program, at the University of California at Los Angeles.
She doesn’t believe that the new findings mean that liberal education is somehow being compromised. “After all, the core component of a liberal education, in fact, is to know thyself,” says Lindholm. “It’s important to note, too, that not everyone who thinks of themselves as a spiritual person also thinks of themselves as religious. The core component of a liberal education — who am I? — is also a core component of the spiritual aspects in our lives.”
Most academics, in my experience, don't have a problem with "spirituality"--meaning Eastern mysticism, Islam, or New Age beliefs--but anything even slightly traditional, such as Christianity or Conservative or Orthodox Judaism--that's definitely something that they feel a need to attack in classes.
The Importance of Lies
One of the Iraq War veterans who is part of Cindy Sheehan's little crew has been exposed as a liar by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article: For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.
They go over this in detail, not only with civilian witnesses who contradict Massey, but also demonstrating that Massey hasn't even told the same story about many of these incidents in different places and times.
In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Among his claims:
Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters.
Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head.
A tractor-trailer was filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children killed by American artillery.
Massey's claims have gained him celebrity. Last month, Massey's book, "Kill, Kill, Kill," was released in France. His allegations have been reported in nationwide publications such as Vanity Fair and USA Today, as well as numerous broadcast reports. Earlier this year, he joined the anti-war bus tour of Cindy Sheehan, and he's spoken at Cornell and Syracuse universities, among others.
News organizations worldwide published or broadcast Massey's claims without any corroboration and in most cases without investigation. Outside of the Marines, almost no one has seriously questioned whether Massey, a 12-year veteran who was honorably discharged, was telling the truth.
He wasn't.
Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey's own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey's unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.
One of the advantages of telling the truth is that you don't have to remember what lie you told to whom. It is gratifying to see a major newspaper actually prepared to check out these horrifying stories--and call a liar what he is.
House Project: Interior Painting Under Way
We drove up there this afternoon, and it was a gender-transformational moment--just about the entire work crew was teenaged girls. Apparently, our builder's daughter recruited all of her friends at church to come up and finish the prep work.
At this point, they are painting the interior trim. I was expecting them to do the walls first, and then come back with a brush to do the door frames and window trim, but no, they sprayed the trim. After it is dry, they will mask it off, and paint the walls.
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It was wet and rainy up there--as our builder put it, an opportunity to figure out where we need more gravel, and whether we need roof gutters or not! My wife has wanted more land around us, so that we don't have neighbors looking in our windows. On a day like this, I would not know if we even had neighbors. We could be the last people on Earth.
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Last house project entry.
I'm Not Sure What Category This Goes Into
Is this a free speech question? Is this an example of the left's complete inability to understand that women going topless isn't going to generate popular hostility towards the war--but more likely to cause many men to stop listening to what the women are saying? I think this is the same group that protested old growth forest logging by baring their breasts to the loggers--where it did not generate the correct level of remorse about cutting down trees, for some reason. I don't know how to categorize this one: A federal court judge has ruled against a request by anti-war activists to bar authorities from arresting them if they bare their breasts at a State Capitol demonstration on Monday.
UPDATE: A friend sent me a link to this website documenting one of the Breasts not Bombs rallies--definitely NOT work-safe. If this collection of severely sagging women (and in one case, what seems to be a person part-way through a sex change) has any effect on your politics, you let me know. I would think of this collection of pictures as anti-pornography--something that will squelch lust, not increase it.
The group calling themselves Breasts Not Bombs sought to keep the California Highway Patrol from arresting its members if they expose their breasts at a rally to protest some of the governor's initiatives on Tuesday's special election ballot.
The women from Mendocino County have taken off their tops in anti-war demonstrations in Mendocino County, Santa Rosa, San Francisco and in Washington, D.C., but have not been arrested. However, CHP Commissioner Mike Brown admonished the group they would be arrested for indecent exposure and disorderly conduct if the same tactic is tried Monday.
House Project: The Importance of Insulation & Preparing To Paint
I drove up Saturday to see how things were going. It has been cold and rainy here in Boise--and if there was any question as to whether spending the extra $1400 to raise the insulation level in the roof from R-38 to R-50, and insulating under the floor, these pictures of the surrounding mountains should tell you the answer--and it is only November!
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My builder tells me that when arrived Saturday morning, it was 32 degrees outside, and not much warmer inside. He turned on the thermostat, and within 15 minutes, had to go turn it down, because it reached an uncomfortably warm temperature inside. I guess that tells us the furnace is highly effective, and the insulation is holding in the heat once produced.
You can see prep work around windows in the master bedroom:
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I was both pleased and just slightly surprised at the attention to detail as the builder and his family went around preparing all surfaces for interior painting, using wall patch to seal gaps between moldings and walls, and removing door hinges to make sure that the paint went everywhere.
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The plan was to paint the interior Saturday afternoon, and have the kitchen cabinets, vanities, toilets, carpets, and appliances done this coming week. He is waiting for the temperatures to rise a bit so that he can finish the exterior paint. If the electrician ever gets back from elk hunting, he can install the outlets and light fixtures.
Last house project entry.
Out of Control Prom
I didn't think this was specific to Sonoma County--the out of control prom "experience." Where we lived, parents were expected to not only rent a limo for a young man to take his date to the high school prom--parents were also expected to rent a hotel room (with champagne) for "after prom activities." Of course, in a culture where girls (and therefore guys) are supposed to be sexually active before high school--and parents really don't care--why not? It's just extravagant expenditure of money!
This article in the Chicago Tribune discusses what a Catholic high school on Long Island did--they sent out a letter to parents that basically said, "What prom has become is something that no proper Christian can condone. Since you parents won't bring this under control, we won't have anything to do with it anymore." UNIONDALE, N.Y. -- October is the time for homecoming and Halloween parties, but the 489 seniors at Kellenberg Memorial High School already are focused on their prom--the one they are not going to have.
The letter itself is here--and I strongly encourage you to read it. It makes points that obviously no public institution could dare make, because it calls the parents to Christian duty, and promoting orgies, premarital sex, drunkenness, and above all, the extravagant display of obscene wealth for its own sake is not what we are called to by Jesus.
Fed up with the revealing evening gowns, flashy tuxedos, stretch limos, alcohol, drugs, sex and rowdy house parties that are an increasingly common part of the dinner-dance scene across Long Island, Kellenberg administrators canceled the prom this year as a way to end its excesses.
"We watched a pattern develop," said Brother Kenneth Hoagland, the principal of Kellenberg, a Roman Catholic school. "Twenty years ago, seniors went to the beach after the prom and then to someone's house for breakfast. From that, it's turned into a weekend-long orgy that every year has become incrementally more excessive."
The school sent parents a letter in March, before the last prom, outlining objections.
Calling prom "an exaggerated rite of passage that verges on decadence," the letter signed by 11 administrators said spending up to $1,000 on formal wear, limos and after-parties was wasteful. It contended a "booze cruise" and the rented party houses were opportunities for illegal drinking and sex. And it said the school, fearing legal liability, could no longer be responsible for what might happen.
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"All schools are doing soul-searching concerning the proms," he said. "There's considerable pressure on the kids because the prom looms large in their imagination, and parents want leverage over their own kids, so we hope a letter from the school will help them say "no" to all the excess."
Kellenberg officials said the time had come for more drastic measures. They called the problem a Long Island-wide phenomenon, involving not just Catholic but also public schools, worsened by some parents' willingness to bankroll the extravaganza.
"We felt that what the prom had become went against the moral and spiritual lessons we were trying to teach their children," Hoagland said.
He said he worried most about parents who play host to cocktail parties before prom and keg parties afterward, or pay thousands of dollars to rent a house in the Hamptons where unchaperoned teens hold raucous parties.
Those notorious prom houses so angered neighbors and local officials that the Southampton Town Police Department sent a letter to every high school on Long Island last year, warning that it was shutting down parties and arresting anyone who had broken a law.
I am not surprised that in Sonoma County, where Christians were a tiny fraction of the population (largely outnumbered by New Age and secular liberals) that this vulgar flaunting of wealth was common. I was disappointed that there was so much of this same sort of garbage associated with the two Catholic high schools in Santa Rosa (where, even though we are pretty well off, "we wuz the po' folk" when my daughter attended Ursuline). I am pleased to the leaders at Kellenberg Memorial draw a line in the sand, and make such a blunt statement: you parents are setting a terrible example for your kids.
I really don't like the whole liberal mentality of taxing people until they are dead broke--but there have been times these last twenty years that I wonder if most Americans can sensibly spend the extra money that the government is no longer wasting on stupid stuff. It seems that because large numbers of Americans have far more money than they can sensibly spend (and they won't invest it or put it into savings), they have to spend it spoiling and destroying their children.
