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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). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Friday, April 28, 2006
House Project: Zeno's Paradox At Work You may be familiar with Zeno's Paradox. Zeno was a Greek philosopher who argued that to run distance X, a runner must cross first the distance 1/2 X. To do that, he must first cross the distance 1/4 X. Keep dividing these segments down, and you end up with an infinite number of infinitesimally small segments. Even if each small distance takes only a short time to cross, an infinite number of them would mean that it would take an infinite time for the runner to complete the distance X. Now, that's why I've never taken philosophy very seriously. The real world suggests that Zeno didn't know what he was talking about. But construction projects have certain elements in common with Zeno's Paradox--one of which is that the first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time--and the last 10% of the project takes another 90% of the time. This is why so few large construction projects seem to get done on time. Our builder tells us that we are now 99.9999% done. He went up and did almost all the exterior painting yesterday--just a few last details to fix. He still has to dig a drainage ditch next to the garage, to keep water from accumulating (which may have contributed to the cracking of the rear driveway apron, because of expansion of the soil). There being a number of large blocks of concrete cut out of the driveway, he was planning to hall them away. Instead, I suggested that he might want to use them as the base upon which to put the drainage tubes--which he thought was a very good idea. It makes them less likely to move, and he doesn't have to haul the broken concrete blocks to the dump. The water test results came back: no measurable lead (or rather, <0.002 mg/L) and iron is 0.17 mg/L--about half of the EPA action level. I'll check again in a few months, but it looks like much of the complex filtration stuff just wasn't needed. One more item to add to the "lessons learned" chapter of the book I'll write about this. (You will buy a copy, right?) The sky is so blue today. Tonight will be spent at the new house, using Big Bertha on Saturn and M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. Last house project entry. Labels: house project How Can I Offend You? Let Me Count The Ways I knew that the musical Rent had homosexual characters, but I assumed that they were cleaned up Will and Grace homosexuals--the kind that really do exist--but that seem to be more common in television and movies than in real life. (This assumes, of course, that living in the San Francisco Bay Area qualifies as "real life.") Rent was a real surprise. Not a pleasant one, either. I've never been a big fan of musicals. Perhaps it is because the conceit of an art form that pretends that ordinary people will break into perfect song as part of emotionally powerful dramat (or comedy) just overstretches my credulity. I enjoyed The Sound of Music, but I confess, there aren't many musicals that don't leave me sitting there wondering, "Why bother?" We rented Rent because my wife is going to be teaching a class about the history of drama, and she wanted to see what modern stage productions there might be to have students watch and discuss. I don't think so. Rent is one of those reminders that you can invest a lot of talent in writing music and lyrics, find some very talented actors to sing those songs--and still end up with a depressing and unpleasant product. Rent is about a bunch of people dying of AIDS, many of them homosexual, and all of them unpleasantly full of themselves, feeling sorry for themselves, and in general, behaving like the sort of irresponsible and immature bunch that I have long associated with being an artiste. The lyrics to "La Vie de Boheme," one of the high energy numbers, are here. It is rather as though the lyrcists was trying to see how many different ways to offend the majority of Americans. Labels: film reviews The Number of Gay Marriages Dale Carpenter, who blogs over at Volokh Conspiracy primarily about gay marriage and related issues (he's in favor of gay marriage), points to a recent study done by one of the anti-gay marriage groups that shows that only a tiny fraction of homosexuals are taking advantage of new laws allowing gay marriage--something like 2% to 6% of homosexuals--who in turn, are only about 2% of the population: The report derives these numbers by comparing the total number of same-sex marriages in a jurisdiction (based on government reports) to an estimate of the total number of adult homosexuals in the jurisdiction (based on survey data for the jurisdiction, if available, or a general estimate if not). The first number is precise; the second number is necessarily a rough estimate. I won't address here the accuracy of the data; I'll assume that the numbers for same-sex marriages are correct. While we could quibble over the estimates of gays in a given jurisdiction, the assumptions used seem fair. The report itself has a welcome "just the facts, ma'am" tone.One of the criticisms of recognizing gay marriage was the claim (which seems to have been borne out) that relatively few gay people are interested in the sort of long-term committment that marriage entails. Now, even if true, this wouldn't be an argument against gay marriage. But it does suggest that the claim that gay people are just like everyone else, except for their sexual orientation, isn't really accurate. There are a number of data points that show that homosexuals are, on average, different from straight people. Let me emphasize on average. They are more likely to vote Democrat and subscribe to liberal or leftist ideas--but there are conservative and libertarian homosexuals--rather more than most people would expect.* For example, this recent article in what appears to be a Chicago gay newspaper reports something that is not a surprise to anyone that has looked at the rather extensive literature on homosexuality and substance abuse: Paul Fressola, one of HBHC’s psychotherapists, presented a grid illustrating the use of hard drugs ( e.g., meth, heroin and cocaine ) by LGBT seniors. It is estimated that 10 percent of those aged 50-75 abuse a hard drug, compared to 1.8 percent in the general population. There is no data for individuals aged 75 and over, and none at all on the senior transgender community. * You think life is hard for a homosexual in an overwhelmingly straight culture? I used to correspond with a guy who was a gay conservative who shot in the Camp Perry high power rifle matches. He had to mind what he said that might expose his sexuality when he was hanging out with fellow gunnies, and he had to mind what he said about politics when he was hanging out with his fellow homosexuals. Labels: homosexuality The Right of Conscience Is In Danger A man in Virginia refused to duplicate videos that were contrary to his beliefs. Not surprisingly, the homosexual who wanted him to do so is bringing the government in to force him to do so: A government commission has ordered a man who runs a video duplicator business to do a job for a lesbian activist after he initially refused because, as a Christian, he did not want to help promote homosexuality.The article mentions a similar case in Canada where a print shop owner refused to produce letterhead for a gay rights group, and the government fined him. But there's a similar case in the U.S., where a Seattle antidiscrimination ordinance was used to force a print shop to print gay wedding announcements. Labels: homosexuality Enlarging That CI-700 Tripod Head I mentioned a couple of days ago that I have a Celestron CI-700 tripod--and the Losmandy GM-8 equatorial mount almost fits. Everything that I have read indicates that it should fit. Losmandy made the CI-700 mounts for Celestron, and I thought that they were supposed to be able to accept both Losmandy GM-8 and G-11 equatorial mounts. I am not so sure about this. The GM-8 and G-11 tripods are 5.54" inside diameter. This CI-700 tripod is 5.50" inside diameter. Even if it wasn't intended to accept the GM-8 and G-11 mounts, it should! So I tried to figure out how to take .04" off the inside of the tripod. The obvious solution would be to bore it on a lathe. The part of the tripod into which the mount fits is head to the rest of the tripod by three bolts. What you have after removing those three bolts is an aluminum tube about 6" outside diameter, and about 5" long. Unfortunately, my current lathe is too small for that. So I thought about using the vertical mill. But it is too small for that, and the flycutter, which could be used, perhaps, to remove metal from the inside of a cylinder, is too small, even if the tube could be fit into the vertical mill. So I spent a bit of time looking around my garage, and I finally found a less than elegant solution that produced a less than elegant result. I put a 3/8" end mill (which is a cutting tool that you use on a vertical mill) in my drill press, put the cylinder up against it, and then held the inside of the cylinder against the end mill. In short order, I was removing little chunks of aluminum--and the rotation of the end mill caused the cylinder to want to rotate on the drill press table. By holding the cylinder in a particular position, it would slowly rotate on the table, and remove aluminum where the end mill ground into it. The finish isn't quite as slick as I would like, but it isn't too bad, and the resulting enlarged hole was within a few hundreds of an inch of being a perfect circle. I can now mount the GM-8 mount in the CI-700 tripod, which both lets me test the caster sets that I make for the CI-700 with a realistic load on them, and gives me a tripod that puts the refractor about five feet in the air--which is a good height for observing while standing. I Can't Kill Those Woodpeckers But I don't believe the federal law in question says anything about bringing my cat to the new house. When he sees birds--especially when he can't get to them, because they are outside, and he is inside--he goes into what we call Robocat Mode--where his tail twitches, his hind legs start to flex, and he starts to meow in a way that highly repetitive--a fully instinctual behavior. He can also jump high enough to give those woodpeckers a real scare. Small Business Health Insurance Plans I noticed an ad over on Michelle Malkin's site from the National Federation of Independent Business asking people to contact their U.S. Senators about S.1955. This appears to be similar to the Association Health Plan proposals to which I have previously alluded. You can read the text of S.1955 here. I can't make heads or tails of the text, but it appears that the goal is to allow small businesses, working through trade associations, to form sufficiently large pools for small businesses to offer health insurance at affordable rates to their employees. (Well, I suspect that the business owners are mostly interested in getting affordable insurance for themselves, but having a large pool by including their employees is yet another example of Adam Smith's remarks about the Invisible Hand.) Maybe this bill has some gaping whole in it--but as I have previously mentioned, the opponents of these sort of bills are the strongest argument for them--insurance companies (who like to sell very expensive individual policies), unions (who don't want small, generally non-union businesses to survive), and big corporations (who can form large enough insurance pools with just their own employees). Thursday, April 27, 2006
This Might Shake Congress But it might also shake Americans into insisting that Congress do something about the problem: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood U.S. streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.Close down our cities? It sounds like a pretty serious threat to me. I do hope that Republicans in Congress stop listening to their corporate masters, and actually insist that Bush enforce the existing laws. Oregonians: Your Tax Dollars At Work One of the tax-funded student newspapers at the University of Oregon decided to give Christians a taste of how offended Muslims were by the Mohammed cartoons--so they published a cartoon depicting Jesus on the cross in a state of sexual excitement. It isn't subtle--not even close. If you really want to see it, you go here. I warned you--it is incredibly vulgar. Not surprisingly, there have been no riots by Christians, no death threats against the students involved, no buildings burned. I guess that the leftists unintentionally made not their point, but ours: Islam isn't like Christianity. But it says something about the left, doesn't it? The main student newspaper, of course, explained that the situations aren't analogous: The cartoons created by The Insurgent were not only irrelevantly offensive (why should a Christian care that an amateur liberal cartoonist has drawn Jesus listening to an iPod?), they were printed in a nation where many citizens identify with some sect of Christianity and rarely experience the kind of widespread oppression felt by Muslims around the world. Trying to make an equal comparison between the Muslim anger toward European cartoons and potential Christian anger toward homoerotic Jesus cartoons printed in The Insurgent is a careless dismissal of why Islamic communities felt under attack because of the offensive comics. Unlike the Danish cartoons, The Insurgent drawings seem intended to simply incite controversy for controversy’s sake rather than making specific social commentaries.It all fits with Judge Reinhardt's decision that materials offensive to some groups may be lawfully censored by public authorities, but not materials offensive to others. We are fast approaching the point where defunding public universities--and thus giving the totalitarians who call themselves "liberals" and "progressives" to get their hands dirty growing food--starts to look like a good idea. UPDATE: I was busy milling a piece of metal last night, and it struck me that the difference in reactions between offended Christians and offended Muslims has a very pity description: "Offended Christians want to cut off funding; offended Muslims want to cut off heads." Rising Bond Yields There are finally some S&P A-rated corporate bonds with yields to maturity exceeding 7%. There aren't a lot of them, but they are out there. An A-rated bond isn't as secure as a Treasury bond, or a government agency bond, but as long as you don't have too much concentrated in a single corporation or industry, A-rated bonds are reasonably safe. As a general rule, A-rate corporate bonds don't default, and while A-rated bonds sometimes drop to lower ratings (where there are, rarely, defaults), this doesn't happen over night. Even then, A-rated corporate bonds seldom suffer complete wipeouts, even if they drop down into the lower ratings and then default. Corporate bondholders are pretty high up the food chain when it comes to claims on corporate assets. From what I have read, most defaulted bonds end up paying the principal back (although sometimes after several years of no interest payments), and even those that don't are seldom a total loss. When A-rated corporate bonds hit a 7.5% yield, it will probably be time to pull the trigger on buying bonds, and then get ready to pull the retirement ripcord. Alternatively, when government agency bonds hit a 7% yield, that might be another appropriate target--a bit less income, but better sleep. Wednesday, April 26, 2006
House Project: Death To All Woodpeckers! We went up Friday evening, partly to see if Richard the Water Boy (yes, that's how he answers the phone) had gotten to the pressurization pump, which was still making water into a bucket under the overflow valve. It appears not--his plan is to reduce the pump pressure to 55 psi from 65 psi, in the hopes that spikes in pressure won't go over the overflow relief level. However, we were pleased to see that the badly cracked rear driveway apron had been cut and...well, at least removed from the driveway, if not from the property.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge We went back today, and we were very pleased to see that the new concrete had been poured and stamped.  Click to enlarge It is still drying. They also fixed a number of less severe cracks as well. Our builder is going to put a drainage channel to remove water from the area between the hillside and the foundation--which I think now should have been done in the first place. In a few more days, the concrete guys will come back, power wash all the concrete, and apply a sealant coat to make it shiny and pretty. However, the big surprise when we arrived this evening was some rather odd marks that at first my wife thought were bees swarming on the south face of the house.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge My wife saw the hole in the screen and thought that someone might have tried to break into the house. Okay, okay, make fun of us city folk, but I did point out to her that if someone was going to break into the house, they wouldn't attack the upper left corner of the screen--nor would they chew up the wood that far above the ground. My guess was that some bird attacked the house--and then my wife noticed that only the windows with blinds inside were being attacked. I noticed that only the south facing windows were attacked. Apparently, a window with darkness inside didn't upset the birds. So I started making some calls. One of my neighbors said, "Woodpeckers. They chewed up the outside of our house a couple of days ago. My daughter went after them with a shotgun. She didn't hit 'em, but it scared 'em off." He recommended that I stake them out, and blast them out of the air. I have some skeet loads that should be heavy enough for woodpeckers, and light enough that a richocheting pellet shouldn't be a hazard to the house. (Obviously, you scare the birds away from the house, then blast them--the house is not an appropriate backstop.) We'll have to replace at least one of the screens, maybe two, but these are all standard windows. The builder still has to finish the exterior trim paint, so a little patching and repainting after we have disposed of the pests won't be a big problem. It is beautiful up there--and the natural grasses are coming out in a big way.  Click to enlarge Last house project entry. UPDATE: It appears that I am going to have to persuade the woodpeckers to leave my house alone: Woodpeckers are federally protected migratory species, and as such are subject to both state and federal laws. The legal requirements under each set of laws apply. A federally issued depredation permit is required before any person may take, possess or transport migratory birds for depredation control purposes. No permit is required to scare or herd depredating migratory birds other than federally listed threatened or endangered species, bald or golden eagles (50 CFR 21.41).UC Davis has a rather discouraging list of approaches for making the woodpeckers leave your home alone; it sounds like noise or moving objects is the only legal way to do so that actually works. We were going to hang up wind chimes at some point; maybe we will do this a bit sooner. Labels: house project Machining: Like Most Skills, Practice Makes Perfect I decided to make a set of caster inserts for a Celestron CI-700 mount last night, partly to start building up some inventory, and partly because I have a CI-700 tripod sitting in the corner of the garage. The CI-700 is a very tall tripod--well suited to refractors and the Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes with which Celestron sold the CI-700. Anyway, I decided to try and make the leg inserts as precisely as I could, with the target being 2.475" diameter. (The CI-700 tripod legs are 2.480" inside diameter.) I've been working on improving my ability to replicate--exactly--the dimensions of these parts. I have not worried very much about the length of these inserts--if they came out within a tenth of an inch of each other, that was fine with me, because that wasn't a critical dimension. Also, I couldn't see a fast and easy way to get three pieces to exactly the same length. Yes, I could measure each piece before I put it in the lathe, and then trim it down by the required amount, but that was timee consuming and unnecessary, especially because I have to face (that is, make a perfect 90 degree cut) each end of the cylinder. Once you have faced one end, you reverse the cylinder, and then you have to move the cutting tool in a few thousandths of an inch more to face the opposite end. This means that you can't keep the cutting tool in exactly the same spot for each cylinder. Over the weekend, I figured out how to do this quickly and easily. I face the first cylinder at both ends. After I have faced the second end, I now have the total length that I want other cylinders to be. Now I back out the cutting tool by some fixed dimension large enough to fit the other cylinders into the lathe--say, .050". Now I put the second cylinder into the jaws, and turn the tool in by .025", and face the first end. Then I reverse the cylinder, turn the tool in by 0.025", and face the second end of the cylinder. Now I back about the tool .050", put the third cylinder in, and repeat. When I was done, I had three cylinders that were within .002" of each other in length--and two of the cylinders were 2.474" diameter, and the third was 2.476" diameter. Okay, a difference of .002" isn't going to impress a machininst, but it is certainly good enough for what the customer needs in this case. These leg inserts slide into the CI-700 legs just about perfectly--they are a tight enough fit that they won't rotate in the leg, but they are loose enough that they don't need to be pressed into the leg, either. Now, the bigger problem is that the top of the CI-700 tripod, where the Losmandy mounts are supposed to go, seems to have been dented at some point. (I don't know if this happened in shipping, or after I received it, since I was only using it for leg testing.) I can't quite put a Losmandy GM-8 mount into the tripod, because one side of the circle is 5.50" diameter--and another side is 5.49" diameter. If I had a really big lathe, I could bore this to a perfect circle--but I don't have a lathe that big. Instead, I am using a large bolt to expand the 5.49" diameter side. At least as of last night, I had managed to expand it from 5.493" to 5.498"--still just a little too small to accept the GM-8 mount head. I am hoping that by tonight, the pressure of the screw will have stretched it to 5.503", which should be large enough. The Persistence of Blasphemy Laws in Early America I was startled to find that Maryland as late as 1879 still had a blasphemy law on the books at Art. 72, sec. 189: If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Saviour, Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, he shall, on conviction, be fined not more than one hundred dollars, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both fined and imprisoned as aforesaid, at the discretion of the court.According to the marginalia, this statute was adopted in 1819, and a similar law dates back to 1723. Now, the colonial law doesn't surprise me--but I was a little surprised to see that as late as 1819 the Maryland legislature thought it appropriate to pass such a law. I don't know if this law was still being enforced in 1879, but at least we can see that in 1819 the Maryland legislature thought it was appropriate to pass such a law. I was a bit surprised, because I recall reading about a New York court striking down a blasphemy law around 1815 for violating a state guarantee of freedom of speech. This is still on the books in 1904, as Art. 27, sec. 20: If any person, by writing or speaking, shall blaspheme or curse God, or shall write or utter any profane words of and concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ, or of and concerning the Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, he shall on conviction be fined not more than one hundred dollars, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both fined and imprisoned as aforesaid, at the discretion of the court.As late as 1939, this still seems to be the law of Maryland--although there are notes that suggest that the courts had made some ruling about this section in State v. Popp, 45 Md. 438. This note, however, suggests that State v. Popp might be more related to Sunday alcohol sales. I suspect that someone that lives in Maryland, and needs an unusual topic for a research paper or a law review article might find an examination of the decline of blasphemy laws interesting. Monday, April 24, 2006
Articles You Won't See On The Front Page Of Most Newspapers It is a very positive, very upbeat article by one of the Idaho Statesman's fairly liberal columnists about Cowboy Action Shooting: Remember the Boise Walkabout, a 2002 series of columns in which a different neighborhood was trodden and written about each week? The idea is similar, except this column isn't about people and their neighborhoods. It's about people and how they spend the time they treasure.This wasn't just on the front page--it was above the fold! Judge Reinhardt's Peculiar Definition of Freedom of Speech I mentioned a couple of days ago that the 9th Circus Court of Appeals has ruled that the freedom of speech enjoyed by students ever since Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969) does not apply if the speech offends an oppressed minority group (yeah, homosexuals, of course). The liberal who wrote this decision, Judge Reinhardt, apparently has a very elaborate system for figuring out what is protected free speech, and what isn't. Professor Volokh has found that four years ago, Judge Reinhardt wrote a dissent emphasizing the importance of an unlimited freedom of speech: I would add only that at times like those this nation now confronts, it is especially important that the courts remain sensitive to the demands of the First Amendment, a provision that underlies the very existence of our democracy. See Brown v. Hartlage, 456 U.S. 45, 60 (1982) ("[T]he First Amendment [is] the guardian of our democracy.") First Amendment judicial scrutiny should now be at its height, whether the individual before us is a troubled schoolboy, a right-to-life-activist, an outraged environmentalist, a Taliban sympathizer, or any other person who disapproves of one or more of our nation's officials or policies for any reason whatsoever.But not, apparently, if you wear a T-shirt that expresses disapproval of homosexuality. Reinhardt's hypocrisy is the reason that I hold the ACLU (to which Judge Reinhard is married) in such utter contempt--and yet Professor Volokh thinks that I suffer from "ACLU Derangement Syndrome"! Warning: Being Immoral Has Consequences Ann Coulter, once again, demonstrates her lack of compassion for the morally handicapped: However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.How complicated is this? There are a number of behaviors that are vulgar and stupid. If you don't do them, you can substantially reduce your risk of being raped, accused of rape, etc. U.S. Gas Price Map Here's something that, before the Internet, would either not have existed at all, or would have been a very expensive subscription service--if you could even get it: a map of U.S. gasoline prices by county. Not surprisingly, some of the more remote areas of the country (such as Humboldt and Modoc Counties in California) are very expensive, and the relatively wealthy urban counties such as Los Angeles are above average. To my surprise, the cheapest region isn't Texas, but the intermountain Northwest, with some counties in Wyoming (which has lots of oil and refineries) the cheapest by far, and nearby states often just a little more expensive. Sunday, April 23, 2006
Is Bush Trying To Lose The Mid-Term Elections For Republicans? Look, I can understand if Bush thinks open borders are a good thing because it lowers the costs of production. I can understand if Bush thinks that we need to keep Mexico and President Fox on our side in the Global War on Terrorism. I can even understand (and be offended by) the idea that if Republicans take a position against illegal immigration, it might hurt them with Hispanics (even though many Hispanics oppose illegal immigration). What just flabbergasts me is a story like this, that suggests that parts of the Administration are preventing enforcement of the existing laws: WASHINGTON -- Two federal agencies are refusing to turn over a mountain of evidence that investigators could use to indict the nation's burgeoning work force of illegal immigrants and the firms that employ them.At the same time, the wall of black activists playing the Democratic Party game is starting to crack: (CBS) LOS ANGELES Several black activists plan to join members of the Minutemen Project to protest illegal immigration, which organizer Ted Hayes touted as the "biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery."?Okay, Hayes' rhetoric is a bit over the top--these aren't "slave wages" and I do think that lynching was a bigger threat--but at least his heart in the right place, and he knows that unskilled blacks are the biggest losers from unlimited immigration. |
