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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, November 18, 2006
A Couple of Pictures With the New Camera; Stupid Bicycling Adventures The thumbnails are of course reduced in size, but if you click on these, you will get the full six megapixel image the camera produces. I didn't reduce the size of the pictures (as I usually do) to give you an idea of the quality of picture that a camera that costs less than $100 and fits in a shirt pocket can give. Out the back door:  Click to enlarge Yes, that's snow on the peaks. And that little town there? That's Horseshoe Bend. I became excessively adventuresome this morning, figuring that I could enjoy a proper breakfast (you know, one with too much fat and calories in it) if I bicycled to breakfast and back. The trip down was very quick--about 35 minutes or so, I think, to cover about six miles. Hint: I only had to peddle for about two minutes of that--the rest was using the brakes to keep the speed under control. It is about six miles, but the elevation drop is about 1300 feet. This had a predictable result on the return journey--it took about two hours, and only a small part of it was bicycling, the rest was walking my bike. It turns out that while I've done some bicycling in the last several years, it has all been on the flats. Even in the lowest gear, this was more arduous than I expected. Tater Tot the Tiny Terrorist (temporarily calm because I fed him):  Click to enlarge UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! There's a bit more detail about the camera and the decision process to getting this particular camera here and here and here. Friday, November 17, 2006
In Some Theoretical Sense This Is Wrong If you want to wear silly clothing that unnecessarily restricts you, so what? The government shouldn't be telling people what they can wear, as long as the private parts remain private. But there's something a lot more repressive than saying, "No burkhas," and that's living in a society where social pressure means that women don't have any choice: THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The Dutch government announced plans Friday for legislation banning full-length veils in public places and other clothing that covers the face — putting the Netherlands at the forefront of a general European hardening toward Muslim minorities.If hardly any Dutch Muslims wear them, then it won't be much of an inconvenience, will it? More seriously: there are, I think, legitimate security questions about the wearing of masks or other face coverings in public. Faces are the primary method for identifying people--and the use of masks to hide one's identity as part of criminal action is why states like New York have regulated the wearing of masks or other methods of obscuring one's identity since at least 1845. While women have not historically been part of masked criminal activities, you couldn't very easily ban men from doing so, without opening the law up to challenge on sex discrimination grounds. Still, let's not pretend that this isn't at least partly an attempt to tell Muslims that they aren't going to treat their women like possessions. There is a plausible argument that even though such a law is an unreasonable imposition on Muslim women, there is also a legitimate argument that Muslim women, subject to barbarous mistreatment by at least some Muslim men, need the government to step in and give them an excuse to say, "No." The multiculturalists are, of course, quite upset, because such a law will violate the rights of Dutch Muslims to maintain their traditional culture in a country where Muslims aren't part of the tradition. What about the rights of Dutch non-Muslims to maintain their traditions? I'm not keen on some aspects of the Netherlands very permissive culture, but at least they aren't exporting suicide bombers. "Do as I demand, or I will smoke some more pot...and then I'll forget what I came here to demand." Busy Weekend My wife is off in Portland teaching Shakespeare in a very accelerated format--three weekends where she teaches Friday evening and all day Saturday. I'm not quite sure how she keeps her energy up for this, except lots of caffeine. Anyway, I'm alone on my mountaintop, but I've got plenty to do. 1. Get the patent application complete and ready to mail. 2. Write an article for next month's Shotgun News. 3. Try to get a working video editing package for Linux. As with everything in the wonderful and wacky world of open source, almost everything is free, but the cost of finding it and getting everything working makes it attractive to buy what you need. Windows World has this stuff for sale, but at the cost of an unreliable and insecure operating system. Yes, there's the Macintosh, but the Macintosh GUI is just too darn Martian. It reminds me of the teenagers greeting people at the door of a very fundamentalist church that we used to attend in California. All the facial piercings, tattoos, technicolor Mohawks didn't mean that they weren't good kids--but why offend with style when you can offend with substance? It was just a bit too strange to spend the time and energy getting past. And the Macintosh interface is like that--a little too loopy in its colors, windows flying around, going transparent. Like all those facial piercings, tattoos, etc., there's so much energy wasted on this silliness. 4. Figure out what processor I should splurge for on the laptop I'm about to buy. (See previous posting.) Any Suggestions From Current Chip Jockeys? There was a time when I was so in touch with current microprocessor technology that I would not have been asking this question. This was back in the bad old days when my friends and I thought that we were so cool because we were replacing the oscillator that supplied the clock frequency on IBM AT motherboards so that we could run the 286 processor not at 6 MHz (like IBM intended), but at 8 MHz or even 10 MHz! (Not that all of them could handle the extra speed, and still work.) And yes, that's a processor speed measured in megahertz, not gigahertz. Try not to laugh, younguns! I'm getting ready to tell the great HP factory to build me a laptop. There seems to be a processor war going on, and I can't tell much about the players. My wife's desktop as a 1.60 GHz AMD Sempron processor--and with 1.25 GB of RAM, it is plenty fast enough, even with OpenOffice running spreadsheets, word processing, Thunderbird running--plenty quick. (It was a bit pathetic with 256 MB of RAM.) I am planning to run Ubuntu Linux 6.06 on it--but there's no way to save any money by ordering a laptop without Windows, mostly because the volumes for the vendors who ship with Linux, or nothing, are so puny. There is a plethora of choices available on this laptop, each of which is just a LITTLE more expensive than the previous one. I want something as snappy as my wife's desktop, and even a little faster wouldn't hurt. If I have to spend a few dollars more to get a big jump in performance, that's good. But you gotta draw the line somewhere! (The last person to tell me that was a co-worker who made $100 million when Cisco bought out his company. He was explaining why he bought a BMW 740i instead of a 750i--personally, if I were in his shoes, I might have drawn the line a little higher.) Intel Celeron 1.60 GHz $0 Intel Celeron 1.73 GHz $10 Intel Core Solo 1.86 GHz $60 Intel Core Duo 1.60 GHz $120 Intel Core Duo 1.73 GHz $145 Intel Core 2 Duo 1.60 GHz $170 Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66 Ghz $220 I am considering ordering it with 2 GB of RAM--primarily so that I won't have much occasion to ever shut down any running applications. Unlike Windows, which requires reboots every few days to empty its heap, Ubuntu Linux runs like it was written by professionals--I think I have had two forced reboots over the last few months. Obviously, the Celeron is the reduced performance cheapo processor--I I would guess the Intel Core Solo at 1.86 GHz is a good bit faster than either of the Celeron choices. The Intel Core Duo presumably runs faster than the Intel Core Solo, although almost certainly not twice as fast. (Square root of twice as fast? Nah, too simple.) The Intel Core 2 Duo, from what I have read, has substantial advantages in power consumption, which for a laptop sounds like a good idea--but is there any performance advantage over the Intel Core Duo? UPDATE: I was chagrined to get a reminder from my mother that "me and my friends" above was grammatically wrong, and I have updated it. Formal grammar teaches that when combining two or more parties in a subject or object, the speaker puts himself last. When this compound noun is a subject, the correct form is "I" (nominative case); when it is an object, the correct form is "me" (accusative case). But in informal writing (as a blog is), lots of people either get careless, or decide to sound chatty. A Nice Summary of Why Alcee Hastings Was Removed From the Federal Bench Can be found here. This is the guy who is likely going to be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee--someone who was removed from the federal bench for soliciting bribes from a drug dealer, and for accepting bribes from two criminals who stole $1 million from a union pension fund. But of course, Hastings managed to get himself elected to Congress, and blamed it all on racism--even though Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), one of the most prominent blacks in the House, led the impeachment effort after he became convinced that Hastings was indeed corrupt. There's an entire blog devoted to Hastings' questionable use of taxpayer money, although it isn't terribly active. Think how painful it must be to be the sacrifical Republican who gets to run against someone who was removed from office by Congress--when both houses were controlled by Democrats--and knows that there is nothing than can defeat Hastings. When All Else Fails... Read the instructions. My HP Photosmart E427 arrived yesterday, and at first glance, it was exactly what I was expecting. It is tiny--about the size of a cell phone. It fits into any pocket. It is mechanically simple: instead of a lens cover that opens when you turn it on (as with most digital cameras that I have owned), the lens is shielded by a cover that you slide open to turn on the camera. Less moving parts. No optical zoom means less moving parts to break. Unfortunately, there is no driver for Windows 98. Okay, there's no driver for Windows 3.1, either. I know, I know, I need to buy a new laptop, and start running something a bit more modern. I had one disappointment, however, and I was about ready to return it, until I took the last possible step: reading the instruction manual. The macro mode switch (which is on the front of the camera, below the lens) didn't seem to work. At least, I couldn't get a decent focus, even when both camera and object were sitting on a table, so there was no motion. How do most digital cameras do autofocus? By looking for edges, and then adjusting the focus until the edges have minimum width and maximum contrast. For some reason that I didn't learn in class, at very close range, this doesn't work very well--hence the need for the macro setting. But it turns out that the macro setting is really for distances of 0.7 to 1.0 meters. I was trying to take pictures closer than 0.7 meters. I guess that this isn't so bad--other digital cameras had similar limitations. The trick is to get back to 0.7 meters, and then zoom in to get detail. A few objects from around my cube.  Library Filtering Professor Volokh points to an ACLU lawsuit against public library filtering in Washington State that would seem, at least based on the complaint, as though the library filtering is both too narrow, and the library is unwilling to disable it for a particular patron. One of the examples of overzealous filtering was blocking of access to the Second Amendment Foundation's website, and the website of the magazine Women & Guns. One commenter over there observes: No, they just think that if they have some unobjectionable examples of overfiltering (can't do legitimate research on drug addiction or gun ownership) that they can use this to strike down all library filtering. Of course, the ACLU made library filtering inevitable, because they have argued that there should be no (or almost no) limits on what can be shown or produced. If there weren't websites offering porn and hate propaganda, there wouldn't be a need for libraries to filter Internet access. It should be obvious to any rational person (i.e., non-ACLU members) that there are materials that are inappropriate for children, and of very limited value (if any) for adults. Libraries have traditionally been selective as to what they put on the shelves. The value added to the society by stocking the shelves of a public library with bestial porn and neo-Nazi hatred is actually negative. The rationalization that the ACLU and the ALA use for distinguishing the "filtering" that they do for physical media and the Internet is that shelf space is limited. True enough, but bandwidth, while cheap, isn't free. Why should the library patron downloading several megabytes a day of porn impair the performance of the library patron who is searching for articles about drug addiction treatment? Only an ACLU member would argue that these are so equal in value that the government should subsidize them equally. There is also the question of sexual harassment. If, as liberals like to believe, the presence of nude pictures in a workplace qualifies as sexual harassment, why is it no different when a librarian has to sort through the printouts from the library terminals, with sexual pictures scattered in amongst items that are part of a library's highest purpose? This is not a hypothetical; this was the situation of a friend who worked for Santa Rosa Public Library. She was not in any way a prude--and yet some of the pictures were so repulsive that she could not even hint at their content. UPDATE: Even more interesting--the ACLU used to argue in favor of filtering--at least, when they were arguing against the Child Online Protection Act. See Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union (2004): After considering testimony presented by both respondents and the Government, the District Court granted the preliminary injunction, concluding that respondents were likely to prevail on their argument that there were less restrictive alternatives to COPA, particularly blocking or filtering technology.It is all very Goldilocks. Don't try to ban children getting access to pornography online--filtering and blocking can solve the legitimate problem. But now someone has called the ACLU's bluff--and they aren't happy about that, either. One of the sad things is how high minded organizations become whores for particular industries. NORML became largely a legal defense organization for mid-level drug dealers, and the ACLU seems, at least in this area, to have become a legal defense organization for the most grotesque parts of the porn industry. Interesting Study About Politics & Charitable Giving And from a fairly liberal academic: SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making him nervous.I'm not terribly surprised. Some years ago, I wrote this opinion piece for the local newspaper. Although I didn't write it for the purpose of ingratiating myself with the multimillionaire liberals that I had worked with, I thought that at least they would tell me, "Good job, Clayton, encouraging people with more money than they need to spend it on helping the poor!" Instead, it closed a whole bunch of doors when it came time to look for work. It would appear that the same sentiments are at work among liberals in general--a lot of selfishness that they project onto the society as a whole, hence their desire to have the government do this. I remember one of my co-workers--an unabashed liberal, who made several hundred million dollars by the time he was in his early 30s, expressing his desire to help a particular charity, as long as he didn't have to actually put any money out of pocket. Thursday, November 16, 2006
Good Losers Pat Sajak has a nice piece here pointing out something that I noticed the day after the election: There’s a lot of debate in the country over which political party is better suited to lead, and that question is supposed to be decided regularly at polling places throughout the nation. However, there is absolutely no question about which party is better at losing elections; hands down, it’s the Republicans.And have you noticed that in the post-election analysis, Republicans and conservatives have focused on what went wrong in the last few years within the Republican Party, not spinning elaborate theories of voter fraud? There are some advantages to being an adult. What Sort Of People Does Instapundit Hang With? In the middle of a nice little piece encouraging everyone to give blood--Instapundit wonders if the increasingly long list of questions used to disqualify those at risk is taking too many potential blood donors out of circulation: The list of questions and exclusions seems to get longer every time I do this. As I've noted here before, I wonder if all these exclusions might not cost as many lives as they save. Since I'm one of the few people I know who's eligible to give blood, I try to do it a couple of times a year, since it's got to come from someplace.Yes, I find the list of questions and exclusions pretty astonishing, but I can't imagine that the list isn't the result of pretty exhaustive analysis of the statistics of infected blood. For example, the prohibition on giving blood if you have spent more than 72 consecutive hours in a jail or juvenile detention facility in the last year. Why 72 consecutive hours, not 48? I'm sure that someone analyzing the demographics of blood donors with infected blood discovered a quite dramatic increase in risk at around the 72 hour mark. I'm too polite to suggest why the risk goes up so much after three nights, but Instapundit has already pointed out why here. Anyway, back to my point: is it really true that Instapundit is one of the few people he knows "who's eligible to give blood"? I guess my worst concerns about the preferences of law school faculty are turning out to be true! UPDATE: It occurred to me at the time that because of his Nigerian relatives, he might have family members who spend a bit of time in Africa, which would explain some of the exclusions. But apparently he knows a bunch of people who have spent time in the military, and lots of time in Europe. Those Evil People At Wal-Mart! Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a booster of Wal-Mart. There are things that they do that greatly irritate me: above all, being the marketing arm of the modern fascist society of the People's Republic of China. Much of the upset with Wal-Mart is really just union whining because Wal-Mart has aggressively resisted unionization. Even the complaint about health insurance is really just union dishonesty. Most of the small businesses that Wal-Mart is driving out of business aren't noted for their health insurance, either. I would guess that the percentage of Wal-Mart employees with health insurance is substantially higher than the percentage of Mom & Pop store employees with health insurance. But those evil people at Wal-Mart have done it again--extended their $4 generic prescrption program to a bunch more states: Wal-Mart stores in Idaho now are offering more than 300 generic drugs for $4 for a month’s supply.The whiners--who at least this Idaho Statesman article identifies correctly so that we can see the financial interests involved--complain because it doesn't cover everything: Critics including union-led groups and the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents non-chain pharmacies, have called the discounts a publicity stunt that covers only a fraction of the 8,700 generic prescription drugs approved by the Federal Drug Administration.Yes, those 300 generic drugs are only a fraction of the 8,700 that exist--but does anyone want to guess what fraction of the prescriptions actually filled each day those 300 generic drugs include? I would not be at all surprised if they are a majority of generic prescriptions. Remember that Wal-Mart has always made its money with a relentlessly efficient distribution system for selling mass market goods. I think it likely that the same is true for this program--buying amoxicillin in single shipments that the average non-chain pharmacy wouldn't buy in a century. Ron Chomiuk, Wal-Mart’s vice president of pharmacy operations, said Wal-Mart introduced the discount program to help people struggling with health-care costs, not as a public relations maneuver.Sorry, but I don't believe that Wal-Mart is just doing this because they are civic minded, or to give themselves good publicity. They are probably making money on those $4 generic prescriptions--maybe only a few cents on each--but Wal-Mart's model has always been to sell vast quantities of something on very thin margins, and make it up in volume. For all the whining liberals, upset that Wal-Mart is about to make vast quantities of generic prescription drugs available to the poor for almost nothing--what next? Are you going to blame Wal-Mart for causing a population crisis, because too many kids are going to survive ear infections? Call Me Skeptical... But I find it very hard to believe that breaching four dams along the Columbia River--dams that produce about 5% of the Pacific Northwest's electricity, make possible ocean-going ship transport as far inland as Lewiston, Idaho, and provide irrigation water to significant parts of Washington State--is going to save money. The Idaho Statesman has an article about this new report from the environmentalist/salmon fishing industry coalition that makes the claim that: Breaching four Washington Snake River dams to save Idaho's endangered salmon would cost less than leaving the dams in place, according to a report released Wednesday by salmon advocates, taxpayer and business groups.The claim is that wind power and conservation can make up for the loss of 5% of the region's electric power. Huh? Look, I am really keen on wind power (I'm looking for a recording anerometer that I can rent right now), but putting up wind generators isn't free, and "conservation" generally requires either substantial reductions in living standards, or sizeable investments to reduce energy consumption. If we were starting from scratch--if we didn't have these dams already built--I could at least consider it plausible that the dams aren't a perfect solution. There's a huge capital investment in building a dam, and some of that investment is energy, to make the concrete, to move equipment into place, to smelt the copper for the wire that goes into the generators (some of which will need replacement in a few years--one of the costs of keeping the dams). Even the one area that seems most intuitively advantageous about dams--flood control--is less obvious than it appears. A dam saves a lot of land downstream from unpredictable flooding, but at the cost of putting a lot of land upstream under water. Depending on the topography, the land flooded upstream could be smaller than the land saved from flooding downstream, and there's a case for flooding land in a predictable manner, instead of getting surprised when you get up to use the bathroom, and discovered that there's a lake in your bedroom. But the dams are already built. This description of the environementalist claims makes me immediately wonder if the religious fanaticism of the Gaea-worshippers hasn't gotten out of control, once again. Losing the Culture Wars Recently, a friend forwarded to me an email from the Christian Film & Television Commission about how young Christian adults are so dramatically different in their moral outlook than older Christian adults: A poll comparing the moral and religious views of young adults in their 20s and 30s with the views of adults over 40 shows that the young adults are abandoning the biblical faith of their elders at an alarming rate, according to the Barna Group.Of course, being the Christian Film & Television Commission, they see the core problem as the sort of trash that young people are watching. Doubtless this plays a part: garbage in, garbage out. But there's a deeper problem, which became apparent as we discussed some of these issues with our kids on the way back from a family reunion: our generation of Christians has largely failed. It is difficult for a younger generation of Christians to take the sanctity of marriage seriously (and thus regard homosexual marriage as a bad idea) when our generation demonstrated that it didn't really believe in the sanctity of marriage. Think about it: how many Christians do you know that are divorced, for some reason other than adultery (the one reason that Jesus gave that was valid)? My wife and I know a few other Christians who married around the same time as us that are still married, but we are trees in a forest full of stumps. Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Obscure History Boston 1775 has a very interesting piece about what happened in January 1775 when British General Haldiman's servants unintentionally damaged a sledding area used by the boys of Boston, quoting a letter of the time: With the true spirit of the sons of Boston, they chose a committee to wait upon the General to remonstrate against the proceedings, & complain of the maltreatment they had received of his servant. When the servant came to the door, he asked their business; they replied it was with the General. The servant was ordered to wait upon them into the parlour. The chairman informed the General that they were a committee from the boys, sent to make complaint of the invasion of their rights made by one of his servants; that he had spoiled their sport by tossing a quantity of ashes over a spot of ground which they & their fathers before them had taken possession of for a coasting-place. An Interesting Idea--But There's a Fatal Flaw Instapundit points to Pakistan's Parliament moving forward into the medieval period, by adopting a new law on rape that takes these cases away from the Sharia law courts--where a woman needed four witnesses to a rape, or she could be prosecuted for adultery. I knew that Islam had some pretty bizarrely misogynistic ideas, but requiring four witnesses to a rape effectively made rape legal. If there were four witnesses to the rape, why wouldn't the witnesses drag the rapist away? Odd that you never hear about laws like this from the PC crowd that argues that Islam is really no worse than Christianity in its treatment of women. Okay, that's progress. Instapundit points to another blogger who suggests that the West could incentivize Islam improving its treatment of women by giving refuge to every Islamic woman that wanted out--and maybe all the engineers and scientists as well. At first glance, this is a clever idea--eventually, a shortage of women will impair the ability of backward Muslim societies to reproduce. More immediately, a shortage of women could endanger the institution of polygamy. This would be a good thing--if it actually happened. At least part of why there is never a shortage of single Muslim young men willing to engage in suicide missions is that many of them have no chance of ever marrying--because at least 16% of Muslim men take more than one wife, dooming at least 16% of Muslim men to homosexuality, visiting prostitutes, or chastity (two of which are sins under Islam, and the third is not a viable option for adult men). Part of why I say, "if it actually happened" is that polygamy is a way of expressing one's high status in the Muslim world. Yes, there are probably men who take multiple wives for the reasons that you might expect (madly in love with multiple women, or someone is still suffering from teenaged male hormone levels), but generally, the reason for having multiple wives is not so different from why the alpha male horse or lion has multiple female mates--and competing adults males are either driven out, or prevented from mating. A shortage of females in Muslim countries, rather than endangering the institution of polygamy, might simply encourage the alpha males of those societies to drive more of lower status males into suicide bombings. That we do not need. UPDATE: A reader points out: Under Islamic law, Moslem women may only marry Moslem men. Moslem men, of course, may marry non-Moslem women, but all children are considered to be Moslem automatically. Importing large numbers of poor, mostly illiterate, Moslem women who retain their religion into the US would provide US-born Moslem men with wives, to be sure, but what else it would do is not clear. I don't think it is a very good idea. Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Public Schools Promoting Religion? I don't know if this is true or not. I was lecturing at a local university about the history of the Scopes Trial last night (not my class--I was invited in by the instructor) and during the discussion afterwards, one of the adult students told me that in the Nampa, Idaho school district, where his kids attend, the schools are putting a lot of energy lately into teaching them about world religions--except for one obscure religion with which only about a billion people worldwide identify, and only about 80% of Americans claim to be. In practice, most of the energy is being spent, as he tells it, on discussing, and not in a very neutral way, Islam. Now, I can understand if the schools were being careful to avoid any discussion of religion to avoid offending anyone. After all, atheists and agnostics might regard any discussion of religion that did not include an even-handed discussion of atheism and agnosticism as promoting faith with their tax dollars. Even though I don't think they have a Constitutional claim, I can understand their upset, and as a matter of good manners and public policy, I would consider this a poor idea. If the presentation of a particular religion was erroneous, or was hostile in its description of that religion, I can see why members of that religion would be upset--especially since their tax dollars are being used to present it. There is a legitimate Constitutional claim here, since using tax dollars to put a particular religion in a disfavored light is perilously close to establishment of religion in reverse. If the religion of the majority (or at least of the ruling politicians) were being promoted and discussed while all others were given little or no attention, I could see why many people might be upset. If one particular denomination was getting the advantage, this would be clearly a violation of the establishment clause. For a variety of reasons, primarily the history of how the First Congress and its successors handled the question of general preference for Christianity, I think the establishment violation claim isn't quite so clear. It is at least in poor taste, and as a matter of public policy, I think it is a very bad idea to do this. There is perhaps a legitimate equal protection violation claim involved here. But are Nampa schools actually giving preferential treatment in their discussion of Islam? Now, in California, where anything that seems to be an enemy of the United States is automatically given preference, this would not surprise me. But in Nampa? I would be shocked if this was really the case. Labels: establishment of religion Just In Case I'm Not Here To Explain This to the Police I mentioned last month that Duane Morrison, who sexually assaulted several girls at a Colorado high school before murdering them, had a previous run-in with the law when he left a message that he probably thought was a humorous attempt at getting himself removed from a mailing list--but the recipients regarded as threatening. In retrospect, that phone message tells us a lot about Duane Morrison. Most of us here in our subdivision have been trying to get agreement about repairing the common road. To that end, I have been contacting the various property owners (not all of whom actually live here), explaining the cost of the proposed work, and trying to get agreement about it. The parcel to our north is not currently owner-occupied. The previous owner had a travel trailer on it "temporarily" while getting ready to build. One thing led to another, including a divorce, and that "temporarily" stretched on and on. The CC&Rs for our subdivision specify that no temporary dwelling, including a motor home, travel trailer, etc., will be kept for more than one year on a property, and only then as a temporary measure until a CC&R-compliant home gets built. The travel trailer there isn't too bad, but it isn't in compliance with the CC&Rs--and a lot of the debris scattered about the travel trailer really is an eyesore. Anyway, the owner of the property to our north called me up to discuss the common road, and was enthusiastic about chipping in to regrade it. At the end of what had been a very pleasant conversation, I asked him if he had any plans to build, and I very politely reminded him, "You know, the CC&Rs specify that temporary dwellings are only supposed to be there for one year while a home is being built." He became quite irate, and said, "I've gone through this with CC&Rs before. Don't make me your enemy! I don't want to have to burn your house down!" The conversation ended shortly thereafter. Now, I don't know if this was just his attempt at being humorous or what, but it made a cold chill run down my spine. And yes, it makes me uninclined to ever raise that issue again--which is what he was trying to do--intimidate me into shutting up about his violation of the CC&Rs. I don't think this was anything more than the short temper of someone who, by his own admission, bought the property on a whim, and even if he was crazy enough to burn me out so that I wouldn't bother him about his eyesores, I can't imagine he would try to do that while my house was occupied. But just in case I have misread this guy--this posting is here so that the police will know who to go talk to first. Gee, Could Control of the Senate Change Again? From, of places, ABC News's blog: Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is scheduled to report to federal prison tomorrow, over the objections of federal prosecutors who say they still need his help to pursue leads on officials he allegedly bribed.Hmmm. If even two of them had to resign, or were convicted, that could change the balance of power again. Voluntary Prayer? Not in Public Buildings! You can always count on the 9th Circuit to implement the liberal theory of, "That which is not required, is prohibited." A few years ago, the City of Boise had a homeless shelter that was operated by a group called Community House, Inc. The shelter housed men, women, and children. I don't remember all the details, but what was covered in the local paper doesn't exactly square with the court decision, which makes it sound like Boise decided to kick Community House, Inc., out of operation of Boise's homeless shelter. My recollection (somewhat hazy) is that Community House needed more money to operate the shelter than Boise government could provide. Anyway, Boise ended up requesting various nonprofits bid on running the homeless shelter. Boise Rescue Mission won the contract. BRM is an organization to which I have contributed in the past. I also know a former employee who was full of criticism of how BRM operated--although he seems to have some difficulties with almost every organization at which he has worked or volunteered, so I'm not sure how much to blame BRM for this. The lawsuit concerning BRM's contract to operate the Community House homeless shelter concerns two questions: 1. May BRM limit use of the shelter to men, requiring women and children to be sheltered elsewhere? 2. May BRM provide voluntary religious services to homeless men using the shelter? With respect to the first question, BRM argues that putting homeless men in the same shelter with homeless women and children is a safety problem. To quote from Bill Roscoe, who is Executive Director of BRM, and has been doing homeless shelter work for 20 years: The problems [of serving the homeless] are exacerbated in a mixed gender shelter environment. Further, it is not always appropriate to have families, particularly families with young or vulnerable children, to sleep in the same facility as other members of the homeless population. We believe that our separate shelter facilities for men and women is one of the reasons why we have fewer police calls at our facilities than Community House. For example, in 2004, all five of Rescue Mission’s facilities combined had less than one-half of the police calls of Community House.The 9th Circuit decision concluded that this sex discrimination wasn't lawful, not because there was evidence to counter Roscoe's claim, but: Other than Roscoe’s opinion, the City did not submit a single police report, incident report, or any other documentation that supported any safety concerns. The “fewer police calls” at the BRM’s other facilities does not establish that the men-only policy is justified by safety concerns. There could have been fewer police calls due to fewer residents at the other facilities. Or, there could have been fewer police calls due to fewer disabled residents at those facilities and therefore less need for emergency medical assistance.You know, they could be right about that, and they are probably right about what the law requires. But guess what? I've been inside BRM's operation at 6th Street in Boise, helping out with an event. I've talked to some of the guys that were living there. Do I find it likely that Roscoe knows what he's talking about? You betcha! Even in Idaho, a large fraction of the unsheltered homeless are mentally ill, substance abusers, or describe themselves as "disabled" but won't identify in what way they are disabled (see pp. 35-36 of that report). I do not find it at all hard to believe that putting women and children in a shelter with mentally ill men might be a safety issue. Another case of law trumping reality. The second issue is prayer. Boise Rescue Mission is, surprise, surprise, a Christian organization. They have a voluntary worship session for an hour before the evening meal. Once again, the truly destructive Lemon decision with its three prongs comes into play: The record shows that the BRM conducts a daily sixty-minute Christian chapel service at Community House before dinner. The chapel service consists of singing, scripture reading, prayer, testimonies, and preaching. It thus appears that the BRM is giving instruction in, and imbuing those Community House residents in attendance at the chapel service with, the tenets of Christianity. This is true even assuming attendance at the chapel service is voluntary.I've seen, at least a little bit, how BRM operates with respect to chapel service at their 6th Street facility. What I saw were men who were coming back (or at least trying to come back) from the bottom--many of them men who, unsurprisingly, responded positively to a message that probably resonates strongly with positive memories of childhood church services. I didn't see anyone who was obviously there against his will, or who seemed to be just going through the motions to get himself fed. I'm inclined to believe, based on what I have seen in other BRM facilities, BRM's claim that chapel service at Community House is voluntary. Maybe this 9th Circuit decision is legally correct, based on the existing precedents. It is shameful how the courts have completely twisted the intent of the establishment clause--which was originally intended to prevent a particular religious body from receiving preferential treatment--into this prohibition on voluntary church services in a building because it is leased by the city. If this were a forced attendance, I could understand the liberal concern. But that's not the case--and the 9th Circuit even says that even if it is voluntary--that's not good enough. "That which is not required, is prohibited." Labels: deinstitutionalization Intelligence Detected At Work In School District; Problem Solved I mentioned a few weeks back a school district that has hired a security firm to teach teachers and students to respond to a gunman attack with human wave tactics and throwing objects until they could overwhelm him--instead of sitting there waiting to die. I guess word got out about this shocking display of intelligence, and that has been crushed out: Two weeks ago, Greg Crane, a criminal justice teacher at Burleson High School, was teaching six classes a day. Digital Camera Death, Part 2 I just ordered up an HP Photosmart E427 as a replacement for the dead Kodak Z700. I did not have good luck with the HP Photosmart 812 because the optical zoom kept breaking. The first one I bought didn't even survive the first day before the cheap plastic gear that moves the lens in and out broke. The replacement one lasted a couple of years. I don't know if the Kodak's failure is related, but it is interesting that it is during powerup that the optical zoom motor activates--and this is exactly where the Kodak suddenly gives up, with the red LED indicating "not enough power." This is also how the HP Photosmart 812 failed--indicating a power problem, because the motor was overloading during lens extension. As a result, I decided that I would not buy another consumer digital camera with an optical zoom. In case you don't know the difference: digital cameras typically have both an optical zoom, and a digital zoom. Optical zoom means that the lens actually moves to magnify the field; digital zoom means that the image already shown is enlarged. If the digital zoom is powerful enough, you start to see the grain of individual pixels. As a result, digital zoom is not generally very useful; it doesn't give you anything that you can't accomplish back at home when you crop the picture. It is pretty typical for consumer digital cameras to have a 3x optical zoom, and a 6x or 7x digital zoom--and it is also too typical for these to be advertised as 18x or 21x zoom cameras. There is one advantage to digital zoom--it doesn't involve motors moving lens, and plastic gears breaking. If your camera is high enough resolution, you can somewhat consider a digital zoom an adequate alternative to an optical zoom. For example, consider a 4 megapixel camera where you have used the optical zoom to enlarge the picture 2x, and then consider an 8 megapixel camera where you have used a 2x digital zoom. They will show the same size image, and the actual resolution of the image will be about the same, because the 8 megapixel camera with a 2x digital zoom is actually using about 4 megapixels for the image. As long as you use the digital zoom with restraint, you will still have a fine image for 8x10 pictures, or even larger--and with fewer motors and moving parts, there will be less to break, and probably somewhat longer battery life. The HP Photosmart E427 is a 6 megapixel camera with a 5x digital zoom--and with my employee discount and Idaho sales tax, it only came to $79.49. For blogging, and for putting up pictures on the ScopeRoller web page (the primary purposes), this is a bargain. If it lasts a year, this comes to less than $7 a month to have a digital camera. Without an optical zoom, it might last quite a bit longer. I wouldn't necessarily call the E427 head and shoulders above the competition (at least, if you are buying it as a retail consumer), but it uses the SD memory cards that I already had for the HP 812, and the Kodak Z700, and because of the employee discount, it was a decent deal. UPDATE: I was feeling adventuresome this evening, and thought to take apart the Kodak Z700--you know, hoping to find some trivial cause of the failure. I removed the 128 MB SD memory card first, then the batteries. Then I tried to unscrew the little tiny screws that hold it together. No luck--way too small. So I decided to put the batteries back in--and when I turned on the camera, it powered up! For about two seconds. Then it shut off again. But the lens fully extended, and stayed in operating position until the power went out. Hmmm. So I put the 128 MB SD memory card back in--and it would no longer finish powering up. I went back and forth a couple of times, and concluded that the memory card increases total power demand on the camera beyond the point where brand new batteries give enough voltage to complete the powerup cycle. I suspect that it isn't the lens extension, but some other component (probably something that would have to debugged at the printed circuit board or chip level) is suddenly gobbling too much power. This tells me that the only repair possible, without the factory drawings and specifications, is probably replacing whatever printed circuit board this contains. It would appear that I made the right decision to replace it. It drives me absolutely crazy to have something like this that you can't repair because one part somewhere, costing probably all of a dollar or two, has failed--and there's no cost-effective way to figure out which part. Of course, if there was an easy to way to do this, it would be built out of discrete parts such that it would cost $3000, and be about the size of a desktop computer. Monday, November 13, 2006
Digital Camera Death It appears that it will cost me $125 to get this Kodak Z700 repaired--and it is less than 13 months old. The failure mode seems to be a pretty common one--it behaves as though the batteries are dead, but even brand new batteries make no difference. The green LED comes on a for a fraction of a second after you start it, and then goes red, and then goes black. (And you didn't know that there were black LEDs, did you?) To say that I am disappointed is putting it mildly. The repair cost of $125 is about what it costs to buy a new 5 megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom. Why would you have something repaired when you can buy something else that will probably last just about as long, and be under warranty for a year? The alternative that I am considering is to buy a digital SLR camera body (like this Pentax *IST, which will accept all my current Pentax ME Super lens) for those applications such as astrophotography and serious photography. For carrying around when I just want stuff for the blog, I can buy a very cheap 2 megapixel camera without an optical zoom, and plan to replace it every year when the warranty and (it appears) the camera expires. Someone In Danger Of Drowning in the Gene Pool This incident in Knoxville is a pretty typical "stupid criminal discovers the victim is also armed, and a lot faster on the draw" case: A Knox County commissioner known for his pro-gun stance says he aborted an armed robbery at his car dealership Saturday with the aid of his .380-caliber pistol.What makes this incident a little more "special" is for this: Lambert was apparently wearing his "Friends of the NRA" hat at the time. This is what gunwriter Massad Ayoob likes to call "a failure of the victim selection process." The Target Audience Isn't the Problem J.L. Bell blogs over at Boston 1775 about Revolutionary Massachusetts. (Yeah, there's a specialty blog for you!) He has some criticism of Peter Hoffer's book Past Imperfect, about the history scandals of several years ago: Past Imperfect links its two halves this way: academic historians lost the affection and trust of the general public in the late 1900s. Therefore, the public was primed to jump on the scandals of 2002, and see them as tainting the whole profession. Yet two of those scandals (Ambrose, Goodwin) had arisen because of authors' wishes to please popular audiences with stirring language, a third (Ellis) to please them with a personal link to important movements. Bellesiles published through a commercial press that did no peer review but an excellent job of getting pre-publication news coverage and prominent reviews. One half of Past Imperfect is about historians not pleasing the public's tastes. The other half is about historians trying too hard to please. But, as I wrote above, are those two things related?What these two "halves" have in common isn't who historians were trying to please, but about the willingness to cut corners in an effort to please. I could have written my new book Armed America as a fire-breathing defense of the Second Amendment as a laissez-faire protection of unlimited gun rights. I would not have needed to lie (unlike Bellesiles' Arming America); I could have just left out evidence that I found that didn't fit that model, or downplayed the significance of evidence that shows that the Framers regarded gun ownership as both a right and a duty. I think that's Hoffer's point--that historians have a duty to not only tell the truth, but to tell the whole truth, and not trim the facts to satisfy either the left-leaning academy or the self-satisfied popular market. Back From Family Reunion I'm back. How many 90th birthday parties do you go to where the guest of honor tap dances? My children compare my mother to the Eveready battery bunny: "She just keeps goin' and goin'." The weather in Bandon on the Oregon coast varied from cold with pouring rain to cold with drizzles, with a brief glorious period of cold sunlight on Saturday morning. As beautiful as all those forests are, I don't think the constant gray would be something that I can could live with day in and day out. These family reunions are always interesting, with a pretty amazingly diverse collection of nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, first cousins, first cousins once removed. I had to answer questions about proper terminology, and explain why and when the early medieval church adopted its consanguinity rules. It is a pretty diverse collection of people. We've got kids there that are so clean-cut that you might think it was still 1955--and adults who are perilously close to Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man (although the art work doesn't move). We've got a range of skin colors from chocolate to almost albino. The range of politics is also pretty remarkable, as you might expect with family members who live in California, Oregon, Idaho, and Texas. Present were antiwar activists who think the world of Michael Moore, and wives of active duty military. There were bumper stickers on some of the cars that were well to the right of me! There were lawyers, college faculty, school counselors, teachers, and full-time mothers. The only convicted felon learned quite a bit inside Club Fed, and is now working his way up the ladder to being a real estate mogul. We had some interesting discussions of the physical and fiscal merits of steel vs. wood framing for houses, alternative construction media, and why Nazi-era public buildings fell down so readily during bombing raids. (Hint: the decision to not use reinforcing rod was an attempt at making buildings that would last as long as Roman buildings.) All in all, an interesting weekend. I would have pictures, but my Kodak Z700 digital camera, which is now 15 days out of warranty--failed. It turns on and immediately turns off. I can't decide whether to go ultimate cheap, and figure that whatever I buy will only last through warranty period, or buy a quality digital SLR, and figure that it is worth buying an extended warranty on a $650 camera. |
