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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, December 02, 2006
Would Someone Explain This To Me? My daughter tells me that much of the upset that she hears from her social work professors with the Bush Administration is the deep cuts in social spending that they made while spending money on the Iraq War, with food stamps being one example. I was wondering how the mainstream media had missed this wonderful example of Bush playing Scrooge--so I started looking for data. Budget item 605 is "Food and nutrition assistance" which covers both Food Stamps and the WIC program (which provides food assistance to pregnant women and children under five). The historical budget allocation comes from here. I've adjusted for inflation by using the Consumer Price Index-Urban consumers (CPI-U) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period 1913 to the present. In the table below, I present the budget amount for each year, the CPI-U for January of that year, and then what that budget amount would be if adjusted for inflation (effectively, converting the budget amount to what it would have been if CPI-U=100). Obviously, we don't know what the CPI-U number will be for 2007 and later.
Now, maybe there was a dramatic increase in people dependent on the Food Stamps and WIC programs over the period 2000 to 2006, but there's a 43% increase in spending between 2000 and 2006. For Bush budget cuts to have reduced food stamp spending would require at least a 43% increase in the number of those eligible for assistance. What am I missing? UPDATE: My daughter clarified that her social work professors weren't the ones doing the major moaning about "cuts" in food stamps, but people at the University of Idaho. There has been a significant growth in the number of families participating in the WIC program, although I am hard pressed to see how the increase could be enough to overwhelm the pretty dramatic growth in the program under President Bush. A Shocking Admission I was watching the Fox News program The Lineup while washing the dishes, and they were covering a criminal case in Akron, Ohio in which a videographer for Girls Gone Wild is accused of raping a drunk 17-year-old, who has publicly identified herself (Nina Ramos). I haven't seen Girls Gone Wild (obviously), but the ads alone are, I think, a pretty strong argument that it this series fails at least the first and third prongs of the obscenity test in Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966): (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex;The second prong is the only questionable aspect of this, but if there is a community somewhere in America where this isn't "patently offensive," it would have to be one that is made up entirely of 14 year old boys. Still, what I did find refreshing was that the victim of the rape acknowledged that she was part of the problem. She admitted without any prodding that she was partly responsible for what happened because she was drinking, and continued doing so far beyond the point where she was in control of herself--nearly passed out when she claims the videographer had sex with her. This doesn't minimize the videographer's responsibility, if he actually did have sex with a severely drunk 17-year-old. It is, however, refreshing to see someone acknowledge her own partial responsibility for what happened. Tracks in the Snow I walked down to the mailbox this afternoon, mostly because I needed the exercise. (It shouldn't be much exercise, except that it is about 25 degrees outside, and you burn a lot of calories warming up the air you breathe.) There was only an HP Shopping catalog, but there were plenty of interesting artifacts along the way--one of the advantages of this very compact HP Photosmart E427 camera--it just slides in my pocket, and I don't even notice it. I own it for the same reason that I own an Iver Johnson .22 pistol (a licensed copy of the Walther PPK)--there are times that it is too much of a bother to carry a real gun--and it is better than being completely unarmed. This is the back side of Bogus Basin ski resort--and yes, they are open, to my son's delight.  Click to enlarge I think this might be the prints of the foxes we see around here, although we've had a couple of days for the beautiful impressions in the snow to soften because of sublimation and melting.  Click to enlarge I'm not quite sure what left this track, but the size of the prints and what looks like a dragging tail makes me think it was a bird.  Click to enlarge This zoomed in picture is of Maya's prints, the big friendly mastiff puppy that lives across the road. Most of the prints were too mushed to see anything but a big hole, but this way seems to have survived intact.  This beast's track I would recognize anywhere--the powerful but friendly Corvette.  Click to enlarge The Imams Not Allowed to Fly I've seen a bit of television coverage of this--and this article from the New York Post provides a nice summary of what really happened, and why they were removed from the flight. It wasn't anti-Muslim bias--a Muslim passenger informed a flight attendant of what the imams were saying in Arabic in praise of Osama bin Laden and in opposition to the U.S. for what happened to Saddam Hussein. Their behavior was bizarre--and the request for seat belt extenders when they clearly didn't need them, or use them, should have given reason to worry about the use of these as weapons. (Big heavy metal buckle on one end of a flexible strap--an improvised nunchaku.) I saw an interview with one of the passengers a couple of nights ago who pointed out that there were press releases issued within three hours of the incident--and the claim that they were removed in handcuffs from the plane was completely false. So what was going on? I don't think that this was a terrorist probe--an attempt to see how far they could get without drawing attention. I am quite sure that this was not a terrorist attack that was prevented by the removal of the imams from the plane. For one thing, their actions seemed designed to attract attention, in a way that real terrorists would not have done so. I think the real goal was to provoke an incident that could be used to intimidate airplane crews from taking action if they saw suspicious behavior by Muslim passengers. The least worrisome reason might be a desire to make sure that Americans do not automatically see every Muslim as a terrorist. The most worrisome reason might be to make sure Americans are intimidated into not asking questions if a Muslim starts to act suspiciously on an airliner--you know, like trying to set fire to his shoe. This most recent letter from the President of Iran, some people think, may be a final warning. Islamofascists believe that if they give you warning that you need to submit to Islam, and you fail to do so, then they are justified in killing you. I wonder if the six imams are part of this same effort--trying to break down the willingness of Americans to ask questions, so that when the actual terrorist attack takes place, our nagging fear of being called "racists" will prevent us from saying, "Wait a minute--this looks wrong." HP Technical Support Solved The Driver Problem I mentioned recently that this new notebook wasn't working with an external monitor--and the more I looked at the driver settings, the more apparent it became that something wasn't right. It took several back and forth emails with HP Technical Support, but they finally told me to download two driver updates (an Intel chipset driver for this notebook, and the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator driver), and this solved the problem. I can now plug the external monitor into the external VGA port, hit Fn F4, and have the display appear. Also, the Display Settings now shows the actual resolution--1280x800--instead of the utterly incorrect 1024x768 that it was showing before. I wish that it supported a higher resolution, but this is adequate, and lets me work at the desk. As one of my readers pointed out, prolonged use of the notebook means that either your hands are too high, or you are looking too far down. Friday, December 01, 2006
A Recent Washington State Supreme Court Decision Professor Volokh points to a recent decision of the Washington State Supreme Court concerning the meaning of the Second Amendment: In the present case, we are similarly concerned that possessing a firearm can be innocent conduct. Citizens have a constitutional right to bear arms under both the federal and state constitutions. U.S. Const. amend. II; Wash. Const. art. I, § 24. A person may lawfully own a shotgun so long as the barrel length is more than 18 inches in length and has an overall length of less than 26 inches.This is a bit more of a throwaway line than it might at first appear, and says nothing more than many previous state supreme courts have acknowledged: that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. See, for example, Nunn v. State (Ga. 1846); State v. Chandler (La. 1850); Cockrum v. State (Tex. 1859) and more recently, State v. Nickerson (Mont. 1952). The issue involves a guy named Matthew Williams in Kitsap County who came into possession of a sawed-off shotgun under conditions that seem pretty innocent to me--and not what Washington State's ban on short-barreled shotguns was really intended to stop: In April 2003, Mr. Williams was helping his grandmother move out of her house and into another residence. While he was cleaning out his grandmother's garage he came across his deceased grandfather's shotgun. Mr. Williams took the shotgun and placed it in the bathroom that was inside the back bedroom -- the bedroom that had been his grandmother's -- because there was a lock on that door and the garage did not have a lock. He then locked the door to the bedroom to prevent others from stumbling upon the gun and hurting themselves.The Washington Supreme Court agreed that Williams was not really the sort of person at whom this law was aimed, and this was an innocent possession--but the law in question does not require a criminal intent, nor does it require you to know that you are breaking the law. Any possession is a violation. After a lot of discussion of whether the jury instructions were erroneous or not, they decided they were, but it was a harmless error--and upheld Williams's conviction! Now, I agree that it would sure make the law a lot more complex if you had to prove that a violator knew that he was breaking the law, or even worse, if you had to prove that a violator had a criminal intent. Still, this is the kind of case that makes me wonder why this prosecution went forward. It would certainly have been more just if the Washington Supreme Court had struck down the conviction. That, however, would have been the judges substituting their judgment for that of the state legislature (who is responsible for writing the laws) or of the jury (who is responsible for deciding matters of fact). I would hope that the Washington legislature would rewrite the statute to deal with cases such as this--and I would also hope that the governor would pardon Mr. Williams for what is clearly an improper conviction. Labels: gun rights Jaguar Is A Fitting Name I test-drove a 2002 Jaguar X-type this evening. This one had about 42,000 miles on it, and while I was initially taken aback by it being a stick, I discovered that I am not quite as incompetent as I had feared. (I only stalled twice in about 50 minutes of driving, much of it stop and go rush hour traffic.) I've never driven a Jaguar before--in fact, I've never even been in one--but it conformed to my expectations of what a Jaguar would be. Like a cat, it was muscular, with a suspension that was firm, but not harsh. I could easily see driving this car all day on either Interstates or winding back roads. It cornered well--not as well as the Corvette--but still quite respectably, and it was much quieter. It wasn't quite Cadillac quiet inside, but it was certainly quiet enough that you could hold a prolonged conversation with someone without ever raising your voice much above a whisper. Remember that I seldom drive a stick. In Boise rush hour traffic, it was a bit of a nuisance, and I think that I would probably buy an automatic, but I found the clutch and shift quite easy to use. Since this isn't a front wheel drive car, the vagueness typical of many FWD cars just wasn't there. All five forward gears were easy to find, although you could definitely tell that there was something mechanical when you found a gear. When I first found myself having to put it in reverse, I was a little unclear how to do so--then I discovered that the little ring on the gear shift lever has to be lifted while you make the shift into reverse--which prevents embarrassing and ultimately destructive missed shifts from 2nd into R! I've seen 0-60 figures of 6.3 seconds (for the stick) and 7.1 seconds (for the automatic) quoted, and this doesn't seem implausible to me. It's not quite as quick as the Corvette at low speeds--and this difference might be even more dramatic above 80 mph (like I have a lot of occasion to drive that fast)--but for a sport sedan it is quite pleasant. Engine noise was very subdued--but I did notice it at one point when accelerating briskly above 4000 rpm--and yes, it does remind me of a big cat purring! Nice stereo--although the steering wheel controls were a little strange. The mute button--good idea, especially when your phone rings. There's a volume control on the steering wheel, too. But what's really odd is that while there is a button for Select, it doesn't advance through the radio presets, but only switches between AM and FM. Perhaps there's some other set of features that I missed. The cruise control is also mounted on the steering wheel, and the controls don't work in what I would consider a completely obvious way. Whoa, I might have to read the manual! Sunroof: I miss a sunroof. Yes, you can take the top off the Corvette, but you have to stop the car and get out to do so, or to put it back. It is definitely a more open feeling than a sunroof--but a sunroof lets open and close without even slowing down--and it isn't as noisy as having the top off. In spite of a couple of days of snow, I couldn't find enough of it left to try out the all wheel drive feature. The back seat is fit for small children, or adults that aren't going to spend hours back there. This is a compact car, like a Chevrolet Cobalt or a BMW 3-series. The trunk is also pretty small. For two people on a cross country jaunt, this might be barely enough, if you were careful about how much you packed. For a family with small children? No, I don't think so. Oh yes, this being a Jaguar, when I started it--and each and every time I had to start it because of my clumsiness with the clutch--the mysterious message DSC System Fault appeared. This seems to be the Directional Stability Control system (what GM calls "Active Handling"). The message went away as soon as the car started, so I would suspect, based on similarity to what happened to the Corvette at about 30,000 miles, is that one of the wheel sensors is beginning to fail, and this problem will get worse with time. My guess is that the problem is most severe when the sensor first gets power, and the degradation will eventually require attention. If I were looking at this car new on a lot at the MSRP of $34,995, I would say, "Gee, it's a nice car. But maybe not that nice of a car." But at about $18,000 for used? It's attractive. If I can persuade myself that I don't really need a second car for winter, I'll put this off a bit longer--perhaps when the Corvette starts to reach the end of its extended warranty. But if I were fabulously wealthy, I would buy this in a flash. If I had to compare the Corvette and Jaguar X-type, I think the best comparison would be Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage to Sophia Loren in just about any movie she made in the early 1970s. The Corvette is louder, in a "look at me, and I have a lot to look at" sort of way, while the Jaguar is more sophisticated and refined--but still of interest. The Totalitarian Thugs Are Winning Look, you can disagree with Tom Tancredo in a polite way. Even disagreeing with him in an impolite way is better than violent attacks: Violence erupted at a Michigan law school Thursday when protestors tried to block a speech by Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo.This really isn't too surprising. The left knows that violence begets more violence, and violence begets authoritarianism, which they believe will strengthen their position among "the masses" (meaning, faculty, students, and multimillionaires). It is no great surprise that Communists and National Socialists relied on street brawls to disrupt the Weimar Republic--and it played into the hands of Hitler. If This Isn't a Typo... It is a sign of someone who drives way too much: 2005 Subaru Outback 2.5iEven if it was sold in, say, July of 2004, this is 232,593 miles in 17 months--or more than 13,000 miles a month! I would guess that this must be just about all highway miles. That's more than 400 miles a day, every day! Thursday, November 30, 2006
Quirky Display Adapter I mentioned a few days ago that this new notebook won't go above 1024x768 resolution, even with an external monitor attached. The more I look at this, the less sense this all makes. Because of the widescreen display, I think this is actually more like 1280x768 or something like that. More importantly, I think that HP did something a bit bizarre here. I suspected that perhaps I needed a driver update for the display adapter. When I entered Control Panel, Display, Settings, Advanced, Adapter--all the information about the chipset is "unavailable" and Properties shows "unknown" for manufacturer. On HP's website, it claims that this model uses the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. Intel claims that chipset will go to 2048x1536 resolution. Now, HP might have some reason to not go that far--but why would they describe the chipset as "unavailable" and the manufacturer as "unknown"? I think that a driver update might solve this--but I can't find anything on the HP website that provides a driver update, and technical support is uncharacteristically slow in responding. Time to annoy them again. Seriously: this limitation of the resolution on the external monitor is the only complaint that I have about this notebook. It is fast, and reasonably compact. It goes through battery pretty quickly--I think they ship it with the cheapest battery pack. Disorganized Crime Woody Allen is a pig. But some of his early movies were pretty funny, in a sophomoric sort of way. Take the Money and Run stands up better when I see it today than say, Love and Death. When a reader brought this news story to my attention, all I could think was, "It sounds like something that belonged in Take the Money and Run." An apparent robbery attempt at a Jersey City liquor store went awry when the three would-be robbers began fighting over their gun, reports said.Talk about disorganized crime! Decline and Fall of American Civilization, Part 303,022 Oh gee, aren't we sophisticated and avant garde! The Sundance Film Festival announced Wednesday that Seattle filmmaker Robinson Devor's documentary "Zoo" has been accepted into the 2007 festival's documentary competition. The film examines the widely reported case of an Enumclaw man who died in 2005 after having sex with a horse.Why, Brokeback Mountain looks downright Disney by comparison. Traction My wife is bugging me to buy a 4WD or AWD vehicle--and she won't let me do what I would prefer, and buy something fairly beat up and cheap. She's concerned about me getting stranded on Idaho 55 at night, and I can't say that her concerns aren't justified. Unfortunately, at least in the Boise area, anything that is 4-wheel drive or all-wheel drive is either quite old, or costs $12,000 and up. Oddly enough, Jaguar X-type sedans (which are AWD) are startlingly cheap--typically about $18,000 to $20,000 for 2002-2004 models with less than 60,000 miles. This is enough money that I can't quite talk myself into spending it--but the idea of spending $6,000 less to get something that is always going to be unpleasant to drive doesn't thrill me, either. The X-type's performance is almost sufficient to persuade me to give up the Corvette--and in that case, I could probably end up doing a swap of Corvette for a 2-3 year old X-type. I'm not keen on buying a Ford (and Jaguar is part of Ford now), a company that has shown a dogged insistence of backing homosexual political activism and has a history of discrimination against white males in engineering jobs. Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Real Life Isn't Like The Movies In the movies, you punch someone in a bar fight, and maybe he ends up with a bloody nose. In the real world, sometimes they die: The Boise man who killed his friend with one punch to the face at a Meridian bar in January will spend at least the next two years in prison before he can ask for parole. Crime & Punishment, Boise Style One of these days, Boise is going to have a serious crime problem, and I won't be able to make jokes about it, but for now, it is still a safe place, and we can laugh at stories like this: BOISE, Idaho -- Would you like fired with that? Are You a Myspace Member? Then you have an assignment. I'm not a member, and even I was, I'm probably too old to meaningfully relate to this person. But here is a frighteningly sad cry for help from a 16 year old who sounds deeply, perhaps suicidally depressed. Please: send her email, and find some way to see if this a serious cry for help or just a poser. If this person is as miserable as she sounds, she needs professional help, and now. Mitt Romney, Mormonism, & Homosexuality There's a pretty big effort under way to derail Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as Republican nominee for President in 2008. There's a strong argument at Americans for Truth that Mitt Romney isn't a social conservative of any sort. I haven't done any research on this, so I don't know if it is fair or accurate. In some circles, there is some reluctance to accept Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee because he is Mormon. This is not a good reason to vote against Romney. If, as Americans for Truth asserts, Romney is prepared to play both sides on the homosexual marriage issue, that is a good argument for looking for a better candidate. Even if you support homosexual marriage, an honest opponent or honest proponent is better than someone who seems to want to play both sides. Aside from the issue of Romney himself, I think it would be a terrible mistake for Christians to refuse to consider a Mormon for public office simply because he or she is Mormon. If we were electing a Secretary of Religious Affairs, I can see why it might matter--but the First Amendment provides substantial protection against individual government officials giving preference to a particular church. On the other hand, on issue after issue that matter to Christian conservatives, such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and divorce, we have common ground with Mormons. Let's not create unnecessary divisions among conservatives. House Project: Final Warranty Work? Interesting Unexpected Benefits It has been several months since the last entry about the house. We are coming up on the one year closing next month, and we've been making sure that any existing warranty issues are taken care of now. For example, the kitchen sink faucet keeps working itself loose, because the window sill sticks out too far. The builder decided to do it right, and recut the window sill so it isn't running into the faucet. The third bathroom sink (which doesn't get much use) started to leak--because the pipe coming out of the bottom of the sink is the wrong diameter for the rest of the fittings. It is 1 3/8" outside diameter--and the washer that is supposed to seal this is 1 1/2" inside diameter. The builder is nagging the plumber to get up here and fix this properly. How did he not notice this much looseness? There are a couple of exterior trim pieces that have fallen off the house in our rather startlingly strong winds, so he is replacing these. We've had a few tiles crack, probably because of settling in the floor joists. No great surprise on that. One rather nice surprise today is something that I had not planned on, but it has worked out rather well. All of this concrete that was originally supposed to be Dusty Rose (or whatever color it is that my wife thought was so elegant) came out closer to molasses brown. One benefit of this was that even though it is very cold up here today--it has still not broken 20 degrees--the snow on the concrete facing south has just about cleared off the concrete, and almost as though I had swept it.  Click to enlarge There a few spots where snow melt from the columns has accumulated on the concrete, but overall, I could not have swept it this clear without enormous effort.  Click to enlarge It is not hard to figure out why. Once any particular area had enough snow melt away because of sunlight, the concrete underneath absorbed heat--and then transmitted it to the rest of the concrete, accelerating whatever melting was induced by the sunlight hitting the top of the snow. Out on the driveway, you can see this taking place a bit more slowly (probably because it doesn't have the radiant heat from the walls of the house).  Click to enlarge Over on the east face of the house, where the sunlight was only falling in the morning, you can see the difference.  Click to enlarge On the north face of the house, where there was no sunlight at all, it is still pretty unaltered.  Click to enlarge In spite of the temperature outside--it was ten degrees this morning when my wife woke up--the furnace isn't running all that much. The sunlight flooding in the south windows of the house is hitting the tiles, and turning into infared as it bounces. The insulation is doing its job. I expect in summer, all that concrete around the house is going to get unpleasantly warm by the end of the day--and remain pleasant to bare feet into the early evening hours. Last house project entry. Labels: house project Derangement at Boise State University One of the student organizations, the College Republicans, had the unmitigated gall to organize something called "Freedom Week" commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall: The poster Howard mentions--which wasn't approved by ASBSU, as is required for student organizations--was placed on campus by the College Republicans to support "Freedom Week," a commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall sponsored by a national conservative student organization. The poster included drawings of Che Guevara and Ronald Reagan under the title, "Who is the real revolutionary?" It labeled Guevara a "murderer," saying "his ideology murdered 100,000,000 people." Reagan, on the other hand, is identified as a "liberator," with the caption, "His ideology freed 425,574,817 people."So celebrating the end of Communism is equivalent to being a Nazi? Wow! It gets better. The same little progressive bunch now wants to set some limits who may be a member of BSU student government: ASBSU president Wyatt Parke decided to use his veto power to cancel Freedom Week, telling The Arbiter he "didn't feel like I could endorse a week that had gone so awry."In short, oppose gay marriage, or celebrate the fall of Communism--and you aren't fit to be a part of student government. Oh yes. Even though Boise Police Department says that, other than this gay-bashing incident that turned out to be a fake, there has not been any dramatic increase in hate crimes, the progressive sorts insist that there has been an increase in hate crimes: The Boise Police Department keeps seven full-time officers on campus, according to BPD spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. She says those officers have not received a notably increased number of reports of hate-crime or harassment incidents of late, aside from the alleged attack.And so what do the progressive sorts want to do? Howard said if he attends the meeting, he would like to specifically address campus safety, by proposing a campuswide camera surveillance system on hallways and walkways as a deterrent to threats and attacks.Hmmm. I think I see why they see celebration of the fall of the Soviet Union as a bad thing. Performance I now have three different PCs running different operating systems at different speeds. I loaded up the manuscript for Armed America in OpenOffice on each, just to get an idea of relative speed. Windows XP on a 1.6 GHz Intel Duo Core with 1 GB of RAM: 8 seconds Windows 98 on a 466 MHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB of RAM: 68 seconds Ubuntu Linux 6.06 on a 900 MHz Pentium 2 with 512 MB of RAM: 86 seconds Tuesday, November 28, 2006
New Notebook Computer I've been threatening to replace the eMachines 466 MHz desktop that runs Windows 98 for some time. The replacement arrived today--an HP dv5000 notebook, with 100 GB of hard disk, 1 GB of RAM, and a 1.60 MHz Intel Duo Core processor. It is noticeably snappy compared to my pretty darn quick work notebook. This was a refurbished system, so it was only about $700. The only real disappointment so far was the discovery that the video controller is limited to 1024x768, even with an external monitor hooked up. Of course, the display is so large, bright, and contrasty that perhaps there wouldn't be much reason to hook up an external monitor. Windows XP set up very nicely--almost simple enough for the intended customer base. I've only had one software hiccup so far, and that was the HP Photosmart camera software installer. If I told it to install updates automatically, it would just hang part way through the process. When I killed the job, it tried to inform Microsoft of the crash--and hung part way through notifying Microsoft. UPDATE: A second bad sign. I was running OpenOffice, and told it to load the text of my upcoming book. It never completed the operation, which is probably an indication of a problem with OpenOffice (although it has never had this problem under Windows 98 or Linux). The more worrisome behavior was that when I tried to kill the application using the Windows Task Manager--it kept insisting that OpenOffice had been killed--but it didn't leave the screen, and I found that I could kill it again and again, producing an error message that was sent to Microsoft each time. It was rather like a first person shooter video game where you keep killing the zombies, and they keep coming back for more. The only way to really the application was to reboot Windows. The second time I tried to load that book into OpenOffice, it worked just fine. Hmmmm. It is entirely possible that OpenOffice was at fault--but an operating system that can't kill an application isn't much of an operating system. Perhaps there is going to be Linux running on this notebook after all. UPDATE 2: So I'm trying to get Thunderbird installed and working with Windows XP. Hmmm. It isn't successfully opening a connection to my POP server. Okay, that could be an application problem of some sort--although Thunderbird works fine under Windows 98 and Ubuntu Linux. So I figure, "Hey, maybe something didn't install correctly the first time. I'll shut it down, and reinstall." During reinstallation, the installer says that Thunderbird needs to be shut down. Hmmm. I don't see that it is up. I go to the Windows Task Manager, and it doesn't show up under Applications. Under processes, I see two copies of thunderbird.exe running, so I use the "End Process" button to stop them. Nope. Windows XP can't shut down running application processes--except by rebooting Windows. Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to write an operating system. No matter how badly an application is written (and I have no reason at this point to assume that the problem is the application), the operating system should be able to shut down an application. UPDATE 3: A reader points out that even Unix applications can't be killed immediately--even with kill -9. That's fair. Still, this "I tried to kill it, but it wouldn't die!" problem with Thunderbird is something that I have not seen with Linux, Windows 98, or Windows ME. Corvette As Snowmobile I've heard from a few of my readers concerned about my driving the Corvette in snow and wondering why I just don't run out and buy a 4WD? 1. I drove the Corvette this morning. It was 20 degrees outside, and there was snow everywhere. Oddly enough, there were only two moments where I did not feel completely in control. One was when I came to a stop at the end of Sunburst Road--and this is a situation where a 4WD would probably have the same difficulty. Most 4WDs start just fine; the problem has always been stopping. I'm not persuaded that a 4WD would have helped much here. The second situation was coming down Idaho 55 at about 50 miles per hour--and again, this is one of those situations that is a bit hard to judge, because there was very little snow visible, and I suspect a 4WD would have had the same problem. (This is more a matter of the driver driving a little slower.) My guess is that the stories everyone tells of wild fishtailing vehicles in the snow from their youth are the result of the really poor traction that tires used to have, and the lack of traction control. The Corvette's traction control does a pretty good job of keeping the tire spin under control. I turn it off under certain conditions--such as when neither wheel is getting any traction, and then apply gas very lightly--but most of the time, letting traction control take charge is a very wise decision. 2. The market for 4WD vehicles is always hot around here. In summer, everyone wants one to go off-road. In winter, everyone wants one to get home through the snow, mud, and slush. As a result, a 4WD that costs less than $5000 is generally in pretty used up shape. I can't quite talk myself into spending $10,000 plus for a vehicle that I would only use for about three months of the year (and even then, probably only about half of the weeks of those three months_. Capital put into a vehicle is interest lost, and the sooner that I don't need to go to work everyday (so that I can blog all morning long), the better. Of course, if any of the billionaires reading my blog decide to be generous--a used Jeep CJ-7 wouldn't be rejected! (The rest of you can use the PayPal button to contribute to Clayton's 4WD fund!) Identify The Ideology of the Speaker, And the Issue "There are times when it's appropriate to regulate what people can do in their home," she said.One of those nasty conservatives, trying to get the government to tell people what they can do in the privacy of their own home? No, a liberal: Anti-tobacco forces are opening a new front in the war against smoking by banning it in private places such as homes and cars when children are present.Now, it may well be true that second-hand smoke is a real risk to children. I don't know that this has been terribly well proven, but I don't find it implausible. What I do want is for liberals to stop pretending that they are on the side of freedom, while conservatives are somehow dramatically different in their view of appropriate uses of governmental power. They disagree about what is important, but they don't disagree that there are times that the government has a right to regulate what goes on in private. If you want to argue that laws regulating sexual behavior in private (such as prohibiting homosexual couples from adopting) don't make any sense because they are ineffective, okay, make that argument. If you want to argue that children aren't harmed by being raised in a homosexual home, make that argument. But claiming that such laws are fundamentally wrong because they intrude on a right of privacy--while supporting laws such as this--really isn't going to fly. Clayton's Online Garage Sale Okay, it worked to get rid of vast quantities of National Geographic maps. Maybe it will work for other stuff that I can't justify throwing away, but I can't justify keeping, either. Broken Kodak Z700. It powers up--and immediately powers down. Are you a bored EE looking for a challenge? Do you need parts for your Kodak Z700? Well, highest bidder by next Tuesday above the shipping charges ($8.10 in the U.S.) gets it. It is conceivable that you could even bid $8.10 and get it.  Click to enlarge Harmsco HIF-14 water filter housing and activated carbon filters for removing lead and other metals. This is a big heavy stainless steel gadget--very well made. Regular readers of my blog may recall that this was installed to deal with a lead problem that turned out to be the contractor failing to do his job properly about cleaning the water tank. Go here (p. 8) and you can see the list price on this piece of stainless: $1226. This was used for a few months, and is otherwise new.  Click to enlarge The little filters (of which I have about 20, brand new) are the ones that come with it. These cost about $7.50 each.  Click to enlarge I'm not expecting a bidding war for this (unless there's a lot more contractors reading this than I think), but if I could get $500 plus shipping for this, I would consider myself not too taken advantage of. It is a very pretty paperweight, if you keep your papers outside in hurricane season. Monday, November 27, 2006
It Wasn't Worth a Slice of Pizza Count on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to make a bunch of hoodlums into the "victims" when the real victim shoots a robber: At about noon Monday, roughly 15 teenagers, calling themselves the Young Paper Chasers, stood beneath a tree in the Huntingwood Pointe apartment complex on Campellton Road and tried to wash away what was left of their friend and "brother" Kenyatta Calhoun.After describing a pretty typical ghetto neighborhood--bars on the windows, and a pizza joint where employees work behind bulletproof class, but are still willing to deliver in a dangerous neighborhood: Counterfeit bills are taped to the wall, along with a long list of people who can't get deliveries. They've apparently cheated Super Crown in the past.Admirable restraint, considering previous criminal attacks he has suffered. He retrieved his car keys and escaped. APD spokesman Joe Cobb said the investigation is on-going and police are still looking for anyone else who might have been involved in the attempted robbery. He said the shooting will be presented to the Fulton County District Attorney's office to determine whether charges will be filed in the incident.Yes, there is someone who needs to be charged, and that's the felons in training who approached Mahmood with Calhoun. Here's where the coverage crosses the line from, "This is a tragedy" to "Here is a person with absolutely no morals whatsoever": Although several of his friends say they witnessed the shooting and cradled his dying body, none of them knew the circumstances that led to it.Nope. Nor should a pizza delivery driver have to fear that his life will be taken for a pizza, at most, a few dozen dollars, and his car keys. A robber (or his friends) are in no position to complain about life not being valued by the shooter; the robber has already demonstrated that he considers the life of his victim worth nothing at all. This Solves a Problem That I Didn't Even Know That I Had! The need for a radio-controlled, full auto shotgun equipped helicopter. Annoying Ad Several of you have complained that the ad that appears at the top of the blog is annoyingly large. I hear you. I will not accept any more "skyscraper" ads like that at the top of the blog. This ad expires tomorrow. Be patient. Breaking Up Great Britain The Telegraph reports on a new poll that finds majority support for Scottish secession not only in Scotland, but also in England: The United Kingdom should be broken up and Scotland and England set free as independent nations, according to a huge number of voters on both sides of the border.I was a little surprised to find from the poll questions that per capita government spending is higher in England than in Scotland. I was under the impression that Scotland was the basket case of Great Britain, requiring large welfare spending to keep it afloat. If this is really the case, I can see why Scots are so upset about union. The history of the Union of Scotland and England is pretty corrupt. There was apparently large scale bribery of members of the Scottish Parliament to agree to the Act of Union in 1707. Still, I cringe a little at the prospect of separation. Scotland is definitely the junior partner in terms of wealth and population in Great Britain, but as it is, Great Britain is barely in the major powers--and if it wasn't for their nuclear capacity, they wouldn't even be that anymore. The last thing that the world needs is for one of the few significant players that has stood firmly against Islamofascism to become weaker. Scotland, almost certainly, would roll over and play dead for Islamofascism very quickly if it were threatened. What would make more sense would be for a full federalist system to come to Britain, with a national Parliament passing only laws that truly needed to be national, and leaving all other laws and regulations to the Scottish Parliament, a revived English Parliament, a Welsh Parliament, and the Northern Ireland Parliament. UPDATE: A reader points out that my surprise was with good reason: the graphic was wrong; the text in the article points out that Scotland has higher per capita governmental spending than England. 4WD Time? I was hoping that I wouldn't need to get a 4WD, but it is beginning to look like this might be necessary. I just drove down to the mailbox in the Corvette--and getting back up the hill was a bit more entertaining than it should have been. UPDATE: I came back this evening from the valley and I was really quite apprehensive. It was snowing heavily, and it was in the mid-20s when I approached my driveway. But the Corvette had no problem at all negotiating the hill. Perhaps because it was cold enough that the snow didn't turn to water when the tires went over it. As I understand it, Antarctic ice isn't difficult to get traction on, because it is too cold for the ice to be slippery. What makes ice slippery is that pressure on the ice causes it to melt. What you really slip on is a very thin sheet of water--not the ice itself. If it is really cold, even a fair amount of pressure won't produce a sheet of water. For those you who wondered why I drove to my mailbox--the mailbox is half a mile away. Sunday, November 26, 2006
Blogging To Avoid Headed Back to Researching the Next Book... Yes, Grob's The Mad Among Us is well-written, but I'm feeling very lazy. Last Christmas, my daughter gave me a gift card to Office Depot, in the hopes that I would use it to replace the sticky keyboard on my older eMachines desktop. I never quite got around to it--and my recent experiments with a KVM switch mean that I am now using the best keyboard in the office, not the sticky one. I planned to use the gift card today to buy a DVI to VGA converter--but the only unit Office Depot had in stock had the four extra pins on it, which makes it unuseful to connect to the external monitor port on my employer's HP nc6000 notebook. Since these gift cards don't last forever, I looked for something that I either needed or could use that Office Depot has in stock. This isn't easy; Office Depot manages to be pretty expensive, and with a disappointing selection of merchandise in stock. (For example, the right variant of the DVI to VGA converter.) I did see an Ative 1 GB SD memory card for sale for $19.99--just about the right amount to consume the gift card. In the HP Photosmart E427 camera, I can take 402 pictures at 6 megapixel resolution without having to swap memory cards. That's a two week vacation (if you exercise some restraint). I am going probably going to buy a Pentax K100D camera in the near future--and it uses the SD memory cards as well. Old Man Winter Has Arrived We stockpiled groceries on the way home from church. Take a look at this picture, and you'll see why.  Click to enlarge Weightism & Fat Studies When I started reading this article, I had stop and make sure that I wasn't reading the Daily Onion, or Scrappleface--because this had to be satire: During her sophomore year at Smith College, Ms. Director attended a discussion on fat discrimination: the way the super-sized are marginalized, the way excessive girth is seen as a moral failing rather than the result of complicated factors. But the academic community, she felt, didn’t really give the topic proper consideration. She decided to do something about it.There's no great surprise about the intersection of "fat studies" and concern about "weightism" and lesbianism. The stereotype of the enormously overweight lesbian--not just carrying a few extra pounds, as many sedentary Americans do, but 5'2" and 300 pounds or above--reflects a really depressing reality. There are a lot of grossly overweight lesbians, and the reason isn't hard to find. For a lot of women who were sexually abused (which includes at least 48% of lesbians in one study that I have read), getting grossly fat is a method of telling men, "I'm not a sexual object! Go away!" You can understand the reaction--but it is a telling sign of how severely screwed up the academy has become that pathologies rapidly turn into academic disciplines. Over at Ann Althouse's blog she mentioned this absolutely astonishing development, one of the commenters observes: Hahaha...someday the humanities will have delegitimized themselves so throughly that we will dispense with them altogether.Yup. But they will do enormous damage to the culture, to legitimate academic study, and to the taxpayers, before we get to the point of firing this entire set of emotionally disturbed people. Labels: homosexuality |
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