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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, February 10, 2007
Just a Reminder: Blogging Will Be Light For A Day Or Two I'll be flying to Minneapolis tomorrow, and from there to Baltimore on Tuesday morning. Both the hotels that I am staying in promise high-speed wireless internet, but they are also promising a gym and an indoor pool, too, and we'll say how well those work out. Fortunately, my very compact HP Photosmart E427 and HP DV5000 laptop are coming with me, so, along as the internet connections work out as promised, I will be blogging and taking pictures along the way. Who Is Michael Zezima? Over at The Other McCain, Robert S. McCain talks about Michael Zezima, who recently wrote a diatribe about "Why I Hate America." After reading McCain's description, I suddenly realized that I have run into this hate-filled ignorant fool before. At the time, I was having a heck of a time getting my book Armed America published, and I was just utterly amazed at how ignorant this guy Zezima was--and the book that he found someone to publish: I was in a book store at lunch, and there was a book whose cover at least got my attention: it showed the famous "Uncle Sam Wants You!" poster with Hitler in the red, white, and blue suit. The title of the book was Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of "the Good War"--a mildly entertaining parody of Saving Private Ryan. (Make sure you read the positive reviews of Saving Private Power, especially the ones that explain why Steven Spielberg makes pro-war movies, "Being an American Jew, we must consider Speilberg's bias.")McCain points to the signs of Zezima's narcissism: One of the pictures on the photo montage at his blog shows Mickey Z’s shirtless, muscular torso. Health and fitness are good things, but when a middle-aged man feels a compulsion to display himself in such a manner -- and is as touchy about his age as a Hollywood startlet -- you’re talking about raging narcissism. (Full disclosure: I used to be pretty buff myself, and there is a semi-notorious photo my wife took of me in a red-striped Speedo, but I was only 30 then. Most raging narcissists eventually grow up.)McCain points out something that has been obvious to me for a very long time--the moonbat left (note: I would distinguish them from liberals) have some serious emotional problems: Now, back to that “self-educated” thing. In explaining why he didn’t attend college, Zezima says, “I learned to think for myself and discovered my own path...for better or for worse.”There's certainly something to be said for being self-educated, but there's a reason that we don't put first graders in charge of teaching first graders. I found that when I went back to college, and completed a history degree, that I learned an enormous amount. I also discovered that much of what I had learned previously about the way the world works, from highly ideological works, although polar opposites to what Mr. Zezima has "self-educated" himself with, was at least incomplete, and often quite wrong. Blog Administrivia Regular readers sometimes complain about how the archives list (on the left side of page) is often not up to date. Back when I first start blogging in September of 2002, I couldn't get the Blogger template to produce the list of archives automatically. I don't know why it didn't work, but I just kept updating the list by hand--and sometimes I didn't get around to it! (But oddly enough, it worked fine for the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog.) The new version of Blogger broke a few things--like the permanent links to the blogs, both here and on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog. I have fixed the broken permalinks--and while I was at it, I fixed the automatic archive list component for this blog. Flag Desecration At San Francisco State University And the university is proposing to punish students for this! So the ACLU is stepping in to file suit, right? Nope. After all, it wasn't an American flag they were desecrating: This story starts with an "anti-terrorism rally" held last October on campus by the College Republicans. To emphasize their point, students stomped on Hezbollah and Hamas flags. According to the college paper, the Golden Gate (X)Press, members of Students Against War and the International Socialist Organization showed up to call the Republicans "racists," while the president of the General Union of Palestinian Students accused the Repubs of spreading false information about Muslims.As I commented here: I think it is a serious mistake to criminalize flag burning. People that do that manage to enrage most Americans so much that they fail to accomplish anything but what leftist agitators like to do most: make themselves feel superior while spending Daddy's millions. More Principled Defense of Freedom of the Press By Amazon.com Count on Amazon.com to take a principled position on this: SEATTLE — Amazon.com (AMZN) says it will keep selling two magazines about cockfighting, despite plans by the Humane Society of the United States to file a lawsuit Thursday accusing the company of operating an illegal "animal-fighting paraphernalia sale and distribution scheme."Sure. But that doesn't mean that Amazon.com has to participate. Refusing to sell books or magazines isn't censorship. Censorship is something that the government does. Thanks to Wuzzadem for the pointer. Friday, February 09, 2007
Not Too Late To Add An Event To This Coming Week I've got a few slots still open in my schedule this coming week, either to speak to a group or if you have contacts with a radio talk show in the Maryland/DC area. February 11: Fly to Minneapolis February 12: 3:30pm PLACE: Moot Courtroom School of Law Hamline University 1536 Hewitt Avenue St. Paul, MN 55104 Click here for map. DESCRIPTION: Clayton Cramer Author of the new book Armed America: The Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie will discuss his work on the development of America's gun culture. February 13: Fly into Baltimore 6:00 PM, Montgomery Citizens for a Safer Maryland Map here. February 14, 2007 TIME: 7:00 PM Monocacy Pistol Club LOCATION: See here. February 15, 2007 I am completely free during the day. February 16, 2007 10:45 - 11:30 G. Gordon Liddy's radio show 1:30 lunch with several Maryland legislators and gun rights activists 5:00 Books-A-Million, DuPont Circle, Washington, DC, for book signing February 17, 2007: Fly back to Boise. Thursday, February 08, 2007
Inconvenient History? Just Deny It! It's simpler that way. James Lindgren over at Volokh Conspiracy points to the claims of sociologist Jerry Lembcke that stories of returning Vietnam soldiers being spat upon by antiwar protesters are fakes: In a 1998 NYU Press book, The Spitting Image; a 1999 scholarly conference paper of the same name; and two op-eds, Lembcke spins an elaborate tale to support his view. In this post I’ll take up just a few of Lembcke’s arguments (I’ll have much more on spitting over the next week):So Lindgren went back to newspapers of the period--and demonstrated that such reports were very easy to find, and Lembcke's claims are, at best, ignorant. I Know What I Need; I Just Don't What It's Called I am looking at again improving the quality of the ScopeRoller product, and what I want is a gadget that is basically a spring-loaded piece of steel, perhaps 1/8" to 1/4" in diameter, and perhaps 1/2" to 2" long (depending on model). It should be a single assembly that I can buy off the shelf. It should be round, so that I can drill a hole in a piece of plastic, and stuff this gadget inside. The user presses down on the plunger while inserting the entire assembly inside a telescope tripod leg. It doesn't need to exert enormous pressure once depressed--a couple pounds of force is probably sufficient. My first reaction was that such a gadget is called a "spring-loaded plunger" but when I go to various industrial supply places, what they are selling by that name is both complex and expensive. Look: this is basically two pieces of telescoping steel tube, with a coil spring inside. I can't imagine that such gadgets aren't made by the millions. Any hints? UPDATE: Thanks to all. "Spring plunger" is indeed the name, and I can buy them for around $3 each (quantity one) from mscdirect.com or more like $3.50 each from mcmaster.com. The only remaining question: how much force can a normal person exert between thumb and forefinger on such a plunger? From reading an article about hand fatigue experiments involving dental students, it would appear that about 2-3 pounds is easy to do for the period of time required to squeeze the plunger, and insert the assembly into a caster leg. The more force of the spring plunger that I use, the better, because it will make the assembly stay in the tripod leg more solidly. My mother came up with the most apt description of what this is: a toilet paper roll holder. Of course, for mouse-sized toilet paper! Wednesday, February 07, 2007
The Mandatory Vaccination for HPV Is In The News Again And Professor Volokh, who fancies himself a libertarian, seems to be arguing in favor of it--or at least, defending Megan McArdle's defense of making it mandatory: Look, if we're talking assumption of risk and "you could have prevented it yourself" in the context of skydiving or bungee-jumping, I can understand that. But if "100% preventable" means living an entirely asexual life, and "almost 100% preventable" means dumping the person you're in love with because he isn't a virgin (and maybe is even part of the 50% of the public that's HPV-infected), then we're way out of the range of normal assumption-of-risk talk. And when you add to that the fact that failure to immunize turns the unimmunized into unwitting but still dangerous vehicles of transmission of deadly disease — when a woman dies of HPV-related cervical cancer, the unimmunized people who helped spread the HPV to the woman helped cause her death — then the case for "never mind immunizing, people should prevent HPV themselves because it's 100% preventable by behavioral change" becomes very weak indeed.I've argued in favor of the vaccine, but against making it mandatory but I also pointed out that if the left wants to use law to prevent STDs, then they need to be consistent about it: Now, there is one other argument in favor of mandatory vaccination: if you wipe out the potential pool of HPV (at least the strains that cause most of the cervical cancer), over time, the disease will disappear. This is a plausible argument based on a communitarian model of public health--that because the society as a whole benefits from it, the minor nuisance, inconvenience, or even violation of the right of conscience that individuals suffer is trivial compared to the broader public good. But the same "public good, private disadvantage" argument can be advanced for laws that actively discouraging sexual promiscuity as part of trying to reduce STDs--and I somehow can't picture the Democrats getting behind that program.And we know where that idea will go. A number of the comments at Volokh Conspiracy capture the whole absurdity of people that call themselves libertarians defending mandatory vaccination: So let me get this straight...and another comment points out that Merck (who makes Gardisil) is going to make a pile of money by making vaccination mandatory: If this were not an STD I think people most political philosphies would oppose the mandate. Libertarians would see rent seeking, liberals would see abuse of corporate power, and conservatives would see a reduction in parental rights. The fact that it is an STD has distracted from the real problems with the mandate.Sorry for the somewhat coarse language on this next one, but it really does show what I am afraid explains this sudden "libertarian" interest in state coercion: Here we have an early entry for the Fair-Weather Libertarianism Award for 2007. Government compulsion is bad, especially when the government tells you what you can and cannot put in your body. The exception is when the government forces you to do something that makes it safer for everyone to screw like rabbits with a coke habit. Then it's time for you to line up and take your shot. This will only hurt a little, and it's good for you, doncha know?I really want to see a lot of people get this vaccine. But why the need for state coercion on this? Yes, the risk of cervical cancer from HPV is real, and serious. Yes, this will reduce the rate of cervical cancer. But it isn't going to make it 1975 again (when there was absolutely no reason not to have sex whenever and with whomever you wanted--yeah, right, until something odd showed up in San Francisco and New York City), and if 20% of the female population doesn't get vaccinated, they are the only ones at real risk (and even they are at reduced risk, because the pool of HPV carriers will decline). HPV isn't like whooping cough or measles, where casual contact is going to be an issue. More Crushing of Dissent Classical Values points to this most recent example of the intolerance of the left: In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm. He does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change. Labels: global warming Very Busy Working on speeches; filling orders for ScopeRoller. Oh yeah, and I have this silly job that pays the bills that I have to go to, as well. The good news is that even without doing any advertising, orders keep showing up in my email, and more importantly, in my PayPal account! I am also about to do my first credit card order, for an observatory owned by the Smithsonian. (Yes, they have little telescopes as well--to my surprise.) Why There Are No Comments On My Blog Pam Spaulding, a lesbian blogger, posted something about Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which is run by Peter LaBarbera. Like many blogs, Pam's blog allows readers to add comments--which soon included Peter LaBarbera's home address, and a suggestion that the park across the street would be a good place for a sniper. Comments on blogs can either be moderated (which ends up taking a lot of a blogger's time) or unmoderated (in which case, the blogger may not be aware of what's being said in the comments). One informed, Pam Spaulding removed these comments and emphasized that this was not acceptable behavior. That's why I have never turned commenting on in my blog. Who needs the aggravation of letting unhinged idiots post trash like that (and worse) in the comments? I can't say that I am surprised by what happened on Pam Spaulding's blog, however. Over the roughly twenty years that I have been using the Internet to engage in political discussion, I have expressed myself strongly (sometimes even a little too strongly) about a very large number of controversial issues. There is one, and only one group of political activists that have ever made harassing phone calls to me (repeated calls at 6:00 AM with silence at the other end), made lewd phone calls to my children (who fortunately, were small enough to be confused rather than shocked), tried to get me fired from a job, or threatened my safety with threats of violence. Guess which group that was. Not leftists. Not gun control activists. No Islamists. Not Communists. Not labor unionists. Not history professors. Not environmentalists. Homosexual activists are the only group that has engaged in these tactics in response to my political free speech. Obviously, not all homosexuals--or even all homosexual activists--have engaged in these tactics. But part of why I have joined the ranks of those who think that homosexuality reflects something terribly broken is because there is no other group whose activists become so unhinged in response to criticism that they engaged in these tactics. I have never felt at risk because of my political activity--until the unrelenting campaign of harassment started in the early 1990s, and I started to regularly carry a gun because of it. Labels: homosexuality Tuesday, February 06, 2007
An Astonishing Sign of How Far The Gun Control Crowd Has Fallen Stephen Halbrook has a very detailed paper here from the Texas Review of Law & Politics demolishing the claim that the Nazis were pro-gun. Fordham Law Review recently published three papers claiming that the Nazi government was very pro-gun, and that the NRA is engaged in mythmaking to claim otherwise. Professor Bernard E. Harcourt apparently led the charge, and his evidence that the Nazis were pro-gun was to cite the claims of William L. Pierce. And who is William L. Pierce? An American neo-Nazi, the author (under a pseudonym) of The Turner Diaries. I've read the essay in question. Pierce's argument is that the Nazi government allowed citizens to own guns, but not Jews and other inferior races. I guess by that definition of "pro-gun" the South was "anti-slavery" because it opposed slavery for white people. Halbrook does a thorough job of demonstrating that the Nazi government was not pro-gun, except in the sense that they believed that the government, its minions, and those it trusted, should be armed. Big deal. There are few governments anywhere that don't qualify as "pro-gun" by such a definition. Global Warming A single data point doesn't establish a trend--but when the area that is supposed to be at greatest risk of warming because of Evil Mankind--the polar regions--report record cold--what does that suggest? Helsinki - After an unseasonally warm winter, the mercury has plunged to record lows in Finland, reports said Tuesday.Farther south, we have record cold being tied: The Toledo area was spared the deadly cold and windchills that exceeded -30 degrees in the northern plains and upper Great Lakes yesterday, but the overnight low here was expected to tie a record and led many area school districts to cancel classes today for a second straight day.Look, these areas aren't Southern California, where a snowfall might close schools. These are places that are used to cold weather and snow. And yet they are having to close schools! Jackson, Michigan is also reporting record cold: It's going to be bitterly cold early this week in Jackson, but temperatures are expected to climb up slowly by the weekend.And in London, Ontario: While Wiarton Willie may have predicted an early spring last Friday, winter returned with a vengeance in London on Sunday, setting a new cold-temperature record.And in Manitoba: On Monday, Manitobans in six communities braved record-breaking cold while Winnipeggers awoke to the province's coldest day in 11 years.And there were many other stories of new low temperature records in West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine. Labels: global warming Why "Soak The Rich" Schemes Might Be a Good Strategy For Social Conservatives I've long mentioned that wealthy people are overwhelmingly on the left. This article (which you will probably have to be a subscriber to The Atlantic to read), explains how Tim Gill, founder of software firm Quark, rallied his fellow multimillionaire homosexuals to defeat traditional values state legislators around the country--changing the balance of power as a result: When they are rising stars like Danny Carroll, the Republican speaker pro tempore of Iowa’s House of Representatives, and the loss is unexpected, the urge to blame unseen forces can be even stronger—and in Carroll’s case, it would have the additional distinction of being justified. Carroll was among the dozens of targets of a group of rich gay philanthropists who quietly joined forces last year, under the leadership of a reclusive Colorado technology mogul, to counter the tide of antigay politics in America that has generated, among other things, a succession of state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage. Carroll had sponsored such a bill in Iowa and guided it to passage in the state House of Representatives, the first step toward getting it on the ballot.Gill apparently gave $15 million last year to state and local races. Every social conservative in America combined couldn't touch that kind of money. Bruce Black or the Idaho Automatic Weapons Collectors Association: Anyone Have Contacts? I've been trying to contact Bruce Black or anyone with the Idaho Automatic Weapons Collectors Association. Emails are going unanswered. Does anyone have contact information other than email? My wife needs their assistance for an upcoming literature class she is teaching. Monday, February 05, 2007
Iceland's "Ancient Enemy" Returns What is Iceland's ancient enemy? "Iceland’s ancient enemy” (Landsins forni fjandi), or pack ice, has returned. The fjord of Dýrafjördur is almost blocked by ice, and inhabitants say they have never seen anything like it.The anthropocenic global warming (AGW) claim is that the warming will be most pronounced at the poles. So why is pack ice again a problem in Iceland? Labels: global warming Sunday, February 04, 2007
Installed the Moonlite CF2 On Big Bertha It was only a minor chore: drill new screw holes in the tube; enlarge the hole for the drawtube; cross-thread a nut on one of the stainless steel screws, and then break the screw trying to remove it; discover that Lowe's doesn't have 10-32 stainless steel screws, but they do have 10-24.  The "coarse" focus is quite a bit finer than the old focuser, and the "fine" focus barely feels like it is moving: 0.0725" per revolution of the knob. High clouds came in after I finished recollimating it, so this will have to wait for better weather. Labels: telescopes Traffic Rules? We're The U.S. Army! You think drivers are bad where you are? Here's a video taken by a Humvee driver in Baghdad. To avoid IEDs and ambushes, their driving tactics aren't going to win any awards for politeness. |
