The advertising above is just a source of revenue. If the ads get offensive enough, I may drop them.
Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
|||||||||||||
|
Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
Magazines for cheap!
PayPal members: to make a contribution
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through. |
Saturday, May 19, 2007
More Signs of the Vigorous Racism of the Mainstream Media I had heard about this case a couple of years ago, floating around the blogosphere, but of course, it received no mainstream media attention. Read the description of this case, and ask yourself: if victims had been black, and the rapists/torturers/murderers had been white, do you think you would have heard for weeks on end about the Wichita Massacre? The Carr brothers, 22-year-old Reginald and 20-year-old Jonathan, already had serious criminal records when they began their spree. On December 8, 2000, having recently arrived in Wichita, they committed armed robbery against 23-year-old assistant baseball coach Andrew Schreiber. Three days later, they shot and mortally wounded 55-year-old cellist and librarian Ann Walenta as she tried to escape from them in her car.At trial, the Carrs' attorney argued that they had tough childhoods. Apparently, not tough enough to kill them, and not tough enough to put even a tiny bit of empathy with the suffering of others. The national news media in America serve no useful function. They make no serious effort to portray the complexity of questions such as global warming; focus on sensational crimes of relatively little importance--unless the killers are black, in which case the crimes are generally ignored or excused. If they covered no sensational crimes of little national importance only at a very low level--for example, giving coverage on the day the Duke rape case was first reported, and perhaps coverage when the case was dropped--it would not much matter if they were selective about reporting black on white crime. But to spend the time covering the Duke case--an allegation of rape--while ignoring the Wichita Massacre and these horrifying murders in Knoxville--well, just imagine if the national news media reported in lurid detail, for days on end, every rape committed by a black man against a white woman, and ignored all other rapes. You would correctly recognize that the objective was to demonize black men and foment lynching. There's a quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson which sounds just a bit too modern to me: Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.I rather doubt that the quote is accurate, but if it is, Jefferson must have said it before the "flowering" of partisan newspapers in the early Republic. (Flowers grow well in manure, and a lot of the early Republic's newspapers aren't even as polite as manure.) I'm afraid that this other quote attributed to Jefferson--which may also be incorrect--is more accurate: The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.UPDATE: To my surprise, both quotes are accurate. See here. The first quote is from 1787, and the second from 1807. A lot of experience in that period with a free press seems to have lowered his estimation of them. Labels: low standards of journalism Fun With Vertical Mills I've never had terribly good luck with this Sherline vertical mill--and I wasn't sure if it was because I bought it used--and perhaps used up. The problem has always been that I couldn't get the mill vise to hold parts firmly enough. As soon as I tried to run an end mill or a flycutter over a part, it would eventually shake loose. I finally reached the end of my frustration, and began to wonder if there was something worn out about this mill vise, so I contacted the president of Sherline (who responded on his private email--on a Saturday!) and he confirmed that what I was doing should work, and made some suggestions. (One of which, politely stated, was to read the manual for the mill vise.) Well, it turns out that the socket head screw that tightens down the mill vise is no longer a particularly good hexagon inside--it is definitely a bit rounded. I tried to find a replacement 1 5/8" long, 10-32 socket head screw at Lowe's and at Home Depot on my way back from the Idaho Military History Museum--no luck. They had nothing in 10-32. The leap is always from 8-32 to 10-24. So I ran down to Horseshoe's Hardware. Horseshoe's Hardware is one of the more surprising retail operations. It is one of the smallest square footage hardware stores that I have ever seen--and yet it is surprisingly well stocked. Things like metric dies. I called easily a dozen stores trying to find metric dies in Boise a year or two ago, without success. I would never have guessed Horseshoe's Hardware would have such things. (The owner is also a surprisingly interesting person--former social worker, and as you might expect, pretty well read.) While Horseshoe's Hardware didn't have exactly what I needed, they did have a 2" 10-32 thumbscrew, which worked well enough for me use it in the mill vise--and my, what a difference! I can now exert enough force for the mill vise to hold 1/4" aluminum or Delrin plate tightly enough for me to take actually quite aggressive cuts. Labels: machining Prosecution for False Claims Glad to see that the mainstream media are prepared to admit that one of their darlings wasn't what he claimed: SEATTLE - A man who tried to position himself as a leader of the anti-war movement by claiming to have participated in war crimes while serving in Iraq is facing federal charges of falsifying his record.So not only were the war atrocities claims false--so was his service in Iraq. Complete fraud. Friday, May 18, 2007
What You Can Do About The Illegal Amnesty Bill Well, I mean a bill to amnesty illegal aliens, but this bill is so bad, it should be illegal. From a group called GrassFire.org: #1-- Help us flood the Senate with faxes. Labels: immigration Carbon Fiber Composite I've been looking at aluminum square tubing for Big Bertha's rebuild--but I'm running into some interesting issues. I would prefer to use two square tubes on opposite sides of the optical components, primarily because it makes it easier to mount it in a Dobsonian mounting as a short term strategy. There's also a cost issue. One 4" square tube (which is as light as I can go if I only use one tube) gives a deflection of .00053", which I consider sufficient for my purposes. But that one 4" tube is substantially more expensive than two 3" tubes would be--and the two 3" tubes gives a deflection of .00068", assuming that the stiffness is additive. I'm told by a PhD in Mechanical Engineering that using two tubes on opposite sides of the optical components, as long as everything is firmly attached at both ends, will give a stiffness that is quite a bit more than the sum of each tube, because you are effectively creating an I-beam. But how much stiffer than the sum of two tubes is that? I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm looking at carbon fiber composite. I see figures for its modulus of elasticity quoted of 33 million pounds per square inch, or about 220 gigapascals--more than three times stiffer than aluminum or steel. At the same time, it is far lighter than aluminum. Unfortunately, while there are a lot of vendors of carbon fiber composite tubes, all that I am finding seem to be aimed at the bicycle enthusiast, so no square tubes, and finding one that is 72" is also difficult. (Perhaps I should check with whoever makes racing bicycles for the Jolly Green Giant.) Any suggestions on where I might find 2" square tubing made of this miraculous material? UPDATE: It turns out that the formula for computing the stiffness of an I-beam is described here. You compute the moment of inertia based on the cross-section of the flanges (the top and bottom horizontal strokes of the "I"), a factor that includes the height of the vertical member (and that gets squared), and a third factor that multiples the width of the bottom flange by the height of the vertical member--and then raises it to the third power. If I regard the two aluminum hexagons that will sit between the tubes as effectively a very tall, very wide vertical member, then the combination will be very stiff indeed. Unlike a conventional I-beam, the two hexagonal members are many times wider and taller than the flanges (although not full length). Best of all, because they are effectively round, unlike an I-beam, which is much stiffer vertically than horizontally (because of that cubed factor on the height of the vertical member), there should not be an enormous difference in stiffness of the telescope depending on whether the tubes are vertical or horizontal. I haven't tried to calculate the deflection of the combination, but I suspect that having these hexagonal structures between will enhance stiffness quite impressively. It also argues for going a little stiffer on the hexagons, so that I can go a bit thinner on the tubes. Labels: telescopes You Know the Joke About a Conservative Is a Liberal Who Has Been Mugged? As with many jokes and stereotypes, there's a little kernel of truth hiding in there. Consider this recent news story about an Ohio legislator who opposed adoption of the shall-issue concealed handgun license law--and got mugged by reality, as this article from the May 15, 2007 Cleveland Plain Dealer explains: It's funny how a gun can instantly change your perspec tive on things, make you wish you could rewrite history. Labels: gun rights More Evidence That Senator Craig Is Turning Into a Closet Democrat My wife and I were concerned that Craig apparently was buying the Anthropogenic Global Warming arguments, and wrote him a letter about it--emphasizing that the science is this is still up in the air concerning how much if any is the result of man's actions. The response we received is something that a Democrat--a moderate Democrat, of course--might write: I have always felt that energy security, our competitiveness as a nation, and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand. At this point in time there are a majority of Senators, including myself, who agree that the globe is warming and that reducing greenhouse gasses is a prudent course of action.In short, Senator Craig won't admit that there's some very serious questions about the accuracy of these AGW claims, and just wants to make sure that the damage that gets done to us won't be too severe. What is it about spending time in the District of Criminals that does this to our elected representatives? Labels: global warming H-1B Visas The Center for Immigration Studies (which is not pro-immigration) has a study out of H1B visas here. I don't have enough expertise to tell if these claims they are making are accurate or not: Technology sector employers, who represent the largest share of H-1B visa users, tell the public that the H-1B program is vital to their ability to find the highly skilled workers they need. Yet Department of Labor data tell a different story. Previous studies have found that the H-1B program is primarily used to import low-wage workers.1 This report examines the most recently available wage data on the H-1B program and finds that the trend of low prevailing wage claims and low wages continues. In addition, while industry spokesmen say these workers bring needed skills to our economy, on the H-1B Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) filed with the Department of Labor, employers classify most of their H-1B workers as being relatively low-skilled for the jobs they are filling. This report compares prevailing wage claims and wages employers reported for H-1B workers in computer programming occupations in FY 2005 to wages for U.S. workers in the same occupation. Although the H-1B program stipulates that employers must pay H-1B workers at least the prevailing wage for their occupation and location, the results of this report clearly demonstrate that the regulation does not produce that result. The findings in this report clearly demonstrate that the legal definition of the prevailing wage requirement does not ensure H-1B workers are paid the actual market prevailing wage. Employer prevailing wage claims and reported wages for H-1B workers are significantly less than those for U.S. workers in the same occupation and location. This suggests that, regardless of the program’s original intent, the H-1B program now operates mainly to supply U.S. employers with cheap workers, rather than with essential skilled workers.Unlike the illegal aliens who drive down the wages of unskilled or low skilled citizens and legal residents, H-1B workers are driving down the wages of people like myself, who are paid pretty darn well. I'm not asking you to cry for people whose salaries are driven down to $80,000 a year by competition--it's not equivalent to the guy who is trying to raise a family on minimum wage. Still, there are some unpleasant results, if this is an accurate description of the people that are brought in under H-1B visas. It means that most of these jobs are positions that could be filled by college grads, or people with one or two years of experience. (My experience with my current employer suggests that this is actually the case--some of them bring no more--and in some cases less expertise than I would expect of any recent computer science graduate.) Driving down wages in this entry level or near entry level segment has the effect of discouraging Americans from getting degrees in these fields--or preventing them from getting jobs that will give them the experience that they need. This is bad for them, and probably bad for the American economy in general. We already have a hard enough time getting Americans to major in hard subjects--why provide any encouragement for them to get degrees in fields where, to put it bluntly, we already have more than we usefully employ? UPDATE: A reader writes: I am a software engineer that has worked in Silicon Valley and now in the DC area. As far as I'm concerned, the H1B program is a complete sham. During the early days of the web explosion, I worked at Netscape and we hired H1B visa workers like crazy. At that time an H1B worker couldn't switch jobs, which we referred to as "H1B handcuffs". The gov kept ramping up the H1B cap at the behest of business lobbyists. Each time, the cap was met almost immediately. Many of these engineers returned to their country of origins when their visas expired, the majority of whom where Indian. That led to a strong buildup of experienced engineers in India which was followed by pushes to "offshore" development. In other words, we trained our own competition. This meant a double impact on the US software engineering market, first from the pressure of H1B workers, then from efforts to shift the work offshore. The number of US students seeking software engineering degrees dropped as a result. The current H1B program no longer restricts workers to their original sponsors, giving them more leverage in the work market. However, there is still heavy downward pressure on US salaries. Labels: immigration Senator Craig (R-ID) Joins the Democrats Why bother voting for Republicans, when they act like Democrats? You can see Senator Craig's support for this insane immigration proposal here. My wife and I just sent him this letter: To say that we are disappointed that you are backing this immigration amnesty (and that is what it is) barely touches the surface. Why bother to obey laws if you will be rewarded later for breaking them? I can understand why Democrats want this--so that they can bring in vast populations who speak little English, and can therefore be persuaded to vote without a full understanding of the issues--but why are helping them?I am beginning to wonder: should some real Republicans (not the pretend kind, like Senator Craig seems to be turning into) run in the primaries next year? UPDATE: Coincidentally, I received a fundraising letter from the Republican National Committee today. I usually just ignore these now--but today I wrote, "No money for amnesty" on the letter, stuffed all of the paperwork back in the Business Reply Envelope, and sent it back. What I should have written is, "No money for the RNC until conservatives control it again." Labels: immigration Justifications of Hate Crime Laws David Kopel over at Volokh Conspiracy points out that one of the justifications for why hate crimes (crimes motivated by bias against members of an identifiable group) is the secondary consequences: The best argument for hate crimes laws is that a hate crime causes more harm than an ordinary crime, because it causes many other people to fear being victimized. This is true for some hate crimes (e.g., public vandalism of a synagogue), but certainly not all of them (e.g., a dispute between neighbors in which an epithet is used). Moreover, there are plenty of ordinary crimes (such as highly-publicized serial attacks on random victims), which also cause fear in many people besides the immediate victims.And this is one of the most powerful arguments against "hate crime" laws. Yes, a crime motivated by hatred of members of group A will, if widely publicized, cause all members of group A to feel threatened. But a robbery and murder that is motivated only by the desire to obtain the contents of the victim's wallet causes all members of the society to feel threatened. (At least, all members of the society that have anything worth taking.) So why doesn't the same logic apply to robbery, aggravated assault, or murder? All violent crimes that aren't motivated by bias produce a generalized fear in the population. Let's just stop the pretending: this is about pandering to a group that is politically powerful, and wants violent crimes against it to be punished very severely--but doesn't much care about violent crimes committed against everyone else. Labels: homosexuality Thursday, May 17, 2007
This Is Wrong Like bad science fiction--except that brutal monsters of the past actually tried this, but didn't have any chance of success. The British government has just approved a new "research" technique: The government has overturned its proposed ban on the creation of human-animal embryos and now wants to allow them to be used to develop new treatments for incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.I've mentioned in the past that the Soviet Union attempted--unsuccessfully--to crossbreed humans and chimpanzees to make "living war machines." I mentioned a while back this scientist who wants to create mice with human brains. And this also horrifying account of "experiments." I am not hostile to science. I originally majored in chemistry, long, long ago at USC. But there comes a point where you have a draw a line and say, "This is horrifying, this is wrong, and it should not be done." Labels: cross-species breeding Why Obey Laws? It's not like there's any punishment when you break the law: WASHINGTON (AP) - In a striking reach across party lines, the White House and key lawmakers agreed Thursday on a sweeping immigration plan to grant legal status to millions of people in the country unlawfully.Great. Republicans who sold out to Big Business interests have made common cause with Democrats who are only thinking of the next generation of guaranteed Democrats (or so they assume). This is going to be a flaming disaster. The Republican National Committee hasn't received a penny from me in a bit more than two years because the national party was so intent on this. They want to believe that somehow, this is going to get Hispanics to vote Republican. Well, it might. But I'm not much interested in voting for a party that is now acting like Democrats--more interested in winning the next election than in national security. Labels: immigration How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended It's here. It would have been a bit shorter of a film, however. Thanks to Michael Williams for the pointer. Labels: humor The Big Bertha Rebuild Project I mentioned this yesterday, and I know that some of you are very interested in it (or are really desperate for something to read). For those who are wondering why I care about a deflection measured in hundredths of inch, when I almost certainly can't make all the parts that accurately--it's very simple. With the telescope sticking straight up in the air, there will be no deflection. With the telescope pointing at the horizon, a few hundredths of an inch of deflection will screw up the collimation of the optical train. If I collimate for one position, that much deflection will screw up collimation in the other position. As far as I am concerned, deflection needs to be down in the thousandths of an inch area before I am happy. I went to Metals Supermarket today to look at what they had in stock, and see if comparing the stiffness of the square aluminum tubing with what the formulas tell me passed the giggle test. Yup! I tried to bend a 3", .125" wall piece of 6063T6 aluminum, and a 3", .25" wall piece of 6061T6 aluminum. Yes, extremely stiff! There's no difference in stiffness between 6061 and 6063--although 6061 is a bit harder. Both have a 68.9 gigapascal modulus of elasticity. The good news is that when I went out to measure the dimensions of Big Bertha, I discovered that some of my assumptions about the dimensions were wrong. The mirror weighs 26 pounds, and it is only 23 inches from the balance point for the telescope. This lower weight and shorter length substantially reduces the point load length and somewhat reduces the beam load length. This lets me use either a somewhat smaller tube, or get less deflection. Using real data, a 3" square tube with .125" wall would give me .001" total deflection from beam load and point weight load--and at least at this point, it appears that my total telescope weight will be somewhere around 46 pounds. I can get the total deflection below .001" by going to a 4.25" tube, which brings the telescope weight up to 48 pounds--still acceptable. I am still trying to find out if using two smaller tubes is additive--if it distributes the load across both tubes, and thus cuts the deflection in half. I have an email into a friend with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering--I'm hoping that he is educated enough to answer the question! As I mentioned, I have to build my own mirror cell to fit the rather odd geometry of not having a tube, but I think have come up with a design involving a hexagon that will work. I can't turn a piece of aluminum 17.5" inside diameter (as tempting as it is), but I think the solution is to make a hexagon from pieces of aluminum bar stock, cutting 60 degree corners, then drill, tap, and screw them together at the corners. I can use a similar, although slightly larger hexagon to suspend the diagonal mirror from, and on which to mount the eyepiece focuser and finder. I may build a small version of this first to house the 3" f/4.5 reflector I built some years ago--a chance to verify the design in Delrin. If it works in Delrin, aluminum should be no problem. Yes, the weight of something like this goes up with the cube of the increase in linear dimension, but aluminum has a somewhat higher modulus of elasticity than Delrin, so I suspect that if it works for the 3", I won't have to do much to make it work for Big Bertha. Labels: machining, telescopes Barbarism...Let's Have a Party I mentioned yesterday Michelle Malkin's report about this act of barbarism--the rape, torture, murder, and mutilation of a couple of young people that wandered into the wrong neighborhood in Knoxville. It gets worse. This report concerns two of the accused: (Knoxville) - St. Nicolas Thief, president and founder of Black Poverty Speaks, along with many local Knoxville blacks who live in the Washington Pike area has organized a social action protest celebration championing Lemaricus Davidson and Letalvis Cobbins.Fortunately, not everyone in Knoxville is looking to make excuses. Some are learning the lesson: Interest in self-defense has boosted inquiries about handgun carry permits in Knoxville, firearms instructors say, although Virginia Tech wasn't the main impetus. UPDATE: There are some who suspect that this "St. Nicolas Thief" may not exist, and this be an agent provocateur of traditional white racists. Classical Values discusses this at the bottom, here. Labels: political correctness This Sounds Like Martial Law If a Republican suggested something like this, it would be a big news story. But because liberal Democrats want it to happen--and on top of the raging success of Maryland's gun control laws--you won't hear about it: How, exactly, would you tell the difference?
Nutter...my, there's an appropriate name. And the gun control nuts accuse of proposing extreme and bizarre measures when we suggest that law-abiding adults should be able to defend themselves. Labels: gun rights Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Imagine if the Victims Were Blacks and the Killers Were White Then this news story would be everywhere. It would be on the nightly news every day for a while, and then every week--rather like the Duke athletes rape case. But this one is getting no national attention: (CNSNews.com) - The national news media demonstrates a double standard in covering "hate crimes," as evidenced by the lack of attention given to the murder of a white couple in Tennessee last January, a conservative columnist charged on Monday.And that account really does convey the barbarism of what was done to the Christian and Newsom. Michelle Malkin has a video presentation here that tells you more than you probably want to know. It isn't like there's no local coverage of this horrifying crime for the national news media to use. Like here. If they really wanted to play up the white racism angle, there's this news story here, about white racists trying to stir up trouble with this. (It really says a lot about how far Tennessee has come. A crime this horrifying in 1950 would have probably led to a race riot and mass lynching.) And it seems to have woken the locals that they need to be ready to fight back: At news.google.com, "Christian Newsom" brings up 13 news stories--not a single one of them from the mainstream media. Liberalism is a morally bankrupt and utterly depraved system of thought. Labels: political correctness Why Don't They Repeal the Law of Gravity, Too? San Francisco's mayor is hot to do something about guns--but it would help if they knew what the current laws are, I think: Huh? You can't lawfully carry a loaded firearm in any city in California (including San Francisco) without a concealed carry license (Cal. Penal Code sec. 12031). You can't lawfully transport even an unloaded firearm except to or from a range, your home, a gun store or repair facility or a few other exceptional situations unless that gun is visible (Cal. Penal Code secs. 12025, 12026, and 12026.1). You can, theoretically, walk through San Francisco with an unloaded firearm, as long as it is openly carried. If you feel like giving it a try, tell us where you want the flowers delivered. The only thing that might prevent you from being shot to death by the San Francisco Police Department would be that they have such lousy aim. (I'm thinking of an incident some years ago where they fired over a hundred shots inside of a bank at a guy that was armed with a dummy grenade--and no gun.) Cal. Penal Code sec. 12035 already makes it a criminal offense if a civilian: keeps any loaded firearm within any premises that are under his or her custody or control and he or she knows or reasonablyThis isn't quite a requirement to keep a gun locked up, but it is already a pretty strong encouragement to keep the gun locked up. But, even some of the legislation's co-sponsors conceded the proposals will have little effect on the proliferation of illegal guns on San Francisco streets.Huh? Penal Code sec. 12072(d) prohibits firearm transfers in California except through a licensed dealer or police department--with exceptions for antiques and within family. If there are people selling guns on public property in San Francisco, they are already breaking the law. Though there is only one gun store located in San Francisco, the legislation targets licensed dealers by requiring them to provide police with an inventory list every six months so that authorities could keep track of how many guns are sold. "It's about that one gun shop and making a statement to anyone who's thinking about opening up," said District Attorney Kamala Harris, who is one of several politicians who have signed on to co-sponsor the legislation.Let's see: to buy a gun in California--a handgun, a rifle, or a shotgun--you need to pass a background check and waiting period. And the requirements are actually pretty stiff: Any person who has been convicted of a felony, certain misdemeanors, certain firearms offenses, who is addicted to narcotics, who is the subject of a domestic violence restraining order, or has been committed to a mental institution pursuant to Welfare and Institutions Code section 8100, may not possess or have under his or her control any firearm. See Prohibiting Categories. PDF logo [PDF 10 kb / 1 pg] Certain federal statutes impose lifetime and other more restrictive prohibitions on firearm possession. Additionally, certain statutory conditions exist that allow for the possession of firearms but preclude the acquisition or purchase of additional firearms, such as the subjects of certain restraining orders and those under state or federal indictment.It is already quite inconvenient to buy a gun in California, and it hasn't worked--so San Francisco wants to continue down a path that hasn't worked. UPDATE: A reader who lives in the area points out that the ban on sales on public property is aimed at the Cow Palace gun shows. The Cow Palace is one of those weird situations where it is apparently partly in the City and County 0f San Francisco*, and partly in San Mateo County, but the land is entirely owned by the City and County of San Francisco*. But as this reader points out, if they had such a law--and used it prohibit sales by licensed gun dealers at the Cow Palace (who have to go through background checks and waiting periods), you can be sure it would never be used to prosecute criminals selling guns in city parks. * The City and County of San Francisco is one of those weird little quirks of California--where they don't just engage in sexual perversion, but political entity perversion as well. California, like most Western states, has counties and cities. There are often several incorporated cities within a county, as well as large areas that are unincorporated, and thus under county control only. If you live in a city, the police department is supposed to protect you. If you live in the unincorporated part of the county, the sheriff's department is who you call. In some smaller cities in the state, the sheriff's department actually provides police services, and the deputy sheriff in charge is given the title of police chief. But that's relatively unusual. San Francisco at some point expanded out so rapidly that there was nothing left within the County of San Francisco that wasn't also the City of San Francisco, so they merged together, into the California political equivalent of a transsexual. (This means that everywhere in California statutes where they refer to a "county" or "city" they have to throw the political entity pervert in as well: Cal. Penal Code sec. 148.3: "(a) Any individual who reports, or causes any report to bemade, to any city, county, city and county,...") There is a sheriff--but he pretty much runs the jail, provides protection to the courts and city hall, and serves warrants. Law enforcement is primarily done by the San Francisco Police Department. In most California cities, there is a city council and a mayor, and the county is run by a board of supervisors. In San Francisco, the county aspect wins out, mostly, and so they elect a board of supervisors (and among the most deranged elected officials that America has ever seen)--but they also elect a mayor. Labels: gun rights Anthropogenic Global Warming Converts Senator Imhofe's blog has a list of prominent scientists who have changed sides--those who used to believe that global warming was entirely or largely man's doing, and no longer believe it. Here's a couple of samples:
And the chances of finding out about this from watching the mainstream media? About zero. Oh yeah, here's a European politician with enough integrity to call it for what it is:
Labels: global warming If True, Someone Needs to Go Away Assuming that the BATF's claims are correct, this is exactly the sort of activity that BATF is supposed to be doing--but doesn't seem to do very often: I've seen the claim that a relatively small number of gun dealers--just a few percent of the total--are the source for the vast majority of guns that are criminally misused. I don't know if this is because some dealers are on the edge of vast ghettos, or if they are counting a few dealers who sell vast quantities of guns (and perhaps have no disproportionate number of "crime guns" because of it). But I do not find it hard to believe that there are a few dealers who are so intent on maximizing profit that they knowingly engage in sales to criminals. I remember some years ago reading about two guys in Los Angeles who obtained a Federal Firearms License, and over a period of several months, purchased and sold--without any paperwork at all--more than 800 guns, operating out of a van in South Central Los Angeles. It was not a few technical violations, nor was it ignorance--they were just intent on making a pile of money, very quickly. They were convicted of more than 800 felonies--and received nine months and twelve months, respectively, in prison. Labels: gun rights Postage Went Up... And not just first class mail. The Priority Mail Flate Rate Box went from $8.10 to $8.95, so I had to go through and update the ScopeRoller web page with slightly higher prices. I'm not whining about this; any service that delivers things is going to be hit by the increase in gasoline prices. It was a good excuse to go through and start using the PayPal shopping cart scheme instead of just the BuyNow buttons. It still isn't beautiful, but it is at least a bit more maintainable than it was before. Bad Analogies One of the great weaknesses of argument by analogy is that sometimes A isn't equivalent to B. Here's a good example: Arnold Kling's discussion of health insurance by analogy to prostitution:
Let's make a list of some of the differences: 1. No one ever died from lack of sex. 2. It has never been unlawful in America to pay for medical care, and with a very few exceptions, there is no one who regards medical care as immoral. 3. The cost of medical care is especially amenable to insurance, because you can go for months or even years without requiring medical care--but if you do suddenly need it, the cost of that care can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are legitimate arguments against the government being in the health insurance business. Arguments by false analogy such as this one by Kling are offensively absurd. Labels: health care Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Humor A friend who lives in the Bay Area pointed me to this very funny item on the Bay Area Craig's List "Rants and Raves" section (which is in danger of disappearing because liberals don't like him): I buy ammo at a local Big5 Sporting Goods because they always have it (at least the common stuff) and the prices are good. Just the week before last they had R-P 9mm JHP for under $6/box with an additional 10% discount if you bought ten boxes. Labels: humor I Thought They Were Pretty Crazy I'm reading Rael Jean Issac and Virginia C. Armat's Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill (New York: Free Press, 1990) at the moment. I'm quite impressed. It's well written, with passion, but without (so far) taking any integrity shortcuts to win sympathy for their position. Much of what they have to say I have been able to match in other sources--and as I usually do, when I find an interesting, astonishing, and especially "too good to be true" fact, I try to verify it. So far, they are doing just fine. Anyway, in their discussion of how our society abandoned the notion of mental illness (with prominent psychiatrists and sociologists arguing that mental illness does not exist), they mention the fusion of radical politics with the anti-psychiatric movement: While the contribution of radical therapists in the United States was chiefly rhetorical, in Europe the mixture of left-wing politics and anti-psychiatry proved explosive. In the venerable university town of Heidelberg, a Socialist Patients Collective, formed in 1970, rapidly transformed itself from a patients group to a political organization. It propounded such doctrines as "illness and capital are identical: the intensity and extent of illness multiply in proportion to the accumulation process of dead capital." In her 1988 book The Europeans, Jane Kramer points that most of the "second generation" of Baader-Meinhof terrorists came out of this group. She writes:If you are too young to know who Baader-Meinhof was--well, here's a quick intro.They followed a psychiatrist guru by the name of Wolfgang Huber--a kind of Leninist R.D. Laing, who convinced the people in his charge that the society was their real disease, and apparently inspired a lot of them to try to cure it. Labels: deinstitutionalization Down the Memory Hole Remember in 1984, where Winston's job was to revise newspapers of the past to keep up with the ever changing present? This is very interesting. A couple years ago, during the Katrina disaster, I linked to a CNN report and quoted it: Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.One of my readers ran into that posting of mine--and noticed that the CNN report at that link no longer said anything like that. It was much, much more upbeat. Nothing about the police snipers on the roof. Did I copy the wrong link? Did I have a brief attack of delusion, and make something up? Nope. Lots of other people linked to that same CNN page, and quoted the same text. Like http://paulsplanet.blogspot.com/2005/09/fall-of-new-orleans_02.html and http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002476.html . There were bloggers who quoted CNN exactly as I did, although with no link to the story: http://knemeyer.com/dk.cfm?a=cms,c,318,1 and http://www.flaregun.org/?feed=rss2&p=51 and http://gutternickle.net/blog/index.php/2005/09/02/something_i_don_t_want_to_forget_about_k Did something go down the memory hole? If that story was inaccurate, they should have identified it as inaccurate, and updated it. This dramatic transformation of a story that played a big part in creating bad press for President Bush really smacks of something very Orwellian. "We have always been at war with Eastasia." UPDATE: As Rite Wing Techno Pagan calls it, "Changeable News Network." Instapundit readers: welcome! Feel free to come back now and again. I don't produce quite the volume of postings as Instapundit--but I do give a somewhat more conservative perspective. I went to the Internet Archive site, but unfortunately the first archive they have of that page is from December 10, 2005--and it is the "improved" version. Labels: low standards of journalism I Am Always Impressed How Smart My Readers Are I mentioned here the engineering problem I was confronting on rebuilding Big Bertha, and the formulae provided by a reader for calculating deflection under load. I pulled together the appropriate data, and this is what I found. First of all: I discovered that Young's modulus is expressed in Pascals (the metric unit of pressure). Because the Pascal is defined as one newton of force over a one square meter area, I needed to convert all my numbers from centimeter/gram/second to meter/kilogram/second. Next, I used the equations to figure out the moment of inertia for a solid rectangle, rectangular tube, and a square tube. (I'm not considering the use of a round tube, simply because it is harder to get a solid connection between two pieces of metal if one of them is trying to roll.) I plugged in dimensions for several commonly available 6061 aluminum shapes, and the moment of inertia came out like this:
You can see what a difference a square tube makes relative to a rectangular tube of the same weight, or a rectangular solid that weighs slightly more! There are two loads to consider for computing deflection: the point load (which assumes a weight that is concentrated at one point), and the load that the weight of the tube itself inflicts. When I plugged in those formulae, using a weight of 40 pounds for the mirror end of the telescope (which is by far the heaver load) and a distance of 40 inches (it will actually be a bit less, depending on the balance point), the square tube gave a deflection of .00069 meters for the point load, and .00056 for the beam load. I'm told that adding these together is probably sufficiently accurate for these purposes, so that comes to .00072 meters, or about .028". That's not quite sufficient (especially because it will vary depending on whether the telescope is pointing horizontally or vertically), so I could either go to a larger tube, or plan on using two of them. Going to a 3" x 3" x .125" tube more than triples the moment of inertia, and knocks the deflection down to .008". I suspect that it may make more sense to use two or even four of the 2" square tubes instead. I don't know exactly how they would reinforce each other, but I suspect that two tubes would halve the point load per tube. UPDATE: One advantage of using a single large tube to mount everything--it makes it easy to adjust distances. When you are doing astrophotography, you either need a lot of adjustment range in the focuser, or you have to move the mirror closer to the camera than would be needed for visual use (typically 2" to 2.5" closer). It would be fairly use to drill two sets of holes in the base tube: one set for mounting the diagonal/eyepiece/finder cage at astrophotography distance, and another set for visual distance. It might even be possible to do this on a sliding mechanism with set screws to lock everything into position. Labels: machining, telescopes Too Stupid To Stay Out of the Hospital Here's one of those reminders that if you are stupid enough, you don't even need a gun to shoot yourself: LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y. (AP) - A teenager who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings was wounded in the abdomen by approximately the 100th bullet he hit, according to Warren County deputies.This just makes me scratch my head in wonder. Fired brass is certainly worth something, enough that after going shooting, I usually pick up my brass. But unfired ammunition is worth a lot more! Brand new, the cheapest .223 is about .22 cents a round. I'm sure that with a little effort, Mosher could have sold that 100 rounds for $2 to someone--and that would have been worth a lot more than he was going to get for the brass. Labels: stupidity An Amusing Questionnaire Idaho Values Alliance sent out a questionnaire to the nineteen candidates for an open seat on the Idaho Supreme Court, asking them to express "agree" or "disagree" with various statements. I was amused when I saw the questionnaire, because I recognized that most of these statements were taken verbatim from the Idaho Constitution--and it turns out that, according to this press release from the Idaho Values Alliance, that this was the goal--to see which of the candidates agreed with our state constitution, and which did not. (Perhaps more worrisome, to see which candidates even recognized where these phrases came from.) None of the candidates responded to the questionnaire, apparently out of concern that taking a position might show that they had prejudged issues that might come before them. But how can you call it prejudging an issue to admit that you agree or disagree with the Idaho Constitution? Isn't that what you are supposed to be following when you sit on the Idaho Supreme Court? UPDATE: Professor Volokh points out that someone might disagree with these provisions of the state constitution, and yet still be willing to follow them in making decisions. I suspect that if any candidate had responded, "I disagree with this provision, but I will follow the Idaho Constitution in making decisions," it would have been a pretty positive sign for that candidate's integrity. Labels: judicial activism Another Billionaire Intent On Putting the Democrats in the White House This article from the May 15, 2007 Washington Times is quite worrisome: New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is prepared to spend an unprecedented $1 billion of his own $5.5 billion personal fortune for a third-party presidential campaign, personal friends of the mayor tell The Washington Times.People that call themselves "social liberal and fiscal conservative" might be mistaken for libertarians, but Bloomberg certainly is not that. His gun control ferocity alone should tell you that he is not libertarian. If he was running because he expected to win, I could perhaps see this as an ambitious billionaire trying to buy the White House, but the article makes it clear that he intends to be a spoiler: The Bloomberg team is studying the strategies of Mr. Perot, the Texas billionaire whose 1992 presidential campaign helped President Clinton to win the White House with 43 percent of the popular vote.My guess is that Bloomberg is considering blowing a billion dollars to pull enough votes from the Republican nominee so that the Democratic nominee will win the White House. Being a billionaire, his natural inclinations are going to be with the Democrats, and against any sort of conservative. If George Soros were a native-born citizen, I suspect that he would pull the same stunt to make sure that the left wins. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Interesting Blog Posts By Michael Williams I've been too busy to read Michael Williams' blog--which is a sign that I am too busy--and there's some interesting stuff there. Here he does the math to point out that American produced biofuels aren't every going to be a big chunk of our energy consumption: So assuming our coal and oil consumption haven't grown since 2000 (unlikely) and assuming a generous ratio of biomass to biofuel conversion, the United States could generate about 18% of the power it consumes by converting 100% of its arable land to biofuel production.He also points to a New York Times article about Japan's criminal justice system, and how it relies heavily on coerced confessions--and then has to release these people years later, when they turn out to be innocent: Norimitsu Onishi makes it sound as if Japanese police don't even do proper investigations or gather evidence, they just pick a suspect, coerce a confession, and then rely on that confession alone for a conviction.This wasn't a surprise to me. Dave Kopel's book The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy makes the point that part of how the Japanese police achieve 99% conviction rates--with something 95% of suspects confessing--is that they rely on torture. Even though it is illegal, and suspects often still have marks of torture visible when they come to court--Japanese judges routinely refuse to do anything about it. Finally, Michael Williams points to this Michael Barone column about how the big cities on the coasts are fast turning into the Third World--a small number of extremely rich people and fast quantities of desperately poor people: The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo.Michael and his wife left Los Angeles for this reason: Sounds about right to me; my wife and I left Los Angeles because we're neither rich nor immigrant laborers.This is part of why liberals are so dangerous for America. While they talk about "two Americas" one rich, one poor, they are the major forces causing this increasingly Third World divide. They want illegal immigrants to come here in large numbers because this provides them with cheap maids; cheap gardeners; cheap busboys and kitchen help in their fashionable restaurants; and cheap prostitutes. If liberals really believed their own garbage about helping the working poor, they would be willing to shut off illegal immigration, so that wages of citizens and lawful immigrants would rise. Monday, May 14, 2007
Low Academic Standards One of the reasons that I get a bit irritated with identity politics "academic" programs in universities is that they are so often stronger in polemics than in research. I scratched my head about this supposed "Mercury 13" program. The claim is that these women entered astronaut training in the early 1960s, only to be scrubbed because of sexism. It was certainly possible, but I had never heard anything about it before, and unless it was intended as a response to the Soviet Union's female cosmonaut program, it seemed most unlikely. James Oberg, who has spent entire entire life involved with the space program, has a devastating account of the dishonesty of the University of Wisconsin, and the credulity of journalists, who overwhelming bought the press releases, without any serious attempt at finding out what the real story was: UPDATE: A reader actually took flying lessons from one of the "Mercury 13" in 1972; she mentioned it, and that "it was a mad enthusiasm of one or a small number of people, and it never went anywhere; she certainly never had any direct dealings with NASA." The reader suggests that the real reason it went nowhere wasn't even sexism, but that military test pilots (who were almost all the early astronauts) were regarded as having signed up for hazardous duty, and there would little political fallout if they were killed in flight. Labels: political correctness Mechanical Engineering Question Young's Modulus tells you have much a piece of metal will bend under strain; it's a measure of stiffness. This website (which sounds like they know what they are doing) claims that titanium and aluminum are about 5% stiffer than steel for the same weight. Steel is much stiffer for the same thickness than aluminum, but steel is about 7.8 g/cc, while aluminum is about 2.7 g/cc. For the same stiffness as steel, you use a much thicker piece of aluminum--but you can still end up ahead on weight--and weight matters for this application. I'm looking to rebuild Big Bertha in a form that is substantially lighter. Right now, it is unnecessarily heavy--perhaps 250 pounds, which is absurd, considering that the optics, eyepiece focuser, and mounting hardware for the optics weigh perhaps 45 pounds. If I just replaced the current wooden superstructure with Sonotube, I can get the telescope down to 110 pounds--perhaps less. But an equatorial mount that would handle it would cost $6000--and even then, it would be a bit heavy for that mount. There's a saying in backpacking that every pound you take off your feet is equivalent to five to six pounds out of your backpack. The same is true with telescopes: for every dollar you spend taking weight off the telescope, you can save many dollars on the mount itself. As an example, the Losmandy GM-8 mount that I have is nominally capable of carrying a 30 pound instrument, and costs about $1500. The next step up is the G-11, nominal capacity 60 pounds, and costs about $2200. The next step from there is the HGM Titan, nominal capacity 100 pounds, and costs about $6000. I don't even look at the step up from that; it makes my wallet scream in agony to even think about it (and even the HGM Titan causes me to cringe at the price). I don't know that I can get Big Bertha light enough to fit on a G11, but if I can, it is worth spending a bit of money lightening it up enough to do so. If it is just too heavy for a G-11, then it will be at least light enough to cause no strain for the HGM Titan. So, one strategy is to build an octagonal skeleton tube, using eight aluminum tubes 81" long, cross braced with perhaps 1/4" thick aluminum flats, all bolted together with stainless steel bolts. How thin can the 81" long tubes be, and still provide sufficient stiffness once cross braced? I need it to be stiff enough that even with roughly 38 pounds at one end (where the mirror is), and about 7 pounds at the other end (diagonal mirror, its holder, and the eyepiece focuser), the deformation of those tubes by gravity will be barely measurable, or not measurable at all. (The telescope will be mounted at approximately the center of gravity, with a plate that will bolt to two of the long tubes.) There must be a way to calculate this--I know that mechanical engineers don't do everything by experiment. The telescope pictured here might be another strategy. It uses a single, extremely stiff member to hold the two ends in the correct positions. Perhaps this is another approach, since this very stiff member could also be the dovetail plate that slides into the telescope mount saddle. One other aspect of this design that is attractive--it is possible to disassemble it quickly into two "rings": the top one carries the eyepiece focuser, diagonal, and finder, and the bottom ring carries the primary mirror. These can attach to the base with several bolts, making it quickly come apart into two relatively light and compact parts, and one very long rail. UPDATE: One of my readers responded with: There's a measure of flexural rigidity for a beam which you can use to compare some alternatives (it doesn't account for twisting though). It's simply the elastic modulus of the material multiplied by the cross-sectional moment of inertia (E*I).Where the ^ indicates exponentiation. Labels: telescopes Need Someone To Make My ScopeRoller Page Look Better I just finished chopping up the ScopeRoller web page into multiple pages--it was just taking too long to load. I still can't claim that it looks terribly professional. At the same time, I'm not sure that I want to spend vast quantities of money to make it look like I'm the size of IBM. If one of my readers wants to make a little money polishing the current content, get in touch. I'm not a big fan of frames, and I don't like complicated background patterns. But if you can figure out a way to make it look a bit less like a piece of handcoded primitive HTML, I'm all ears. Some Are More Equal Than Others I mentioned a couple of weeks back how the ACLU's concern about double jeopardy had formerly caused them to be skeptical of federal "hate crime" laws--but now that sexual orientation is in a new federal bill...well, that changes everything. Now the Washington Post is joining in: Because if it passes the Senate, which could vote on it next month, and gets past a threatened presidential veto, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability would join race, religion and national origin as protected classes under the 1969 federal hate-crimes law.This bill has been rattling around Congress in one form or another for nearly 10 years. As time passed, it evolved and incorporated good ideas from both sides of the aisle. And while we have long opposed the inclusion of gender and disability, we believe the bill is worthy of support overall.So it isn't just the liberal tendency to want to federalize everything. Nor is it a matter of adding sexual orientation to a list of characteristics that liberals think need protection. This Washington Post editorial admits that they "have long opposed the inclusion of gender and disability." It's all about homosexuality--and they are more deserving of federal protection than "gender and disability." Labels: homosexuality Sunday, May 13, 2007
Neptune and Global Warming One of those nasty global warming skeptics is pointing to an article about changing brightness of Neptune: Incredibly, an article has appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters showing a stunning relationship between the solar output, Neptune’s brightness, and heaven forbid, the temperature of the Earth. With its obvious implications to the greenhouse debate, we are certain you have never heard of the work and never will outside World Climate Report.I went to find the article, and while you have to pay to read the whole article, the abstract is free: Long-term photometric measurements of Neptune show variations of brightness over half a century. Seasonal change in Neptune's atmosphere may partially explain a general rise in the long-term light curve, but cannot explain its detailed variations. This leads us to consider the possibility of solar-driven changes, i.e., changes incurred by innate solar variability perhaps coupled with changing seasonal insolation. Although correlations between Neptune's brightness and Earth's temperature anomaly—and between Neptune and two models of solar variability—are visually compelling, at this time they are not statistically significant due to the limited degrees of freedom of the various time series. Nevertheless, the striking similarity of the temporal patterns of variation should not be ignored simply because of low formal statistical significance. If changing brightnesses and temperatures of two different planets are correlated, then some planetary climate changes may be due to variations in the solar system environment.Now, Neptune has an interesting history to its brightness variations, and there's a lot of published papers on the subject. This letter published in 1991--with one of the same authors--observes that an existing Neptune and solar cycle relationship had recently changed: FOR almost two decades, Neptune's brightness varied inversely, at the level of a few per cent, with the solar cycle. The anticorrela-tion was so striking that some causal mechanism seemed necessary, and several suggestions were made1,2. Two different but plausible ideas involving solar-induced global changes in Neptune's atmosphere were a cyclic darkening ('tanning') of stratospheric aerosols caused by varying ultraviolet radiation3 and a variation in the rate of ion-induced nucleation of atmospheric aerosols due to the modulation of galactic cosmic-ray flux by solar activity4. In 1990, with the current solar cycle near its peak, however, Neptune departed unexpectedly from the previous cyclic behaviour, attaining its greatest brightness since 1972. Further observations will be needed to decide if the present deviation signals a unique atmospheric phenomenon, and to see if the cyclic anticorrelation will be restored.It certainly raises questions about the connections that this recent paper mentions--but notice that even back in 1991, there was a recognition that cosmic-ray flux modulation caused by solar activity might be influencing cloud cover on Neptune. Regular readers will know that I have mentioned previously the research that suggests that global warming here on Earth is related to solar output altering cosmic ray flux. More solar output not only means more sunlight warming up the Earth, but less cosmic ray flux, and less cloud cover--increasing the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface. I found some of this material over at Classical Values, including a discussion of how NASA has observed some evidence of changes in solar activity that suggest that the solar output increases are about to stop:
As Simon at Classical Values observes: If sunspots are going to decline in the near future the global warming era may be over. Especially if the sun's effect on Clouds turns out to be affected by solar activity as some scientists have experimentally proved.Perhaps we have reached the point where the AGW True Believers need to get their tax structure in place now, or worry about the polar bears attacking them when they hold conferences in New York City. Labels: global warming Materials Choices I mentioned a while back that I was having trouble finding 2 3/8" UHMW polyethylene for making a particular part. Turning these 2.35" diameter cylinders down from 2.5" stock is slow (at least on a Sherline lathe). I can get 2 3/8" Delrin. Even though it is about $19.50 a foot, vs. $8 a foot for the UHMW, the time savings compensate for the price. It takes about 30 minutes for me to turn three 2.5" diameter by 3.4" long UHMW cylinders down to 2.35" diameter. The 2 3/8" Delrin takes about five minutes to turn down the same three cylinders. The materials cost is $10 more for three cylinders, but it saves me 25 minutes. That's an easy tradeoff. Labels: machining Teachers in Need of Firing Traumatizing children as a "learning experience": MURFREESBORO, Tennessee (AP) -- Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables. Labels: gun rights, stupidity Colorado State University's Policy on Concealed Carry This is a surprising article: Police at the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Colorado say allowing concealed weapons on campus is more trouble than its worth, but Colorado State University is sticking to its policy that allows permit-holders to carry their guns.After recounting the traditional arguments against from the University of Northern Colorado and Colorado University spokesmen: But count Alderden as an advocate for allowing guns on campus. He also said gun carriers should intervene when they can.By comparison, a student at Hamline University in Minnesota merely suggested that the university's gun-free policy was a mistake--and was suspended and ordered to seek psychological counseling: In the aftermath, officials at Hamline University sought to comfort their 4,000 students. David Stern, the vice president for academic and student affairs, sent a campus-wide email offering extra counseling sessions for those who needed help coping.Now to be fair, Scheffler had also expressed disapproval of the university's "diversity programs," feeling that they were discriminating against him for being a white male, and I guess by the standards of Hamline University, that makes him a dangerous lunatic. Labels: gun rights The Next Time a Liberal Compares Bush's America to Nazi Germany Ask them to explain this: Situated within a dense forest at the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York, Islamberg is not an ideal place for a summer vacation unless, of course, you are an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden.Is someone at Homeland Security not paying attention? Or is this report completely bogus? Labels: terrorism Hypothermia Deaths I make no pretense that the data is sufficient to prove a connection between deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and people freezing to death--but in 1974, the hypothermia death rate in the U.S. was .164/100,000 people. By 1979, the death rate had doubled to .322/100,000. Hypothermia death rates continued to rise, peaking at .411/100,000 in 1989, before dropping back below .2/100,000 in the late 1990s. Not every person who died of hypothermia was mentally ill, but a detailed study of hypothermia deaths in Washington, DC in the years 1972-82 found that one-third were severely malnourished, with “most discovered in abandoned buildings or vehicles. Four-fifths had not been reported missing. One-half had high blood ethanol levels.”1 It is difficult to read these characteristics, which sound suspiciously like those of mentally ill homeless people in America, and not suspect that the increase in hypothermia death rates was partly because of deinstitutionalization. 1 Nicholas Rango, “Exposure-Related Hypothermia in the United States: 1970-79,” American Journal of Public Health, 74:10[October, 1984] 1159-60; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Compressed Mortality File 1979-1998. CDC WONDER On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File CMF 1968-1988, Series 20, No. 2A, 2000 and CMF 1989-1998, Series 20, No. 2E, 2003, ICD-9 E901. UPDATE: Just to clarify: hypothermia death rates fell again in the late 1990s back to roughly mid-1970s rates. Perhaps the increased institutionalization of the mentally ill in prisons--or some other factor--caused this. Labels: deinstitutionalization |
||||||||||||
The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle, and that's why the slowdown is important.