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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, June 23, 2007
Fun With Band Saws; Happy Customers I just finished making a set of casters for the Vixen HAL-110 tripod--by far the most challenging machining operation yet. This slides inside the tripod leg assembly, replacing the "foot" that ordinarily sits on the ground.  What makes it difficult is that I wanted something that would slide into a fairly complex hole (far more complex than the insert's end, and far more complex than really needed for Vixen's purposes) without being loose. And that's what I achieved--precisely enough machined that it doesn't fall out, but also doesn't have to be pressed in hard. Of course, I use the M4-0.7 screws that hold the foot in place to hold this insert in position as well.   It doesn't look like it should be all that hard to make, but with the amount of time it took, I think I may charge a pretty premium price to make any more. Even using the band saw to hack the big chunks out, while it saved a lot of time, still doesn't make these fast to make. The problem is that even with a 1.5" long cutting surface on this end mill, the power limitations of the Sherline means that you are removing at most .020" of Delrin at a time. If you try to remove more, you get some nasty vibrations and accuracy suffers. Do you notice the "waffle" pattern? This particular end mill was a roughing mill--meaning that it concentrates on speed, not finish quality. If you hold the final result in exactly the right position, it kinda looks like a Manhattan skyscraper. The Sears 10 inch band saw has turned out to be the best $170 I've spent in a long time. It is reasonably consistent. I set the fence at 1 1/8", and the piece that came out was 1.03" wide, so about .09" short. I set the fence at 2 1/8", and it cut a piece 2.04" wide, so about .08" short. I tried moving the scale on the edge of the table to correct for this, but there's only a very small amount of adjustment potential. I'll just remember that the cut is going to be a little under 1/8" narrower than the fence position, and that's good enough. The other thing about it that is nice is that I can see where the blade is while cutting. The chop saw that I have, as powerful and quick as it is, is just too dangerous to use for cutting anything small. The blade that came with the band saw works well for Delrin and for 6061 aluminum. I tried to trim a small piece of steel, and it was clearly not going to do anything but dull the blade. This is a woodworking blade, however, so I am not surprised. One aspect of the band saw that has me a little confused is that it produces a bit of a wavy cut in Delrin. It doesn't seem to do this in wood or aluminum--very odd. It isn't a problem, since the only band saw work I do in Delrin is just a first step towards machining, but I suspect that there's something that I don't know that might produce a smoother finish. I made a caster set for the Celestron 93493 tripod (first time for this model). The customer is singing my praises in this thread. Now, if all the other users of that tripod would just go ahead and order. Labels: machining, telescopes Are Lunatics Running the Asylum at Immigration? This news story just floors me. Our government drags its feet about identifying and deporting illegal aliens--but they deport a U.S. citizen? TIJUANA, Mexico - Clutching a photo of her son, Maria Carvajal walks Tijuana’s sweltering streets searching for the mentally disabled man she says was deported more than a month ago despite being a U.S. citizen and then disappeared in this chaotic border city. Labels: immigration Friday, June 22, 2007
I've Never Been Much Impressed With WorldNetDaily And I'm less impressed because of this article: If the Act passes in the Senate, it would provide grants so states can add the names of criminals to the NICS system, which would label them as unable to own firearms, but it also flags those with medical or psychological issues as unfit to possess a gun. This is utterly wrong. From HR 2640: As used in this Act, the following definitions shall apply: From 18 USC 922(g)(4) and (8): (g) Commitment (as opposed to a hold for observation) in the U.S. is not easy. In fact, it has become far too difficult. But the claim that a person can be denied gun ownership based on taking Ritalin or simply on the say-so of a doctor is false. Labels: deinstitutionalization, gun rights Thursday, June 21, 2007
I'm The Winner of the Week! My review of the Moonlite Telescopes CR2 dual speed focuser won the weekly contest over at Astromart.com. Labels: telescopes Journalist Campaign Contributions Mainstream journalists like to pretend that they are completely unbiased in their reporting. But when you look at how journalists lean on their campaign contributions, it does suggest that they see the world considerably to the left of the average American: Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.As the sidebar article points out, this is a very incomplete list, because of what data is required in the federal campaign records. There's a longstanding tradition that journalists don't cheer in the press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected to keep those opinions out of their work. Because appearing to be fair is part of being fair, most mainstream news organizations discourage marching for causes, displaying political bumper stickers or giving cash to candidates.I actually would prefer that journalists be allowed to make political donations; it at least puts it all out in the open where he stands. Preventing them from contributing to political causes doesn't make them unbiased; it just lets them pretends that they don't have any political preferences. Which does more good for a Democratic presidential candidate? A $2000 contribution from a reporter? Or a series of liberal leaning articles about global warming, minimum wage laws, and same-sex marriage? Labels: low standards of journalism Interesting Electrical System Failure on the Corvette A couple of weeks back, and a couple of weeks after the dealer replaced the bad fuel gauge sending unit in the fuel tank, the Corvette started to act "funny." I had a dead battery one morning, even though the car had only sat idle for three days. But when I hooked up the charging unit in the garage--it started right up--which is odd, since it usually takes tens of minutes or more of trickle charging before it has enough power to get going. Then, I was driving through one of Boise's many construction zones where they were repaving--and the road was very rough. Twice, when I went over especially rough sections, the car completely cut out for a fraction of a second, resetting all electronic counters (such as average fuel economy). I checked the battery connections, and they seemed tight enough. Then I drove down to the mailbox on my fairly rough driveway and access road--and when I tried to restart the car--dead as a doornail. Then, miraculously, two minutes later, it started right up! So now I have decided that there are gremlins in the electrical system. This is worrisome, because intermittent electrical problems on cars are notoriously hard to diagnose--and the extended warranty doesn't cover diagnosis time. Anyway, I pull into the Chevy dealer, and Darrin Panda, who is the service advisor that I usually talk to, admitted that what I was describing sounded like a loose connection, and he admitted that it was not impossible that something didn't get hooked up right after the last repair. So we pop the hood, and he finds that the battery terminal is loose--and even more interesting, he can see corrosion that has dripped out of that part of the battery. Since this is a sealed Delco battery, this is a sign that the battery has serious problems. They managed to get it all fixed for about $70 (because the battery was still under a pro rata warranty). Labels: cars So Much For "Settled Science" Interesting article in the Canadian Financial Post yesterday by "R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University." What he has to say won't be a surprise to my regular readers: My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.Oh, and there are politicians with some courage out there, like President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, whose article in the British Financial Times points out what is really driving the global warming propaganda war: In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.For several generations, the left used "let's help the poor" as the rationale for governmental redistribution of wealth--and eventually, that argument wore out. There were several reasons why this argument stopped working: 1. Compassion fatigue. There comes a certain point where people start saying, "I'm tired of giving half my income to help poor people." This is to me the least valid reason, but the one most likely at work over the 25 years, as conservative and libertarian ideas have taken the field. 2. If you pay people to be poor and dependent--it increases the number of poor and dependent people. This doesn't mean that every poor person--or even most poor people--are scamming the system. It does mean that if someone has two choices--be dependent or work a little harder to be independent--inertia means that some people who may have the option to get out of their poverty and dependency will stay that way. 3. If the left had actually engaged in wealth redistribution, it would not have generated the upset among the middle class. Instead, because the left is already wealthy, they have focused on income redistribution. The income tax isn't a tax on wealth (except indirectly); it's a tax on people who are trying to become wealthy. 4. While not directly associated with income redistribution, the left's baggage included mindless anti-capitalism, and a general hostility towards the values that the masses, especially in America hold dear: God, patriotism, duty, and honor. I try to imagine a leftist welfare state that wasn't actively hostile towards these values, and I imagine how differently things might have turned out. I have to imagine that, however, because it doesn't happen in the real world. What's left as an excuse for taking control over people's lives? Global warming. "Give us all this money and power over your lives, or the icecaps will melt, flood all the cities, cause terrible hurricanes, drought, starvation!" Labels: global warming Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Electric Vehicles Are Slow, Right? How about this electric motorcycle, doing the quarter mile in 8.168 seconds at 155.78 mph? There's video of it. Labels: cars John Lott's Freedomnomics I was hoping to sell this as a book review somewhere, but I can't find any magazines that will publish anything by me anymore except Shotgun News, so.... Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t. John R. Lott. Regnery Publishing, 2006. 275 pp. The cover art shows a slice of apple pie—with stars and stripes and an explanation, “A Rebuttal to Freakonomics and More”—thus explaining the “half-baked” in the subtitle. If you weren’t paying attention a couple of years ago, Freakonomics was a very successful popular book on economics. Dr. Lott’s book is a defense of free markets aimed at much the same audience—-people in the middle who aren’t quite sure what to think about how well free markets work. I rather doubt that people who are either strongly supportive or strongly hostile to free markets are going to have their minds changed by Freedomnomics—-but almost everyone will find some of the examples that Lott gives entertaining or thought-provoking. Lott articulates how and why the free market behaves the way that it does. While this behavior may sometimes frustrate us as consumers, it nonetheless provides useful benefits to the society as a whole. Lott explains why hurricane Katrina drove up gasoline prices before it hit, as oil companies raised prices to reduce demand and enlarge gasoline inventories. After Katrina damaged Gulf of Mexico well platforms, pipelines, petroleum terminals, and refineries, those enlarged inventories helped keep prices from rising higher than they otherwise might. Oil companies didn’t do this because they were looking out for the benefit of consumers, or because the government told them to do so—but because they were trying to maximize profit. As Adam Smith observed about butchers, brewers, and bakers, we don’t get gasoline because oil companies are concerned for our needs, “but from their regard to their own interest." We might not like it, but self-interest is a far more certain motivator than benevolence. Many of the most surprising sections of the book concern topics where economists have done statistical analyses to try and test particular hypotheses. As much as anyone else, I assume that campaign contributions have some significant influence on how legislators vote, but Lott provides an ingenious example of how he tested this problem, by studying the voting record of members of Congress who retired in 1978, and did not go on to other government service or lobbying. In their last term, without the pressure of raising money, they presumably were now free to vote their consciences without fear of reprisal—-and astonishingly, it had no effect (pp. 50-53). The real problem of campaign contributions isn’t usually quid pro quo corruption (although Lott acknowledges that this happens too) but that special interests contribute money to people that genuinely share their beliefs. As Lott points out, “Politicians from Kansas really do think that farmers are the backbone of America. Those from Detroit really do want to help the car industry.” (p. 56) This is no surprise; a Silicon Valley candidate who didn’t see electronics as a vital American industry would not be able to raise enough money to defeat a candidate more in line with the values of big campaign contributors. While most of Freedomnomics examined statistical work concerning interesting social problems, Lott sometimes gives examples from his personal experience, such as what happened when he involved himself in a Montana tax limitation initiative campaign in 1986. He soon learned that while it was perfectly okay for professors to involve themselves in the campaign against the initiative, the economics department at Montana State University was threatened with a cut in funding if they could not get Lott to shut up in support of the measure. Lott was younger and more naïve back then, “but I was surprised by the vehemence with which people who receive their income from taxes fought to protect that largesse.” (pp. 7-11) In light of Lott’s highly publicized research into crime rates (More Guns, Less Crime, for example), it is unsurprising that he devotes an entire chapter to economics and crime. In particular, he points to inconsistencies and factual errors in the work by economists Donohue and Levitt that claims that Roe v. Wade (1973), by legalizing abortion, caused a dramatic decline in crime rates in the 1990s. Lott instead presents evidence that suggests that legalizing abortion, by reducing incentives for men and women to be careful, increased the number of illegitimate births—-and points out that children of single mothers are actually at higher risk of becoming criminals. Lott says that the decline in crime rates in the 1990s was in spite of legalizing abortion, not because of it. While I am not sure that I find his argument persuasive, he does demonstrate that Donohue and Levitt’s opposing claim is not a slam-dunk. Perhaps the most startling claim that Lott makes is that women’s suffrage caused a dramatic increase in the size of government, because the “gender gap” reflects a genuine difference in how men and women—-especially single or divorced women—-see the appropriate role of government with respect to income security and education. He points to how state government expenditures changed in states as the percentage of women voting increased—and how the varying years in which different states granted women the vote confirms that this was not a coincidence. Even if you don’t find every argument convincing, Freedomnomics will make you think about issues that you have never even considered before. Best of all, Freedomnomics is entertaining, crisp, and free of the sometimes off-putting statistical lingo that scholarly papers concerning economics necessarily employ. Labels: book reviews Muslims Are Supposed To Pray Towards Mecca Five Times a Day... A friend worked on a jumbo jet refit for the Sultan of Brunei, and among other items on board was a "Mecca finder": something that was tied into the navigation system of the aircraft so that the gold-tipped pointer always pointed towards Mecca. I don't know how long you are supposed to wait before getting down to pray, but this picture suggests that it is either not very long--or Mecca isn't the direction of adoration for this group.  Labels: humor Admitting The Goal is to Not Hire An American Look, if you can't find an American to do a job, there's nothing wrong with hiring a foreigner. Many years ago, I was trying to hire software engineers in Silicon Valley, and I ended up hiring a South African through an H-1B visa, because we literally could not find an American. It wasn't even a matter of salary--there was just no one available. To get Department of Labor approval to hire that South African, we had to run ads to demonstrate that we couldn't find an American. We weren't gaming the system; we did exactly what we were supposed to do, and if we had found even a minimally qualified U.S. citizen or permanent resident, we would have hired that applicant instead, because it would have been faster and less expensive. We tried; we failed. Like many people who come to America with nothing, within ten years he was independently wealthy. Over here is a video showing an immigration lawyer explaining how to go through the process, and admitting that the goal of how and where they place ads is to not hire an American, but to hire a foreigner. I am sympathetic to companies that are having trouble hiring people--but there's not a shortage of skilled workers in the U.S. Pretending otherwise is dishonest. Labels: immigration Adult Stem Cells Unlike embryonic stem cells, research using adult stem cells produces no ethical concerns. As I have previously mentioned, adult stem cell research is actually further along towards producing successful treatments than embryonic stem cells. There's been more progress on reprogramming adult cells into stem cells, and even Instapundit, who has no ethical problems with embryonic stem cell research, is acknowledging that there's something coming down the pike here, pointing to this article: Only a few days ago an article in the leading journal Nature brought amazing news. A Japanese team at Kyoto University has discovered how to reprogram skin cells so that they "dedifferentiate" into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell. From this they can be morphed, theoretically, into any cell in the body, a property called pluripotency. It could be the Holy Grail of stem cell science: a technique that is both feasible and unambiguously ethical. Labels: abortion Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Band Saws I am thinking that perhaps what I need to do the rough cuts on the next Delrin project is a band saw. Not a big band saw--Sears has a 9" band saw for $119--but a band saw seems a bit more controllable than a router. Since everything that I need to cut is a rectangular solid, this has potential. I need to see if my neighbor who does woodworking has one. I think I want to experiment a bit before I commit myself to one. And yes, I know that band saws have another common use--by butchers. Even more than a drill press, one must exercise great care in using a band saw. UPDATE: One of my neighbors has a band saw--a 12" Delta that looks ancient enough to have been made somewhere that at least they use a Roman alphabet, even if they don't speak English. This is definitely the way to do this. He didn't have a fence appropriate to my needs, but even free hand, I managed to do an adequate job of making a couple of rough cuts. Not wanting to wear out my welcome, I stopped with two rough cuts, and didn't make the other two, much larger rough cuts--and regretted that decision for the next several hours, as I removed a .35" x 1.57" x 2.75" chunk of Delrin with an end mill. To my surprise, I found a monstrously big end mill--0.75" diameter and about 1.75" tall cutting surface--and so I was able to make make all my motions in the X and Y planes. But because of the height of the cutting face of the end mill, I was only taking off 20/1000ths of an inch on the forward pass, and 5/1000ths of an inch on the backward pass. (Trying to take off more than that caused it to chatter.) In spite of, I thought, extraordinarily careful measurement, the final result would not quite fit into the leg, so I had to make a few cuts here and there. The good news is that the final version slides right in, and is actually more amenable to band saw work, with just a few minutes of precision work with the end mill. My plan to use the Vixen leg as a template for positioning the holes in my piece worked perfectly, and it actually looks like something that might have come out of the Vixen factory! (Provided, of course, you don't look at the ugly surfaces that are now hidden inside the tripod leg. Production will be better.) I also made a set of casters for a customer who sent me his leg (tripod leg, of course) because the Celestron 93493 tripod isn't exactly the same dimensions as other Celestron tripods that I have made for. This went very well; I received the leg today, measured it, picked out the stock to work from, and machined the parts in time that I will be shipping the leg and the caster set back tomorrow. Had I been thinking a bit farther ahead, I could have dropped them at the post office this afternoon. Labels: machining, telescopes Sorry For The Lack of Activity Here... I have been extraordinarily busy for my employer, and my spare time has been spent this evening reading H. Richard Lamb, ed., the Homeless Mentally Ill: A Task Force Report of the American Psychiatric Association (1984). Surprisingly enough, while they criticized the method by which deinstitutionalization was implemented, and the reports contain some occasionally veiled references that show that they were holding their tongues a bit, they were reluctant to criticize the idea. But they essentially argued that yes, there were patients who benefited from deinstitutionalization, but there were others who very clearly were worse off as a result. (Surprise, surprise.) Labels: deinstitutionalization A Unique Use for Fish and Chips They won't let decent people have guns in Britain, so they are reduced to improvising their weapons: A chip shop worker faced with an armed robber scared him off by waving a fish slice dripping in hot fat."You can have my breaded cod when you pull it from my cold, malt vinegar soaked fingers!" Labels: humor Monday, June 18, 2007
How Not to Measure Temperature Over at Watts Up With That? is a collection of hilarious pictures of official U.S. Weather Service temperature monitoring stations, and after you look at some of them, you can see why the data that comes from them is showing global warming. A number of the thermometers are located within a few feet of air conditioning exhaust fans, another is sitting at the end of a jet runway--literally dozens of feet from jet exhausts. Here's one that is located next to a trash burning barrel! And my all-time favorite: First site is the Lodi Municipal Service Center, 38.11619N 121.29003W. FYI, Lodi runs their own municipal district, which is why they own a substation. Note the bank of fans on the big transformer. they are about 30 feet away. I wasn't about to get close enough to the transformers to measure for sure. The fans exhaust the waste heat the transformer produces. Note that when temperatures are at their highest, so is electrical energy use for air conditioning. And of course, our thermometer will track this trend.Garbage in, garbage out. I've mentioned before that there have long been concerns that the thermometers in urban areas are warming up because urban areas have lots of concrete (which turns sunlight into heat for hours afterwards), and because population growth in urban areas creates artificially warm microclimates. These examples are pretty persuasive that this is indeed a serious problem--and some of the graphs, such as the one for this station in Tahoe City, are so dramatic that you can pretty well guess when the trash burning barrel was placed five feet from the thermometer. Labels: global warming It's Not Often You See A V.P. of a Technology Company Running From a Violent Crime Charge It doesn't seem to be getting any press in the U.S.: New Delhi: A non-resident Indian who allegedly raped his house help in Delhi last week has fled to the US, police said on Monday.Gulati isn't just a "software professional", but a V.P. of Ciena. Here's a recent patent with his name on it. UPDATE: According to Ciena, it's not the same Neeraj Gulati. Here's the Interpol flyer for the guy wanted in India; this appears to be the VP of Ciena by that name. They sure don't look like the same guy to me. Sunday, June 17, 2007
Improper Commitments I mentioned a while back that I was having trouble finding evidence that the due process revolution that affected mental hospitals in the 1960s actually involved a widespread problem. Other than Bruce J. Ennis's Prisoners of Psychiatry (1972), which a little research suggested was too incomplete in its information to completely trust as evidence on this, I just wasn't finding evidence of widespread abuses. I just finished reading a 1963 subcommittee report. To Protect the Constitutional Rights of the Mentally Ill, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate (88th Cong., 1st sess.) The title alone emphasizes how focused they were on the rights of the mentally ill. There is an enormous amount of discussion of the dangers of people being improperly committed, and why the mental health laws for the District of Columbia needed to make sure that this didn't happen--but what is really odd is that every witness who testified about this subject was confident that this had not been a problem in D.C., and was rare elsewhere in America. One of the other issues that the bill raised was concerns about improper commitments—-or “railroading” a sane person, as several witnesses colorfully referred to it. But in spite of multiple witnesses who expressed concern that this could happen, and almost certainly, somewhere, did happen, there are no horror stories presented by any of the witnesses. Indeed, Judge Holtzoff admitted, “Such cases are rare….” Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court, Matthew H. McGuire went even further, and claimed that he was not aware of any cases where the existing D.C. law had led to such improper commitments. “We have had outstanding success here in the District of Columbia… and certainly the so-called railroading of an individual to a mental institution under its provisions is something that couldn’t possibly happen.” Many other witnesses, even those that one might expect to be concerned about this possibility generally discounted that this had been a problem. Even the ACLU’s representative at the hearings, Elyce H. Zenoff, was careful not to claim that there was an existing problem. Referring to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, “There are many dedicated men and women on its staff who, we know, are solicitous of the legal rights of patients. However, there is no way of knowing whether those who may join the staff in the future will be equally solicitous.” The one witness who was prepared to admit that some inmates might be hospitalized somewhere improperly or for too long, was Dr. Dale Cameron, superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s (D.C. mental hospital): In short, the ACLU’s zealous concern about the fine details of due process—-for example, their insistence that the normal rules of evidence should apply to competency hearings, requiring those who filed written reports appear in person to be cross-examined-—seems far more focused on a problem that everyone at the hearings, even the ACLU, believed was not present in D.C.’s mental hospitals, and was rare elsewhere in the United States. Even one person locked up in a mental hospital improperly is a tragedy to be avoided, of course, but any system that has people involved is going to make mistakes, and be subject to abuse of power. The only way to build a perfect system--one that never screws up and does X is to build a system that never does X. Labels: deinstitutionalization |
