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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, November 17, 2007
Astonishing--Perhaps Fatal Admission Snowflakes in Hell and Call me Ahab brought to my attention this November 13, 2007 Washington Post article about the DC gun control law, and its current problems. If I thought the editors of the Washington Post were planning that far ahead, I would wonder if they decided to let their liberal readers down slowly about what is going to happen before the Supreme Court. The article both admits that the DC gun control law did not work--as measured by things like the murder rate--but even quotes members of the DC City Council that it wasn't supposed to solve DC's problems. It was supposed to send a message!
I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to know if this admission constitutes a fatal turn for the District of Criminals or not. In general, the courts are supposed to accept a legislative body's claim, "We were doing this for a legitimate purpose X" unless there is clear evidence that they were not. (For example, when Alabama's legislature passed a law that provided for a minute of silence at the beginning of every school day, and proponents admitted during legislative debate that it was to provide an opportunity for prayer--something that the state denied in court.) There might still be a conflict with the state or federal constitution, but unless that conflict is obvious, the courts are supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to the legislative body. (Except if it involves homosexuality or one of the other "special" groups that the courts so vigorously protect--then the rules all change.) Still, there's a difference between, "We passed this law effectively banning new handguns in the District because it was necessary for public health and safety" and, "We passed this law because we hoped that other cities might adopt it, and eventually, reduce the supply of guns enough that it might eventually make the District a little safer." One is a law passed for a legitimate public purpose (even if doesn't work), while the other is pretty indirect. To make an analogy that might be a bit clearer: if the State of Alabama passed a law that prohibited sex between strangers, they could argue that this was a public health measure designed to reduce the spread of STDs. But if they passed a law that taxed single adults $5000 a year as an encouragement for them to get married, in the hopes that it would reduce sex between strangers, and thus reduce the spread of STDs--well, that's a lot more indirect. The first law is nanny-statism at its worst, and has many implementation problems, but it is at least an attempt to use the police powers of the state for what is generally considered a legitimate public health and safety issue. The second law is so indirect that you would have to consider it insane. Labels: gun rights If There Is Anything Messier and Less Elegant Than Learning to Lay Up Fiberglass Tubes It must be appendectomies done with a hatchet. I'm back to working on Big Bertha's weight reduction program. (She's not fat; she just has big bones--too much wood, not enough aluminum.) I decided to use two pieces of Sonotube, each about 12 inches long and a bit more 20" inside diameter. One will hold the mirror cell, and the other will hold the focuser, diagonal, and finder. This stuff isn't as stiff as I would like (but it was $5.75 per foot), so I decided to try and improvise fiberglassing. I bought a fiberglass repair kit and a big bag of latex gloves (absolutely necessary for this job), and tried to fiberglass these pieces. I suspended both of them on a piece of wood between two chairs, then painted the exterior surface with the epoxy mix as quick as I could, then put fiberglass matting on the outside, and tried to paint another layer of epoxy mix on top. It is really ugly. I am beginning to wonder if I might be better off spending the money to buy these sections from someone who doesn't mind (for some big bucks) getting his hands messy. Yuck. UPDATE: A reader pointed me to this account of fiberglassing a cardboard tube which I remember reading. I remember the part about using a stick to hold the tube. I didn't remember the part about the temperature needing to be 60-80 degrees. That may be why the resin was so thick that it kept grabbing the fiberglass mat and pulling it loose--making a really ugly mess. This is a more ambitious effort that doesn't involve starting with a cardboard tube at all! Labels: telescopes Friday, November 16, 2007
Odd Little Movie: Possession (2002) No, it's not about demons. I found it an achingly beautiful bittersweet romance story. The framing story involves two modern scholars who are both way too attractive to be real academics (when I tell you that Gynweth Paltrow plays the feminist literature professor, that alone should tell you how far from reality it is). She and an American grad student try to piece together a mystery involving two Victorian poets from letters, diaries, and other clues. And yes, it is far more watchable than that sounds. This is, in some ways, a profoundly unPC movie. There's one character who leaves her lifelong lesbian relationship because she falls madly in love with a man. It is also a film in which people feel free to do as they wish--ignoring conventional morality--and the consequences are very Victorian. If you are familiar with the story of Dante Rossetti and burying a book of his poems with his wife--and then retrieving it six years later--well, you will recognize the odd little reference to that, too. It may remind you a bit of National Treasure or The Da Vinci Code as our two scholars rush around from archive to decaying English manor house to library--and there is a willingness to abscond with primary sources that I assure you, real scholars would never do. (Of course, I used to think that real scholars wouldn't just make stuff up, either.) There is also a bit less use of white gloves when handling antique papers and items than would really happen. But still, it does capture something of the excitement of scholarly investigation, and adds a dollop of romance on top of it all. Okay, maybe I'm partial to this movie because I'm married to someone whose specialty in grad school was Victorian literature. One aspect of the film that really, really grabbed me at a very visceral level was how the actors managed to convey with subtlety and surprising economy of words and gestures the excitement of two people falling in love. You don't really realize, until you see a film this deftly made, that most films manage to only give you the impression of animal lust. There is a bit of that involved as well, of course, but this film makes me remember the magnetism that comes from two similar minds that are attracted to each other. This film brought back an enormously powerful set of memories of when I met my wife, and for the first time, I found not just someone that I enjoyed being around, but another soul that rang in perfect harmony--and the rush of that first kiss. Labels: movie reviews Is This Too Much Like The Memory Hole in 1984? Early this year, the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog reported a news story about a man who was shot by his father. Now, the man who was shot tells me that he was found innocent on all criminal charges related to the incident, and his father is now being prosecuted for bribing a government official--presumably in relation to the incident. He wants not just a correction or an update (although I can't find any news accounts of his being cleared)--but for the posting to disappear. Now, he has some good reasons that I won't go into for why he would like all references to this unfortunate situation to go away. But since there are no news accounts that show that he was cleared--and I have received no official documents showing that he was cleared--and even all accounts of the original shooting have disappeared--this is beginning to feel a bit like the memory hole in 1984. Any thoughts? SUVs and Terrorism Environmentalists sometimes like to claim that SUVs fund terrorism, because of the amount of gas that they consume, putting money into nations where some of the population has its turbans wound too tight. There's some truth to that, but when environmentalists retire their private jets, or in John Travolta's case, his fleet of private jets, and as Instapundit pointed out a while ago: I'll buy it when they stop jetting off for global-warming conferences in Bali. As I've said before, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who keep telling me it's a crisis start acting as if it's a crisis.Well, let's just call me a bit skeptical. However, here's a connection between SUVs and terrorism that completely surprised me, in a posting by Eric over at Classical Values. This started out as a posting about a carjacking victim who took the gun away from the bad guys, and as often happens, ended in tragedy--for the bad guys, who are African immigrants. Eric links to articles in the November 16, 2007 Philadelphia Daily News and October 2, 2005 Boston Globe that indicate there is a significant amount of SUV theft going on in America for export--and that terrorists in the Middle East are some of the customers: WASHINGTON -- The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering that some of the vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior government officials.So the next time that you read of a carjacking victim shooting a carjacker--like all of these carjacking incidents on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog--you are perhaps reading of another vict0ry in the Global War on Terrorism. Labels: global warming, gun self-defense, terrorism For Those Who Think There's No Overlap In some circles, I am considered a "homophobe" for pointing out that there are homosexual activists who are pedophiles--and don't see these two categories as disjoint sets. For a very long time, homosexual activists were reluctant to separate themselves from groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association. There are still a number of pedophiles out there who apparently didn't get the memo, and are still loudly homosexual and loudly pedophiles, like this guy, who runs the NGblog. Here he is whining that ENDA (the sexual orientation non-discrimination bill working its way through Congress) doesn't go far enough in protecting the "transgendered." Here he is complaining that sex offender laws and laws against child pornography are a bad thing. Here he is organizing a boycott of a particular business because they contribute to what he calls the "homophobic Boy Scouts." Oh, and according to this website, it is the NGblog because "NG" is "Nelson Garcia," a level one sex offender in New York State, and a member of NAMBLA. Unfortunately, the New York State Sex Offender Registry doesn't let you look up level one sex offenders online. It sounds like the ACLU has been busy: You can access the Subdirectory on this web site by clicking on the "Search Subdirectory " button. You can search for level 2 and level 3 offenders by name, county or zip code. Please note that a federal court injunction currently prohibits the release of information on this web site concerning sex offenders who committed their crime prior to January 21, 1996 and were assigned a risk level prior to January 1, 2000, unless they have had an opportunity for a due process hearing.Of course, to be a sex offender you have to have been convicted of a crime, which should qualify as due process, but I am guessing that someone argued that being listed as a sex offender requires a separate due process hearing. There is this Bronx District Attorney's office report (on p. 26) that discusses a "Nelson Garcia" who was convicted of mailing a DVD of child pornography to what he thought was a 14 year old. (Actually a cop.) There are a number of other items that make it likely that NGblog is that of Nelson Garcia, the convicted sex offender. This pretense that pedophiles are fundamentally different from homosexuals--that a person who identifies himself as a homosexual can't be a pedophile and vice versa--is simply false. There are pedophiles who identify themselves as heterosexual, as homosexual, and bisexual. The media have done a really good job of pretending that there's no overlap--and yet the NGblog is one of those reminders that this is simply not true. If pedophilia is truly a "sexual orientation," will ENDA protect pedophiles who want a job at the day care center? And on what basis will you reject such person, if ENDA passes? Labels: child sexual abuse, homosexuality, NAMBLA Thursday, November 15, 2007
Pennsylvania Gun Owners Your urgent attention is needed. See this alert from the Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association. Governor Rendell is apparently intent on damaging the rights of Pennsylvania gun owners because Philadelphia is unwilling to lock up violent criminals. Labels: gun rights Two Different Laws Need Nuking This case from California is a reminder that both the California assault weapons law needs to be repealed, and the provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 that prohibits interstate purchases of firearms (with a few limited exceptions) needs to be repealed. From the November 14, 2007 San Diego Union-Tribune: SAN DIEGO – An El Cajon businessman who purchased 10 guns in Arizona for a wealthy La Jolla man was sentenced Wednesday to two months in federal prison and six months of home confinement.Home invasion? Well, I can understand why someone might have felt a need for better weapons. Yes, you can buy pretty respectable home defense weapons in California--still--but I confess after reading this other story about the home invasion, I can see why someone was tempted to break both federal and California law. From the October 20, 2007 San Diego Union-Tribune: This is what upsets me so much about gun control laws that are not narrowly aimed at criminals, but are intended to prohibit the law-abiding as well. If I were a billionaire, instead of breaking California and federal law, I would say goodbye to California, and move somewhere that I am allowed to defend myself. And maybe spend some of that enormous wealth helping to elect people to California's legislature who are more concerned about locking up criminals than making criminals of their victims. As much as it may be a surprise to you, there are a lot of people who live in California who are not independently wealthy, and can't just afford to pick up and move to a state with more sensible gun control laws after something traumatic like a home invasion. These are the people who get the full tragedy of California's idiocy: laws that reduce the access of victims to the most effective home defense weapons. For some odd reason, these laws don't seem to discourage those planning robbery, rape, and murder, from being adequately armed for their tasks. I'm not sure of the exact motivation for GCA68's ban on interstate gun sales. I suspect that it was because there was no national background check system (we have one now), and to make it easier for states that did have background check or licensing systems to enforce those rules. The granddaddy of this is the 1927 federal law that bans mailing of handguns. While there were a lot of reasons for this, I do recall seeing some Congressional speeches that involved a member of Congress from Tennessee complaining that otherwise there was no way to keep black people from getting pistols. Labels: gun rights How To ENDA Free Speech No, this isn't a joke with Italian accent. Hans Bader over at OpenMarket.org points out that the sexual orientation non-discrimination bill, even while not directly a suppression of free speech bill, has that potential because of the mixed and confused state of current jurisprudence: While well-intended, it could lead to very costly lawsuits against employers for things their employees say, even if the employer itself has no discriminatory bias.Look: if there are already people talking about using ENDA or similar state laws to shut up other employees, this should worry you. While Bader points out that many of these secondhand bias claims don't survive in the courts, some of them do:
It is entirely possible that the courts will reject attempts to use ENDA as a tool of censorship. But the prospect of such suits is likely to make employers increasingly willing to tell employees to shut up (even over lunch) or to mandate sensitivity training programs that should make you worried. Especially because a previous post by Bader points to this worrisome issue: Moreover, ENDA may lead to employers settling even weak or dubious discrimination claims, especially those alleging wrongful termination or harassment, since ENDA incorporates the Christiansburg Garment standard for awarding attorneys fees — a sort of “heads I win, tails you lose” scheme under which the plaintiff gets his attorneys fees paid for by the other side if he wins, but the employer has to pay its own attorneys fees even if it wins (a win at trial typically costs an employer at least $250,000).If you know that you are going to have to pay your legal costs even if you win, the incentive to either settle out of court for less than the likely legal fees--or worse, create a code of employee conduct designed to shut people up--is very strong. Think about it for a minute or two, and you will realize that a code of employee conduct that says that you may not ever express disapproval of homosexuality, even away from work, provides a basis for firing someone--and on what basis can they file suit? Labels: homosexuality Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Gideon to Trojan I mentioned several months back a modest counterrevolution in Sweden, when one of the hotel chains decided to remove Gideon's Bibles from their hotel rooms--and even those very liberal Swedes, as a nation, responded with upset. Religion was making a modest comeback in Europe. (Admittedly, starting from near-zero, almost anything is a step up.) Now I see this rather astonishing article in Newsweek. Yes, I found out about this from the American Family Association, and as with most such amazing claims that I receive, I make some effort to verify it before going forward. From November 8, 2007 Newsweek:
Now, it doesn't particularly bother me that hotels might be aiming at encouraging some wild times by their guests. Let's face it: much of the upscale "bed and breakfast" market is romantic getaways. (Although the "One Night Stand" package is pretty clearly aiming at actions that aren't "romantic getaways" at all.) It does somewhat concern me that hotels think: 1. Bible, or "intimacy kits"--as though the two are mutually exclusive. I am always astonished at how secular Americans so completely misunderstand Christianity and its view of sexuality. Christianity teaches that sex outside of marriage is wrong, but it strongly encourages sex inside of marriage. The secularists should be aware that the infamous "lie back and think of England" statement attributed to Alice, Lady Hillingdon (1857-1940) has never been properly attributed, and even if she did write it, it may be more a statement of her relationship to her husband than a widely held Victorian belief. 2. That there's some need to scrap Bibles for fear of offending what? Muslims? Dhimmitude is coming, and the same corporate interests that have bent over forwards to make the homosexual community happy are going to put our collective heads on the block to make Islam happy. Heaven forbid that U.S. corporations not take steps that offend the majority of Americans! Labels: decline and fall of Western civilization 48mm Camera Filter Tap & Die There is a very common camera filter thread that I believe is M48x0.75. I am having trouble finding a source for tap and die for cutting threads for this size. I've tried the obvious places, like McMaster-Carr and MSC Direct, and I've searched the web. Any suggestions of who might have such a tap and die set? UPDATE: I received a number of good suggestions, and amazingly enough, it does not appear that anyone has such a tap available off the shelf at less than $150. The reason that I need this ability is that my 5" refractor uses an astonishing piece of optics called an Aries Chromacor, which is made by one of those Ukrainian optical wizards who I gather used to work for the Soviet military--and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, put his expertise to work on peace dividend stuff. In this case, the Aries Chromacor is a piece of rather specialized glass that does two things, simultaneously: 1. It corrects the chromatic aberration that is common to all but apochromatic refractors. 2. It also corrects for whatever spherical aberration your refractor has. If you have a 1/6th wave undercorrected achromatic refractor, you buy an Aries Chromacor that has a 1/6th wave overcorrection built in. Anyway, it works very well--turning what would otherwise be a so-so cheap refractor into something that is perhaps 85-90% of an apochromat for about 30% of the price. A detailed review that I wrote several years ago is here. As with all clever compromises, there are couple of irritations about the Chromacor. Because it goes inside the telescope tube, at the eyepiece focuser end, something has to hold it place. The Chromacor has a male, 48mm filter thread on it. Refractor diagonals (at least some refractor diagonals) have the end that goes into the focuser tube threaded to accept 48mm filters, so the Chromacor just screws onto the end. This works fine, except that the diagonal adds enough length to the optical path that you can't attach a camera at prime focus--the focal point won't be at the focal plane of the camera. To take prime focus photographs requires removing the diagonal--and thus the Chromacor. What is needed to solve this problem is something that goes inside the focuser tube, and has 48mm filter threads on one end. That's why I was looking for a way to tap M48x0.75 threads. Well, it turns out that others have had this problem, and one solution is this Televue 2" eyepiece barrel extension. I'm told that it has 48mm threads (probably at both ends) so that you can attach it to a 2" diameter eyepiece barrel, and lengthen the eyepiece. I think what I will do (once I have verified the thread details) is buy one (or perhaps two), and then machine a piece of aluminum that will slide into the focuser tube. On one end, it will be wide enough that it doesn't slide all the way into the tube. On the other end, it will be small enough that the threads on the barrel extension will slide in, and I can use some epoxy to hold everything together. Then I can screw the Chromacor into the other end of the barrel extension. Labels: telescopes Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Sunrise Over Bogus Basin Sunrise a few days ago over Bogus Basin, the ski resort to our east.  Click to enlarge Comet 17P/Holmes I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was going to try and get a picture. I did. At ASA 1600, 30 second exposure. My battery pack ran out of juice for the telescope mount drive, so....  Click to enlarge I may have overprocessed the picture--but ASA 1600 is a pretty grainy speed setting on film. I've reduced the image size substantially--from about 6MB to about 800KB--but it doesn't seem to have done any real harm to the picture. I would have taken some longer exposures, but it takes a while to recharge the battery pack (which I haven't recharged recently enough to have a full charge), and by the time it was getting to full charge, there just wasn't any way to stay warm enough outside. Tomorrow night, I will try this again, perhaps at ASA 100, with a 25 or 30 minute exposure. UPDATE: I suppose that I should give all the grubby details. Pentax K10D, prime focus on a Photon Instruments 5" f/9 achromatic refractor. UPDATE 2: To find the comet (you will want binoculars), find the big W of Cassiopeia, and then take about a 30 degree line down to the eastern horizon. A bit farther than the width of the W will be several bright stars that make up Perseus. Just to the west of the brighter stars in Perseus will be a faint fuzzy. Aim your binoculars at it. Labels: astrophotography STDs At Record Levels From November 13, 2007 Associated Press: ATLANTA - More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year — the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.Not sure? Hmmm. Could it be a dramatic increase in people who are changing sexual partners more frequently than they change their cell phone provider? Yes, using condoms helps, but it isn't a sure method of avoiding STDs. There's a reason that cable television channels are awash in ads for drugs to help people suffering from herpes outbreaks, and who don't want to give it to their current sexual partner. UPDATE: Shocking: the AP version of the story left out this detail that appears in the November 14, 2007 Los Angeles Times story about this: Gay and bisexual men made up 64% of new cases of primary and secondary syphilis in 2006.Hmmm. About 4-4.5% of men are gay or bisexual--so about 2-2.25% of the population has 64% of the new cases of syphilis. Who woulda thunk it? Labels: STDs Ron Paul's Supporters I mentioned a few weeks back my discomfort with some of Ron Paul's supporters, and some of the things Ron Paul wrote after the 1988 campaign that were two steps back from "international Jewish bankers control the world." Now I see that Stormfront and other neo-Nazi organizations are apparently getting behind Ron Paul's campaign--which is not surprising, since these groups are also heavily engaged in opposition to the Iraq War: The New Republic is also concerned: Daniel Siederaski of the Jewish Telegraph Agency has a story that should rile all those liberals oddly attracted to the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul: not only have neo-Nazis vocally expressed support for his campaign and form a crucial part of his online spam brigades, but one of their leaders has donated money and the Texas Republican hasn't decided yet whether to return it. Siederaski has been trying to get in touch with the Paul campaign for an explanation, but thus far, his many phone calls have gone unreturned, leading him to conclude that "Ron Paul will take money from Nazis. But he won’t take telephone calls from Jews."If you have the stomach for it, you can see their endorsements of Ron Paul's campaign at Vanguard News Network (their masthead says, "No Jews. Just Right."): Ron Paul’s opponents, whether left-wing or right-wing, should be nervous. Because Paul’s ideas - such as “isolationism” in foreign matters and reforming America’s money system - could spread far and wide. And some people, especially Jews, don’t want that to happen. They want America to keep fighting wars for Israel.Ron Paul's supporters aren't necessarily an indication of where Ron Paul stands. But he does need to denounce these hatemongers. Of course, if he does so, some of the Ron Paul supporters that I have met would probably lose heart. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates No Decision From the Supreme Court on DC Case According to SCOTUSBlog, the Supreme Court did not grant or deny cert on the DC gun control case: Remember: it takes four justices to grant cert. It is very, very difficult for me to believe that only three justices consider this important enough of a question of law for the Court to consider. So it may be the question above (someone is writing a dissent from the denial and needs more time). Or it may be that there are six justices who are afraid to confront this question. Let's do the math. There are nine justices on the Court. If a majority are in favor of overturning the Court of Appeals decision, then they have the votes to grant cert plus one. If a majority are in favor of upholding the Court of Appeals decision, then they have the votes to grant cert plus one. So why wouldn't they grant cert? Perhaps there is a majority in favor of overturning the Court of Appeals, and ruling that the Second Amendment doesn't protect an individual right, but they realize that doing so would launch a political firestorm in the U.S., and pretty well destroy any chance of the Democrats taking control of the White House next year. If so, they are prepared to destroy the existing ban on bringing handguns into the District, in order to put a Democrat in the White House next year. This really confuses me. Labels: gun rights Monday, November 12, 2007
Family Trees Aren't you looking forward to decorating the family tree next month with lights and ornaments? Yes, it isn't a Christmas tree anymore, but a "family tree." See page 2 of the Lowe's catalog. Is it just me, or is there something positively Orwellian about this? Where I grew up, you would hear Jews refer to them (laughingly) as "Hannukah bushes." But no one, I repeat, no one, called them "family trees." If Christians were a tiny little fraction of the population of this country (say, 1-2%), I could understand if Lowe's had no idea what our traditions were. But we are still a strong majority--and to see a phrase that has been in continuous use since at least the middle of the 19th century suddenly replaced with this bizarre euphemism is a little scary--almost like the powers that be have decided to phase out Christianity in the United States. What's next? UPDATE: Lowe's is now apologizing for a proof reading error. What? This doesn't make any sense at all. We Had An Impressive Storm Today And after it was over, the clouds came pouring through the gap from Horseshoe Bend towards Boise. Click here to see the video. I shot this with the HP E427 camera in video mode. Corporation Manipulating Public Opinion I was watching the news earlier, and someone mentioned that a major U.S. corporation--indeed, one of the largest on Earth--has been engaged in some very sneaky propaganda. They actually managed to get an entire television network to devote itself for a week--even changing their sitcoms to fit the theme--and it is a theme that will benefit the corporation's economic interests. No, not Halliburton. General Electric. They are a big player in everything from solar power to compact fluorescent light bulbs--and their network, NBC, devoted last week to "Green is Universal." Oh yeah, and they bought up Enron's energy trading schemes a while back, when Enron was in trouble. Isn't it amazing how the same crowd that sees the Iraq War as a payback to Halliburton doesn't say a word about a company with substantial business interests in global warming hysteria using its control of a television network to promote their policies? Labels: global warming A MySpace Tragedy But really, a moral failing tragedy. From the November 12, 2007 Suburban Journals, which is apparently a publication of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: His name was Josh Evans. He was 16 years old. And he was hot.Josh did not exist--and after playing games with Megan's head long enough, the teenagers involved drove her to suicide. If this stupid stunt had been entirely the work of teenagers, I would have been disappointed, but not terribly surprised. But the parents of one of the teenagers that put this ultimately deadly fraud together apparently played a part in it. What really bothers me about this article is how completely unresponsible the parents who played a crucial role in this feel. Megan's parents are now divorcing. Megan's mom kept a very, very close watch on her daughter's online activities--but even this wasn't enough. I can remember junior high school very well--the ferocious cruelties, the violence. Adding the anonymity and disconnectedness of cyberspace just aggravates the problem. Labels: decline and fall of Western civilization I Smell Some Justification Coming I've mentioned in the past that some parts of the academic community is in the process of trying to come up with justifications for adults having sex with children, and pointed to the ACLU's efforts to find a "due process liberty interest" for minors having sex with adults--in a case where the minor said No. I've mentioned in the past studies that suggest that early sex for girls is very destructive, leading to increased suicide attempts. Now I see this November 11, 2007 Washington Post article:
The phrase that ought to scare you witless is: "preteen years." Now, it is entirely possible that this study is correct that there is no statistically significant correlation between early sex and juvenile delinquency. But I would be very surprised if this "consensual sex in their ... preeteen years" isn't doing considerable damage. Over at Volokh Conspiracy, the usual commenters (largely lawyers, law professors, and law students) have turned to argue in favor of often and young, such as: I actually have some personal experience with this one -- I lost my virginity at age 12 (to a 26 year old). Looking back on it 30 years later I don't see that waiting would have hurt me, but neither do I see that not waiting did me any harm, and I'd be surprised if there is any kind of a cause and effect relationship between early loss of virginity and anything.and: As bad as the neo-puritans, prudes and government say pre-teen sex, teen sex and child pornography are, the exact opposite is true. They are every bit as GOOD as their detractors are maintaining that they are bad.Watching the crowd that shows up to comment at Volokh Conspiracy is part of why I am increasingly of the opinion that instead of making law school a requirement to be a judge, it should be a disqualifier. For reasons that I don't entirely understand, it seems like a really unsavory bunch have been going to law school the last few years. Labels: child sexual abuse Freedom of Speech: How Far Does It Go? Over at Classical Values, Eric is pointing to some examples of stuff that the ACLU should, in theory, be filing suit to protect, if they actually take their ahistorical doctrines of freedom of speech seriously: Eric also points to another example of a person whose freedom of speech rights are being denied--and where's the ACLU? In this video, well known anti-gay/anti-abortion activist Michael Marcavage has his signs taken away by local police in Media, PA. The reason given is that the pictures would "upset the children." As usual, Eric is asking important questions that reveal the foolishness of the unlimited freedom of speech position that the ACLU often takes--one that considers nude dancing, flag burning, and Fred Phelps' flock holding up offensive signs at a funeral, to be constitutionally protected forms of speech. Labels: freedom of speech Are You Familiar With This Statute? 26 Henry 8 ch. 6 "Bearing Arms at Assemblies in Wales Prohibited" I can't seem to find this statute of Henry VIII anywhere online. If you have a statute book for England, I would love the see the text of it. Labels: gun history Sunday, November 11, 2007
Comet 17P/Holmes I mentioned this a week or two back--a comet that went from barely visible telescopically to naked eye in a few hours. There's a finder chart here that shows how to find it. (It has moved noticeably closer to Cassiopeia since that photograph was taken October 30.) It will be a fuzzy patch to the naked eye (at least, if you have skies as dark as mine). But put some decent binoculars on it, and oh my! I don't see any tail on it yet, but perhaps with Big Bertha and the 85mm eyepiece, there might be some chance. Tomorrow night, a little earlier in the evening, I will be rolling out one of my telescopes and trying to photograph it. UPDATE: I probably should have jumped at the chance last night. The clouds have come in. More Wildlife Our cat became quite aggressive at the back slider--and then we saw it: a skunk sitting under the patio table. Big--especially because we normally only see skunks in the two-dimensional, roadkill form. Sorry, our cat scared the skunk away before we could get a picture. Three Movies: Two Good, One Not So Good I was manufacturing ScopeRoller 11 Deluxe sets last night, mostly in front of the TV. Not the parts done with power tools, obviously, but once I have the holes drilled, I can hand tap them, and screw all the parts together. Anyway, the first movie was We Were Soldiers (2002), a film version of Lt. Gen. Hal Moore's memoir We Were Soldiers Once...And Young about the Battle of La Drang in 1965. It was a stirring film about a deeply religious officer looking to do his duty to God, country, and his men, in a situation that in retrospect made very little sense. It's hard to watch this and not feel tremendous respect for the soldiers involved--and contempt for the idiocy of how the civilian leadership made the decisions about how the Vietnam War was fought. It is harrowing to watch the battle scenes, and heartbreaking to watch the scenes stateside as families confront the awfulness of war. The second movie was Mission Impossible 2--one of those reminders that you can spend a lot of money on a film, but if the screenwriters have the maturity of teenagers, the results can be very disappointing. I think I saw complaints about Mission Impossible having too complex of a plot--and they seem have gone too far the other direction, with a very direct, not terribly involving plot, but complex stunts, lots and lots of explosions, and Agent Hunt convincing a supermodel jewel thief (there are lots of those around, you know) to join the team--but of course, they hop into the sack immediately. As I said--very realistic--if you are a teenager. What a waste. The third movie was Sahara, which was actually something of a surprise. I had seen trailers for it, and thought, "It looks like an action adventure movie. I'll wait for it to come on TV." Yet it was a far better film than I expected. It had witty dialog reminiscent of The Mummy or Tremors, which redeemed what otherwise might have been a fairly uninspiring action adventure movie. It actually had at least two major plots to it, with an incident on the beach that brings all the players together. Someone actually made the effort to create a plausible backstory for the two action leads (all expressed in the opening credits, as we see various newspaper clippings on a wall)--which otherwise would have made their derring-do laughably impossible. I don't want to give away too much of Sahara, but imagine a historical context and involvement like National Treasure, except with far more historical plausibility. (I won't say plausible, but it only required me to press the "Historian Off" button twice or three times to enjoy it, unlike National Treasure, where my finger was getting blistered from having to keep hitting the button.) It wasn't a great movie, but it was fun, and well worth sitting through the commercials to watch! UPDATE: A reader tells me that he really enjoyed the movie--after giving up on Clive Cussler's novel from which the movie is derived after four chapters. From the description of the novel, the screenplay took certain liberties with the location. Am I Really This Important? Or am I a big fish in a small pond? Over at Politics and Christianity is a list of Intellectual Conservative's Who's Who of Conservative Political Websites of 2007--and I'm at number 79 on the list! |
