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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, December 15, 2007
HP12C Calculator Finally Needed New Batteries HP calculators have long been on my list of things that just really impress the heck out of me. I bought an HP-45 when I went off to the first (and only) year at USC. (The HP-45 was a more full featured version of the revolutionary HP-35.) I had worked all summer debugging weird operating system problems with minicomputers, and used part of my miserable $80 a week pay to save up for this gem. For those of us who grew up using slide rules (and carrying them in holsters on our belts) to solve physical science problems, this was such a leap forward--no more trying to figure out where the decimal point went in the mantissa! (Is this .003 Newtons of force? Or 3000 Newtons of force?) This was back in the bad old days when manufacturers had enforceable "fair trade" agreements that prohibited most stores from selling HP calculators below the manufacturer's "suggested" retail price. In practice, the HP-45 was $395 everywhere you went, except at university bookstores and a few other places that required to prove that you were faculty or student. My HP-45 at the USC bookstore was $309, with sales tax--and worth every penny, since I was taking chemistry and physics that year. That HP-45 served me well, until it was burgled, along with my German hyperinflation 100 million mark note. (I'm sure that the burglar was quite disappointed to discover that he couldn't exchange it at the then current rate of four marks per dollar.) I bought an HP-27 calculator, which was a mixture of scientific and business functions with the insurance company's payout--and had money left over. I loved that HP-27--even smaller and more powerful than the HP-45, but eventually, the NiCad batteries wouldn't recharge, and then the charger wouldn't recharge new batteries. I gave the calculator to a buddy, who sold it at a swap meet. The box and manual I sold on eBay a few years ago for more than $200 to a Hong Kong collector of such stuff. I wonder what the calculator and recharger would have fetched! Perhaps seven or eight years ago, I bought an HP12C, primarily to do financial calculations (loan payments, that sort of thing). I bought it because I have always been a big fan of RPN calculators--the equals sign is the mark of an inferior and less powerful calculator, as far as I am concerned. RPN stands for Reverse Polish Notation, so called because no one (except a Pole) can pronounce the name of Jan ?ukasiewicz, the Polish mathematician who developed the prefix operator method of defining mathematical equations without parentheses. (RPN is a postfix operator form that also gets rid of parentheses.) Computer geeks just seem to take naturally to RPN, perhaps because we learn very young about parsing techniques that involve converting complex combinations of parentheses, values, and operators into RPN-like stacks. Anyway, this HP12C has served me well, but the original batteries finally gave up the ghost yesterday. I am absolutely sure that I have never replaced them; when I opened up the battery cover, I was surprised to find three LR44 watch batteries snuggled up like they were sleeping on their sides. It turns out that HP has brought back as a weird kind of nostalgia item the HP-35s--and I must confess that I wouldn't mind having one. (For the scientific functions that the HP12C doesn't have, such as trig.) Friday, December 14, 2007
A Thought Experiment I've received a rash of emails the last few days from people saying that Oakland's problem of violence is largely the result of drug prohibition, and we should repeal the drug laws. Well, there's no question that some categories of violence in inner cities are definitely connected to drug prohibition--especially turf wars. But there's a problem with this explanation. Actually, several problems. 1. Murder rates among young black men are typically 10x or more worse than among young white men. Do young white men not buy or sell illegal drugs? If anything, whites have more disposable income than blacks, and thus more available to spend on drugs. A back of the envelope guess is that if drug prohibition causes 30% of the murders, and say 3 murders per 100,000 among young white men (who are definitely more dangerous than women or an age-normal distribution of the population), then why would young black men have 30 murders per 100,000 people caused by drug prohibition? Are blacks 10x as likely to be drug traffickers or drug addicts? That's a tall claim that requires some serious evidence. In short, drug prohibition might well be a factor, but it is insufficient to explain why the situation is so much worse among young black men. 2. Are drug laws not enforced as vigorously in white communities? One of the recurring complaints of black community activists for many years was the lack of effort by police to deal with widespread drug dealing, and their recurring efforts to reduce the number of liquor stores and liquor ads in the ghettos. (That's how you can tell you have entered a ghetto, by the way: every fourth or fifth billboard is now for alcohol.) I can remember driving through East Palo Alto on several occasions in the 1980s and seeing drug dealing taking place quite openly. Here I am, a white guy driving through in a reasonably new car, and for all they know, an undercover cop, and they don't even make an attempt at hiding what they are doing. If drug prohibition is the problem, then the relatively low violence rates in white America would only make sense if the drug laws weren't enforced in white America as vigorously as they are in black America--and the difference would have to be dramatic to explain the tenfold difference in violence. 3. Those who are so partial to the "Drug Prohibition causes violence" explanation consistently ignore the inhibition-reducing effects of intoxicants. There's a reason that alcohol, for example, and opiates, and cocaine, and meth, are all associated with increased levels of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and child sexual abuse--and it isn't because drug traffickers are going out and doing these things as part of turf wars. They are because people that are loaded do things that they otherwise would not. Perhaps the reason that East Palo Alto was such a pit of a place to live in the 1980s was not drug prohibition, but the inability of law enforcement to prevent the sale of intoxicants. 4. I do not dispute that drug prohibition has its own set of significant problems: corruption of the criminal justice system; overloaded jails and prisons; a failure to help addicts who want help because the system is so punitive. But there's a reason that the drug laws remain in place: large numbers of Americans know people for whom legal intoxicants (like alcohol) or illegal drugs have been the source of enormous heartbreak, and they are not willing to exchange one set of serious problems for another serious set of problems. We already have a serious set of problems associated with alcohol abuse, and it is legal, and relatively lightly regulated. The fear is that marijuana, meth, and opiates, if deregulated, would soon expand the social problem set. 5. If you want to argue that drug laws don't reduce drug abuse, you have some serious work to do. Anytime that you make a commodity illegal, you are making it less available, simply because it can't be advertised, and therefore pricing becomes uncompetitive. Rising prices for all but the most severely addictive drugs will reduce consumption. As I have mentioned before, cirrhosis of the liver rates fell roughly in half within a few years of the start of Prohibition. They came back up again (although not as quickly) with a few years of the end of Prohibition. Pretty clearly, alcohol consumption, and especially the regular, high consumption of alcohol associated with cirrhosis of the liver, fell because of Prohibition. Whether the other negative consequences of Prohibition (such as gangsters and corrupt politicians) was too high of a price to pay is a legitimate question. It is also a legitimate question whether Prohibition disproportionately discouraged those drinkers who weren't the social problem. I rather suspect that people that had the occasional beer before Prohibition, or some wine at home with dinner, weren't the ones hitting speakeasies--and they weren't the problem that Prohibition was trying to fix. But let's not pretend that prohibiting a commodity doesn't affect consumption rates. 6. Those of you who argue so vigorously for decriminalization of drugs need to be consistent about this. If we are going to decriminalize marijuana, why not meth, heroin, LSD? All your principled arguments for one apply to these other drugs. (On the other hand, if your argument is that marijuana isn't terribly damaging, that's not a principled argument for drug decriminalization--just an argument for what drugs should be unlawful.) If you want drugs legal for adults, why don't your same arguments apply to minors as well? Or would the drug traffickers not break laws to sell to 6th graders? If you believe that minors shouldn't be restricted, why not deregulate alcohol sales to minors as well? My experience is that those arguing for decriminalization of all drugs fit into several categories: 1. Those in love with the idea for its elegance. I had a long chat with a guy at a party last weekend, part of the generation that grew up during Vietnam, who was making this argument. Another person, a bit younger than me, asked him, "If the reason for repealing the drug laws is that they don't stop people from getting and using drugs, why not repeal the laws against robbery as well?" And this guy responded, "Sure. Laws against robbery don't do anything either. Just shoot 'em." Love the consistency, but I am not interested in living in a society like that, and I don't think too many people do. 2. Those who don't appreciate the level of damage that both legal and illegal drugs do. The older you get, the more damage you see caused by it. 3. Those who want marijuana legal because they have a serious addiction problem, don't want to admit that, and look for ways to turn, "I like to smoke pot, and no one should get in my way" into "I have a principled basis for scrapping all drug laws." 4. People that recognize the damage that is currently being done by drug use, and have concluded that the damage caused by trafficking is worse. I waver back and forth about this. There is probably an argument for decriminalizing heroin on this cost-benefit basis, but not marijuana. Marijuana drug gangs aren't major parts of our violence problem, and potheads seldom commit armed robbery. At least those who acknowledge that there is a serious social problem with drug abuse aren't living in a fantasy world. Labels: drug laws If You Live in the Eugene, Oregon Area and you are looking for a telescope--this appears to be a spectacular deal. The seller thinks that it is a Parks 10" f/5 reflector (no mount, just the OTA). He's trying to get $200 for it. This is about 1/8th of what I would expect it to sell for new. Parks is a well respected maker of traditional Newtonian reflectors. They may not be quite as stupendous as their ads make them sound, but they do have a good reputation for being a real step up from the average Meade or Celestron reflector. If I lived within two hours of Eugene, I would run over there, take a look, and probably buy it--just because it is so cheap that with a little effort, and assuming that it is in the condition described, you can probably find a buyer willing to pay several times that much. If you invest about $600 in a used equatorial mount for it, you could have a very nice setup for astrophotography. (Assuming that the sky ever clears in Eugene.) Labels: telescopes Banned For Life From Free Speech My heavens, what did this guy do? Express an interest in little boys? Oh, no, he expressed his disgust with those who are interested in little boys: REGINA, Saskatchewan, December 13, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission's decision to impose a "lifetime" ban on a local Catholic's freedom to publicly criticise homosexuality, was upheld this week in its entirety by Saskatchewan Court of Queens Bench.I have not been able to find any other Internet discussion of this situation, and the website I'm quoting above is an explicitly Christian organization, so it is possible that they made the whole thing up. But unless someone can find me some evidence that this is complete fabrication, or grossly distorts the facts, it really shows where Canada is going. UPDATE: A reader points me to evidence that Bill Whatcott's hostility towards homosexuality isn't based on ignorance:
Labels: child sexual abuse, freedom of speech Big Bertha's Rebuild: Mirror Cell National Metal Fabricators promised the two aluminum rings from which I am planning to make the lightweight mirror cell for December 13. Sure enough, that's when they arrived. I was just slightly nervous about whether they would be stiff enough for the job, but the math said that 1/8" thick 6061 aluminum would be up to the task. Having put out about $135 for them, I was still concerned that I might end up with two of the more unusual paperweights. This is the 17.5" diameter ring that the mirror will rest on. (Actually, on some felt that will be on top of this.)  Click to enlarge This is the 20.4" diameter ring that the smaller ring will connect with springs and bolts. And yes, the protractor is because I was measuring 120 degree angles to get the flanges as close to even as possible.  Click to enlarge They are certainly stiff enough for the task. I don't think I would have wanted to go any thinner, but I don't think that they in any way marginal for the intended purpose. Best of all, these two rings weigh about four pounds! Even with the springs, bolts, flanges, and side supports for the mirror, it is going to be under six pounds. Since the mirror end of the scope is the heaviest part--and therefore the one most prone to deform the tubes--the more weight that comes off here the better. Here you can see the flanges that will bolt the mirror cell into the tube, in roughly their final position.  Click to enlarge I made the flanges by taking a 3" x 2" rectangular aluminum tube (1/8" wall), cutting sections, then cutting these L-brackets out of the sections. There are two 1/4"-20 threaded holes in each of the horizontal sections that will be used to hold the base plate to the flanges. There is a 2.25" long, 1/4" wide slot in the vertical sections that will be used to hang the mirror cell to the tube wall. The reason for the slot is to let me move the mirror between the visual and photographic positions. (The focal point needs to move about 2.5" farther up for the camera; this lets me optimize the secondary mirror for visual use, and yet still be able to do prime focus astrophotography.) The L-brackets were an interesting experience. I had originally planned to rough cut them with the chop saw, then machine them more precisely to length and width with the vertical mill. But it turned out that the vertical mill doesn't have quite enough motion in one direction to do what I wanted. To my pleasure, I was able to get the length and width of these L-brackets with .010" using the bandsaw. Then I used the vertical mill to very precisely (within .005") position the slot. I used a 1/4" end mill to create the slot. The more precisely you position the mirror in the cell, and the cell in the tube, the less play you need in the collimation screws to get everything exactly aligned. I've seen some telescopes where sloppiness in placing the mirror cell in the tube meant a lot more movement was required in the collimation screws. The horizontal part of the L-bracket will be attached to the base plate of the cell with two 1/4"-20 hex head bolts. The L-bracket is tapped; the base plate will be through hole; and there will be nuts on the bottom of the base plate. I may use a lock washer on the bottom to make sure that once I have these screwed down, they don't move. Six 1/4" bolts should be more than sufficient to hold an assembly that weighs total (with the mirror) about 32 pounds. The slots will take 1/4"-20 bolts again, probably hex head. I will use a wing nut and a lock washer on the outside of the tube to hold the mirror cell in position to the tube. This way I only have to loosen the lock washers and push or pull the mirror cell to reposition it at either the visual or photographic position. Of course, that still means recollimating the mirror, but that's not all that hard to do. I may look for the higher grade of bolts on this, since that's a total of three bolts holding about 32 pounds. That still seems more than sufficient. The finish isn't much, but I am going to either have it black anodized or (if that turns out to be too expensive) flat black paint it. Labels: machining, telescopes Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Corvette Fans May Want To Take A Valium First before clicking over to Autoblog's example of a...uniquely customized Corvette. If bad taste were a crime, this approaches the capital crime category. Labels: cars Should I Laugh Or Cry? The main story of this December 10, 2007 New York Times story is about the Clinton campaign's efforts to dig up dirt on Barack Obama. But this email--which looks like something that you might see on IM, if the teenager in question was recovering from a drug overdose--is tragically incompetent: From: Bob NashI've had some very bad spelling days, too, but this is not a great sign for the quality of Clinton's team. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Romney's Mormonism As Bryan Fischer of Idaho Values Alliance pointed out recently, the real concern isn't that the Mormon Church will tell Romney what to do--the real concern is that Romney as governor of Massachusetts didn't pay much attention the Mormon Church's positions on important moral issues: I don't see Romney's Mormonism as being all that important to whether he should be president or not; I see his willingness to embrace positions contrary to evangelical Christian and Mormon doctrine--and then change his mind on the national stage--as the real issue. There are some evangelical Christians who want to make a big issue of Mormonism--but there are a fair number of people on the left that seem to want to make an issue of it as well. AlterNet, which is one of the hard left blogs, makes a point of linking to this video that explains Mormon theology (and which from my reading, is an accurate description). I don't know if AlterNet's motivation is to damage Romney in the primaries, because they perceive him as a strong Republican nominee, or simply to promote intraparty hard feelings. But when the left decides to make this an issue, it is a pretty good piece of evidence that this issue is bad for America. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates What's Gone Wrong In Oakland And Philly, and a lot of other black inner cities in America? This is a powerful article from the December 9, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle:
Those of you who have read my book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Praeger, 1999) will recognize some parallels between the culture of honor violence in the Old Southwest and the problems this insightful article describes in Oakland. But along with the parallels, there are some substantial differences. The Old Southwest's problems were a minority of men in a mainstream population. Most white men in the Old Southwest did not engage in dueling or bar brawls, and those that did were still part of a mainstream culture where the criminal justice system often (but not always) punished murder and manslaughter. This article describes neighborhoods where this destructive culture is not a minority at all, and in a subculture that is fairly well isolated from the mainstream not just of American society, but even from the mainstream of black America. (Contrary to what the news media would like you to believe, the average black person in America does not live in a ghetto.) There is a strong desire in some circles to see gun control as the solution to the problems of inner city violence. This has never worked, and this article points out that the cultural problems that have developed in Oakland are so severe that: Gun laws can't reach places like East and West Oakland. Rarely do boys go get a gun and kill - the gun is already there. Guns are as common as cell phones. Friends give their friends guns for protection after losing a fistfight. Every day, drug addicts trade guns for a fix. Groups of boys share guns, keeping them hidden in abandoned homes, in empty lots, in the rain gutters and under their beds.I'm not quite sure what can be done to fix places like Oakland. There is a tipping point where such a large fraction of the population are engaged in socially destructive behaviors that it is difficult for the government to fix the problem. As the article points out, it is difficult to get witnesses to testify in murder cases in Oakland, because snitches die. The honor violence culture of the Old Southwest, while it had problems (because juries were reluctant to convict), at least did not have this climate of fear preventing the justice system from trying to work. There may not be a constitutional solution to problems this severe. The Old Southwest's problems were fixed largely by a change in attitude--one driven by the efforts of evangelicals to replace an honor culture ("What will others think of me?") with a conscience culture ("God sees my sins, and knows what I have done"). Times have changed; I am skeptical that a subculture as deeply damaged as this article describes can be fixed without extraordinary and probably unconstitutional changes in criminal procedure. In addition, that transformation of the Old Southwest was driven by a religious revival that is simply unimaginable in post-Christian America. Improvise! The belt on my lathe broke Sunday--probably because I was trying to machine a little too aggressively on a very big piece of Delrin. I am making a caster set for a customer with the Meade Giant Field Tripod--and trust me, "Giant" isn't exaggeration. I ordered up some replacement belts from Sherline--but Tuesday I went down to the local hardware store, and discovered that the Eureka series 1100 vacuum clean belts ($2.64 for two of them) were close enough in dimensions to the Sherline belts that I was able to resume work. Labels: machining Tuesday, December 11, 2007
I Hope Canada Prosecutes This Vigorously But since the place is run by multicultural PCers, I am a bit worried that they may decide to respect the father's traditional culture instead: Friends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab. Certainly, parents have substantial authority over their children. I know of a kid from a Mormon family who left the house dressed the way Mom and Dad wanted--and as soon as he was a block away, like Clark Kent stripping off his dress shirt to expose the big red "S" underneath, kaboom! Then the heavy metal T-shirt would appear. But imposing rules about dress and behavior doesn't extend to killing rebellious kids. Labels: Islamofascism The Hero of Colorado Springs & Her Dark Past Not surprisingly, the antigun news media are trying to find some way to besmirch the character of Ms. Jeanne Assam (or as we call her, Didn't Miss AWESOME!) We finally find out the dark secret that is why she is no longer a Minneapolis police officer! From December 11, 2007 Associated Press: Also Tuesday, Minneapolis police Sgt. Jesse Garcia said Assam was fired from the Minneapolis force in 1997 for lying during an internal investigation. Sgt. John Delmonico, president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, said police were investigating a complaint that Assam swore at a bus driver while she was handling an incident on a city bus.Please tell me that there's more to this story--or I will be forced to conclude that Minneapolis PD's officers all have to wear special coats, to cover their angel wings. UPDATE: A reader points out that once a police officer has been caught lying about something so trivial, it makes it very easy to impeach her testimony about important matters. On the one hand, it seems like a minor basis to fire someone; on the other hand, the police department can't have you around for fear of losing a major criminal case based on a lie. Labels: gun self-defense Immune Systems & Weightlessness It has been known for a many years that prolonged weightlessness causes a loss of bone mass, as well as a tendency towards atrophy of muscles. After all, there's no load bearing caused by gravity, both of which are important for maintenance of muscles and bone mass. This article from the December 10, 2007 Washington Post contains an interesting concern: evidence that human immune systems require gravity: But researchers are also coming up against another more surprising physical risk for future long-haul space travelers -- their immune systems appear to become less capable in space, leaving them more susceptible to stowaway bacteria and viruses.
A Juicy Scandal From Kansas Ordinarily, I don't much care about politician sex scandals--but it appears that there is significant interaction between the sex scandal and the official duties of the Kansas Attorney-General--and that makes it important as a reminder that absolute power should be regarded with concern, not just because absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton observed, but because we do not elect angels to public office. Some are worse than others, of course, but we should never put too much power in the hands of any official just because of this danger. From the December 11, 2007 Washington Times:
Labels: politicians behaving badly This Angers Me The Cheerful Iconoclast reports about an incident that really captures how screaming "racism" is so much easier than accepting responsibility for thuggish behavior: Here's what happened: three young black men, including a 22-year-old named Renato Hughes, broke into the home of Shannon Edmonds, who is white, intending to steal some marijuana. During the course of the burglary, they beat Edmonds' stepson, Dale Lafferty, with a baseball bat, causing permanent brain damage severe enough to render him unable to live independently or even feed himself.In 1970, all you had to say was, "racism!" and everyone would fall all over themselves to be sympathetic. The race card has been so overused to justify criminal behavior that most Americans just ignore it now. And that's unfortunate, because sometimes racism really is an issue. I used to visit Lake County pretty frequently. It is not a particularly liberal place, considering how close it is to the Bay Area, and if you showed me evidence of racism in how criminal justice is administered there, I would not be completely shocked. But I can't imagine that white thugs behaving this way would have got off any easier. UPDATE: One of the complaints is that the third party of this criminal crew was charged with murder under something called the Provocative Act doctrine. From November 15, 2007 Associated Press: What is the Provocative Act doctrine? "Provocative Act" Doctrine – A felon may be held responsible for the death of another at the hands of a third party, if the basis for the charge is not felony-murder, but instead is founded on what is sometimes termed the "provocative act" doctrine, which is simply a form of reckless homicide, e.g., a felon recklessly provokes a victim to shoot in self-defense, killing an innocent bystander.Gee, I can't imagine how forcing entry into someone's home for the purpose of robbery might be considered a provocative act, can you? What Went Wrong With Matthew Murray? As I have pointed out in previous postings, it appears that Murray was evincing symptoms of psychosis (hearing voices, for example). Was he not receiving treatment? It is very, very easy to second guess what went wrong. Murray's father is a respected research neurologist--how could have missed Murray's symptoms? I can see several possible explanations. 1. Maybe his father saw the symptoms, and tried to get him help. But thanks to the ACLU, you can't force an adult into treatment except under rather extraordinary circumstances, and even the threat, "You need to get help or move out" is a hopelessly painful step. I've seen this situation close up, and no parent wants to make a agonizing demand like that--for fear that the mentally ill child will move out--and get even worse. 2. Schizophrenia isn't a binary situation. Some people are obviously psychotic; others have good days and bad days, and it is very easy to mistake the bad days for laziness, or a lack of ambition. Simple schizophrenia, for example, has a symptom list that seems to fit published accounts of Murray's behavior, and might explain why his parents could have failed to see mental illness (which is always painful to face): An uncommon disorder in which there is an insidious but progressive development of oddities of conduct, inability to meet the demands of society, and decline in total performance. Delusions and hallucinations are not evident, and the disorder is less obviously psychotic than the hebephrenic, paranoid, and catatonic subtypes of schizophrenia. The characteristic "negative" features of residual schizophrenia (e.g. blunting of affect, loss of volition) develop without being preceded by any overt psychotic symptoms. With increasing social impoverishment, vagrancy may ensue and the individual may then become self-absorbed, idle, and aimless. 3. There is a tendency in fundamentalist Christian circles to refuse to acknowledge that mental illness can afflict Christians. Obviously, this isn't the norm; most fundamentalist Christians do know better. But over the years, my wife and I have met more than a couple of fundamentalist Christians who simply refuse to admit that mental illness is something that requires more than prayer. It may require medication, since many of the more severe mental disorders are biochemical in nature--no different from diabetes in that respect. UPDATE: A reader tells me that a caller to the Dennis Praeger show this morning claimed to know the family, and that Murray was being medically treated--but without success. Labels: deinstitutionalization Monday, December 10, 2007
Murray Was Apparently Mentally Ill This CNN report would seem to suggest it, at least: COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- Matthew Murray was kicked out of a missionary training program five years ago for strange behavior, and talked about hearing voices, according to a man who served at the center with him.At first glance, this would suggest schizophrenia (which usually hits in the late teens or early 20s). His father was a neurologist--someone that you would expect to have seen and understood such signs. This report from Denver's channel 9 indicates that between the two sets of shootings, Murray apparently posted what he was going to do: KUSA - 9Wants to Know has discovered more than a dozen writings posted by Matthew Murray where he warns of an impending rampage and copied the statements of one of the Columbine High School gunmen. Labels: deinstitutionalization Guns in Church Just a quick reminder, for those who think there's something bizarre about guns in churches--the law used to require you to bring your gun to church, for the security of those present. This article appeared in America's First Freedom, January, 2003, 36-37. (Their title for the article, not mine.) Labels: gun history On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs A thoughtful piece, I believe written some time back, by Lt. Col. (ret.) Dave Grossman, about facing reality when confronting evil--and why decent people need to be willing to be armed. Labels: gun self-defense Exactly What I Wanted To Hear From the hero of Colorado Springs. From channel 7 in Denver: COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Jeanne Assam appeared before the news media for the first time Monday and said she "did not think for a minute to run away" when a gunman entered the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and started shooting.UPDATE: And she's single, too! From ABC News: Dressed in blue jeans and boots, the petite Assam (pronounced AH-som) was greeted with applause at the news conference. When asked about her marital status, Assam said she was single - and then cracked a smile.Got that? Pronounced "AH-som"--the rest of us will settle for just calling her Awesome! Labels: gun self-defense This Could Have Been Much Worse But fortunately, this church wasn't a gun-free zone. From December 10, 2007 Reuters: A man dressed in black, wearing combat boots and holding an assault rifle and at least one handgun, opened fire in the parking lot of the vast New Life church in Colorado Springs after Sunday services, killing one person on the spot and wounding others. A second person died later, police said.UPDATE: Not even a security guard! Apparently, just a member of the church with a carry permit, according to this. UPDATE 2: News reports have identified the murderer as Matthew J. Murray, who had been home schooled, from a deeply religious family, and had been kicked out of Youth With A Mission three years ago--and was sending them threatening emails. He was also described here as the son of a prominent neurologist, specializing in multiple sclerosis research--and as someone who "hated Christians." The various accounts describe a 24 year old who was still living at home, and dropping out of various schools. There are no indications of mental illness (other than showing up at a church with smoke grenades, an assault rifle, and a handgun, to commit mass murder), but it does seem a bit odd that someone coming from a highly educated home would be fumbling through life at age 24 like this. Labels: gun self-defense I'm Not Sympathetic I've mentioned in the past examples of discrimination against, in some cases, quite astonishingly qualified scientists apparently based on their disagreement with the True Faith of Evolution. Here's a case where, at least based on the news reports, I'm not so sympathetic. From the December 7, 2007 Boston Globe: The battle between science and creationism has reached the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where a former researcher is claiming he was fired because he doesn't believe in evolution.The article goes on to state that Abraham was hired specifically to work on projects that involved studying particular problems from an evolutionary standpoint. The analogy would be if a free market think tank hired someone to analyze public policy problems from a laissez faire capitalist perspective. If you hired someone, and they told you that they really didn't believe that capitalism was a good thing, I think it would be entirely within the employer's rights to fire such a person. What is more troubling, however, is this claim on the second page: The [Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination] commission dismissed his complaint earlier this year. The commission said Abraham was terminated because his request not to work on evolutionary aspects of the project would be challenging for Woods Hole because the research was based on evolutionary theories.If this is an accurate description of what happened (and it might not be), this might be a valid basis for concern. If an employee is simply not going to do the job that you hired him to do, you fire him. Why spend time trying to "change his beliefs"? That, unfortunately, shows the fundamentally religious nature of the True Religion of Evolution that dominates a lot of institutions. Labels: intelligent design Religion of Peace This is one of those depressing stories that if it happened in a Muslim nation, it would be discouraging. But it is happening in a formerly Christian nation--and one that prides itself on tolerance. From the December 7, 2007 Daily Mail: The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.Islam, or freedom of conscience: pick one. Labels: Islamofascism Sunday, December 09, 2007
Bernie Ward's Problems--A Lot More Serious I was lambasted over here for moral relativism on the Bernie Ward matter. It turns out that December 6, 2007 KTVU channel 2 in San Francisco reported that Ward didn't just download child pornography, but exchanged it with other adults. If true, that pretty well destroys Ward's claim about being engaged in research. Labels: child sexual abuse The Golden Compass Can't Find An Audience I mentioned several days ago concerns that while the movie may have watered down the atheism and anti-Catholicism of the novels on which The Golden Compass is based, there's a lot of reason why Christians might want to avoid putting any money into the pockets of the movie makers. What do you know? SATURDAY NIGHT: There was no Saturday miracle surge for New Line. The Golden Compass, an effects-laden family film starring Nicole Kidman with a reported budget of $200M, received a modest 16% increase from its opening day, posting an estimated $10.2M on Saturday. Assuming a Sunday drop of 33%, Compass will finish its opening weekend with a disastrous $25.84M. (For a comparison to other big-budget, family-oriented films in this mold, along with details about New Line's dismal 2007 and Nicole Kidman's box office cold streak, scroll down to my Friday Night report.)I rather suspect that the producers were thinking, "Heck, those Christians probably can't even read! How will they know that the novels were insulting their beliefs?" Or perhaps they figured that vast swarm of atheists with small children would fill the seats instead. An Eyewitness Account From Omaha I have no way of verifying that it is by someone that was actually there, but it is plausible, and there are details here that while politically comfortable, are by no means perfect: the eyewitness has taken the class to apply for a concealed handgun license, but has not bothered to apply, because he didn't think he would ever need one. (He has changed his mind.) Over at Joe's Crabby Shack: I heard gunshots, about 8. I knew exactly what they were, but my brain didn't want me to believe it. |
