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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'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, March 08, 2008
Obfuscating Clear Language The Petitioner's Reply brief in the D.C. case cites a new law review article by Nathan Kozuskanich in the University of Pennsylvania's Journal of Constitutional Law, clearly intended to blunt the evidence that Joe Olson and I found that "bear arms" was widely used in both a military and a civilian context. Most importantly, we demonstrated that U.S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, who was also the primary author of the 1790 Pennsylvania Constitution, understood the "bear arms" provision of that Constitution as protecting an individual right to be armed for self-defense. This demolished Kozuskanich's already weak claim in Rutgers Law Journal that the phrase referred only to a collective defense of the community, as I discuss here. This new Journal of Constitutional Law paper by Kozuskanich is, if anything, even weaker. It was a rush job, and it shows--especially because it contradicts its own claims in some places. First of all, let me point out that the header of each page says: DRAFT 03/03/2008 CITE ONLY WITH PERMISSIONIn an academic setting, this means, "I may still have some mistakes here--don't cite it yet, because I may still be fixing things here and there." If this were simply an academic question, there's no argument about what to do--you only cite this draft with permission. But the Petitioner's Reply brief has cited it, and obviously, Kozuskanich has no intention of allowing anyone to cite it to point out what a shoddy and dishonest piece of work it is. As I have already pointed out here, Kozuskanich has engaged in what I would argue is academic fraud by citing Bellesiles's Arming America concerning gun scarcity in early America--without acknowledging that the claim in question has been demonstrated to be fraudulent. Indeed, the probate data that underlay Bellesiles's claim is part of why he "resigned" a tenured position at Emory University and Columbia University revoked the Bancroft Prize awarded for Arming America. What are some of the serious problems with Kozuskanich's new work? 1. After a long discussion of how just about every reference in contemporary documents is to "bear arms" in the sense of collective defense (i.e., as part of a militia), on p. 431 Kozuskanich quotes Representative Sherman that it was the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack made upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.Kozuskanich is using this as evidence that lends credence to a civic interpretation of the right to bear arms. Bearing arms was a privilege, a right, and a duty, and one that was integral to the survival of the militia.Yet Sherman was not saying that the right to bear arms was limited to militia duty; he drew an analogy between the right of "every citizen" (singular, you notice) to be armed to protect "his liberty or property" and the right of "particular states, like private citizens" to be armed to defend the rights of the state. That phrase "by whomsoever made" isn't limited to enemies of the State. It could even include "every citizen" defending his liberty or property from the State itself, under certain dire circumstances. 2. Kozuskanich acknowledges on p. 437 that James Wilson used "bear arms" in the 1790 Pennsylvania Constitution in an individual sense, but argues that the meaning of the phrase "changed in subtle ways" between 1776 and 1790. Yet on pp. 439-441, he makes the argument that Wilson really meant it to only be used in a militia sense. I guess we should ignore Wilson's own direct statement quoting the Pennsylvania Constitution's "bear arms" clause as protecting an individual right for self-defense. (See here for more details.) 3. Kozuskanich argues on pp. 441-3 that "self-defence" was more commonly used with respect to states in that period, and therefore that is the meaning that should be we should ascribe to the phrase--not individual self-defense. Yet he does acknowledge that there are some occasions when the phrase is used to refer to individual self-defense. Could perhaps the reason that the phrase is commonly used in the Revolutionary period to refer to the States and the United States fighting against Britain is because this was the major issue confronting Americans at the time? There is certainly no shortage of references to self-defense in the period 1760 to 1800. For example, William Paley's The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th ed. (London: R. Faulder, 1799), 2:3, is devoted to a discussion of self-defense in a strictly individual sense of the word. Ditto, Sir Geoffrey Gilbert's The Law of Evidence (London: A. Strahan and W. Woodfall, 1791), 2:736. Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 13th ed. (London: A. Strahan, 1800), 3:4 also clearly states that self-defense is an individual right: Self-defence therefore, as it is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the law of society. In the English law particularly it is held an excuse for breaches of the peace, nay even for homicide itself: but care must be taken, that the resistance does not exceed the bounds of mere defence and prevention; for then the defender would himself become an aggressor.4. On p.443 Kozuskanich points to a case where a Dr. James Reynolds was tried for "assault with intent to commit murder" and that neither prosecution nor defense "considered Reynolds's possession or use of his gun to be a matter of constitutional law." Well, yes, because he wasn't charged with possession of a gun, but "assault with intent to commit murder." The prosecution quoted Blackstone to the effect that you couldn't use deadly force if you had the opportunity to escape. And this proves what? The right to bear arms for self-defense didn't change the requirement to avoid using deadly force if you had that option. What is significant is that Reynolds knew full well that carrying a pistol was lawful. From John D. Lawson, ed., American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials... (St. Louis: F. H. Thomas Law Book Co., 1917), 7:691: In this situation, Dr. Reynolds did not lose sight of prudence; he asked advice how he ought to act in such a singular case, and he was advised to arm himself; he said he would arm himself with a pistol; but the gentleman told him that a pistol was an uncertain defense, it was liable to so many accidents; a dirk was a more secure weapon of defense; Dr. Reynolds, however, contented himself with carrying a pistol. And in this he was justified by every law, human and divine. [emphasis added]Kozuskanich uses the jury's acquittal of Reynolds (who drew his pistol only after an attempt was made by a mob to prevent him from speaking) to argue that: The case clearly demonstrates that using a gun in self defense was legally different from bearing arms in "defense of themselves and the state."But it demonstrates nothing of the sort. The only legal question in this case of relevance to being armed was whether Reynolds had threatened to use deadly force when he had the option of retreating. Reynolds' right to be armed was never in dispute. Unsurprisingly, neither side had any reason to raise the Pennsylvania Constitution's arms guarantee. 5. I know that Kozuskanich has read the paper by Joe Olson and myself that gives a large number of non-military uses of "bear arms." I know this because Kozuskanich attempted (unsuccessfully) to get a paper published in the same issue of Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy that was publishing our paper. Yet the only examples that Kozuskanich mentions are the Pennsylvania Antifederalists, and James Wilson. The alternative would be to try and explain each and every one of the examples of "bear arms" in a civilian sense that we found. This complete failure to address the very large number of examples is effectively Kozuskanich putting his fingers in his ears and screaming, "I can't hear you" in the hopes that our many examples will go away. Labels: gun rights Friday, March 07, 2008
The Pure Sleep Antisnoring Device I saw the ad for this on TV. It is an oral appliance that apparently pulls the lower jaw forward to eliminate snoring. It costs $59.90 plus shipping, and has a 30 day money back guarantee. In spite of how well I now sleep (because of the sinus surgery some years ago, and the Breathe Right strips), I still snore--loudly enough that when we traveled with the kids, my wife would usually take refuge in the kid's room. I am hoping it arrives before we fly back to Washington for the Supreme Court hearings. It would be lovely if my wife wasn't awakened multiple times during the night--which means that I get awakened multiple times during the night. "Roll over!" The website asks a bunch of questions to screen out people with TMJ and other jaw joint problems. UPDATE: Short answer: it didn't work for me, so I returned it. Labels: sinuses Kozuskanich's Rutgers Law Journal Paper Nathan Kozuskanich is part of the academic establishment intent on proving that the Second Amendment doesn't protect an individual right. Last year, he claimed that the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitutution's guarantee: XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state;protected not an individual right for self-defense, but an obligation to serve in the militia. This has been a recurring claim of the collective rights crowd, by the way--that "bear arms" refers not to an individual right, but only a collective or militia right. This seemed rather strange to me, for two reasons. First of all, because the language of Art. XIII parallels that of other provisions of that constitution that are generally understood as individual: X. That the people have a right to hold themselves, their houses, papers, and possessions free from search and seizure, and therefore warrants without oaths or affirmations first made, affording a sufficient foundation for them, and whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded or required to search suspected places, or to seize any person or persons, his or their property, not particularly described, are contrary to that right, and ought not to be granted.Notice what all of these clauses protecting individual rights have in common with Art. XIII? The same opening: "That the people have a right...." Even worse, if Art. XIII was supposed to protect not an individual right--but an individual duty to militia service--why is Art. VIII in the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution? VIII. That every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and therefore is bound to contribute his proportion towards the expence of that protection, and yield his personal service when necessary, or an equivalent thereto: But no part of a man's property can be justly taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of his legal representatives: Nor can any man who is conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms, be justly compelled thereto, if he will pay such equivalent, nor are the people bound by any laws, but such as they have in like manner assented to, for their common good.If Art. XIII created an obligation to militia duty, then why was Art. VIII (which explicitly does obligate "every member of society" to either pay taxes or serve in person) in there as well? Which is more likely? That Art. XIII duplicates Art. VIII, or that Art. XIII means what it seems to mean? Secondly, I also pointed out to Kozuskanich that there were a lot of contemporary uses of "bear arms" to refer to the carrying of arms in an individual, non-military sense. I pointed out to Kozuskanich that James Wilson, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice, and the primary author of Pennsylvania's 1790 Constitution, gave a speech in which he used the similar language in a way that is unmistakably individual: With regard to the first, it is the great natural law of self preservation, which, as we have seen, cannot be repealed, or superseded, or suspended by any human institution. This law, however, is expressly recognized in the constitution of Pennsylvania. “The right of the citizens to bear arms in the defence of themselves shall not be questioned.” This is one of our many renewals of the Saxon regulations. “They were bound,” says Mr. Selden, “to keep arms for the preservation of the kingdom, and of their own persons.” Anyway, it appears that Kozuskanich's Rutgers Law Journal article came out some months back, but I have just found it and read it. It is a very detailed and interesting discussion of the struggles between the Quakers and non-Quakers of Pennsylvania over whether to have a Colonial militia or not--but as evidence to support Kozuskanich's claims about "bear arms," it is embarrassingly bad. 1. He cites Bellesiles' Arming America in note 38 as a source for the claim that guns were pretty scarce. He then tells the reader, "For more detailed studies of gun numbers that contradict Bellesiles" and cites the Lindgren & Heather paper in William and Mary Law Review, and Randolph Roth's William and Mary Quarterly paper. At no point does Kozuskanich acknowledge that Bellesiles was not simply wrong, but a fraud. Bellesiles's own university investigated the allegations--and issued a report so critical that Bellesiles resigned a tenured position. Columbia University had given Bellesiles the Bancroft Prize for Arming America--and then revoked it (something that had never happened before) because of falsifications of the probate data that underlay Bellesiles's claim about gun scarcity. See this Robert F. Worth article in the December 14, 2002 New York Times: To cite Bellesiles's claim with such an inadequate discussion seems like something that might qualify as academic fraud. It would be like citing something out of the Hitler Diaries, and then mentioning that there was some argument about their veracity. 2. Kozuskanich on pp. 9-10 makes a big point of the conflict between the Quaker opposition to state-sanctioned violence and the back country crowd of Pennsylvania--and then on pp. 11-12 observes that Quakers actually formed an armed militia in response to the Paxton Boys. This raises some serious questions about how serious the Quaker opposition to state-sanctioned violence was. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was skeptical that the Quaker opposition was fundamentally moral in nature. As Franklin's autobiography observed: These public quarrels were all at bottom owing to the proprietaries, our hereditary governors, who, when any expense was to be incurred for the defense of their province, with incredible meanness instructed their deputies to pass no act for levying the necessary taxes, unless their vast estates were in the same act expressly excused.... [Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1915), p. 204]Perhaps Franklin was being unfair about this. But when Kozuskanich observes on pp. 11-12 that Quakers actually shouldered muskets when the Paxton Boys, having slaughtered Indians out on the frontier, were now ready to cause trouble in Philadelphia--you would think it might raise some questions about whether the Quakers were really as hostile to state-sponsored violence as Kozuskanich says--or just had very flexible principles. 3. On p. 12, Kozuskanich explains that In language that would be echoed in the 1776 Declaration of Rights, the [Paxton Boys] Apology explained that “the far greater part of our Assembly were Quakers, some of whom made light of our sufferings & plead conscience, so that they could neither take Arms in defense of themselves or their country.”He argues that this language would be echoed in the 1776 Constitution's clause--as though this was evidence that the phrase "a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state" was necessarily limited to a collective purpose. This fails for two entirely different reasons. First of all, the Paxton Boys took their murderous actions against the Conestoga Indians without governmental approval--indeed, contrary to the government: The Canestoga Indians had lived in peace for more than a century, in the neighborhood of Lancaster. Their number did not exceed forty. Against these unoffending descendants of the first friends of the famous William Penn, the Paxton boys first directed their more than savage vengeance. Fifty-seven of them, in military array, poured into their little village and instantly murdered all whom they found at home, to the- number of fourteen men, women and children. Those of them who did not happen to be at home at the massacre, were lodged in the jail of Lancaster, for safety. But alas ! This precaution was unavailing. The Paxton boys broke open the jail door and murdered the whole of them, in number from fifteen to twenty. [Joseph Doddrige, Alfred Williams, ed., Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania, From 1763 to 1783, Inclusive (Albany, N.Y.: Joel Munsell, 1876), 225]Secondly, the use of "or" in this phrase indicates that the Paxton Boys thought that the Quakers were distinguishing "in defense of themselves" from "their country." The Paxton Boys thought the Quakers were unable to defend "themselves" or "their country." The first of these is individual; the second is collective. 4. On p. 24, Kozuskanich baldly asserts that Art. XIII of the 1776 Const. "guaranteed the right to bear arms for community safety" but provides absolutely no evidence that the right was limited to that purpose. Art. VIII clearly does define a duty that every Pennsylvanian had for the collective defense, but that's a long ways from Art. XIII. The only actual evidence that Kozuskanich asserts to back up his claim about what the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention intended is entirely about Art. VIII. Kozuskanich has not a single piece of evidence--even weak evidence--that the Convention believed that Art. XIII protected only a collective right. Kozuskanich doesn't even really try to defend his claim. He makes an assertion, and presents absolutely no evidence to defend it. At best, Kozuskanich's evidence shows that the hot topic of the 1760s and 1770s was collective defense. This doesn't mean anything, simply because the right of self-defense was not under attack. Let's use an analogy. You won't find anyone today arguing for the right to attend the church of their choice today. To the extent that questions of religious worship are topics of discussion, they are arguments about government and church entanglement. This lack of discussion doesn't mean that we do not recognize a right to worship, or not worship, at the religious institution of our choice. It is simply and utterly unquestioned that we have a right to worship, or not worship. Now, imagine if a new Constitutional Convention were held in 2010. The Convention adopts a religious freedom provision that clarified the religious entanglement issue with language such as: The government may encourage or assist any religious body engaged in educational or social welfare work, but governmental benefits shall be provided to all religious institutions on an equal basis, and no person's religious beliefs shall be a basis for preference or punishment.(Think of this as breaking the prongs off the Lemon test.) The Convention adopts no language about the freedom to pick your church. By Kozuskanich's argument, the lack of a vigorous debate in the period 2000-2010 about freedom to worship as you please would be evidence that religious bodies were limited to educational or social welfare work--and nothing else. Kozuskanich is positing his argument on the absence of discussion of an individual right to bear arms in the period 1750-1776. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Labels: gun rights Jokes That Bomb That's the title of a very detailed posting by Eric over at Classical Values about former terrorists who are now tenured faculty--and are trying their best to both: 1. Refuse to admit that they did something wrong, when they were making bombs that killed people. 2. Pretend that it was all a big joke back then. Read it in full--and ask yourself why Obama won't admit that going over to get permission to run for public office from these scum was a mistake. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Both Sides of the Equation Need Solving Illegal immigration has two sides: supply, and demand. For a long time, critics of building a wall have claimed that employers should be punished for hiring illegal aliens. I agree. The wall is the supply side; punishing employers who knowingly or negligently hire illegal aliens is the demand side. We need to fix both of these to have any hope. Unfortunately, a bill that would punish employers just went down to defeat in the Idaho legislature. From the March 7, 2008 Idaho Statesman: The House State Affairs Committee unanimously rejected a bill Friday that would have required employers to verify workers' immigration status. Companies could have had their business licenses suspended or revoked for hiring people unauthorized to work in the United States. Labels: immigration What's The Problem Here? I keep linking to stories like this to emphasize the importance of fixing our mental health system. A minor factor that drove deinstitutionalization was the belief that it would reduce costs to the states. Incidents like this remind us that fixing the system isn't just for the benefit of the mentally ill, but for the benefit of their families, and because of costs that the criminal justice system incurs. From the March 7, 2008 Idaho Statesman: A 16-year-old Boise boy accused of stabbing and critically injuring his mother in November is not mentally competent to stand trial in adult court on an attempted murder charge.What was the problem? Was this an insurance problem? Was it a problem of not being able to persuade her son to take his medication? These are important questions--and I would love to see a bit more investigative effort by journalists to get deeper than today's event. Labels: deinstitutionalization Thursday, March 06, 2008
The Orion Nebula I still don't have Big Bertha 2.0 ready yet--waiting on a 4" wide aluminum channel to arrive. But in the meantime, I have my small reflector mounted on the CI-700 mount, becoming more familiar with the digital setting circles. The great struggle with exposures of more than a few seconds is that you have to get the polar alignment very exactly on target. This isn't easy--especially because the most exacting method--the star drift method--requires you to start the mount running, and see if a star drifts north or south, and adjust the polar axis alignment accordingly. This can take a while--and when it is fiercely cold (for an ex-Californian, at least), this isn't a pleasant wait. Anyway, here are a series of prime focus exposures of M42, the Orion Nebula, taken at ASA 1600 for exposures of 18 seconds, 41 seconds, and 151 seconds, respectively. The little arcs instead of round little circles for the stars show that I still didn't have the polar axis perfectly aligned. It's still pretty impressive! Although the four stars that form the Trapezium are pretty well burned out into a solid mass.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Saturn was, as usual, awesome, but I was getting cold and tired, and photographing Saturn is a bit more work, because you can't do it at prime focus. Labels: astrophotography Remember the Blood in The Movie Alien? How it burns down through deck after deck of the spaceship? That's what I thought of when I read this account of an accident involving chlorine trifluoride: When I was in junior high, I still fantasized about being a research chemist. (Those weren't your junior high fantasies? Okay, I'm weird.) I remember being quite fascinated with what I read about fluorine gas and its unique properties. Fluorine gas doesn't just set fire to water (it rips the water molecule apart so that you now have free oxygen atoms running around frantically to find something to burn), it burns even substances that we don't think of as burnable--and even makes asbestos glow. The Greeks were convinced that there were four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) that, mixed in the appropriate proportions, made up everything. Fluorine gas seems perilously close to the essence of fire! I've read that most of the nineteenth century chemists who tried to isolate fluorine gas died fairly young, because fluorine compounds tend to be pretty poisonous--even if you aren't catching on fire. The scientist who finally isolated fluorine gas was Henri Moissan, who lived to a ripe old age for a chemist--and especially a fluorine chemist. My recollection was that he was able to electrolytically separate fluorine from the compounds to which it clings with great vigor without dying by the following steps: 1. Most of the reaction vessels were carved out of single pieces of fluorospar, a calcium fluoride mineral. The calcium in fluorospar already has all the fluorine atoms it can use, so it's like a traditional junior high dance with thirty girls and five boys--there's no way for more than five girls at a time to dance. The girls sitting on the sidelines might be able to cut in, but the number of girls sitting on the sidelines, worried that they don't look good enough, doesn't change. 2. Most of the rest of the piping was made of copper, which reacts vigorously with fluorine gas, but once the reaction is complete, it produces a very tight, very durable coating of copper fluoride that doesn't react anymore. (This is analogous to how aluminum rapidly forms an aluminum oxide coating that protects the surface from further oxidation.) 3. The whole apparatus was cooled down to -50 degrees Celsius, at which point fluorine only reacts like the cartoon version of a Tasmanian devil. Fluorine: Satan's element! Another School Shooting--But A Student Fired Back It appears that one of the students, while he didn't take out the shooter, may have slowed him down. From the March 6, 2008 Jerusalem Post:
UPDATE: This account from Associated Press is a bit more explicit about Dadon's effect: One of the students, Yitzhak Dadon, said he shot the attacker twice in the head. "I laid on the roof of the study hall, cocked my gun and waited for him. He came out of the library spraying automatic fire," he said. Labels: gun self-defense First They Banned Handguns, And I Said Nothing... Then they came for the plastic bags. From the March 5, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times: Look, I sympathize with their problem. They have a huge population that is intent on self-destruction, and confronting the severe cultural problems that afflict poor blacks in America would require more courage than any elected Democrat seems to have. But there does come a point where you have to ask, "What's the core problem here?" Some years back, the city of Cincinnati was discussing registering and controlling baseball bats because of the enormous amount of bat violence that was going on in black neighborhoods. If you solve the underlying cultural problems, then you don't have to ban handguns, or baseball bats, or plastic bags. If you don't solve those problems, you are going to be trying to ban paper bags, little metal cans, glass vials, etc. Labels: gun rights Will We Need Passports to Visit California? Increasingly, it seems like a foreign country. I had heard a couple of years ago that California had effectively banned home schooling. I didn't look into it because, well, it is a liberal state, and the objective of banning home schooling is to encourage Christians to move to the United States. I see that the insanity keeps enlarging from this posting by Hans Bader at OpenMarket.org. Bader points to the Fields decision that I mentioned some time back, which essentially found that parents had no authority to countermand what the public schools did--such as asking 7-10 year olds about their sex lives and desires. At the time, I observed that as horrified as I was by the result, Judge Reinhardt seems to have come to the legally correct decision--but: It is a strong argument for home schooling--and perhaps a strong argument for either scrapping public education, or allowing parents to move their tax dollars along with their children.And sure enough, Bader tells us that the courts have closed that escape route, too: But when parents respond to such rulings by exercising their choice not to send their kids to a public school, but rather home-school them, the courts then switch arguments to claim that there really is no such choice, claiming that the State can prevent anyone who lacks State-approved teaching “credentials” from teaching children, and that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” according to the California Court of Appeal’s disturbing ruling in another case, In re Rachel L. (2008).It seems that liberals are doing their best to achieve the goal stated by their patron saint, Benito Mussolini: "Nothing against the State, nothing outside the State." Terrorist Bomb in New York City The initial reports indicate a pretty amateurish bomb exploded outside the military recruiting station in Times Square at 3:45 AM. I can't imagine al-Qaeda doing something like this. It would have been bigger, and it would have been set off in daytime, to maximize casualties. I can picture part of barking moonbat wing of the Democratic Party doing this--to make a statement, without having to actually kill anyone. It is one of those remarkable indications of a shortage of brainpower applied to a criminal act, rather like the idiots that rob banks (a federal crime) rather than liquor stores. They get the investigative power of the federal government applied to finding them, and the usually much serious penalties of federal law--while accomplishing nothing of any real significance, other than a symbolic statement of their rage. Of course, the barking moonbat wing has a history of this kind of stupidity, such as the retired Weather Underground bombers that Obama met with some years ago to get permission to run for public office. Although the Weather Underground did actually kill people, with bombs and murders of Brinks guards. Labels: terrorism Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Just Imagine If Fundamentalist Protestants Asked For This Instapundit points to the situation where Harvard has set aside some hours at their formerly co-ed gym as women-only. Now, there's nothing objectionable to me about that--as long as there are men-only hours (and just as many of them) as well. I am not even particularly upset that Harvard has done this to make Muslim women happy. But as Instapundit points out, what if "some Catholic or evangelical mother urged 'girls-only' campus workouts in the name of modesty"? I think we know what the reaction would have been. You can tell how far to the left an institution is by examining how far it will go to make Muslims happy--while going out of its way to insult Christians. Labels: Islamism Exploded Diagrams Are So Twentieth Century Unless you are putting together a M1911 pistol from individual parts, this isn't very useful--but it is so cool, I just had to share it with you. Now, as long as no one does the same for hydrogen bombs, I guess we're okay. Labels: gun technology A Woman's Right to Choose For all the screeching about "a woman's right to choose," here's a case where you can be sure that the pro-choice lobby is going to have to do some serious mental acrobatics to justify their opposition to this bill before the Idaho legislature: H464: Adds to and amends existing law to provide that it is a criminal act to coerce or attempt to coerce a woman to obtain an abortion; to provide for recovery of damages by civil suit; and to provide penalties.The pro-choice side opposes parental consent laws, for fear that parents will refuse to consent to their daughters getting an abortion. I'll be amused to hear their excuses for opposing H464. It's Like An Elaborate Joke One that might be told if you wanted to insult liberals by comparing them to intentionally ignorant idiots. This article describes something that happened at IUPUI--which is an acronym for Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis: Keith John Sampson never thought he could get in trouble for reading a book, especially not on a college campus. But that’s what happened. Sampson is a man in his early 50s. He does janitorial work for the campus facility services at IUPUI, where he’s been gradually accumulating credits for a degree in communications studies. He has 10 credit hours to go.I really want to believe that this article is misrepresenting what happened. But one thing I have learned over the years--when Political Correctness is hybridized with an academic institution and a bureaucracy, there's almost nothing that is impossible. Labels: political correctness Monday, March 03, 2008
Aluminum Channel I'm having a heck of a time finding aluminum channel that is 4" or so wide, and 1/4" thick. Generally, aluminum channel doesn't come quite that thick. Sometimes, the vertical legs of the channel are more than 1/4" thick--but not the horizontal leg. You see, the way that channels with low walls (as a channel that will cradle a large diameter round tube will be) get their stiffness, is primarily dependent on the thickness of the horizontal leg. The stiffness of a channel is roughly in direct proportion to the increase in width--but if you double the thickness of the base of the channel, it gets about five times stiffer with only an approximate doubling of the channel's weight. If you double the thickness of the vertical legs, you only get about a 30% improvement in stiffness. What this means is that a 4" wide channel that is .25" thick (or perhaps even .30" thick) provides very nearly the perfect tradeoff between weight and thickness for this application--and I'm having trouble finding such a channel that is available off the shelf. I had thought about cutting off one side of a 4" square, 1/4" wall tube, or perhaps a 4" x 1" rectangular tube with a 1/4" wall--but these also seem to be unavailable. Square or rectangular tubing that size is typically 1/8" wall or thinner--just not stiff enough for this purpose. I looked at perhaps using steel channel instead, which is cheaper than aluminum--but steel turns out to be, for the same weight, no great advantage. Mild steel has Young's modulus typically of about 190 to 210 GPa; aluminum is 70 Gpa. The steel is therefore 2.7x to 3x the stiffness of aluminum--and 2.44x as dense. Because of the non-linear advantage of a thicker channel for enhancing stiffness, it turns out that steel doesn't buy me anything, except harder to machine, and a little cheaper on the raw material. UPDATE: I've got a vendor offering me 3" wide, .25" thick, or 5" wide, .375" thick. The first choice gives me a .019" deflection (which, because there are two other members also providing support, means I will probably get closer to .010" of deflection), and a weight of 5.7 pounds. The second choice gives me a deflection of .0026" (which far stiffer than I need), but a weight of 14.8 pounds--which is just too much. If I don't find something better by tomorrow, I may go with the 3" wide channel. (The prices are really, really good, too.) If I had a really big mill, I suppose that I could take the 5" piece and take an 1/8" off the inside of the vertical legs.... UPDATE 2: A reader suggested using the 5" piece, then drilling lightening holes in it to make it lighter--especially since it is far stiffer than I need. This is an intriguing thought. There's really no room in the vertical legs to drill anything but tiny, tiny holes, but putting a series of 2" holes through the horizontal leg every few inches might make this feasible. Of course, I've got to put some holes in the base for mounting the dovetail plate. This could get ugly, although not difficult. One other thought just occurred to me: I have two 1" square aluminum tubes that I won't be using. I might be able to have the welding shop I used the other day weld these to the bottom of the 3" channel to increase stiffness, or have a 2 1/2" wide, 1/8" strip of aluminum plate welded into the bottom of the 3" channel. UPDATE 3: It turns out that they can only really weld where the channel and the plate meet--so it sounds like using JB Weld as an adhesive between the channel and the plate would be the way to go--and that opens up a lot more possibilities. I could use a 4" wide by 1/8" channel with a 1/8" plate glued to it. This gives me nearly optimal tradeoff of stiffness and lightness. Labels: telescopes |
