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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'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 29, 2008
28th Anniversary Today is our 28th wedding anniversary. Some day I should scan in some of the wedding pictures so that you can laugh at the silly 1980 clothes everyone was wearing. We went to dinner at Da Vinci's in Eagle--which is a local Italian restaurant a step up from Carino's or Olive Garden in ambiance, without quite the expense and pretense of Asiago's, the high end gourmet Italian restaurant in Boise. An interesting twist is that like my wife, the waitress's undergraduate area of specialization was Victorian literature, and the two of them probably spent more time discussing Vanity Fair, Jane Austen, and related subjects, than they really should have. You may recall that in the 1980s TV series Cheers, Shelley Long played Diane Chambers, a neurotic English literature grad student who worked in the bar. Alas, the world is full of overeducated English literature specialists working in food service. Along with the waitress tonight, my wife worked as a hostess at a country club when we first moved here. Her fellow employees kidded that she was the most overeducated restaurant hostess that had ever lived. Quickie Burger Eric Scheie over at Classical Values is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and reports on a local burger joint called "Quickie Burger." Their symbol is a cowgirl riding a gigantic hamburger. Okay, there is some double entendre involved with the name, and it might not have been my first choice for that reason. The logo is perfectly wholesome--and there was a time when the logo and the name of the place would only have suggested (in all but the most dirty-minded) that this is a place for fast food. There are people upset about the name, however, and the cowgirl riding the hamburger. Is it a bunch of narrow-minded fundamentalists? No! Eric links to this news account from the March 21, 2008 Michigan Daily of who is upset: When the owners of Quickie Burger and Dogs chose their logo, they thought it would make patrons crave an order of chili cheese fries. But the logo, a busty woman in a tight shirt straddling a hamburger, has drawn criticism from campus groups.Now, there are traditional morality groups that, if they complained about this, I would say, "Guys, I see your concern, but you are grasping at straws on this. This is writing parking tickets while ICBMs re-enter the atmosphere." But when a gay and lesbian group gets upset about insulting objectification of women, I can only say this: Why aren't you complaining about drag queens? My wife finds the entire insulting parody of women that drag queens do insulting, and I can see why, and agree. One of the commenters over at Classical Values catches it very well (although you do need to have read George Orwell's 1984 to appreciate the wit of it): "In a related story, gay campus activists today announced they were organizing a Junior Anti-Sex League to 'combat doubleplusungood expressions of sexism.' The activists also issued demands for U of M to include Newspeak in its core liberal arts curriculum, imposition of mandatory 'Two Minutes Hate' at noon each day, and the creation of a 'Vice-Provost of Love' to oversee student sexual activities, suppress vice and propagate virtue." Labels: homosexuality, political correctness Friday, March 28, 2008
Time Is Getting Short I mentioned a couple of years ago the fossil evidence that life existed at least 3.4 billion years ago--and the presence of an oxygen atmosphere suggests photosynthesis was already at work (thus implying life) 3.8 billion years ago. I also mentioned that this creates an interesting problem for evolutionists--how in the heck did this happen so quickly? Richard Talcott, "Earth's troubled adolescence," Astronomy, May 2008, 32-37, has one of those very nice simplified explanations of early Earth history that Astronomy is good at presenting. The article points out that the Earth had a catastrophic beginning, with a Mars-size impact at about 4.52 billion years ago that stripped away the atmosphere, created the Moon, melted the surface, and generally, would have ruined your whole day, if you had been on Earth at the time. More importantly, after 500 million years or so of relative calm: That started to change approximately 4.0 billion years ago. For a period of 200 million years, the rate of impacts skyrocketed as the young planets made a final sweep of the inner solar system. Astronomers don't know for sure what caused this "late heavy bombardment" or where the objects came from....As the article points out, at 3.5 billion years ago, there was life on Earth. So we're talking about as little as 300 million years and a maximum of 500 million years from the end of temperatures that would have sterilized the planet, to fossils. That's amazingly quick for a blind, random, and necessarily slow process. It turns out that there is considerable argument about when our atmosphere first had substantial oxygen in it. Here's a book by Stephen E. Kesler and Hiroshi Ohmoto, Evolution of Earth's Early Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and Biosphere--Constraints From Ore Deposits that argues that there is still consider uncertainty as to whether the atmosphere had free oxygen at 3.8 billion years ago, or not until much later. A 3.8 billion year free oxygen atmosphere almost certainly requires photosynthesis--and therefore life. That would mean that from sterilizing heat to enough photosynthetic life to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen would be a period between 0 and 200 million years. Blind, random, luck, starts to look pretty unlikely. Frances Westall and Maud Walsh, "Early Life on Earth : 3.5-3.3 Ga microbial remains from South Africa," Geophysical Research Abstracts points to the 3.5 billion year old microfossils, and observes something that should be making shivers run up the spines of those committed to a blind, random process for life: The latter is a relatively evolved mechanism for obtaining energy to drive cellular processes. Given the fact that these are amongst the oldest microfossils yet discovered, this implies that these oldest probable microfossils are already far evolved from LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, and that traces of the earlier steps in the origin and evolution of life are missing on Earth (rocks older than 3.5 Ga are too badly metamorphosed to be used in microfossil studies).Hmmm: "far evolved" not just from the first life, but from the last life that was still a common ancestor of all life. And somehow, we go from life-sterilizing heat, through a completely random, blind process that creates life, and is already "far evolved" in 300 to 500 million years. Those who insist that Intelligent Design is based on religious faith need to start asking why they are so confident that their model doesn't required a bit of faith to hold onto with data like this! Labels: intelligent design Outgoing Mail Isn't HostRocket is having some problems with my outgoing mail server--so I am seeing your emails--but I am not having much luck sending them. Be patient. I'm sure by tomorrow any outgoing mails will be flying towards their intended destinations. It Has Been a Busy Day And not because of the campaign. My day job involves keeping a collection of tools (about 170 scripts and programs, mostly Korn shell, but some Perl and C, probably totaling 20,000 lines) running. These tools bring together all the code that makes up a laser printer in a consistent manner, including verifying that whatever changes developers make don't break the overall product. It is an incredibly boring job, but someone has to do it. I wrote some of this code, but much of it was written by other people, and it is sometimes challenging to figure out what particular parts of it are supposed to do. Adding to the aggravation, all the source code is stored in ClearCase, and a display of the all the different branches of this code is like a Los Angeles freeway map (although less logical and harder to navigate). Figuring out which printer is using which element on which branch--or at least which it is supposed to be using--is one of those frustrating exercises that I hate. There are eight different laser printers under development using this toolset that I am responsible for keeping operational. Much of the time, I am waiting for tests to complete, or for people to respond to questions. There are days when I may only be doing something for a couple of hours--and there days like today, when toolset problems develop simultaneously on four different products--and then I am fully engaged for nine hours. Most of the time, the work that I do involves analyzing why tools have stopped breaking--and sometimes, reproducing the failures is impossible. All I can do is an autopsy on the results, and hope that I can change the tools to give me more information the next they fail. Today was, if busy, at least mildly entertaining in places. Exceeded 75 Gigabit Bandwidth! If you have been having trouble reading my blog, or visiting my campaign website--it is because I have exceeded the 75 Gigabit/month bandwidth I am paying for. My, I never expected that to be a problem! I'm working on getting my bandwidth increased. UPDATE: Problem fixed; I made a one time purchase of $29.99 for unlimited bandwidth and 100 gigabytes of online storage. That should hold me for, oh, a few months. Also, another volunteer from the army of Davids polished up the campaign web page. Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Buying A Garden Implement We needed to buy one of those gadgets for removing weeds, so we went to Lowe's after church Sunday. Unfortunately, the tool in question--called a "hoe," once upon a time--seems to have been renamed as a "garden implement." I fear that many young people are only familiar with the rap homonym for this word--perhaps the powers that be at Lowe's are afraid that giving the tool its proper name would cause too many facial muscle injuries to their younger employees. One Of Those "Quotes" From Jefferson This quote is all over the Internet--including in some places that you might expect had checked its accuracy, purportedly from Thomas Jefferson: My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.But I can't find this quote in the Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress, at the University of Virginia's Jefferson digital archive, or by searching through books.google.com anywhere in the 19th century. The closest that I can find is this quote: History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. But as we have employed some of the best materials of the British constitution in the construction of our own government, a knowledge of British history becomes useful to the American politician. There is, however, no general history of that country which can be recommended. [Thomas Jefferson, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1905), 10:416]Maybe somewhere the quote above appears in Jefferson's writings. It is something that Jefferson could easily have thought, but there's something about the style that doesn't really sound like Jefferson. If you can find a verifiable source for this quote, let me know. Labels: history Pure Sleep Antisnoring Device Didn't Work For Me I mentioned a few weeks back a device advertised on TV called the Pure Sleep antisnoring device, sold with a 30 day money back guarantee. It arrived. You fit to your mouth by immersing it in boiling water for 60 seconds, pull it out for 10-12 seconds, then put it into your mouth to mold to your teeth. You are supposed to have your lower jaw as far forward as you can comfortably project it while doing so. The first couple of nights it was somewhat uncomfortable--but worse, my wife indicated that I wasn't any quieter. So I remolded it, and tried again, with my jaw farther forward. Still didn't solve the snoring problem, and I didn't sleep very well. In addition, a reader warned me that a somewhat similar device, prescribed by a doctor, because he had used it consistently for a very long time--caused his jaw to grow to the point where his teeth no longer fit together properly. Scary enough for you? Oh yes, they could fix it by breaking his jaw. I have no reason to believe that the Pure Sleep device would suffer from this problem (which is probably while they ask a bunch of questions on their website about TMJ and other jaw-related issues). I was only planning to use it while my wife and I were on vacation anyway, so only a few weeks of the year--but it didn't work for me, so there was no point in continuing the effort. Labels: sinuses A Fascinating Piece By A Johns Hopkins Professor I mentioned a few days ago my revulsion at a partial sex change who is now pregnant--a pregnant "man" by his/her/its definition. A reader pointed me to this long and important article by Professor Paul McHugh, the head of psychiatry for Johns Hopkins University medical school--rather an expert, by the terms of such things. It is too long to summarize fairly, but he explains why he made the decision that Johns Hopkins would no longer do sex change operations, and why increasingly, other university medical schools are following suit: The subjects before the surgery struck me as even more strange, as they struggled to convince anyone who might influence the decision for their surgery. First, they spent an unusual amount of time thinking and talking about sex and their sexual experiences; their sexual hungers and adventures seemed to preoccupy them. Second, discussion of babies or children provoked little interest from them; indeed, they seemed indifferent to children. But third, and most remarkable, many of these men-who-claimed-to-be-women reported that they found women sexually attractive and that they saw themselves as “lesbians.” When I noted to their champions that their psychological leanings seemed more like those of men than of women, I would get various replies, mostly to the effect that in making such judgments I was drawing on sexual stereotypes.Professor McHugh has a detailed discussion of the characteristics of men who want to be women--and regular readers of my blog will not be surprised by what they found: Most of the cases fell into one of two quite different groups. One group consisted of conflicted and guilt-ridden homosexual men who saw a sex-change as a way to resolve their conflicts over homosexuality by allowing them to behave sexually as females with men. The other group, mostly older men, consisted of heterosexual (and some bisexual) males who found intense sexual arousal in cross-dressing as females.Now, some of you are going to say, "If it makes them happy, what's wrong with them doing this?" 1. Medical resources spent on this wrongheaded procedure are not available for legitimate medical problems. Even if the confused ones pay for this procedure entirely themselves, it is still using plastic surgeons who could be doing legitimate reconstructive surgery, hospital beds, and operating rooms. 2. In some cases, the taxpayers are paying for sex-change operations. San Francisco, which is self-insured, does so--up to $50,000 per employee, according to this February 18, 2001 New York Times report. Berkeley apparently did likewise last year, according to this account copied from the May 8, 2007 Contra Costa Times. This October 10, 2007 KTVB channel 7 report tells us that the federal courts have been wrangling over whether two Idaho prisoners have a right to a treatment for "gender identity disorder." Really bad ideas don't seem to stay private; they soon became a constitutional right. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Stuck In The Past Alan K. Henderson asks if Rev. Wright came to us through a time machine, based on some astonishing statements in a recent eulogy by him. Oh yes, he has to start out with some offensive ethnic stereotyping: "(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him," Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue. "The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans.Italians? Not Romans? Does he refer to the people that meet in the building with the Star of David on it as "Hebrews"? As Henderson points out, "lynching" is a term that we reserve for non-official killings; Jesus' crucifixion was most definitely official and governmental execution. "The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge, but Asa, like Jesus, refused to be defined by an oppressive government because Asa got his identity from an Omnipotent God," said Wright.Wow! White supremacy "is clearly in charge"! That's why we have a black Secretary of State. Actually, our second black Secretary of State. And yes, the Klan is clearly a dominant force in our society today. If Obama just figured out that there's something offensive about Rev. Wright, then he lacks the judgment to be a member of a city council, much less President of the United States. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates An Army Of Davids That's the title of a book by Professor Glenn Reynolds about how new technology and market forces are allowing individuals who aren't powerful in themselves to combine forces and destroy the existing power structure of Big Media and Big Government. I sent out the call last night--and it is happening. Contributions are starting to trickle in through the campaign web site, which became operational sometime during the night. Each contribution is relatively small--$25, $50--but collectively, they will become a mighty river of money. A pro-gun blogger issues the clarion call for pro-gun activists to put their money where their mouths are. One of my readers is a graphic artist; he's putting together a logo for the campaign. I needed a list of zip codes in the two counties that make up the district. No problem; another reader used his knowledge of GIS to pull that information together into a spreadsheet for me. Another reader is a website designer; he has offered to polish up my rather basic campaign web site. Win or lose--this is going to be fun! Labels: Idaho politics Easier Address For The Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog You can now get to the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog with the address www.gundefense.net--a lot easier to remember and say. Labels: gun self-defense How To Get A List of All Zip Codes In Two Counties? Does anyone know of a place to download a list of all zip codes in Boise and Elmore Counties, Idaho? This page gets you zip codes by city--but not for an entire county. UPDATE: One of my readers used his skills with GIS to get me a spreadsheet with all the zip codes for those two counties. UPDATE 2: Here's a page that will let you get a list of all zip codes in any county in any state. Unfortunately, it isn't very accurate! Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Campaign Webpage Is Up It is here. The domain www.cramerforsenate.org will point to that same location in a day or two--but it takes a while for this domain name to propagate out through all the domain name servers. Labels: Idaho politics Elk: I Never Realized How Important They Are! I don't just mean the breeders who raise domestic elk for the table--I mean the antiwolf and prowolf crowd who argue about the wild elk. I'm doing my best not to stick my foot in my mouth on this issue--and more importantly, not in a wolf's mouth--while I am trying to understand this issue. Someone sent me this YouTube video that claims that the introduction of the wolves has largely wiped out the wild elk population. As near as I can tell, the differing factions are: 1. People that want the wolves removed. They claim that the Canadian wolves introduced into central Idaho are substantially larger than the Rocky Mountain wolves that were originally here. (I don't know if this is true or not; I haven't had time to research this claim.) One of these groups seems to be made up elk hunters who claim that the reintroduced wolves are taking vast numbers of elk, reducing the herds too dramatically. I notice that the person making that claim in the YouTube video is also in the elk hunt guide business. Hmmmm. Another antiwolf group are those who use the wilderness and don't want their horses and dogs spooked by the wolves--and may prefer not being shredded themselves. The Idaho World had a report in the last week or two of someone's dog who was killed by a wolf near their home. If I had small children still at home, and I lived somewhere wilder than Horseshoe Bend, I might well be in this group myself. Wolves are like land sharks; extremely competent, and without the same soft and squishy feelings for our children and pets that the wolf-huggers have for the wolves. Ranchers are concerned about wolves killing their livestock. I'm not sure that it is practical to fence in their livestock--wolves are pretty smart and powerful animals. 2. People that want the wolves here. Some of these wolf-huggers, in love with nature, but who don't have to live in it. Some of these seem to be more intelligent and serious ecologists who believe that wolves belong here to act as a natural restraint on the native prey. I will say that there is some merit to having natural predators at work, along with man. Wolves will take out some elk that human hunters might not--especially the sick, and the young ones that aren't quick enough. If the claim about the reintroduced wolves is correct, however, there might be a serious question if we are restoring the natural balance. Some hunters seem to either accept the presence or the wolves, or see them as being an important part of the natural balance. This doesn't surprise me; a lot of hunters are, at heart, nature lovers. It has always been astonishing to me how Sierra Clubbers managed to create a gap between themselves and hunters--a group that has very similar views of the importance of nature. As I said, I don't have an opinion on this yet (although I lean towards the idea that wolves perform a useful ecological role--but their numbers in populated areas need to be kept under control). Maybe it is wisest not to get in between these two factions. I will say that fear of wolves might encourage Sierra Club types to reconsider gun ownership while enjoying the Idaho wilderness. Labels: Idaho politics "This Isn't Even Wrong" So said the email from a reader pointing to me something that reads like either a horrifying piece of 1930s science fiction (except that no one would have thought this plausible), or a satirical piece from The Onion. This, unfortunately, comes from the March 25, 2008 National Post of Canada: An Oregon man who used to be a woman says he is pregnant with a baby girl.I think I disagree with my reader. If true, this is very wrong. Oh yeah, you can tell something of what the expectant couple are like from the name of the firm that they run: Yesterday, the couple-- who run a T-shirt printing company called Define Normal -- refused to tell their story, citing U.S. deals with TV and print media outlets.I won't "define normal" but I will certainly define sick, and this is it. Of course, if State Senator Tim Corder had his way with S.1323, an employer who refused to hire this pregnant "man" would be punished for discriminating based on "gender identity." Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics What Am I Missing Here? There has to be some reason that 11 members of the Idaho House voted against this bill. Maybe because they don't believe in a woman's right to choose? From the March 25, 2008 Idaho Statesman: BOISE, Idaho — The House has passed a measure making it a crime to violently coerce a woman into getting an abortion.Oh, here's the explanation: Opponents say the law is unnecessary since the threat of physical violence is already a crime.And so having a second statute under which someone can be charged is a problem because....what? I would think that there are a number of situations where a person could be charged with different crimes for what is essentially the same offense. Labels: abortion, Idaho politics Crossing The Line I can understand why someone might feel that his conscience would be violated by filling a particular prescription. But this guy seems to have gone a bit beyond refusing to fill the prescription for birth control pills. An Associated Press story from the March 25, 2008 Idaho Statesman: WAUSAU, Wis. — A state appeals court upheld sanctions Tuesday against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere. If Noesen ran his own pharmacy, I might be a bit more tolerant of his unwillingness to help her get her prescription filled. But he was working for someone else, and has an obligation to perform the duties set out by his employer. (And yes, that would include cases like this one, where as much as I sympathize with Mr. Peterson, there are consequences to refusing to obey company rules. No one said that following your conscience was guaranteed to be painless.) If those obligations are morally repugnant, then he needs to quit, or not take the job. I'm Hoping This News Story Is Inaccurate Or Incomplete Because if it isn't, I'm pretty upset at the Bush Administration. From the February 5, 2008 San Francisco Chronicle:
Labels: mental illness BBC Discusses The Failures of Sex Change This August 1, 2007 BBC report of course mentions that some of the critics of sex change surgery are radical feminists: Radical feminists have ideological reasons for opposing sex change surgery.But they also go on to admit that there is beginning to be significant non-ideological concern about this as well: Claudia says she was referred for surgery after a single 45 minute consultation.The article does say that there are satisfied customers. Well, heck, there were satisfied customers who bought Yugos, too. Admittedly, you could get out of a Yugo a bit easier than a sex change. Perhaps the greatest surprise to me in the article was this discussion of how happy the "customers" are:
A related BBC story from May 25, 2007 tells of a doctor being disciplined: A doctor hailed as an expert in transsexualism has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC).And yet, he is still allowed to practice medicine in Britain--although, with significant supervision. Look, if a doctor rushed into an appendectomy, or a tonsilectomy, putting his own interests ahead of the patient, we would be appropriately concerned. We would be talking about criminal charges if a doctor decided to do a masectomy without any better cause than "It's time to pay the Porsche insurance bill." But a sex change? That's a rather....dramatic change--and one that can't really be undone. Labels: homosexuality Imagine If They Were Searching For Pornography Then imagine the screeching from the left about these voluntary searches. From D.C.'s NBC channel 4, March 24, 2008: Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District's gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday.Strictly speaking, there is nothing unconstitutional about the police asking permission to search homes. But there is something a bit too...European about this kind of "your papers, bitte" approach to policing. The theory is that adults are reluctant to search their kids' rooms for guns and drugs. But somehow, "Oh yeah, I gave permission for the police to search your room" is going to go over better? Labels: gun rights Monday, March 24, 2008
This Is Disturbing The government has been funding robotic research--and the combination of the buzzing sound from the motors, and positively animal-like behavior of "Big Dog" a quadruped robot reminds me of the 1954 sci-fi classic about giant mutant ants, Them! (which gave me nightmares when I first saw it). I have confidence that robots will, in a generation or two, be doing most of the grubby work of farmworkers, and many of the backstraining hospital jobs now done by LVNs and nurse's aides. But perhaps we will have to get rid of all the giant mutant bug movies first, so that the next generation won't be freaked out by them! Labels: robotics Psychiatric Genetic Testing An interesting article about a company that sells a bipolar disorder genetic test. Or more accurately, a genetic test that identifies for some people that they might be at heightened risk of bipolar disorder:
They quote some skeptics who are uncomfortable with these tests because the data isn't terribly complete yet on the claimed connection between the genes and the disease--and it turns out that only some people can use this test:
I'm not keen on the use of genetic testing to "brand" people--especially since we don't entirely know what causes particular people to develop the disease in a full-blown form--and others do not. But there is some advantage to knowing that you are risk for a particular disease. For example, if you know that you are genetically predisposed to colon cancer, you may want more regular colon cancer testing than the average person. Labels: mental illness What Is Left Out Matters I was watching a powerfully depressing CBC/BBC documentary about Guatemala's soaring problem of murders of women. Women and girls being kidnapped, raped, murdered, mutilated, and beheaded--and with no prosecutions. According to the documentary, fear of retaliation keeps everyone silent, and the police seem to be going out of their way not to find the killers. The film also implies that traditional macho is part of the problem, and by mentioning the war against the Indians under various U.S.-backed governments of the past, they give you the impression that there might be some racial or class motives--although this leftist news source indicates: The poorest parts of Guatemala, rural areas mainly inhabited by indigenous people, have lower violent crime rates than the rest of the country, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which warns in a new report that the murder rate -- one of the highest in the region -- has climbed steadily since 1999.Hmmm. I think that this is how the left handles the problem that the facts don't fit into the leftist model of explaining bad things. It therefore requires more "in-depth analysis" to make it fit the "no justice, no peace" model. Even more disturbingly, the documentary suggests that this lack of action isn't politically motivated--it's just gangs doing this. I found myself wondering if the lack of successful prosecution--or even serious attempt at it--might be because the police are also intimidated. Part way through, I found myself wondering, "What is the murder rate for men in Guatemala?" The documentary mentioned 665 women murdered in Guatemala in 2005, in a nation of fifteen million people. That would imply that female victims are a bit under 5/100,000 total population. Yet the murder rate for both sexes combined is 47/100,000 total population. If anything, women are almost being ignored by the murderers. There might still be a good case for being upset if the murders of women are being ignored by the authorities, while the murderers of men were being pursued. But I confess that watching a documentary that gives you the impression that women are subject to extraordinary victimization when this is not the case makes me wonder how accurately they are portraying the rest of the problem. I sure wouldn't want to be a Guatemalan man or woman. Labels: media manipulation If Stupid, Don't Perjure Yourself That just aggravates the problem. From Associated Press March 24, 2008: DETROIT (AP) - Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a one-time rising star and as Detroit's youngest elected leader, was charged Monday with perjury and other counts after sexually explicit text messages surfaced that appear to contradict his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide. If you do something stupid, lying about it won't help for long. Lying about it under oath will turn "stupid" into "criminal." Labels: politicians behaving badly Pledge of Allegiance Apparently some members of the press corps are choosing not to say the Pledge of Allegiance with the rest of those present in the Idaho House. The letter from Speaker Denney to the dean of the press corps says: My reactions are: 1. Perhaps the non-Pledgers aren't citizens of the U.S. (Not likely, but it is possible.) 2. Perhaps the non-Pledgers are showing us how they really feel about the U.S. 3. Perhaps the non-Pledgers regard the Pledge as a meaningless piece of symbolism. If the answer is #2, I prefer the honesty of media people telling us where their loyalty isn't. If the answer is #3, they won't mind abiding by Speaker Denney's request, because it is just a meaningless piece of symbolism, right? I am proud to say the Pledge of Allegiance (in spite of its socialist origins), but it is symbolism. It is part of the late 19th century and early 20th century's peculiar blending of jingoism and ritual into a pseudo-religious patriotism. Our elaborate procedures for how to display the American flag, and how to dispose of flags when no longer serviceable, are peculiarly ritualistic, with the flag treated rather like a religious icon. I follow these rules because I do not want to offend others, and because there is an enormous amount about our nation that deserves respect--and therefore our flag and the ritual patriotism is also deserving of respect. But we should never forget that the symbols are not the nation, anymore than the map of Idaho is Idaho. Labels: Idaho politics Sunday, March 23, 2008
Toyota Prius--A Few More Comments During the time that my wife and I drove a rental Toyota Prius, I grew to both love and hate different aspects of the car. Loved 1. The rear view camera--it made it possible to get really, really close to the car behind when parallel parking without worry about colliding. Especially on a rental car, that's very cool. 2. It was very compact, which was excellent for D.C. traffic. 3. I averaged more than 41 mpg during the roughly 250 miles I drove it. On Interstate, it was consistently hitting about 50 mpg. Around town it was more like 25 mpg. Compared to the EPA estimate of 48/45 mpg, that's okay. 4. The touch screen display allowed you to display not only bar graphs of mileage over the last 30 minutes, but also showed a schematic of the battery, electric motor, and gasoline motor. It was easy to figure out from the schematic if you were operating entirely on battery, a combination of battery and gasoline motor running the wheels, or the gasoline motor recharging the battery. 5. How quiet it was when stopped. This took some getting used to, because my first reaction, and that of my wife when she drove it, was that the engine had stalled. No, there's just no need to run anything when you are stopped. Hated 1. The touch screen display that it uses for the rear view camera, schematic display, mileage information, air conditioning controls, and stereo controls--is all one display. This means that you can't easily change one set of controls without losing information. 2. The driver should be able to set air conditioning or stereo controls without taking his eyes off the road to look at the touch screen display. Maybe there was a way to do this, but it sure wasn't obvious to me. This is potentially dangerous--especially on a rental car, where the person driving it is unlikely to have read the manual before driving away. A more conventional design--where you can adjust settings with knobs and no real need to look away from the road, would be safer. Or use the heads-up display that GM uses for some of their cars. 3. The touch screen display was not bright enough in direct sunlight to easily read. That's potentially a safety issue. 4. My wife was of the opinion that the touch screen display was distracting to the driver. I found myself having to force myself to not watch it--and under certain conditions, this might be a problem. You can turn it off, but this seems like a suboptimal situation--where you turn off a display that can provide useful information, because it is so active. 5. I found that to start the car, I had to put in the key, press the START button, then press it again to turn off the car, then press START again. Otherwise, there was no way to get it into gear. The first couple of times I thought that I had missed some step, but I was convinced by the end that this was intentional. Maybe there was a reason for this, but especially on a rental car, this seems stupid. 6. Having a button to put the car in Park separate from the Buck Rogers transmission selector works okay--but it is so different from the traditional automobile user interface that I am sure it is going to cause some accidents, somewhere along the way. 7. While it had plenty of punch for city traffic, it was a little disappointing merging on to freeways. Not really bad--but I suspect that passing on a two lane road at 60 mph might require considerable care. (Okay, the Corvette has spoiled me on this.) I realize that the Prius is something of an experiment, but I'm not sure that this makes sense except for the trendily green. You are going to spend $21,000-$23,000 for a new Prius. A Chevy Cobalt can be yours for about $13,000-$15,000 (unless you gotta have the SS model). The mileage on the Cobalt isn't as good as the Prius (and remember that there are plenty of similar sized cars that do better on mileage than the Cobalt). The EPA estimates for the Cobalt are 22/31; my daughter often gets in the high 30s on open highway, so the Cobalt is going to cost about three cents a mile more to operate than the Prius (at $3.25 per gallon). But with an $8,000 difference in purchase price, that will take 266,000 miles to recoup the difference. The Prius will probably hold its value better than the Cobalt--but still--that's a lot of miles. One of the early concerns about hybrid cars was that the batteries, when they wore out, were going to be expensive to replace. This web site says not to worry--at least about the Prius: I suspect that at some point, the price of gasoline is going to make the Prius and similar hybrids make a lot more sense than it does now. Labels: cars How To Win Friends and Influence People Well, here's the exact opposite of the way to do that from Gateway Pundit: EASTER MASS ATTACK!! Protesters Scream & Spray Fake Blood at Churchgoers Trade Associations When I was in Washington last week, I was really impressed how many associations are there. I mean, if you are going to be lobbying Congress, that's where you need to be--but it is still startling how many thousands of these groups exist. Here's a picture from near our hotel in Alexandria:  Click here to enlarge I had recent opportunity to chat with the lobbyist for the Idaho Elk Breeders Association. At this point, you may be asking yourself the same question I asked: "There is an association for that?" Some of you may even be asking, "What's an elk?" We went looking for an elk herd a few weeks back a few miles north of our home. These are elk:  Click here to enlarge So I decided to research the Idaho Elk Breeders Association, and I found this article about the controversy over a bill regulating the industry introduced by the state senator I am trying to unseat: Friday's three-hour debate featured bickering elk ranchers who criticized the bill -- even though it had been drafted by members of their own industry association.I'm still scratching my head trying to understand all the different players on this, and where I stand on this matter. It is still an astonishing little universe that most Idahoans doubtless don't even realize exists. Labels: Idaho politics |
