The advertising above is just a source of revenue. If the ads get offensive enough, I may drop them.
Clayton Cramer's BLOG
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).
My nephew Shippy makes very pretty ceramic items. Click here to visit his online studio. Give someone one of these, and you can be sure that they don't already have one!
Click here to find out why the Amazon.com Honor System paybox is no longer here.
Search only this site: Click here and enter your search string at the beginning of the search field.
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Turning The Tables on Telemarketers This has to be the funniest prank phone call ever made--and the prank was on the telemarketer who made the mistake of calling up to give away a "free" satellite system. It isn't until the very end that the telemarketer starts to suspect that he's been had.
I've had some problems ever since we moved in with rain coming in under the garage doors--in spite of drains cut into the concrete in front of the door. (The wind whips the rain pretty solidly.) So I have been planning for some time buy the rubber garage thresholds that you glue to the concrete. The first place that I found them was Harbor Freight--and as much as I don't like to buy Chinese, they were very reasonably priced.
I mean, everything Harbor Freight sells is Chinese, right? Nope. "Made in USA" on the garage thresholds. What is the world coming to, when Harbor Freight sells reasonably priced stuff made in America? posted by Clayton at 3:45 PM permalink
Friday, August 08, 2008
Startup!
Okay, this (and "this" remains double secret) is beginning to look good. I've got a mechanical engineer working on some designs; I have a patent attorney who wants to do the patent work in exchange for equity; I have enough data that I have confidence that this will work and be economically viable. What I need:
1. An attorney with experience setting up startups. There's enough people involved, and there's enough work that some of them will be doing, that it seems appropriate to organize this as a corporation, so that everyone's hard work is protected by some sort of legally enforceable equity ownership.
2. Investors who meet the SEC legal requirements to invest in something like this. As I have mentioned in the past, the SEC "protects" little people by requiring that certain investments can only be done by "accredited investors"--which essentially means those who are millionaires, or who will be shortly.
If you are in one of these two categories, contact me. Once the Non-Disclosure Agreement is signed, I can tell you about the product, the intellectual property behind it, and how we can make some money. This isn't going to be a billion dollar company--but it might be $50 million company in a few years--and it will definitely stop putting money into the hands of people with their turbans wound too tight. posted by Clayton at 4:49 PM permalink
Thursday, August 07, 2008
The World Wide Web: So Many Answers, Some Right
I needed the formula for calculating the sagitta of a spherical mirror (which is the depth of the hole you have to gouge out to make a flat mirror into a spherical mirror). Go ahead: search for the formula. There many different formulas out there--some of them right, some of them wrong.
Now you are almost ready to start grinding. Before you start you need to figure out how deep the hole is that we are going to need. The formula for this is pretty simple. You need to know the diameter of the mirror (D) and the Focal Length (F) that you want to make and you get the Sagitta (S) which is the depth of the hole that you need to carve into the glass. The formal formula is:
S = 2F - sqrt( (2F)2 - (D/2 )2)
The second way (an approximation) to calculate the sagitta with this formula which is probably a lot easier to calculate:
S = (D/2)2 / 4*F
"Sqrt" is the square root of the number inside of the brackets. Sagitta is how deep the curve of the mirror is going to be in the center of the glass. The more accurately you calculate and measure this dimension, the closer you will be to the Focal Length you want when you get done. Either formula should provide the same basic answer unless you're doing a fast mirror.
SAGITTA This is the depth of the curvature of the primary mirror, measured at the center. The deeper the curve, the shorter the radius of curvature, and of course the focal length. The formula for sagitta is:
sagitta = R - Square root(R2 - d2/4)
R = Radius of Curvature
d = diameter of mirror
The following table ties it all together with some examples:
Mirror diameter
F ratio
Radius of Curvature
Focal Length
Sagitta
8"
7
112"
56"
.071"
10"
7
140"
70"
.089"
12.5"
6
150"
75"
.130"
16"
5.5
176"
88"
.182"
The World Wide Web is an amazing resource--but only slightly more authoritatively accurate than watching television news.
One of the recurring arguments of the pro-choice crowd is that women shouldn't be forced to carry a "parasite" against their will. You know what, I'm prepared to agree with them--if they will agree to consider the alternative. This article in the May 9, 2008 The Guardianindicates that we seem to have reached a barrier on survival rates for premature births; in spite of significant advances in the field of neonatal medical care, 24 weeks gestational age seems to be about the limit. Below 24 weeks, the survival rate remains extraordinarily low. Above 24 weeks, the survival rates have actually gotten relatively acceptable:
The study involved 16 hospitals with more than 55,000 births a year. Researchers found a marked improvement in survival of the 24 and 25-week babies. In 1994-1999, 490 such babies were admitted to intensive care and 174 survived to be sent home (36%). In the later years, 2000-2005, 497 babies were admitted to intensive care and 236 (47%) went home.
So for women who insist that they don't want to carry the baby, and the baby is 24 weeks or later, perhaps we can work out a deal. Instead of an abortion, they go ahead and have a C-section and put the baby up for adoption. Okay, the chances that the baby will survive aren't spectacularly good--but a heck of a lot better than an abortion. I mean, assuming that is the real reason for the late-term abortions of otherwise healthy babies.
We don't have a similar compromise to offer those who want to abort a baby before 24 weeks. There's almost no chance of survival (and none at all below 23 weeks), and the enormous costs involved in a lost cause probably don't justify the effort. But it does raise another question: could pro-life groups pay pregnant women who want an abortion to wait until the baby has a chance to live? I suspect that it wouldn't take an enormous amount of money (perhaps just a few hundred dollars) to persuade some of these women to wait a couple months, and then go for a C-section.
Like I said, I'm being mischievous. Or perhaps I'm trying to get people on both sides to think about this issue in a new way.
Long-time readers may recall that when we first had this house built, it looked like we had a lead problem--and so we ended up with a very expensive, very cool stainless steel housing in which lead filters went. Well, it turned out that we didn't have a lead problem, and so we removed the cool stainless steel housing, sold it for a fraction of what it cost us--but we still have all these replacement filters for removing lead from water.
I don't know if any of you have the right housings, but heck, it's worth a try.
I have eight carbon filters for removing lead made by FilterCor of Texas. These are 19.5" x 2.75", designed to fit into 20" x 3" housings. (Picture is here.) These are new, in the original plastic wrapping--indeed, in the original box from FilterCor of Texas. I would be overjoyed to get $120 plus shipping for all eight, or I could let them go for $18 each, plus shipping.
I also have twelve Matrikx +Pb1 filters, which are 9.5" x 2.875", designed to fit into the ubiquitous 10" x 3" housings. (Picture is here.) I would love to get $15 per filter, or $144 for all twelve (plus shipping). I can fit six of these into a Priority Mail Flat Rate box, and whether you want one or six, it comes to $9.30 for shipping anywhere in the U.S. posted by Clayton at 7:26 PM permalink
Democracy Protester Gets Arrested in China: Liberals Applaud
It is always very interesting to read the comments made by readers at the Idaho Statesman. This August 6, 2008 article reports:
A Boise woman was detained briefly by security agents and police officers while protesting in Tiananmen Square Wednesday.
Brandi Swindell, national director of the activist group Generation Life, was among three Americans that spent about an hour criticizing Beijing’s handling of issues ranging from forced abortions to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989.
The trio also set up a banner in the square that said “Christ is King” and knelt and prayed.
“It’s so shocking being an American … to see the blatant oppression,” Swindell said.
The small group said plainclothes security agents and police officers tried to block the banner with umbrellas and started shoving the group when they tried to walk around the square.
...
“It was important for us that there be a clear voice speaking out against the Chinese government’s abuse of human rights,” Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition in Washington, said in a telephone interview.
The protest was among several involving foreign activists protesting in China just days before the Olympic Games begin in Beijing.
Progressive and liberal sorts of course had to comment:
Submitted by ElaineMT on Wed, 08/06/2008 - 9:16am.
I propose that Bill Sali and Bryan Fischer go to Beijing to support the protests. And all can share a jail cell. And Bill can use the Larry Craig "I am a US Senator!" and see how far that gets him....
Submitted by andiegee on Wed, 08/06/2008 - 12:52pm.
Too bad we can't get her arrested in Singapore - a couple of lashes with a cane might set her straight!
If she were truly greater than the rest of us as she believes, she would spend her vacation time in a third world country helping the world's starving children instead of protesting causes which I believe she does not even understand.
I try very hard to see liberals and progressives as not being fundamentally totalitarians--but then they expose themselves as such. posted by Clayton at 1:50 PM permalink
BOISE, Idaho -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by an eastern Idaho developer who ignored federal government warnings to stop bulldozing a streambed, clearing the way for him to serve an 18-month prison sentence.
In 2005, Charles Lynn Moses was found guilty in U.S. District Court of felony violations of the federal Clean Water Act. It was the first time in Idaho that a person was convicted of criminal charges under the 1972 law.
Prosecutors alleged that as early as 1982, Moses began a pattern of ignoring U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials who told him he needed a permit to reshape Teton Creek where it ran through his Aspens subdivision on the outskirts of Driggs in Teton County.
The Environmental Protection Agency accused Moses of polluting a spawning area for Yellowstone cutthroat trout and exacerbating flooding danger by turning Teton Creek into a huge drainage ditch.
"Mr. Moses chose knowingly to destroy a major natural resource, and did it with the full knowledge that it was illegal," said Jim Werntz, director of EPA office in Idaho. His conviction "helps people understand how important it is to protect streams and the wetlands associated with them."
In August, Moses lost an appeal of his conviction before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges didn't accept his arguments that Teton Creek wasn't under the jurisdiction of the United States.
Although the director of the EPA in Idaho, Jim Wernitz, asserts that Mr. Moses had damaged “wetlands” associated with the stream, there are no wetlands there! The very word requires that land be, well, wet, but the stream bed is bone dry for at least 10 months out of every year. Wernitz is apparently ignorant of the fact that the Government had previously stipulated that there are no wetlands surrounding the storm channel, nor any “aquatic environment” that could be damaged.
In the plurality opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2006 Rapanos case, Justice Scalia wrote that the Clean Water Act in fact gives the federal government jurisdiction only over “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water,” and explicitly added, “[T]he ‘waters of the United States’ does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall.”
The claim is that the Ninth Circuit ignored the Rapanos plurality's decision (four justices) and focused on Justice Kennedy's decision which concurred in the result, but not the reasoning--and which argued that intermittent streams are protected by the Clean Water Act.
The Corps' expansive approach might be arguable if the CSA defined "navigable waters" as "water of the United States." But "the waters of the United States" is something else. The use of the definite article ("the") and the plural number ("waters") show plainly that §1362(7) does not refer to water in general. In this form, "the waters" refers more narrowly to water "[a]s found in streams and bodies forming geographical features such as oceans, rivers, [and] lakes," or "the flowing or moving masses, as of waves or floods, making up such streams or bodies." Webster's New International Dictionary 2882 (2d ed. 1954) (hereinafter Webster's Second).4 On this definition, "the waters of the United States" include only relatively permanent, standing or flowing bodies of water.5 The definition refers to water as found in "streams," "oceans," "rivers," "lakes," and "bodies" of water "forming geographical features." Ibid. All of these terms connote continuously present, fixed bodies of water, as opposed to ordinarily dry channels through which water occasionally or intermittently flows. Even the least substantial of the definition's terms, namely "streams," connotes a continuous flow of water in a permanent channel--especially when used in company with other terms such as "rivers," "lakes," and "oceans."6 None of these terms encompasses transitory puddles or ephemeral flows of water.
The plurality opinion points out that:
In deciding whether to grant or deny a permit, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) exercises the discretion of an enlightened despot, relying on such factors as "economics," "aesthetics," "recreation," and "in general, the needs and welfare of the people," 33 CFR §320.4(a) (2004).1 The average applicant for an individual permit spends 788 days and $271,596 in completing the process, and the average applicant for a nationwide permit spends 313 days and $28,915--not counting costs of mitigation or design changes.
So why didn't the U.S. Supreme Court hear Moses's appeal from the Ninth Circuit decision? This guy is going to prison over this, and it would certainly appear from reading the Rapanos decision that Moses was technically in the right: the creekbed was not within the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers, a position that they seem to have taken in 1980, but reversed in 1982, and certainly by 1997, when they told Moses to stop work.
When you are dealing with the federal government, remember that you are dealing with people with enormous power. They resent being ignored. They resent being told that you aren't going to obey them. They are rather like an Egyptian pharoah (which makes the defendant's name especially ironic). Under the circumstances, Moses should have responded to the first cease and desist order by stopping work, and filing suit asking the federal courts to straighten this question out--before it became a felony criminal charge.
I am not at all sympathetic to the Army Corps of Engineers and their approach. Read the Rapanos decision for a discussion of how they have continually increased their jurisdiction far beyond what the Clean Water Act of 1972 intended, and how the federal courts have kept trying to rein them in. But fighting with federal bureaucrats has to be done in a manner that does not offend their dignity and sense of self-importance. A suit asking the courts to clarify whether they have the authority to regulate an intermittent stream does not offend them as much as just ignoring their orders.
Big Corporate Interests Trying To Buy The Election!
I am so disappointed. All these corporate interests trying to buy influence and access to a guy who is running for President! From the August 5, 2008 International Herald Tribune:
But records show that a third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more - a total of $112 million, more than the total of contributions in that category taken in by either Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries.
Behind those large donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama "bundlers," fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.
While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate.
He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago before the 2004 Senate race, and, once elected, set out across the country starting in 2005 to cultivate some of his party's most influential money collectors.
...
An analysis of campaign finance records shows that about two-thirds of his bundlers are concentrated in four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate and entertainment. Lawyers make up the largest group at about 130, with many working for firms that also have lobbying arms. At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses - nearly two dozen work for financial titans like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. About 40 others come from the real-estate industry.
The biggest fund-raisers include people like Julius Genachowski, a former senior official at the Federal Communications Commission and a technology executive who is new to big-time political fund-raising; Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of UBS Investment Bank; James Torrey, a New York hedge fund investor; and Charles Rivkin, an animation studio head in Los Angeles.
"It's fairly clear that this is being packaged as an extraordinary new kind of fund-raising, and the Internet is a new and powerful part of it," said Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute. "But it's also clear that many of the old donors are still there and important."
The care and feeding of top Obama fund-raisers underscores their significance to his campaign. Members of his National Finance Committee who fulfill their commitment to raise at least $250,000 are being rewarded with trips to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Finance committee members participate in biweekly conference calls with top campaign officials. The fund-raisers meet quarterly, often with Obama dropping in. He lingered after the meeting last month in Chicago, telling his staff he wanted to thank every person in the room. Some fund-raisers who knocked on doors for Obama in places like Iowa, Pennsylvania and Indiana got to spend time with Obama backstage before and after speeches on primary nights.
His fund-raisers invariably say their support for him is not rooted in any kind of promise of access but in their belief in him.
"This is about Barack Obama and changing the direction of our country," said Jonathan Perdue, a business consultant in Mill Valley, California, who has raised more than $250,000 for Obama's campaign.
Obama has pledged not to accept donations from federally registered lobbyists or political action committees. But some top donors clearly have policy and political agendas. Hedge fund executives, for example, have bundled large sums for Obama at a time their industry has been looking to increase its clout in Washington.
You were expecting this article about corporate interests trying to buy a candidate to be about McCain? Look, I have no illusions about this. Jefferson wrote, "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." And the same is true for politics. Corporations (with a very few exceptions) will buy access to whoever they need to, as long they expect to benefit, and it doesn't matter if the politician is Republican or Democrat. I just want all those who are ga-ga about Obama to recognize this unpleasant fact. They may think that they are electing a hard leftist. That might be what Obama believes, but harsh reality is that Obama is a Chicago machine politician--and he will do whatever his corporate masters tell him to do.
I don't have any higher hopes for McCain--but at least he knows that we are at war with terrorists, and knows better than to propose negotiating with our enemies, while invading our allies.
Ann Coulter and the Problem of Pluralism: From Values to Politics
...
Of course, one can certainly envisage particular ways in which political theory might directly address Coulterism. Thought from within the frame of deliberative democratic theory, Coulterism is undoubtedly an instance of illegitimate coercive communication shaped by the instrumental concerns of faction or personal profit rather than the universal interest in mutual understanding (Habermas 1979; Habermas 1990). It is also easily definable as a major vehicle of false consciousness and part of what Chomsky and Hermann (1979) have described as the media-military-industrial-complex ‘propaganda machine’.
"[I]llegitimate coercive communication"? I suspect that this means something in Chomskyite jargonbabble, but in ordinary English, it would seem to imply that after the Revolution, Coulter won't be allowed to speak. After all, she is engaged in "coercive communication"--her words force you to do things! posted by Clayton at 4:32 PM permalink
What Got Obama The Nomination
If you want to know who supported Barack Hussein Obama, and why, read this open letter in the July 30, 2008 The Nation, in which the hard left of the Democratic Party expresses concern that he might not be far enough left now:
Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance--including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters.
We recognize that compromise is necessary in any democracy. We understand that the pressures brought to bear on those seeking the highest office are intense. But retreating from the stands that have been the signature of your campaign will weaken the movement whose vigorous backing you need in order to win and then deliver the change you have promised.
Here are key positions you have embraced that we believe are essential to sustaining this movement:
§?Withdrawal from Iraq on a fixed timetable.
§?A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.
§?Universal healthcare.
§?An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.
§?An end to the regime of torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power that has flourished in the Bush era.
§?A commitment to the rights of women, including the right to choose abortion and improved access to abortion and reproductive health services.
§?A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.
§?An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.
§?Reform of the drug laws that incarcerate hundreds of thousands who need help, not jail.
§?Reform of the political process that reduces the influence of money and corporate lobbyists and amplifies the voices of ordinary people.
One of the reasons why the Weather Underground and other leftist groups went crazy in the late 1960s and early 1970s--and started bombing buildings, and killing working class people--is that they spent all their time talking to other leftists. As a result, they became convinced that America was on the edge of a communist revolution that just needed a spark to light the fire.
Look at this list of "key positions" above. Many of them are not just minority points of view, but extreme minority points of view.
Even worse, some of them show that the left is completely out of touch with reality. For example, "restoration of the freedom to organize unions." Did Congress pass a law prohibiting labor union organization? Did Bush lock up union organizers in Gitmo?
"An end to the regime of torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power that has flourished in the Bush era." Unchecked executive power? So the courts didn't do anything about Gitmo and the military tribunals?
"A commitment to the rights of women, including the right to choose abortion and improved access to abortion and reproductive health services." Wow! The Bush Administration banned abortion? No one told me!
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed House Resolution 194, apologizing for slavery--which is fine. It costs nothing, and there is much to be ashamed about with respect to slavery. But there is one part of the resolution which is historically wrong:
Whereas millions of Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and the 13 American colonies from 1619 through 1865;
Whereas slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals;
Nope. Slavery in America resembled Muslim slavery in this respect quite closely. Arabs were capturing and selling of not only black Africans into the 20th century, but white Europeans into the 18th century. Classical civilization took slaves quite commonly as a result of war, and sold them. That's part of why the Jews of Masada committed mass suicide, rather than surrender to the Romans.
I know that the Democrats have to see the United States as among the greatest evils that the world has ever seen, but this resolution is just plain wrong.
Scotland's smoking ban appears to have prevented hundreds of heart attacks in its first year, a study shows.
The number of people admitted to the hospital for heart attacks fell by 17% in the year after Scotland's smoking ban took effect in March 2006, according to a study in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
The study's author, Jill Pell of the University of Glasgow, says the size of the decline strongly suggests it was the smoke-free law and not some other trend or lifestyle change that prevented the heart attacks.
In the decade before the law was in place, heart attack admissions fell by an average of about 3% a year. And heart attacks fell by 4% in the same period in neighboring England, whose smoking ban took effect in July 2007.
Tobacco smoke causes immediate damage to blood vessels, increasing the risk of clots, Pell says, adding the law may protect non-smokers the most. Two-thirds of the decline in heart attacks were in non-smokers.
The ban on smoking indoors helped smokers, too, because it reduced their opportunities to smoke and spurred many to quit, Pell says.
And the law, which bars smoking in all enclosed public places, may keep many people from taking up the habit.
"This really demonstrates that smoke-free laws work," says Tom Glynn of the American Cancer Society. "They reduce disease and save money" in hospital costs.
Smoke-free laws also protect people from cancer, although it can take longer for cancer rates to drop, Glynn says.
Lung cancer rates in California, which began raising tobacco taxes in 1988 and banned indoor smoking in most workplaces in 1995, have been falling three times faster than rates in the rest of the country.
Glynn says the new study was "virtually flawless."
First of all, let me emphasize that I find smoking a vile habit. Only chewing tobacco makes smoking look sophisticated. (I was eating outside at a restaurant recently, and there were several businesswomen wearing power suits, trying to look sophisticated, while smoking cigars. Bizarre.)
Secondly, I am not at all comfortable with the liberal enthusiasm for exercising unlimited governmental power over all personal habits--with the notable exception of sex, where liberals believe that even governmental disapproval is legally wrong, and use of governmental power to stop public sex is equivalent to concentration camps.
I do find the connection that they are drawing here plausible--that making smoking in enclosed public places illegal might have reduced the number of heart attacks. What I find a little curious is that 2/3 of the decline in heart attacks supposedly caused by the new law were in non-smokers.
It is certainly plausible that secondary smoke (especially in enclosed public places) might have been causing heart attacks in non-smokers. But I would expect that smoking would be more dangerous to smokers than non-smokers--just because the smoker's exposure is far higher and more direct. According to this 2003 data, 31% of Scots smoke. Yet the non-smokers received just about as much benefit in heart attack reduction as the smokers! (The non-smoker decline was 66.6%, yet they are 69% of the population.)
What this says is that tobacco smoke is only slightly less dangerous to people that are simply in the same room than it is to people that are actively inhaling. Does anyone besides me find this implausible?
Police in a western Indian city defused an explosive device Wednesday, the 19th unexploded bomb found there in past two days.
The latest discovery came Wednesday morning in one of the markets in the port city of Surat, local police commissioner R.M.S. Brar said. Eighteen explosives were found a day earlier.
Police have warned people to avoid gathering in public places, leaving Surat a virtual ghost town as residents stayed at home and businesses closed, Brar said.
Twenty-two blasts ripped through the nearby city of Ahmadabad over the weekend, killing 42 people and wounding 183. Seven small blasts also hit Bangalore in the south, killing one person.
A little-known Islamic militant group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen took credit for Saturday's attack in Ahmadabad, though authorities believe the claim may be aimed at covering the tracks of a better-known group.
On Tuesday, authorities launched a massive manhunt in the Mumbai suburb of Navi Mumbai where investigators believe the bomb plots were hatched.
Authorities say four cars — two used in the Ahmadabad attack and two found in Surat — were stolen earlier in the month from that suburb, and believe the nondescript area was used as headquarters by the bombers to try to avoid detection.
Also, authorities are checking the computer of a 48-year-old American citizen living in Mumbai after an e-mail claiming responsibility for an attack was sent from it.
Police say the man is not a suspect and they believe unknown attackers accessed his wireless internet connection.
The diamond city of Surat came under the terror radar with nine live bombs being on Tuesday found from residential areas as Gujarat police detained three men for questioning in connection with the serial blasts.
All the bombs were recovered from different parts of Varacha area, housing most of Surat's diamond processing units, in a span of four hours, putting severe pressure on the city's bomb disposal squad.
Panic gripped the city as the explosive devices were found from residential localities and the diamond workshop areas which the terrorists apparently wanted to target. They were all defused by the bomb disposal squad. "Till now, nine bombs have been found," Surat Police Commissioner R M S Brar told PTI.
Police said three bombs were deactivated in the Mini Diamond Market area, three in Labeshwar, Santoshinagar and Matavadi localities and three under the Varacha-Kapodra flyover. The contents of the neutralised explosive devices have been sent for forensic analysis.
In Matavadi, a bomb was found handing from a tree while in Labeshwar it was left in an abandoned bag. In both these cases, the devices were planted near police outposts.
The three suspected -Abdul Qadir, Hasil Mohammad and Hussain Ibrahim--were detained near Limbi on Rajkot-Ahmedabad highway in Surendranagar district while they were leaving Ahmedabad soon after the blasts that took 49 lives and left over 145 injured. Their possible links with outlawed SIMI and 'Indian Mujahideen' are being investigated, police said.
Now, there are several possible reasons that the mainstream media are ignoring this.
1. India didn't invade Iraq.
2. India doesn't consist of a bunch of Western Christians, and therefore can't be held responsible for all that has gone wrong with the world.
3. They don't want to distract attention from the importance of electing Obama, the President who will solve these problems by invading our allies, and doing a group-hug with our enemies.
I dare any of the Idaho liberal bloggers, or the Idaho Statesman (which is pretty much the same thing) to link to those pictures and then defend San Francisco liberalism.
What's amazing is that some of these pictures show a situation where one is at (small) risk of AIDS infection from merely walking down the street. It isn't just rain that falls from the sky there.
UPDATE: Let me emphasize that the fuzzed-out version is still NC-17; the uncensored version would not be worksafe in Hell.
UPDATE 2: I'm told that this has nothing to do with homosexuality; San Francisco is just a crazy place. Yeah, right. It's just a coincidence that San Francisco has the highest percentage of gay people, a city government dominated by gay people, and a police department that was told not to arrest naked gay men having bizarre sex in public.
I've got a remarkably knowledgeable readership. I'm working on a business proposal to get seed funding (perhaps $100K to $400K). I need someone with significant experience with stepper motors or servomotors (loads measured in the 40-200 pound range at velocities of inches per minute), and embedded firmware who might be interested in getting in on the ground floor of a startup that has the potential to make us mildly rich. I don't dare say much more until we've had a chance to talk, do a Non-Disclosure Agreement. posted by Clayton at 10:41 PM permalink
How To Make Friends Into Enemies
This column by Dan Popkey in the August 3, 2008 Idaho Statesman makes it sound like this new church in Boise, Common Ground, is kind of a church for pro-gay, Green, liberal Christians:
You might not expect a pastor to cite a Schlitz beer commercial as an expression of faith. But that's just what I heard at Common Ground, a new Meridian church that is part of a growing movement away from the extremism that's dominated evangelism for 30 years.
"There's not a lot of Christian functions where people say, 'Who's bringing the beer?' " said Dennis Dickson, one of the founding pastors. "But God intended us, as the beer commercial says, to live with gusto. It's just that we are not to leave God out of the discussion."
Dickson spent 25 years at Boise's Cole Community Church, serving as youth and men's pastor, among other posts. He was senior enough to get six weeks vacation. But two years ago, he and Cole's junior high pastor, Tom Bowen, left to form Common Ground.
...
"We want to build bridges," said Bowen, the lead pastor. "We are unshakably Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians who believe our job is reconciling people together to God and to each other, and not drawing them apart."
I was invited to attend by Bob McGraw, who read my recent solicitation for ideas from people "quietly occupying the middle ground."
McGraw has distanced himself from his conservative heritage in part because of his experience at Hewlett Packard. For a decade, McGraw, who has two mixed-race sons, was on the diversity team and committed to HP's inclusive values.
But when HP added sexual orientation to the rainbow, McGraw said he became "real uncomfortable." But he studied, prayed and heard gay colleagues describe harassment, threats and fear. "I listened and I said, 'No matter where you are on the issue, that's wrong.' That was a breakthrough."
...
Jill Gill, a Boise State history professor, said Common Ground is part of a growing moderate evangelical movement that's loosening ties to the Republican Party.
"Many are talking less about politics, period, and more about spiritual nurture in terms of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and being good stewards of God's creation," said Gill.
Bowen agreed. "We proclaim that Jesus is our King and is teaching us how to live in the world. On the flip side, we strongly believe God is neither a Republican or a Democrat. There is a new politic interested in both proclamational truth and social justice."
Gill said younger evangelicals are drawn to moderate churches. Common Ground is typical and an alternative to what Dickson called the "sourpuss faces" in some churches.
"I've seen so many denominations draw lines in the sand," Dickson said, citing homosexuality as a prominent divider. "We don't see that as a sin that's any worse than the other sins. So, you're welcome to worship with us knowing the direction we're heading."
The church hasn't gone soft. It teaches sexuality and marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman. There are no gay members, but neither is there shrill condemnation heard in some quarters.
So what, exactly, does this mean? I'm mystified by Dickson's assertion that there are churches that have made homosexuality "a prominent divider" and yet "sexuality and marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman." That's sounds like Dickson is sure doing some serious dividing, following the Bible's clear statements about homosexuality.
I'm mystified what Dickson means when he emphasizes that homosexuality is no worse than other sins. I don't know of any church that I have ever attended that disagrees with him on that.
Even alcohol--while many fundamentalist churches disapprove of drinking--isn't any real surprise. The Bible teaches against drunkenness but not against alcohol. I can't recall a pastor that I have ever talked to about this subject who argues that alcohol is sinful. While most of the pastors that I have known don't drink, and strongly encourage others not to do so, it isn't because alcohol is intrinsically sinful, but because the damage that alcohol does for those who can't handle it is so dramatic.
No, I suspect that Popkey is either intentionally trying to create a divide between traditional style churches and Common Ground, or knows so little about Christianity that he thinks that Common Ground is somehow radically different from most evangelical churches with respect to homosexuality. I can't see any difference at all.
"Sqrt" is the square root of the number inside of the brackets. Sagitta is how deep the curve of the mirror is going to be in the center of the glass. The more accurately you calculate and measure this dimension, the closer you will be to the Focal Length you want when you get done. Either formula should provide the same basic answer unless you're doing a fast mirror.
