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Labels: machining Labels: economics Rubbing an oversized bandage on his left forearm, where he said he was grazed by a robber’s bullet, Ersland related details of what he said was a highly organized hit on the Reliable Discount Pharmacy. "I just regret anybody would get killed,” Ersland said. "But if I wouldn’t have been here, there would have been three people killed — the other pharmacist and the two techs.” "We have a very good security system,” Ersland said, motioning to the magnetic door locks that won’t let anyone in or out of the store without permission. "The door locks, and they (robbers) knew that. They had cased it because they knew exactly what time to hit us when we’d have all of our narcotics out and our money out.” About 10 minutes before 6 p.m., Ersland said, two robbers wearing ski masks waited for someone to leave the pharmacy and then grabbed the open door and threw down a board to stop the door from closing. The robbers went in cursing and yelling, ordering employees to give them money and drugs, Ersland said. Two women who were working behind the counter ran for a back room where they would be safe, but Ersland said he couldn’t run. Ersland said he’s a veteran with disabilities from wounds he received in Operation Desert Storm, wears a cumbersome back brace and just had his latest back surgery six weeks ago. "All of a sudden, they started shooting,” he said. "They were attempting to kill me, but they didn’t know I had a gun. They said, ‘You’re gonna die.’ That’s when one of them shot at me, and that’s when he got my hand.” Ersland said he was thrown against a wall, but managed to go for the semiautomatic in his pocket. "And that’s when I started defending myself,” he said. "The first shot got him in the head, and that slowed him down so I could get my other gun.” But as one robber hit the floor, Ersland said, a bullet from the other robber whizzed past his ear. The pharmacist said he then got his second gun from a nearby drawer, a Taurus "Judge.” After he had the big gun, Ersland said, the second robber ran. But as he started to chase after the second robber, Ersland said, he looked back to see the 16-year-old he had shot in the head getting up again. Ersland said he then emptied the Kel-Tec .380 into the boy’s chest as he kept going after the second robber. "I went after the other guy, but he was real fast and I’m crippled,” Ersland said. Outside the pharmacy, he said he saw what he thought was a third black male in a car with the engine running and reaching for what appeared to be a shotgun. "I pulled out my ‘Judge’ and pointed it right between his eyes and he floored it,” Ersland said. Labels: racism Labels: concealed carry Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock revealed this week that his state's police and teacher pension funds have lost millions of dollars in the Chrysler "restructuring." Indiana's State Police Fund and Major Moves Construction Fund, which finances roads and bridges, together lost more than $1 million. And the Teacher's Retirement Fund "suffered, at a minimum, a loss of $4.6 million due to the action of the Federal government," reports Mr. Mourdock. Far from being speculators, these funds represent retired public employees, including cops and teachers. The funds paid a premium to buy "secured" status, only to discover that they were politically outranked by the United Auto Workers in the White House hierarchy. "In the past, to be 'secured' meant an investor was 'first in line' in the event of a bankruptcy and 'non-secured' creditors would receive value after secured-creditors were paid," Mr. Mourdock says. "In the Chrysler bankruptcy, however, secured creditors received $.29 on the dollar even as non-secured creditors received higher values and ended up with a 55% ownership of the new company, which is fundamentally wrong and a dangerous precedent to the capital markets." Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, economics Labels: economics Labels: gun rights This is what the Obama administration's new commitment to help Mexico fight its drug cartels looks like. President Barack Obama this spring promised his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, that the U.S. would fight two of the biggest contributions U.S. residents make to drug cartels: cash and weapons. The latter is hard to come by in Mexico. For the past five weeks, hundreds of agents participating in a newly intensified $95 million outbound inspection program have been stepping into southbound traffic lanes and stopping suspicious-looking cars and trucks. Associated Press reporters fanned out to the busiest crossings along the Mexican border – Laredo and El Paso; Nogales, Ariz.; and San Diego – to see how effective the inspections are. The findings? Wads of U.S. currency headed for Mexico, wedged into car doors, stuffed under mattresses, taped onto torsos, were sniffed out by dogs, seized by agents and locked away for possible investigations. No guns were found as the reporters watched; they rarely are. "I do not believe we can even make a dent in [southbound smuggling] because that assumes the cartels are complete idiots, which they're not. Why in the world would they try to smuggle weapons and currency through a checkpoint when there are so many other options?" said Border Patrol Agent T.J. Bonner, president of the agents' union. According to Customs and Border Protection, between March 12 and April 30 officers seized: • Fifty-one pieces of ammunition, weapons parts and guns, a fraction of the 2,000 weapons the Mexican government estimates are smuggled south every day. • $12 million in cash, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the $17 billion to $39 billion the U.S. Justice Department estimates is illegally sent to Mexico from the U.S. annually, but more than the $10 million seized in outbound checks in 2008. • Sixty-one people on charges involving weapons or currency offenses and on outstanding warrants. Labels: gun rights, immigration Labels: health care A power producer typically gets paid for the power it generates. In Texas, some wind energy generators are paying to have someone take power off their hands. Because of intense competition, the way wind tax credits work, the location of the wind farms and the fact that the wind often blows at night, wind farms in Texas are generating power they can’t sell. To get rid of it, they are paying the state’s main grid operator to accept it. $40 a megawatt hour is roughly the going rate. Once you start screwing with the market ever more laws are required to make up for the distortions created by the previous set of laws. It never ends and only gets worse. Labels: enviromental lunacy Labels: machining Labels: movie reviews
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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Mostly Goofing Around
I'm playing with the video capture of this webcam--and thinking about offering the Constitutional History class that I taught at Boise State University here on video. Okay, no college credits--but also no exams, and it will cost whatever people are prepared to contribute.
I promise: this won't be PajamasLectures. I'll wear something more presentable than a bathrobe, and edit in pictures and documents into the video!
Click here to download the video as MPG
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Startling. Amazing. What Weirdness Will Happen Next At Target?
I went into Target today to buy some clothes, and I found socks manufactured somewhere that still has me in shock. "Made in USA." And they weren't a lot more expensive than the ones made in China! Who knows what will happen next?
UPDATE: A reader reports going into a Wal-Mart to buy inexpensive sleeping bags for a camping trip for kids. The Coleman brand sleeping bags, of course, were made in China. But the house brand, Ozark Trail, was made in USA, $4 cheaper--and upon careful inspection, was better made than the Chinese-made Coleman brand.
On Skype?
I've got a webcam, and I want to verify functionality. If you are one of my readers, and you have a Skype account, let me know, and I'll give it a try.
UPDATE: Thanks, someone is helping me resolve the mystery. It's almost like the webcam stopped working shortly after I blogged this.
UPDATE 2: The problem with having too many USB connected devices close together is that it is very easy to plug the wrong one in. And of course, then the webcame is invisible, but this seems to be working now. I feel so 21st century being able to do video conferencing like this.
Need Webcam Recommendations
I need a webcam useful for reasonably high quality video transmission (so that someone can record my end of the conversation for an interview). Any recommendations or disrecommendations? I would prefer below $100, which seems to give plenty of 3 MP and even 5 MP cameras--although my internet connection is sufficiently slow (800 kilobits/second) that they won't be able to use full frame rate at anything but a very tiny size (unless the compression algorithms have improved a lot since I was actively involved in this stuff some years back).
And get those to me pronto, since I need to buy the camera by tomorrow at noon.
UPDATE: Got one.
Techniques For Coarse Vertical Milling?
I've got a question that some of my clever readers might be able to answer: is there a coarse and powerful equivalent of a vertical mill? Here's the problem: the Sherline vertical mill, even with a stronger vise, still doesn't like taking more than about .050" of Delrin at a cut. I'm making cuts of about .210" deep. If I could find some way to take off .150"-.175" with a powerful but perhaps not terribly accurate tool, then I could use the vertical mill to do the rest.
I've tried to use a bandsaw for this and I'm not impressed with results, partly because a bandsaw intended for wood tends to flex when you ask it to cut something as strong as Delrin. I need a way to rapidly remove rectangles of Delrin.
The temptation is strong to use a drill press, and move the material through an end mill held in the drill press. This doesn't really work because drill presses aren't designed to handle the sideways load, and the spindle detaches after a couple of minutes. (And it's probably not good for it, anyway.)
Is there some other common tool that can be used for this operation? I've experimented with a router, but if you use it for anything but a pretty big piece of wood, it throws the workpiece to the far side of the garage with great enthusiasm! (Be glad that you weren't at the far side of the garage.)
I suspect that a dado blade on a table saw might be way to do this, although I've never used a dado blade before. I suspect that if I used a 1/4" wide dado blade, and lowered it far enough that only about .1875" of it was exposed, I could use a fence on the table saw to make repeated passes through it. For the 1.5" x 2.62" x .1875" section that I need to remove, this would be six passes, each of them only a few seconds long. Then I could complete the process quickly and precisely on the vertical mill.
Inflation Strategies
It has been so long since I worried about galloping inflation--and I had so little in the way of assets the last time this was an issue--I find myself wondering how to cope with the near future. Obama and the Democrats have started a deficit spending frenzy that makes the last Republican controlled Congresses look responsible.
I mentioned almost three months ago that there are signs that the Fed is inflating the money supply to try and revive the economy--and the only reason that it isn't causing price inflation yet is that the velocity of money is quite low, as everyone has been socking money away into savings, instead of spending it.
At some point, the chickens are going to come home to roost on this, and when they do, we're going to see some serious inflation. Inflation benefits people who have fixed rate loans, especially long fixed rate loans, and no significant dollar denominated assets. For those who have lived in the same house for a number of years, doing a refinance at current fixed rates would be a good thing; I rather doubt that it would be worthwhile for us, since I suspect that 80% of current appraised value would be quite disappointing compared to our current loan.
On the investing side, variable rate or other forms of inflation protected bonds are probably a pretty decent deal, and I do own some of those. But what else makes sense? The great German hyperinflation of the 1920s was extreme, but in that case, people demanded to be paid twice a day, and then ran out and bought whatever tangible goods they could immediately buy with the noon paycheck, so that they could trade those goods for what they really needed at the end of the day.
That was an absurd hyperinflation, one that I don't think that even Obama's wrecking crew is stupid enough to engineer. The same principles apply, however, to other inflationary spirals.
Keep in mind that there are two different concerns here: inflation hedges, and true investments. An inflation hedge is something that you buy with the hope that you it won't dwindle in value because of the inflation. If you have $1,000 in the bank, and we get a galloping inflation of 25% a year, at the end of two years, even if you earned 10% interest per annum on your deposit, will still be worth 80% of what it was at the start of the inflation. (And that's assuming that your interest isn't taxed, because your job disappears during the inflationary chaos.)
The problem for inflation hedges is that:
1. The transaction costs of the tangible goods need to be small. If it you spend $100 to buy $1,000 worth of goods, you are 10% down right there.
2. The goods should not depreciate over time. So automobiles (unless you actually are going to use them, and need them in the interim) are not a particularly good choice.
3. It's important that whatever you buy as an inflation hedge doesn't have some sort of irrational valuation because of emotions. Yes, Ferraris and Corvettes are examples. So is gold. The market value of these items can be inflated beyond their rational value, and emotion can make the market value deflate suddenly, too. Buying lumps of osmium might be an example of a non-emotionally valued item. (Most people don't even know what osmium is--an essential component of ball point pens.) This website is quoting a spread of $360-$400 per ounce, which seems oddly cheap compared to gold, but this may be a sign of the irrational nature of gold buying.
4. It would be good for the commodity to be relatively easy to transport, if you had to hide it or carry it with you. (Advantage of osmium over ammunition.)
Investments, however, are a harder problem. What investments, historically, have kept ahead of inflation? I don't know.
UPDATE: A reader tells me that buying U.S. Senators is the best investment of all. Agreed, but they are a bit out of my price range. Perhaps if a few hundred of us kicked in $1000 each, and agreed to share control over his voting digit.
This Is The Sort of Story That Makes My Blood Boil
The Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog frequently runs news stories like this one, involving armed robbers who get shot to death by their victims. And not too surprisingly, the robbers are sometimes black, the victims white. What makes my blood boil is when a person who is defending himself and his fellow employees from a highly organized, planned violent armed robbery gets called a racist for doing so. First, the robbery itself, from the May 22, 2009 Oklahoma City Oklahoman:Jerome Ersland was back at work Thursday filling prescriptions and hoping that by taking the life of a 16-year-old boy two days earlier, he had saved others.
This was not a misunderstanding. Gee, what were they planning to do? The ski masks alone would give you a clue.
After the pharmacy near SW 59 and Pennsylvania was robbed two years ago, the owner installed new security measures to try to make sure his employees would never again be forced to a back room and pistol-whipped.
This was not an unlawful overreaction, like the Korean shopkeeper in Los Angeles some years ago who shot to death a black teenager who shoplifted something from the store. This was a carefully planned robbery by a group of heavily armed teenaged criminals.
And the response of the community?"I just regret anybody would get killed,” Ersland said. "But if I wouldn’t have been here, there would have been three people killed — the other pharmacist and the two techs.”
That makes my blood boil. Does anyone seriously think that a group of similarly determined white robbers would not have received the same response? I keep hoping that American electing a black man to the highest office in the land would stop this lame attempt at turning every criminal into a victim of racism. But apparently not.
He also recalls the angry voices of people who gathered outside the pharmacy Tuesday night, shouting that he was a racist who unnecessarily took a life of the Seeworth Academy charter school student, Antwun Parker.
"There were a lot of black people gathered out there yelling and everything at my boss,” Ersland said.
The race card has been played so many times where it simply does not apply that I no longer pay any attention to it. And there are probably times when race really is an issue. But this is the type of behavior by some members of the black community that makes me just yawn now when I hear the accusation.
UPDATE: From the May 27, 2009 Oklahoma City Oklahoman:The charge alleges Ersland shot Antwun Parker, 16, while he was incapacitated and lying on his back. Ersland’s account of the incident doesn’t match the video or the evidence collected at the scene, according to the affidavit written by Oklahoma City Police Detective David Jacobson.
The surveillance video does seem to confirm that while the first shot was in self-defense, subsequent shots were not even close to being in self-defense.
Parker was shot once in the head and five times in the stomach area. The autopsy found Parker was still alive after the head shot and died from the stomach wounds.
Make That 39 States
Nevada, has had a shall issue concealed carry permit law since 2001. While they issued permits to non-residents, the requirement that the mandatory class be conducted in Nevada made it something of a nuisance for non-residents. Even though there are small Nevada cities just across the border from Idaho (and which exist for one reason alone: gambling), the mandatory class wasn't ever offered in those small cities.
However: Nevada now recognizes the concealed carry permits of several other states, including one that I have: Florida. Very nice--no more need to unload when I reach the border.
This takes me to the point where my six there are now 39 states where I can carry concealed. And strictly speaking, I can carry openly in Wisconsin.
The Obama Administration As Mafioso
That was a sweetheart deal that the the UAW, an unsecured creditor, got on the Chrysler restructuring; they ended up with 55% of the company, while secured creditors (in law, higher up on the food chain) received 29% of the value of their bonds. And look at some of who suffered from the Thug-in-Chief being on the side of the UAW, sidestepping existing bankruptcy law. From the May 21, 2009 Wall Street Journal:
Not surprisingly, Mourdock is no longer investing public funds in similar bonds where the prospect of political interference with the process may injure the bondholders. Obama and his thugs seem to be a curious mixture of progressive rhetoric and better spoken organized criminals. I sure hope that all those wealthy people who voted for him just to provie how unracist they were have learned their lesson.
This Is Beginning To Look Like Enemy Action
In one of Ian Fleming's novels, we learn that, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." I am beginning to wonder who Barack Hussein Obama really works for--because he is doing things that our enemies would do. For example, the actions of Democrats in Congress and Obama are endangering the sovereign rating of U.S. Treasury bonds.
If you don't know what that means, let me explain. When a corporation or government sells bonds, they are borrowing money from those who buy the bonds. Is there some risk that a corporation or government will default on those bonds? Well, sure. Joe's Five And Dime Corporation may well go under during the 30 year duration of the bonds that they issue. Certain governments (especially in the Third World) aren't particularly trustworthy.
The U.S. government, however, under the wise leadership of Alexander Hamilton, and the responsible leadership, both Democrat and Republican ever since, became such a trustworthy entity that it has what is called a sovereign rating--meaning, that any circumstances under which the U.S. Treasury defaults, you won't much care about bonds. You'll be more concerned about having a stockpile of canned food and ammo. But that couldn't happen. It just couldn't. Even the most deranged liberals that have run our government knew full well that a sovereign rating means that our government gets to borrow at the lowest rates possible--and that you can't just blithely throw away something that valuable.
Until now. This isn't a short-term crisis; the prospect that our government is no longer run by responsible adults is going to have a destructive effect on Treasury yields for a long time--even if our credit rating isn't actually downgraded. The realization that the adults are no longer in charge is that destructive.
Lots of people rely on Treasury bonds. They are considered the lowest risk investment imaginable. This is what lots of retirees rely upon. This is what pension funds invest their money in. This is where charitable organizations and educatonal institutions park money. Destroying the bond rating of the U.S. ends up destroying the resources of lots of people who aren't even particularly wealthy.
Now, if there was a functioning Republican Party, they would be running television ads right now saying, "Look where your hero has taken us--to a point where he is destroying the wealth that you are relying upon for retirement." But the national Republican Party doesn't have the intelligence of a squash.
UPDATE: The more I think about that news story--it may be time to start stockpiling canned food and ammunition. Especially ammunition that can be used to put food on the table. I'm not a hunter, but with these raving idiots (or worse) running the show, there might well be reason to become one in a year or two.
It's still barely possible that the masses will stop playing with their iPods and Blackberries when they lose their jobs, and suddenly go, "What the heck happened?" But I'm impressed how little attention much of the population seems to be paying, until the crisis is fully at hand--and impossible to avoid.
The Marching Morons Argument Against Big Government
There's a great science fiction story from the 1950s about a future where really stupid people have outreproduced the smarter half of the bell curve--and the average IQ, measured on today's scale, has plummeted to about 60. (It is titled, appropriately enough, "The Marching Morons.") As I look back on that story now, its depiction of degraded, almost pornographic advertising and moronic television shows starts to look surprisingly...familiar. "Put it in the tomorrow file," to quote from one of my favorite dystopian science fiction novel.
Ilya Somin has often argued over at Volokh Conspiracy that the general public is rationally ignorant of public policy issues. By this, he means that even if they understood the issues--what influence can they have on our government making decisions? And here he points to a disturbing new survey that finds THE JEWS are responsible! And this isn't in some ignorant place where they wear their turbans wound too tight, but in America:Political scientists Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit have an article describing survey data showing that some 25% of [non-Jewish] Americans believe that "the Jews" deserve at least "a moderate amount" or "a great deal" of blame for the current economic crisis. Some 32% of self-identified Democrats and 18% of Republicans take that view. Similar results were obtained in a recent survey of opinion in several European nations.
And yes, you read that correctly--Democrats are almost twice as likely to blame "the Jews" for this as Republicans. And the Democrats call us bigots?
Throwing Gun Control Advocates Under The Bus
It appears that Democrats in Congress have finally decided to throw gun control advocates under the bus--having finally figured out that upsetting gun owners risks losing them control of Congress in 2010. (I wish that concern about upsetting taxpayers figured so strongly in their calculations.) Not only did Nancy Pelosi (D-Derangedland) tell Obama to back off on assault weapon bans, but according to this May 19, 2009 New York Times article, Congress is going to implement--and even a bit more strongly--a last minute effort by the Bush Administration to allow concealed carry in national parks:To the frustration and discouragement of many Democrats, House and Senate lawmakers and aides say it now appears likely that President Obama will this week sign into law a provision allowing visitors to national parks and refuges to carry loaded and concealed weapons.
I doubt that this will be in effect soon enough for my upcoming visit to the Grand Canyon, but there's no dangerous wildlife there that would cause me to carry a gun (unlike Yellowstone).
The White House is lukewarm at best on the gun provision, which was added to a popular measure imposing new rules on credit card companies. But the Democrats who now control both Congress and the White House appear ready to allow it to survive rather than derail a consumer-friendly credit card measure that Mr. Obama is eager to sign as Congress heads off for a Memorial Day recess.
“Timing is everything in politics,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma and the champion of the gun proposal.
A majority of Democrats in the House and Senate still typically come down on the side of gun control. But the fact that they have been outmaneuvered by Republicans on gun issues is rooted in the fact that recently swollen Democratic ranks include senators and House members who represent Western states and more rural areas where gun ownership is popular and deemed sacrosanct.
When those Democrats team up with Republicans, they constitute a clear majority in the House and Senate.
“It is a shame,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. “But you have to come to a realization around here that at this point in time, the N.R.A. gets the votes,” she said referring to the National Rifle Association.
Wasting Resources on the Border
The May 18, 2009 Dallas Morning News reports on the efforts to stop the flow of guns southward--and what a waste of energy it is:
The wads of cash being seized are, very likely, going to the drug cartels, as payment for drugs smuggled north. To the extent that this effort reduces money received by the drug cartels, it may make a dent in their ability to buy weapons--but we already know that most of the weapons aren't coming from the U.S.
Angels & Demons & Cowardice
There's a commentary by Kyle Smith over at PajamasMedia pointing out that Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons de-Muslimed the lead bad guy--and in the process, made hm far less interesting of a character. Smith ascribes this to the Political Correctness that now runs Hollyweird. We saw something of the same thing when Tom Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears was turned into a movie--and the Islamic terrorists of the novel are turned into Russian nationalists.
Look, if Hollyweird is concerned about demonizing Muslims, that's legitimate. But take a look at the second season of 24. It had Muslim terrorists; it had Muslims who were not terrorists--and it wasn't done in a preachy or clumsy way. But anyone making a film about current events who simply insists that the bad guys will never be Muslims (as Hollyweird now apparently believes it is required to do) might as well pretend that the greatest danger to Americans today is rabid leprechauns.
A number of people have suggested that Hollyweird is operating on a very obvious model: if you insult Islam, you get stabbed to death (like Theo Van Gogh), or have to go into hiding (like Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses), or just accept the possibility that you may get to make the real life version of The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958). (Except that once detached, your head won't stay alive for hundreds of years.) But I think there are two much more direct explanations:
1. Hollyweird wasn't listening to Bush, and imagined that Bush declared war on Islam--even though Bush was very careful to emphasize that our war was with terrorists, not Islam. Therefore, since Bush is the enemy of Hollyweird, and Islam is the enemy of Bush, Islam must be the friend of Hollyweird.
2. I understand that Hollyweird is having trouble finding traditional sources of movie financing--and that even some very well known directors are having to go overseas to raise money. I wonder where some of that money is coming from--and if there are strings attached, or perhaps directors are self-censoring because they don't want to offend the puppet masters.
UPDATE: A reader points out that because of the release date of The Sum of All Fears, the script was almost certainly completed well before 9/11, and so it could not have been the theory I espouse above.
Hands Off My Soda!
Here's an article that I couldn't sell to PajamasMedia. Alas, there aren't really any paying conservative magazines anymore.
Hands Off My Soda!
Many years ago, I recall a relatively sympathetic article about Ralph Nader and his then current campaign to get Americans to stop buying soft drinks. They were, Nader insisted, an expensive way to drink water. He even had a policy prohibiting his employees from drinking soft drinks at the office. At the time, H. L. Mencken’s funny, and not terribly accurate definition of a Puritan came to mind: “A person who lives in dread fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.”
No one would ever have accused Bill Clinton of that—but I am beginning to worry about the Democratic Party of Comrade Obama. The May 12, 2009 Wall Street Journal reports that “Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.” The motivation isn’t just money; the article quotes “Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest” a Ralph Nader affiliate, that, “Soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply, and it's something government should discourage the consumption of.” Gadzooks! I thought it was beautifully marbled steaks, or Big Macs, or hot fudge sundaes!
Now, if you believe that the job of the government is to help us poor benighted peasants make better choices, then I suppose that this makes a bit of sense. And you don’t have to be a flaming liberal to believe that if there are social costs associated with a product or activity, taxing it to defray some of those costs makes sense. That’s what “sin taxes” have traditionally done. Tobacco taxes recover some of the costs that the government puts out on cancer treatment and oxygen tanks for those with emphysema. Similarly, we use alcohol taxes to cover criminal justice and welfare system costs imposed by drunks and alcoholics. Handguns, for many years, have been subject to a federal excise tax for the same reason—to defray some of the costs of handgun crime.
I can’t complain too strongly about the idea behind this—but I would like to see a bit more consistency in how the government decides which sins are going to get taxed. There are lots of habits out there that contribute to our collective poor health, and thus, that deserve to be taxed or discouraged.
In some cases, the government is already working very hard to discourage those behaviors. Crack, cocaine, heroin, meth: all bad things, all unlawful, and all theoretically taxed. The taxation was part of how Congress found authority to regulate intrastate commerce during the Progressive Era—and they used the same trick for machine guns, starting with the National Firearms Act of 1934.
Part of my concern, however, is that there are some bad habits with enormous health care costs that I have this odd sensation the Democrats aren’t going to do much to tax or otherwise discourage. Unprotected promiscuous sex, especially with prostitutes, increases the risk of transmitting AIDS. Promiscuous unprotected anal sex is even more risky. While it doesn’t get a great deal of attention anymore, the problem is still huge, and costly—perhaps even more so today, now that large numbers of the HIV+ are living longer lives, consuming very expensive multidrug treatments.
Now, I recognize that from a practical standpoint, it’s easier to tax soda than to tax unprotected anonymous anal sex. Can you imagine being the poor GS-9 responsible for pounding on a bathroom stall? “Excuse me, gentlemen, I’m from the Department of Health & Human Services, Health Care Costs Mitigation Division, AIDS Agency, Unprotected Anal Sex Desk. Before you get started, could you let me make sure that you have a condom on?” Long pause. “Don’t mind me, 48 CFR 1289 requires me to verify that it remains on throughout the process, or I have to assess you $4.50 in health care tax.”
Obviously, I don’t want a government that intrusive. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have. But let’s not pretend, if the government wants to tax our soft drinks in the name of public health, that there’s any principled reason why some unhealthy practices are going to be regulated—and others will not. The worst aspect of sin taxes is that some sinners have more political juice than others—and I rather doubt that us soda drinkers have the power to protect ourselves as well as some of the other sinners do.
One More Weakness Of The New Star Trek
Like the original series, there is an implausibly large number of humanoid sentient species around the galaxy. "The Paradise Syndrome" episode explains this--well, not really, but at least Spock suggests that there's a reason so many humanoid species exist. And we know that, against all plausibility, humans can interbreed with them. (You will recall that Kirk, suffering from electrical shock induced amnesia, falls in love with the beautiful somewhat American Indian gal, and gets her pregnant.)
Yeah, yeah, I know, budgets for the TV show were tight, and besides, by the third season, there needed to be a lust interest for Captain Kirk in every second or third show, but still, it was a serious weakness of the show. I suppose that an alien (humanoid, of course) watching Star Trek without the full cultural context would just assume that the writers were Creationists. (God was making aliens throughout the galaxy in His image!)
More seriously: I've seen a European describe the original Star Trek as Kennedy New Frontierism throughout the galaxy. In many respects, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek reflects John Kennedy liberalism. A belief that there is good and evil and that good will eventually triumph. That fundamentally, sentient beings everywhere are pretty much alike. And that the chief executive gets lots and lots of girls, by virtue of holding that job.
Sometimes, the Kennedyesque liberal shows up, and often in not very subtle ways. In "A Private Little War," Kirk and Spock must decide whether to arm a peaceful little bunch of almost Stone Age people on one underdeveloped planet to protect themselves from another indigenous, Klingon-armed tribe--and Kirk directly compares what they are doing to the brush wars of Korea and Vietnam--an ugly business, but one that Kirk feels obligated to do, because the alternative is worse.
And there's "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," one of the preachiest Star Trek episodes, with two aliens who are black on one side of their body, and white on the other--and both insistent that the other is an inferior race. ("He is black on the left; I am black on the right." I may be getting the sides reversed; I haven't seen that episode in many years.) Even when I saw it the first time (yes, I'm that old, that I used to watch it with my sister during the initial television run), at the heights of the civil rights movement, as much as I agreed with (and still agree with) its sentiment, it struck me as preachy and about as subtle as nuclear weapons.
Wind Power Generators
Environmentalists are really big on wind power (as long as it isn't affecting their view from Cape Cod), but there are some significant issues that need to be worked out. One of those issues is that wind power is highly variable. This means that it really only makes sense if you have some practical way to store that energy. Another problem is that many of the places that have plenty of wind don't have enough customers to take advantage of that electricity--because the transmission lines don't exist to transfer power from places like West Texas to places like Los Angeles.
Now, I ran into a fascinating claim:
I first saw this at Classical Values, and followed the links. But the last link to the original story is now dead. The story apparently first appeared on Greentech Media, which appears to be a blog for promoting alternative energy. While other articles on the Greentech Media site still reference this broken link, and indicate that it did indeed show this absurd situation, the original story has disappeared.
There's nothing terribly surprising about this irrational situation where alternative energy producers are having to pay someone to take their product. As Simon at Classical Values points out: What they really need to do is to find customers who are willing to be paid to use electricity. In other words we have set up a system where conservation is a bad idea.
As much as I like the idea of alternative power, and finding a way to impoverish societies where they have their turbans wound too tight, the fact is that much of the alternative energy industry isn't really a business; it's a religion, a belief that anything that doesn't involve fossil fuels is fundamentally wise. It is a religion because it involves not evidence, but faith.
The government can encourage alternative power, but they need to be encouraging basic research. If you throw a few billion dollars at solving hard problems, such as how to create inexpensive photovolatics, or more efficient wind turbines, that doesn't distort the market badly, like subsidies and tax credits to producers and consumers do.
I don't know if the disappearance of the original article off the Greentech Media article was a mistake, or an attempt to hide an embarassing reminder that some of this Green obsession is actually a bad idea. But the core problem remains: societies that refuse to face reality when it comes to economics end up going broke.
More On The Modified Drill Press Vise
I used to make a ScopeRoller set for the Vixen HAL-110 tripod. Or more accurately, I made one, because it was a challenge--and since then, I have turned away a second order for it, and for the very similar HAL-130. Why? Because I couldn't hold the workpiece solidly enough in the Sherline mill vise to machine the part.
The modified drill press vise seems to be doing the job adequately. I can take much deeper cuts, because it holds the workpiece much more solidly, and because it is big enough for me to lay the workpiece (which is 2.62" wide) down flat for milling. In addition, the drill press vise is big enough that I will be able (I think) be able to put three workpieces in at once, and use a fly cutter to do some of the operations all at once. (I might have to bolt all three of them together, however, to make sure that they don't slip on the Delrin to Delrin surfaces. Not a problem. I drill a hole anyway to speed up milling a slot, so I can use that hole for the bolt.)
I also had a chance to do some more accuracy checks. In the Y-direction, accuracy is excellent. I squared my workpiece, and it was square within the limits of my measuring device (<.001"). In the Z-direction, it isn't quite as good; within .015". Part of the problem may be that the movable vise jaw has some play in it (of course), and so if the workpiece is off-center between the jaws, it tends to pivot the workpiece slightly.
I put a piece of Delrin of almost the same width in the vise at the same time, to reduce the pivot; it seems to have knocked it down to perhaps .008". That's good enough for the rough cuts for which I am using it. It is probably good enough to ship to customers; but if I decide to be more careful, I can rough cut to 1.40", and then remove the last .010" with the workpiece sitting vertically.
Star Trek
I confess: I was never terribly impressed with Star Trek: The Next Generation or any of the other spinoffs from the original series. Enterprise was about as close as I can find pleasant, and even then, it isn't good enough to make me watch an episode unless I have nothing else to do.
The new movie, showing how Kirk, Spock, Uhura, "Scotty", Dr. McCoy, Sulu, and Chekov first meet, has utterly charmed me. It has all the strengths of the original series, and some of its weaknesses. So what? My wife and I both loved it.
It has witty dialog and amusing situations. (Strength of the original series.) It has clear-cut heroes and bad guys--but realistic heroes and bad guys, with complex motivations. (Strength.) It has Kirk unable to stay out of bed with beautiful alien women. (Weakness.) It has utterly unrealistic fist fights and gun battles. (Strength of the original, because it made it exciting; weakness, because it made unrealistic.) It has utterly implausible science. (Weakness.) It has interesting, almost self-referential inconsistencies related to time travel, (a weakness of the original) used to solve the problem of inconsistencies with the original series.
The special effects, of course, are far superior to what the original series could do with the technology of the time and the budget for a weekly television show. And to the director's credit, they didn't let the special effects take over the story--as more than few movies have done in the last few years.
My wife pointed out that they did a great job of finding actors and actresses who you could almost believe, in a few years more, might look something like William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, and George Takei. (Yes, there's a problem with Chekov's appearance this early--who wasn't in the first season of the original series.)
I am also gratified that the writers didn't feel a need to make the series "relevant" to today. There's no gratuitously gay character; no same-sex marriages; no speeches about saving Mother Earth from global warming; no subplots involving Romulan WMDs that turn out not to be there.
And yes, I would encourage you to see it on the big screen. It really benefits from it.
