Clayton Cramer's BLOG

Demon Sheep Ad

2010-02-06T10:19:00.003-07:00

Demon Sheep Ad

The comment over at YouTube: "Is this real?" captures it all. I don't have any strong opinion about Tom Campbell, having been away from the open ward that is California politics for too long. (Obviously, I hold Carly Fiorina in contempt, having worked at HP when the Empress was in charge.) But this demon sheep ad almost looks like a parody of the worst political attack ads! Especially the glowing eyes!

I Wish I Had A Union This Good

2010-02-01T22:04:00.003-07:00

I Wish I Had A Union This Good

From the February 1, 2010 New York Post:

A Queens teacher who collects a $100,000 salary for doing nothing spends time in a Department of Education "rubber room" working on his law practice and managing 12 real-estate properties worth an estimated $7.8 million, The Post found.
Alan Rosenfeld hasn't set foot in a classroom for nearly a decade since he was accused in 2001 of making lewd comments to junior-high girls and "staring at their butts," yet the department still pays him handsomely for sitting on his own butt seven hours a day.
In 2001, six eighth-graders at IS 347 in Queens accused Rosenfeld, a typing teacher who filled in for an absent dean, of making comments like "You have a sexy body," asking one whether she had a boyfriend and making others feel uncomfortable with creepy leers.

Because the Department of Education could not produce all the students as witnesses, he was found guilty in only one case. A girl testified that Rosenfeld stopped at her locker, where she was standing with a friend, and "said I love him because I talk to him so much."
A DOE hearing officer gave him a slap on the wrist -- a week off without pay -- for "conduct unbecoming a teacher." He was cleared to return to teaching.
Instead, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has kept the scruffy 64-year-old in a Brooklyn rubber room, deeming him too dangerous to be near kids, officials said.
The DOE can't fire him.
"We have to abide by the union contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.
So Rosenfeld simply collects his $100,049 salary -- top scale for teachers -- plus full health benefits and the promise of a fat pension, about $82,000 a year if he were to retire today.
His pension will grow by $1,700 each year he remains. He could have retired at age 62, but he stays.
He has also accumulated about 435 unused sick days -- and will get paid for half of them when he retires.
With city teachers trying to negotiate a 4 percent pay hike, Rosenfeld stands to get the raise.
All this largesse comes as Mayor Bloomberg threatens to cut 2,500 teachers to help close a $4 billion budget gap.
Meanwhile, the multimillionaire Rosenfeld lords over the rubber room, where he is the oldest and most veteran of 100 teachers.

Gee, I wonder why they have a budget shortfall?

Due Process As Pandora's Box

2010-02-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

Due Process As Pandora's Box

At PajamasMedia.

The Most Powerful Political Ad I've Seen

2010-01-30T07:54:00.001-07:00

The Most Powerful Political Ad I've Seen

If this is the sort of ad that Brown ran in Massachusetts, I can see why he won!

Very Impressive, But Sobering

2010-01-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

Very Impressive, But Sobering

It's a county-by-county map of unemployment rates over the last couple of years.

I'm Impressed

2010-01-28T20:26:00.002-07:00

I'm Impressed

The same crowd that is full of defenses and excuses for why the First Amendment protects virtual child pornography, flag burning, live sex shows, is all upset that it also protects political speech! Wow! What a stretch! Who would have ever guessed that the Framers intended it to protect political speech!

START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

2010-01-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

1. Open a new file in your computer.
2. Name it 'Barack Obama'.
3. Send it to the Recycle Bin.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin.
5. Your PC will ask you: 'Do you really want to get rid of 'Barack Obama?'
6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'

Feel better?

GOOD! - Tomorrow we'll do Nancy Pelosi!

Hans C. Ohanian Einstein's Mistakes

2010-01-26T22:48:00.002-07:00

Hans C. Ohanian Einstein's Mistakes

Subtitled, "The Human Failings of Genius." This is a very different book. Nominally, it is about Einstein's many mistakes as a scientist. Okay, scientists are allowed to make mistakes--but Ohanian makes the point that some of Einstein's mistakes were because he was something of a mystic who started out with his destination firmly in mind--and then tried to make the physics and math fit his destination. Often as not, Einstein knew what the right answer was, and clumsily tried to fit the equations and the data to fit. When they didn't fit, he used a bigger hammer.

Ohanian also tells us a bit about Einstein's private life, some of which I knew (his frequent adultery) and much of which I did not. In a lot of ways, Einstein was the first rock star of scientists in terms of public attention and adulation--and it sounds like Einstein worked like a rock star when it came to women, too. There's a lot here that is surprisingly sleazy--like when he left his first wife for one of his cousins--and then, at the last moment, couldn't decide whether to marry this cousin he had been sleeping with--or her very pretty, very young daughter. (The daughter wasn't interested.)

There's a lot that is very disappointing, but perhaps unsurprising, all things considered. One of Einstein's sons, Hans Albert Einstein, became a prominent academic in his own right. Another had a schizophrenic breakdown while young, and spent the rest of his life in a Swiss mental hospital. Einstein apparently never visited or even wrote to his son for the last 25 years of Einstein's life.

The plus side of Ohanian's book is a very well done explanation of some of the big physics problems that lead to Einstein's work. I think this is the best explanation of the Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment that I think that I have read.

The down side is Ohanian's often quite distracting snarky remarks directed at evangelical Christians who, to hear Ohanian tell it, all think the Earth is 6000 years old. It is distracting, and likely to irritate a fair number of readers who might otherwise find the book a useful math-free introduction to Einstein's work.

New Law Review Article Up

2010-01-26T22:43:00.002-07:00

New Law Review Article Up

David B. Kopel and Clayton E. Cramer, "State Court Standards of Review for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms," Santa Clara Law Review 50, pp. 1-110 (2010) (forthcoming). The abstract:

Abstract:
Cases on the right to arms in state constitutions can provide useful guidance for courts addressing Second Amendment issues. Although some people have claimed that state courts always use a highly deferential version of "reasonableness," this article shows that many courts have employed rigorous standards, including the tools of strict scrutiny, such as overbreadth, narrow tailoring, and less restrictive means. Courts have also used categoricalism (deciding whether something is inside or outside the right) and narrow construction (to prevent criminal laws from conflicting with the right to arms). Even when formally applying "reasonableness," many courts have used reasonableness as a serious, non-deferential standard of review. District of Columbia v. Heller teaches that supine standards of review, such as deferring to the mere invocation of "police power," are inappropriate in Second Amendment interpretation. This article surveys important state cases from the Early Republic to the present, and explains how they may be applied to the Second Amendment.

You can download it from the link above.

AIG's Corruption

2010-01-25T00:00:00.002-07:00

AIG's Corruption

From January 25, 2010 Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve's bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.

Crisis in Credit

The request to keep the details secret were made by the New York Federal Reserve -- a regulator that helped orchestrate the bailout -- and by the giant insurer itself, according to the emails.

The emails from early last year reveal that officials at the New York Fed were only comfortable with AIG submitting a critical bailout-related document to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after getting assurances from the regulatory agency that "special security procedures" would be used to handle the document.

The SEC, according to an email sent by a New York Fed lawyer on January 13, 2009, agreed to limit the number of SEC employees who would review the document to just two and keep the document locked in a safe while the SEC considered AIG's confidentiality request.

The SEC had also agreed that if it determined the document should not be made public, it would be stored "in a special area where national security related files are kept," the lawyer wrote.

If there is anything that the Bush and Obama Administrations could agree upon it was this: that incompetent Wall Street firms needed government protection. And that alone should have been enough argument for letting them go under. Painful? Yes. But I wonder how much of the continuing crisis more than a year later is because of the unwillingness to allow the market to liquidate and rationalize the bad consequences of the 1999 decision to encourage bad loans.

I'm Done With CFLs

2010-01-24T20:10:00.002-07:00

I'm Done With CFLs

Like almost everything that comes out of the environmental movement, they are a mixture of corrupt corporate dealings and fantasy.

I've previously mentioned the problems that I have had with CFLs in outdoor settings, where it is simply too cold for them to work reliably. But even the one area where I had some hope--that the purchase cost would be compensated for by their longer life as well as lower energy use--has turned out to be nonsense.

I bought a number of CFLs a few months after we moved into our current house in June of 2006. I bought some more in 2008. I have just replaced the fourth CFL--and in some cases, they are alongside the original incandescent bulbs that were installed in the house when it was built in late 2005.

I think I am going to buy a couple of the new LED light bulbs, and see if they last. I have some confidence. But the fact that environmentalists/corporate fatcats (pretty much the same thing) felt the need to pass a law to pretty much force us to stop buying incandescent bulbs shows how much hype is involved.

"She Turned Me Into A Newt!"

2010-01-23T19:03:00.003-07:00

"She Turned Me Into A Newt!"

While reading the Code of Hammurabi in preparation for Western Civ lectures this week, I was reminded of this gem from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). (Can anything top John Cleese's timing with the lines about his recovery?)

And why was I reminded of this? Because the notion that criminal justice relies upon the power of water to distinguish guilt from innocence is a lot older than I would have guessed:

If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

Okay, the polarity is reversed: Europeans believed that witches would not sink in water, while under the Code of Hammurabi, if the accused sinks, he's guilty. Still, it's interesting to see how far back some traditions go.

Surprises

2010-01-23T07:19:00.002-07:00

Surprises

A reader points out the irony of it all: "Who would have guessed that that Air America would close before Gitmo?"

UPDATE: My reader tells me he saw it over at Tigerhawk, who also doesn't take credit for originating it.

Teaching Has Its Rewards

2010-01-21T22:39:00.002-07:00

Teaching Has Its Rewards

Not generally financial rewards, but hey, I've got a full-time computer job so I can afford it.

Idaho taxpayers should be glad to know that you provided me with a stupendously nice and technologically sophisticated classroom in which to teach: the fruits of Western Civilization in which to teach Western Civilization! As near as I can tell, I can press a couple of buttons and feed the video projector from the desktop PC, from a laptop, from a DVD player, from a VCR--heck, probably straight from my cerebral cortex, if I was prepared to have it upgraded appropriately. (Yes, I'm using PowerPoint instead of torturing the students by expecting them to read my horrible scribbles on the blackboard.)

As part of my, "Why do we inflict history classes on you" lecture, I told my story about the woman from whom I used to get my ice cream cones--the one with the unfashionable tattoo: just the letter A and some numbers--and why history matters. As I mentioned some of the crimes of the Holocaust (before giving a brief summary of other atrocities of the twentieth century), I could see that some of the students were actually startled by what they were hearing. I know that a lot of kids are getting out of high school now with almost no awareness of the Holocaust., but I was a bit startled that some of them were startled.

It's The Little Details...

2010-01-21T22:34:00.002-07:00

It's The Little Details...

That really make the news story! From the January 20, 2010 Kansas City Star:

A man who put a container on a pharmacy counter, claimed it was a bomb and demanded prescription drugs left after the pharmacist wielded a shotgun.

...

Kansas City, Kan., police said the robber today was a heavy-set, white male with short, gray hair and a beard and about 50 to 60 years old.
He drove an early 2000 model, four-door Ford Taurus that was either blue or gray with Johnson County tags.
Shotgun fire might have damaged the car�s right rear quarter panel, they said.

I would look for someone desperately seeking clean underwear, too.

Never bring a bomb to a gunfight.

Wow! Freedom of Speech Includes Political Speech!

2010-01-21T21:09:00.002-07:00

Wow! Freedom of Speech Includes Political Speech!

The Supreme Court actually struck down a big chunk of the McCain-Feingold Act, because it prevented political speech by corporations. While I have some genuine discomfort with the extent to which big money (from corporations and labor unions and interest groups) pollutes the political process, McCain-Feingold didn't actually solve this problem: it just strengthened the situation for the overwhelmingly leftist mass media.

Humor

2010-01-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

Humor

Seen on Facebook:

Saw on the internet that Haiti is without a government. To help out, I am donating one Obama, one Pelosi, one Reid, one Frank, one Coakley and two Clintons! They may keep them permanently! I'd give them a constitution; but I can't find mine right now!

Very Nice Ego Stroke

2010-01-21T18:22:00.002-07:00

Very Nice Ego Stroke

I did a search for my name through all the briefs filed in the McDonald v. Chicago suit, over at the website that Alan Gura has for it. There were more than a dozen briefs that cited my work--and not just briefs on our side. Even the other side was citing my work! I suppose that I better go back and see if they are accurately citing it.

More About That Annoying Bug

2010-01-21T18:18:00.002-07:00

More About That Annoying Bug

I mentioned a few days ago the problem with my wife's PC. Using Process Explorer, I identified that the svchost.exe that was gobbling all the resources was launched by a device driver for an HP digital camera--one that we never connect to my wife's computer. I then removed all HP device drivers from her computer except the one for the HP Photosmart C6280 printer. And guess what? Now it works perfectly!

I don't know if the problem was that the device driver as delivered by HP had something wrong with it, or if a virus had somehow attached itself to it. But Process Explorer is a very useful tool!

Modal Dialog Boxes & Javascript

2010-01-21T13:40:00.003-07:00

Modal Dialog Boxes & Javascript
I'm hoping one of you already knows the answer on this. Javascript has "confirm" function that puts up a modal dialog box that gives you the choice of "OK" or "Cancel" and returns true or false accordingly. That's fine for some things--but what you want to change the text to "Yes" or "No" or (let's get really extravagant here), you want to give the user three choices, and have a function that returns 0, 1, or 2?

I know that there must be a way to do this--but darned if I can figure it out. There's certainly a way to do this with the jQuery package, but in the grand tradition of the Internet, trying to find a simple example is pretty much impossible. No, it doesn't need to do fifteenzillion amazing things when you click on the buttons--I just need the ability to control the text for 2 or 3 buttons, and return to the caller a value indicating which button got pushed.

In C#, or Java, this would be trivial.

UPDATE: A reader pointed me to this solution, which looks perfect.

Too Stupid To Stay Out of Jail?

2010-01-19T20:04:00.002-07:00

Too Stupid To Stay Out of Jail?

It's like a smorgasbord of trouble! From the January 19, 2010 Idaho Statesman:

Zachary W. Robinson is being held in the Ada County Jail on felony counts of possession of a controlled substance (methamphetamine and prescription drugs), delivery of a controlled substance (meth), manufacture of a dangerous weapon (a sawed-off shotgun), and misdemeanor counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, marijuana, a concealed weapon, and fake controlled substance after police arrested the 23-year-old Boise man following traffic stop just after midnight Monday.
The arrest occurred just after Boise police officer pulled over a car on State Street near the Vine Street intersection after seeing the driver make an illegal lane change. That�s when police say Robinson, who was sitting in the passenger seat, told officers that he had a handgun in his lap and a sawed-off shotgun in the back seat of the car.
Police say when Robinson got out of the car, an open can of beer he was holding in his lap spilled on the seat.
Police then searched the car and found the sawed-off shotgun and drugs in the the back seat, including: seven grams of methamphetamine, one gram of a substance the looked like meth but wasn�t, 3.5 grams of marijuana, a small amount of pharmaceutical medication he did not have a valid prescription for, and scales and packaging materials, according to police reports.
At that point, police arrested Robinson and booked him into the jail.

Ya think?

A Victory For Brown

2010-01-19T19:44:00.003-07:00

A Victory For Brown

I find myself wondering how much of this victory was a repudiation of Coakley's involvement in the Amirault case. Dorothy Rabinowitz has a detailed discussion of this tragedy here, and Coakley's insistence on keeping an obviously innocent man in prison because of the politics of feminist rage.

There were a lot of child sexual abuse cases in the 1980s that went completely insane. There is a lot of child sexual abuse, no question. There were cases in the period where what might have been actual child sexual abuse was so overwhelmed with utterly absurd and impossible coached statements by small children that we will never know what really happened: the McMartin Preschool case, for example.

There were others were prosecutors finally admitted that they were dealing with their own demons. One assistant D.A. in Minnesota, after having put a big chunk of the town under indictment or suspicion, finally admitted that she had not dealt with her abuse as a child. There was probably one actual victim in that case--but by the time she was done, she had destroyed whatever case there was.

I haven't kept track of the Wenatchee, Washington cases, but my impression was that if there was some actual child sexual abuse there, it was washed over in the hysteria that came out of it.

One of the cases that Janet Reno pursued in Miami was pretty clearly fabricated by "child advocates" who managed to coach children into pretty implausible accusations.

Some of the cases of that appear to have been completely and utterly false--like the Amirault case. This isn't a matter of, "The evidence was weak," but there was no physical evidence at all that should have been present if these claims by highly coached children was true.

Who Is It That Supports Gay Equal Rights?

2010-01-16T23:00:00.004-07:00

Who Is It That Supports Gay Equal Rights?

Democrats? I was pleased to see that President Obama wasn't as stupid as he seemed--since he seems to have nothing more towards repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" than lip service. This article from the January 15, 2010 The Hill reminds us that what's holding up a change in policy is another Democrat:

The leading House Democrat on military policy said Friday that he opposes repealing the law that bans openly gay people from serving in the military.

Seventeen years ago, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) played a major role in crafting the controversial law known as "Don't ask, don't tell." When President Bill Clinton wanted to lift the ban preventing gay people from joining the military, Skelton opposed the move. The end result was a compromise under which gay service members would conceal their sexual orientation.

As I pointed out last year, I have very mixed feelings about the ban on homosexuals serving in the military:

As I have said, there are doubtless a fair number of homosexuals in the military who are showing their love of country by going into the military--and staying there--even though the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy creates a very difficult situation for them. Those that put service to nation above their understandable personal desire to not have to live a lie deserve praise.

As I also pointed out last year, when linking to a piece by a closeted gay soldier:

I have my objections to allowing homosexuals into the military, but they aren't what you might think. I do not think that homosexuals can't be good soldiers. My guess is that the more bizarrely self-destructive homosexuals who make such a spectacle of themselves in the streets of San Francisco aren't inclined towards the kind of sacrifice and honor-driven behavior that Colorado Patriot describes. It's the same reason that Code Pink members aren't joining up, either.

As I mentioned several years ago, one of my concerns is that in some military settings, with all the requirements to obey orders, and limited opportunity to appeal a decision, it would be very easy to abuse authority--and I gave an example from the end of World War II, when the U.S. Navy had not yet formalized a prohibition on homosexuals in the service, and the nightmare that resulted on one ship. Yes, we have procedures to handle that sort of thing--but for the same reason that women in the military have been sometimes quite reluctant to file charges about rape, the problem will be substantially worse if the victim is a man.

I am concerned that a fair number of current members of the military, if put in a situation like that, might decide not to re-up, and many might decide not to join. How many? It's hard to say for sure, but if even 10% of the current population that is in, or considering going into the military, decided not to do so, it would be catastrophic, since homosexuals are only about 4-4.5% of the male population, and 1-2% of the female population. I don't find a 10% loss rate implausible, considering how traditional much of the population is that joins our military.

What concerns me most of all is this: homosexuals who are currently in the military under DADT are committed to the success of our military--even at some considerable personal sacrifice above and beyond the personal sacrifices that all members of the armed services undergo. They are having to watch what they say (like Colorado Patriot) to be in the service. Dropping DADT would, I fear, encourage a fair number of homosexual activists out to prove a point to enlist--and who would then insist that displays of affection, sex in the barracks, dressing in drag after hours, and other signs of...flamboyance...were part of gay culture. Would any of this set stay in the military, after making their point, and winning their lawsuits? Certainly not. But like the Goodridges, who won the right to marry in Massachusetts in 2003--and are now divorced--they would have done their damage, and gone on to destroy something else.

It's pretty clear that not just Republicans, but even Democrats, such as Rep. Skelton, are concerned about the possible consequences of repealing DADT. Those who insist on seeing homosexuality as a neat partisan divide are not playing straight about this.

A Unique Artistic Gift

2010-01-16T16:15:00.002-07:00

A Unique Artistic Gift

My oldest sister is an artist out on the Oregon coast. She has turned a number of her water colors and charcoals into a line of note cards. If you are interested in having something that didn't come from the Hallmark store, or otherwise different, you might find these of interest. Here's a chance to put some money into the pockets of an American artist. (And yes, they are printed right here in the United States.)

Why Reward Obeying The Law?

2010-01-16T15:53:00.003-07:00

Why Reward Obeying The Law?

Over the last few years, I've noticed that some of the most vigorous opponents of illegal immigration are legal immigrants--the ones that filled out the forms, asked permission to move to the United States, paid the fees. You know, those silly foreigners who actually obeyed the law. One of my Swedish co-workers at HP wore a T-shirt that asked, "What part of illegal didn't you understand?"

I have another friend who moved to the U.S. several years ago on an H-1B visa, working for Applied Materials as a Customer Engineer in the chip fab area. He loves it here, and sold his home in Britain. Shortly thereafter his wife and kids were able to legally join him in the U.S. (By "legally," I mean that they didn't sneak across the border, or overstay on a tourist visa.) Now, because of the general collapse of the economy, his job has evaporated, and if he doesn't find another employer to take him on under H-1B in the next 60 days--he and his family have to return to their home country. This will lead to enormous hardship because his house is underwater, there will be enormous costs to move back, and there are certain...items that can't go back to Britain. (Most regular readers of my blog will know that he is a member of our fraternity!)

This may not seem like a big deal--but Ronnie loves being in America. This is exactly the sort of immigrant that our laws are supposed to be encouraging: highly skilled workers with technical skills that are usually in short supply in this country who obeyed the laws to come here. If you are aware of any positions anywhere in the U.S. that might be able to justify hiring someone on an H-1B visa with chip manufacturing equipment experience, please get in touch with me, so that I can hook you two up.