Bird flu scare

There is some concern that the bird flu has just made the evolutionary jump to transmit between human easily.  It’s too early to say for certain but it looks like that concern is unfounded:

“This is not the first time, and we cannot conclusively discard or prove this to be human-to-human transmission,” Mehta said, echoing a statement made by the WHO.

On Tuesday, the WHO said limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu might have occurred in the family, but there was no scientific evidence that the virus had mutated to allow it to spread easily among people.

“What is reassuring is two of the human samples from Kubu Sembilang have shown no evidence of reassortment or significant mutations. The lineage of these viruses are very similar to H5N1 viruses from avian specimens from north Sumatra,” Mehta said.

It’s things like the bird flu that cause me to have near zero concerns about global over-population.  The glass is half-full, right?  I’m just naturally an optimist.

Quote of the day–Lee Boyd Malvo

For the sheer terror of it – the worst thing you can do to people is aim at their children.

Lee Boyd Malvo
May 23, 2006
Rockville, MD trial of John Allen Muhammad
In response to being asked why Muhammad devised a two-phase plan to shoot as many as six random people each day for 30 days in the Washington area and then target children and police officers with explosives.  They planned to place explosives on school buses in Baltimore, kill a Baltimore police officer and then set off explosives packed with ball bearings at the officer’s funeral.  Malvo also testified Muhammad hated America, introduced him to the teaching of the Nation of Islam, and thought white people were “the devil”.
[Islamic extremist.  Racist.  Murderer.  Conspiring to murder children.  The death penalty is clearly appropriate for Muhammad.–Joe]

Update: Far more details are in the Washington Post article.

Prosecuting Bloomberg

It’s a pleasant thought.  Start prosecuting the bigots that are infringing upon our inalienable rights.  From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms comes this news release:

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 23 /U.S. Newswire/ — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should be investigated for obstruction of justice, and possibly prosecuted under the federal RICO statutes, for his headline-hunting “sting” operation of alleged law- breaking gun dealers, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today.

“According to the New York Daily News, ‘Quick-Draw’ Bloomberg’s decision to hire private investigators for this gun control stunt has apparently jeopardized several genuine criminal cases,’ said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “In his foolish zeal to drum up support for an anti-gun campaign, Bloomberg quite possibly has put real investigations at risk. This appears to be as clear cut a case of obstruction of justice as I’ve ever witnessed and Bloomberg should be investigated, and prosecuted if necessary.”

There is also the felony offense of 18 U.S.C. 242 “acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”  The offense is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any.

Of course the fantasy of Bloomberg spending the rest of his life in some Federal prison playing the role of “girlfriend” to some thug won’t play out anytime soon.  He is above the law for now and knows it.  But it doesn’t hurt to keep reminding the bigots that what they are doing is illegal.  Perhaps someday, before the statute of limitations runs out, he and others will get what they legally have coming.

I wonder if they do background checks

It would appear that, despite the screeching of the anti-gun bigots here, the U.S. doesn’t have the most lax or ignored gun laws.  Yemen seems to enjoy a bit more freedom in that regard.

“I have cannons, missiles, Kalashnikovs, anti-aircraft guns and hand grenades,” said community leader Mohammed Naji, sitting cross-legged in his house in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. “This is a part of our culture, and a tribesman can give up everything except his gun.”

The report said it was relatively easy to obtain surface-to-air missiles in Yemen.

Too bad their culture is so messed up in other ways.  Revenge killings are just a bit too crude for my tastes.

Boomershoot cleanup

No, it is not the cleanup the Boomershoot participants helped with.  Sunday, while Barb was at work, I drove the hour east to Boomershoot country to tidy up a bit in preparation for the next ATF inspection.

After using over a 1000 pounds of my chemical supply (we consumed 864 reactive targets at Boomershoot 2006) I had some room to rearrange things.  I also removed a couple garbage bags full of old milk and soy cartons.  We used to use the cartons for target containers and I had saved them for testing new mixtures.  We discovered the type of container made a difference in how easy the targets detonated.  Future tests will be made with the actual containers used.  This gave me room for the table we set up outside during production on the north side of the Taj Mahal.  This lets us open the door to the magazine without the table being knocked over and gives us better access to the chemical on the south side of the shed.

This same table has been broken for a couple years.  This year during the building of the targets it collapsed with some targets on it.  There wasn’t any danger of the targets exploding from the slide to the ground but it was not pleasant and someone could have gotten hurt anyway.  It needed to be fixed and I have been meaning to do that every year.  I still need to do some sanding, buy the screws, and put them in but I have made a significant amount of progress on this long overdue task.

I was pleased to note that the batteries were fully charged by the solar cells.

I swept the floor which had a couple dustpans full of dirt on it from all the travel in and out with muddy feet.

I ran the generator for a few minutes to warm it up so I could change the oil–which I did at lunch time in my parents shop.

I took the floor mats to my parents place and hosed them off.

I cleaned the air cleaner and put in a new filter.  I burned the old filter which was filled with potassium chlorate dust.

I removed all the miscellaneous mixing utensils we don’t use which have gathered over the years.

I brought home two blenders that “froze up”.  The chemical contact apparently had corroded the bearings (ammonium nitrate is particularly hard on metal).  I’ll see if I can repair them easily, if not I’ll buy at least one more for backup to the two remaining ones.

I did an inventory of chemicals we use (there are some chemical types we have used for testing that I didn’t inventory), and the target containers.  I still need to inventory the remaining stakes.

The following pictures are after clean up and putting all the remaining stuff, including some empty garbage cans, back in.  I’m pleased and I hope Crystal, Sue, or whoever the ATF sends to visit this year is as pleased as I am.

A visit from my girlfriend

Last Wednesday my girlfriend for the last 30+ years, Barbara, flew into SeaTac (I work in the Seattle area) from Idaho.  Even with the extra few days together it seemed we didn’t have enough time together or to do the things we wanted to do.  We had lunch with HsuanHua on Thursday.  I introduced Barb to my work associates on noon Friday.  Friday night we went to dinner and a movie (The Da Vinci Code–good, but not as good as the book) with my roommates.  Saturday morning we went hiking on Mt. Si then had lunch with Michelle before we drove back home to Moscow together.

And every night we tested out the new sheets I bought for my bed.  At 600 threads per inch they are almost like satin sheets without the problems (a small amount of sweat cause satin sheets to stick to your skin).  Even at $100 for the set (King size) they are worth it.

Soon, we hope, the visits and the testing of the sheets will be much more frequent.

Quote of the day–Dana Milbank

It takes a particular kind of nerve to be filmed taking $100,000 in alleged bribe money out of an FBI informant’s car, have the FBI later find the same cold, hard cash wrapped in aluminum foil in your freezer — and then adamantly claim that you have done nothing wrong.

…displaying the cool of a man who keeps his cash in the freezer.

Dana Milbank
May 23, 2006
So $90,000 Was in the Freezer. What’s Wrong With That?
Washington Post
[While this scumbag, Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, needs to be prosecuted this incidents of these sorts of crimes could be greatly reduced by restoring the limits to power to those mandated by the U.S. Constitution.  An excess of power, as is now the case, attracts the type of people who will abuse it.–Joe]

The bigot known as Michael Daly

Daly was my Quote of the day todayAlphecca also commented on him.  This is the email I sent him:

I just read your May 21, 2006 article in the Daily News and the first paragraph or two of a few of your other anti-gun owner articles.  You appear to be mistaken and or ignorant about certain facts.  Firearms in the U.S. are used to defend innocent life between two and three million times each year.  In the vast majority of these cases no shots are fired.  Most of these firearms are handguns.  Defending the innocent from grievous bodily harm or death is a entirely legitimate use of a tool–which is why the police and millions of private citizens in the U.S. carry handguns on a daily basis.

Before you advocate restrictions on such useful tools you have to ask yourself Just One Question:

Can you demonstrate just one time, one place, throughout all of human history, where restricting the access of handheld weapons to the average person made them safer?

-joe-
http://blog.joehuffman.org

Looking through my log files I could not find any indication he clicked on the link to my “Just One Question”.  This is as I would expect.  Bigots don’t need to think about an issue since they already know what they want to believe.

Lyle’s comment deserves some more attention.  He says:

In a free society, “legitimate demand” is determined by the manufacturers and their customers, not by socialist political activists masquerading as journalists.

Very true, but beyond that only someone that hasn’t made it past elementary school would believe that manufactures would be able to known what “legitimate demand” is.  The manufacturers sell to distributors who sell to retailers.  They manufacture as many as the distributors wish to purchase.  They have no “crystal ball” which can give them any sort of clue as to how many of those firearms will be lost, stolen, or sold to straw purchasers and end up in the hands of a person prohibited from firearms ownership.  And with there being about 200 million firearms in the country and just a little over 300,000 crimes involving a firearm each year in this country it means only about one out about 700 guns is used in a crime.  And that is making the worst case assumption that each crime is committed with a different gun!  The real number is probably something on the order of one gun out of 2000 to 10,000 is used in a crime.  Hence forecasting of firearms sales would have to be accurate to the level of about +/- 0.01% in order to know what the “legitimate demand” is.

Bigot Daly and his kind have mental problems.

Quote of the day–Michael Daly

…to enter the cavernous Midwest Airlines Center was to behold thousands of weapons, many of them handguns that have no real purpose other than to kill people and are produced in far greater numbers than the legitimate demand.

Just inside and to the left was the booth for Smith & Wesson, which manufactures two of the three most-prevalent guns among the 5,551 recovered by the NYPD last year. The list was topped by the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver, a number of which were on display for anyone to heft.

Michael Daly
Aw shoot, they’re cute
May 21, 2006
Daily News
[I don’t believe I have ever read a more bigoted article by someone who was not on the payroll of an anti-gun owner organization.  I sent him a short email asking Just One Question–Joe]

Quote of the day–Carol Sarler

The inquisitions, however, are predicated upon the wholly implausible notion that there are people out there willing to bomb the bejeezus out of 300 fellow passengers, yet unable to bring themselves to tell a fib. Either that or the increasing torment is just a canny plot by rabid environmentalists, hellbent on dissuading us from flying at all.

Personally, I find the second more likely. I also think they’re winning.

Carol Sarler
May 21, 2006
Airport security is a farce… I rest my case
The Observer
 (UK)

Quote of the day–Prime Minister Stephen Harper

We believe the evidence is absolutely clear on this.

This system is expensive and not effective. It’s not the right way to spend dollars on both gun control and crime control.

Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
May 19, 2006
Harper tells Ontario, Quebec to butt out on gun registry complaints
[It’s going to be a rough road getting rid of this dangerous encroachment on civil rights but Harper appears to be determined.  Good for him!–Joe]

Quote of the day–Celeste A. Morello

Ms. Porter should walk in the shoes of those who couldn’t fend off the strength of another, where using a gun would be the only means to stay alive. If it isn’t a gun, then it would be a baseball bat, tire iron, piece of glass or just muscle.

As a woman, I deserve the right to defend myself the best way I can. Gun-control advocates don’t seem to realize that gun control will adversely affect the rights of the easily-victimized, i.e., the elderly and young and, especially, females who can’t throw a punch like men.

Celeste A. Morello
Letter to the editor.
Philadelphia
Apparently in response to this editorial.
[Ms. Morello should ask Just One Question.–Joe]

Red asks questions–Dr. Joe answers them

Red asked a bunch of questions.  This post was only after I didn’t answer a much more detailed email from her two days before.  It wasn’t that was avoiding the questions it was that I was really busy with some other stuff.  I woke up at 3:40 this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep so I decided now was as good a time as any.  So here are Dr. Joe’s answers to the publicly available version:

Q: What is sex? Is it the act of intercourse carried to its fullest extent of a man orgasming inside a woman?
A: Technically speaking that should be “ejaculating inside a woman” the orgasm doesn’t really happen inside the woman.  But nit-picking aside, in this context it’s called sex if it’s a sexually motivated phenomena or behavior.  Hence “phone sex” is still sex even if you are using it as a communication device and not as a toy.

Q: Does the man pulling out right before he orgasms count as sex?
A: Yes.

Q: Does a man entering a woman once count as sex?
A: Yes.  Ask a rape victim.  Or imagine what one of your parents would say if their spouse used that argument as a defense against infidelity.

Q: Is any penetration of the vagina sex?
A: No. There has to be sexual motivation.  Hence the exam at the doctors office probably isn’t sex even though there is penetration.

Q: Then that brings up hand jobs. Is that sex?
A: Yes.

Q: Does cyber sex count as sex? Does phone sex count as sex?
A: Yes and yes. It’s called sex isn’t it?

Q: Does thinking about sex with a man count as sex?
A: Now you have asked a more interesting question! No. This is actually more of the motivation for the phenomena or behavior, not the phenomena or behavior.

Q: Where is the line of virginity drawn these days?
A: It probably has always had a little bit of fuzzy definition.  But probably the clearest line can be draw with sexual intercourse.  Once the male has penetrated the woman’s vagina with his penis, even a small amount, they are no longer virgins.

Q: What is cheating?
A: That is going to depend on the rules of the relationship. For some couples having lunch with a member of the appropriate sex with the intention of pursuing a sexual relationship is cheating.  For other couples having complete intercourse with everyone at the orgy is not cheating.  It’s about breaking rules, not the acts themselves.  Those rules are defined by the people involved.  Problems can arise when different parties to the relationship are working from different understandings of what the rules are.

The rest of the questions, while important relationship questions, are beyond the scope of Dr. Joe’s expertise (sex). The two things I will tell you are that: 1) you are 21 years old and at that age it is normal to be asking those type of questions; and 2) For the most part you will have to answer them yourself.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day–Bill Lockyer

We cannot rely on the federal government to enact responsible legislation that will prevent criminals from possessing and using guns. In order to create safer streets and neighborhoods in California, we must act now to stop illegal gun trafficking at its source.

Bill Lockyer
California State Attorney General
Lockyer touts gun control Amid area visit, officials push bills
May 16, 2006
[You would think that someone smart enough to get themselves elected to such a high office would realize that government cannot actually prevent things.  Government can only punish acts that have already been committed.  Never mind the little “shall not be infringed” issue in the Bill of Rights which means Mr. Lockyer is actually admitting to a felony.  But as we already know, the law doesn’t apply to ‘them’.–Joe]

Pronunciation

Our kids harass Barb and me whenever we mispronounce certain words.  “Wash” and “Washington” are two of the biggies (we grew up pronouncing “wash” as “worsh”) but “creek” (it came out as “crick”) gets a fair amount of attention also.  I actually appreciate being corrected and work at incorporating the corrections.  Barb does not appreciate it and at times threatens the kids (and occasionally me for agreeing that, technically, they are correct) with various types of retaliation and furthermore declares she will pronounce words just as she always has–which of course just means she told the kids they have a button to push almost anytime they want to use it.

It turns out it isn’t just in our household pronunciation is sometimes an issue.  Heather Armstrong nearly had me falling out of my chair in laughter with her pronunciation (MP3) of “crayon” with which her husband disagrees with.  Her entire post on the topic is here and probably will get at least a chuckle from you.

Real ID runs into more resistance

Maine realizes the Federal mandate on Real ID is unrealistic:

AUGUSTA – Two years from now, Mainers wanting to fly for business or pleasure may be barred from getting on the airplane. The federal Real ID act takes effect May 11, 2008, and state officials say there is no way Maine can be in compliance with the law that mandates various security measures dealing with driver’s licenses.

It would cost millions to implement, and new licenses likely would cost more than $100. “I don’t see how we could possibly meet all its requirements. I don’t see how any state could meet all the requirements by the deadline,” Secretary of State Matt Dunlap said. “This is something that could cost a couple of hundred billion dollars to do.”

Dunlap said the Real ID Act was passed a year ago as a result of the 9-11 Commission Report that was critical of the lack of security in obtaining identity documents such as driver’s licenses. But, he said, the Read ID Act has unrealistic schedules and provides little federal funding.

“It is a huge, unfunded federal mandate,” he said, “and it is totally unrealistic in its timelines.”

For example, Dunlap said, Maine has spent years and more than $14 million to set up the new computer system in his office to handle license and motor vehicle registrations. He said the federal law requires that all the states share, through databases, the personal information needed for a driver’s license.

“It simply can’t be done in a couple of years,” he said. Dunlap is joined in his criticism of the law by the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures, which issued a report last month critical of the lack of funding and unrealistic implementation schedule.

Dunlap said other states are as concerned as Maine. The New Hampshire House has passed a bill to opt out of the law, and its Senate has voted to study it. Other states are considering resolutions calling on Congress to adopt a more realistic implementation schedule.

All the states need to stand up and assert their constitutionally guaranteed powers on this issue.  The Federal government is way out of line on this as well as nearly everything they currently do.