| Court Address: | 1100 W Mallon Ave
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Case | CR0070552 | Criminal Traffic | 12/23/04 | 09:00 AM | Court Room 2
Case | CR0070553 | Criminal Non-Traffic | 12/23/04 | 09:00 AM | Court Room 2
About a year ago my wife bought three 1500 Watt space heaters at Walmart. About a week ago my youngest daughter noticed the plug on hers was discolored as if it had overheated. She checked the plug on her brother's heater and found it too was discolored and reported it to me. I checked the third heater and found it was even worse than the other two. Since the heaters were tested by Underwriters Laboratory I sent them a picture of the plug and the information they requested such as information about the heater:
Holmes Group Inc
Milford, MA 01757 USA
Model: HFH2985
Made in China
Serviced in USA
Heater 120V 60Hz 1500W A/C Only
3403DHX
UL
Listed 11C1
E91385
Today I received a letter from UL. So far they are “doing okay” in my book. It's odd the return address on the email is different from the person that 'signed' the email. And it took almost a week to send me a confirmation they received my email. But it's Christmas time of year and I give them a pass for now.
From: Lorene.A.Seeger
Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 9:07 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Your report - space heater
Field Report Investigation Number: 2004FR-2260
Mr. Huffman,
Thank you for contacting Underwriters Laboratories Inc. The information you submitted has been forwarded to our Field Report Department and an investigation has been initiated. We will contact you if additional information is needed during the course of this investigation.
We would like to assure you that the information you provided will be thoroughly reviewed and appropriate action will be taken as warranted.
Since the information developed throughout the course of our investigation is confidential, we cannot provide you with details or the results of the investigation. However, we will notify you upon completion of this investigation.
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention and assisting us in maintaining the UL Public Safety Mission.
Regards,
Craig M. Witt
Engineering Team Leader
Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.
[phone number and email address snipped]
-- For more information about UL, its Marks, and its services for
EMC, quality registrations and product certifications for global
markets, please access our web sites at http://www.ul.com and
http://www.ulc.ca, or contact your local sales representative. --
********* Internet E-mail Confidentiality Disclaimer **********
This e-mail message may contain privileged or confidential
information. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not
disclose, use, disseminate, distribute, copy or rely upon this
message or attachment in any way. If you received this e-mail
message in error, please return by forwarding the message and
its attachments to the sender.
UL and its affiliates do notaccept liability for any errors,
omissions, corruption or virus in the contents of this message
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Ho hum... So what did you expect? I've been saying:
The AP story is all over now. Here is one link and a snippet:
Democrats have claimed victory in the race for Washington governor by a razor-thin margin of eight votes, citing preliminary results of a hand recount they say puts Christine Gregoire in front for the first time.
...
More legal battles appeared inevitable. Rossi has said that he would consider challenging the election results in court if he loses the third count after winning the first two. Republicans have already started preparing for a possible court challenge.
...
King County Elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan, who confirmed that both parties received the recount data on Tuesday, said official results would be released Wednesday at 3:30 p.m.
...
Seven justices will hear the lawsuit brought by King County, the state Democratic Party and the secretary of state seeking to include the 723 uncounted King County ballots.
Rossi doesn't have a chance and never did after the first count came out so close.
 Tuesday, December 21, 2004
If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Winston Churchill
Even though Stalin killed between 8 and 20 million of his own people there are people who still think of him as a great leader:
"As a leader of the country, Stalin did much," Gryzlov said. But "what I think to be his extremes in his domestic policy, they certainly did not do much for his image."
Russia NTV television said a poll of 1,600 Russians taken by the respected Levada Center showed that only 31 percent consider Stalin to be a cruel tyrant, while 21 percent think he was a wise leader. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The poll also found 16 percent thought that "our people will never be able to do without a leader like Stalin."
I could always see, via a twisted sort of logic, how present day Hitler admirers could maintain their belief system. If they had been raised to believe they were the “superior race”, that Jews were the spawn of the devil (blah, blah, blah...), and there was some great Jewish conspiracy to rule the world then Hitler was “just solving the Jewish problem”--the Final Solution (you know about the First Solution don't you? Interesting story for another time). Sick chain of “logic” and “facts”, but you can sort of see how they got from “point A” to “point B”. Then there are the faith based nut cases, “god(s) said it, I believe it, that settles it”--we must kill the infidels. Okay. Facts and logic are irrelevant to them. And if you were an underling of Saddam Hussein I could see how you would either adopt his viewpoint and admire him, quit his employee, or go insane.
But what about some of the other really truly evil people such as Stalin? Surely decades after he or his thugs could put a bullet in your head any person could see “his extremes in his domestic policy” could not be compensated for by his abilities as “a leader of the country”. But apparently not. I suspect there are two ways to continue to believe what is clearly wrong and one or both are at work with these people.
-
People have an exceedingly strong tendency to believe what they want to believe. Many of the Jews walking into Auschwitz surely knew better but yet wanted to believe “Arbeit Macht Frei“ (Work Will Set You Free). And so they believed it rather than take at least one guard out on their way in.
-
When Prophecy Fails again impresses me as a absolutely brilliant piece of research into the human mind. Basically there is a psychological cost involved with changing your mind and you will be willing to pay a very heavy price in order to avoid it.
Now that I see people who lived under Stalin can admire him and think of him as a “wise leader” I now can fathom how Bill Clinton is admired by a similar percentage of our population and people in this day and age still clamor for more gun control. It doesn't have anything to do with rational thought, it has to do with being human. And as I have said before, it is irrational to expect people to be rational.
This was originally intended to be a response to one of the comments in this post but I decided it was straying far enough and was getting large enough that it deserved it's own post.
I have had numerous people tell me how obnoxious the police are and how egotistic, etc., etc. But my experience has been completely the opposite. I've been stopped numerous times for minor traffic violations and had several interactions when I was involved in an accident (both my fault and not my fault). On each and every occasion I thought I was treated fairly. Only on one occasion did I think maybe the officer had been having a "bad day" and was a bit on the grumpy side. I have always chalked up my difference in experience from that reported by others to be because I have had my interactions in Washington and Idaho as opposed to places like New Jersey or Chicago (where the horror stories came from). And that I always let the police do the talking and I listened in a polite manner. My attitude was always, in essence, "You're right. I screwed up. I'm sorry.", "I screwed up? I'm sorry, what did I do?" or "I've got problems here, can you help me?" Even when carrying concealed (and I gave them my permit in addition to my drivers license), the back of the van full of guns, ammo, targets, and explosive components (I also have a license to manufacture high explosives) the police have been professional and treated me with respect--as I did them.
Because I have no complaints about any of the police I have dealt with I am somewhat suspicious of Fish Or Man's experience. On one hand we can say, "He didn't break any laws therefore he doesn't deserve what he is getting." But on the other hand good policemen have fantastic intuition which is undoubtedly fed in part by behavioral clues from the people they interact with. If you are "sending up flares" that scream for attention to the police officer it is hard to for me to criticize the officer for giving you "extra attention".
The next few days will determine where I stand on this particular interaction.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Gun Control: Hiding Their Heads in San Francisco. Lots of nice numbers and tables then this:
Conclusion
Certain San Francisco supervisors are choosing to ignore history. With so much evidence casting doubt upon the wisdom of banning civilian firearm ownership, they would be wise to abandon their plan. Considering all the easily-accessible information contradicting their claims of noble intent, one must pause and ponder what their true motivation may be.
Since it has been in vogue for cities to sue firearms manufacturers for criminal use of highly-regulated, non-defective products, it would seem legal ground has been prepared for similar suits in the reverse direction: that city politicians should be held accountable for death and destruction of public safety resulting from the flawed policies they enact. Perhaps we need to start a new holiday: Take a Politician to Court Day.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.
Mahatma Gandhi
Autobiography,
Translated from the Gujarati by Mahadev Desai.
Public Affairs Press, Washington, D.C. 1948.
(Republication by Unabridged Dover, 1983. page 403.
As I mentioned on Saturday coming out of the closet has it's price. But that price could probably have been lowered with a little bit of planning.
Fish Or Man should have found an attorney prior to coming out of the closet. Getting funding ahead of time would have been a good idea too. The attorney could have researched the case law related to the laws in question. Sometimes the case law will essentially turn what the legislature wrote into something very different than what the average person would think it to mean. Once Fish Or Man decided to actually proceed he would have had a much more accurate view of what the cops could charge him with and how to respond. He could have had a note from his lawyer to hand to the cop saying, in great detail, this is the law and my client is not violating it.
So, Fish Or Man wasn't as prepared as he should have been. This doesn't mean that he is totally screwed yet or that we should abandon him. I have the 23rd off from work and if the roads are decent and I can talk my wife into a trip to Spokane (about a 2 hour drive for us) I will be there to watch what happens on his first court date. It may be that Fish Or Man is an embarrassment to the gun community and he should be “left hung out to dry“, or it could be that he is guilty only of lack of planning and we need to support him. We'll see and I'll report back later this week.
If not a form letter then it's probably a minor modification of one. I doubt that they really know what to say when confronted with their own bigotry. I can't imagine their policies “ensure the effectiveness of Google ads“. I think it is more likely the “Google Ethics Committee“ believed they were being ethical when they banned firearms. And once a decision is made and they defend it against critics it is hard for people to admit they were wrong. It takes very strong character to be able to do that. Google, as a company, is probably not much above average in character. It's just a battle we have to keep fighting one day at a time while showing all the character we can.
Subject: Re: [#17065471] Google AdSense Account Status
From: "Google AdSense"
Date: Mon, December 20, 2004 22:21 (GMT)
To: Joe Huffman
Hello Joe,
Thank you for your email. I understand that you are disappointed with our
current policies. We apologize for the inconvenience. However, we have
certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the
effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as our advertisers.
We review all publishers according to our Terms and Conditions and program
policies, and we reserve the right to decline certain websites. As we
grow, we may find that we are able to expand our program to more web
publishers with a wider variety of web content.
Thank you for your feedback, and please know that we are working hard to
make the AdSense program available to as many web publishers as we can.
Please feel free to reply to this email if you have additional questions
or concerns.
Sincerely,
Emily
The Google AdSense Team
----------------
AdSense publishers now have the option to display image ads, in addition
to text ads, through AdSense. Go to
https://www.google.com/adsense/faq#imageads to learn more.
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Indeed, I am now of the opinion that a compelling case for "stricter gun control" cannot be made, at least not on empirical grounds. I have nothing but respect for the various pro-gun control advocates with whom I have come in contact over the past years. They are, for the most part, sensitive, humane and intelligent people, and their ultimate aim, to reduce death and violence in our society, is one that every civilized person must share. I have, however, come to be convinced that they are barking up the wrong tree.
James Wright
Academic researcher who collaborated with Peter Rossi on the book Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and their Firearms
With all the funerals and stuff going on here I was behind on things. I think I'm caught up now.
Technically this is somewhat old news but it doesn't appear to be widely distributed. I got the first pointer to this info from Jihad Watch. ABC News in Australia reports the following:
...researcher Saiful Mujani of Jakarta's Freedom Institute now believes Indonesia's Muslims are less moderate than governments and academics suggest.
"The rhetoric claiming that there is no problem in the society…to me that's too simplistic, that's wishful thinking," he said.
The Freedom Institute's survey of 1400 people across Indonesia, found that less than 60 per cent of Muslims disagreed with Imam Samudra and Dr Azahari's bombing campaigns.
Sixteen per cent, representing tens of millions of Indonesians, agreed with the bombers and another 25 per cent refused to disagree.
"There is a significant number of Indonesians, at least half, [who] do not have a negative reaction to that and they agree with silence at least, or protect this kind of activity," Mr Mujani said.
“The bombers” refers to the bombing of night clubs and hotels that have been killing Australians. So at least 16% agree with the bombings and the actual number is probably closer to 40%. If there are a billion Muslims in the world and the fraction remains constant worldwide (yes, I know, BIG assumption here) then that means worldwide we have close to 400 million people willing to kill us because of we don't adhere to their religious beliefs. This is very, very scary stuff. That has exceedingly powerful implications for our future and how we must respond to it. So why isn't this a big topic for MSM in the US? I thought maybe I just had missed it. So I did a search on Google News. My search terms were “Freedom Institute Indonesia”. The only articles that referenced the study were these:
Nothing from anywhere outside of Australia. Why is this? Could this be the key (from the first article)?
Details of the negative attitudes to America and Australia revealed in the survey have been held back by the US Embassy in Jakarta, which funded the poll.
The US Embassy in Jakarta held back the numbers? The US doesn't want this information known? Am I missing something here? Was the study obviously poorly done? Was this viewed as too encouraging news for the extremists?
We are in the middle of World War III and I think it's important to know the size of our enemy's supportors.
Update @ 21:45: I did a search on google.com, instead of news.google.com, for ["Freedom Institute" Indonesia] and found these:
Still no U.S. MSM reports.
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