The View From North Central Idaho

heavy sigh

Ry is now working for Microsoft (see also this posting) again. We became acquainted with each other while working at MS via the MS Gun Club (MSGC) in the late 90's.  We only met once (which I don't remember) but saw a lot of each other's posting in the MSGC public folder.  We were both contractors at MS and Ry had other contracts he worked on in the bay area between his MS gigs.  It was because of me living in Moscow, Idaho that Ry decided to check out the town as a place for him to raise his family.  He drove over for a visit, looked around, and moved his family there.  I still didn't meet him.  It was at least a couple years later that I was reading a magazine while waiting to get on a plane at SeaTac (Seattle Tacoma airport) to come home to Idaho for the weekend from my job at Chromium.  This guy asks me, “Are you Joe Huffman?”  I confirmed his hunch and asked who he was and how he knew.  It was Ry. He said it was because I looked familiar, it was the gate for a plane to go to the Pullman-Moscow airport, my hat, and I was reading Precision Shooting.  We talked while waiting for the plane and I was thrilled.  He is so smart and so funny.  It was great.  He had just finished an interview at Microsoft.   I suggested he also consider Chromium, he agreed and got his resume in front of the right people the next week.  On the plane I loaned him my magazine and when we got off the plane less than an hour later he had finished it.  Ry reads incredibly fast.  Rather than him catch a taxi to his home in Moscow Barb and I gave him a ride.

Everyone at work was just as impressed by Ry as I was.  During the interview process the test manager came into my office and said that he had stopped the typical interrogation process and was going to have everyone else work on convincing Ry that Chromium was the place to work rather than Microsoft where he had received an offer.  A few days later Ry was working at Chromium just down the hall from me.  I found out that as he drove home from his interview at Chromium he stopped off at Vantage to use his minivan as a dune buggy in the sand dunes to celebrate how well the interview had gone at Chromium.  It was nearly midnight and when he tipped it over he had to walk a mile or so on the interstate to find someone who would give him a tow and get his van upright again.  This was just one of many well thought out adventures that I would hear about and occasionally witness.  Barb quickly concluded that he was incompletely myelinated.  There has been no evidence to contraindicate that diagnosis in the subsequent years (see also this posting).

Ry lived on the couch in the apartment I had in Kirkland most of the time we worked at Chromium and we were both laid off on the same day when Eric ran out of money.  I couldn't tell you the number of times we have talked late into the night until the sun came up.  Such far ranging topics and ideas for things.  It's always a thrill to be around Ry.  And he has been a tremendous help in the Boomershoot.  He was always ready to help test a new idea for explosives and had lots of ideas of his own.  And I especially loved it when one of us would come up with an idea and the other would immediately modify it to make it something that would actually work.  I would tell him that between the two of us we had a complete brain.

I so glad that he finally got a decent paying job after being laid off at Chromium, but he has moved 300 miles away.

heavy sigh

I gotta start working on this empathy shit.

Ry Jones
April 5, 2001

A middle aged woman and her children have house and cars repeatedly vandalized.  After a mid-night confrontation she retrieves an air pistol and rifle from her house and shoots a few rounds into the ground near them.  The police show up and arrest her but not the vandals.  Read about it here.

Mrs Walker was being driven towards breaking point by groups of youths “terrorising” her neighbourhood. She logged a catalogue of complaints with officers, from abusive phone calls to thefts and vandalism.

Anonymous callers would abuse her son as a “poof”. A wing mirror of her other son’s car was broken off, the garden shed was broken into, ornaments thrown over the wall and fish stolen from her pond.

The final straw came when she noticed that a five-litre plastic container of washing up liquid was moved from the back garden and emptied over her son’s car in the driveway.

She was “fuming mad” when she rushed out of her house at night to confront a knot of teenagers 250 yards away. After an exchange of abuse she returned home to arm herself with a Walther CP88 gas-powered air pistol, which she had kept in her underwear drawer for four months since she had been burgled, and an air rifle.

She phoned the police to tell them that she was going to “shoot the f****** vandals. I’ve got an air rifle and a pistol and I’m going to shoot them.”

Mrs Walker squared up to one 18-year-old, firing off several rounds from the pistol into nearby ground. The youth, Robert McKiernan, now 19, who has a number of convictions including burglary, told her that she was a “psycho”.

She later expressed surprise when an armed response unit arrested her and not the youths. Afterwards she complained to officers: “Police are very sympathetic but the law is on the side of these criminals and yobbos and not the victims. They have all the rights.”

In this country, at least in the habitable parts like Idaho and Eastern Washington, had it been a real gun and she had not shot it they probably would have run away.  They would have never come back and the police would not have had cause to arrest her.  But with a air pistol the risk of permanent injury or death to a health 18 year-old male is pretty low and they probably will now figure this is great fun.  I think I would have confronted them with full IPSC gear in plain view on my belt, eye and ear protection in place, and carrying a shovel.  I would have informed them that if they stayed any longer or ever came back they would be staying MUCH longer.  Probably it would technically be a punishable offense but the police and prosecutors here would almost for certain do no more than suggest you not do that again while thinking that you handled it better than they could have in their official capacity.

Oh, and of course you can count on this arrest and conviction to go on record as a “gun crime” and used as further evidence why air guns and replicas should be banned.

Over in Kim duToit's forum someone asked about when people learned about firearms and things related.  I told the following story and figured it would of interest here as well.  It's slightly modified here for lack of some of the context in the forum and to correct a few spelling and grammar errors I found...

Back on the farm we used 1/2 stick of dynamite as the booster charge for the ammonium nitrate we had mixed with diesel.  I wish we had video of all the stumps we launched into the air.  There were hundreds of them.  I got to help with that when I was about 10 years old.   Dad let me shoot the .22 about then too.  My brothers and I shared a BB gun we got when I was about 12.  I went through the "killed a bird and never shot a living thing again" learning experience too.  It was ammonium triodide, an extremely sensitive contact explosive (a feather touching it or even sound will detonate it), that I almost blew up the school with.  The first batch lasted a week as my buddies and I played with tiny samples.  The second batch was much larger and I had the test tube leaning in the corner of my locker with the freshly combined iodine and ammonia with just a stopper loosely sitting on the top (gas is evolved in the process and it needed an escape).  When I came back to the locker it had tipped over and the sludge was about 1/4 inch deep all over the top shelf of the locker and running down the sides.  It was still wet and safe but it was drying out and would soon be explosive to the touch.  I ran to the chemistry teacher while my buddy kept others out of that section of the hallway.  I confessed to the teacher and he helped me clean up the mess without blowing anything up or telling the principal or my parents.  I didn't tell my parents about it until 30 years later.  My brother and I use oxygen acetylene in plastic jugs and garbage sacks with dynamite fuse to ignite it.  Our biggest explosion shook the house 1/4 mile away and when we got back to the house Mom asked, "Did you hear that sonic boom a few minutes ago?"  We immediately affirmed an experience very similar to hers.

Then there was black powder we made and used in the "cannons" we made out of galvanized pipe.  The hand-loaded paraffin bullet I shot in the old .32-20 that hung on my bedroom wall out the bedroom window in the middle of the night at a stray dog.   All the experiments we did with firecrackers to see what they would do to various things.  Lots of Estes rockets with 'special' payloads.  The homemade 4th of July rocket that detonated about 2' off the ground--fender height of Mom and Dad's car.  We used the battery in the car for ignition of the rocket engine and it was too close to the launch pad to escape the consequences of the failed launch.

In college (fall of '73) my interest in women overwhelmed my interest in firearms and pyrotechnics until after Clinton was elected President.  From there you can probably figure out my history from the web.

I woke up at 2:00 this morning and after laying around for a long time grabbed the laptop computer and started working the hit probabilities and the target distribution.

See this picture to help visual the layout.  The large green tree on the left at the 380 yard line has been removed.

I plan on putting 210 4-inch and 40 6-inch targets at the 380 yard line.  From 575 to about 675 yards there will 120 4-inch, 280 6-inch, and 60 7-inch targets. At 700 yards there will be 10 7-inch targets.  There probably will also be a few 7-inch targets at 380 yards “roped off“ for the press and special guests.

This doesn't include the clinic targets.  Current plans are for 80 4-inch and 40 6-inch targets to be used in the clinics.

Including the press that is about 850 targets.  The total amount of explosives will be about 830 pounds.  I had originally thought there would be over 1000 pounds of explosives but measurements on the new mix indicate the density is lower even though it is more powerful per unit volume than previous mixes.

We can continue to push legislation of dubious effectiveness. Or we can acknowledge that gun violence is a public-health crisis fueled by an inherently dangerous consumer product. To end the crisis, we have to regulate--or, in the case of handguns and assault weapons, completely ban--the product.

Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center
From the article "Reverse Fire"
January/February 1994 Issue of Mother Jones

For those of you that don't know what swag is click here.

If you want to figure it out on your own just click here.

In years past I purchased t-shirts and sold them at the event.  I always had too many or too few, or the wrong sizes, whatever.  This year it will all be done online and you can buy hats and sweatshirts, and mugs too.  Probably other things too as I get around to it.  And Stephanie says she has some other designs coming out soon too.

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

T H Huxley
[Reminds me of the tragedy of gun control laws.  Great hypothesis, too bad they are such failures.]

James and I are watching a movie.  We try to get together on the weekends and do something.  It hasn't happened as much as it used to.  He was going to help with the Boomershoot private party but that got canceled so neither of us have anything else planned.  It just got started at about 15:00 when I get a call from Kim.  Her car will start but dies when she tries to do anything more than idle.  It sounds like it's not getting enough fuel. 

“Are you low on gas?“
“No.  I have half a tank.“
“Could you have some bad gas?“
“Same place as always.  Where you and Mom get gas.“
“It's been raining.  Have you left your gas cap off in the rain?“
“No.“
“It's probably either your fuel filter or your fuel pump.“
“How do I find out which it is?“
“We swap out the fuel filter and if that doesn't fix the problem it's the pump.  Where are you at?”
“Plummer.”
”Groan.”  Plummer is an hour's drive from home. “Okay, well, I'll go pick up a filter and come rescue you.”
”I want to visit Jessica first.”
”Groan.”  She is stranded.  It's raining.  It will be dark soon.  I offer to rescue her and her highest priority is visiting with her friend.

We ended up deciding she would try to fix it up there on her own with the help of Jessica and friends.  She called back a bit later and said it was running just fine now without any mechanical attention.  Of course neither of us trust it.  We decide I will get a fuel filter before the stores close and then she will call me as she is leaving town.  There is very little cell phone reception between Plummer and Moscow.  If she doesn't show up in Moscow within an hour I will come and find her. She is to stay in her car and just wait if it dies.

She calls at 17:45 to say she is leaving.  I set my alarm on my cell phone and 45 minutes later she calls to say she is in Moscow.  I just know she is driving faster than she should.  She visits another friend then comes over and to put on the new filter. I warn her that this doesn't really seem like a fuel filter so much anymore.  If it were plugged it wouldn't have gotten better.  It could be the fuel pump.  It could have been water in her gas.  But the fuel filter probably should be replaced anyway.

Kim may not have the best judgment but she is very good mechanically.  I pull the new fuel filter out of the box and she finds the old one.  I ask if she knows how to replace it.  She thinks she needs to bend “those thingys”.  “Not exactly.  Those are clamps which don't exactly bend.”  I show her how to slide one clamp off and she does the other, removes the filter, replaces it with the new one, and puts the clamps back on.  The car starts up again and runs.  Kim takes off again. 

Who knows what adventure will be next?

The Violence Policy Center is probably the most anti-gun organization in this country.  I notice they have a page devoted to explosives.

America must face the fact that we have a love affair with guns that exacts a tremendous and unacceptable cost in human lives lost. Mass shootings like that at Red Lake High School are the future for America's children until policymakers decide it's time to enact real gun control. Other countries have found the solution to mass shootings, and it consists of severe restrictions on the availability of specific classes of firearms, such as handguns and assault weapons.

Kristen Rand
Legislative director for the Violence Policy Center
News release March 22, 2005

[Note: The guns used were stolen from the shooters grandfather--a police officer killed by the shooter.  The school guard, also killed, was unarmed.]

The entire discussion of "stopping power" is both stupid and irrelevant. Statistics cannot be applied to individuals. People that need to be shot need to be shot soon and often. They need to be shot until they run out of fluid, brains, or balls.

If during the time you were reading the latest "stopping power" article you were instead practicing to save your life you would be far, far ahead.

Greg Hamilton
Self-defense instructor
May 08, 1998

Assuming the people of our country have the political will to stick with it long enough our technology will make it nearly impossible for the Islamic extremists to function.  I just look at the requests for proposals (here and here--these links may die in a week or two) and I know most of them are possible.  Not all of course, but we might have partial solutions for even the more “far out” requests. Compare what they think is really hot stuff to what we are working on:

R2017 Text Attribution
Design and develop computer software tools to automate existing stylometric and related psychological analysis of Arabic and English text to include e-mail, passwords, chat conversations, and other documents. Design analysis to generate investigative leads such as author’s age, sex, geographic orientation, English as a second language, and other basic psychological social and personality traits with resultant probabilities. The software shall include the capability to provide the investigator with a probability of a match to other inputted text (from known or unknown authors). Techniques shall include message stream profiling analyses from computational linguistics that have been used in investigations. The solution shall include a combination of techniques and approaches including, but not limited to, clause analysis, common word approach, idiosyncratic indicators, lexicon analysis, unique word approach, and other word use. The software shall have an interface to allow non-technical investigators the ability to upload text for automated analysis. The tools must employ a modular approach so multiple foreign-language capabilities may be developed in subsequent work efforts.

Imagine monitoring a chat session in real time.  Their chat is entirely innocent stuff but within a few minutes one of the participants is identified as the same individual that wrote the speech for a half dozen beheadings.  The other person is new to the database but the computer says he is the superior of the first person.  The IP addresses of both people are known and from that we know their city and probably can even construct databases of exact locations for a lot of the IP addresses.  The Blackhawks get launched while the chat is still in progress...

You can imagine the impact of the following systems:

R2047 Wireless Sensor System
Develop and test a wireless sensor network integrating seismic, acoustic, IR, and/or other intrusion detection and assessment technologies capable of detecting and tracking human and vehicle intruders while excluding local wildlife. The system is to be deployed in forested or otherwise visually obstructed areas. The system must provide security personnel with a situational awareness overview, alarm on detection of threat events, track multiple intruders, determine direction and speed of travel, and provide information for operators to identify and locate potential adversaries. The command and control unit will be a typical PC-based system.

R2073 Tunnels and Tunneling Detection System
Develop and field-test a prototype tunnel detection and tunneling activity detection system suitable for use by U.S. military and law enforcement personnel in domestic and foreign locations. The system must be capable of scanning the earth to 50 feet below the surface and be usable in urban and rural locations without creating safety or environmental hazards. The system must be capable of displaying a three-dimensional composite picture of the area scanned and must compare the results of scans from prior and subsequent surveys in such a way as to trace a tunnel's path. The system must be capable of providing operators clear information on the quality of the data and provide indicators of system limitations such that the reliability of the information can be estimated. The system should be air or surface deployed, with minimal and preferably no digging, drilling, or core sampling required. Data acquisition should be relatively fast and accuracy of tunnel location sufficient to allow a protective response.

Of course she is sitting on my lap as I write this too.

Her cat, wanting attention came up to us meowing and then started “sharpening his claws” on my knee.  “OWWW!!!”.  Xenia started giggling.  I glared. Her mood suddenly became somber, grim even, and barked, “Bad cat!”.

This was all the more funny because it isn't the first time she has done something like that.  Another time she was telling me about how her cat talks to her.  “Oh?  What does he say?”  “He thinks you're stupid.”  Glare and the mouth opens to return her to her proper place of respect for her parental units.  Before the first word can get out she blurts out, “But I don't believe him.”  She saved her ass.  Damn, she is fast.

To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers or both.

Elizabeth Charles

BP and the FBI both say it wasn't an intentional act but one has to wonder how they know that for certain so soon.  Details here.

FBI agents found "no evidence for any criminal or terrorist activity" linked to Wednesday's blast at the third-largest U.S. refinery, FBI spokesman Al Tribble said in Houston.

Two Islamist groups claimed responsibility, but BP also said it had ruled out sabotage as a cause of the third fatal accident in a year at the 71-year-old plant.

Of course various groups would probably claim responsibility if a meteorite fell on the Pope too.

I missed it when it first came out but late last month the TSA banned all lighters from checked as well as carry-on luggage.  I had grumbled about the congressional idiots who passed the law before and sort of expected the TSA would bring some smarts to the table.  I was wrong.  The TSA expanded the congressional idiocy.  Read their press release here.  Relevant snippets are here:

After carefully evaluating the security threat, Congressional intent and operational considerations, TSA determined that passengers should be prohibited from carrying all lighters on their person or in carry-on luggage in the sterile areas of airports or onboard an airplane. The policy will be fully enforced beginning April 14, 2005.  

...

All lighters will be banned from sterile areas beyond security checkpoints at airports.  This includes, for example, butane, absorbed-fuel (Zippo-type), electric/battery-powered and novelty lighters.

TSA’s mission includes preventing air piracy and use of an airplane as a weapon.  TSA prohibits items that may be used to that end from being carried aboard an airplane.  The lighter ban will fulfill Congress’ intent as expressed in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and reduce security vulnerabilities, providing one more layer of security for the nation’s travelers.

No mention of matches in their press release.  So I guess if you light a fuse with a match they don't have a problem with it.  And interestingly enough, confirming their idiocy, is that their list of prohibited items says:

Up to 2 lighters or 4 books of safety matches are allowed in your carry-on baggage - NOT checked baggage. Disposable lighters and absorbed liquid lighters are allowed in your carry-on baggage.

Everything I said before about the congress critters applies to the TSA idiots that implemented the idiotic law.

Yesterday I sent an email to the author of an anti-freedom editorial.  I received a response from her today and I responded:

From: Zackywacks@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 4:40 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Red Lake, Minnesota Shooting [On Gun Control]

Hi Joe.  Thanks for your thoughts on this subject.  I guess that any percentage of decline would not make a difference for those bent on carrying guns that get in the hands of babes and then kill other children...so let's begin to issue guns to children in grade school so they can protect themselves from each other.  NOT!

 

Thanks again and have a nice day.

Michelle

 

From: Joe Huffman 
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 8:39 AM
To: 'Zackywacks@aol.com'
Subject: RE: Red Lake, Minnesota Shooting [On Gun Control]

The point wasn't that it wasn't possible that some decline in gun related deaths occurred due to the assault weapon ban.  The point was that the numbers used could not possibly be accurate and that the number of gun related deaths are really irrelevant.  This is because thousands of those deaths are people shot by the police and private citizens in the defense of innocent life.  Furthermore if firearms become less available, the criminals substitute other weapons, and their victims are less able to defend themselves due to the lack of a firearm the total violent crime death rate may actually increase. To evaluate the benefits of gun control there is only one question we need to answer:

 

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?

For more background:

 

http://blog.joehuffman.org/archive/2004/12/14/583.aspx

 

And I fail to see how sarcasm is productive in this discussion.

 

You have a nice day too.

 

 

Joe Huffman
Senior Research Scientist
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
----
http://blog.joehuffman.org
http://www.boomershoot.org

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
Walden, "The Village," 1854.

My son once suggested we auction off a rainy day on eBay to someone who wanted it to rain on a particular day.  They would choose the day and we would then schedule Boomershoot on that day to guarantee that there would be rain.  Except for the one event in July of '99 (we had a fire the next day instead of rain the day of) he would have been able to deliver on his auction.

This Sunday, the 27th, we are putting on a “private party”.  I started watching the weather forecasts last weekend.  It didn't look good--rain AND snow was predicited.  I sent an email to the participants telling them to bring rain gear and to plan on getting wet.  No response.  Okay, if they can handle it so can I and the kids helping me.

I sent an email to my cousin who owns some of the land we use for the event.  Being a farmer he watches the weather forecasts pretty close.  Our email exchange follows:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 11:21 PM
To: Alan
Subject: Boomers on Sunday afternoon.

There will be a few guys shooting some boomers this Sunday afternoon.  Is this something that would interfere with any of your plans?

The regular boomershoot is April 29, 30, and May 1.

-joe-

From: Alan
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 5:30 PM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Boomers on Sunday afternoon.

It will probably be snowing this week end so I won't be out and about.  Have fun.

Alan

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 6:48 PM
To: Alan
Subject: RE: Boomers on Sunday afternoon.

The forecasts I have been looking at predict rain but since it's a boomershoot event I figure freezing rain and 30 MPH winds is more likely.  But I suppose snow is possible too.

-joe-