The connection between my ISP and Sprint to the Internet went down about 30 minutes ago.  Less than half the people in Moscow can reach my websites, the rest of the world will just have to get by without them somehow until the connection is restored.  Last time this happened it was a fiber optic cable that was severed by some construction north of Moscow.

Update 12:00: From our ISP's website:

Line to the Internet is Down
Starting around 8:20 this morning, our Sprint backbone to the Internet went down.  Sprint long distance and cell phones are also down.  Sprint is aware of this problem and is working on it.  9/22/05 9:00 a.m.

11:11 a.m.  We heard scuttlebutt from a usually reliable source that the fiber optic line near Worley was cut, and that they expect it to be back up by noon.

There is a bunch of highway construction going on all along state highway 95.  Worley is on 95 north of Moscow.

Update 13:00: From our IPS's website:

12:40 p.m.  Nope.  No additional word.

Update 14:05: From our IPS's website:

1:50 p.m.  Verizon says the fiber should be repaired by 2:30.

Update 15:54 From our IPS's website (heavy sigh):

3:50 p.m.  Nope.

Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Long-distance phone service cut in area

Several communities in Latah, Nez Perce and Clearwater counties lost their long-distance telephone service Thursday morning when an underground line was cut by an Idaho Transportation Department crew near Worley, Idaho.

According to Kevin Laverty, a Verizon media relations spokesman, most Idaho long-distance customers south of the cut line to around Orofino were without service until about 4 p.m. when repairs had been completed.

Affected towns included Moscow, Peck and Orofino, according to Laverty.

Barb woke me up at 2:08 this morning to report the electricity was off.  No electricity, no clock, no getting up at the right time to go to work.  I offered her the alarm clock on my cellphone and discovered a text message from Ry sent at 0:35:05, "Network down?"  That meant the battery backup had failed on our websites sometime prior to that.  I went outside and looked around.  The nearest lights I could see were about a mile away.  No need to report it then since there were lots of people without power.  I replied to Ry and we sent a couple messages back and forth. 

Power came back up at about 3:10.  Everything appears to be normal at the Huffman-Scott home and websites now.

Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Moscow residents hit by power outage

MOSCOW -- The city of Moscow was hit with a double-whammy by loss of service from two utilities Thursday.

First it suffered a power outage, which began late Wednesday night. Then its long-distance service was disrupted, along with several north central Idaho communities, Thursday (see story below).

Electrical service was knocked out shortly after 11:30 p.m., affecting more than 6,000 Avista Utilities customers, ranging from the Washington state line to one or two miles east, north and west of Moscow.

According to Debbie Simock, a spokeswoman from Avista, the blackout was caused by equipment failure at a substation in the area.

Avista rerouted some switches, bringing power back on for some customers, including Gritman Medical Center, by 1 a.m., Simock said. The rest of the affected areas had power by 3 a.m.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Samuel Goldwyn

For those who are not members or have a bad email address with them.  "Under new management":

http://www.thenationofriflemen.com

From a Keep and Bear Arms alert I just received.  Tomorrow morning they will file suit:

SAF, NRA ASK FEDERAL COURT TO HALT NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES

BATON ROUGE, LA (Sept. 22) – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA) joined with individual gun owners in Louisiana Thursday morning, filing a motion in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana seeking a temporary restraining order to stop authorities in and around the City of New Orleans from seizing firearms from private citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Click here to make a contribution to help fund this lawsuit.

Arbitrary gun seizures, without warrant or probable cause, have been reported during the past three weeks since the Crescent City was devastated by the hurricane. In cases reported to SAF, police refused to give citizens receipts for their seized firearms. Earlier, SAF insisted that police account for all seized firearms, disclose their whereabouts, and explain how they will be returned to their rightful owners. Authorities have not responded.

Gun confiscations have been highly publicized since the New York Times quoted New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III, who said, "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," and ABC News quoted Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley stating, "No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons."

For example, a San Francisco, CA camera crew from KTVU filmed one incident in which visiting California Highway Patrol officers tackled an elderly woman identified as Patricia Konie, to seize her pistol and forcibly remove her from her home. An ABC news crew accompanying an Oklahoma National Guard unit filmed another incident in which homeowners were handcuffed and disarmed, then released but without their firearms.

"We are delighted to work jointly with the NRA in an effort to bring these outrageous gun seizures to a halt," said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. "Our inquiries about these confiscations were cavalierly ignored, as were our demands for a public explanation from the police and city officials about why citizens were being unlawfully disarmed, leaving them defenseless against lingering bands of looters and thugs.

"New Orleans officials left us with no recourse," Gottlieb observed. "It was bad enough that Big Easy residents were victims of the worst natural disaster in the nation's history. That they would be subsequently victimized by their own local government, taking their personal property without warrant, is unconscionable. These illegal gun seizures must be stopped, now."

Today I checked on the status of a couple of the "blunt instruments" I'm using on Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  Since I hadn't heard back on them for weeks I sort of guessed they had been dropped and I wasn't going to get anywhere with them.  I was wrong.

The first person I talked to said the issue was still VERY much alive it was just that he had been buried in stuff and was reluctant to share the work load with others.  He has a couple of hard deadlines to meet and couldn't work on it this minute.  My project had received some attention a couple days ago and would be getting more attention soon.  I felt pretty good about things.  He asked a few more good questions which I gave short answers to and then followed up with detailed email answers.

The second person I talked to said I had gone about things in the wrong manner.  No big deal--the person in the appropriate channel will be contacting me soon.  I got the feeling that it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't called back twice to find out the story.  I was very pleased with this.  I was afraid I would just be told to "go away."  That could still happen but at least I believe I will get a chance to present my findings and have a reasonable chance of convincing them to take action.

One "blunt instrument" should be in there hands by now.  That is the appeal of their denial of my Privacy Act request on all the information they have in their files, email, etc. about the "investigation" they did on me.  I hired a lawyer in D.C. that specializes in FOIA/Privacy Act requests.  They claimed the Privacy Act didn't apply to them, but both my and the lawyer's read of the Act is that it specifically says it applies to contractors that perform a government agency function--so "hand it over!"  Nothing back on the appeal yet.

And since PNNL has received the FOIA request I talked about the other day by now I might as well reveal it here.  I asked for:

---

A list of all Pacific Northwest National Laboratory computer programs that use the FlashTek software library or rely on derivations of the FlashTek software library and/or it's source code.

A list, complete with contact information, of all PNNL customers and contacts that have copies of those programs.

Most, perhaps all, of these programs will have been produced in the Cyber Security Group at PNNL.  The source code can be easily identified by a copyright notice similar to the following:

/////////////////////////
// Copyright FlashTek
// Joe Huffman
// Joe@joehuffman.org
/////////////////////////

---

In case the name "FlashTek" doesn't mean anything to you, that is the name I use for all my private business stuff.  From software to explosives FlashTek is my dba (Doing Business As) name.  To speed up development of several projects at PNNL my coworkers and I used some of my previously developed code. PNNL never bothered to obtain a written license for that and I never bothered to ask for one. The implied threat with the FOIA request is that I will now ask for a license and/or demand they and all their customers stop using my previously developed software. This is a really nasty thing to do and I don't really want to do it. If they would give me all the information I asked for via the Privacy Act request then I, almost for certain, would not bring up the software license issue.

There is one more "blunt instrument" that I haven't checked up on.  I'll just wait a while for that one.

Previous posts:

Blunt instrument number five
Case blown open--maybe
Reconsideration

The second printing of this book is coming out next month.  For gun geeks this is a great book.  Lots of math and experimental results to back up the theory.  I have a copy of the first printing someplace.  I got it probably 7 or 8 years ago and immediately went out and did some of my own experiments to verify things.  The results looked good.  From the web page:

Bullet Penetration describes the analysis and testing of a model of bullet penetration dynamics; this model  is a significant technical advance over what has been heretofore available.  This penetration model is directly related to understanding the production of an incapacitating wound by the bullet parameters (velocity, weight, shape, diameter).  Incapacitation from wound trauma is a complex subject that has been controversial for many decades, and all aspects of this subject are discussed in detail in Bullet Penetration.  The new results in this book are described in a style and vocabulary that make the basic principles and results understandable to the layman.  This outstanding book should be read by everyone who is critically dependent on handgun bullet performance as well as all those with an interest in any aspect of wound ballistics.

The topics covered in Bullet Penetration include physiological and psychological effects in incapacitation from wound trauma, modeling of bullet penetration, and modeling of bullet expansion.  The realities associated with the desired "one shot stop" and the ignorance and/or fraud in "combat data" claims are discussed in detail.  The primary focus is on handgun ammunition, but the principles and many of the results are also applicable to rifle ammunition.  The book has 303 pages, including 69 pages of bullet photographs and graphs of test results.

Xenia's boyfriend John came over to visit yesterday afternoon.  Xenia and her John were looking at stuff on the computer and didn't seem to be needing any of my attention so I laid down to take a short nap.  I awoke to find the my legs on the edge of the couch separating the dogs, who were on the floor, from a half grown cat I had never seen before on the couch.  The dogs were extremely interested in the cat bug weren't big enough to jump over my legs onto the couch to make contact with the cat.  The cat seemed content with this arrangement.  My thought was, "This must be the cat Xenia's John said he was going to get for his sister.  Okay, I'll be the 'castle wall' for the cat.  I need to be careful not to crush it by moving my legs quickly."  Xenia and her John were on the other side of the room talking in whispers and I didn't pay them any attention as I tried to go back to sleep.  Xenia then told me in a normal voice, "I updated my Live Journal".  "Okay", I said, "I'll look at it later when I get up."  After a minute or two Xenia asked, "Do you like the cat?"  "Sure, it seems to be a nice cat."  What did it matter to me?  I probably would never see it again after her John gave it to his sister.  A few more minutes passed.  "Can she stay?  Her name is Zandra."  "No.", was my immediate reply.  Why would she ask that?  This cat is for her John's sister.  Probably 30 minutes later I got up and went downstairs to my computer.  I found this Live Journal posting from Xenia.  Zandra was a birthday present to Xenia from her John.

To make a long story short Barb and I ended up giving her three choices:

1. She could keep her cat or she could keep her John (only mentioned to get her attention of how serious we were).
2. We would call her John's parents and explain that John had not asked US about Xenia getting another cat.  They would be asked to come and get the cat.
3. She could take trigonometry next year and do really good job and not complain about hating math (she dropped it on the second day of class this year).

She chose option 3 amid apologies and tears.  We weren't and aren't upset with Xenia but her John really stepped into it.  That was a major blunder on his part.

She is a nice cat.  She is laying on my lap purring as I type this...

Update: It turns out Xenia asked her John to not ask us if she could have the cat.  It appears John wasn't the "bad guy" here.  More consultation with Barb is needed before we partake on a final course of action.  Xenia got herself into trouble on this one.

Xenia renamed the cat "Zanitia".  I'm thinking perhaps it should be "Xenia's Folly", or perhaps "Albatross".

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers
Nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.
[I would claim than in matters that adversely affect other people one has the obligation to demand empirical evidence.  But so many moonbats agree with Landers philosophy that it is rather depressing at times.  -- Joe]

The annual Gun Rights Policy Conference is this weekend.  If I had a job and it wasn't in California (spit, spit) I would have seriously considered going.  I was a speaker at GRPC 1999 and 2000 and was very impressed with the entire event.  I just received this Keep and Bear Arms alert:

WATCH LIVE FEED FROM GUN RIGHTS POLICY CONFERENCE

BELLEVUE, WA – Gun rights activists unable to attend this weekend's 20th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference in Los Angeles can still get in on the action via a live internet video feed from the event, according to Alan M. Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA).

Gottlieb announced today that by visiting the SAF website at www.saf.org, the CCRKBA website at www.ccrkba.org, or KeepAndBearArms.com, and clicking on the link, activists may watch the action unfold on their computer screen.

The live feed is being accomplished through the courtesy of the Freedom Broadcast Network, both Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to Gottlieb, scheduled to appear during the conference are U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID), National Rifle Association President Sandra Froman, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, SAF President Joseph Tartaro, UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, national syndicated talk radio hosts Larry Elder, Michael Reagan, author and Professor John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute, Larry Pratt with Gun Owners of America; John Burtt, chairman of the Fifty Caliber Shooters' Institute; Dr. Timothy Wheeler, director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, and many others.

Cool.  Very cool.  You won't get a chance to do all the networking (I met Stephanie at GRPC 2000--she does all the publicity for Boomershoot) but you will get a chance to listen to some awesome speakers.

My wife, Barbara, is a physical therapist who specializes in "home health".  She drives all over the county to see her patients.  She works with others who do speech therapists, occupational therapy, and nursing.  Many of the patients are on Medicaid/Medicare so in many cases there is government payment for the services.  The Danes have a new branch of government supported therapy which the government is also paying for.  The next time she complains about her job I'll suggest she could change her therapy modalities and perhaps go into private practice in Denmark.  On second thought, that probably wouldn't be a very good suggestion to make.  Via Clayton Cramer:

Danes take care of disabled to new level

Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

Opposition parties call the program, officially known as ''Sex, irrespective of disability,'' immoral.

''We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes,'' said Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel.

Responded Stig Langvad of the country's Disabled Association: ''The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.''

Mandatory reading if you plan to spend some time in Thailand or those of you who think working on the holy day, Friday, is no big deal.  From Jihad Watch with the complete article on Sign On San Diego:

PATTANI, Thailand – The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day.

After 20 months of insurgent violence, the no-work threat has driven another nail into what is becoming an economic coffin in Thailand's terrorized southern provinces.

...

Among the hundreds killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are police and soldiers, but police records show that 80 percent are civilians – rubber tappers, shopkeepers, civil servants, construction workers and ice cream vendors.

Bombs have exploded at a department store, a cinema complex, the international airport at Hat Yai and a department store owned by the French Carrefour chain. Now investors and tourists have been driven off and some workers are leaving.

...

Soaring demand, driven by the booming Chinese economy, has doubled rubber's price on the global market, but production in Pattani province has plummeted to a tenth of its volume in just a year, according to official statistics.

...

Prices of quarried rock have doubled, because the government severely limited the use of explosives that were reportedly being stolen for bomb attacks. The government eased the curbs as part of efforts to revive the economy, but Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura Na Ayutthaya, while warily approving the measure, said he expected coffins would have to be stockpiled for bomb victims.

I might be about to adjust to not working on Friday, but severe restrictions on explosives?  Now they've done it!  We we have no viable options but to destroy the extremist Muslim culture world wide.

On probably the second day of class this year Xenia told me she needed ten minutes of video to take into her English class that would "get people talking."  She asked me for suggestions.  It's 58 minutes, not 10, but we came up with Innocents Betrayed.  She said she could just select 10 minutes of the video to show.  We watched it together and timed various segments.  She decided just the first ten minutes would work.  I wanted her to skip one of the genocides and show the part about the kids in California who were killed by a guy with a pitchfork in their home.  All the kids knew how to shoot but couldn't get access to any of the guns because California state law requires "safe storage" to keep guns away from unsupervised kids.  But it was Xenia's decision and she figured showing a few more million dead because of gun control would be sufficient to start people talking without getting into little kids with hundreds of stab wounds.

Her class should be over by now and I haven't got any calls from the school to pick her up so my guess is things couldn't have gone too badly for her.  I'll update this posting later today when I get a full report from her.

Next on our list of projects is to take my picture from the fair and the KING 5 Boomershoot video to her chemistry teacher and suggest a field trip on "exothermic reactions".  In an "isn't it a small world" twist her chemistry teacher's husband supplies the portable toilets each year for Boomershoot.  Also, Barb and I graduated from Orofino High School with him.

Update 1: Xenia called a few minutes ago on another topic and I asked how the English class went.  She said when she turned off the video it was silent for 30 seconds.  They didn't know what to say.  She didn't have much time and I'll get a further update after school.  She seem pretty happy with the results though.

Update 2: Xenia reported most people didn't talk.  The instructor didn't commit himself either way.  Many of the kids didn't get the connection between lack of guns and genocide, "The government would have just done it anyway."  One suggested that taking of the guns was as much a symbolic thing as much as anything, "Maybe because they didn't have guns they were more likely to feel helpless."  Even if they weren't totally convinced at least they had some doubt put in their minds about the wisdom of gun control.  Video can be a much more powerful media than the written word and JPFO did a great job on this video, although I do agree that the "gun-control enables genocide" could have been expressed better than just giving examples of when that happened.  They should also of said that genocide has never happened without there being gun control in place.  And more examples of where a relatively small number of private citizens with guns saved themselves (or at least significantly delayed their demise) from government sponsored murder would be welcomed.

I remember attending a party once where most people id not know who I was and where I worked at the time (a contractor for Microsoft).  I was just sort of hanging out and listening (that's really active for me, often I just find a place to take a nap if I have to go to a party).  This woman started talking about how selfish rich people are and how they should be made to be more generous.  "So", I asked, "What is your source of data for the claim that rich people are selfish?"  I know, that was a below the belt punch on a defenseless communist as per the following:

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers, nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.

But being the scientist/engineer and generally socially clueless type I asked anyway.  The response was, "Do you have any evidence they are not?"  That was actually a fairly decent response--had I not been working at Microsoft for several years and knew many multi-millionaires.  Other people could have mentioned numerous famous foundations and philanthropists but I chose to give examples I had witnessed.  I told of going to Denny's in Bellevue, a short distance from Microsoft, with other people form Microsoft for coffee and desert.  We hung around for an hour or two talking, sipping our drinks, and nibbling on our pies and cakes.  As we left we tossed money on the table to cover our bill and a tip.  There was probably six or seven people but the excess money for the tip was over $60.  No one cared if they got change for the $20 they tossed on the table.  That was common whenever I went out for meals with "rich people" from Microsoft--a $20 bill WAS change to them.  I further told the clueless commie that the head of my favorite charity (I didn't tell her SAF was my favorite at the time) came in to talk to a club I belonged to at Microsoft (the Microsoft Gun Club) and told us that every year the largest single donation they received was from Microsoft Corporation.  Microsoft matches employee donations dollar for dollar to qualified 501(C)(3) organizations if you do the proper paperwork.  Those "rich selfish Microsoft employees" and their greedy corporation donations made a huge difference to that charitable organization.  In my several years of being around "rich people" I didn't know a single person I would have considered selfish.  I even knew one manager who offered to pay for one of his employee's sex change operation out of his own pocket (in return he wanted the testicles in a jar to put on his desk--but that's another story I didn't tell her).  In short, I had a very limited sample of probably 50 to 100 people in one geographical location at one company, but every bit of data I had contradicted her claim.  She didn't have anything to offer and we changed subject--I wasn't so clueless that I pushed the issue with her.

Ry, over at Mindless Bit Spew, is currently working at Microsoft and today reports on the activities of just one Microsoft private pilot who got time off from work to help with Katrina relief efforts.  Here is the first paragraph of his story published in a newsgroup internal to Microsoft:

Watching the destruction of Hurricane Katrina & the effect it was having on people’s lives, I wanted to help somehow. Our neighborhood organized a lunch, and we raised $3000 in just a few hours via donations by selling sandwiches to people simply driving buy. The company that I work at building a game called Flight Simulator, Microsoft Corporation, matched the donation. Wow, I was very impressed how people rallied and came together to support individuals thousands of miles away. Although I thought this effort on my neighborhoods part was awesome, I wanted to contribute more directly to the relief effort. I searched online for a way to contribute my airplane to fly people & supplies to the disaster stricken area.

People that bash capitalism need some exposure to reality.  Personally I know of no better place than what you see at Microsoft.  They've done some things wrong but the scales are so heavily weighted on the positive side you have to be actively avoiding reality to claim socialism/communism/fascism or whatever government scheme you might imagine is a "better way".

Below is a graph of the traffic on my blog for the past week.  As I mentioned yesterday there was a spike in activity.  If I get much more I'll need something more than a 2400 baud modem to handle it*.

Who you should really fear, hasn't visited you yet.

James Gordon
December 16, 1998
Referring to Microsoft Gun Club visiting Microsoft business competitors.

We celebrated Xenia's birthday yesterday.  It was nice to have all three kids in the house for a few hours.  Here is one of the pictures I took:

Xenia has information and pictures on her Live Journal.

I haven't been following the scandal related to the University of Idaho's University Place project.  So I don't really know what to make of this Google query that showed up in the list of referral links for my blog:

grand jury witness list University of Idaho Foundation (www.google.com)

It could have been almost anyone looking for more information on the topic.  It could be a reporter.  It could be a lawyer.  It could be a "hit man" (or is that synonymous with "lawyer"?)  As near as I can tell they are located in North Carolina.

Anytime someone is looking for testifying witnesses I start hearing alarms go off in my head.  Any suggestions as to what, if anything, I should do?

I made an animated gif of the blasting of the big rock in our field the other day.  The combustion products from the gun show up in the second frame, then dirt is thrown up around the muzzle, then the detonation occurs.  This gives you an indication of the time delay between the bullet leaving the muzzle and the detonation of the explosion.  I was 127 yards from the explosion.  Just a little closer than I really should have been--there were clods of dirt that landed behind us.  My brother moved behind my van as the objects fell from the sky.  He was concerned they were rocks.

Before.

The jugs have water in them.  Except for the red targets all the explosives are under the water jugs and dirt.

After.

Here is a picture of one of the larger plastic water jug remnants:

Click on the pictures for a high resolution version.

See also my previous posts on this topic:

Rocks and explosives video
Little rocks from big rocks and explosives

Kim du Toit (his site still down at the current time) once posted that he was frequently surprised at what posts got the most attention.  Something he thought was very ordinary would get a lot of attention and something he thought was really special would end up being no big deal.  In the case of my postings nearly everything is "no big deal".  Virtually nothing makes a big splash on my blog.  However last night Keep and Bear Arms posted a link to my simple reposting of an email alert I received from them.  Traffic jumped.  Probably half of my traffic came from their referrals.  Then this morning Outdoors Unlimited linked to the same posting.  About 80% of my traffic is now from that one site.  About 10% is now from KABA.

It's not my writing, it's not my insights, it's not my leaking of privileged information (hah!  As if I would ever do that), it's that I posted an email that went out to thousands of other people.  <shrug>

It would appear that socialism really works under some circumstances. Karl Marx just had the wrong species.

Hollander & Wilson
Journey to the Ants (1994)

We heard the Feds recently insisting that those are not black helicopters, they are dark green. Sorry about that.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 5, No. 2
February 1997

I've had a couple people ask me if I had any clues what was going on with Kim duToit's site, why it was down, etc.  I also saw a lot of people visit my site via search engines with query strings about Kim.  About all I could determine without given him a call (which I was hesitant to do because I don't really know him that well) was that a connection could be made to the machine but it was refusing requests--someone had turned the site off.

AnarchAngel has the story, the essence of which is:

I have communicated briefly with Connie Du Toit, and there is a business issue requiring Kim and Connie to take the site down right now, and without any notice. They can't provide details yet but expect some information in a few days.

The last few months have had a very sobering effect on me.  Think about this:

Q: How many gun bloggers openly use their real names? 
A: Not many.

Q: What percentage of those have had "problems" of some sort because of that?
A: A lot.

Q: How many anti-freedom bloggers do you know of that have "had problems?"
A: None that I know of.  But I don't "travel in those circles."  Anyone that you know of?

If you have to "stay in the closet" to be safe then how safe are you?  Did the Jews in Nazi Germany increase their safety by "keeping their heads down"?  It's a predator/prey type situation.  If you go into hiding then you are saying, "I am the prey."  You embolden the enemies of freedom. They become the full time predators.  They are at the top of the food-chain.  If we don't bring a few of those predators down, feed on them, and scatter their sun-bleached bones on the range among our empty brass shell casing we have nothing but fear and hiding in our future.

Careful now.  Think about this.  Who are our true predators?  They aren't just someone that advocates for their own imagined safety at our expense.  The predators are those that attempt to harm us personally (socially, financially, etc. as well as physically--which is unlikely) because they do not want our voices heard in open debate.  If you were to target someone for the loss of their job just because they advocated some new restriction on firearms then you are no better than those that targeted me or Kim for our activism.  In essence you cannot initiate "force"--you can only respond when they have initiated the use of "force" against you or another innocent party.  Don't think this means you have to "play nice".  Don't just whine about things for a while.  If they initiate "force" they have given you the signal for you to transform into a ferocious predator.  You aren't done until you are napping in the sun with a full belly and the vultures are feeding on the remnants of the carcass.

Also on this topic:

The closet
CCRKBA blasts bigotry 
Fred of Fred's M14 Stocks on being on a list
Thoughts on coming out of the closet
Coming out of the closet has it's price
Coming out of the closet

You've just dumped a scumbag.  Don't put your gun away.  You scan the area.  Jackals and lions travel in packs.  You probably will never be involved in another shooting in your entire life.  This is it!  Make the most of it.  This is a target rich environment.  See if there is someone else that needs to be shot.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995

I have had a lot of experience recently with detecting and tracking visitors to my websites that have an unusual interest in what I have to say.  Some of this is automated but a lot is still just grunt work.  I could do a lot more automation--to the point I think I could sell the service or perhaps the program.  I'm not sure on this last point.  Their may sufficient false positives that a quick look by a human eye is needed to make the final judgment.  Anyway, there are two things I would like to ask of my fellow bloggers and webmasters:

1. Would you be interested in a service that monitors your log files and was capable of giving you a notice within a few hours that someone was taking an unusual interest in you?  It might prevent you from being Dooced.
2. Do you have access to log files that I could use for test and development purposes?  I would even pay small amounts of money for log files from people who have actually been Dooced or "investigated."  "Normal" log files would also be needed but I wouldn't pay money for those.

Send me an email if you have some input.  Use nodooce@joehuffman.org

From a KABA alert I just received:

SAF INVESTIGATING NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES; NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is calling on members and supporters living in the New Orleans metropolitan area who have had firearms confiscated by police, federal officers or National Guard units to contact SAF headquarters at once.

Over the past three weeks, since the New Orleans and surrounding area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, there have been disturbing reports about warrantless searches and seizures of privately-owned firearms.

"SAF, in cooperation with the National Rifle Association, has investigators on the ground and has retained legal counsel in preparation for possible action," said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb.

SAF wants to speak directly with individuals who have actually had their firearms confiscated. If you, or someone you know, has had a firearm seized by authorities in the New Orleans area in the days following the hurricane, SAF needs to hear from you.

Contact SAF via e-mail at safalert@liberty.seanet.com. Please provide us with your full name, address, current working telephone number and the date and time of the firearm(s) seizure. Please also let us know the best time of day for us to reach you at that number.

Sincerely yours, Alan M. Gottlieb President, KeepAndBearArms.com

Earlier this week Xenia and I entered a bunch of photos in the Latah County Fair.  She entered most of these.  I entered this one:

All got blue ribbons except for three of Xenia's.  The Blue Fairy on the next to the last row got a white ribbon, the one of the cat and the flower got a red ribbon, and one was entered in a different contest which hasn't been decided yet.  She is very talented.  Barb and I went to the open house at the High School last night and got to meet all her teachers.  She is taking "Yearbook" this year and is one of the photographers.  The teacher held up last year's "Inner Visions" (once a year school publication for outstanding literary works) with this picture of Xenia's on the cover.  We are very proud.

I enjoyed hanging around my picture at the fair last night and listening to the comments of the people when they noticed it.  I think I'll do that some more today...

I had a phone interview this morning with a software company.  It seemed to go very well.  My skills in the area they need help with are a bit rusty but I know I could do the job.  They said they are having trouble finding qualified people so my guess is that I'm in the running for at least a little while.  I probably won't hear back from them for at least a week and then from there even if things went perfectly it would be at least several more weeks before I could actually start work. 

Xenia, Xenia's John, and James were really excited about the job possibility and not just that it's a job but because what I would be doing in this job (details after it is decided one way or the other).  Barb is less enthusiastic because it is out of state.  I share Barb's concern on that issue but it is the number one company I would like to develop software for.  That makes up for a lot.

Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive.

Sidney Hook
American Philosopher

Kevin, over at The Smallest Minority, received a letter from one of his readers today.  I read it a little while ago.  A contributing factor is that I'm really tired right now but I started crying when I got to this part:

My dad, however, was a survivor of Auschwitz. My grandparents were murdered there. And it is now a cliche, but it's true, the 'average' Jew could not defend themselves. So that got me to thinkin...and then seeing how it starts to look like America could end up like many S. American countries, with gated communities and barbed wire or broken glass up on the walls of the compounds...and I used to think this was the siren song of the Cassandras, but New Orleans showed that ain't necessarily true...well, all this speaks of the need to have some protection.

This is the part that has to make Kevin really puff up in justifiable pride:

You've helped me understand a great deal of things I otherwise might not have. I had a lifetime bias against guns...still won't say I like 'em, but that's that cultural bias I mentioned, and having one for self-defense is not the same as enjoying killing.

Although it scares some people he should now understand my post Why Boomershoot?  And although many people think I'm paranoid for my Jews in the Attic Test I doubt he is one of them.

He's looking for someone in the St. Louis area to take him shooting for the first time.  I would go and supply an assortment of firearms and the ammunition if someone wants to cover my travel expenses.  I'm a certified NRA instructor, I'm a high class B IPSC shooter, I do pretty good with a long range rifle, and further credentials are here.

Thanks for sharing Kevin.  That was really great.

Update: I have a pledge to cover the air travel with excess frequent flyer miles.  If I could get a little bit more to cover a couple nights in a cheap motel I'll cover my meals.

Update2: I now have pledges to cover all my expenses.  Now it just depends on if Kevin's reader wants to accept or not.

Via a pointer from Mindless Bit Spew. The Dutch are planning to open a "cradle to grave" electronic file on every child.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.

As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise "red flags" in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.

The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.

"Child protection services will say, 'Hey, there's a warning flag from the police. There's another one from school. There's another one from the doctor," Brouwer said. "Something must be going on and it's time to call the parents in for a meeting."

Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move, said Secretary of Health Clemence Ross.

"Safety, guidance, education and supervision are incredibly important for the development of children," Ross said.

All Dutch births are currently registered with local authorities.

Doesn't it always seem to be "for the children"?  It has often been said the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I claim it is paved with the skulls of the tens of millions of people, including children, who died at the hands of their own governments intent on doing good at any cost.

It must be the Dutch forgot about the little incident back in the late '30s and '40s when those type of records were found to be quite useful--when tracking down all the people with "Jewish blood".  And how is that "privacy safeguard" enforced?  Is there anything that can't be changed by a simple act of the lawmakers?  As I said in the context of a U.S. Universal Biometric Identification the safeguards that I would require to be put in place in order to believe the contents of the database would not abused would cause the most enthusiastic Auschwitz guard to cringe at my creativity in punishment methods, violate numerous protections of the Bill of Rights, and probably inspire several additions to it.  And, I now add, enforceable by any person anywhere on the planet that has a reasonable suspicion there was abuse of that database.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell