Considering recent news from Canada and the real reason for Boomershoot I have decided to give Canadians entering Boomershoot 2006 a rebate of one half the price their entry fee.  Payable upon showing their Canadian drivers license or other proof of Canadian citizenship at Boomershoot 2006.

Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moment's respite deserve only the end of a rope.

L. Neil Smith

Happiness is being near the top of the food chain.

Back of a T-shirt worn by
Greg Hamilton
Self defense and firearms instructor
September 15, 1997
[Also applicable to the truth laid bear ecosystem for blogs.--Joe]

The new address is http://captjason.blogspot.com.  I have also created a backup site that I will update about once a week so we don't lose all the postings and comments if something catastrophic happens to blogspot.com.  The backup site is http://www.joehuffman.org/Jason.

This post will stay at the top for one week.  See below for newer postings.

The following story reminds me of this old joke:

I went to the County Fair. They had one of those "Believe it or not?" shows.

They had a man born with a penis and a brain.

Here's the story:

Syracuse University biology professor Scott Pitnick knows a lot about the birds and the bees (or in this case, bats). He teaches courses in evolution and population biology, and researches topics such as sexual selection, sexual conflict and speciation. His latest research sheds light on a little-explored area of evolutionary biology: the contribution of sexual selection to brain evolution. “The brain can be considered the most important ‘sex organ,’” says Pitnick. “Nevertheless, the relationship between breeding system and relative brain size has received little investigation.”

A recent study by Pitnick and colleagues Kate Jones of the Institute of Zoology at the Zoological Society of London and Jerry Wilkinson of the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland was funded by the National Science Foundation and used comparative analysis to show that bat species that roost in larger social groups and those with promiscuous females have relatively smaller brains than species with females that are faithful to their mates. Male infidelity, by contrast, had no evolutionary impact on relative brain size.

According to Pitnick, a likely explanation for this relationship relates to the energetic demands of producing and maintaining both brain and sperm cells; males cannot afford a lot of both. Under this explanation, males with relatively large testes and small brains leave more offspring than larger-brained, less fertile, competitors.

“When females mate with more than one male, sperm compete to fertilize the female’s eggs. Such ‘sperm competition’ is rife in many bat species, perhaps due in part to the unusual ability (among mammals at least) of sperm to survive inside the female’s reproductive tract for a very long time,” says Pitnick. “The
male who ejaculates the greatest number of sperm may win at this game, and hence many bats have evolved outrageously big testes—as much as 8.5% of their body mass. Because they live on an energetic knife-edge, bats may not be able to evolutionarily afford both big testes and big brains. We’re excited about these results, as they may stimulate more research into the correlated evolution of brains, behavior and the extravagant and costly ornaments and armaments favored by sexual selection.”

The full results of Pitnick’s study have recently been published in Proceedings B (London) a biology journal of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of science.

You know what this means, don't you?  If someone says you have big balls they are also saying you are pea brain and your mother was promiscuous.

Yahoo News reports:

OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin will venture into a violence-plagued area of Toronto on Thursday to announce a sweeping ban on handguns, The Canadian Press has learned.

Martin was scheduled to visit Toronto's troubled Jane-Finch area to make a "safer communities announcement." Liberal sources have confirmed the announcement includes an "outright" ban on handguns.

However, there will be exceptions for competitive target shooters, gun collectors and peace officers, a Liberal insider said on condition of anonymity. The source would not explain any more details of the policy proposal.

Handguns are already severely restricted in Canada and a handgun registry has been in force for more than 60 years.

...

Windsor MP Joe Comartin, the New Democratic Party's justice critic, said the announcement sounds like "smoke and mirrors."

"Basically, all handguns in Canada are illegal now," said Comartin. "The only people who get permits are those who are using them for recreational purposes or those who need it for their own personal safety and there's not a lot of those that are granted."

He said the announcement sounds like "a political ploy during an election to garner some headlines and make it look like you're actually doing something when, in fact, what you're proposing is pretty meaningless."

...

It remains to be seen how the ban will go over in rural areas, where the issue is more about rifles. Many Prairie rifle owners have never forgiven the Liberals for creating a registry for long guns.

Created 10 years ago, the registry was supposed to cost a mere $2 million. Instead, its cost has ballooned to more than $1 billion.

The Conservatives, who declined comment on the expected handgun ban Wednesday, have called the program a boondoggle and Auditor General Sheila Fraser has sharply criticized the waste and mismanagment that have pervaded the registry.

Gun owners warned at the time that the registry was the first step toward confiscation of their guns. Martin's announcement may be seen as confirmation of their worst fears.

...

Wendy Cukier, who co-founded the Coalition for Gun Control after the Montreal massacre, said the government has yet to live up to previous promises to ban the AR-15 semi-assault rifle and the Ruger Mini-14, the same weapon used in the Polytechnique shootings.

But she said existing laws limiting the use of rifles and shotguns have been successful.

"Overall gun death and injury in Canada is way down," Cukier said. "Where we've actually seen a slight increase is in murders with handguns and so clearly our existing laws are not addressing the handgun problem and something is needed."

...

"It's going to accomplish nothing," said Wayne Fields of LaSalle, Ont., president of the Law-Abiding Registered Firearms Association. "There's already all types of legislation and illegal use of handguns is out of control."

Quick correction, it should be Law-Abiding Unregistered Firearms Association.

I've commented on Cukier before (and here, and here). I'm certain she is not ignorant on this issue, I think James has her pegged, and she is deliberately misleading when she says "gun death and injury in Canada is way down".  That's not the issue.  The issue is what is the total crime rate?  As you restrict weapons the population at large is made less safe because criminals have a safer working environment.  You have reduced the total cost to being a criminal.  A criminal can be successful simply by being large, strong, or armed with a simpler and/or cheaper weapon.  If you could magically eliminate all firearms from the planet you could set the firearm death rate to zero but the total murder rate could climb.  There is Just One Question at issue here and Cukier dodges it.

And of course assurances by the anti-freedom bigots that a gun registry won't be used for confiscation are worthless.  That is the only thing it is good for.

Gun bans are an attempt to confiscate the right of self-defense.  Politicians perennially react to the police's total failure to control crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens.  In a nutshell, gun bans mean that because criminals abuse guns, law-abiding citizen have no right to defend themselves.

James Bovard
Lost Rights
ISBN 0-312-12333-7
Copyright 1994, 1995

I have been a fan of Oleg Volk's photographs for many years.  These are some fairly new ones:

http://www.olegvolk.net/gallery/arms/guncontrol4677
http://www.olegvolk.net/gallery/arms/swordmaidentwo5009
http://www.olegvolk.net/gallery/arms/allpink4803

I think my daughter Xenia would especially like the second one.

I don't read much of AR15.com--mostly just when I see hits coming in on Boomershoot.org from it.  Today this link was posted on an public folder at work.  Some of the AR-15.com crowd claim it's the funniest post ever.  It could be--it's very good.  But you probably have to be a moderately well trained gun person to get the totality of the humor.

Aside from the humor there are some important lessons to be learned from the pictures and the comments.  I'll leave those lessons unstated so that it is less likely inappropriate people learn them.

I ran across the following comment today.  As I am a great fan of understatment as well as sick humor I just had to share:

History will show that being nuked repeatedly has great calming influence on the "We should rule the world because it's our divine right" types.

Sort of like Greg Hamilton's "Universal Hand Signal" for "lie down" as applied to individuals.

Samantha Burns is looking for PC alternatives for the names of various types of terrorists.  The moonbats don't like being called animal-rights terrorists, ecoterrorist, etc.  Any idea?  I'll have to think about it some but I think it's a worthy endeavor.

People may be ignorant, yes. But it is a willful ignorance. They don’t want the truth. No matter how many times I explain they are wrong, no matter how much evidence I give them they don’t care. Their belief makes them feel good and that’s good enough for them.

And this understanding of people’s willful ignorance leads directly to my lack of faith in humanity. I don’t trust people to fix the political system, I don’t trust people to see religion for what it is, I don’t trust people to see the truth that is in front of them, and I don’t trust people to be smart. People don’t want to question their beliefs, they’re happy being ignorant and it doesn’t matter how much I argue with them they won’t change. Therefore they are not worth my time. The majority of mankind doesn’t care for truth and so I don’t care for them.

James Huffman-Scott
Speech for Comm 101
2001
From http://www.joehuffman.org/misc/LifeChange.htm

Probably not something you would give your mother.  And not recommended for office wear--except maybe at Planned Parenthood.  100% latex condoms.

Thanks to Samatha Burns for pointing this out.  She has links to other clothes made with condoms here.

I'm disappointed. The New York Times headline says, "Where an Orgy of Shopping Meets Shopping for an Orgy".  Cool.  I'll take three orgies for Christmas gifts (I have interesting friends), can I have them gift wrapped?  I was disappointed to find:

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4 - The season of the holiday shopping orgy has arrived. In San Francisco on Sunday, they took it literally.

"Holidays are a time for intimacy," said Carol Leigh, a k a Scarlet Harlot, a pink-haired former call girl who was selling her own brand of perfume, Whore Magic, along with feather boas and other "sex positive" gifts at the holiday bazaar at the Center for Sex and Culture. "It's winter, so it's time to keep warm."

While shoppers in suburban malls trolled the aisles for iPods and salad spinners, at the Belle Bizarre, as it was called, they could pick up a used copy of Sophocles's "Oedipus Cycle," a Delta Burke bustier, a Post-it-note-style pastie, or a candy garter belt or G-string, a new spin on candy necklaces sold at Kissable Cutie, a booth operated by Contessa Carlton, a professional escort.

It is probably safe to say that the average American mall would not feature a sign that said "U.S. Out of My Underwear."

The bazaar, where Santa Claus was not spotted, was a benefit for the sex and culture center, a nonprofit organization that specializes in adult sex education programs. The money raised from the sale of geisha hair clips, suede chokers and the like is to help finance the center's Exotic Dancers Education Project, a support program for sex workers that addresses issues like filing taxes and "avoiding sex worker burnout."

There's more but it wasn't much more interesting.  The local shops in the Seattle area sound just as interesting.

Real men use guns made of metal and use other people’s teeth to rack the slide.

Bill Boyle
Monday, December 05, 2005 2:33 PM
Microsoft Gun Club
After someone else suggested using his teeth to rack the slide on his polymer pistol if one hand was incapacitated.

As long time readers will know I watch my log files pretty close.  In the last month or two I have had occasion to be amused at some of the things I found.  For example I found the U.S. Justice Department doing a Google search for {"sheriff's office" "clearwater county" idaho}.  I sent an email to the sheriff with the details.  In addition to just being a neighborly thing to do, Boomershoot is held in Clearwater County and I like staying on the good side of the people in the office.

I found another search by the IRS for {nancy amos}.  I don't know if they were looking for the same Nancy that is my sister-in-law, but I was amused to send her an email telling her that it was.

Today I ran across something far more amusing.  Someone, at the IRS, did a search for Ayn Rand quotes:

Domain Name		irs.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		152.216.7.# (INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE) 152.216.7.5
ISP		INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  District of Columbia City  :  Washington Lat/Long  :  38.8933, -77.0146 (Map)
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  800 x 600 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Dec 5 2005 9:54:12 am
Last Page View		Dec 5 2005 9:54:12 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...en&lr=&start=50&sa=N
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		quotations from ayn rand books
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...Ayn Rand Quotes.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...Ayn Rand Quotes.aspx
Time Zone		UTC-5:00 EST - Eastern Standard EDT - Eastern Daylight Saving Time
Visitor's Time		Dec 5 2005 12:54:12 pm
Visit Number		51,048

I received these via email.  Interesting stuff:

http://www.anti-cair-net.org

http://www.hvk.org/articles/1202/200.html

The Toronta Star says a brutal winter with colder than normal temperatures is coming.  Contrast that with the CBC story on all the people marching in downtown Montreal urging our government to sign the Kyoto treaty to prevent global warming.  The CBC story, even a single sentence all by itself, is an amusing contrast:

Thousands of people marched in frigid temperatures through downtown Montreal on Saturday as part of worldwide rallies to urge the United States and other countries to do more to curb global warming.

And people wonder why we call them barking moonbats.

Boomershoot 2006 just got a mention on Survival Blog.  There weren't any permalinks that I could find so it's on the main page for now and probably will go into the December Archives at the beginning of next month.  This blog is written by James Wesley, Rawles.  Rawles wrote an interesting book that is a cult classic in survivalist circles.  It has gone through numerous versions and titles.  Currently it's called Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse.  Starting in about 1998 (I think it was in the version called "TEOTWAWKI" (The End Of The World As We Know It) Rawles gave credit to me under the name, which he chose, "Huff the dynamite shooter" for comments I made on previous versions.  I couldn't see that he used any of my suggestions but it was nice that he made mention of my input.

The novel takes place just a few miles from where I currently live near Moscow Idaho.  It's an interesting read even if there are some errors and oversights that I find distracting.

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

Thomas Jefferson
[We failed.--Joe]

It's time for me to create the next Boomershoot t-shirt (and mugs, hats, thongs, etc.).  If you have a slogan you think would especially appropriate let me know and if I use it I'll give you a free shirt, mug, whatever with that slogan on it.

Send your entry to slogan@boomershoot.org.  Enter as many times as you like.  I will be the final judge on what is used.  All whiners complaining about not winning will receive an ammonium nitrate prill as a consolation prize if they show up at Boomershoot 2006 to claim it (valued at $250/ton--one prill weighs approximately 1 grain).  Boomershoot helpers, friends and family members are all welcome to submit entries.  Deadline is December 15, 2005.  Here are previous years slogans:

• 2001--THE BIG BANG!
• 2002--Guns.  Explosives.  I was there.
• 2003--Project Fireball 2003
• 2004--A ton of explosives.  Fun beyond measure.
• 2005--Exercise your freedom with guns and explosives.

Update: The slogans proposed so far.  I don't want people entering duplicates:

• BANG -- BOOM -- COOL!
• A practical alternative to a wholesome day at work. [I think I would change this to "A wholesome alternative to a practical day at work."--Joe]
• A magical land full of rifles and explosives.
• Good marksmanship has EXPLOSIVE rewards!
• WHOO-WEE! That blowed up REAL GOOD!  [obscure SCTV reference]
• Take your shot from the Grassy Knoll.  [get all sorts of Google traffic from JFK theorists.]
• The smell of cordite. The sound of thunder.
• Heads up! Here comes the anvil!
• Prometheus suffered so you could do stuff like this. Don't be ungrateful.
• Welcome to Joe's World!
• Freedom smells like gunpowder
• Feinstein's worst nightmare: Families. Guns. Fun.
• Sight alignment, trigger squeeze, holy shit!
• Guns, Explosives, and the Pursuit of Happiness
• Blow Shiite up
• Famous potatoes explosives
• Reach Out And Blow Something Up
• This is my target.  There are many like it.  But this one explodes!  [based on the Rifleman's Creed]
• Peace Through Superior Marksmanship [I think I would change this to "Freedom Through Superior Marksmanship"--Joe]
• The blood of the enemy!
• Vini. Vidi. Boom. [I came. I saw. I blew stuff up.]
• Don't know Jesus??? I'll make ya Holey !!! Braaappp....
• Peace, Love, Explosives and Guns.
• Got boom?
• Got kaboom?
• If you don't get it, then never mind.
• Life, liberty, and the pursuit of kaboom...
• I shit you not - we shoot bombs. [Hint to others.  We NEVER use the 'B' word at Boomershoot.--Joe]
• We shoot bombs. [Ditto the previous comment.]
• Get a big BANG for your buck.

They aren't technically calling it marriage but there is no legal distinction between the two.  Read about it here.  Many of my conservative readers will disagree with my libertarian viewpoint on this but I think it's a good thing.  Marriage (the first 29 years anyway) has been good for me and I expect it will be good for others even if they happen to be of the same gender as their partner.  And what is good for the average individual is almost always good for society.  I've posted on this topic before and don't need to expound on it much again:

• Gay marriage in California
• California Court Rules Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional
• Gay marriage is spreading
• Looking back at my predictions
• Why the election related violence?
• Gay marriages in MA
• Bush calls for Constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage
• Gay marriage and the disintegration of the Democrat party
• Gay marriage in MA is inevitable

Click on the image for variations on the theme.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people.  Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.  This is known as "bad luck."

Robert Heinlein
[This, in a nutshell, is the problem with socialism in all it's forms.--Joe]

Xenia called earlier and told us both of her and Meghan's entries made it into the finals in state drama competition.  The competition will be over within about 15 minutes.  It probably will be another hour or so before we hear the results.  She was really excited--I could barely understand her.  Break a leg Xenia!

Update: She got third place in ensemble pantomime and a medal.  It was a skit they created on their own.

Update2: Xenia has her own post up with lots of pictures.  Caution--pictures of teenage girls in nightgowns and beds.  (That should generate some traffic for her.)

Update3: I fixed the broken link to the teenage girls in nightgowns and one wearing a bra on her head.

The Canadian Shooting Sports Association invited Glen Caroline, director of the NRA's grassroots division, to be a keynote speaker and is give a seminar. Wendy Cukier (I wrote about her before) and other anti-freedom advocates are all bent out of shape about it. They apparently have a problem with freedom of association and freedom of speech as well as freedom to keep and bear arms.  From The Star:

U.S. gun lobbyist here to `counsel'

Canadian shooting group enlists NRA Official denies interfering with election

Nice.  The paper doesn't say the NRA is interfering in the election--they just plant that thought by saying the Canadian shooting group denies it.  Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and Mother Therese would have denied being mass murderers too.

Dec. 3, 2005. 01:00 AM

BETSY POWELL
CRIME REPORTER

A crime reporter!  How appropriate for a political story.

...

But Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, said she's astonished by the blatancy of the NRA's involvement because the group's influence in jurisdictions outside the United States, while well known to people who monitor gun control issues, is not as familiar to the public at large.

"I don't think the average Canadian understands how powerful the gun lobby is," in opposing attempts to block tightening of gun control legislation and bans on handgun sales, the Ryerson professor said.

"It is ironic because it's three days before the anniversary of the Montreal massacre, it's in Toronto where most people are currently preoccupied with trying to prevent gun violence."

The NRA has a well-established tradition of "interfering" in other countries, Alun Howard, of the International Action Network on Small Arms, said yesterday by phone from London, England. "We've seen them working in Central America ... their arguments have appeared in England and Australia, so it's certainly a worrying trend that the NRA has gone global."

Most recently, the NRA's influence was credited — or blamed, depending on your viewpoint — with influencing the outcome of Brazil's national referendum in October on a proposal to ban the sale of guns.

In a country with one of the world's highest firearm murder rates, the proposal was soundly rejected.

NRA public affairs director Andrew Arulanandam said yesterday that the organization is only too happy to provide "counsel" to organizations in other countries to help ensure that "gun rights" prevail around the world, adding "we're really heartened with what happened in Brazil."

The NRA was approached because members belonging to the association share its underlying mantra: that gun control laws don't work, criminals don't obey the law, and the only people affected by gun control are law-abiding citizens, Whitmore said.

I just "love" that a "crime reporter" wrote the story, not a political reporter.  And that the reporter describes as a mantra (mystic incantation) the verifiable fact "gun control laws don't work, criminals don't obey the law, and the only people affected by gun control are law-abiding citizens."

After we are done in Iraq we need to liberate Canada from the bigots like this 'reporter'.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't we have this discussion with you folks about 223 years ago? I'd have thought that having the road between Lexington and Concord fertilized with dead Redcoats answered that question back then.

...

If my ancestors would have been armed, they wouldn't have been slaves.

JJ Johnson
Black American gun-owner
Answering the poll question "Should America ban the handgun?"
BBC News -- March 1998