As Stephanie has explained to me if you want the media to cover your event you need to write the story for them.  Compare this article to our news release.

Keep this in mind when you are complaining about the bias against guns in the media.  Don't hide in the closet.  Give the media something positive to say about gun owners and make it really easy for them.  Then you can gloat as the anti-gun people whine about the bias in the media.

I suppose it depends on how you define "successful".  From New York Daily News:

The National Summit on Illegal Guns will take place next Tuesday. The event will begin with a symposium outlining successful gun control policies from cities across the country.

If they mean using legal restrictions on weapons to reduce crime then it will be a very short symposium.  If they mean disarming the victims and enabling murder and other violent crime to increase then they could probably spend months on the topic.  My prediction is they will measure success in terms of gun destroyed, not lives destroyed, by their illegal actions.

I have Just One Question for these nut cases.

Ry merely calls it Reading list.  I was busy when I first read his post and didn't follow the links.  Yesterday he talked to me about some of the content.  Mostly about "category errors".  Interesting stuff and there are some valuable lessons in studying that concept.  But that is a topic for a different time. 

More importantly Dan Simmons uses a science fiction short story as a vehicle to get some points across about WW III.  I had long thought the politicians had been calling it "The War on Terror" simply as a euphemism for the war against the Muslim extremists.  But perhaps that's not true.  If, in fact, they and the vast majority don't understand the true nature of who are enemies are and why they are at war against us then lots of people have some reading to do.  Simmons gives us a starting point.  It's required reading.  Just like Osama bin Laden's letter to America.

I come from a place and time where your grandchildren and hundreds of millions of other dhimmi are compelled to write ‘pbuh’ after the Prophet’s name. They wear gold crosses and gold Stars of David sewn onto their clothing. The Nazis didn’t invent the wearing of the Star of David . . . the marking and setting apart of the Jews in society. Muslims did that centuries ago in they lands they conquered, European and otherwise. They will refine it and update it, not toward the more merciful, in the lands they occupy through the decades ahead of you.

Dan Simmons
Speaking through a character he calls "The Time Traveler"
April 2006
[The link above may break soon.  I expect you will find it's replacement here.--Joe]

I don't recall being asked for permission but in this case I don't mind.  Gun Owners of America published my Just One Question post in their Opinions And Editorials section.  It's in the "Various Authors" section.

It's sort of "a dirty little secret" but I'm going to tell it anyway.  There are certain things that drive technology forward.  And, from the viewpoint of many, it's frequently for the wrong reasons. 

War is a huge push.  Think of the jet engine, electronics (RADAR, communications, computers for ballistics calculations), rockets, aircraft, ships, photography (spying), optics, satellites, etc.   All those because of wartime need.

Business of course is a bad word with some people and that "evil" concept of "profit".  Another big push for technology.  Robots, computers, mechanical and electrical power for the factories.

But did you realize what a big push sex was?  You certainly know that abstinence doesn't create a market for new technology.

The first moving image I ever saw on a computer screen was a very simple, two-color image of a woman having sex with a man.  I think I may still have that around someplace.  The timing of the image was dependent on the speed of the processor and since at the time there was only one clock speed for the IBM PC, 4.77 MHz, it would run at something approaching "Warp 8" on today's computers. 

The push for better image quality (the first color graphics screen, the CGA, only had 16 colors) on the PC was not from conventional business.  It was porn.  Programmers did some amazing tricks (for example changing the palette between scan lines) to get better pictures of naked women.

It turns out Microsoft spent a lot of time developing Net Meeting (or some such thing, I forget the exact name now) for business needs thinking that major corporations would be their biggest customers.  Well... it was "business" that first adopted it and had a lot of feedback for improving the first versions.  In fact it was a variation of the "oldest business", or should I say "oldest profession", that pushed the early development.

Photography, from the very earliest of days, until the present is technologically pushed by pornography.

And what do you think people used the early VCR's and video cameras for?  It was for porn.

And the logical next step is being worked on right now:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When America's top sex researchers gathered recently to discuss the next decade in their field, some envisioned a future in which artificial sex partners could cater to every fantasy.

"What is very likely to be present before 2016 would be a multi-sensual experience of virtual sex," said Julia Heiman, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, Bloomington.

"There is a possibility of developing erotic materials for yourself that would allow you to create a partner of certain dimensions and qualities, the partner saying certain things in that interaction, certain things happening in that interaction."

A field dubbed "teledildonics" already allows people at two remote computers to manipulate electronic devices such as a vibrator at the other end for sexual purposes.

"People who use it are just blown away," said Steve Rhodes, president of Sinulate Entertainment, which has sold thousands of Internet-connected sex devices over the past three years. "This is not something that just the lunatic fringe does."

"The Iraq war...was kind of a boom for our company."

Gina Lynn, who writes the "Sex Drive" column for Wired magazine, says she has used and enjoyed the Sinulator and says there is no reason to fear the technology.

...

SEX WITH A PORN STAR

Entrepreneurs are also seeking to fuse explicit video imagery with real-life tactile sensation.

Brad Abram, president of XStream3D Multimedia, said his firm's "Virtually Jenna," an online game in which the player has sex with realistic cartoon of porn star Jenna Jameson, can link hardware devices following the action to genitalia.

"None of the big publishers will probably venture in there so we could be like the Hustler or the Playboy or whatever, the Penthouse of adult gaming," the Vancouver, Canada-based Abram said. "Sex toys is a huge business."

His service, without the hardware, costs $29.95 a month, and he said several hundred thousand people have tried the online sex game to date. He expects the hardware area of such simulations to grow rapidly.

...

ALL IN THE MIND

Going even a level further, other researchers say in decades to come advanced devices will be able to stimulate the brain to create a sexual experience without manipulating genitalia.

Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence dating back to 1951, said such devices could either trigger an actual physical response from the brain, or have the entire experience take place in the mind with the sensation of sex -- but without the mess or risk of sexually transmitted disease.

"It's bound to happen ... and is not as far off as some people think," Minsky, a professor emeritus at MIT, said of direct brain manipulation. "They are doing things with monkeys but it is not a big world-class industry yet, so that could take 20-30 years."

"But if the game (industry) people got involved in some underdeveloped country that didn't have any laws against it, it could all happen twice as fast."

You've already gone way past the "Thin Ice" sign.

Kim Huffman-Scott
April 16, 2006
Telling her dad to back off some on teasing her brother James about Meredith.

As Jason pointed out to me with this link the proper phrase should be "Veni, vidi, BOOM!".  Not Vini. Vidi. BOOM! as in the quote of the day from last week.  Unfortunately this wasn't pointed out to me until after there was one order for a shirt already "in production" before I got the image corrected and back up in the Boomershoot 2006 merchandise shop.  I don't know if that means the image will actually make it onto the shirt or not.  So... it's possible there will be just one shirt on the whole planet that has the wrong slogan on it.  It will be a collectors item.

That wasn't the only change I made either.  Here is the before and after:

Vini. Vidi. BOOM!
[I came.  I saw.  I blew stuff up!]

After:

Veni, vidi, BOOM!
[I came, I saw, I BLEW STUFF UP!]

Order soon if you want to have your stuff in time for the event.  There won't be shirt sales at the event.

After I put up the site about Pacific Northwest National Laboratories they blocked access of their employees to my websites.  Apparently this has changed:

Domain Name		pnl.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		130.20.177.# (Battele Pacific Northwest Laboratory)
ISP		Battele Pacific Northwest Laboratory
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Washington City  :  Richland Lat/Long  :  46.282, -119.4917 (Map)
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.2) Gecko/20060308 Firefox/1.5.0.2
Javascript		version 1.5
Monitor		Resolution  :  1280 x 1024 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Apr 17 2006 7:58:56 am
Last Page View		Apr 17 2006 7:58:56 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...zilla:en-US:official
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		pnnl email
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...w,category,PNNL.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...w,category,PNNL.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Apr 17 2006 10:58:56 am
Visit Number		73,506

Now if they would just turn in the evidence to Federal prosecutors for the felony some of their bigoted employees committed against me.

Xenia: We are going to be gypsies.
Sara: And maybe become lesbians.

Sara Young
Xenia Huffman-Scott
Referring to their plans for when they turn 18 years old.
April 16, 2006
[I'm always entertained by what Sara and Xenia say when they get together. It's great having such smart kids around.--Joe]

Several years ago we became good friends with this Jewish guy named Randy.  Easter came along and we were making plans for the holiday.  We sort of absent mindedly asked what he had planned and then realized it wouldn't be a Holiday he or his wife (she is Buddhist) would celebrate.  He, however, corrected us. 

"Sure!  Jews celebrate Easter." 
"You do???" 
"Yeah, sure we do."
"How do you celebrate?"
"We hold hands and dance around in a circle singing, 'We killed him!  We killed him!'"

My kind of humor.

I can understand someone having this sort of dream.  But after waking up you would think they would recognize the difference between reality and a dream.  This guy apparently doesn't and then in some sort of embarrassing public confession he tells everyone of his delusion.  And the worst part?  He's the mayor of Toronto.  The men in white coats should just quietly take him away and the people of Toronto could just pretend he never represented them.  Here are the details of his delusions.  The overview follows:

I see a yellowing front page of the Toronto Star shouting "Gun violence ends!" There are no guns on the street any more because a Toronto-led coalition of mayors from both sides of the 49th parallel stood strong against the American government on gun control.

So persuasive were Toronto's arguments that the U.S. finally enacted common-sense gun control and repealed legislation that prevented lawsuits from being launched against firearms manufacturers.

...

This helps explain why gangs aren't a problem any more. No one's drawn to the gangster life because of all the services the city can provide to all of its residents. There are childcare spaces for all parents who need them so they can work and make the money needed to nurture their children. And parks and recreation programs are available free for every child in every city neighbourhood.

Training and jobs have been made available through partnerships established among City Hall, the Toronto Board of Trade and organized labour. Youth from neighbourhoods that were once Toronto's poorest get proper training and gain the self-respect needed to move forward in life. They become carpenters. And bankers. Even journalists. Whatever they aspire to be.

No one in Toronto lives in isolation. Or on the street. Not the young. And certainly not their elders. Homelessness is a thing of the past. Because of the compassion and commitment of Torontonians, all orders of government came together as partners to provide affordable housing to anyone who needs it. There's an incredible array of services for seniors who want to remain engaged in the communities where they live and share their wisdom with other generations.

It's the kind of wisdom that has led Toronto to be recognized as a world leader in promoting peace and harmony. The city will forever be a microcosm of the world's people living together with respect and not a hint of intolerance. Our Canadian Council for Christians, Jews and Muslims is cited around the globe as an example of how to build bridges among people of different faiths. Every man woman and child can walk down every street in this city and know they are recognized as Torontonians regardless of race, colour or religion.

...

Our subway stations are astonishing. As many people enjoy the exhibits at the TTC's Museum station as visit the ROM. They come for an enlightening look at the exhibits before moving on to their chosen destinations. There's a network of streetcars crossing this city on reserved rights-of-way. The Finch Hydro Corridor is now a conduit for light rail transit. People can get from eastern Scarborough to western Etobicoke quickly and at reasonable cost. Every neighbourhood has access to rapid transit, and every able-bodied Torontonian is within a five-minute walk of a bus stop and is one bus journey away from the subway or a light rail connection. For the disabled, every bus, streetcar and subway stop is accessible.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  Nearly all anti-gun people have mental problems.  Mix those problems with the obvious failings of socialism and the all the conditions decribed in When Prophecy Fails and you end up with what you see above--increased proselyting of a failed belief system.

Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iranian President
April 14, 2006
As quoted in the April 16, 2006 Scotland on Sunday
[With Iran enriching Uranium as fast as it can it's not hard to imagine what kind of storm he has in mind.--Joe]

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

Albert Einstein

A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler's "big Lie"; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you.

Darrell Huff
How to Lie with Statistics
Copyright 1954
[I was reminded of this book when reading this from the Violence Policy Center.  The VPC ignores all the murders in Washington D.C. due to the repressive gun laws and focuses on a subset of the suicides.--Joe]

Zacarias Moussaoui has no regret and no remorse.  I have no doubts.  He should be executed and his extremist culture must be destroyed.  Read his own words and decide for yourself.

From the AP (via South of Boston):

He mocked a Navy officer who wept as she described the death of two subordinates in the attack on the Pentagon.

"I think it was disgusting for a military person" to cry, Moussaoui said of Lt. Nancy McKeown. "She is military. She should expect people at war with her to want to kill her."

Asked if he was happy to hear her sobbing, he said, "Make my day."

He noted many relatives of victims wept on the witness stand, then walked past him in the courtroom and looked his way without crying. "I find it disgusting that people come here to share their grief over the death of some other person," he said.

"I'm glad there was pain, and I wish there will be more pain," Moussaoui said. "The children in Palestine and in Chechnya will have pain. I want you to share their pain."

So, Spencer asked: "You have no regret, no remorse?"

"No regret, no remorse," Moussaoui responded.

...

In a lengthy explanation of why he hates Americans, Moussaoui said Islam requires Muslims to be the world's superpower as he flipped through a copy of the Quran searching for verses to support his assertion. He said one verse requires Muslims "to fight against all who believe not in Allah."

"We have an obligation to be the superpower. You have to be subdued," Moussaoui said. "America is a superpower and you want to eradicate Islam."

From Bangkok Post:

Zacarias Moussaoui said he wished the September 11 attacks had happened many more times over and expressed his willingness to kill Americans "any time, anywhere", in testimony at his own death sentencing trial Thursday.

"I wish it had happened not only on the 11th, but the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th," Moussaoui said of the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, according to television news broadcaster CNN.

From ABC News:

Asked if he wanted to see 9/11 happen again, Moussaoui said he wished it would happen "everyday." Chuckling to himself, Moussaoui testified to prosecutors that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is "the greatest American."

From BBC News:

"Suicide bombing would be a high calling?" prosecutor Robert Spencer asked him. "You would do it again tomorrow?"

"Today," Moussaoui responded unhesitatingly.

...

But he launched into a diatribe that put a quick halt to the tittering, beginning with a citation from the Koran which he said meant Islam had to become a superpower in place of America, and drifting into an answer about "the Jewish state of Palestine" that ended with a threat to "exterminate" American Jews.

He said he felt no regret when he saw 11 September victims testifying in the court, enunciating every syllable of his reply: "None what-so-ever.

"We did it for this. We want to inflict pain on your country."

From The Independent:

We wanted you to have pain in your country," he said during two-and-a-half hours of testimony. I just wish it would have happened on September 12, September 13, September 14 ... there's no remorse for justice."

The French-Moroccan, a confessed member of al-Qa'ida, claimed to have enjoyed images shown in court this week of the Pentagon after it was attacked and said that reports of the deaths "make my day".

It will make my day when I see the video of his remains being excreted from the ass of a pig.

Vini. Vidi. Boom.
[I came. I saw. I blew stuff up.]

Bruce at mAss Backwards
The winning Boomershoot 2006 slogan entry.
Congratulations Bruce.

I hope this goes well:

A scholar known for his work on guns and crime filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-seller "Freakonomics." John Lott Jr. of Virginia, a former U. of C. visiting professor, alleges that Levitt defamed him in the book by claiming that other scholars had tried and failed to confirm Lott's conclusion that allowing people to carry concealed weapons reduces crime.

...

The lawsuit alleges that Levitt and his publisher, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., made the statements with reckless disregard for whether they were true and that the book damaged Lott's reputation.

I don't know about the details of Lott's lawsuit but in some states there are a lot of exceptions for this sort of thing.  You can knowingly lie about someone, cause them great damage, and be untouchable by a lawsuit.  I was told by a Hindu friend those sort of people will be reincarnated as a lower life form--perhaps as manure eating flies. I confess to having urges to accelerate certain slime-balls toward their destiny.

Whenever there's a shooting, there's almost always two people who are responsible, the one with the gun and the one who sold him the gun.

David Yassky
New York City Council Member
City Gun Control Bill Would Punish Dealers
April 12, 2006
Epoch Times
[Is the same true when there is a stabbing?  Or a hit and run?  How about in a beating with a baseball bat?  David Yassky has mental problems.--Joe]

Good news on the National ID boondogle called "Real ID".  New Hampshire is considering just saying no:

Last year, Congress passed the Real ID Act in an effort to curb terrorism.

That means by May 2008 all states must issue drivers licenses and ids that meet tougher federal standards laid out by the Department of Homeland Security.

Information on a 'Real ID' would include a person's full name, date of birth, home address, physical features and arguably the most controversial aspect, some sort of bar or chip that can be read or scanned, much like a credit card.

All of that personal information would be stored on a database to be shared nationwide.

Republican Representative Neal Kurk ushered the measure to bar the state from adopting Real ID through the House last month.

He told the Senate Committee the new federal plan won't enhance national security at all.

:55 ... Remember the 9/11 terrorirsts were in this country legally and had legally obtained documents. The real id system will enhance government control and citizens will suffer. Perhaps that is why the Real ID Act is opposed by the Naitonal Governor's Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, the conservative Cato Institute and the liberal ACLU.

Indeed, traditional political opponents find themselves on the same side of this issue.

Whether Republican, Libertarian or Democrat much of the criticism centered on privacy.

Some, like Jennifer Coffey with the gun rights group 2nd Amendment Sisters, worry about identity theft.

12:46 it creates a beautiful database that is easy to get into. If they get into the NH Liquor Store database and stole people's names and credit cards. They got people's names and address from Fidelity and social security. And those were much smaller databases.

Democratic Senator Iris Estabrook spoke of being tracked.

2:43 it doesn't seem to me that as Americans we want to live with radio signals being omitted from our required ID cards. That doesn't sound like America to me. And it doesn't sound like something we need in order to have drivers licenses.

Opponents see Real ID as a first step to a national identification system that would require people to carry their papers even when walking their dog.

Republican Representative Steve Valincourt warned Senators similar systems haven't worked out so well in other countries.

1:10 in the 1930's we are told the Netherlands went to this type of system for national id...Of course late in the 30's, some other people goose-stepped their way into the Netherlands, and all the work on National ID had been done.

Another victim of a repressive government:

...

On Monday, L/Cpl James Piotrowski was jailed by a court martial for handling a stolen SA80.

He pleaded guilty to possessing and handling it after another soldier stole it from Wellington barracks in London in 2004.

He didn't steal it.  He didn't fire it.  He only handled it.  I can't image why the politicians that create such laws are still allowed to see the sun and breath fresh air.

In the 20th Century "gun control" is an essential pre-condition for genocide.  Until and unless a hate-driven group gets control of the government mechanism and disarms its intended targets, genocide simply cannot and does not occur.

There is nothing wrong with having nothing to say unless you insist on saying it.

Steven Gerri
April 10, 2006
[A frustration of mine with all politicians.--Joe]