The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.

Abbie Hoffman
[I admire his insight, his energy and his ability to accomplish things even though many of his goals were misguided.--Joe]

You just have to be thankful he wasn't an underwear bomber.

Bruce Schneier
TALES FROM THE CRYPT(OGRAPHER)
Bostons weekly dig
In response to a comment about the TSA requiring the removal of shoes at airport "security" check points because there was one Islamic extremist that tried to blow up a plane with a bomb hidden in his shoe.
[Bruce agrees with me that existing airport "security" is less than worthless.  Read the article.--Joe]

It's the knife culture that is out of control!  Not the gun culture!  And it's in the anti-gun bigot Bloomberg's city too:

NEW YORK — Police suspect a knife-wielding homeless man went on a rampage, stabbing four people in a bloody 12-hour span, including two Canadian tourists, before police finally nabbed him early Wednesday.

Kenny Alexis, 21, was taken into custody about 4:15 a.m. outside a fast-food restaurant in midtown Manhattan shortly after the two Canadian women were stabbed, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The women were identified as Melanie Carrier, 22, and Audrey Perrier, 25, both of Montreal.

Carrier remained in hospital Wednesday afternoon, awaiting surgery on her lower back, police said. Perrier was treated and released.

The other two victims, a man from Texas and another man not identified, were in hospital. All of the victims are expected to survive.

Police say Alexis had in his possession the knife used in the attack on the two women and investigators were attempting to link it to two separate subway ambushes that took place earlier.

They complain about "silencers" and "high capacity guns" but they don't seem to realize a knife is a lot like a suppressed (very short ranged) gun you don't have to stop and reload.

I've updated the Bomb Help 2005 web page.  There are a lot more I need to put up--including a bunch from 2006.  I just haven't gotten around to getting their email and my responses on the website.  I just hadn't felt like responding to these clueless twerps for the last year.  I'd look at their messages and draw a blank so they just queued up in my "Bomb help" folder until today.  Then I sort of cut loose when a new one came in today.  Altogether, I think there was 23 of them I responded to today. The people on the Bomb Help Fan Club email list probably thought I was spamming them. 

My favorites from this batch are here:

• A little fun
• Enemy at school
• big 1s

Oh, I'm getting responses back from some of them too.  This could be lots of fun.

Ry has put up a video documenting some people with their first experience. They seem to like it. I know I do. It's safe for work in all but the most bigoted of work environments.

Overtime has both it's advantages and disadvantages.  The increased pay is nice but the extra hours are seldom fun even if you enjoy your work.  In this case I'm sure it literally sucks:

BERLIN: Sex workers in Berlin have gone into extra time at the World Cup and are doing double shifts to cash in, a German newspaper said on Wednesday.

“Berlin’s hookers are groaning - all brothels are creaking at the seams,” mass daily Bild reported. “In some establishments the girls already have to put in double shifts owing to the World Cup,” the paper added, saying clients were virtually queuing up to get in to the host nation’s ‘Freudenhauser’ (literally, joy houses). One taxi driver was quoted as saying he had taken a fare from four would-be customers of some of the capital’s estimated 8,000 prostitutes.

“But they were turned away. The places are too full.” German police said last week there were no signs of forced prostitution being on the rise. Be that as it may, with around a million fans having come over for the month-long football showpiece and with prostitution legal in Germany, supply is clearly meeting demand. Bild quoted Josephine Conte of Berlin’s upmarket Bel Ami establishment, one of 400 “joy houses” in the city, as saying demand had gone through the roof and that her employees were having to put in “special shifts.”

She explained: “We have VIP reservations right through to the end of the tournament. Sometimes we don’t know where to put all the men!” According to ‘Joy’, a 21-year-old woman doing the morning shift with seven colleagues, “the guys come for a massage as they want to relax before the game.” But “the guests must be patient with waiting times of up to two hours,” according to Conte. It’s hard work, says another ‘Joy,’ a blonde aged 23 who says she sometimes puts in a 16-hour day, though some of that is on call after a regular shift.

“We are earning as much in one day as we normally would in a week. “But after the World Cup I’ll need a holiday.”

A high school teacher posts on his blog a picture of a cake one of his female students decorated as a vagina during menstruation.  Only some sort of pervert that would do this, right? 

Context is important. It was from Xenia's anthology.  I'm fine with it.  Anyone going moonbatty on this guy will get my ridicule (okay, so it's not that big of a threat).

I got an email at work yesterday saying I needed to update all my Windows machines.  I did so and it seemed like there were a LOT of updates.  I updated my boxes at my "home" in the Seattle area and had James (who is staying with me until he can move into his new apartment tomorrow) do the same.  It turns out there were a very large number of updates released by Microsoft yesteday and a lot of them were for security vulnerabilities.

The vulnerabilities being fixed makes them known to attackers. If you haven't updated your computer after the fixes have been released then you are, in most cases, more vulnerable than before they were released. Update your computer now.

The right of citizens to be safe in their homes and communities can never be subject to a popular vote.

It is astonishing that in a city where the leaders preach how open they are to diversity, they encouraged voters to blindly march to the polls last November to practice a blatant, egregious and despicable form of social bigotry against their neighbors and fellow citizens.

Working to deprive others of their property and their right to self-defense just because you don't like firearms is morally repugnant, and with today's ruling, the people who pushed Proposition H last fall should feel ashamed of themselves.

Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation
June 13, 2006
Judge Rejects San Francisco's Handgun Ban
[I'm pleased SAF/CCRKBA is continuing to push the bigotry meme.  Also of interest is the city bigots announced today they are going to appeal the decision.--Joe]

It would be unreasonable to expect the HTML parser to be able to understand every language both present and future. (At least not until clairvoyance has been perfected.)

Raymond Chen
June 5, 2006
[I absolutely love this quote.  Understatement in the first sentence followed by the only known exception to the stated rule.  Succinct yet complete encapsulation of the situation.  Some people get annoyed at me when I find exceptions to their overly broad generalizations but I think they are an essential component of understanding the situation and almost always just trying to help.  Today, as most days, Raymond is my technological and word-smithing hero.-Joe]

You probably have to be a numbers geek to enjoy this but since this is my blog and I am a numbers geek you get the "benefits".  Clayton Cramer computes how hated you are based on the number of crimes committed against various groups (racial, sexual orientation, and religious belief) as compared to what is to be expected from your representation in the population.  So for example, if the group you belong to composes 10% of the U.S. population yet suffers 20% of the hate crimes you are hated more than a group that composes 80% of the population and suffers 40% of the hate crimes. 

What group do you think is the most hated?  Blacks maybe?  They used to get lynched for looking at white women "the wrong way".  Nope, not the most hated anymore.

What about Jews?  They were considered the "spawn of the devil", "controlled the banks", and "vermin that spread disease."  Nazi Germany was implementing the "Final Solution" just 65 years ago.  There still must be a lot of residual hate for them, right?  Not all that much in this country anyway.  In the Mideast I'm sure it's tough to top their score.

Maybe it's the Muslims.  It was Muslim extremists that perpetrated 9-11, the first World Trade Center bombing, the Beslan school hostage crisis, and nearly all the casualties of our armed forces in the last few years.  Surely they are the most hated.  Nope.

What about homosexuals?  The Pink Pistols haven't really caught on enough to prevent gay bashing, right?  I'm not sure about the effect of the Pink Pistols on hate crimes against gays but homosexuals only come in at number two.

The most hated group is not identified by religion or sexual orientation.  This group is identified by "race" (the definition of "race" is a topic for another time) and I'm a member.  Read the Clayton's post for details.  This runs counter to the Seattle School Districts definition of racist however.

Update: I fixed the example in the first paragraph.  I was in a hurry and made a major error in my haste which defeated my attempt at clarification.

Sarah Thompson, M.D. gives us an expanded version of the mental issues of the anti-gun bigots I posted about a year ago.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, al Qaeda has taken a stand.

They know that if progress and democracy take root in those two previously failed and terrorized states, then their values of violence and hatred against those who disagree with them will in turn be uprooted.

That's why they fight and why they will continue to fight very hard.

For three years, al Qaeda have sought to murder innocent people, promote sectarian killing and wreck the democratic process in Iraq.

This terrorism is a global movement. Their attack in Iraq has only ever been part of a wider attack that they have carried into conflicts and countries the world over.

Indeed, there is barely a major nation in the world that has not felt the outreach of their evil.

Defeat them in Iraq and we will defeat them everywhere.

We need to do so armed, of course, with weapons, but also with one simple idea -- that where people want to live in freedom and be governed by democracy, they should be able to do so and the world should stand united behind them.

In Iraq today, that idea has shown its worth.

 

Tony Blair
Prime Minister of Britain
June 8, 2006
Blair: Blow to al Qaeda everywhere
CNN

That' my youngest daughter behind the camera and my (so called) adopted daughter in front of the lens.  I'm impressed by both.  My favorite of the collection:

Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God.

Martin Luther
[I admire Luther for his honesty even though I dispise his contempt for reason and truth. Most present day haters of reason, nearly all advocates of gun control, are not nearly so open about it.--Joe]

In the U.S. we have a gun culture--NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, GOA, KABA, JPFO, USPSA, bloggers, and even Boomershoot and I are a small part of it. And even though all the these organizations and people only advocate legal activities we still get blamed for the illegal use of guns. Our culture is under attack by bigots with mental problems who can't answer Just One Question. 

But have you wondered what the bigots would say if our gun culture was abolished? Would they then be happy and stop their whining about freedom? In England nearly all guns are banned yet they still have violent crime. So what do the like-minded bigots say there? No big surprise--it's the knife culture:

...he was appalled at Britain's knife culture.

Kamondo Mulumbu said: "Knives are out of control. Most young people are walking around with them."

These bigots are people that cannot tolerate freedom. They demand their freedoms be taken from them and others. They yearn for a utopia that cannot exist and paradoxically the perceived path to an Elysium Field is the path to a hell on earth. You can chose to fight them now on the gun issue or you can attempt to fight them later when even knives have been abolished. Adapt Churchill's quote to the situation as necessary. It's not just gun or knife culture that is under attack, it's the culture of freedom.

Ry says awesome.  That is an understatement.  Among the usual things to wonder about in this video I wonder about the air density.  How did he know it would be safe at that altitude?  The glide ratio is going to be severely affected compared to doing the same stunt at sea level.

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Martin Luther
[The benefits of socialism, communism, and gun control are faiths as well.  Factual data and reason are hated by most, no matter how well intentioned, promoters of those belief systems.--Joe]

Some moderate Muslims in Canada are asking for help in preventing their youth from becoming extremists.  This is a good sign:

OTTAWA—Canada's Muslim community is asking for high-level political assistance, including the help of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to weed out extremists who are preying on young people.

"We're not here to say we don't have an issue. Of course we have an issue, but we can't deal with it ourselves," social worker Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, told a news conference yesterday.

"We are part of the Canadian society and so we demand that the Canadian society come forward and help us to root out this."

All the alternatives to a large majority of Muslims helping to end the violence of the extremists are very unpleasant.

Putting on my engineer/scientist hat...

Problem:
Why do so many of the people on the political left make such outlandish claims that no rational person could believe them?

Given:
Bush derangement syndrome describes some of the symptoms in general terms. It does not explain why it occurs and hence is of little use in prevention and cure.  Other, more specific, examples of irrational beliefs include:

• Grumpy Old Man--How the next election will be won
• Michelle Malkin--I CALL IT "HATE COUTURE"
• Expose the left--Nick Berg’s Father Blame Bush For His Son’s Beheading, Not Zarqawi (VIDEO)
• It's hopeless
• Elections, Cease Fear, and The Pink Pistols
• The Gallery of "Bush = Hitler" Allusions
• Barking Moonbat Early Warning System

Solution:
The best explanation to date is, in the simplest possible words, When Prophecy Fails.  This isn't a perfect fit but the underlying mechanism appears to explain the symptoms.  Let me explain.   When people commit to a political viewpoint they frequently don't just adhere to a set of beliefs they claim are "good" they also frequently claim their opponents are "evil".  This is, in almost all cases, not true.  Because I am so familiar with the issue of gun control I'll use examples from that particular public debate to illustrate. Without any data to support one side or the other there are two hypothesis that, at face value, appear to be worth exploring:

1. Easily available weapons is good public policy because they enable innocent people to defend themselves against violent criminals.
2. Easily available weapons is poor public policy because they enable violent criminals to commit violent acts against innocent people.

Some people promoting hypothesis 1 go beyond claiming they are trying to save lives by enabling self-defense.  These people may claim their opponents have the intent to enable evil acts (socialism, communism, genocide, etc.)  Some people promoting hypothesis 2 go beyond claiming they are trying to save innocent lives by removing weapons from potential criminals.  These people may claim their opponents do not care about the loss of innocent lives and are motivated by money from gun and ammunition sales or the mere enjoyment of their hobby.  

In the process of promoting their beliefs both sides will make predictions (prophecies) about the consequences of agreeing and/or not agreeing with them.  When those predictions fail to come about they are in the situation of a failed prophecy as described by the book.  Those people, given certain conditions, will not admit they were wrong and change their beliefs but will instead increase their promotion (proselyting) of their belief system and make new, typically even grander, predications of the adverse results if people fail to adhere to their belief system.  

Hence, people opposed to the Bush administration end up claiming President Bush is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler and the gun controller types ban certain types of clothes when gun bans fail to reduce crime.

We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme.

Abu Abdel-Rahman al-Iraqi
Identified as the deputy "emir" or leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
June 6, 2006
Quad Cities Times--Spiritual adviser led to al-Zarqawi
[Note the goal, that the word of his God to be supreme and hence the end of human rights as we know them.  It also sounds to me like a example for When Prophecy Fails.--Joe]