Interesting:

The study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair colour.

He said: "The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair colour, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation."

He added that women who dyed their hair red from another colour were signalling they were looking for a partner, and added: "Even women in a fixed relationship are letting their partners know they are unhappy if they dye their hair red. They are saying that they are looking for something better."

Despite standing right beside the Muslim extremist who shot her and listening while he "ranted on the phone about Jews, Israel and the U.S. role in the war in Iraq and the Middle East" Ms Klein is concerned about all the wrong things:

Klein said she hopes the shooting will serve to renew local and national efforts to draft gun control legislation.

How and why Haq "was able to legally acquire two semi-automatic weapons in our state is still a very disturbing mystery to me," she said.

...

"Naveed Haq has wasted enough of my time," she said.

Huh? Haq is the reason she may not regain the use of her hand. His extremist religious beliefs are the reason he and millions of others want her dead. And she is distrubed because it's legal to purchase firearms? Had she purchased and carried a similar firearm she and others might not have been shot. She should exercise her rights, her brain, and before pushing for more useless gun control legislation answer Just One Question.

For reference see:

• The Seattle Times
• Seattle PI
• The Daily Herald

As pointed out by Denise, Jenny Price wrote another editorial. This time on gun owners instead of guns. I commented on her last one here. This one is about being "Targeted by Gun Nuts". At the time I suspected she visited my blog a week or two after I wrote that post because of what I saw in my log file, but one never knows for certain.

Jenny, if you visit again please answer Just One Question.

I think the most telling part of the editorial are the last two paragraphs:

...do you really want these people on these websites (and 40 million other people in the country) to have guns?

I can cite statistics, and I can tell you why the right to carry a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun with a 10-shot clip is not guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. But the paranoia and bone-chilling hatred that spew from such sites as packing.org and freerepublic.com make for an equally — and unusually — effective argument for a ban on handguns.

She can cite statistics but can she do it correctly? Last time she had a terrible problem doing so. I've looked around a fair amount this morning and as near as I can tell she is off by about a factor of two, on the low side, with the number of gun owners in this country.

And if she can tell us why the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee us the right to carry a 9mm handgun with a 10 round magazine there are some others besides me who would be interested in her reasoning. For example:

• The Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, 2/82
• The judges in U.S. vs. Emerson, 5th Circuit Federal Court
• The U.S. Attorney General

But then she could have done that this time but instead went for the emotional appeal and claims it's is an unusually effective argument.

I think the 2008 presidential election will be won or lost on environmental degradation and new thinking on the environment.

Fabian Nunez
California Assembly Speaker
August 17, 2006
California on brink of global warming breakthrough
[We are in the middle of WWIII (or IV) and this guy thinks "new thinking on the environment" will be the deciding issue of the next presidental election? The guy is a Barking Moonbat.--Joe]

I remembered as soon as I heard it, Barb and I mispronounce Missouri. It's pronouced mi-ZER-ah by the locals here. With that small error corrected we are doing fine (other than the marginal Internet connection).

Monday was spent in Branson. In the morning we visited the Titanic museum. We were quite impressed. But why such an extensive Titanic museum in the Midwest? I could see having it in New York City, Belfast, or even London, but Branson Missouri? Never mind. We liked it a great deal.

Monday afternoon we rode the ducks with "Captain Clyde." Very funny and pleasingly informative.

Monday evening we had dinner at the Shogun Restaurant and were pleased with both the food and the show.

After dinner we went to the Jim Stafford Show. He and his kids are very talented musically but the humor was disappointing.

Tuesday afternoon we visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield. I haven't read even one of her "Little House on the Prairie" books or watched one of the T.V. shows but still enjoyed the museum. Her daughter Rose Wilder Lane was quite impressive too and a large section of the museum is devoted to her. Rose is considered seminal force behind the Libertarian party!

Late on Tuesday afternoon we found our way deep into the "hills" to the home of Ozark Pyrotechnics owner Dave and his family. The highest point in the state is 1772 feet and the lowest is 230 feet above sea level so it's not really possible to have "hills" that qualify to our Idaho sensibilities. Dave is a self described hillbilly. If Dave and his family are representative of hillbillies then it is no insult to be called one. For hours Dave and talked about Boomershoot and his first effort at a similar event while Barb was entertained by the two girls:

Dave, knowing we were celebrating our 30th anniversary this week fixed us a wonderful dinner, complete with champagne, and put on a fireworks show for us. This wasn't just a few fountains, sparklers and firecrackers. This was a real fireworks show that required a call to the local sheriff and the fire marshall beforehand. Here is a picture of Dave with his idea of real fireworks (the biggest shells for us were 'only' four inches):

Update: I forgot to mention the fireflies! Barb and I had never seen fireflies before. We saw our first fireflies Tuesday night as we were preparing the fireworks. The dark haired girl in the picture above caught a couple and showed them to us up close.

It was such a cool way to celebrate our anniversary. Other people celebrate anniversaries by going to Hawaii or Europe. We visited hillbillies in the Ozarks and saw fireflies and our own private fireworks display. How many people can claim an experience like that?

The folksongs of the 1960s will never be written again because of President George Bush. He has hampered the liberties of my country in the name of September 11. Songs now can only talk of patriotism, they cannot mention peace.

Catherine Mayo
AN AMERICAN IN PAKISTAN: Value of dissent
March 18, 2003

[Mayo is the Barking Moonbat who urinated in the aisle of United flight 923 from London to Washington D.C. yesterday.--Joe]

The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it.

P. J. O'Rourke
Parliament of Whores

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.

Dave Barry

What I really need is a directional WiFi antenna. I've been meaning to get one and had really intended to do that before this trip. As I stand (the signal inside the car is too weak) in the parking lot next to our rental car (for the power from the inverter I did bring along) in the early hours of the morning, blogging, reading and writing email, I realize my tendency to procrastinate is a vice (Xenia, please learn from your father's mistakes--even if you did inherit this personality trait from him).

I have permission to use the WiFi in the building across the parking lot from our place here but just not the range with the network card in my laptop. Neither WalMart nor Staples have the desired equipment. And it looks like the closest Fry's is in Texas.

All though this video I get increasingly uncomfortable. I kept thinking "this can't turn out well" and I was tempted to stop watching. The tension gradually increases and reaches a peak just as you "know" it's going to get really ugly. It has a nice twist at the end as everything resolves in a satisfactory manner that makes it worthwhile watching. Via Ry.

It illustrates the truth of Lyle's post from the other day.

No wonder the police and the politicians in Philadelphia want the citizens disarmed: Philadelphia cops use badges to exhort sex.

Liberty is a hollow joke without an armed populace to protect the rights of all.

Donald L. Cline
August 14, 2006
Gun laws only help criminals

We have arrived. The internet connection sucks. Only if I put my laptop on top of the T.V. at a funny angle can I get a connection. I think I can fix it but it will have to wait for a few hours. We are both tired and are going to take a nap.

NWA is going to get a letter from Barb about our baggage and a couple other items. She already called them and rattled their cage once. They messed up a bunch of people, not just us. It's straightened out now but it wasn't pleasant.

We've made more enemies during the presidency of George Bush than in the rest of our history combined.

Ramsey Clark
Former US Attorney General
[And one could make a lot of enemies serving "colored people" in your restaurant in the deep south 50 years ago too. It's the same emotional 'argument' about "squandering our good will". We "squandered our good will" with Germany, Italy, and Japan about 65 years ago too. Doing the right thing is more important than trying to make everyone happy. Facts don't support his agenda so he makes an emotional appeal.--Joe]

The majority opinion over here is pretty much what Ry and I have concluded. We'll have to take a serious hit before we stop swatting at the "wasps" and instead destroy the "nests" and kill the "queens".

We were supposed to be in Springfield MO by now. But our plane to leave Seattle arrived 40 minutes late. It took off well over an hour late (taxiway congestion). We arrived in Minneapolis about 10 minutes after our connecting flight to Springfield was scheduled to leave.

The airline (NWA) put us up in a very nice room with free ground transportation, meals, and small overnight kit (they locked up our luggage for the night). Tomorrow morning we get a wake up call at 4:00 AM (2:00 AM my time) to catch a shuttle ride back to the airport where we catch a flight to Memphis and from there we go to Springfield arriving almost exactly 12 hours later than we planned..

Barb is stressing a little bit but as long as I do the interacting with all the wonderful service people that have been so accommodating we'll do just fine.

I am annoyed with the hotel here, they have a policy of no guns on the property. This appears to be in accordance with Minnesota law. But since I don't have my gun with me (it's locked up at the airport) I suppose it doesn't matter all that much this time. I'll leave them one of these cards in the morning:

Barb and I will be visiting the Mark Twain National Forest and Ozark Pyrotechnics this week. The plane leaves in a few hours. I'm sure it will be fun going through security. I'm tempted to play games with security but Barb gets annoyed when I do that when she is along.

While we are gone the Huffman-Scott compound will be occupied by men and/or women with nasty attitudes, both long and short guns, bitey dogs, but no explosives. The explosives have been locked away in a secure facility. This is so there will be something left of any goblin who visits while we are gone. I don't want them to get all the fun.

Update: From being dropped off at the airport until we were through security and done putting all our clothes back on it only took 40 minutes. That 40 minutes included an inexperience ticket agent dealing with my handgun. They are doing their best to make the violation of our inalienable rights as painless as possible.

As I have been saying for years current airport security doesn't and probably can't possibly work. Here are some other peoples thoughts on the topic:

• New Airline Security Rules (be sure and read the comments)
• Threat modeling airplane explosive detection
• Bruce Schneier points out knives and guns are built in prisons so how can we hope to keep them off of airplanes?
• Gaping holes in airport security

It's time to investigate alternatives. Even scrapping the existing system entirely and taking all that money and investing it in intelligence and police work would be an improvement.

There should be a meteor shower tonight.

Appeasement but begets new and bloodier wars.

Douglas MacArthur
1880-1964
American general
Address to Congress
April 19, 1951
[Communists, Islamic extremists, or anti-gun owner bigots it still applies.--Joe]

I'm getting a bunch of hits from people searching for liquid explosive recipes. You won't find them on any of my sites. They are too unstable for my use. The explosive that probably was planned for the most recent event in the U.K. is this one. Note what is said about it:

For its instability, it has been called the "Mother of Satan".

Even nitroglycerin is more stable.

But if you are planning a one way trip to meet your 72 virgins I suppose that doesn't much matter.

Who says you own Britain, anyway? Britain belongs to Allah. The whole world belongs to Allah. ... If I go to the jungle, I'm not going to live like the animals, I'm going to propagate a superior way of life. Islam is a superior way of life.

Anjem Choudary
A former leader of Al Mujahiroun
Via Diana West

Clayton asks, What, Exactly, Is The Purpose Of Blowing Up A Bunch of Airliners?

A couple years ago I was talking with a guy in the CIA. He was a manager over, among others, a bunch of psychologists. What he told me was that "these people" think differently than we do. "Perhaps more differently that we can think." Most important about this is that we understand what to do and/or say to get them to do the things we want them to do, next week, next month, and next year. And these means to these different goals may be in conflict with each other.

Now for my speculation. We probably think so differently that they have difficultly thinking like us as well. They probably are doing what they think should cause us to do what they want us to do, but as Clayton points out, it is going to make us more determined to capture and/or kill their extremists. It's sort of a messed up communication channel.

Another possibility is they just want to kill as many infidels as possible. They are just delivering on the "convert or die" offer from their leaders. If you look at the kill ratio when our military goes up against them it's probably 1:20 to even 1:100 in our favor. The numbers are against them in that situation.

Ry and I once did an informal study of kill ratios for various "occupations" such as military, mass killers, serial killers, terrorists, etc. This was a little different than your normal ratio of dead on one side to dead on the other side. In this case what is the ratio of people involved on one side to the number of people dead on the other. So if Ted Bundy acted alone, which I think is most likely true, and he killed 43 (or maybe 143--who knows?) then the kill ratio there is 1:43 (or 1:143). In the Oklahoma City bombing 168 were killed and there were probably two people involved for a ratio of 1:84. In 9-11 there were 19 (plus some organizers and support people) who killed something like 3500 people for a ratio of (on the high end) of 1:184. In the case of the military dropping a nuke you have to include all the people that helped make and store the nuke and it's delivery system, as well as the people in the chain of command who delivered the nuke.

It's not difficult to concluded that 1:200 is about the upper limit.

Therefore, if the goal is to kill as many infidels as possible losing one "martyr" per airplane full of infidels is pushing the limit of what is the "current state of the art" in dealing out death.

But who can know if that's right? My guess it's going to be difficult for us understand even if they were to explain it to us.

Oh, how many times we have heard the phrase, "It takes two to make a fight".  That statement appears to assign equal guilt to the defender and the perpetrator, which is the same as saying that you do not have any right to defend yourself, or to be defended by anyone else.  By the time I reached high school in 1972, two kids caught fighting were both punished equally ('cause fighting just isn't cool, man).  I see it as no mere coincidence that the arena wherein I've heard this phrase uttered the most, if not exclusively, is the public school system.

Its time to modify the phrase slightly, based on the application of intelligence guided by experience:

"It takes at least two to make a fight-- one perpetrator and one defender."

Col. Jeff Cooper was once asked whether violence merely begets more violence.  His answer went something like this (I'm going from memory, so I can only paraphrase): "It is my sincere endeavor to see to it that it does."  In explaining his answer, he said that if someone is going to perpetrate violence against innocents, that person should get more violence in return than he can handle.

How many times have you heard some version of "Don't judge me, man" or "You're being too judgmental"?  Similar to the "it takes two" quote, this seems to be designed to prevent us from doing that which makes us human-- it asks us to stop using our ability to reason.

If we really value "Peace And Love, Man" we should be ready to dish out both blame and praise appropriately.

Iran is fighting a proxy war, but smugly feels itself immune to consequence. Not only is this unfair to the Lebanese, but it is dangerous for Washington. The more overconfident Iran becomes in its ability to get away with murder, the more likely Americans will be targeted down the line.

Michael Rubin
Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington
Attributed in the article Iran mullah rush to resupply Lebanese agents, "Hezbollah"

I arrived at 8:00 this morning and didn't leave until 22:00 except for about 10 minutes to get a slice of pizza from the cafeteria. The brought supper to us which we ate in a conference room. It was a long tiring day but I got the last of my stuff checked in before Barb and I leave on vacation next week. This gives me two days to deal with whatever might blow up when my stuff starts getting executed in the daily build.

As I left work were still dozens of cars in the parking garage which reminded me of one time I had commented about how different it was at PNNL. I had made some causal remark about how my car would be nearly the only one in the parking lot when I left at 19:00 and how different this was than at Microsoft. I blogged about this once too. Some of my PNNL co-workers got indignant about that comment. My comment was accurate. It must have been there was some guilt on their conscience.

Will this be the triggering event for another change in airport security? Just like when the shoe bomber did his thing we had to start taking off our shoes before boarding the planes. Will now have to follow the British lead as described here?

BRITISH police have reportedly foiled a plot to smuggle explosive devices in airline hand luggage to blow up planes in mid-flight, according to Sky News in London.

The targets were said to have been flights between the Britain and the US.

Overnight police have arrested a number of people in London.

The BBC reports that the Department for Transport has set strict security measures at UK airports.

Passengers would not be allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK, the department said.

Only the barest essentials - including passports and wallets - would be allowed on board in transparent plastic bags.

Sky said the Metropolitan Police arrests were the culmination of a big covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months.

It followed a pre-planned intelligence led operation by the Met's anti-terrorist branch and security service.

Police said they believed the aim was to detonate explosive devices smuggled on board the aircraft in hand luggage.

"We would like to reassure the public that this operation was carried out with public safety uppermost in our minds," a police statement said.

"This is a major operation which inevitably will be lengthy and complex. We will provide further information as soon as possible."

Next will be strip and body cavity searches. But even that will fail. Defensive security is inherently very difficult and prone to failure. You must take the offense which, if reports are correct, it appears the British successfully done in this case. Good for them if true.