The View From North Central Idaho

Last weekend Kim, Caleb and I spent some time working on a water supply at the Taj Mahal. Kim and Caleb are on their belated honeymoon at Lake Tahoe today so I finished it off by myself.  And since we have WiFi onsite I'm blogging from the Taj. I'll post more pictures of the intermediate steps later but here is the final result:

I already explained this but apparently some people didn't get the memo--Sex survey numbers don't add up, mathematicians say:

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for the mean number of partners for men to be different from the mean for women in any given population with equal numbers of heterosexual men and women, although the mean, or mathematical average, can differ from the median, the middle point of a range. Surveys typically report the median.

Still, mathematicians should set the record straight, said David Gale, an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of California.

"Surveys and studies to the contrary notwithstanding, the conclusion that men have substantially more sex partners than women is not and cannot be true, for purely logical reasons," Gale said.

...

Sevgi Aral, who is associate director for science in the division of sexually transmitted disease prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there are several possible explanations, and all are probably operating.

One is that men are going outside the population to find partners, to prostitutes, for example, who are not part of the survey, or are having sex when they travel to other countries.

Another, of course, is that men exaggerate the number of partners they have and women underestimate.

Aral said she could not determine what the true number of sex partners is for men and women. "I would say that men have more partners on average," she said, "but the difference is not as big as it seems in the numbers we are looking at."

Gale is still troubled. He said invoking women who are outside the survey population cannot begin to explain a difference of 75 percent in the number of partners, as occurred in the study saying men had seven partners and women four. Something like a prostitute effect, he said, "would be negligible." The most likely explanation, by far, is that the numbers cannot be trusted.

Ronald Graham, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, San Diego, agreed with Gale. After all, on average, men would have to have three more partners than women, raising the question of where all those extra partners might be.

It's easy to explain, there is no mystery, other studies have shown the "prostitute effect" is not negligible. Read my previous post for an example that makes it all clear. These guys are professors in California. You shouldn't expect anything but crap for brains from people like that.

The anti-gun bigots in Massachusetts are happy:

The number of licensed gun owners in Massachusetts has declined by more than a quarter in the past six years, a falloff driven by restrictive laws, higher licensing fees, and cultural change, according to police officers and gun owners.

The drop is especially dramatic in the eastern part of the state and in urban areas. The number of licensed gun owners fell at least 30 percent in Boston, Springfield, Quincy, Fall River, and Waltham. It dropped at least 20 percent in more than 220 of the state's 351 communities.

Fewer firearms on the street makes life safer for everyone," said Robert F. Crowley, Quincy's police chief.

[...]

In Boston, the number of licensed owners fell from 7,577 in 2001 to 4,374 this year, a drop of 42 percent. In the same period, gun licenses in Cambridge dropped 25 percent to 782; 71 percent to 484 in Brookline, and 33 percent to 1,150 in Newton, state records show.

"We're pleased that the number of gun owners has decreased in our city, but the real issue is illegal guns, and we need more laws to deal with illegal guns in our cities," Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston said in a statement.

Here is one of the contributors to that reduced number of gun owners: 

Edward Arsenault, 70, of Fairhaven, was turned down for his license renewal earlier this year because he had been convicted in juvenile court of stealing a chicken from a chicken coop when he was 9 years old, in 1946.

With a 30% decline in the number of gun owners one should expect the number of "gun crimes" should decrease by a similar amount wouldn't you think (at least if you were a rational gun-control advocate)? But of course they aren't reporting on that or even hinting that anyone has considered that line of thinking. A quick scan of the FBI's UCR didn't yield the information I wanted so I'll just leave it as "interesting" they didn't report on the dramatic drop in crime compared to other states that didn't put so much effort into eradicating gun owners.

This year will go down in history.  For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration!  Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future. 

Adolph Hitler
One attribution has it as:
'Berlin Daily' (Loose English Translation) April 15th, 1935 Page 3 Article 2 by Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann - "Abschied vom Hessenland!"
[This is such a wonderful quote that it falls into the category of "too good to be true". People have a strong tendency to believe what they want to believe. Resist that temptation.

From http://www.rkba.org/research/rkba.faq:

This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all,
suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant
of which is that the date given (*in alternate versions, the
words "This year..." are replaced by "1935...") has no correlation
with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration,
nor would there have been a need for the Nazis to pass such a
law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government
were already in effect.  The Nazi Weapons Law (or_Waffengesetz_)
which further restricted the possession of militarily useful
weapons and forbade trade in weapons without a government-issued
license was passed on March 18, 1938.
   The citation usually given for this quote is a jumbled mess,
and has only three major clues from which to work.  The first is
the date, which does not correspond (even approximately) to a date
on which Hitler made a public speech, and a check of the texts of
Hitler's speeches does not reveal a quotation resembling this
(which is easily understandable when you realize that "Hitler"
is commenting on a non-existent law).  The second clue is the
newspaper reference, which if translated into German resembles the
title of a newspaper called _Berliner Tageblatt,_ and a check of
the issue for that date reveals that the page and column references
given are to the arts and culture page!  No Hitler speech appears
in the pages of _Berliner Tageblatt_ on that date, or dates close
to it, because there was no such speech to report.  Finally,
the citation includes a proper name "Eberhard Beckmann," which
is sometimes cited as "by Einleitung Von Eberhard Beckmann,"
which is an important clue itself, because it reveals that the
citation was fabricated by someone who had so little knowledge of
the German language that they were unaware that "Einleitung"
isn't the fellow's first name!  The only "Eberhard Beckmann"
which has been uncovered thus far did indeed write introductions,
but he was a journalist for a German broadcasting company after
WWII, and he wrote several introductions to_photography books,_
one of which was photos of the German state of Hesse (or Hessia),
which may be the source of the curious phrase "Abschied vom
Hessenland!" which appears in the citation.  This quotation,
however effective it may be as propaganda, is a fraud.

Check your facts before you publish them. I wear size 14 shoes and even though my mouth opens wider than most people it's much preferable to not insert my foot into my mouth rather than extracting it after I have.--Joe]

Barb and I will be at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in October at Reno. We haven't made our reservations yet but the vacation time is scheduled and currently the plan doesn't have any obstacles.

This year I'm going to bring what I call my spud gun. It actually shoots 210 grain Berger VLDs at 2915 fps rather than Idaho's famous vegetables. It was custom made by a gunsmith in Idaho and a friend of mine figured it couldn't be as a good a rifle as the one made by Arnold Arms north of Seattle. I started referring to my rifle as my spud gun just to neutralize his criticism of my choice of gunsmiths. I could have the last laugh by reminding my friend of the tens of thousands of dollars he had invested in Arnold Arms--which he lost when they went bankrupt--but that would be cruel.

I got in trouble with PNNL because someone thought my daughter might have had access to "Official Use Only" material. The material in question was marked OUO but was never OUO. We managed to get evidence of that after filing a motion to compel with the judge but legally it just didn't matter. Someone saw the markings, didn't bother to check to see if the markings were valid, see if Xenia actually had access, and acted accordingly--I lost my job. Here is another document marked OUO: I Found Ted Kennedy's Safe! (nice demonstration video of .50 BMG capabilities). I reported the OUO material from the TSA about three weeks ago.

What's interesting to me is that you find quite a lot of stuff if you do a search for "Official Use Only" on Live Search (142,637 items) or Google (about 815,000 items). Most of that is not actually government OUO material but some of it is and was put on websites and indexed when it really shouldn't have been. And then there is the stuff marked as OUO for political purposes. And even some of the material marked and protected as OUO is still available under the Freedom of Information Act:

The For Official Use Only designation is also used by CIA and a number of other federal agencies, but each agency is responsible for determining how it shall be used. The categories of protected information may be quite different from one agency to another, although in every case the protected information must be covered by one of the nine categories of information that are exempt from public release under FOIA.

Some agencies use different terminology for the same types of information. For example, Department of Energy uses Official Use Only (OUO). Department of State uses Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), formerly called Limited Official Use (LOU). The Drug Enforcement Administration uses DEA Sensitive. In all cases the designations refer to unclassified, sensitive information that is or may be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The fact that information is marked FOUO does not mean it is automatically exempt from public release under FOIA. If a request for the information is received, it must be reviewed to see if it meets the FOIA dual test: (1) It fits into one of the nine FOIA exemption categories, and (2) There is a legitimate government purpose served by withholding the information. On the other hand, the absence of the FOUO or other marking does not automatically mean the information must be released in response to a FOIA request.

Part of why I'm doing all the FOIA requests is to demonstrate that the material Xenia supposedly had access to, which was a major component the supposed reason I was fired, is in fact available to anyone that asks for it. This doesn't matter in a legal sense in terms of a wrongful termination lawsuit--they could make up a rule that says people can't trim their nose hair or some such thing and fire people that do. Of course this is all rather embarrassing to PNNL and they are just ignoring the FOIA requests--because they think the law doesn't apply to them. The person that said "See this badge?  This means the law doesn't apply to us." was Newton Brown, who instigated the investigation against me.

More details on the entire story of what happened to me at PNNL including how they let unauthorized people, perhaps including foreign nationals, have access to hundreds of computers with OUO material on them, some other time--I want to reload some ammo this morning before I have lunch with Barb.

How can government eliminate poverty? Poverty is government's stock in trade.

Tamara K.
August 11, 2007
Yes, wouldn't it?
[Read the post if this out of context quote doesn't make sense to you. Beyond what is in the post think about all the lost wealth complying with filling out paperwork, wasted government projects, and complying with pointless government regulations.--Joe]

I knew about the article from the chatter on the local email lists but hadn't actually seen it because the Lewiston Morning Tribune doesn't have free access. But thanks to Uncle I found the AP version of the story. Here is the gist of the story:

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) - The sheriff of a north-central Idaho county where a shooting rampage left four dead and three wounded last May wants more people to obtain concealed weapons permits and carry guns, including on the University of Idaho campus, to improve public safety.

"In my opinion, if there were more students with (concealed weapons permits), the world would be safer," Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch told the Lewiston Tribune on Tuesday. "Just because we (law enforcement officers) are charged with protecting the public, doesn't mean the public shouldn't be able to protect itself."

And the most memorable part of the story:

"When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away," David Klingenberg, 36, told the meeting. "I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy."

David was the Secretary/Treasurer of the now defunct Palouse Practical Shooters. The PPS range and functions have been taken over by the Lewiston Pistol Club and David shot at a couple LPC IPSC matches (here and here).

Also related is that the Lewiston Morning Tribune currently has a poll up, "Should private citizens be allowed to carry guns into public buildings?". You might want to participate.

I don't know of a single incident where CCTV has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act.

The presence of CCTV is irrelevant for those who want to sacrifice their lives to carry out a terrorist act.

You need to do this piece of theater so that if the terrorists are looking at you, they can see that you've got some measures in place.

Steve Swain
August 3, 2007
'Ring of Steel' coming to New York
Swain served for years with the London Metropolitan Police and its counter-terror operations and now works for Control Risk, an international security firm.
[Found via Bruce. If you don't see the folly of the security theater argument send me an email and I'll explain.--Joe]

Some of my FOIA requests to PNNL are over two years old. And even after I won an appeal from an early denial they still are refusing to send me the data. We'll, not exactly refusing. Every week when my lawyer calls them up asks what the status is they say, "I'll have to get back to you on that." And, of course, they don't. Repeat the next week.

In another case, in response to a FOIA request, they deleted a bunch of material (I found out via a late night anonymous phone call) and told me they did a "thorough search" and no such documents were found. My lawyer reworded the request and resubmitted it. They ignored both it and my congress critter's repeated requests to comply.

Remember the batch of requests I made almost seven weeks ago? They had 20 business days to respond and I've not received even a "go pound sand" response. Like I have said before they think the law doesn't apply to them.

This may make it easier for me to change their tune:

The Senate on Friday unanimously approved a measure that would extend the open-government requirements of the Freedom of Information Act to private contractors and increase penalties for federal agencies that do not comply.

[...]

Sens. Patrick Leahy and John Cornyn, R-Texas, sponsored the legislation to speed agency responses and compel the government to more accurately track pending requests. The legislation was blocked from a floor vote for months because Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and the Justice Department objected to several provisions.

One would have allowed requesters who file lawsuits to recover their attorney fees. Under the compromise, a requester would be able to recover the fees unless the claim is found to be "wholly insubstantial."

[...]

Other provisions would extend FOIA compliance to private contractors who keep records on government work and would protect fee waivers for "legitimate journalists, regardless of institutional association." That means waivers would apply to bloggers and others based on the Internet.

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

Mark Twain
[It's a bit simplistic but as a general rule I'm inclined to agree. Majorities have a strong tendency to ignore inalienable rights and abuse minorities. And I'm talking about all types of minorities including those based on things like sexual orientation and habits (include "sex workers"), recreational drug use, gun ownership, and types of hobbies (think "model rocketry").--Joe]

The headline reads SF Leads Nation With Toughest Gun Control Law. It's not true, Washington D.C. and Chicago are tougher with near complete bans on handguns and severe restrictions on long guns. But that's not my main point. The headline could just as accurately be SF Bigots Implement Repressive Law Against a Minority but that might make the bigots feel bad about themselves.

The field of explosives engineering incorporates a broad variety of sciences and engineering technologies that are brought together to bear on each particular design problem. These technologies include chemistry, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, mechanics, electricity, and electronics, and even meteorology, biology, and physiology.

Paul W. Cooper
1996
Preface to Explosives Engineering
[Chemistry? Check. Thermodynamics? That class was lots of fun. I got an A+ in it. Fluid dynamics? Check. Aerodynamics? Check--see Modern Ballistics. Mechanics? Check, Electricity and electronics? I have a BSEE and MSEE. Meteorology? I'll keep the explosive events to a size that shouldn't be affecting the weather. Biology and physiology? Not particularly--That's what the flak jacket, mask, gloves and apron are for--keeping explosives components, by-products, and accelerated objects out of my body.--Joe]

A person without conscience, even a smart one, tends to be a short sighted and naive individual who eventually expires of boredom, financial ruin, or a bullet.

Martha Stout
The Sociopath Next Door
[At first I was rather depressed by the book. In the U.S. one in 25 people has no conscience. They can do anything they want and not feel the least bit of guilt. Fear of getting caught and punished yes, but that just means they work a little hard and smarter to get away with whatever they want to do. Torturing animals, torturing humans, lying, cheating, backstabbing, murder, rape, whatever relieves their boredom. Those that follow the rules are stupid and naive. All part of the mindset of the sociopath. And it is the sociopath that is the dictator, the corrupt politician, the serial killer, and one of the reasons the average person needs to own a gun. As I got near the end of the book I heard about what serious deficits they have in their emotional lives and how their lives frequently end. This gave me hope. Hope that perhaps justice is more sure than it sometimes appears to be.--Joe]

I asked Barb to sit on my lap while I watched the video about Beth's 12 egg omelette (via Ry). When it was over Barb asked, "What's CaTTy about?" I had no idea so we watched it. Barb laughed so hard I thought she was going to tip over our chair. When it was over she said, "Send that to Xenia." Xenia has two cats.

Yup. It is pretty good.

Video: CaTTy

We’re hearing rumors that the Moscow, Idaho Mayor, Nancy Chaney, is plotting to ban guns in “Public Places”.

One’s right to self defense is under attack right here in Idaho.  Do I need to look up the political affiliations of the Mayor?  Does anyone wonder?

AP has it now, so the story is repeated verbatim on several sites.  As anyone could predict, it starts out describing a multiple murder committed using firearms.  The conclusion is always the same:  We must "prevent" further incidents of people breaking the law by passing more laws.  That way, when criminals obey this new law, they won't be able to break the old ones.

"I think there is probably some nervousness about that, of course."

Chaney said the shooting at the courthouse made her concerned about how vulnerable people might be at public meetings. She said she was also concerned about armed citizens who might be inclined to "swoop in to protect people" in situations that police should deal with.

"We don't want to tread on anyone's Second Amendment rights," Chaney told the Lewiston Tribune. "We want to find out what is within our legal prerogative."

She doesn't want to tread on anyone's rights, she just wants to ban guns.  Its hard to find anything on this locally, so apparently its being kept pretty hush.

Chaney, Girl, you be trippin'!  People may be "nervous" about a lot of things.  Some people at one time were very nervous about black people wanderin' all over free and what not, too.  It doesn't mean they had any right to keep black people out of public places, any more than you have the right to ban self defense.  If you're too nervous to do your job properly while respecting and appreciating the rights of your neighbors, I'm sure we can find a more level-headed replacement for you.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62)
U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849).
[Does this remind you of Gandhi in any way? It should. Gandhi studied Thoreau's writings and put a lot of the theory into practice.--Joe]

If there ever comes a time when I have to defend my life, I wouldn't trust that to anybody else -- no matter what oath they took or what contract they signed. I came to America from Brazil. The Second Amendment, I think, is one of the best things about this country.

Diego
Pennsylvania
Armed America--Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes
Page 48

As Uncle pointed out (and here) we have a new kid on the block. I left a comment in response to his post Happiness is a warm gun. Comments require approval before they show up so I decided to post it here because I expect the probability of anti-gun blogger Bryan Miller approving the comment are no better than 50-50.

My comment:

I find the following data points about Miller very interesting:

1. He refers to gun rights activists as “boys”.
2. When people call him on his inaccurate use of the phrase “assault rifle” he says, “It’s just a name.” Yup, it’s just a name. Just like “n****r” is “just a name” for people with dark colored skin.
3. He questions the mental qualifications of people with a fondness for a particular hobby that he doesn’t share.
4. He wants to restrict the rights of certain people.

It’s all part of the mindset Miller has. He apparently believes he is better than others, specifically he is better than people that own or want to own guns. It took me a long time to understand anti-gun people like Miller. I grew up in a place with a very homogenous population and hence there was virtually no elitist mentality other than the typical school stuff of the fourth graders looking down on the second graders and the high school seniors looking down on the freshman. It took some long discussions and email with a recovered liberal friend of mine (see here and "Comments from ‘Mike’ at the bottom of this page) and seeing the racist roots of gun control before it finally clicked into place. It’s even more clear to me from the many discussions I have had with these type of people about what they are trying to do. You can ask them just one question and they will dance around the question and even call you stupid for asking the question--but they won’t answer the question. To them it’s perfectly clear that the question doesn’t need to be answered. What they are doing, what they want to accomplish makes perfect sense and needs no justification. The conclusion was finally obvious to me--the anti-gun people are the bigots of the 21st century. It took me a long time to realize this because I didn’t have any real contact with the more typical bigots until a few years ago. The parallels in mindset and thinking processes were astonishing—but that is a topic for an entire blog post, not just a comment on someone else’s blog. I now have Just One Question for Miller:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

Also, Mr. Miller, when you “explain the Second Amendment” to us, please address the points in this blog posting: An Individual Right. Thank you for providing us with this forum where you show us your true colors and allowing us to show ours.

These high-sounding lectures from you and your colleagues in the so-called "gun rights" crowd are not even slightly impressive (they are amusing, though). As I've written above, society has a duty to mediate between individual privilege (that's right - privilege - neither you nor any other American has an unfettered "right" to own any weapon he or she wants) and public safety. In this case, the choice is clear. The public safety demands that massively destructive weapons like the Big 50 be prohibited from public purchase. And, you are in a tiny minority if you think Americans, and especially New Jerseyans (who suffered so from 9/11), would rather face the issue AFTER some terrorist knocks over a chlorine plant or similar disaster and hundreds die. Nuff said.

Bryan Miller
July 27, 2007
Put down the ducky -- I mean, gun
[Typical elitist mindset--He can't be bothered to address the points made. Furthermore he is willing to give up, and demand that others give up rights, in the name of "crime prevention". What a disgusting, revolting, frightening mindset.--Joe]

Interesting. My most recent post about the TSA is getting more and more attention. Most recent is this mention in a forum:

If you really need to believe that you're safe when you get on a plane, don't read the above. If you want to realize what a bullshit fantasy "safety" through a "security" agency is, then take the red pill and click the link.

I like how he expressed that. Very nice. I remember one time not too long after 9/11 Ry was having Thanksgiving dinner with us and our extended family at my parent's place. Somehow Ry (software tester extraordinaire--finding flaws is what software testers do) and I started talking about all the vulnerabilities in our country that someone could use to cause us great damage. We were rattling things off so fast that someone had to raise their voice to get in a command to "STOP". People didn't want to know. They wanted ignorance. This is baffling to me, but whatever.

Anyway, on to what makes particular posts interesting...

Uncle and Existing Thing (via Uncle) linked to my TSA post. I was thinking Uncle would link to it when I made it. He links to almost anything of mine that is a little out of the ordinary (honest, I have only made him one offer for a free position at Boomershoot--which he hasn't acted upon. I don't think that constitutes bribery). Thinking about what makes a post interesting I made the connection to the recent career advice from Scott Adams (via Kim). I have expertise in more than one field and combining that expertise with a somewhat rare political viewpoint (pro-freedom) increases my "value". In this case it was my expertise in explosives and (computer) security.

I keep wondering if there is a way to combine all my hobbies in an interesting way. But at least for me guns, explosives, and sex just don't mix.

I say, what do you expect? Disarming potential victims is almost never a good idea. As long as predators exist their prey will need to defend themselves. Taking away the tools used for defense is just asking for more victims. That the daughter of a gun control activist gets shot gets two responses from me:

1. (Outwardly) I'm so sorry, is there anything we can do to help?
2. (Under my breath) Well, duh! Would you like some firearm training for your family so this is less likely to happen again?

Regarding predators... I'm listening to a book on my iPod Nano now: The Sociopath Next Door. Four percent of the population are sociopaths. Not all are violent, but more than enough are. There is no cure. As long as sociopaths exist in the general population, and probably even if there weren't, the innocent will need tools to defend themselves. People that argue "economic justice", "midnight basketball", or even "two parent families" will make ownership of defensive tools obsolete is exceedingly naive.

Democracy is a bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

Oscar Wilde
[My original source claimed it was Wilde but I can't confirm it. But in any case--this is part of the reason why we have a republic rather than a democracy. But these days one could make the case there isn't all that much difference between the two.--Joe]

I can't endorse the bill because it is wasteful and supports an unconstitutional program, but I won't oppose it because it contains provisions that I consider critically important -- things I've been writing about for years -- correcting the injustices of permanently denying Second Amendment rights, without recourse, to tens of thousands of people. Maybe I'm missing something and maybe I'm wrong, but at this point, I think our energy can be expended in much more productive ways -- making sure Tiahrt passes comes to mind.

Jeff Knox
Hard Corps Report
May - June 2007
Volume 4, Issue 3
[Jeff captures my take on it quite well. I wish I had got around to reading it before I posted my own opinion of the Tiahrt amendment.--Joe]

From Canada, Turning Legal Gun Owners Into SOCIAL LEPERS:

Citing concern over the "sinister uses" of guns, University of Toronto officials are closing down their 88-year-old shooting range. No word yet on the fate of the university's chemistry labs.

More than just one more example of political correctness run amok (which of course it is), I take this gesture as academic ideologues' invitation to government to follow suit and ban gun sport and gun collecting nationally. Alas, I think the initiative might find broad public support. To many liberal Canadians nowadays, tolerating gun use in any capacity is akin to complicity in Bambi's mother's murder, fatalism regarding school massacres and genuflection to American imperialism.

And from the same article it looks like I have a new book to read:

In a recently-published book discussed on these pages last Thursday, Mistakes Were Made:Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson argue that many social and cultural problems spring from humans' inability to admit when they're wrong. How right they are. And as further evidence to those adduced in their book, I would cite: the blinkered ideologues who punish responsible gun users for the sins of criminals; police who automatically privilege the idle or fabricated concerns of disaffected women over men's property and civil rights; and governments who continue to throw good money after bad in perpetuating an institution that fails utterly to deter gun crime, but succeeds magnificently in stigmatizing an identifiable minority of law-abiding citizens as criminals in waiting.

Our future as gun owners doesn't have to be same as that of Canadian gun owners. Right now we essentially have the bigots at a standstill. We need to keep pushed them and change the attitudes in this country. We have to have the right mindset and turn the anti-gun bigots into the social lepers.

It is late at night and I got a little agitated reading some of the comments at Schneier's blog post about airplane security. When I'm tired my inhibtions drop and I write things I might not normally. Here's a duplicate of the rant I left in Schneier's comments:

Regarding dust explosions...

This is about 8 ounces of flour over an ounce of black powder (the original gun powder): http://www.joehuffman.org/FlashTek/06-FFFFgFlour.mpeg

That is in open air. In an enclosed room of an abandoned house a similar test brought the house down. Sorry, that wasn't my test and I don't have any video for it.

Shaped charges made from match heads? I don't think so. The "detonation" velocity is just too slow. It's more properly called deflagration than detonation for that type of "explosive". Shaped charges require MUCH faster propagation rates.

Binary explosives are available here: http://www.tannerite.com/ No background check, no license required, delivered to your door via UPS. Now THAT is something you can make a crude shaped charge with.

The "projectile" (typically a slug of molten copper) from a shaped charge is moving at 6 to 10 kilometers per second. At the pressures generated when it hits a "target" everything is "plastic". Hardened steel develops a hole just like a high velocity stream from your garden hose nozzle punches a hole in a dirt bank. Penetration for a properly configured 10 (ten) gram shaped charges is about 2 inches of steel. Yes--a shaped charge using less than one half ounce of explosives will penetrate two inches of steel. See Explosives Engineering by Paul W. Cooper, ISBN 0-471-18636-8 page 442. Or do you think the doors to the cockpit are more resistant than two inches of steel?

Do you think someone could not get a half ounce of explosives through TSA security? You could probably successfully hide that in your mouth or arm pit if you didn't want to use some other body cavity.

Oh, and you know why the explosives detectors work fairly well with plastic explosives? It's, by international agreement (Montreal, March 1, 1991, Article XIII of the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives -- http://www.atf.gov/explarson/fedexplolaw/subpartj.pdf ), that all plastic explosives be "marked" by their manufacture with a chemical that is easily detected. Do you think Iran and others are going to abide by that International Convention if they want to provide some terrorists plastic explosives?

We really should spend the $2 billion/year, or whatever it is, on finding and stopping the bad guys before they arrive at the airport/train-station/shopping-mall/etc. than on pointless screening. The bottom line is that the acronym TSA should be reversed--it really stands for "A Security Theater".

It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.

Will Rogers

It's mildly interesting and somewhat amusing but I hope it wasn't funded by some government grant. As much as I'm interested in sex I don't see much point in this study. I also find it annoying that some of the reasons are duplicates; Example, #7 "I'm addicted to sex", and #9 "I am a sex addict". Probably the most interesting part of the survey was this paragraph:

Another perspective comes from the literature on sperm competition (Baker & Bellis, 1995; Shackelford, Pound, Goetz, & LaMunyon, 2005). From this perspective, a man whose partner might have been sexually unfaithful might seek sex, which functions to displace the sperm of the rival male. Or a woman might deplete the sperm of her partner, leaving few available for insemination of rival women. None of these hypothesized functions, of course, need operate through conscious psychological mechanisms.

This is the first meme I'm actually happy to receive. A Brain Like Mine gave me a Thinking Blogger Award.

She even made me #1 in her post about it but I may be reading too much into that. It was my Jews In the Attic Test that did it for her.

Here are the rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

I don't read that many blogs and most of them are not in search for food for thought. Hence there is only one blogger that I'm going to tag--Kevin.

My son, Alex and I went to the range last weekend.  He wanted to confirm zero on his rifle before the start of hunting season, and I wanted to do the same with a 50 caliber muzzleloading caplock rifle.

I don't know how explain this, but it wasn't until we were half way home that I again realized the fact that I had any problems or concerns in life at all-- they had completely gone away for the time we spent at the range.

I hadn't experienced anything like this in, I don't know how long. Talk about "Zen and the Art of the Rifle" which is the title of one of Oleg's recent posts.

Alex had some of his custom ammo left over from the Boomershoot, and since the bullet manufacturer says their VLD is also a decent hunting bullet, he decided to use that accurized load for hunting this year.  I won't tell you the size of his 200 yard group (he fired a total of four rounds that day-- three at 200 and one at 50, to get a first-hand feel for the difference in POI) partly because it would be bragging, but mostly because you wouldn't believe it anyway, coming as it did from a "mere" Ruger M77 MKII.  I had to explain to him that this was something remarkable, and yet maybe I shouldn't have bothered.

It was one of those few days in life wherein one can truly say one was "at peace".  But you don't realize its happening until its over.