In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
Monthly Archives: October 2006
Boomershoot 2007 entry form improvements
I’ve gradually been making improvements to the Boomershoot 2007 online entry form. It should now be sending email when you have all the required fields filled out and you select a position. I had a few problems getting that to work right for certain email addresses so I would appreciate you verfying that you can receive email via the entry form before I enable everything for actual entries. It will show that positions have been taken but ignore that. They will all be reset when it is enabled for actual entries.
I still have some more things to do such as making the confirmation email real, rather than “this is a test…”, and setting up the payment options. I’m off to the Gun Blogger Rendezvous tomorrow so I don’t know when I will get it completed and will actually be able to start accepting entries but it will be soon.
DNA remedy ‘beats hay fever’
I have problems with hay fever. Yeah, that was a big issue when I lived on the farm. Especially when my family’s religious beliefs (Christian Scientist) strongly discouraged the use of medicines. Some of my kids inherited the problem but Sudafed (years ago) and now Claritin give us the relief we need to be functional in most situations.
Now there is a new solution on the horizon:
Scientists claim six injections of a new vaccine offers years of relief to sufferers of the allergy
A NEW DNA-based allergy vaccine can offer long-lasting relief to hay fever sufferers after just six injections, American scientists have claimed.Patients receiving the experimental vaccine showed an average 60 per cent reduction in typical allergy symptoms, such as sneezing, runny nose, watering eyes and itching for at least two years, compared with those receiving a placebo.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, Maryland, believe that a six-injection treatment with the new vaccine, known as AIC, could offer a significant improvement over traditional allergen immunotherapy, which can require several years of weekly or bi-weekly injections.AIC contains a short piece of DNA known as an “immunostimulatory sequence” that can modify immune system reactions and reduce the typical symptoms of ragweed allergy, more commonly known as hay fever.
The experimental therapy also holds the promise of one day eliminating the need for traditional allergy medicines such as nasal steroids and antihistamines.
Michelle Malkin gets sarcastic with YouTube
Malkin’s video on Islamic extremists has been banned and they won’t tell her specifically why. So she made another video asking them why. I love the sarcasm at the end:
Quote of the day–Stephen Harper
The Liberal party has no direction. The real challenge for the next leader will obviously be to unite the party and give them some direction other than just to run with whatever the issue of the week is that they think they can make a cheap point out of.
Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
September 16, 2006
$1-billion didn’t prevent tragedy
[As near as I can tell the same applies to the Democrats in our country.–Joe]
Ken Schram gets asked Just One Question
Phil at Random Nuclear Strikes asks Ken Schram, Seattle liberal talk show host, Just One Question.
He probably won’t get an answer, but it might make a few gears grind for a minute or two.
Helen Chenoweth is dead
Via David and the Idaho Statesman:
Helen Chenoweth-Hage, an outspoken conservative who served three terms as Idaho’s 1st Congressional District representative, died Monday after being thrown from a vehicle that overturned on an isolated central Nevada highway.
She was traveling toward Tonopah, Nev., at 11:40 a.m. PDT on State Route 376 when the Jeep drifted off the right side of the road, swerved to the left and flipped after the driver overcorrected in steering to the right, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Rocky Gonzalez said.
State Route 376 is the main route between Tonopah and her ranch in Monitor Valley. The crash occurred about 40 miles from her ranch. Tonopah is halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.
The other occupants — daughter-in-law Yelena Hage, 24, and 5-month-old grandson, Bryan Hage — also were ejected but were not seriously injured. Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said it’s still unclear who was driving.
Gonzalez said Chenoweth-Hage, 68, was holding the baby and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
…
A Republican, Chenoweth-Hage was elected to Congress from Idaho in 1994, serving three terms before stepping down.
She first ran for Congress against incumbent Democrat Larry LaRocco, gaining national attention during fundraisers when she held endangered-salmon bakes, serving canned salmon and ridiculing the listing of Idaho salmon as an endangered species.
During her congressional career, Chenoweth-Hage was a victim of a “salmon pie” attack while at a field hearing on forest health in Missoula, Mont. Randall Mark of Moscow hit her in the head with a “pie” made of rotten canned salmon, forcing the meeting to adjourn for an hour while she cleaned salmon flakes from her hair and jacket.
After the attack, the congresswoman joked, “I would like to say that I find it amusing that they used salmon. I guess salmon must not be endangered anymore.”
Chenoweth-Hage, a colorful lawmaker, said salmon aren’t endangered but that white males are. She also said the Endangered Species Act was unconstitutional, complained about black government helicopters harassing ranchers, said minorities didn’t like northern Idaho because it is too cold and called for disarming federal resource enforcement agents.
The outspoken advocate of smaller government self-imposed a three-term limit and chose not to run in 2000.
She lived in Orofino at the same time Barb and I were going to High School there. Barb’s sister Nancy used to babysit for her and her ex-husband Nick Chenoweth. There are stories I could tell, but won’t, about her private life.
She did a good job as our Representative in Congress. I’m sorry to hear she is gone.
Scott humor
I sometimes give my wife and her family a bad time about their “different” sense of humor. Here we have Barb’s sister Nancy caught in the act, by both Xenia and I, of pushing over an old building in the park last Saturday:
Probably more characteristic of their “different” sense of humor is as it applies to outhouses. I’ll explain some other time.
Some politicians get it
For some reason this quote came to mind when I read the article:
Man, n.: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
It’s politicians that infest the whole habitable earth, even Canada, but some of them ‘get it’–even in Canada:
For the past decade, the previous Liberal government has put all of its eggs in one basket when it comes to preventing gun crime. It invested over $1 billion into a gun registry that never functioned properly and was never proven to have prevented a single crime.
While federal gun registry officials were out chasing down farmers for not registering their .22s, relatively little was being done to attack criminal gun use. The Montreal tragedy, sadly, was the ultimate proof of the gun registry’s failure. The preliminary police investigation revealed Kimveer Gill appears to have properly registered all his guns and complied with every other firearm regulation.
The $1 billion wasted on the registry could have been put to much better use in putting more police on the streets, providing better equipment for forensics labs and helping schools and social workers to identify and deal with troubled youths before they become violent.
The Liberal opposition, blind as always to facts, continues to chant that we must keep the registry to prevent future crimes, even though it has failed so abysmally to prevent past ones. The new Conservative government will not repeat the Liberals’ mistakes.
…
Shamefully, the Liberals, NDP and the Bloc continue to exploit the grief of families by trying to twist the Montreal tragedy to their own political advantage. The Conservative government is not interested in such rhetoric. We are interested only in doing the right things by taking practical steps to clamp down on gun crime and violent criminals.
Tom Lukiwski
Lukiwski is Conservative MP for Regina Lumsden Lake Centre.
Ottawa
They have a long way to go to undo all the harm done by the restrictions on firearms. An entire nation needs to be educated on self-defense and how to use handguns. Had that $1 Billion (some say $2 Billion) been spent on teaching people to use and carry a handgun the Montreal tragedy would have been stopped much sooner. Think of it this way; when some criminal starts shooting innocent people what is the current response? It’s to call the police who, quite correctly, arrive as fast as is practical with their own guns to stop the shooter.
Got that? Good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns from hurting innocent people. Everyone knows that. When the good guys don’t have guns they are easily slaughtered by the bad guys with guns.
Therefore the way to reduce the number of innocent people from getting hurt or killed is to make sure there are good guys with guns close by. Therefore we need more good guys to carry guns with them and reduce the time from when a bad guy does something bad until he is stopped by a good guy with a gun. In this country we, by constitutional design, have the ultimate solution–The Right to Keep and Bear Arms. This solution also protects us from when the police, and the government in general, becomes infested with bad guys.
Unfortunately because of the infestation of politicians we have suffered with for the past 70+ years (I’m thinking of NFA ’34, but really it’s been longer than that) we have a lot of work to do before we restore things to their proper order. At least we are headed in the proper direction on this important issue.
Cinderella story
As I obliquely reported the other day my cell phone turned into a pumpkin at midnight on Saturday. It wasn’t until lunch time yesterday that I was finally able to get it fixed. It’s quite the Cinderella now. Very pretty and nice. I’d like to say more but there are those pesky NDAs…
Market price
They say $32K was too much for playing around on second base. But they don’t say what they think a fair price would be.
I think they should just let the open market decide.
Both links are via Raymond.
Quote of the day–John Ross
Your claim that “they’re only for killing people” is imprecise. A gas chamber or electric chair is designed for killing people, and these devices obviously serve different functions than guns. To be precise, a high-capacity, military-type rifle or handgun is designed for conflict. When I need to protect myself and my freedom, I want the most reliable, most durable, highest-capacity weapon possible. The only thing hunting and target shooting have to do with freedom is that they’re good practice.
John Ross
http://www.john-ross.net/mistakes.htm
September 14, 2005
Idaho is so ugly
Just stay away. There’s no one here but racist, sexist, red-necked, gun-toting, explosives-loving, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthals anyway so you wouldn’t like it.
On Sunday Barb and I replaced a Geocache that turned up missing. Things went much better this time than the last time we tried to visit this location. We took some pictures while we were out:
This is what I want you to think of when you think of Idaho:
You can use it just don’t promote it
I think the law is silly, but I am inclined to agree that the State of Texas probably is within it’s enumerated powers to pass and enforce such a silly law:
The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether a Texas law making it a crime to promote sex toys shaped like sexual organs is unconstitutional.
An adult bookstore employee in El Paso, Texas, sued the state after his arrest for showing two undercover officers a device shaped like a penis and telling the female officer the device would arouse and gratify her.
The employee, Ignacio Sergio Acosta, says a Texas law outlawing the manufacture, marketing or dissemination of an “obscene device” including those shaped like sex organs is unconstitutional because it prevents individuals from using such devices, violating their right to sexual privacy.
I would be inclined to ridicule every man involved in this from the legislators that voted for it, the police enforcing the law, to the prosecutors presenting the case. It would go something like this, “So, are you afraid your wife won’t be interested in you anymore once she gets one of these? Perhaps you should get some lessons on how to be a better lover rather than trying to prevent her from getting a little satisfaction.”
Interesting details on the liquid explosives
Pretty much what I expected. I thought that particular explosive needed some more processing after being mixed and perhaps it does but they just aren’t telling us. Also, I would have used something other than a hypodermic needle but other than that there are no surprises here for me:
Scientists tested the ingredients linked to the London plot in the Rio Grande Valley south of Albuquerque, where the canyons and mountains form a perfect explosives testing range. Based on the materials found in Britain, investigators developed a specific theory of the bomb plot, two officials who have been briefed on the inquiry said.
With the seal on a sports drink called Lucozade intact, the plotters apparently intended to remove the drink with a hypodermic needle and replace it with highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide, a syrupy liquid once used as rocket fuel. Another bottle would be filled with a common household substance, which The New York Times agreed not to disclose at the request of Homeland Security officials. After the two were mixed, a detonator hidden in a hollowed-out AA battery would be used to set off the bomb, according to this theory.
What they don’t come right out and say is that they can’t protect us from bombs being brought or made on-board. As long as I am allowed to walk on-board without body cavity searches, remain conscious, unrestrained, and unobserved for at least a short time there will be a way for me to detonate an explosive on-board. Get used to it and stop spending so much money on useless “security”.
Giving inanimate objects free will
I don’t think some people believe me when I tell them the hoplophobes frequently appear to believe that guns have free will. Here is more evidence of the truth of my claim:
No one will rise up to defend a man who walks into an Amish school, lines young girls up against a blackboard, ties up their feet, and then kills them before killing himself. But a surprising number of people will inevitably rise up to defend his guns, to call the man guilty but his weapons innocent.
…
There are no simple solutions to this conflict. It is neither possible nor tolerable to secure every school or guard every child. Nor is it possible or politically tolerable to keep tabs on every gun. But in these killings we see an open society threatened by the ubiquity of its weapons, in which one kind of freedom is allowed to trump all others. Most gun owners are respectable, law-abiding citizens. But that is no reason to acquit the guns.
Call the weapons innocent? “Acquit the guns”? Someone should commit these lunatics. They have mental problems.
Quote of the day–Justice Louis Brandeis
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
The Credibility Gap Runs Wide
This is, word for word and in its entirety, the text on a poster that has been displayed in a public school in our area for years:
Violence is Any;
Word
Look
Sign
Act
that inflicts or threatens to inflict physical or emotional injury or discomfort upon another person’s body, feelings, or possessions.
Can anyone make sense of that statement? Adopting it as policy would be quite another matter: “Ms. Dimbulb, Johnny gave my pencil a dirty look…”
Send the kid in for anger management counseling. That’ll get him to respect you, I’m sure.
I would point out that approximately 100% of a public school’s budget comes as a result of threatening tax payers with acts of violence, but saying that might inflict emotional discomfort and thereby constitute an act of violence.
Quote of the day–Katie True
Someone gets up one day and says, ‘I’m gonna kill all the girls.’ How do you legislate against that?
Katie True
Pennsylvania House Representative from Lancaster County
October 2, 2006
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Analysis: Gun control forces will be emboldened, face tall task
[The “tall task” is to train and arm the adults in the schools. The only solution which could improve the odds.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Ry Jones
DOS probably got your dog pregnant and left the milk out a couple times in college. Perhaps Windows 3.11 never paid you back for that $100 it was totally going to spend to get his car fixed but you later found out he spent on whiskey and hookers. Exchange server – I heard what it did, it was in all the papers.
Ry Jones
I understand you hate Microsoft
October 1, 2006
[Read the post. How apropos. As I told Barb this morning, “My phone turned into a pumpkin at midnight.”–Joe]