Monthly Archives: July 2010

Gun cartoon of the day

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The NRA has never proposed any such thing.

The data shows the woman’s claim is wrong.

Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people.

30,000 is the approximate number of people who die of gunshot wounds every year. This includes suicides, justified, and even praiseworthy homicide as well as murders.

Except for the number of people murdered at VA Tech, everything expressed as fact in the cartoon is either false or extremely misleading.

But it’s not about data. Or as more accurately, as one anti-gun person once told me, “I don’t believe your facts.”

“What facts do you have that you do believe?”, I asked. His response of, “I just don’t believe yours” ended the conversation but not for the reason he probably believed. Had I only slightly less restraint I would have had a momentary pleasure but would have gotten myself talked about.

Quote of the day–Priyanka

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I can eat cake any day. This is the only time I can blow one up.

Priyanka
July 17, 2010
She said this a few minutes before blowing up, instead of blowing out, her birthday cake.
[The white cardboard box contains two pounds of Boomerite.

In the original of second picture (taken by Sharath) you can see bits of the cake high in the air. We were unable to find any of it later.

I expect Barron and Janelle will have video before long. I was playing range safety officer and didn’t take any pictures while the rifles were out of their cases.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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“Access to guns” is a human right. And that is what they view as the problem. There is no common ground between the rapist, or any other rights violator, and their victims. They can either stop proposing to violate our rights or not.

Quote of the day–Priyanka

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Boom!

I think I got it now.

Boom!

Yeah. I got it.

Priyanka
Shooting boomers at a private Boomershoot party.
July 17, 2010
[She was having trouble at first. Lots of misses and almost no booms. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. She did fine with dry fire. The gun stayed steady enough for the range we were at (almost entertainingly close). I think there was a problem with her sight picture even though I went over it several times with her. And it wasn’t like was the first time she had shot a gun either. She did pretty well the first time so I was perplexed why she was having trouble this time. She is a smart woman and she eventually figured it out on her own.

I’ll ask her more about it when I see her at the office on Monday.

Update: Priyanka reports she was concentrating on properly placing the post (front sight) of the AR-15 on the target and was neglecting to center the post in the rear peep sight. I’ll have another QOTD from Priyanka and pictures from the event on Monday.–Joe]

Our universe is a black hole

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I’ve been meaning to explain my black hole hypothesis for some time now but there is always something more important to do. But David and Say Uncle posted about it so it’s time I elaborated.

I tried to leave a comment on David’s post last night but the blog software rejected it as spam. David posted my comment in a separate post a few minutes ago. Here is the comment:

Actually my hypothesis was formed almost exactly 1.5 years ago.
See here and here.
I did a little bit of math on the topic but to say my cosmological math is weak would be a gross understatement. What results I did come up with seemed plausible though. That is–the “background radiation left over from the big bang” appears to have a similar temperature to that of the event horizon of a black hole composed of all the matter of our known universe.
I recently listened to the book Parallel Worlds and was surprised and pleased to hear that others had explored the same hypothesis–at least part of it anyway. No mention was made of the direction the black hole being on the time axis. This is a critical component and the easiest thing to prove as being consistent with the known facts.

I will now elaborate further.

My first “Ah hah!” moment was back in February of 2009 and I posted a couple of Tweets about it:

I’m listening to The Black Hole War. This inspired me to explore the hypothesis that our universe is a black hole.
We are rushing toward the singularity at the speed on light on the time axis.

Since then I have made casual references to my hypothesis on my blog (here, and here) and I think a comment or two on other people’s blogs.

Our experience with time dilation and length contraction is the best support for this hypothesis. Starting with the equation for time dilation we can rearrange it as follows (brother Doug pointed this out to me a couple decades ago, I have not read or heard it expressed this way before or since so a great deal of credit, or blame, for inspiring this hypothesis goes to Doug):

DeltaT’ = DeltaT/(SQRT(1 – v2/c2))  Where DeltaT’ is the elapsed time for the moving, at velocity ‘v’, object and DeltaT is the elapsed time for the stationary observer. ‘c’ is the speed of light.
SQRT(1 – v2/c2) = DeltaT/DeltaT’
1 – v2/c2 = (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2
1 = (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2 + v2/c2
c2 = c2 (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2 + v2

c2 (DeltaT/DeltaT’)2 is the square of a velocity. Hence we could substitute a symbol for this expression. Let’s let ‘t’ = c (DeltaT/DeltaT’).
c2 = t2 + v2

What this says is that as a moving objects velocity, ‘v’, increases the velocity ‘t’ must decrease such that the sum of t2 + v2 remains constant. This gives us time dilation. But what is the less obvious observation is that as ‘v’ goes to zero our velocity in the ‘t’ direction becomes the speed of light. Hence stationary objects in our frame of reference are actually traveling in the ‘t’ direction at the speed of light.

Inside the event horizon of a black hole all objects travel at the speed of light. If they move off of the straight line toward the center of the black hole the sum of their velocity components still must be precisely equal to the speed of light. Hence if they take on a velocity vector perpendicular to the straight line to the singularity they move slower in the direction of the singularity. This is exactly our experience with time. Our time “velocity” decreases when we increase our velocity in any other direction. Hence, I hypothesize that, we are inside the event horizon of a black hole moving toward the singularity which happens to be in the direction of the axis we call ‘time’.

Further support for this hypothesis is length contraction. We know that as the velocity of a moving object increases the observable length (it doesn’t actually contract, only observations of it’s length decrease) of an object decreases. At the speed of light the length of an object is zero (I suspect it actually becomes the Planck length, but this is just a guess on my part). Since we (according to my hypothesis) are traveling at the speed of light on the time axis we can only observe a single instant of time.

Of course the first question that comes to mind is, “When do we get ripped apart by tidal forces and our subatomic components get sucked into the singularity?”

I don’t know the answer to that, but it is something to think about isn’t it?

Have a nice day.

Gun cartoon of the day

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The artist’s familiarity with the facts is, at best, tenuous.

First off all of the NRA-ILA P.R. people I have dealt with have been beautiful young women, not overweight men. Second, those people just as horrified as anyone else about the tragic deaths of innocent people. And third, nearly all mass shooting happen in “gun free” areas with attempted mass shootings being stopped in the areas where people were allowed to defend themselves.

If the NRA had it’s way there would be far fewer “gun free” areas and far fewer mass shootings.

Ownership and use of guns and ammo are sins?

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I just have to shake my head at the person that wrote this headline.

Apparently my definition of sin (I’m with Heinlein on this one) is far different from theirs. What other specific enumerated right is considered a sin by this person? Would the taxing of churches of a different persuasion be considered a sin tax in their eyes? What about taxing writing letters to the editor? Or taxing your right to remain silent? After all, they know they can’t ban your silence so maybe they can just tax it. How does the rate of a dollar a minute sound? That is the way the got NFA34 through. They didn’t ban short barreled shotguns and machine guns–they just taxed them at a rate of $200 per transfer (in 1934 dollars!).

Of course using Heinlein’s definition of sin results in their entire set of taxes being unrelated to sin–except in the sense that the collections of taxes in itself tends to follow under the definition of sin. And I find Heinlein’s caution in regards to “strong drink” and tax collectors illuminating in this case as well.

H/T to Sebastian.

Most Compelling Testimony

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Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign reports some people thought the testimony of a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting was “the most compelling he had ever heard”. The victim detailed the 10 minutes of horror as he and many others were shot multiple times.

I found this rather odd for two reasons:

  1. The testimony was advocating the background checks for private sales of firearms. Which the VT survivor admitted would not have made a difference in his case because the perpetrator purchased his firearms from a licensed FFL and passed the background check. Hence all the physical and emotional trauma of his ordeal was totally irrelevant to the proposed law being discussed.
  2. Apparently these people hadn’t heard Suzanne Hupp’s testimony. Because what she proposed, the right to keep and bear arms in defense of innocent life, would have saved her parents life and is far more compelling.

Sebastian has a different response to this testimony.

How’s that health care working out for you?

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I heard two different stories on the “health care reform” yesterday. I had lunch with an old friend. He has his own small business and with the downturn in the economy he is slowing sinking. He is looking for a contract job writing software and may end up leaving the Seattle area for a few weeks to “go do some coding in Iowa”. The new health care regulations aren’t helping him any either. He pulled out his Group Health identification card and told me, “I was paying $1000/month for this until they passed the bill. Almost immediately it went to $1500/month.”

That evening I had dinner with some other friends. One of them told me about explaining to one of his employees just yesterday that he is now required to offer her health insurance. He told her, “I’m required to offer you health insurance. So I’m doing that now. But if you accept I’m going to have to cut your hours back to 20 per week. At that point I no longer have to pay your insurance. If you sign this other piece of paper saying you don’t want the coverage you can continue to work 40 hours per week.

She clarified, “So I could work 20 hours per week and not have health insurance or I could continue to work 40 hours per week and not have health insurance, right?” “That’s right”, he said. “Unless you can talk Ruth out of her raise. We just don’t have the budget for any additional expenses.”

As Sebastian rhetorically asks on a slightly different topic, “Who could have predicted this?”

How can that be?

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The human brain is amazing. I sometimes look at the things people can do and I have difficulty believing it is possible. I even look at the things I can do and am amazed.

Here is a USPSA stage I shot in April. You have to draw from the surrender position and put 10 rounds on 8 different targets with a mandatory reload in the middle of the string of fire. How long should that take?

Here is my score:

Stage Name A B C D M NS P LS XS XH AP Time Total Points Hit Factor Stg Pts
2P Paper Poppers 7   3                 6.90 47 6.8116 50.0000

6.9 seconds. Right off that bat you can say the average was less than one second per shot. Then you start figuring in the time it takes to draw and reload the gun. Even being generous (I don’t think I am this fast) on my draw and reload by subtracting out 1.25 and 2.25 seconds yields 3.4 seconds for the remaining 8 shots or and average of 0.425 seconds per shot. How can someone even move the gun from target to target that fast? At that speed acquiring a sight picture and squeezing the trigger happens someplace far away from conscious thought.

What is even more interesting is that my score is only 68.6611% of the score by the best shooters. Assuming they get all ‘A’ zone hits (this maximizes the time) they had to do it in a total of 5.04 seconds. Subtracting out 1.0 and 1.5 seconds for the draw and reload and we have 0.3175 seconds per shot.

Gun cartoon of the day

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Suppose the gun references were replaced with Jewish symbols and organizations. What would be the future of this artist then? The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right. Politicians who advocate the infringement of that right violate their oath of office and do not deserve to hold public office. They should be prosecuted under 18 USC 242. Being kicked out of office is being far too kind and sets a poor example.

And, yes, the ejection port is on the wrong side of the pistol.

Quote of the day–Jennifer White

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It’s logical. Greater opportunity to obtain a firearm increases risk for women. Additionally, not every abuser has a misdemeanor conviction that will prevent them from acquiring a firearm.

Jennifer White
July 15, 2010
Why Gun Control Laws Are a Feminist Issue — The recent Supreme Court decision that expanded Second Amendment rights has
left feminist groups silent, even though women are more likely to die of gun
violence at the hands of domestic abusers.
[Somehow she completely overlooks the benefits of enabling women to defend themselves with firearms. As usual, people in the comments are explaining things to the writer.

Update: Jeff has some comments too.–Joe]

NRA versus Brady Campaign in an alternate reality

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I have been thinking about the Brady Campaign story that the Heller and McDonald decisions are really a good thing for their side. They claim it has, “Taken the extremes in the gun debate off the table, and given us the opportunity to decide what kind of gun restrictions make sense in our communities”.


This is based on the premise, as proposed in Chapter 3 of Half-Truth Henigan book Lethal Logic (I really need to finish up that review) that freedom activists use the slippery slope threat of a complete gun ban as justification for opposing all restrictions on firearms.


Okay… lets turn this around and see if it still makes sense with the tables turned.


Let us suppose that in some alternate reality there is an evil NRA and the the good guys are the Brady Campaign. The opposite of a complete gun ban is not what the Brady Campaign claims as “any gun, anyplace, anytime”. It is mandatory gun ownership, training, and subsidies. Suppose Washington D.C. and Chicago had the evil NRA’s dream of a mandatory hour a day instruction and/or practice in firearm use from age 5 on up. All guns, ammo, and ranges for the mandatory practice are supplied at taxpayer expense. Furthermore all people were required to purchase at least one each of a shotgun, bolt gun, semi-auto rifle, semi-auto pistol, revolver, sub-machine gun, heavy machine gun, and (with subsidies for those who needed help) a mini-gun. Other political jurisdictions varied in oppression with California only requiring one hour a week of practice and citizens over the age of 21 only have to purchase one handgun and one semi-auto rifle while Vermont implemented the good Brady Campaign ideals saying, “Do what you want, just don’t hurt anyone else or their property.”


Now suppose Alan Gura, still working for the Cato Institute, takes D.C. and Chicago to court and gets the mandatory purchase requirements for eight different firearms thrown out as violating the Constitution. The justices also say “This narrow ruling should not be interpreted as saying all mandated training or purchases of firearms is unconstitutional”.


Would the evil NRA be justified in saying this furthers their goals? Would it be reasonable to claim, “This has taken the extremes off the table and has given us the opportunity to decide what kind of mandatory gun ownership and training laws make sense in our communities”?


The answer is no. The U.S. Constitution is about limiting government. It gives enumerated powers to government and guarantees specific enumerated inalienable rights. In pushing the D.C. and Chicago government as far as they did the evil NRA was able to violate the rights of the people in those jurisdictions. Those governments had clearly gone beyond their constitutionally granted powers and was oppressing the people. What the ruling does is throw into question all requirements of firearm ownership and training because those requirements were a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom.


And, back in our reality, the Brady Campaign supported complete ban on firearms in D.C. was a violation of a guaranteed freedom. When that was overthrown it put into question all similar restrictions on freedom. It does not enable everything short of a complete ban.