Author Archives: Joe

Random thought of the day

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Over the weekend someone told me, “Drop the logic; embrace the real.” The short version of my response was, “I have no idea what this means.”

Yesterday as I was walking to the bus stop I was listening to The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Yet, I was still trying to get my mind around the implications of “Drop the logic; embrace the real” without concluding such a statement was an invitation to delusionville.

The author was talking (literally, he was reading his own book) about simulations of “universes” and how we might detect if we are in a simulated universe such as those explored in Hollywood with movies like “The Matrix“. Compared to some of the first alternate computer games I was aware of such as the text based game Zork computer games do an amazing job of creating simulated universes. Combined with the predictions of Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology we can imagine we are getting close (perhaps less than 40 years) from creating virtual universes which will be extremely difficult to distinguish from reality.

One of the suggestions the author made was that if we know of existence of millions or billions of virtual universes, such as those instantiated by all the people playing video games, and we question the reality of the universe we live in then the following logical conclusion might be entirely valid. Since we know that there are X million virtual universes in existence and only one universe that we have questions about the most likely answer is that the universe in question is also a virtual universe.

I’m pretty sure my friend hadn’t encouraged me to “Drop the logic” with anything this profound in mind but I decided they weren’t necessarily a strong candidate for occupying a padded cell either.

Quote of the day—Brennan Bailey

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How heartless do you have to be to laugh about the tragedy of this country’s deepening epidemic of spoon crime?

Brennan Bailey
June 25, 2012
From an email thread at work. This was in response to someone who said, “ROF, LMAO” in response to this picture (the origin may have been this comment):
389661_10150885762823887_866039906_n
[Yes. We gun owners are heartless and have no sympathy for those made fat by the spoon manufactures and their evil lobbyists who block commonsense spoon control.—Joe]

Think of the children!

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From Mike at work:

I brought my then youngest (who is now the middle) daughter to the range at 8-years old and she absolutely loved it.  Safe gun handling was taught at least a week before we went.  By the time we were at the range she knew what to do and had respect for the rifle.  To this day she still asks me “when are we going to that range?”  Check out her “straight and off the trigger” finger.

DSCF2959

Here are pictures of Mike:

m14_long_barrelCMMG_223

More pictures of Lily:

DSCF2946DSCF2950DSCF2952

From looking at these pictures the thought occurs to me that if our opponents were smart enough they may actually have had a rational reason for banning rifles with “collapsible” (length adjustable) stocks. This makes it more difficult for the young to shoot. Even if they didn’t think it through it is a good argument against such restrictions. Hence our side could and should demand, “Think of the children!”

Quote of the day—cherokeeprogressive

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Some people see phalluses and penises everywhere they look. It’s either penis envy or hatred of penises, I’ve yet to figure out which.
 
In the end, it’s a homophobic play to shame supporters of gun rights out of their beliefs. “Guns mean you’re gay” isn’t going to work, but some people will never figure that out. Never.

cherokeeprogressive
June 23, 2012
The Washington Monument is a phallic symbol. Skyscrapers are phallic symbols. Guns are NOT.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

There is from what is actually a pretty decent conversation going on in the Democratic Underground.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

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Undefined words have a special power in politics, particularly when they invoke some principle that engages people’s emotions. “Fair” is one of those undefined words which have attracted political support for policies ranging from Fair Trade laws to the Fair Labor Standards Act. While the fact that the word is undefined is an intellectual handicap, it is a huge political advantage.People with very different views on substantive issues can be unified and mobilized behind a word that papers over their differing, and sometimes even mutually contradictory, ideas. Who, after all, is in favor of unfairness? Similarly with “social justice,” “equality,” and other undefined terms that can mean wholly different things to different individuals and groups— all of whom can be mobilized in support of policies that use such appealing words.

Thomas Sowell
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition pages 1 and 2.
[The phrase “special power” brings to mind “super heroes” and “super villains”. I am of the opinion that while there is ample evidence of “super villains” “super heroes” only exist in the minds of small children, some Ron Paul fans, and Democrats.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ayn Rand

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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.

Ayn Rand
“The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made,” Philosophy: Who Needs It (The Ayn Rand Library)
Via Atlas Shrugged Movie
[Those that initiate force against you are not properly identified as human and force may be required. Only in extremely rare circumstances is persuasion a good option with these animals.

Government is force. Government is an extremely inefficient, and hence impractical, means of dealing with a set of rational people. It is only when your set of people are not rational and are approximating a herd of animals that government/force is appropriate. The case can be made that our government is creating, perhaps with malice aforethought, a class of people that are best dealt with as if they were an animal herd. This makes more and larger government seem like the appropriate solution to societal issues.

Perhaps growing up on a farm makes me more aware of this but the owner of the herd does not have the best interest of the herd in mind as they care for it. Yes, the herd gets food, water, shelter, and free health care as needed. But it also gets sheared, neutered, dehorned, selectively bred, and those which will be expensive or impossible to be made productive are killed.

I highly recommend Rand’s book. Rand makes the case that whether we think about it or not we each have a philosophy that guides our life. The only question is what type of philosophy. Will it be rational, conscious, and therefore practical; or contradictory, unidentified, and ultimately lethal? One can make the case that failure to teach philosophy at an early age is extremely harmful to both the individual and society.

The inconsistencies of those supporting the current administration are a case in point.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Appellate Judge D. Michael Swiney

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There is no economic sliding scale for the right to engage in constitutionally protected activities. The richest and poorest among us, as well as those individuals in-between, all have the same rights under the constitution. We hold that, as the ordinance could apply to virtually any pair or group of people engaged in a common activity, the ordinance is overly broad.

Appellate Judge D. Michael Swiney
Tennessee Court of Appeal
Street preacher wins battle against Maryville permit ordinance
June 19, 2012
[This was in regards to $50 permit being required by the city of Maryville Tennessee in order to exercise your First Amendment rights in public.

Via Say Uncle who asks, “So, we should get rid of the fees associated with getting a permit to carry a firearm?”—Joe]

5.56 versus .223

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This is probably more information than you are really want to know—unless you are a gun geek. 5.56 vs .223 – What You Know May Be Wrong

The differences between .223 Remington and 5.56mm NATO have been hashed out many times on the internet. Unfortunately, many of the “facts” that are often thrown around are simply what someone has heard from someone else, leading to a lot of misinformation being accepted as gospel.

…

My findings, and the opinions of many experts in the industry who deal with the topic every day, were not exactly what some might expect. In fact, many of them had already discovered what I am reporting, although my research was conducted independently.

I liked it.

Boomershoot 2013 entry schedule

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Boomershoot 2013 will soon be open for entry. The schedule for entry is as follows. All times are Pacific Daylight time.

Staff: 6/22/2012 6:00:00 PM.
2012 participants: 6/24/2012 12:00:00 PM.
Everyone: 7/7/2012 12:00:00 PM.

The link for entry is http://entry.boomershoot.org/

If something drastically wrong shows up in the software these times could change but I probably can manually recover without starting over or disrupting the schedule above.

There are some changes I would like to bring to your attention.

1) Clinic and Field Fire Registration is done on the web site as opposed to directly with Gene Econ as has been the case in the past.

2) There is a new Boomershoot event on Friday evening: Private fireballs. For $500 you may shoot a fireball of your own at (up to) “entertainingly close” range. We will supply the rifle, ammo, and a shooting table. This is an experience suitable for even novice shooters. There will be a 7″ square target at relatively close range with a red-dot optic on a .223 caliber rifle. This will be a low recoil, easy sighting, highly exothermic experience.

If you have any questions or experience bugs using the updated entry software please let me know (joeh@boomershoot.org).

Boomershoot 2012 stats

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I’m about to update the software on the Boomershoot entry web site and reset all the data so I captured the data from the statistics page before all the information is deleted.

  Total Average per position taken Average per total positions
Positions Taken

71

–

0.93

Participants

152

2.14

2.00

Shooters

140

1.97

1.84

Spotters

12

0.17

0.16

Friday High Intensity participants

23

0.32

0.30

Saturday High Intensity participants

27

0.38

0.36

Dinner participants

112

1.58

1.47

Media/Bloggers

11

0.15

0.14

ATF Approved

15

0.21

0.20

Staff

26

0.37

0.34

The final numbers were probably a little different because of some last minute changes that didn’t get reflected on the web site but they are very close.

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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To date, no gun-control scheme of any sort has ever been proven to deliver even minor reductions in crime, accidents or suicides in any nation. Even if restrictions were to reduce some aspect of crime, they could not be justified because they undermine both the individual right to self-defense and the collective right to political self-determination.

Jeff Knox
June 14, 2012
Chinese plot to strip Americans of firearms–Jeff Knox explains how communist ideals converge in both Asia and U.S.
[And yet those that would ban guns keep trying. One could claim they are ignorant or have evil intent. But I think both are somewhat rare. As near as I can tell the vast majority of anti-gun people are mentally defective.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, United States District Court Judge

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[T]his court finds that the strict scrutiny balancing test would be the most appropriate test to apply in the instant case, since “the right to possess guns is a core enumerated constitutional right” and Section (b)(3)(iii) of the Chicago Firearm Ordinance completely restricts that right.

Samuel Der-Yeghiayan
United States District Court Judge
Gowder v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill. June 19, 2012), Page 24.
[Strict scrutiny!

The Brady Campaign, VPC, CSGV, and others are on the wrong side of history. They are no different that those advocating for ignoring or repealing the 13th Amendment years after it was passed.—Joe]

Extraordinary offer

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Today Attorney General Eric Holder had a 20 minute meeting with Rep. Darrell Issa about the failure of Holder to comply with subpoenas for documents in Fast and Furious.


Apparently the meeting went something like this:



Issa: Turn them over or tomorrow we will hold you in contempt of congress.


Holder: I’ll let you peek at them if you will agree before you ever see them to stop the investigation after you have seen them.


Issa: I think we are done here. We’re voting on the contempt charge tomorrow.


Holder (direct quote to the media): “The ball’s in their court. We made what we thought was an extraordinary offer.”


Imagine for a moment that you or some gun shop owner had sold and/or given thousands (not the hundreds like the article erroneously says) of guns to criminal organizations who used them to murder hundreds of people include at least one if not two government agents. After finding out about it the prosecutor lets you stay out of jail and asks you a few questions and turn over documents and emails to find out who your accomplices were. You sort of comply but just enough to avoid claims that you are completely uncooperative.


Had you told the prosecutor you would turn over some more documents on the condition they stop the investigation before they ever saw the documents, what do you think the reaction would have been?


What is extraordinary here is that Issa didn’t have Federal Marshalls rip his jacket and shirt off, tie him face down on the table, stuff a copy of the subpoena in his mouth, give him 30 lashes with a bull whip, then tell him there would be a whipping every day at 9:00 AM until he fully complied or his flesh had been stripped off and his bones were polished clean.


I understand why Issa didn’t do that but had it been me I would have being showing extraordinary restraint had I only done that in the face of that level of contempt for the law and Congress. Prohibitions against “Cruel and unusual” punishments would just seem inadequate had they been able to even just read my thoughts. “Crimes against nature, humanity, and being an inspiration to Satan” would probably come up in my trial just for a glimpse of what I would have been thinking.

Marxist—No ethics and no shame

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Don’t believe anything people or “news” organizations on the left tell you. Check it out for yourself:

Introduced by Andrea Mitchell saying: “I get the feeling–take a look at this– that Mitt Romney has not been to too many Wawa’s along the roadside in Pennsylvania,” Romney says: “I was at Wawa’s, I wanted to order a sandwich. You press the little touch tone keypad, alright, you just touch that, and you know, the sandwich comes at you, touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier, there’s your sandwich. It’s amazing.”

Momentarily speechless, Mitchell repeats, “It’s amazing,” as her guest breaks into sharp laughter.

Too bad the clip was taken wildly out of context.

In reality, Romney was illustrating the difference between private and public sector efficiency. After telling a story where his friend had to fill out a 33-page form twice to complete a change of address with the government, Romney holds up touch-tone sandwich-ordering as an example of private sector efficiency– not as a marvel of how the “common” man lives.

They claim they fired the producer that did a similar edit in the Zimmerman case. But the last time I looked they did not give the name of the person fired. Perhaps he got reassigned instead.

I have to suspect the ethical environment at MSNBC/NBC is the problem rather just one or two people drinking the communist Kool-Aid with no shame. “Communist?”, you ask. Yes. In both cases it was about promoting a “class struggle” view of our culture. These people promote a Marxist view of our culture and belong in dustbin of history with Marx and Marxism.

I don’t really trust non-liberals all that much either but I haven’t ever seen anything close to this level of misrepresentation in supposed news outlets.

Quote of the day—Raffy Mulivor

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Americans are peace-loving people, but if you start up with us, we’re going to kick your butt.

Raffy Mulivor (12 years old)
June 16, 2012
This was when he was asked to explain the meaning of the arrows and olive branch in the eagle’s claws on symbols in the Great Seal of the United States.
[Via email from his father Phil Mulivor, author of Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms–Joe]

Quote of the day—epkklk851

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In many cases, this fascination with guns is phallic compensation.

epkklk851
June 1, 2012
Comment to Privileging The Lie, Gun Violence Prevention Edition
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Gun laws are complicated

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We in the gun rights community have often complained the gun laws in this country are far too obscure and complicated. You almost have to be a lawyer to be able to understand all the complicated ways you can break the law merely by assembling your firearm with parts made in the wrong country, driving too close to a school you didn’t even know was there, or even having a piece of brass caught in the tread of your shoes.

But when even the lawyers get things wrong and people are in prison even though the law they are accused of breaking did not apply it’s way past time to do a major overhaul of the laws. When the prosecutors are aware there are people in prison who should not be there and they don’t even notify the prisoners it’s time to prosecute the prosecutors:

Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have been aware for nearly a year that dozens of North Carolinians currently incarcerated in federal prisons should not be there, but they have done next to nothing to help them, and in at least once case are actually trying to prevent an innocent man’s release, according to an investigation by USA Today.

The fundamental reason these and other innocent people are in prison is because the anti-gun people pushed for and obtained firearms laws that created victimless crimes. It’s time to wipe our law books clean of all victimless crimes.

There was, and is, a conspiracy to infringe the right to keep and bear arms under the color of law. Those responsible should be charged and prosecuted. People in jail who are clearly known to be innocent cannot be tolerated.

Quote of the day—Dorothy Parker

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The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.


Dorothy Parker
[I recently was talking to someone who herself is quite good with wisecracks and told her, “That reminds me of a Dorothy Parker quote” (the one about using horticulture in a sentence). She didn’t know who Parker was so I gave her a 1 minute biography. Parker’s complete biography, Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, is quite good even if it is a slow motion tragedy.


The next day my friend sent me an email saying she had looked up information on Parker. So I did a quick search to see what she might have found and came across the quote above which was new to me.


Of course my first thought upon reading it was Parker was reincarnated as Tamara. I think there is a good chance the timeline even matches close enough.—Joe]

Boomershoot 2012 fireball video

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Video from Ry:

We are working on making the fireball for Boomershoot 2013 even better.

Making choices

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For decades Libertarians and Republicans have been saying the economic and social policies of the left were destined to be catastrophic. Eventually all looters stop. There are only three options; 1) They stop because they realize theft is wrong, 2) They are stopped by force, or 3) They run out of places to loot.

Greece is the harbinger of our future and has the opportunity to select their option. Yet even now many do not see impending doom crashing in on them:

Riding a wave of anger to rise from obscurity to contender for power, leftist SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, 37, promises to reject the punishing terms of the 130 billion euro ($163.75 billion) bailout if he wins the nail-biter vote on Sunday.

On the right, establishment heir and New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, 61, says that would send Greece crashing out of the single currency and condemn it to even greater economic calamity.

With the election set to go down to the wire, European leaders weighed in on Saturday, urging Greeks to vote with their heads.

The bailout will not be renegotiated, warned German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country’s wealth is vital to shoring up its weaker partners in the bloc.

…

Some global businesses and banks are already in retreat: Europe’s biggest retailer, Carrefour, said on Friday it was selling up in Greece, a day after French bank Credit Agricole moved to take direct control of its Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian units from its Greek bank Emporiki.

On Saturday, Germany’s Biotest appeared to become the first drugmaker to say it was exiting the Greek market in July after its customers there failed to pay outstanding bills of 7 million euros. Others have threatened to do likewise, as the Greek health sector struggles with huge spending cuts.

Spain and Italy will probably be next in line to make a choice.

When it comes time for the American left to select an option which do you think it will be? And will those that oppose them be ready if the left choses options 2) or 3)?