Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

We don’t need no stinking facts

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I sometimes wonder if people who get published in newspapers believe what they write or if they are actually this sloppy with the facts:

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence estimates that each year, 100,000 people in this country are killed by firearms. Spend an hour on the organization’s Web site, and you can watch the day’s total tick unnervingly up.

The writer is confusing injuries with deaths and doesn’t seem to care how many of those were justified, or even praiseworthy, shootings.

Yet recent studies suggest that, far from protecting people who keep them, guns increase the odds that their owners or innocent bystanders will be harmed.

That was pulled out of thin air. Unless “recent” means going back to the discredited 1986 Kellerman study or one of the highly questionable follow on studies.

The U.S. has, far and away, the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, and guns are the method of choice.

Historian Jill Lepore notes that in Europe, the annual murder rate is well below 2 per 100,000 people; here it is around five.

This ignores the murder of 10s of millions by their own governments during the 1930s and 1940s. It also ignores the significantly higher gun ownership rate in Switzerland compared to their neighbors while having a murder rate of about 0.7/100K. The same is true of Norway with a murder rate of 0.6/100K.

The murder rates per 100K in some other countries in Europe and nearby (from here) include:

  • Germany: 0.86
  • Spain: 0.9
  • Denmark: 1.01
  • Greece: 1.1
  • Ireland: 1.12
  • Italy: 1.2
  • Poland: 1.2
  • Portugal: 1.2
  • United Kingdom: 1.28
  • Hungary: 1.38
  • France: 1.4
  • Belgium: 1.49
  • Luxembourg: 1.5
  • Czech Republic: 2.0
  • Georgia 7.6
  • Russia 14.9

All of those are greater than Switzerland and Norway so to blame it on gun ownership laws is deceptive at best.

Either the facts are irrelevant to these people or they know they have to lie to have any chance of winning.

No clue

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Politicians must hold the all records for reaching the greatest depths of stupidity while simultaneously being considered functional members of society. Representative Peter King provides the latest example:

Defying those who assert the right to bear arms at town halls, Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) Wednesday introduced strict new gun-control legislation that would bar people from taking firearms to public events attended by elected federal officials.

The bill would create a 1,000-foot gun-free zone around the event – not just around the lawmakers as King originally proposed…

Does he not realize that people routinely shoot at much smaller targets at much greater distances than 1000 feet? At Boomershoot the closest targets are over 1100 feet away and are only four inches square—much smaller than your average elected federal official. This fact alone makes the proposed law nearly pointless.

Okay, suppose there is no line of sight to the official from greater than 1000 feet. How does King think this law would be enforced? Does he think that a barrier will be erected 1000 feet and everyone would have to pass through metal detectors to get closer? If that is the case then the area would have to be evacuated and swept for firearms prior to the official visit. A 1000 foot radius is a minimum (this is assuming a single point rather than the perimeter of a building for measuring the 1000 feet) of 72 acres that has to be made gun free prior to the event. Add in the surface area of a multistory building and you quickly realize this isn’t practical even if the perimeter of the 1000 foot area could be made secure.

Hence, either enforcement at the perimeter isn’t what King had in mind or he believes that the criminal that would violate the laws and morals against murder will suddenly obey the law against a firearm within 1000 feet of the official. In either case he is totally without a clue or has some other motivation for his proposal.

I’m betting the answer is Representative King has no clue.

Stupid this bad surely hurts

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While I am seldom surprised at the level of stupidity I observe I do see depths being reached. Here is one from “darren.russell” who claims to be from the UK.

Being from the UK i cannot understand that Americans feel they have the need to own guns.
The only thing a gun is good for is to kill or maim.
I know that it is one of the amendments or something but wasn’t the original misquoted that people have the right to bear arms when it was really meant that the army had the right to bear arm to defend the country?

“The only thing a gun is good for is to kill or maim”? First off, even if that was true what is the problem with that? The police and the military use guns to “kill and maim” and very few people advocate removing guns from their collection of tools. And second, if the statement was true then that would mean that the roughly 100,000 rounds I have fired were almost all failures because only five of them succeeded in killing or maiming (I used two on a rattlesnake, one on a deer, and two more on a deer I hit with Barb’s Jeep).

And finally, the most stupid thought is that the Bill of Rights would need to include a section preserving the right of the army to bear arms to defend the country.

I have to wonder if the people in the UK would actually claim him as one of his own and if being this stupid hurts.

‘Our Progressive Health Care Bill is Better Than Theirs’

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Maybe you thought the newly elected Republicans would move to get government’s meddling, grubby hands out of the health care industry.


Think again, suckers.


How many times must we be treated to silver hairspray dude trying to act as though he genuinely believes what he’s saying?  That guy didn’t make it two and a half minutes without an edit, and he was reading from a prompter.  This is our leadership?  It’s an insult.


The least they could do is get these phonies a few more acting lessons, so when they’re bullshitting us to death, at least they’d do a good job of it.  I really wonder who it is they think will find that video appealing.  I think that guy came right off the set of the Lawrence Welk Show.


If you’re figuring on politics to help reverse this encroaching socialism, you’d better be working more locally, because the national-level Republicans are up to the same old Progressive tricks.

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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As household gun ownership has dropped dramatically since the early 1970s and America’s youth turn away from guns, the SHOT Show is proof of the gun industry’s embrace of increased lethality to shore up its fading market and declining sales.

The SHOT Show will bring together hundreds of vendors – including Glock, a manufacturer of pistols used in multiple mass shootings, which markets its handguns as “pocket rockets” – and tens of thousands of attendees, as lawmakers in Congress are expected to introduce legislation to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines like those used in last week’s mass shooting in Arizona. The show comes at a time that most of the major gun manufacturers are experiencing a significant decline in demand and falling sales.

Violence Policy Center
January 13, 2011
SHOT Show an Example of a Politically Powerful Industry Desperate to Hide Its Decline
[“Fading market and declining sales”? At first reading of this you might question what planet they are on since 2009 and 2010 were banner years in terms of gun sales.

If you read a little closer you might notice the sentence doesn’t even make sense. “SHOT Show is proof of the gun industry’s embrace of increased lethality”? Where did that come from? By reading further you discover that apparently the presence of Glock is the key to reaching that conclusion.

Reading VPC material is like listening to the rantings of the mentally ill. At first it sort of makes sense but as you look closer you find the most basic assumptions are wrong and the conclusions reached don’t even follow from the flawed assumptions.

Is anyone proposing legislation for mental health tests prior to posting on the Internet? Not that I think it should be done but I could see a case being made for that with the VPC as one of the prime examples.—Joe]

Quote of the day—American Mercenary

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Joan, you are on the board of directors for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership. You really need to start getting your facts straight before you marginalize even more Americans. Because, you DON’T have the public on your side, the NRA doesn’t issue us talking points, and your organization is in the hole for the exact amount of your President’s salary.

American Mercenary
January 7, 2010
Dumb but motivated
[Although at a cursor glance it appears she is (extraordinarily) dumb I beg to disagree. She is the defining case of Peterson Syndrome. Other than that AM has her pegged correctly.

But if it were something I could do without feeling ethically soiled I would encourage her to continue doing exactly what she is doing.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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Drive-by shootings are just one symptom of the increasing lethality of firearms available to the general public. State and federal policies should focus on limiting the caliber and capacity of firearms marketed to the general public.

Violence Policy Center
July 2010
Drive-By America
[It’s statements like these that cause me to just shake my head. From the premise to the conclusion it simply doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like they know all the words but can’t form a logical thought with them. For example:

  • What is the justification for the claim “of the increasing lethality of firearms available to the general public”? Shotguns and their ancestor the blunderbuss are probably the most lethal weapon available for individual use and they have been around for hundreds of years.
  • How are drive-by shootings a symptom of increased lethality? I’m not sure I can even imagine a dataset that would make sense of that statement.
  • Even if they were constitutional how would laws limiting the caliber and capacity of firearms marketed to the general public affect drive-by shootings? One person in the back seat of a car with two double-barreled shotguns loaded with buckshot could put 35+ pieces of high speed lead into the air in a remarkably short period of time. In countries that have repressive gun laws double barreled shotguns have always been the last to be banned. I can’t imagine this country would have a significant difference in the order in which such attempts would be made.

It reminds me of a conversation I once tired to follow. Things just weren’t making sense to me and I stopped them and pointed out that the most recent statement was completely at odds with previous statements which weren’t exactly clear to me either. I was told, “Oh Joe, it doesn’t have to make sense. We are just talking.” That was when I decided find a comfortable chair in a corner and take a nap until it was time to go home.

If the VPC weren’t trying to influence government policy they too could be ignored. As it is they need to be ridiculed and driven into political extinction.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Joan Peterson

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O.

Joan Peterson
Brady Campaign Board Member
December 16, 2010
Response to the question, “How few murders have to be committed with firearms before the push for new, more restrictive laws ends?”
[Thanks to Bob S. and others for setting her up for and catching this.

I presume she meant “zero” rather than “Oh” but I’ll give her a pass on that. I remember when some typewriters didn’t have the digits ‘1’ and ‘0’ because you were supposed to use a lower case ‘L’ and a capital ‘o’ for them. I will not give her a pass on the intent.

Zero is not possible as long as people and guns exist. No matter how lives are saved with guns, not matter how successful “gun violence prevention” programs are, no matter how many court rules there are that the right to keep in bear arms is a specific enumerated right, this Brady Campaign Board member will demand evermore restrictions on that right.

What she is saying is that guns are somehow different than other tools used to commit murders. If she were to advocate for a position like this in regard to sticks, stones, fists, or feet she would be hauled off to the loony bin. But somehow with a constitutionally protected right at issue there exists an organization that makes her a board member.

The whole lot of them are essentially politically extinct at the Federal level because more and more people are getting a clue as to just how disconnected from reality these people are. We just need to drive them into extinction at the state and local level.—Joe]

If You’re Clueless, Take a Poll

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The NRSC sent out a mass e-mail this week, linking to a web-site poll they have going.  Seriously, guys; you haven’t been listening all year?


It may just be that poll-taking is a pet peeve of mine, but really; if you came into the field (any field) not knowing what you want do and why you want to do it, why are you there at all?  You ran for office, in this case, and really, really wanted to win.  You spent tons of money and long hours getting elected, and now you don’t know why you’re there?  Whiskey…Tango…Foxtrot?


As usual, the poll questions are multiple choice, and as usual the answers could be easily interpreted in opposite ways, depending on the observer.  Unlike many polls however, there are places to enter comments.


They start with; “What do you think should be the first legislation addressed by the new Congress?”


There are four choices, plus “Other”.


I left them all blank and then entered this comment;



It’s really quite simple; if you understood the American Principles of Liberty, you wouldn’t need to take a poll.  The fact that you’re asking tells me you’re fishing for a position, trying to figure out what it is you should PRETEND to believe.  Crack a history book or two and figure it out, then run on those principles, actually stand for them in practice, and win big.


Then came; “Please rank in order of importance to you personally, the following issues” and there were nine choices, starting with abortion (really?) plus “other”.  I left them all blank, and filled in the next comment box;



Regarding #4; See, there you go again.  I don’t see liberty on the ballot.  Never have.  Hence the problem.  This isn’t rocket science, people.  Defeat the left.  Go for the jugular and drive them and their programs into political extinction.  Get Progressivism out of the Republican Party so we can win more elections, shrink the federal government (I mean real, meaningful contractions, and closure of departments) and “promote the general welfare” BY  PROMOTING LIBERTY.  It doesn’t work any other way.


Do we demand perfection immediately?  Of course not.  1; There is no such thing as perfection, and 2; things take time.  The point is; if you have the Ideals, you naturally trend toward them.  If you don’t have the Ideals, stand aside and make room for someone who does.


But after you submit the poll, you’re taken directly to a donation form.  Chances are, no one’s interested in the poll (it’s a piece of jr. high school crap anyway) so much as they’re interested in the raising of funds.


Here’s another (bonus) message for you Senate Republicans;



I’ll consider sending you money after I see some results.  I’m tired of supporting mushy, confused Republicans who can’t decide what it is they should pretend to stand for.  Been there, done that, and I’m never doing it again.


You know about all those eligible voters who sit out election after election?  Yeah; maybe that’s a clue you’re still not getting, and maybe, just maybe, it’s a sign that there are millions of votes available to someone who will, for once, actually stand for American ideals rather than simply jabbering about them during campaign season and hoping we’re still dumb enough to fall for it.  Time is running out.


Really?  You guys didn’t see the spontaneity and scale of the tea party movement?  You really didn’t understand a bit of it?

Don’t bring a knife

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In Washington State it is legal to carry a pistol openly (or, with a license, concealed). But an apparently brain dead lawmaker (Representative Appleton) wants to make it illegal to carry a knife with a blade greater than 3.5 inches long.

This is entirely consistent with the Seattle ordinance that prohibits public carry of Airsoft guns and slingshots while real firearms are allowed.

I guess this could be considered the legislative command “don’t bring a knife to a gun fight” but I somehow don’t think that is what she had in mind.

Quote of the day—Justice Stephen Breyer

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Are you a sportsman? Do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well then get on the subway and go to Maryland. There is no problem!

Justice Stephen Breyer
December 13, 2010
Via John Richardson.
[See also the posts by Sebastian, Alan, Weerd Beard, and Say Uncle.

At what point does this right becomes infringed in Breyer opinion? What if there was only one city in the country that allowed the possession and use of a pistol in public. Suppose that one city was Barrow Alaska (300 miles NORTH of the artic circle) and that was only when there was a polar bear watch in effect (yes, they have polar bears roaming the streets sometimes). Is there still “no problem”?

As pointed out in comments to the above posts (note that Snowflakes in Hell is down and will be for at least a few more hours) this statement by Breyer can be shown to be irrational and inconsistent with the rest of the Bill of Rights by transforming the restricted object to be something other than a gun such as:

  • So if we in Texas decide to ban Islam, and you want to practice that particular religion, then you should just go somewhere else to do it? (StanInTexas)
  • Let’s make a law that all political speech by a Democrat is illegal in Texas. If a Democrat wants to make a political statement, they needs to go to New York or Oklahoma. (StanInTexas)
  • If blacks wish to be served at the lunch counter, they simply must take the blacks-Only Bus to New York where they allow such things. (Weer’d Beard)
  • Can’t get an abortion in Texas? Well just get on an airplane and fly to Maryland! No problem there right? (pete)

Here are some of my contributions to that meme:

  • Are you in an interracial marriage? Do you like to live together? Well then get on the bus and go to San Francisco. There is no problem!
  • Do you want a trial by jury? Then don’t commit a crime unless you live in Washington State. There is no problem!
  • Do you want due process? Then move to Idaho. There is no problem!
  • Do you want representation by a competent attorney? No problem—Just make sure his name isn’t Stephen Breyer.

—Joe]

Quote of the day–Karen Arntzen

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They say that they are law abiding citizens but there’s no way of knowing that. There’s no accountability for this group.

Karen Arntzen
Of the California Brady Campaign.
November 27, 2010
Restaurant Is Stage For Debate Over Open Carry Law
[Via The Madman Raves.

I really don’t get her point.

Accountability? The open carry people she is talking about is just as accountable as she is. And just like with her when someone meets her on the street there is no way of knowing if she is law abiding.

Does she think that if the people open carrying were wearing a uniform and a badge that would make them more law abiding or accountable?

It’s as if I understand all the words she is using but I can’t make sense of her sentence.

The Madman Raves interprets it as “I believe she just called all open carry practitioners ‘criminals’.” —Joe]

Disconnect from reality

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I’m not sure if this is a disconnect from reality or just yet another example of a process failure:

What I think we should do is regulate the price of bullets.  I can see some CEO of a munitions company calculating his performance bonus right now.  Let’s try $75 dollars per bullet for a .22 caliber bullet.  $15 dollars more for each caliber higher.  You want a .38?  No problem!  Only $315 dollar each.  Want a .357 magnum?  Only $5100 dollars each.  Want six?  Cool!   A mere $30,600 will get you six.  Want a 50 round clip of 9mm bullets.  All you have to do is pony up a cool $15,700.  This, of course, does not include the cost of the clip.  How about a recyclable clip for $250 plus a $50 recycling deposit?  At last, an eco-friendly way to kill each other.   I can see Michael F. Golden (Smith and Wesson’s CEO) having multiple orgasms dreaming of his bonus based on the potential profits his company could make.

How disconnected is this? Let me count a few of the ways:

  1. The instant creation of a black market.
  2. The infringement of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
  3. What is or would be a recyclable “clip”?
  4. S&W does not sell ammunition.
  5. With such a high price on something more cheaply available on the black market ammunition manufacturing companies would have near zero sales.
  6. Reading literally “$15 dollars” is “15 dollars dollars”. The same goes for “$75 dollars”, “$315 dollar” (well almost, it is “315 dollars dollar”), and “$5100 dollars”. It isn’t even consistent because many instances of “$” are correct.
  7. .357 magnum is $5100/round but .38 (Special, I presume) and 9mm are only $315 each? How can one derive that from “15 dollars more for each caliber higher”?

Even though I have decades worth of examples of stupid stuff the anti-gunners say I am sometimes still amazed at the depths of stupid they are capable of reaching.

Quote of the day—Christopher Burg

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I guess when your cause has no roots in reality it makes it easier to change your mind ever thirty seconds.

Christopher Burg
November 30, 2010
Guns on Trains
[He is referring to Brady Campaign spokesmen changing their story to fit whatever they hope might get some traction with the public. The problem for them is none of their predictions of the streets running red with blood have come true. Virtually anything they say will be either immediately demonstrated to be false or suspect. How many members do they have? They said they had “about half a million”. The true numbers are about 50,000 if you count everyone who has ever donated to them. They say gun control laws increase public safety yet they also say, “I am not arguing here that higher rates of gun ownership cause higher rates of crime, violent crime, or homicide. Such causation is difficult to show because so many other factors bear on the incidence of crime.”

If they were to say the sky was blue people know it probably is completely overcast or when pressed on the issue the Brady Campaign will claim they meant that it was blue someplace else.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jack E. Dunning

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There are only two other states requiring the sale of confiscated weapons, Kentucky and Tennessee, both of which must have state governments almost as brainsick as Arizona’s. The NRA says why not sell these weapons to an authorized agent, and therein lies the problem. Gun show participants are authorized agents, and carry a loophole that would allow individual to individual weapons sales without background checks.

Jack E. Dunning
November 29, 2010
Arizona continues to lead the nation in putting more guns in the public’s hands
[This appears to be another case of someone lacking a thinking process. Not only does he have an error in his facts about gun shows but if you read the rest of his post you will discover he apparently believes there is a fixed supply of guns in the universe—he wants the police to destroy all confiscated firearms.

The only people that gain from destroying confiscated firearms are the people employed to do that and the gun manufactures. Yes, this anti-gun advocate is proposing a policy that benefits the gun manufactures by decreasing the supply of firearms in the marketplace. A decreased supply means more sales at a higher price for suppliers.

Sometimes I suspect they really are stupid. But if they were as stupid as they appear they couldn’t manage to string together the words into complete sentences. Nope, I think it has to be a mental defect.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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I find these handguns unaesthetic. They’re ugly. They’re in-between things of no particular utility — but if we banned things on the basis of ugliness and relative uselessness, there’s a whole lot of people who’d never be allowed out of the house.

Roberta X
November 21, 2010
Pretzel Helmke Logic
[Agreed. And if such bans were legal and ethical the first useless thing I wouldn’t allow out of the house would be Paul Helmke. But that isn’t the way this part of world works and it shouldn’t work that way. So we need to continue shaming and pointing out his lies and mental defects.

Roberta did a good job but I kept thinking that in the next sentence she was going to point out that the Columbine killers used an ordinary shotgun (which they had sawed off the buttstock) for most of the murders. But that wouldn’t have fit Helmke’s narrative of an “assault weapon” being the real criminal.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? If so then why did Helmke use these exact words, “The TEC-9 assault pistol used by the Columbine killers murdered 12 of their classmates and a teacher.”?—Joe]

Random rant of the day

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I don’t expect but maybe one person out of a 1000 to remember the Quadratic Equation—even though my algebra teacher wrote in my yearbook that if I forgot everything else she wanted me to remember that one thing. I don’t expect but maybe one person out of ten to be able count change without a computer someplace in the process. But there is one “math thing” that is starting to annoy me. I’ve heard this one claim for decades and I have never heard anyone else point out the obvious fallacy. It’s like an urban myth that everyone believes even though nearly everyone with a room temperature I.Q. could demonstrate it is false.

What finally tweaked me enough to do something about it was listening to a podcast by someone who claims to be smart enough that he should know better. I’m withholding the name to protect the guilty, but what was said was something like, “80% of the population thinks they are better than average drivers. That’s mathematically impossible!” Grrr…

Try proving that without resorting to a far less common definition of “average”.

A year or two ago in a much different forum someone else made a similar statement about penis sizes. I politely explained they were full of it and it hasn’t come up again (pun intended).

Now, with a much larger audience, I will now explain the issue using different example  to (mostly) save you from thoughts about penis dimensions. I hope I don’t have to be subjected to this myth again, and if I am I will be able to just glare at them and send them a link to this post.

Imagine we have a sample of 50 male/female couples. All the people, except one, had their spouse as their one and only sex partner (I told you to imagine, remember?). It turns out that before the age of government education loans and grants Trixie earned her way through medical school the old fashion way—in bed. She had 1000 sexual partners prior to her spouse.

Lets compute the average (usually understood to be the arithmetic mean) number of sexual partners in this sample.

MeanSexualPartners = TotalSexualPartners/NumberOfPeople
MeanSexualPartners = ((99 x 1) + (1 x 1001))/100
MeanSexualPartners = 1100/100
MeanSexualPartners = 11

In this case 99% had 1 sexual partner and can truthfully and correctly state they have had fewer than the average number of sexual partners. Furthermore, 99% can correctly state they have had less than 10% of the average number of sexual partners.

I will leave the drivers and penis dimension examples as exercises for the reader.

The Science is Settled

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As we all now know, if you want to answer a question scientifically, you take a poll.  That’s the New Scientific Method.  Scientific American magazine took such a poll regarding anthropogenic Gluball Worming (that’s Kim Du Toit’s term, IIRC) and since they didn’t like the results, it would seem Reasoned DiscourseTM has kicked in.  I suppose the New Scientific Method will have to be amended – you take a poll of Open Society socialists only.  Then you’ll get the right results.

This from Hockey Schtick, which has ostensibly maintained a link to the unwanted results.  Take it for what you will.  Do your own investigation.  Myself, I find it hard to believe even though I know the left like the back of my hand and therefore such things should come as no surprise.  I heard of this poll on the Dennis Prager show last week, and figured I should share.

I used to subscribe to Scientific American, until I received the impression that desperate academics were using it merely as a vehicle for getting published.  I got tired of wading through so much evidence of non-inspiration, just to find the few interesting tidbits.  Still I’ll give them credit for being the only place I’d heard of superfluids, pre internet.

To me it’s not terribly important one way or the other.  The left has been crying “Wolf!” for generations now and it has worn thin, and worn out, for me decades ago.  The planet Earth was supposed to run out of oil in the 1980s, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism.  The “Population Time Bomb” was going to get us by then too, we were told as elementary school students, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism including forced population controls.  The planet was going to freeze up in a new ice age, we were told back in the 1960s, and then it became Glueball Worming, and now it’s “Climate Change”.  Those are just a few highlights, but this crap has been non-stop for what – about 150 years?  They’ve lost control of the narrative now.  What will happen as a result?

I figure it’ll have to get more down to the point – It’ll have to be plain old threats from the left at some point.  When the spoiled child’s attempts at lying and manipulation fall flat, the all-out tantrums come next.  The best we can do I suppose is ignore them, but when they start breaking things it gets difficult.

Security Theater gets attention

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Via email from Kris comes this link and an image from Gizmodo which I continued following to find the artist here. This is the image:

http://assets.arlosites.com/stills/17587011/2a87999b00.jpg

Also from Kris is this collection of TSA bumper stickers:

On the more serious side is Bruce Schneier (via Chet) with my favorite section being:

There’s talk about the health risks of the machines, but I can’t believe you won’t get more radiation on the flight. Here’s some data:

A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth.

More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.

Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.

Nate Silver on the hidden cost of these new airport security measures.

According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit. That’s the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.

Hidden costs… That is something that is difficult to get across to many people. Just like gun control. Ban all the guns and the total crimes committed with firearms will probably go down but the crime rate may actually increase because having unarmed or poorly armed victims enables crime. It appears that is just too difficult of a concept for some people.

I’m not sure how to handle this problem. If they didn’t have (or threaten to have) the force of government behind them it would be fairly easy to ignore them and let Darwin take care of them. But that isn’t the way it works. They can use government to force us all to back over the cliff trying to avoid a nut case in front of us who pops up and says “Boogie! Boogie!” once every few years. We should just allowed to carry our guns and put a bullet in his head when he shows himself.

It seems people are beginning to realize the price they are paying for the security theater but will they be willing to embrace freedom and self-reliance?

Whatever the outcome it makes things worse for gun control. We should be able to draw the parallel between security on an airplane and security in schools, office buildings, and college campuses. If this is what it takes to make things safe on an airplane why should it take any less to make a dorm room “safe’?

How many people do you think will be tolerate this sort of “security” every time they enter a building or any other “gun free zone”? I don’t know the answer but we should start asking the question.

Update: I forgot about Rob’s email that I had saved away:

And from Mike:

Quote of the day—Kurt Hofmann

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We are expected to accept Goddard as some kind of expert on our rights–as having some unique insight about how to legitimately infringe on that which shall not be infringed–not because of extensive study on his part of Constitutional law (his major was international studies), but because he was shot.  When he argues that continuing the mandated defenselessness policies on college campuses is necessary for safety (despite how poorly that worked at VA Tech and elsewhere), we are similarly asked to accept that he is an “expert” on the subject, not because of his extensive training in self-defense (which I have never seen claimed), but again because he was shot.  By that standard, I suppose everyone who survives a heart attack is now a cardiologist.

Kurt Hofmann
November 15, 2010
‘Gun control’ gets a new poster boy
[Oh! I like this game:

  • Everyone who has ever been in an automobile wreck is now a traffic safety engineer.
  • Everyone who has ever had their computer crash is now a software developer.
  • Everyone who has ever been divorced now is an expert on relationships.
  • Everyone who has ever failed a class is now a professor.
  • Everyone who has ever said something stupid is now a genius.

–Joe]