Category Archives: Crap For Brains

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

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]

Nigerian bomb request

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I get the most unusual email:



From: timi top [mailto:timitop_007@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 9:12 AM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: how can i build a bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Hello sir,


                                    My name is temitope and I recite in Nigerian, it’s being a long time have been searching in other to know about how I can build bomb, it not just for fun, but for people in my area to know me that am one of the researcher, I will like you to put me through so people in my area will be doing that in my memory when I grow old and die, and I will be able to generate money from there, please sir I love it if you can help me through and also help me to buy some materials that can be use for it  because am not in usa and I will need someone to help me in other to purchase this items and send it to Nigerian, you can reach me by my mobile number or my e-mail address, am on timitop_007@yahoo.com or call me on +2348169640844 I will be looking for to read from you soon bye and do have a lovely weekend aheard


TEMITOPE


I’m not sure I could find law enforcement in Nigeria but I may not need to because all the IP addresses in the email header are from New York. So I might as well play the fish for a while:



From: Joe Huffman [mailto:joeh@boomershoot.org]
Sent: Sunday, November 14, 2010 10:21 AM
To: ‘timi top’
Subject: RE: how can i build a bomb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


What do you want to do with the bomb? What does it need to be able to destroy? How big does it need to be?


-joe-


Update (11/15/2010 05:16): I received a response.



From: timi top [mailto:timitop_007@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 5:09 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: thanks for your reply sir


hello sir
            thanks for your respond , i want to generate money from there, by selling to my country military people, not that i want to use it for harm or for any dirty game, is just to know know that am one of the people that develop technology in Nigerian please help me out sir, cos we have already have people that is building guns and bullet, but i want to be first  person in Nigerian  to build bomb and one of the people that develop Nigerian technology…… i will be looking forward to read from you again bye


TEMITOPE


I replied:



From: Joe Huffman [mailto:joeh@boomershoot.org]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 5:16 AM
To: ‘timi top’
Subject: RE: thanks for your reply sir


I am sorry but I don’t have any experience in building those types of bombs. The difficulties are as much or more about the accurate delivery of the bomb than about the explosives which is where I have a little bit of expertise.


-joe-

Quote of the day—MikeB302000

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I couldn’t care less about truth and falsity or causation and correlation, or all that other double talk the pro-gun crowd like so much.

MikeB302000
November 12, 2010
Austin, Texas Murders Way Up
[We’ve known this for a long time but it’s nice for him to admit it. If only all the anti-gun people would do so it would make things a lot easier.—Joe]

If You Have to Ask…

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…you clearly haven’t been paying attention.


The Political Insider (requires registration for e-mail alerts) is fielding a poll, trying to find out who we want for the next Republican presidential candidate.  It’s all multiple choice, with the usual suspects.  There are some general opinion questions too.  The one that really got me is; “Do you think the tea party represents the Republican Party?”


Oh boy.  First; No, or I sure hope not.  But that’s not the proper question.  The proper question would be; “Do you think the Republican Party represents the tea party?”  The answer is; “Hell No, that’s why the tea party exists.  Get it?”


That, you Insiders, is the problem, and so the tea party is trying to overrun the Republican Party, co opt it, and bring it into line.  The other question I did not see is; “What should be the primary goal of the Republican Party over the next several years?”


The one, simple answer is; “Get rid of socialism and purge the socialists from American government payrolls.  All of it.  All of them.”  We’ve had enough.


They didn’t give us the opportunity to answer in our own words, so I deleted the message.

Quote of the Day – Bill Whittle

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…just because something is fun, and scares away weenies, doesn’t mean that it’s stupid.


Bill Whittle
November 4, 2010
What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights
[Freedom is scary for a lot of people, and it means that people who hate you can’t tell you what to do or how to do it, just because they hate you.  It sucks for them, and it makes them angry.  Hence, freedom pisses people off.  Hence, if you love freedom, you have to come to grips with the fact that people are going to hate you.  Embrace it, Little Grasshopper.  Or as Zaphod Beeblebrox said after having a nuclear missile attack launched against his ship; “Man, This is Great!  It means we’re really on to something if they’re trying kill us!”–Lyle]

Philosophy questions

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I moved some pages I had on a different web site to this blog for better visibility and archival. These posts were from 1997 and 1998 which was long before my first blog post (February 3, 2004) and I have given the posts their approximate original date.

 

The pages moved are:

 

 

 

If you want to comment on one or more of those posts you will have to do it on this post as the comments are disable for posts that old.

Quote of the day–Patrick Smith

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Somebody, somewhere, needs to shake us from this stupor of blind policy and blind obedience. I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t some test — a test of just how stupid Americans are. If TSA said that from now on we had to hop on one foot while humming “God Bless America,” would we do that too?

That’d be ludicrous, certainly, but how much more ludicrous is it, really, than asking people to remove their belts for purposes of walking through a nonexistent body scanner?

Patrick Smith
November 4, 2010
Airport security reaches new levels of absurdity–Here’s what happens when you refuse to comply with TSA’s “new rule.” Blue-glove groping, anyone?
[Smith, a pilot, attempts to go through A Security Theater. They tell him he must take off his belt. The following then occurred:

“But … What if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll have to go through secondary screening and a full pat-down.”

And so I opted for the secondary screening. Not that a pat-down is reasonable, either, but I did not want to submit to something that I felt was excessive and ridiculous without a reason or explanation.

I was asked to stand in a cordoned-off area, where I waited for several minutes as guards stood around looking at me. Finally a supervisor came over, wearing disposable blue gloves, to administer my secondary screening.

“Sir,” he said, “um, you still need to remove your belt.”

“What do you mean? I chose this so I could leave the belt on.”

“No, either way the belt has to come off.”

“What? And if it doesn’t come off?”

“Then I cannot let you through.”

So, it would seem, secondary screening isn’t really “secondary” at all. Instead of simply taking off my belt, I get a full, blue-glove groping and I have to take off my belt. Either that or I’m not allowed to fly the plane.

I could be wrong but I’m sensing that A Security Theater has almost reached the point where they are going to get slapped down a notch or two. They should be wiped off the face of the planet but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.—Joe]