Category Archives: Home Life

Stuff going on in my personal life.

Overheard at the buffet

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Woman at cashier of dinner buffet to her companion: Oh! I forgot my money. You will have to pay for my dinner.

Companion: Okay. No problem.

Woman to cashier: He has to pay before he can f**k me.

Cashier (shocked): That isn’t the way it is supposed to work here.

Woman: Oh!

[pause]

Woman (with perplexed look on her face) to her companion: Does this mean I’m supposed to pay you?

Cashier: [closes eyes and shakes her head]

I heard enough more to verify the woman wasn’t some bimbo. She was playing a mind game for sport with the cashier and the people listening in.

Quote of the day–Barbara Scott

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Can we drive anyplace we want to go after this?


We can drive to the Bahamas, right?


Barbara Scott
August 9, 2010
After going through TSA at the St. Louis International Airport.
[Her experience was rather ordinary compared to mine. But I have mine on video for mocking later when I’m a little more removed from the situation.


In other news we have treated all the chigger bites, removed all the ticks, and are waiting for our plane to board and take us back to the Seattle area. Once we get home we will remove our sweat soaked clothes and take a shower.


It will be good to be back home in our underground bunker.–Joe]

Real Men…

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…and women should have available, and know how to use, either a micrometer or a good caliper that reads in thousandths of an inch and/or hundredths of a millimeter.  I don’t see how a person could get through life without one.  They’re cheap and they last a long time.  A set of hole gauges and snap gauges is good also, but the calipers are essential.


That’s in my book.


Jeff Cooper wrote about some other things;



Before the young man leaves home, there are certain things he should know and certain skills he should acquire, apart from any state-sponsored activity. Certainly the youngster should be taught to swim, strongly and safely, at distance. And young people of either sex should be taught to drive a motor vehicle, and if at all possible, how to fly a light airplane. I believe a youngster should be taught the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat, unarmed, together with basic survival skills. The list is long, but it is a parent’s duty to make sure that the child does not go forth into the world helpless in the face of its perils. Shooting, of course, is our business, and shooting should not be left up to the state.


Or something like that.  I recall he had learning to handle a motorcycle in there too.


My son took it upon himself to row a boat across Hood Canal a few weeks ago without telling anyone.  We saw him heading over, until he disappeared from sight.


I was miffed.  That is, until I remembered some of the crazy things I did at that age (16) like piloting a canoe (two canoes, four people) up one side of Priest Lake in Idaho, by moonlight, and then navigating up the channel to Upper Priest Lake by starlight (after moondown) then landing and setting up camp on a low cliff.  We figured flashlights were for sissies, back then.  Nowadays I carry one.  Must be getting soft.


But I digress.  Being able to measure the difference between .678″ and .710″ can be pretty important, and it’s not complicated.  This sort of thing comes up often while talking to customers.  Most of them have the tools and the skill, but a disappointing minority do not.

I sucked all the bits out of this town

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I’m in a small town in central Missouri. I’ve been accessing the Internet via Internet Sharing with my cell phone and that worked well for a while. Then the data transfer rate gradually went to zero. Rebooting the phone and computer didn’t help. I started “borrowing” wireless bandwidth from someone with a SSID of “Linksys” (it is my understanding they are the largest free Internet provider in the country). That went away about two hours ago and I’m back on the cell phone which gives me a few bits every once in a while before drying up.


It’s like I am pumping water from a well and I pulled the water table down below all the intake pipes in the town. I’m mostly sucking air now with just an occasional few spurts of water.


Another indication of the low bit table is that my new phone with the weak cell signal (known issue, we are working on it) runs its battery dead, even while plugged into USB power, trying to sync my email from work.


Until I leave town blogging and email responses will be marginal at best.

Floating down the river

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Today we took a little trip down the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River. We put into the river a little bit east of Kooskia and got out a little bit east of Kamiah. Here are some pictures:



Barbara, Joe, Ellie, Dow, Kim, Bryan, Nancy, Willie, Mike.



Kim in the water. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Ellie and Dow. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Bryan. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Bryan, Nancy, Willie, Mike. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.





Video from my video glasses.

Vacation

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In an hour or so I’m headed off to the semi-deep woods of North Central Idaho. I know I won’t have any cell phone service. I might be able to occasionally find an Internet connection. It’s just as likely I will come across wolves (or they will find us). The reports I have been hearing suggest they are getting more bold and agressive toward humans. If it comes up I’ll give a field report on the Hornady TAP FPD in 55 grain .223 Remington I found waiting for me when I got home last night.

Our universe is a black hole

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

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

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

I will now elaborate further.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a nice day.

Middle of Nowhere

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Early next month wife Barbara, her sister Susan, and I are going to Sullivan County Missouri. We had ancestors who emigrated west to Idaho from there in the 19th Century. Barb and her sister will be doing some genealogical research. I probably will help them a little bit but I plan to spend quite a bit of time at Middle of Nowhere with my pistol and perhaps a rifle. I wish they had a 1000 (or 1500!) yard range but a couple of plate racks and 100 yard range will keep me busy for a while.

Anyone else in the area with the time and ammo (I plan on shooting up at least 1000 perhaps as much as 2000 rounds) to spend practicing?

I’ve been busy

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For the last week the tension at work has steadily increased. I came home at 3:00 AM on Saturday morning and was back at it by 8:00 AM. I went to sleep at midnight last night and was working again by 5:30 this morning.

From Thursday morning until this afternoon I had not checked checked email.

I finally have my stuff under control and am trying to catch up on a few things on the home front.

There are hundreds of blog posts that I probably won’t get caught up on for a week. There are over 400 unread news alerts about various things that I’m going to just mark as “read”. If something important happened that I missed out on I’ll probably eventually see it on one of the blogs I read.

Now, I’m going to take a nap.

My first Windows Phone Seven video

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I tried the video camera on my Windows Phone Seven (with a Samsung “Taylor”) with my daughters at lunch today. I’m impressed.





Full disclosure–I’m on the Microsoft Windows Phone Seven team but I had nothing to do with the video or camera portions of the phone.

Quote of the day–John Cook

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Teaching a child to shoot is teaching a child to kill. It’s what guns are used for.


John Cook
Gun Control Australia
Attributed here. GCA defends the statement here.
[Apparently I didn’t teach my children very well then. I pretty sure they haven’t killed anything with a gun even though they first started shooting in the early 90s.–Joe]

Video glasses while open carrying

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I walked over to son James place for dinner and videos after work tonight. I decided to wear my new glasses and open carry. The video was boring so I didn’t both to post it.


On the way back it was cool and I put my coat on and it covered my gun. Besides they had the polarized lenses installed which would have made it difficult to see at night. In the entrance/exit to his condo complex there were two cop cars and another car. I turned on the video and just held them as I walked past.


The video was as good as could be expected in the low light. Here is a screen capture of one of the frames:



My expectation is that if there is enough light you can see then the video will be usable.


Unfortunately they broke when I took them off (they were hanging from a lanyard around my neck) when I got back to my place. The frame just above the right eye broke. I think I can glue them and then if I am very careful with them they will still be usable.

The view from my driveway

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While at the NRA annual meeting I bought a pair of glasses with lenses for sunglasses or safety glasses. The also have a camera (still or video with microphone) built in. The main reason for getting them is for shooting. I expect to be able to get feedback for training (pistol matches) and for shooting explosives.


The results are suprisingly good. Here is the view from my driveway (scaled down from 1080 x 1024 to 600 x 480)–The View From North Central Idaho:



Tomorrow I have a Steel Challenge match I am going to. I’m really looking forward to the video.

Quote of the day–Jay G.

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Guns don’t kill people.


Dads with pretty daughters do.



Jay G.
On his t-shirt May 16, 2010.
[I can’t say that this actually happens that often. It was something I generally wanted to avoid but I did tell my daughters there was a “Blood for Tears” policy in effect (each girl tear would result in an ounce of boy blood) and they should inform the boys that came prowling. When I asked a couple of the boys if they had been fully informed they seemed surprised.


It turns out neither of my daughters had informed any of the boys.


I can’t imagine why they failed to do that. They are usually quite responsible. I would have hated to have been in the middle of a blood letting and had one of the girls back up the boys claim that he didn’t know.–Joe]

Censorship

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While at the NRA Annual Meeting on Saturday I wore this shirt:



It got a lot of compliments while on the exhibit floor but something happened that night while at the blogger dinner. I’ve been told that I might have to burn that shirt. I would have never worn that shirt to work and figured as long as I stayed away for places like that I would be okay. But censors are sometimes where you least expect them. Yes, the heavy hand of censorship is threatening me because of that shirt.


On the night in question there were about 20 or 30 bloggers at this bar having dinner, drinking a few, and trying to talk to each other (it was very loud). Alan Gura had expressed, rather forcefully, that it was too loud and wanted to go someplace else so we could talk easier. I was up moving around and trying to shepherd people in the general direction of the door and to a nearby outdoor plaza with a quiet fountain and seating. From a nearby table filled with college students two young women approached me and said they really liked my shirt and they wanted a picture of one of them with me and the shirt. I obliged them.


I later told Say Uncle about it and he quipped, “I’ll bet you never thought you could use that shirt to pick up chicks, did you?” I laughed and said, “No.” That would have been the end of it had I not opened my big mouth later. Later that evening as I was talking to wife Barbara and she asked how my day had gone I told her of the event and Say Uncle’s joke. In the silence that followed I blissfully babbled on and told her of another funny thing that happened. This probably sealed the fate of that shirt.


As everyone was saying goodnight someone said how wonderful it was to meet and hang out with the celebrities like Michael Bane, Alan Gottlieb, and god of gods Alan Gura. I agreed and added something like, and pointing at Mike W, “But you said I was a celebrity.” Mike protested, “But you are a celebrity. You are the Boomershoot guy!” Dixie was standing just to the right of me and said, “You are the Boomershoot guy?” and stretched her arms out with fingers straight, palms flat, and bowed to me.


Barb hasn’t actually said it in words but I’m pretty good at reading the silence.


I think I’m going to have to burn the shirt.

My book list

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We were talking about books today and I mentioned I listened to a lot of books during my commute to/from Idaho. Below is a fairly complete list from the last four years in close to reverse chronological order. I get nearly all my books from Audible (thank you Ry).


Of the science fiction I listened to it fails into two categories with one exception. It is either Robert Heinlein or it isn’t. If it is by Heinlein it is awesome otherwise it is good. The one exception was Beyond the Gap. I thought it was mediocre.


Everything by Ayn Rand is awesome. Anything that has “brain” in the title is great or better. The Female Brain is AWESOME. Sex Time and Power is very good.


I recently finished “Ice Man”. It is about serial killer Richard Kuklinski who killed for the mafia as well as sport. He killed hundreds of people. Grisly and very disturbing at times but I still recommend it just so you can get a glimpse of “the dark side”.


Spycraft was great. I kept meaning to write up a review of it but never got around to it. It’s about CIA technology and some of their operational methods.


Pride and Prejudice sucked. Snuff was disturbing and it sucked.


The Glenn Beck and Michael Savage books were a little “too low of bandwidth” for me. They had some good points and new information but sometimes I got bored waiting for more good stuff to come along.


Why Woman Have Sex was surprisingly good. Barb and I had, and I expect will continue to have, some good conversations about this book, The Five Love Languages (don’t laugh! It’s a great book!) and Strange Bedfellows.


I listened to The Black Hole War and 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense back to back. If I had not done that I don’t think I would have put two and two together and realized that we are living in a huge black hole. The “background radiation from the big bang” is actually just the event horizon of the black hole which is our universe–which contains other black holes. The direction toward the center of our black hole is the direction of time. This is why we can only perceive time at a single instant–completely different from the other spacial dimensions of our universe. It also (potentially) explains “dark matter” (no such thing) and a lot of other things. At least that is my hypothesis.


The Demon Under the Microscope was very good. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.


Genghis Khan and Hannibal: One Man Against Rome, both by Harold Lamb, are awesome.


Columbine made for great conversations with son James and Barbara. It is a great myth that Columbine was about guns. They tried to use explosives but they didn’t do adequate testing–just like the guy in Times Square recently. Guns were just a poor “Plan B” to them. If everything had gone according to plan for them they would have killed thousands in the first minute. They would have liked to have killed off the human race. They believed humans were too stupid to deserve to live.


Survival of the Sickest is AWESOME. Daughter Kim, son James, and Barbara and I have talked about it a lot and really liked it.


The almost complete list:



Natural Selections: David P. Barash
The Virtue of Selfishness: Ayn Rand
The Housing Boom and Bust: Thomas Sowell
The Ice Man: Philip Carlo
Inside the Jihad: Omar Nasiri
Why Women Have Sex: Cindy M. Meston, David M. Buss
Time Traveler: Ronald L. Mallett, Bruce Henderson
Strange Bedfellows: David P. Barash, Judith Eve Lipton
Next: Michael Crichton
The Big Leap: Gay Hendricks 
Pirate Latitudes: Michael Crichton 
The Colour of Magic: Terry Pratchett 
Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen 
Arguing with Idiots: Glenn Beck
Kill Bin Laden: Dalton Fury
Plain, Honest Men: Richard Beeman
The Unincorporated Man: Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin
Lords of the Sea: John R. Hale
Have Space Suit, Will Travel: Robert A. Heinlein
Tribes: Seth Godin
The Stars, Like Dust: Isaac Asimov
Pebble in the Sky: Isaac Asimov
The Case for Democracy: Natan Sharansky with Ron Dermer
Thermopylae: Paul Cartledge
The Devil of Nanking: Mo Hayder
Columbine: Dave Cullen
Dexter in the Dark: Jeff Lindsay
The Demon Under The Microscope: Thomas Hager
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man: A Biography: Christopher Hitchens
Welcome to Your Brain: Sandra Aamodt, Sam Wang
Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell
How the Mighty Fall: Jim Collins
World War Z: Max Brooks
Liberty and Tyranny: Mark R. Levin
America’s March to Socialism: Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: Glenn Beck
New Deal or Raw Deal?: Burton Folsom
Strategic Intuition: Bill Duggan
The Talent Code: Daniel Coyle
Brain Rules: John J. Medina
Furnace of Creation, Cradle of Destruction: Roy Chester
Appetite for Self-Destruction: Steve Knopper
The Drunkard’s Walk: Leonard Mlodinow
Patriot Pirates: Robert H. Patton
With the Lightnings: RCN Series: David Drake
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Thomas Sowell
Cold Zero: Christopher Whitcomb
Childhood’s End: Arthur C. Clarke
The Irregulars: Jennet Conant
The Five Love Languages: Gary Chapman
The Black Swan: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Dune: Frank Herbert
The Enemy Within: Michael Savage
The Black Hole War: Leonard Susskind
13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: Michael Brooks
The Clan of the Cave Bear: Jean M. Auel
Human Smoke: Nicholson Baker
On Intelligence: Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee
The Devil Came on Horseback: Brian Steidle with Gretchen Steidle Wallace
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East: Martin Sieff
Podkayne of Mars: Robert A. Heinlein
Tempted: Megan Hart
The Portable Atheist: Christopher Hitchens
The Case Against Barack Obama: David Freddoso
Altered Carbon: Richard K. Morgan
The End of America: Naomi Wolf
Spycraft: Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, Henry Robert Schelsinger
2008 RNC: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (9/03/08)
Why Migraines Strike: Scientific American  David W. Dodick, J. Jay Gargus, Scientific American
The Biology of Belief: Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.
Sackett’s Land: Louis L’Amour
The Burden of Bad Ideas: Heather MacDonald
America Alone: Mark Steyn
Naked: David Sedaris
The Best American Erotica 2005: Susie Bright, Jane Smiley, Mary Gaitskill, Steve Almond, and more
Bonk: Mary Roach
This Is Your Brain on Music: Daniel J. Levitin
Blade Runner: Philip K. Dick
Snuff: Chuck Palahniuk
Trigger Men: Hans Halberstadt
The Disappeared: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Future of Freedom: Fareed Zakaria
The Brain That Changes Itself: Norman Doidge
Red Mars: Kim Stanley Robinson
The Puppet Masters: Robert A. Heinlein
The Door into Summer: Robert A. Heinlein
More of the Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Orson Scott Card, Arthur C. Clarke, Karen Joy Fowler, Roger Zelazny, John Varley, Joe Haldeman, Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of the 20th Century: Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. Le Guin, David Brin, Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear, Terry Bisson, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Clifford D. Simak, Judith Merrill, Frederik Pohl, Greg Bear, Terry Bisson, Eric Frank Russell, and John W. Campbell
Hominids: The Neanderthal Parallax, Book 1: Robert J. Sawyer
Voyagers: Ben Bova
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Michael Pollan
Three Cups of Tea: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Liberal Fascism: Jonah Goldberg
The Abolition of Man & The Great Divorce: C.S. Lewis
Shadow Divers: Robert Kurson
Great Blunders in History: Kasserine Pass:  The History Channel
Genghis Khan: Harold Lamb
How Come They Always had the Battles in the National Parks?: Peter Bales
Berserker’s Planet: Fred Saberhagen
For the New Intellectual: Ayn Rand
Striking Back: Aaron J. Klein
The Coming Economic Collapse: Dr. Stephen Leeb and Glen Strathy
In the Wake of the Plague: Norman F. Cantor
Gut Feelings: Gerd Gigerenzer
We Could Do Worse: Larry Niven, Howard Waldrop, Harry Turtledove, Robert Silverberg, Gregory Benford, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Allen Steele
Predictably Irrational: Dan Ariely
Beyond the Gap: Harry Turtledove
Opening Atlantis: Harry Turtledove
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: Robert A. Heinlein
I Am Legend: Richard Matheson
Children of Jihad: Jared Cohen
The Cat Who Walks through Walls: Robert Heinlein
The Menace from Earth: Robert A. Heinlein
Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: Larry Winget
Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the 92nd Street Y on The Trouble with Islam
Preachers of Hate: Kenneth Timmerman
Philosophy: Ayn Rand
Infidel: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Big Three in Economics: Mark Skousen
Freedomnomics: John R. Lott, Jr.
Free to Choose: Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman
The City Who Fought: Anne McCaffrey and S.M. Stirling
The Sky People: S.M. Stirling
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: Richard P. Feynman
What Women Want Men to Know: Barbara DeAngelis
IBM and the Holocaust: Edwin Black
Guns, Germs, and Steel: Jared Diamond
Callahan’s Key: Spider Robinson
The Callahan Chronicals: Spider Robinson
Callahan’s Con: Spider Robinson
Very Bad Deaths: Spider Robinson
Callahan’s Legacy: Spider Robinson
Snow Crash: Neal Stephenson
Death by Black Hole: Neil deGrasse Tyson
The Female Brain: Louann Brizendine, M.D.
Double Star: Robert A. Heinlein
Citizen of the Galaxy: Robert A. Heinlein
Variable Star: Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson
Lies: Scientific American Mind
Consciousness: Scientific American Mind
Scientific American: A Robot in Every Home: Bill Gates
The Rolling Stones: Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Heinlein Radio Dramas: Robert Heinlein
The Sociopath Next Door: Martha Stout
The Diamond Age: Neal Stephenson
God Is Not Great: Christopher Hitchens
A Game of Thrones: George R. R. Martin
The Tipping Point: Malcolm Gladwell
Survival of the Sickest: Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince
Blink: Malcolm Gladwell
A History of the Middle Ages: Crane Brinton, John Christopher, and Robert Wolff
Rocket Ship Galileo: Robert A. Heinlein
Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus: Dave Barry
How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You: Leil Lowndes
Brave New World: Aldous Huxley
Freakonomics: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 
Linked: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi 
Win Your Case: Gerry Spence
Because They Hate: Brigitte Gabriel
The Best American Erotica 2002: Susie Bright, Jamie Callan, Maggie Estep, and more 
Deep Survival: Laurence Gonzales
The God Delusion: Richard Dawkins 
2007 State of the Union Address: George W. Bush 
Islam Unveiled: Robert Spencer, foreword by David Pryce-Jones 
Hatred’s Kingdom: Dore Gold
America’s Secret War: George Friedman 
The Truth About Muhammad: Robert Spencer 
Empire: Orson Scott Card 
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal: Ayn Rand 
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Richard P. Feynman 
Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand 
The World of Atlas Shrugged: Robert Bidinotto 
The Clash of Civilizations: Samuel P. Huntington 
A Short History of Nearly Everything: Bill Bryson
Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Richard M. Restak
Sex, Time, and Power: Leonard Shlain
Sex and the City Writers’ Special:  Un-Cabaret 
Cryptonomicon: Neal Stephenson 
Starship Troopers: Robert A. Heinlein 
Hannibal: One Man Against Rome: Harold Lamb

Playing with a bigot

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Today I went to my hair appointment before I left Idaho and drove to the Seattle area bunker. The lady who was just finishing up in the chair next to me turned and said, “Hello Barbara Scott.”


We had a pleasant short conversation about Dixie where she is trying to sell a bar and house — a remote and beautiful part of Idaho. We briefly talked about Boomershoot and another long distance shooter she had read about in the Lewiston Tribune. After she left a man in expensive “casual” dress sat down.


While he was getting his silver grey hair cut, he started talking about his former student who he had seen working at Tri-State. Apparently this was a typical “Idaho boy” — his words — who was poorly motivated, not very smart, married by the time he was twenty, etc. My ears perked up.


“A typical Idaho boy?”, I said.


He said, “Oh, yes. A typical Idaho boy.”


“Well tell me about this, I am very interested”


He said, “Of course this is an East coast point of view.”


And he told me all about it repeating the “this is an East coast point of view” line several times.


I said, “That is fascinating! I’m just a physical therapist and I can’t wait to tell my husband and son who both work for Microsoft all about it. They’d like to hear about a “typical Idaho boy.”


He muttered again, “It’s just an East coast point of view.”


About that time his hair dresser who is another Idaho boy chimed in, “Well, I’ve got all my teeth.”


I congratulated him and said something like, “We just got our first indoor toilet last year and really like it!”


The conversation died. The man looked kind of truculent.


I was having fun with the conversation and was really disappointed because there was a great deal I hadn’t got to say. Like my son graduated Suma cume laude from college and he was a National Merit Scholar. My husband is an Idaho boy who has been written about in Newsweek, Outside Magazine, Idaho Magazine, Motorcyclist magazine, and has been on television and radio several times. And my brother is a professor at Loyola in Chicago and I would have liked to have mentioned all the savvy men who like to work in lower stress jobs in the Idaho paradise where they can spend their off time hunting and fishing instead of spending hours commuting to work. But that’s just an Idaho point of view.