Evolution is interesting

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From Why Hillary Clinton Thinks Gun Control Can Win in 2016:

Seven years ago, when Hillary Clinton was fighting a grueling Democratic primary battle against then-Sen. Barack Obama, she boasted of duck hunting and championed the Second Amendment. Clinton’s campaign in Indiana sent around negative mailers pasted with rifles, accusing Obama of being weak on gun rights. She talked of learning to shoot a gun as a child.

 

“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” Clinton said in April 2008. “It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are.”

Now she says:

Today, Clinton’s calculus has changed. She has come out this campaign in favor of gun control measures with a vigor that surprised even some Democrats, targeting minorities and urban voters.

…

 

Clinton is helping shape the national debate about firearms, calling for a “national movement” to “stand up to the NRA” and lambasting Republicans for voting against gun control legislation.

I guess this must be “evolution” in action. I can’t imagine it is because she sees the potential for campaign money in taking a different position.

Quote of the day—Italian Rose

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Whatever you do when talking to gun owners use simple sentences and talk slow avoiding big words.

Italian Rose
October 12, 2015
How to argue about gun control
[This is what they think of you.

I say, “Just let them just keep thinking that.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jacob Schuman

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The fact is, the widespread availability of guns is a significant, but often overlooked, cause of persistent inequality in the United States. Focusing on the relationship between guns and inequality will allow gun control advocates to argue that restricting firearm access is an essential step towards achieving social justice and economic empowerment.

The first way that guns drive inequality is by making life more violent and less stable for people living in economically disadvantaged communities.

Jacob Schuman
November 4, 2015
The Equality Argument For Gun Control
[He has it exactly backwards. Guns enable a civil society.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Conor P. Williams @ConorPWilliams

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Let me reiterate that I am ok with mass gun seizing. And a national handgun ban.

Conor P. Williams @ConorPWilliams
Tweeted on November 2, 2015
[Via a tweet from Robb Allen.

Mr. Williams, May you live in interesting times. Molon Labe.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Shooting the Glock 43

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Apparently it’s a thing. People often talk of shooting their guns, but it never quite made sense to me. Why shoot a perfectly good gun?

Quote of the day—Chris Knox

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I’ve proposed a similar Godwin corollary to Godwin’s Law which I have none-too-modestly dubbed “Knox’s Law.”

As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the probability of an ad absurdum argument involving nuclear weapons approaches 1.

Ecclesiastes 1:9King James Version (KJV)

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Chris Knox
November 2, 2015
Comment to Quote of the day—Darcy @brooklinegirl
[And so it shall be. We now have a Knox’s Law category.—Joe]

ATF Data

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The ATF tweeted about their Open Data website the other day and I started poking around this evening. There is some interesting stuff there. It includes developer APIs for accessing their data, number of people in various positions, budgets, the number of explosives manufactures in each state, the heat produced by burning a Christmas tree, and tons of other stuff.

Quote of the day—Darcy @brooklinegirl

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@tinaissa One time, I said to a gun nut, Gun Avi=Teenie Weenie Dick. Boy, did he get upset. Babies.

Darcy @brooklinegirl
Tweeted on January 25, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a tweet from Linoge.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bookworm

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My reversal on guns came about because I realized that gun’s are a predicate requirement for individual freedom and security.  I’ve created five principles that justify this conclusion.  These principles are:  (1) Armed citizens are the best defense against the world’s most dangerous killer: government; (2) I am a Jew; (3) I am not a racist; (4) a self-defended society is a safe society; and (5) the only way gun-control activists can support their position is to lie.

Bookworm
October 1, 2015
Five reasons that the benefits that flow from guns far outweigh the risks inherent in guns
[There are a lot of different reasons people can reverse their position on a subject. If you want to have the power to change minds it is important to have as many different tools in your toolbox as you can. You may need to try a great number of them before you find the tool that works in any given situation.—Joe]

Arches National Park

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After visiting Mesa Verde we spent the night in Cortez. The next morning we drove back to Arches and spent the day there. We probably hiked a total seven miles and saw stunning scenery almost everywhere we went.

I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

IMG_4807IMG_4827

Continue reading →

Quote of the day–Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser

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There is a compound assertion that (a) guns are uniquely available in the United States compared with other modern developed nations, which is why (b) the United States has by far the highest murder rate. Though these assertions have been endlessly repeated, statement (b) is, in fact, false and statement (a) is substantially so.

Don B. Kates and Dr. Gary Mauser
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2007.
[See also the more recent commetary on it: Harvard University Study Reveals Astonishing Link Between Firearms, Crime and Gun Control (via email from Steve at work.

The paper is over eight years old but it is still relevant.—Joe]

Picard won!

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At work today there was a contest and Picard won!

WP_20151030_13_20_53_Pro

No. Next question.

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Nick Vivion asks, “Could this new Wi-Fi technology revolutionize airport security?”

Some of the most promising new technology has emerged from a multi-year project from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab: a Wi-Fi network that can identify who you are — even through a wall. Yep, you read that right. These geniuses have built a way to implement Wi-Fi as a means to identify the unique characteristics of individual humans.

 

The RF Capture technology is able to analyze how Wi-Fi signals bounce off a human being to create an outline similar to what you might see from a millimeter wave scanner. The secret sauce is a reconstruction algorithm that stitches the many refracted waves into an image and then analyses the results. The system was able to identify 15 different people with a 90% accuracy.

The last sentence is meaningless. There are two types of errors. False positives and false negatives. Which type is this 90% numbers? Furthermore there are two types meanings of “identify” in biometrics. There is, “Who is this person?” (identification). And there is, “Is this person who they say they are? (verification)”. If they are identifying one person out of a population of 15 90% of the time then the success with of a population of 100s, 1000s, or millions is going to be insignificant. If they talking about verification then it means that one out of ten times an imposter is falsely verified. This is way too poor.

If that isn’t enough they don’t address the fundamental difficulty with security. That is that you have an active adversary. The adversary is going to do whatever they can to fool you. Wi-Fi signals bounce off of humans, as shown in the video below, but they bounce of metal even better. A little bit of aluminum foil underneath your shirt and you will appear as a completely different image to their technology. Some outdoor clothing has aluminum built into it for heat retention. This would play havoc with their tech.

Vivion should have asked a security expert his question. The answer would have been “No. Next question.”

Quote of the day—Barbara LeSavoy

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Firearm possession should be banned in America; President Obama can orchestrate this directive. His presidency can be remembered as a remarkable turn in United States history where a progressive leader forever changed the landscape under which we live and work. This is his legacy. To establish gun control laws in America that will reduce high levels of male violence and usher in a culture of peace and civility.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States. He can change the country. He can do it today. I believe in him.

Barbara LeSavoy
Director of Women and Gender Studies at The College at Brockport.
October 9, 2015
Obama’s legacy on guns should be to ban them
[One has to wonder how it is she determines truth from falsity. Does she believe men are incapable of violence against women without guns?

A firearm is the best tool to ensure she is not a victim of male violence. It is just the opposite of what she believes. It is guns which promote civility.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—D. Watkins

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So if you love guns, if they make you feel safe, if you hold and cuddle with them at night, then you need to be shot. You need to feel a bullet rip through your flesh, and if you survive and enjoy the feeling­­––then the right to bear arms will be all yours.

D. Watkins
October 16, 2015
Want a gun? Take a bullet: Take this, gutless NRA cowards — you can have a gun, once you understand the pain of being shot
[It appears to me he has a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of a specific enumerated right. What “price” must you pay to exercise your other rights as enumerated in the first ten amendments to the constitution? How about the 13th Amendment?

Actually it is more than a just a misunderstanding. He has it exactly backward. If he is going to violently infringe upon the right to keep and bear arms he is the one mostly likely to pay the high price.—Joe]

Media definition of a clip

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For many years I’ve been fighting a losing battle (daughter Jaime claims I lost the battle years ago) about people calling a “magazine” a “clip”. I’m not fighting the battle alone though. Guy Sagi posted Top Media-Abused Gun Terms and points out the problem is larger than I usually view it:

Clip—Any ammunition-retention system, including magazines, speed loaders, belts, bandoleers and TSA screeners.

Quote of the day—Ryan Holiday

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The most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article provokes. I will say it again, the most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.

Ryan Holiday
2013
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
[This is an excellent book. Jaime, my oldest daughter, got this for herself and we just started listening to it this week. Last night was our first chance to talk about it.

In some regards it is depressing and disgusting. It explains why so much of what we see online is click bait with little or no regard for the truth or completeness. On the other hand it explains in detail how much power blogs, even those with relatively small followings, have if they know what they are doing. Holiday explains in detail how he and many others manipulate the blogs and from there the major media. Everyone, except perhaps the end user, along the way gets what they want.

The online world has returned to the day of yellow journalism like it was 100 years ago. The most sensational headlines of those days sold the most papers on the street. It wasn’t until the transition of the subscription model that newspapers became somewhat trusted news sources. The subscription model of blogs and online news have been, at best, struggling and the quality is corresponding poor. Because sensationalism gets page views and page views mean advertising money, sensationalism wins over thoughtful analysis and thorough, accurate presentation of facts.

Getting back to anger. You see this in the gun rights battle. Both sides use anger to motivate their followers and raise money.

Any blogger who is even quasi-serious or anyone who is concerned about principles and truth in the news should read this book. It will not only open your eyes but it also enables those who care more about the ends than the means to better reach their desired ends.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Maybe we are just little, and governments are huge.  That doesn’t mean we should make it any easier for them to do bad things than it already is.

Roberta X
October 14, 2015
Okay, Let’s Take This “Get Rid Of The Guns” Thing One Step At A Time
[Roberta has some good points.

I would also like to suggest people look at the numbers.—Joe]

Free item

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The first half of the prose rewrite of “The Stars Came Back” is called ” The Stars Came Back: Back from the Dead “. It is now on Kindle unlimited.  So, for those of you that thought you might like to read the edited PROSE version, you can get it at no cost. Whoo-Hoo! Electronic book only so far. Eventually it’ll hit paper for those who, like me, prefer hardcopy. But those won’t be free 🙁

Sometimes, free is good.

SAFE act

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The 2nd Circuit Court upheld the NY “SAFE Act 2013” last week. Bummer. They said that NY could ban certain arms, prohibit private transfers, etc. On the one hand, that really sucks for the people of NY, another in a long line of suckage. Oh, well, I don’t live there, and I’m never planning too. And it sets a circuit court precedent that specific guns can be banned. On the other hand, it was passed so fast, and is so broad, it’s likely to get appealed to the Supreme Court, and it’s also likely to get taken up.

High risk appeal. If we win, it’s big. If we lose, it’s HUGE.

Interesting times.