Quote of the day—Patrick Kerkstra

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The gunfight is over, and the cities lost. The question is: Do they realize it yet?

Patrick Kerkstra
February 14, 2012
Cities facing a tough fight on gun control
[If they were to think about it rationally they cannot help but realize it. But most are probably in denial. Those that are not in denial have only moved to the anger stage. They have quite a way to go before reaching acceptance.

Even though Kerkstra has arrived at the correct conclusion he doesn’t seem to consider that it is even plausible that guns are useful for protection. To him, “guns represent a plague, not protection”.

A suggestion to Kerkstra: answer Just One Question then get back to me.

I’d leave a comment for him but it appears they have implemented “Reasoned Discourse”.—Joe]

Here Come De Judge

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Via Uncle;

I don’t know the whole back story, but I sure liked all the “what ifs”.  Yes; Ronald Reagan, The One, to whom all others must be compared, Ronaldus Magnus, presided over a near doubling of the federal budget, and was all in on the drug war.  I hadn’t previously heard of the things he said about Santorum.  Oh goody.

So how can we fix it?  It’s already been push verses shove for a long time (my neighbor, the political prisoner, gets out of the federal poke in a few months, but his business is totally gone)(I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “You’d better watch what you say…!”).  Ours has just been less violent than, say, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Cultural Revolution.  So far.  I for one would like to keep it that way, but only if it can be going the opposite direction (away from statism and toward liberty).  We’d had far too much of this shit by the time I was born, during the Eisenhower administration.

I suppose then, what we need in a presidential campaign is someone who has a plan to “maintain the revolution, but turn it around the other way and without unnecessary killing”.

I’ll be interested to know where De Judge goes from here.

Random thought of the day

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Time travel is obviously possible. Everyone does it all the time. Just sitting around doing nothing we travel through time at a rate of 1 second per 1000 milliseconds. What’s more interesting is how we can travel through time at a different rate and how this prohibits any time paradoxes from occurring such traveling into the future to meet an older version of yourself.

As I have posted before we are always traveling at a constant speed. This is the speed of light and we cannot change that. What we can change is the direction in which we travel. Nearly all of our velocity is on the time axis but as soon as we move in the conventional sense our velocity in time slows down such that the magnitude of our velocity vector remains constant.

What this means is that every time you travel away from someone and come back you are out of synch with them in regards to time. In nearly all cases the difference is in femtoseconds and is totally irrelevant. What is be more interesting and is conceptually possible is to spend a year (in your perception) and travel two (or ten) years in time as perceived by the people you left behind.

If such a machine were built it would more properly be called a “time vehicle” than a “time machine”. To travel any interesting distance in time would require enormous amounts of energy and you cannot retrace your path or go backward in time.

Using such a machine it would be impossible to meet yourself in the future. Use of the vehicle would be exactly analogous to taking a shortcut to some geographical location your friends were traveling to. You will have traveled a shorter distance than your friends but arrive at the same location. It is not possible for you to travel both paths simultaneously.

I woke up at about 4:00 AM this morning and it took an hour or so of thinking about this before I could go back to sleep.

My blog is a reference for Wikipedia

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I’m a bit surprised but it is a valid reference.

My Sitemeter gave me the clue::

Domain Name   verizon.net ? (Network)
IP Address   96.239.233.# (Verizon Internet Services)
ISP   Verizon Internet Services
Location  
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
Lat/Long : 38, -97 (Map)
Distance : 1,180 miles
Language   English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinNT
Browser   Internet Explorer 8.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; GTB7.2; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; MDDC; .NET4.0C)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution : 1600 x 900
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Feb 15 2012 8:52:39 am
Last Page View   Feb 15 2012 8:52:39 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL   http://en.wikipedia….of_historical_events
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffm…awrenceJohnston.aspx
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…awrenceJohnston.aspx
Out Click  
Time Zone   UTC-6:00
Visitor’s Time   Feb 15 2012 10:52:39 am
Visit Number   1,346,087

I asked once nicely—Now what?

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On February 3rd Linoge sent me an email telling me that CSGV was using daughter Kim’s picture from the Too Many Victims video on their blog in a manner that erroneously shows gun owners in a poor light. He suggested I might want to ask them to remove it.

On February 6th I did just that:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 9:46 AM
To: Ladd Everitt
Cc: Kimberly Frederick
Subject: Please remove my daughters picture.

Neither my daughter nor I gave you permission to use her image on the left sidebar of this web page: http://csgv4.blogspot.com/. Please remove it.

Use of the entire video is fine because it includes the proper context.

Thank you.

-joe-
https://blog.joehuffman.org/
http://www.boomershoot.org/
http://www.modernballistics.com/

Sent via Windows Phone Seven.

On February 10th I received a reply:

From: Ladd Everitt
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 9:08 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Cc: Kimberly Frederick
Subject: RE: Please remove my daughters picture.

Joe,

Thanks for your email.  We’re running this by our attorneys and will get back with you soon.

Best regards,

Ladd Everitt
Director of Communications
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
1424 L Street NW, Suite 2-1
Washington, DC 20005
W:  [deleted by Joe for privacy reasons]
Cell:  [deleted by Joe for privacy reasons]
Email:  [deleted by Joe for privacy reasons]
Website:  www.csgv.org
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/CSGV
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/CoalitionToStopGunViolence/

It is now five days later and I still have not heard back from them. Although I am capable and willing to get my own attorney involved are there some “magic words” involving copyrights I need to invoke that might “encourage” them to remove the picture without the involvement of my lawyers?

Thanks.

Quote of the day—BobG

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It’s not his fault he made a bad drawing; he’s only used to seeing them head-on at eye level.

BobG
February 15, 2012
Comment at Say Uncle on why the drawing of a penis on my bumper sticker was nearly unrecognizable.
[Ellen’s comment was pretty funny too.—Joe]

Starbucks Appreciation Day report

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As today was Starbucks Appreciation Day (see also posts by Robb Allen, Say Uncle, Sebastian, Tamara, and Thirdpower <-MUST READ) as well as Valentine's Day Barb took the bus into Seattle to have lunch with me. The first thing we did was visit Starbucks where I bought a "Red Velvet Whoopie pie" on the recommendation of Sebastian plus a $50 Starbucks card for Barb and a $40 card for daughter Kim:

WP_000477

Barb took a picture of me in front of the store with my NRA Life Member patch and the receipts:

WP_000476

We went on to have lunch at a nice restaurant and I made a Tweet about our purchases at Starbucks. After lunch I purchased another $40 Starbucks card online for daughter Xenia who lives in Alaska. I Tweeted the total amount spent and it was Retweeted by three others.

That was a total of $131.64 we spent at Starbucks today. By all accounts the attempted boycott of Starbucks was a huge failure and I’m proud to have contributed to that.

Thank you Starbucks for respecting our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms and state laws.

Update: I posted the following message to Starbucks Corporate:

My wife and I visited one of your stores today in support of your refusal to bow to pressure from anti-gun rights activists who attempted a boycott of your store today. I am the blogger who started the “buycott” of your stores two years ago and happily contributed again this year. I purchased a total of $131.64 today (mostly in gift cards) and blogged about it here: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2012/02/14/starbucks-appreciation-day-report/

Thank you again for not getting involved. Keep doing what you do best–supplying a product that is enjoyed by millions.

Update 2: February 15th.

I was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times this morning about this blog post and the “buycott” of Starbucks. The main thrust was “Why did you do this?” I think it went well.

However there was some discussion of open carry and desensitization of people to the presence of guns in public and I may have messed up on this topic. In general I think there is little to be gained by this from a political perspective. There are cases where it does make sense but those cases somewhat rare. The decision to carry opening in public places needs to be carefully considered and evaluated on a case by case basis. I wrote a rather long blog post about open carry as a political statement and should be referenced before latching on to what may appear as a blanket statement by me against open carry.

Update 3: February 15th, 3:25 PM.

The Los Angeles Times article is online now. My fears were not realized. The reporter accurately reported what was said and did not take liberties.

Update 4: February 16th.

The Global Post also quotes me (via the LA Times).

Coercively Funded Schools

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I’ve been thinking about this for years, but this post of Kevin’s made something gel.

I say we should quit using the term “public school” and start using “coercively funded school”.  My wife is not a public school teacher, she is a coercively funded school teacher.  Why should we use their language when we have our own and ours is more to the point?  It is one thing to say you’re for public schools, or you’re for “Our Children” but it’s another to come right out and say you’re for coercive funding.

Now I would hope, and predict, that most (though not all) church leaders would eschew coercive funding of their church on the grounds that with government funding comes government control (actually, churches are already government subsidized, but that’s a matter for another post).

As I said in comments at Smallest Minority; the purpose of coercively funded schools is to promote coercive funding.  I.e. they’ll promote that which gave them life in the first place, and that which sustains them.  What would be the result, after all, if the coercive schools actively and consistently promoted the American principals of liberty?  They’d be working themselves into extinction of course.  “You’re right” the students would conclude, “freedom, the free market, would be far superior both morally and functionally, in every respect including education.”

No doubt about it; the American founders got it wrong.  Education should have been included with religion and the press in the first amendment, for exactly the same reasons.  As a result of that failure, our coercively funded schools have become indoctrination centers– socialist missions, if you will, churning out useful idiots if not impassioned believers.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why this was not predicted in the 1780s.

After all these years of entrenchment, what is the fix?  So many states have education funding in their constitutions, I believe it will have to come from the states.  Rex Rammell had a good plan for Idaho, but due to an incompetent campaign no one heard of it.  He acknowledged the state constitutional mandate, but would have chopped much of the top off of the coercive education infrastructure and budget.  It is currently extremely top heavy.  Other measures would have opened the doors to more private schools.

Quote of the day–Kenn Blanchard

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During this time in American history, possession of a firearms was illegal for a person of color. This racism is the base of gun control today.

Kenn Blanchard
February 14, 2012
Maryland vs Moses – The Antebellum Madea
[It’s one of the dirty little secrets of gun control. Nearly all gun control laws in this country had their origins in the insistence that “those people” should not be allowed to posses guns. Most of “those people” had black skin, but sometimes they were from Ireland, and sometime they were from Italy or some other place. But the bottom line is people in power decided some minority with a different skin color or ethic background were not worthy to exercise the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

I hear it even today with code words to hide their prejudice. I’ve had people tell me things like, “I don’t see a problem with people like you having guns but the people in the inner cities just can’t be allowed to have them.”—Joe]

Markley’s Law defacement

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I don’t know exactly when or where it happened but someone defaced the bumper sticker on my vehicle:

MarkleysLawBumperSticker

It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Quote of the day—Steve H.

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http://oag.ca.gov/firearms/fsdcertlist

This is the URL where many of my dreams go to die.

Steve H.
February 7, 2012
[The URL is to the list of the gun California allows you to own.

What if the URL were to the list of religious or political philosophy books the government allowed you to own and/or read? How long would that survive constitutional challenges?

Via the gun discussion email list at work.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Manolis Glezos

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Enough is enough! They have no idea what an uprising by the Greek people means. And the Greek people, regardless of ideology, have risen.

Manolis Glezos
February 12, 2012
Glezos is one of Greece’s most famous leftists.
This was in response to the looting, rioting, and burning of the city of Athens and other places in Greece due to cuts in government spending.
Greek lawmakers approve austerity bill as Athens burns
[I know what it means. It means:

  • If leftists can’t loot via political means they will loot via direct violence.
  • Leftists do not understand economic reality.
  • We can expect to see the violence spread across Europe and to America as economic reality runs its course.

Barb and I had breakfast with son James and his wife Kelsey today. They were contemplating what the economic collapse would look like. This is probably a glimpse of what we have to look forward to.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ambulance Driver

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Paramedics have a pretty high threshold for what constitutes an emergency. Generally, if you ain’t dying, we don’t think it needs an ambulance.
 
But for anything that makes your penis spout an arterial blood spray, I’d make an exception.

Ambulance Driver
February 8, 2012
Overheard On The Bolance
[Via Robb Allen.

For some reason I was able to read the complete post in a rather detached frame of mind. No crossed legs. No cringing.—Joe]

Using a .45 to discipline your teenage daughter

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Want to get your teenage daughter to not disobey ever again? Try using a .45:

I’ll bet that got her attention. It got the attention of the world with 3.7 million views in three days.

Quote of the day—Jacob Sullum

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Every time an advocate of gun control promises not to impair the recreational activities of hunters, he demonstrates his contempt for the values underlying the Second Amendment, implying that the issues at stake are trivial.

Jacob Sullum
Reason December 1995: 50-55
Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms page 60.
[Or as Weer’d Beard said, “George Washington didn’t cross the Delaware River to get to his duck blind.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jonathan Rauch

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How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it’s not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s an orientation.

Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don’t say “What’s the matter?” or “Are you all right?”

Third, don’t say anything else, either.

Jonathan Rauch
March 2003
Caring for Your Introvert—The habits and needs of a little-understood group
[This entire article really resonated with me. In addition to the “Caring for your introvert” aspects there are some profound political considerations addressed. The first thought I had was “Too bad it would be unconstitional to ban extroverts from seeking public office.”

Hi. My name is Joe and I am an introvert.—Joe]

Update: Applicable images from a reader who says the first one “… is especially for Lyle”:

 

IntrovertImage02IntrovertAnonIntrovertImage01

These are My People

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Driving home late last night I spotted something in the road that made me do a “Whoa!” so I turned around to clear it off the road.  Pulling off to the side, as my right tires left the pavement I discovered that the saturated Palouse loess had thawed substantially.  Four wheel drive or not, it won’t matter.  Gigantic 4 x 4 farm tractors with six foot diameter wheels get stuck fast in this stuff.  The road bed was steep enough that my pickup just slid sideways and dug in deep.  My front bumper was resting on the gravel.

Zero cellular coverage and it’s 22:30.  Time for a little hike, to where I can acquire the Kamiak Butte tower.  OK, it’s a nice night.  Multiple calls to the house and no answer.  Randomly, as my wife’s phone is ringing, Son came down to get a drink or something and he answered, so I got him to come pick me up.

This morning I walked downtown to the one local auto shop to see if I could get a tow.  Nope.  That person was out of town.  Tried the one market where they know me, to ask if any of them had a heavy 4 x 4.  You know that wall that appears between you and another person when they just don’t want to deal with anything you’re saying?  Yeah.  Tried the city hall, where we all know each other.  There’s that wall again.

Walking toward the house, going through my options, along comes a rusty 1970s Chevy pickup with a winch in the front.  They wave, as is common in a small town, and I hand signal “come over here”.  Inside are two men, eyeing me suspiciously while eating brunch in the truck.  “Is this a four wheel drive?” I ask, as there are no manual locking hubs.
“Yup” comes the answer after a few seconds pause and some eye-balling. 
“Want to make a couple of bucks for about ten minutes work?”

So we talk back and forth as they explain that they’d seen my pickup and said to themselves as they drove by that they’d do it for a hundred bucks, and that you never know if you’re going to break something doing something like that, and so on.  They hem and haw and after a long pause they agree to it, so I squeeze into the short cab and we head off.  Now they’re concerned about what John Law might do if he sees us.  That was odd, but I explained that I’d take any heat, and that it wouldn’t be problem anyway.  I also reassured them that there’d be no hard feelings or anything like that if they decided not to attempt the pull-out after they saw how bad it was.

No problem.  Once they got there and saw that my truck was in fact dug in up to the bumpers, on a steep incline, they took it upon themselves to get it out as a matter of pride.  These are my people.  They forgot all about the 20 dollars they had demanded in advance, and set to it.

There was much discussion, as is the tradition in these situations, about the best way to approach the task– where to connect the winch, where to locate the rescue vehicle, what gears to use, and so on.  Three pulls– two nasty, poppy, pingy ones with the winch (with dirt and rust flying off the cable as it sings soprano) to get my truck out of the hole, and then a long pull with a tow strap off their trailer hitch.  Bingo.  These guys had done this before.  Of course we have to chat for a bit, and then I whip out my wallet only to discover that I didn’t have that twenty I thought I had.  They didn’t seem too worried, and agreed to follow me back into town to the bank.

As I hand them two twenties (I figured they deserved it) and we exchange thanks, they start up their old Chevy–  “Brrr…………….rr….rr….rrrOOOOMMM.”  It barely started, like it was maybe a one in ten proposition at best.  Maybe they can use that forty bucks toward a new battery.  Yes; these are my people.  Thanks, two brothers, from a small town in North Idaho that you wouldn’t even notice as you drive by it except for the road sign, who just happened by in a small town in Eastern Washington.

And the mission was entirely successful, even if it took 12 hours to complete– I got the junk off the roadway, and with some help, got my muddy butt out of there.

I want one

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I have the software for this. I just don’t have a way of integrating it with the proper hardware. It sounds really nice:

The next generation of battlefield optics will empower infantrymen to hit enemy targets from twice the effective range of the M4 carbine if Defense Department scientists get their way.

This summer, officials at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are scheduled to begin testing prototypes of the Dynamic Image Gunsight Optic, known as “DInGO.”

…

Currently, the device weighs about a pound and is approximately five inches long, three inches wide and three inches high, Wojnar said. It has a digital micro display that originated in the cell phone industry.

I know there are similar devices on the market now but the ones I have seen are larger and more appropriate for the .50 BMG or at least a .30 caliber rifle. Something small and compact for an AR-15 class rifle would be nice.

H/T to reader Richard R.

Quote of the day—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
[And we see that today in the way Washington D.C. and Chicago cling to their oppressive gun laws.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matthew Quigley

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I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn’t know how to use it.

Matthew Quigley:
From the movie Quigley Down Under after Quigley uses a handgun for the first time in the movie with surprising results.
[This is my all time favorite movie. And this is probably the best line in the movie. As both a long range rifle shooter and a pretty good pistol shooter I really, really relate to this movie.

Then there is the the thing about a co-worker watching the movie after my recommendation and he said, “I know why you like that movie. It’s because you are Quigley.” That’s overstating things some. But perhaps not so much that I can’t see a little bit of truth in it.—Joe]