carnaby fudge

For the Star Wars geek who has everything

2011-10-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

Check it out: Star Wars coins as legal tender.

Get 'em now. It's only a matter of time before George Lucas swoops in, ruins the design, and reissues them as special editions.

Is this a joke?

2011-09-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

For real? Really? Seriously?

One of the YouTube comments:

Yes, it is the same one used in Revenge of the Sith. This is getting completely out of hand now. George simply isn't going to be happy until this movie is practically unwatchable, it seems.

Exercise and moods

2011-07-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

A twofold warning for anyone who does intense exercise and is experiencing negative moods.

Beware Blood Sugar Drops

After a long hiatus, I got back on a regimen of intense workouts; but to my surprise I began suffering severe post-exercise feelings of agitation, depression, and fatigue. Never had this problem when I was a competitive athlete, but for whatever reason it's a big problem now. The Senior Fudge, who is a personal trainer, immediately recognized this as a blood sugar problem. I was always working out on an empty stomach, and it was causing my blood sugar to plummet. I started eating half of a banana and an ounce or two of lean meat one hour before working out, and then the other half of the banana and another couple ounces of protein immediately after exercising, along with some water. That completely cured me of the post-exercise symptoms I was experiencing.

Beware (Certain) Protein Drinks

I experimented with using protein drinks (Muscle Milk) after exercising, but found that the stuff was having an adverse affect on my mood. For days, I experienced nonstop feelings of intense agitation and rage, seemingly out of nowhere. My poor husband suffered through these berserker rages until one day when I skipped MM after a workout, and my mood immediately settled back to normal. A quick Google search revealed that other people have experienced the same problem after consuming MM. I don't know, or really care, what the causal link is, but it seems wise to just stick with fruit+meat from now on.

Obama happened

2011-04-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Linton Weeks at NPR.com asks, "Whatever Happened to the Anti-War Movement?" Weeks cites Celia Cook-Huffman, professor of "conflict resolution" at Juniata College, who suggests the reasons may be as varied as lack of a draft to incite people to protest, guilt over the way Vietnam vets were treated, and the squelching of bad news from the war fronts by the military.

Well, lessee. There was no draft during the Bush years, protesters and media alike felt no guilt over calling the men and women in our armed forces murderers and brutes, and there was no end to the bad news coming from war fronts even with the "chill wind" of dissent-crushing blowing from the Bush White House.

To his credit, Weeks also cites David Boaz from the Cato Institute, who identifies the real reason:

[Boaz] concludes that the anti-war activity in the United States — and around the world — a few years ago "was driven as much by antipathy to George W. Bush as by actual opposition to war and intervention."

To buttress his assertions, Boaz cites a recently published study of anti-war protesters. The research was conducted by Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of Indiana University. It concludes that the anti-war movement in America evaporated because Democrats — inspired to protest by their anti-Republican feelings — stopped protesting once the Democratic Party achieved success in Congress in 2006 and then in the White House in 2008.
"As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan," Heaney, an assistant professor of organizational studies and political science, said in a news release. "The anti-war movement should have been furious at Obama's 'betrayal' and reinvigorated its protest activity."

Should have been, but weren't. I'll give props to Dennis Kucinich, who is calling for Obama's impeachment for pretty much the same reason that he wanted Bush impeached. But everybody else in the protest movement? Partisan hacks, no principles. Hey, NPR, we knew this all along. You didn't?

Movie review haikus

2011-04-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

Of Gods and Men

Algerian strife
Cannot make these monks go home
Curiously dull

---

Hanna

Young girl on the run
Shades of River from Firefly
I forget the rest

---

Your Highness

Much obscenity
Could have been entertaining
If it had more laughs

What do the police stand for?

2011-04-03T10:23:00.000-07:00

I was one of those people who thought the police were the good guys. I used to think people who distrusted the police were guilty of something or habitually on the wrong side of the law. I used to give the police the benefit of the doubt when one of them was accused of wrongdoing. I used to get choked up when I read about an officer gunned down in the line of duty. I used to contribute to funds for the families of fallen officers.

Not anymore. Not ever again.

A close friend in Canada has been accused by a former friend of something very bad. While it likely does not involve a prison term, it has already cost my friend a hard-earned reputation and every atom of this person's peace of mind.

Everything the accuser has alleged is false. The accusations are based on the worst, most pathetic and egregious lies I've ever heard. Every single one of these lies is easily disproved, if the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) officer who conducted the investigation would have taken the time to actually investigate the accuser's claims. But the Mountie didn't pursue them. He concluded the investigation and charges were laid without the officer even bothering to take a statement from the accused. This was followed by a press release that was filled with inaccuracies, which I strongly suspect were deliberate.

Why lie to the press? What was the motivation for this? Nobody knows.

Once my friend was in possession of the police report, several contradictions were immediately apparent, not only in the accuser's statements but between the accuser's statements and those of another person who was questioned by the RCMP. That would have alarm bells sounding for any reasonable person interested in the truth, but these inconsistencies weren't investigated. Why? Doesn't the truth matter?

The answer is no. The truth doesn't matter.

My friend has sought the advice of an advocacy group for the wrongfully accused and was told that the police are not interested in the truth. Based on what I've seen, I believe it. The advocacy group claims police are primarily motivated to find a guilty person and gather evidence to support a guilty verdict. I believe it.

So it goes to trial. My friend has hired one of the top defense attorneys in western Canada. Given the weakness of the case, I have little doubt that it will ultimately be dismissed by a judge, but not before it has cost my friend a great deal.

No little cost is that loss of faith in your fellow person and in an institution ostensibly guided by "integrity," "honesty," and "accountability."

Even without this agonizing personal experience, it's hard to dismiss evidence of police malfeasance in this age of ubiquitous video.

A few years ago, video was released showing Mounties tasering a man to death at the Vancouver International Airport within seconds of being called to the scene.

In January of this year a Mountie in Kelowna was caught on video kicking the face of a man who was already complying with officers and on his hands and knees.

God only knows the day-to-day violations of trust that occur all over British Columbia with the RCMP -- a recent article in the Times Colonist states that complaints against the RCMP in B.C. have been steadily rising for some time, and punctuates this claim with the story of a woman in Nanaimo who alleges that a Mountie punched her, shattering her face, because she complained about his conduct.

This is the reason people distrust the police. This is the reason there is so little good will towards law enforcement.

The police are not your friends. They are not on the side of truth. They are not on the side of justice. They are not there to protect you.

I realize there are individual officers within the system who have integrity and are interested in truth and justice. But as Seth Godin writes, the worst voice of the brand is the brand.

Seems obvious, no? I wonder, then, why loyal and earnest members of the tribe hesitate to discipline, ostracize or expel the negative outliers.

"You're hurting us, this is wrong, we are expelling you."

What do you stand for?

What do you stand for, indeed.

My only peeve about mobile sites

2011-03-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

ARGH!

Amazing!

2011-02-21T18:20:00.001-08:00

Ever notice how AMAZING everything is these days?

"My boyfriend is amazing!"

"That movie was totally amazing!"

"Your kazoo-playing is soooo amazing!"

Is everything really that impressive? Are our young people really that stunned by things that were considered only mildly interesting 10-20 years ago, or is it just reckless exaggeration? Is this a recent phenomenon or have I just started to notice it because I'm getting older?

Now that I think about it, everything was TOTALLY AWESOME when I was a teenager. So, does AMAZING constitute progress? Probably as much as AWESOME was an improvement on GROOVY.

(This pointless rant brought to you by a grumpy professor who normally likes goofy, young people well enough, but is AMAZED at how irritating over-usage of this word has become.)

Happy Reagan Centennial

2011-02-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

Say what you will about Reagan's policies, but I'll tell you one thing: I am grateful to have come of age during the 1980s when Reagan was in office. His optimism was infectious, and we all felt it -- even in Canada, where Carnaby and I grew up. We had a wonderful popular culture and we had real hope for the future based on the sense that America and the West were generally good places. Hard to believe there was ever a time like that. God willing, maybe we'll experience it again some day.

Happy Reagan Centennial.

How not to title your paper

2011-01-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

Albert Einstein's paradigm-shifting paper on special relativity was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies."

The paper by Max Planck that started the quantum revolution was titled "Entropy and Temperature of Radiant Heat."

Fritz Zwicky's article introducing supernovae and neutron stars to the world was called "On Super-novae."

Now we get stuff like this. Do you think anyone outside of the authors' immediate sphere of interest has a clue what this paper is about?

I'm sorry to say that more and more titles like this appear in physics journals every year. Not all great scientific articles of the past are eloquently and economically titled, but it's doubtful that anyone doing significant work in the early part of the previous century ever bestowed such a monstrous title on their work. Part of the problem is that the e-print service doesn't translate LaTeX code to HTML (I get around that by only using words and numerals in my titles), but even if the math symbols looked how they're supposed to look, that title still wouldn't compel anyone to read your paper. And it makes you the subject of mockery on an obscure gun blog.

So easy a kid could do it

2011-01-13T10:37:00.001-08:00

It looked lame to have a Christmas post at the top now that we're well into January, so I'm posting some mildly interesting astronomy news. Ten-year-old Kid Discovers Supernova:

Kathryn Aurora Gray of Fredericton, New Brunswick in Canada discovered the supernova explosion in a galaxy, called UGC 3378, within the faint constellation of Camelopardalis. The galaxy is approximately 240 million light-years away.

"I'm really excited. It feels really good," Gray told the Toronto Star.

Gray made the discovery on Jan. 2 using images that were taken of galaxy UGC 3378 on New Year's Eve. The supernova was then verified by Illinois-based amateur Brian Tieman and Arizona-based amateur astronomer Jack Newton, who then reported it to the International Astronomical Union's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams.

This is one reason I like astronomy so much; any amateur with the right equipment, the time, and a little luck, can make discoveries like this.

Despite being the discoverer of this one, Gray didn't get to bestow a name on the object, which is known simply as Supernova 2010lt.

Astronomers rarely get to name their discoveries. Usually it's a catalog designation (e.g. NGC 1068) or celestial coordinates (e.g. SDSS J024240.70-000047.9). Objects that are sometimes named after/by their discoverers are comets, asteroids, planets, and nebulae -- though they often also have official IAU designations more like the ones mentioned. Supernovae are designated according to the year and order in which they are discovered. The first supernova discovered in 2011 will be Supernova 2011a or SN 2011a. They were already up to 'lt' by the time Gray made her discovery, which indicates how many of these objects are observed annually.

Fun fact: Supernovae are expected to go off at a rate of about one per century per galaxy. We observe a lot of them (with telescopes) because there are a lot of galaxies. However, the last supernova to go off in the Milky Way was SN 1604, which was so bright that it could be seen during the day. Four centuries without a supernova -- pretty weird!

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T18:40:00.000-08:00

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

-- Luke 2:8-14

Christmas Comes Early to the Stapers Household

2010-12-19T11:30:00.001-08:00

In Texas, nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like a new gun

Hubby got me my very own Taurus "The Judge" Public Defender yesterday -- it's a handgun that is chambered for both .410 shotgun shells and .45 Long Colts.

He'll be traveling a lot for work in January and wanted me to have a convenient home defense weapon. We have a modified Mossberg 500 plus two .45 ACPs in strategic places around the house, but the Public Defender is a more convenient option for me if I have to deal with an intruder close-range. Also, it'll be a handy car defense weapon for the few road trips I take annually.

According to Wikipedia:

It got its name "The Judge" in 2006 when Bob Morrison, Executive Vice President, learned that judges in high-crime areas of Miami, Florida were purchasing the revolver for personal defense in their courtrooms, and after Morrison investigated further, the model designation was changed from 4410 to 4510 to more accurately reflect the revolver's versatility (.45 Colt + 410 shot -> "4510"). Taurus International reports that the Judge is their top-selling firearm.

We sent photos to my father in-law, who lives in Finland, and he commented that the EU wouldn't even know how to classify the thing (besides "scary" and "banned," that is).

Range trip pending.

Love Child: Andy Dick

2010-12-19T11:24:00.001-08:00

December's Love Child is Andy Dick, who looks like his parents might have been Woody Allen and Garth Algar from Wayne's World.

Erin Crockabitch

2010-12-14T09:52:00.000-08:00

My wife coined that nickname for Erin Brockovich many years ago. Seems it's appropriate.

A Finnish Christmas Story - Updated!

2010-12-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

Leave it to the Finns to make the only Christmas movie showing in the U.S. this year.

Based on the popular shorts by Rare Exports:

[Warning: Mildly NSFW, as it features a bit of Christmas sausage, if you get my drift.]

Update: Saw it this weekend. Entertaining movie with actual Finnishness. A little dark, but funny. Most of the movie is in Finnish with subtitles. I understand a little Finnish, enough to know that all of the bad words (there were a lot) were translated very mildly for the English subtitles. Hubby, who laughed heartily during the movie, commented that the Finnish dialogue was well written -- apparently there are subtleties in the language that were not (or could not be) adequately translated. Also, the boy's dad looks a lot like hubby.

Love Child: Bruce Boudreau

2010-11-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

Introducing a new feature here at Carnaby Fudge, called "Love Child," wherein I point out how a famous person looks like the love child of two other famous people.

Our November (just under the wire) Love Child is Washington Capitals head coach, Bruce Boudreau, who looks to me like he was co-sired by Mickey Rooney and Nikita Khrushchev.

Feel free to send in suggestions.

The Lost Lesson of Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T10:12:00.000-08:00

John Stossel provides a Thanksgiving history lesson your kids are unlikely to learn in school:

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

RTWT.

Charles Bronson Kills Hipsters

2010-11-23T16:03:00.000-08:00

Hey, man, is your coat a vintage coat?

Design Your Universe

2010-11-20T15:40:00.000-08:00

What you get when you combine death metal, Wagner, Hans Zimmer, Carl Orff, and quantum mechanics:

Bad Joke

2010-10-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

I just made up the following joke:

Q: What did the abacus say to the slide rule when it was time to go home from the math party?

A: Calculator

Get it? Calc-u-later? That was pretty bad. Yet the humor lies not in the joke itself, but in the badness.

Medication Nation

2010-09-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

Went to the emergency room this afternoon, because I thought my nectarine was trying to kill me. Turns out what I thought was a piece of nectarine lodged in my throat was a big scratch on my esophagus from a tiny shard of the pit. These two things apparently feel exactly the same. Anyway. The triage nurse asked me, on a scale of 1-10, how much pain was I feeling. I told him zero; I was just exceedingly uncomfortable. He wrote it down on my chart. The nurse who treated me in the observation room asked how painful my condition was. I told him not at all, and he wrote that down on my chart. The doctor came in, looked at my chart, asked me what kind of pain I was in, and I told him none. He wrote it down. Later, as he's discharging me, the doctor hands me a prescription for Vicodin. I told him I didn't need it, because (again) I wasn't in any pain. He said to take it anyway just in case.

I remember how, even 10-15 years ago, it took a lot of convincing to get a doctor to prescribe anything, let alone a powerful painkiller. Now I have a doctor pushing narcotics on me over my protestations. Is this one reason why half of all Americans are on prescription drugs and why addiction to prescription painkillers is a big problem? Yes, and it's insane, and it must confuse the heck out of kids who are supposed to understand why there is a War on (Some) Drugs^TM.

Licious Way to Live

2010-09-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

These days, when everything is racist, I've found an image that causes me great confusion:

Is this picture racist? Tolerant? Inclusive? Color blind? Black and white? Or just a couple of kids holding glasses of milk? Should Darigold be praised or protested? Should we buy their milk or boycott their products? Are they suggesting racial/gender harmony with their checkerboard white/chocolate girl/boy milk montage? Or are they suggesting that interracial relationships are a cold product of societal pasteurization?

And why is the boy black while the girl is white? Are they suggesting that black men will be stealing all our white women? After all, the girl is holding the chocolate milk, while the boy is holding the white milk. Are they suggesting that our children drink forbidden milk?

Maybe the milk/skin combinations are suggesting racial preferences, since, obviously, only an idiot would prefer white milk to chocolate, except that the white kid got the chocolate milk. Maybe the black kid got white milk to show how African Americans are treated as second class citizens. Would the picture be more or less racist if the kids were holding milk of their own color? What if the boy was white and the girl black?

Also, where are Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, etc? What kind of milk do these under-represented flavors drink? Now I'm really confused. Liberal or conservative, progressive or the opposite, please help!!!

Bucket List

2010-07-31T22:25:00.001-07:00

Watching Master Chef with my wife just now. She says to me: "one of my goals in life is to have Gordon Ramsey swear at me."

Forsooth.

On the Economy

2010-07-05T08:39:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite authors, D.G. Garan, wrote compellingly in his book The Key to the Sciences of Man on a great many topics, including economics. Here's a prescient excerpt:

The increase in consumption of the "consumer confidence", about which the economists are always so concerned, never needs any help or stimulation. The consuming masses are always ready to start spending at crazy speed, using every possible form of credit, as soon as they are sure of employment. But possibilities of employment are directly proportional to the amount of capital invested, even as Keynesian theory recognizes; and consumption is what decreases capital. Fortunately there always are savings, by the industrialists producers, as they "exploit" the consumers and labor. ... Thus economy grows in spite of the concerns of economists...

...

Stimulation of economy, through heightened consumption and consumer confidence , is part of the general modern use of stimulation in all fields as the great remedy. ... In economic adjustment the seemingly invigorating increase in consumption decreases the capital accumulation which is the real source of economic vigor. If economic expansion derived from the "scientifically" clearly invigorating effects of increased consumption, we would instantly have a utopian continuous economic expansion. For there is nothing easier and more self enforcing than consumption. People with good common sense know this, but the economists can always prove that increase in consumption is the way to stimulate economy. Hence the perennial controversies, on the highest levels of our economic policy making.

And so we get Stimulus I, and are suffering the push for Stimulus II, even though economic stimulation by the government, which consumes our current and future savings, will make things worse. The American people know instinctively that in times of uncertainty in the economy, saving is the safest approach, provided you can trust your government to refrain from printing money, or from inflationary policies in general. Left alone, we will accumulate the capital necessary for economic recovery, and in less time that might be imagined by the nitwits in government.

And here lies the most unfortunate aspect of the economy. There's no way to know, as in to show with absolute certainty, which approach at a given time is best for the economy. We were told, and many in the public accepted, that Stimulus I was absolutely necessary because no matter how stupid the stimulus was, and no matter the debt we incurred at the time, without the Stimulus NOW! we would be worse off for the considerable future. Oh to be able to back up two years and re-run the economy with no government intervention at all.

Well, That Settles It

2010-06-16T15:58:00.001-07:00

I found this while wasting time on the web:

Machete A2

2010-05-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

Had a look at the trailer for Machete last night. Noticed a little problem at 0:47...

Dude's got his flash hider on sideways.

Update: Properly installed A2 flash hider:

Note To Charles Johnson: These are my people, Americans

2010-04-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

LGF and AGW, Once Again

2010-03-14T23:45:00.001-07:00

Here we have Charles at LGF, again, not understanding what the "science" supposedly says about global warming. I'm also curious why the Canadian climate scientists mentioned in the story are so "appalled" at the warmest Canadian winter on record. Scientists are normally "fascinated" or possibly "interested" in such events. "Appalled" implies an emotion a scientist might feel toward bad science, or meddling administrators, or a surprisingly poor public education system.

Back to Charles being ignorant. Here's a graph of the temperature record for North America dating back to 1750:

And here's what the article in question mentions:

Environment Canada scientists report that winter 2009/10 was 4 C above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948.

[...]

“It’s beyond shocking,” David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, told Canwest News Tuesday. Records have been shattered from “coast to coast to coast.”

The problem with this report is easily seen in the graph above. The average temperature of North America has, since 1750, warmed approximately 1 degree Celsius. So we're to believe that global warming caused the 2009/2010 Canadian winter to be 4 C above normal? How does that fit on the chart? Here's a pic of where a 4 C over normal temperature would fit on the graph above:

Alert Hockey Canada... I think I just found Crosby's Olympic stick!

I know the response to my complaint, that Canada is not all of North America, but it is a significant chunk. So what, did the rest of North America cool so that the average temperature remained on track in the graph? I don't think so. I think this shockingly warm winter was an anomaly having nearly nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming. If you read the article they come up with all sorts of conjectures that could explain why AGW might have something to do with the warm winter, but no hard science.

So what is the point of this article on the warm Canadian winter? Seems to me its only purpose is to try to get regular folks stirred up about AGW, to somehow get them to think that we're about to be cast in a Hollywood disaster flick, and that we'd better accept the massive economic boondoggle they want to engineer in order to stop the melting.

So bite me. And Charles... sit on it, Malph.

Gym Tips and Etiquette

2010-03-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

As a 20+ year veteran of the weight room and former competitive powerlifter, I learned a lot about lifting techniques and how to be a good gym rat. Not everybody follows good technique, however, or understands the written and unwritten rules of the weight room. If you've ever wondered what these are, read on.

Tips

Set goals and keep a record of your progress.

Use good form. The best way to hurt yourself or make minimal gains is to use bad form. Execute the proper range of motion for each lift with no contorting, heaving, or jerking. For instance, if you're doing pulldowns, let the bar go all the way up until your arms are straight before you pull it back down again. If you can't lift with good form, then you're using too much weight -- and you're impressing nobody.

If you want to get big and strong, gradually work into lower reps and higher weight. (Don't do this if you're just starting out -- your body needs to adjust.) Bodybuilders bulk up in the off-season with powerlifting. If you want to shape and tone, use higher reps and lower weights, which is how bodybuilders prepare for competition.

Work your lower-body, too. A big upper-body is great, but you'll look weird if you don't balance it with muscular legs.

Unless you're worried about your baby-soft hands, you don't need gloves. I developed a fine set of callouses on my hands and I was proud of them. Use chalk and Stickum if you're worried about grip.

Wrist wraps and knee wraps, properly applied, offer much-needed support once you get into some serious weights.

Have a spotter for the lifts for which you can't easily dump the weight if you get into trouble, e.g. bench press. A spotter is also helpful for the hand-off and racking the weight.

Etiquette

Don't drop or slam your weights down when you're done. Serious powerlifters use a feather touch when replacing weights. Dropping your weights makes you look like you have no control, and it's annoying to other lifters.

Don't try to carry on conversations with people while they're lifting.

Don't get too close to people when they're lifting (unless you're spotting).

Don't be the jerk who lifts right in front of the dumbbell rack so that no one has access.

Rack your weights. Nothing says "asshole" like leaving weights on the bar when you're done.

Refrain from loud conversations, especially on your cell phone.

Don't yell or swear while you're lifting. Yelling and swearing doesn't make you badass, it makes you obnoxious. (Loud grunting is fine.)

If you're serious about getting fit and strong, then don't talk, watch TV, or play with your iPod while you're doing reps. Save it for between sets and concentrate on what you're doing.

Trade secret: Powerlifters do their main lifts facing away from the mirror. It helps you develop stability and forces you to feel what you're doing.

LGF: The Canker Sore You Just Keep on Licking

2010-02-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

I've been posting a lot lately about what a 'tard Charles at LGF can be. Today is no exception. We have the LGF headline: Man charged with stockpiling weapons: Tea Partier and Palin Fan. This eye-roll inducing headline is typical of Charles' take on us knuckle draggers. Let's have a closer look. Charles sums up the situation:

A Massachusetts man arrested Tuesday and charged with possessing explosives and a stockpile of weapons was a tea partier and a fan of Sarah Palin.

Massachusetts. Great place to start for those of us who know the secret gun-nut handshake. They have a law in MA against possessing "a stockpile of weapons"? News to me, but I'm not surprised. I'm also not convinced that it's even true. On the LGF webpage, Charles quotes from an article on the subject:

As we reported yesterday, Gregory Girard, a Manchester technology consultant, was found with a stash of military grade weapons, explosive devices including tear gas and pepper ball canisters, camouflage clothing, knives, handcuffs, bulletproof vests and helmets, and night vision goggles, say police.

Oh. Brother. He had a "stash of military grade weapons"? I have that, I think... I'm not entirely sure what constitutes a stash. He had camo clothing? OMG?!??!!! Oh, wait, I have that too. Turns out to be handy for turkey hunting. Night vision goggles??!? OMG!!?? Call SWAT!!!

Then we find that he's a "Tea Partier and Palin Fan." Big freaking whoop. Out of the 10 bazillion "Tea Partiers and Palin Fans" we find a lone nutter. You can find nutters everywhere if you look hard enough. But let's get back to the weapons angle. The second linked, but unquoted, article is a little more specific:

Girard, who lived at 23B Bridge St., with his wife and 16-year-old son, was charged with four counts of possession of grenade type explosive devices — including tear gas and explosive pepper ball canisters — and four counts of possession of dangerous weapons which include two police fixed batons and two police expandable batons.

Ah, so there's the problem, the "grenade type explosives." Not really sure what those are. And batons. Seriously? The guy did own some guns so the news outfit obviously is going to show a pic of the "stockpile":

So that's a stockpile, eh? He's got a bunch of bolt action hunting rifles, some with wood stocks, and some with synthetic stocks, all very common to deer hunting. He's got what looks like a flare gun and maybe a couple pistols. And he's got a single "sporter" version of an AK type weapon (note the lack of the evil pistol grip). Talk about lame, the dude's got no tactical cred at all. Stockpile my ass.

What we do have is a guy with emotional problems, obviously getting a little too paranoid, and he's got a bunch of rifles, none of them very interesting. Any particular reason why the number of rifles is important? Can a lone nutter shoot with more than one bolt action rifle at a time? The guy only has two hands. Come on people, lame lame lame.

Charles Non-science on Climate Change Again

2010-02-10T12:26:00.001-08:00

My new buddy Charles at LGF has posted again on climate change. Once again, he takes sides without considering why his side might be dumb. In this instance, he links to a Times article about the latest snow storms back east. Charles writes in this regard:

One of the most ignorant (and often intentionally deceptive) “common sense” talking points promoted by the climate denial industry is that cold weather proves global warming theories are a hoax. Every time there’s a blizzard, this hoary old chestnut is taken out of the freezer, thawed out, and hyped by all the usual suspects, including the Republican Party. And every time they defrost it, it smells worse.

Charles has apparently not noticed how the opposite "common sense" talking points have been dragged out for years by the media every time there's a heat wave somewhere. Now, anecdotal evidence pro or con AGW is not science and the number of scare stories, heat waves, snow storms, etc doesn't affect my opinion on the subject of AGW.

Then Charles trots out the Times story. Here we find:

Brace yourselves now — this may be a case of politicians twisting the facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm. As the meteorologist Jeff Masters points out in his excellent blog at Weather Underground, the two major storms that hit Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this winter — in December and during the first weekend of February — are already among the 10 heaviest snowfalls those cities have ever recorded. The chance of that happening in the same winter is incredibly unlikely.

Hey Charles, brace your own self now — but that's the same stupid argument that you always rally against in regards to intelligent design / creationism: "Hey, whoa, the odds of that happening are really small, hence..." It's dumb in creation / ID, and it's dumb here.

And if you really want to talk about probability, the probability of any particular thing happening at some time or other that is not the expected outcome in a system with randomly varying aspects is small. But big-whoop, the probability of the exact expected outcome occurring is also quite small. The likelihood of the occurance of an event is pretty weak evidence. So quit being dumb.

UPDATE: I should have thought of this sooner. If one checks the weather forecast at weather.com for yesterday in DC, we find that the blizzard conditions are accompanied by daily temperatures ranging from a high of 36 deg F to a low of 21 deg F. The seasonal average temperature this time of year in DC ranges from a high of 45 deg F to a low of 29 deg F. So I'm to understand that global warming caused the below-average temperatures in DC as well as the accompanying snowstorm? I thought the Times article said that colder air was drier air. And we're supposed to believe that the 1.4 deg F change in temperatures in the last 150 years lead to the snowstorm back east, eh?

Charles Brings the Apple Dumb

2010-02-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

We all know that Charles of LGF fame is an Apple fanboy. I personally hate the company, and I also hate my iPhone, which I also like, but hate. But I really do hate Apple, especially for their evil involvement in the bogus anti-trust actions taken against Microsoft back in the day.

Anyway, Charles linked to another dumb piece. This one about "The significance of the A4," which is the new processor used in the iPad. The reason this piece is dumb is that it makes an apples to oranges comparison between two chips:

It [PA Semi's chip] ran at 2.0 GHz with an average of 13 watts of power consumption and a peak of 25 watts. Meanwhile, Intel's more traditionally-designed Merom Core 2 Duo LV L7700—the closest competition at the time—could only run at 1.8 GHz with a max of 17 watts.

The reason this is apples to oranges is that chip clock speed is a poor measure of computing speed. My 1.6 GHz Intel Core CPU can do mathematical computations more than twice as quickly as my old Pentium 4 at 3 GHz.

Without some real measure of performance, the comparison above is useless. But like all things, Charles heaps praise on things he likes (Obama, Apple, big government, liberal stuff, eco-babble, etc.) and scorn for things he doesn't like (normal right of center Americans who want the government to mostly leave them alone and not spend their money for them, all things Christian, etc.).

Another Reason to Dislike Charles at LGF

2010-02-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Apparently Charles at LGF has jumped on the Tea Bag wagon. What an A-hole. All these pathetic lefty losers are referring to the Tea Party movement as such. Yes, Charles has a valid point that some folks who show up to these events are mean idiots, but a lot more of them are good, decent, normal folks who don't like Big Government, and don't need four million and one government programs to make their lives better. That's the point of the movement. Why focus on the crazy? In any big movement like this you will inevitably bring out the crazy, but I choose to ignore them.

And about the Birther thing. I'm not a birther. I'm sure enough that Obama was born in the US and has a birth certificate to prove it, and I honestly don't care if he doesn't. What I am curious about is the fact that he won't let the public see the thing. What's he got to hide? Sorta strange, that's all. This doesn't keep me up at night, but it is interesting that Obama goes out of his way to hide his birth certificate and his college grades. Seems there's something in them that he doesn't want folks to see. If his college grades were great or outstanding, you know we'd have seen them.

More Eco-Lame from LGF

2010-02-08T11:18:00.001-08:00

Charles of LGF fame has posted another eco-idiotic link to a Peter Sinclair video that apparently babbles on about plug-in hybrid cars as a "renewable energy solution of the month." Now, I have nothing against hybrid cars, nor plug in cars, nor hybrid plug-in cars, nor cars in general, but "renewable energy" they ain't. It apparently hasn't occurred to Charles that plug-in cars are coal powered, because that's where the majority of the electricity at the plug-in point comes from in this country.

Update: I was just about to watch the video, and it's been pulled by the user. I wonder if they just got the clue. Note to Charles: get the clue.

Why I Parted Ways With Little Green Footballs

2010-02-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

As a long time reader of LGF, I've finally given up on Charles Johnson. While he was a great help in crushing Dan Rather in Memogate, and for his honesty about the rising threat of Islamism, he's also a left-leaning statist with nary a libertarian bone in his body. Among my gripes with Charles (I had these problems with him long before his "why I left the right" post, btw):

1. Frequent and incorrect accusations of "racism." FYI charles, Kenyan isn't a race. "Racist" has little meaning anymore, since leftists throw it around at the drop of a hat, and scientists can't even define race.

2. Banning me from comments when my comments included the crimes of:

writing that other commenters were being jerks to me, when they were being obvious jerks to me in comments.
asking if Charles was a prodigal son of the left.

That's it, that's all, and I got banned. Thanks Charles, really nice treatment there.

3. He's a complete ignoramus on the second amendment issue, parroting MSM scare articles without a clue.

4. Choosing sides in the AGW debate when he has a poor grasp of the science.

Regarding #4, case in point #1: Charles' link to The Climate Killers article in which we are invited to meet "the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming." The problem with this idiotic link is that the authors omit MIT Professor Richard Lindzen, who is the top denier in the world, and who doesn't fit their bullshit.

Case in point #2: Charles' post New Study: US Weather Stations Not Biased Toward Warming.

If Charles had a critical eye, he would be a little skeptical of the results given by this "new study," which considered the effects of the situation of weather stations in the United States on the measured increase in temperature in the U.S. over the past century. As most of you hopefully already know, there have been complaints that some of these weather stations are poorly sited near building exhaust ports, on asphalt surfaces, etc., so that the temperatures measured at these sites will be warmer than if the weather stations had been sited better. Along comes Dr. Matthew Menne and his co-authors at NOAA NCDC with a study that looks at this problem. Their study is a good one, and shows that if these problematic stations are removed from the data set, voila! the temperature increase measured in the CONUS over the last century is actually a little higher than without the poorly sited station data.

This result, that omission of data from the poorly sited weather stations gives a greater increase in average temperatures in the CONUS, may indeed be correct. But the conclusion that "the badly situated stations tend to have a bias toward cooler temperatures" is problematic. It seems they are saying that the situation of these weather stations near probable sources of extra heat lead to cooler measurements. This is an odd result, which may turn out to be true, but it certainly warrants skepticism. Charles apparently isn't capable of such.

Here's what the researchers stated about the results:

While the poor sites had a slightly warmer average minimum temperature than the good sites (by 0.03°C), the average maximum temperature measured at the poor sites was significantly cooler (by 0.14°C) than the good sites. As a result, overall average temperatures measured at the poor sites were cooler than the good sites.

Here's the problem. The researchers don't know what the measured temperature at the poorly situated sites would have been had the sites been better situated. They only know that the poorly situated sites show overall average temperatures that are lower than those measured at the better situated sites.

There were 525 weather stations considered in the study. Of them, 71 were rated good (as in well-situated) and 454 were rated bad. The authors claim that

...the sites with good exposure, though small in number, are reasonably well distributed across the country and, as shown by Vose and Menne [2004], are of sufficient density to obtain a robust estimate of the CONUS average.

I don't have access to the Vose and Menne [2004] study mentioned, so I can't comment on the result as well as I'd like. We're supposed to just accept their result, that the 2004 study gave a "robust estimate." Robust can mean a lot of things, but in a scientific context it most often means strong. What it does not mean is accurate, otherwise they might have said that their estimate was not only robust but accurate. They didn't tell us how accurate their estimate was, nor did they compare the robustness or accuracy of their estimate to what we'd have had if all the temperature stations were well situated and used in the estimate.

Comparisons, people, I want them. And until I get them, I remain skeptical of these results.

Now here's the rub. Consider the following possibility that Charles and the study authors did not. Suppose the temperature stations were biased upward due to being poorly sited. The results of the study show that the overall average temperature in the CONUS is lower with data from these sites. If both these conjectures are true, then we have the overall result that the average temperature is actually cooler still than what is given with data from all 525 sites.

The reason this bothers me so much is that the authors seem to go out of their way to show the exact opposite result. On an anecdotal level, this seems to happen an awful lot, that errors in the research always show an increase in regional or global temperatures when corrected. Always. Sort of like how election recounts always favor Democrats. The probability of this always being the case is quite low, and so this warrants skepticism.

Anyway, the long and short of this mess is that Charles is off my reading list. He used to be on the side of the skeptics, so he claims, until he read all the stuff that he isn't capable of properly understanding, and was finally convinced. This is the problem with most people on both sides of the political spectrum taking sides in the AGW debate. Most of them aren't capable of understanding the science, and they really ought to stay out of believing one side or the other.

The big sis says I need another paragraph in here somewhere to wrap this up, but I'm out of gas, as usual. So long Charles, thanks for the links to Andy McKee.

Revenge is a dish best served...

2010-02-01T09:57:00.000-08:00

We all went to a "white elephant" Christmas party this year, never been to one before. The kids were supposed to have their own, but in the end, due to limited time, the kids were included with the grownups. The story I have is long, so I'll shorten it: my 9 year old son ended up winning a five piece completer set. Needless to say, this was a bit of a bummer. At the same time, the idiots in our legislature here in Washington State are proposing a new Assault Weapons Ban.

So to get two birds with one stone, my son and I built his first AR. Now, while I specialize in 6.8, I thought it'd be fun to put together a .223 to have around, and it's better for the kid as the recoil is quite mild. Here's the result:

And now everyone is happy. The upper is built with a 16" YHM (read E.R. Shaw) barrel, Troy TRXE 9" forearm, CAA collapsible buttstock, and Young Manufacturing chrome bolt and carrier. The Noveske Flaming Pig flash hider the kid wants on there weighs a ton, so we take it off for shooting off hand for now.

Revenge is a dish best served... on a five piece completer set.

Quote of the Day

2010-01-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

Via comments at Vox Popoli

The atheist says: "There is no human spirit, therefore a vacuum will be sustainable."

The Christian says: "The human spirit abhors a vacuum. And you're not going to like what will fill it."

See "Unintended consequences, atheism and."

French to Criminalize 'Psychological Violence' in Marriages

2010-01-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

As if men needed any more disincentive to marry

France will become the first country in the world to ban 'psychological violence' within marriage later this year.

The new law, which would also apply to co-habiting couples, would see people getting criminal records for insulting their loved ones during domestic arguments.

I wonder if the Frogs are really deluded enough to believe this will encourage couples to get along or if they are trying to discourage marriage/co-habitation to the point that the French population dies out. For such cultural fascists, it's bizarre that they'd enact the swiftest possible means of cultural suicide.

How would you even objectively apply this law? With physical violence, either you hit someone or you didn't, but 'psychological' is extremely subjective: what hurts my feelings may bounce off of you. And if the psychological abuse is so bad that you have to make a criminal of your partner, why not just get a divorce?

Lastly, if there was any real justice in the world, this would put half of all women in electronic ankle bracelets, because most women are far more 'psychologically violent' than men. Ask any girl who went to public school.

But there won't be any justice with this law. As with racism, the law will be interpreted in favor of the "oppressed" class; and "justice" almost always means sticking it to the politically-incorrect group.

Goodbye, Grandpa

2009-12-12T18:01:00.000-08:00

Grandpa passed away peacefully this morning at 2 am. I am sad for the loss of his earthly presence, but I rejoice that he is caught up in God's eternal love and reunited with his beloved wife and daughter.

R.I.P. SSgt. USMC Grandpa: 1923 - 2009. You are missed.

What Santa does with naughty reindeer

2009-12-09T07:45:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Grandpa

2009-12-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

On the 68th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Houston Chronicle observes a sad fact:

The youngest of the World War II veterans are now in their 80s and it's estimated less than 1 million Pacific war combatants, primarily from the Navy and Marine Corps, are alive.

My grandfather is one of the remaining Marines who served in the Pacific theater during WWII. He's 86, very ill, and we've just been told he has a few weeks to live.

Grandpa was 17 when war broke out in the Pacific. He and his friends ran down to the recruitment office to volunteer for service. He became a navigator/bombardier on a B-25 Mitchell. We still have his certificate from bombardier school along with a photo of the handsome young Marine in his uniform.

Many years later, when I was in my 20s, Grandpa was delighted when I told him I was joining the Marines. He smiled widely as he remembered boot camp, and told me it wasn't as terrible as people think: just do what the DIs tell you and you'll be fine. He hid his disappointment when I was disqualified at MEPS for extremely poor eyesight and asthma.

He rarely talked about his service. On a few precious occasions, he would tell us grandchildren amusing little stories -- tantalizing tidbits -- about his time in the South Pacific. To him, it was a job, not heroics. When he came home after the war, he did his best to create a normal life for himself and his family. He worked decades at the same job, driving around the state selling janitorial supplies to schools. He never complained that it was a dreary, unfulfilling job. He found fulfillment in taking care of his family of six, in going to church, in volunteering his time at the local Catholic thrift store, and in skiing on the local hills and hunting on his beloved Steens Mountain.

Grandpa indulged in few luxuries. He lived in the same house for fifty years, and only changed the furniture once in all that time. Most of what he spent was for other people. When his children became teenagers, he surprised them by trading in the old family car for a new Camaro. He drove the same old truck for thirty years, but bought a new dirt bike for the grandsons to use on visits to his hunting cabin. He bought my mother a car when she was a destitute college student with two young children, and paid for my braces when I was a teenager. He never had a VCR or fancy stereo; he had the same small TV and Hi-Fi that seemed to last forever. He did surprise us once by splurging on a skiing trip to Austria, but I think that was more for my grandma than for him. Most of what he earned went into investments and savings. Over five decades, that added up to a lot: when he passes, my grandfather will leave a substantial inheritance to his children and grandchildren.

But nobody is looking forward to the inheritance. We would all rather have Grandpa. There will be one fewer Marine in the coming weeks, and it will be a terrible loss for our family.

Carnaby and I owe a lot to Grandpa, more than can be expressed in words. His sacrifices have often moved me to shame, that his generation gave so much and I have given so little. But as my father reminded me, that is precisely why they gave so much, so that their children and grandchildren could live in peace and prosperity.

Thank you, Grandpa.

No

2009-10-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Got a questionnaire in the mail from the RNC yesterday. The questions are supposed to make me think they care about my opinion, but what they really wanted was my "most generous contribution." Here's what I sent them instead.

Not that it will make any difference, but it's worth a try.

Update: Emailed the photo to Michelle Malkin and she liked it.

Degradation of Civility in the Passing Scene

2009-10-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

I watched an old movie recently with a throw-away moment that showed how much civil behavior has degraded in this country. (I can't remember the title, but I think it had Fred MacMurray in it.) The scene: A woman reporter is about to enter an area where construction men are working, a tunnel or something, and MacMurray instructs the foreman to warn the men about her arrival "and tell them, for God's sake, to watch their language." Do men do that anymore? Why bother, when women don't watch their language anymore, either.

My high school research intern mentioned that yesterday was "hip-hop day" at her school. Students dressed up as "gangstas and hos." Mainstreaming a degenerate subculture at any school is bad enough, but this was at a highly-regarded Christian school. Are Christians so desperate to appeal to kids that they go for the lowest common denominator? In this economic climate, it's understandable that institutions are desperate to hold on to revenue, but compromising your beliefs for $20,000 tuition per student makes you an ecclesiastical prostitute.

Our realtor and his brother helped us move into our new house a few months ago. When I entered the spare bedroom to drop off a box, I saw the brother admiring a large mirror on the wall next to the bed. He quipped that it should come in handy when my husband and I want to "have some fun." I don't understand why any man thinks it's okay to talk to a woman that way, let alone a married woman he hardly knows.

T-shirt seen on a patron at Wal-Mart last month: f*ck all y'all. In front of kids, old ladies, everyone. Growing up in the 1970s, I remember a time when even the toughest scruff would've been ashamed to have kids or old ladies overhear bad language, let alone see it displayed all over his chest.

Have you heard of Gao Zhisheng? He was considered one of China's top lawyers, but went missing over a year ago when he was arrested by police. His crime (besides being a practicing Christian) was writing to the U.S. Congress, just before the Beijing Olympics, protesting his country's human rights record. He had been arrested and physically tortured for his outspokenness in the past, so he knew the risk and did it anyway. I thought of Gao as I looked at a pair of dangly, plastic testicles hanging from the back of a truck in traffic last week. People are tortured in gulags and die fighting for the right to criticize their governments while some guy halfway around the world uses the right to free speech to display plastic genitals on his truck. Or to tell everyone within view "f*ck you" on a t-shirt.

Sigh.

I linked to an article a few days ago about pastors who avoid the culture war. Like Giles' waffling pastors, I, too, am tempted to permanently retreat into the cloistered environment of church and Christian fellowship. This is item #4 on Giles' list: "Last Days Madness." Giles is right that, irrespective of whether this depressing incivility heralds the apocalypse to come, we have a duty to engage the culture.

If the [Christians] within the good old US of A would crucify their fear of man, get solidly briefed regarding the chief political issues, not sweat necessary division, not get caught up in last days madness, maintain their hope for tomorrow, understand their liberties under God and our Constitution, not become so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good, focus on the majors and blow off bowing to cash instead of convictions, then maybe . . . just maybe . . . we will see their righteous influence cause our nation to take the needed sharp turn away from the secularist progressives’ speedily approaching putrid pit.

Amen.

Atheism vs. Christian Theology 101

2009-10-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

Some fascinating back and forth at Common Sense Atheism and Vox Popoli over the verity of Christianity and the nature of evil:

Common Sense Atheism letters 1, 2, 3

Vox Popoli responses 1, 2, 3

"10 Reasons Why Pastors Avoid the Culture War"

2009-10-13T13:55:00.001-07:00

Big Hollywood blogger Doug Giles takes waffling pastors to task

Given that the culture-dividing issues, thanks to Obama, are more obvious than Joan Rivers’ last lip implants, it is mind-boggling to me that many ministers are mute or side with parties, policies and principles that are antithetical to the Judeo-Christian worldview. I don’t know if you got this memo in seminary but pastors are not only supposed to salvage souls but also build the good society.

RTWT.

Sounds like a real page-turner

2009-10-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

Ralph Nader has written a novel, called Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, that appears to be Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged materialized from a parallel universe.

Consider. It's long (700 pages), it's an ideological fantasy, and it centers around the world's elite and super-wealthy. But instead of society's most productive members withdrawing on principle and letting the world fall into chaos, we get society's most earnest members withdrawing to come up with a plan for mega-regulation. Instead of John Galt and his famous radio speech, we get Patriotic Polly the parrot who squawks platitudes over the airwaves. Instead of powerful industrialists like Francisco D'Anconia, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart, we get Warren Buffett, Phil Donahue, and Yoko Ono.

One of the joys of Rand's novels was the aptness with which she named her characters, especially the villains: Mort Liddy, Cuffy Meigs, Chick Morrison. What does Nader come up with? Lancelot Lobo. As this WSJ reviewer quips, it's a good thing Nader chose so many well-known people for his characters.

Say It With Me: INSURANCE

2009-09-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

So many people involved in the health care debate seem unclear on the subject of health insurance. Let's start with a look at the term. From dictionary.com, we have:

in⋅sur⋅ance
–noun
1. the act, system, or business of insuring property, life, one's person, etc., against loss or harm arising in specified contingencies, as fire, accident, death, disablement, or the like, in consideration of a payment proportionate to the risk involved.
2. coverage by contract in which one party agrees to indemnify or reimburse another for loss that occurs under the terms of the contract.

Since some folks have better reading comprehension than others, we'll help everyone out with that word, contingency:

con⋅tin⋅gen⋅cy
–noun, plural -cies.
1. dependence on chance or on the fulfillment of a condition; uncertainty; fortuitousness: Nothing was left to contingency.
2. a contingent event; a chance, accident, or possibility conditional on something uncertain: He was prepared for every contingency.

I'll make the reasonable assumption that nearly everyone knows the meaning of health and thus we can move on to the term health insurance. From the definitions above, we can see that health insurance is a contract one party purchases from another such that by some chance the fulfillment of an undesirable medical condition was to befall the purchaser of said contract, the second party, which supplied the contract, agrees to reimburse the the first party for some or all of his or her medical expenses that arose due to the fulfillment of said contingency, as provided in the contract.

That's all health insurance is, or at least that's what the term health insurance means. A person buys health insurance to protect himself from significant financial loss in the event that he one day is beset by a serious medical condition. I have such a health insurance plan. I pay $340 per month for a family of four for a policy that covers our medical expenses up to one million dollars per person per year.

Now, with such a low premium, the insurance company also has a large deductible. Our deductible is $6,000 per person per year or $12,000 for the whole family per year. No big deal, $12,000 never ruined anyone, and it's unlikely that we'll need to spend that much on health care in any one year anyway (I think we spent about $2k this year). Now to be $50k, $100k, or $500k in the hole due to something serious like cancer, that's a big deal.

Then we have this guy:

My name is Bing Perrine and I live here in Billings, Montana, with my beautiful wife and baby boy. Last June, I collapsed because of congenital heart problems. I need open-heart surgery, but I have no insurance and no company will insure me.

My friends and family have been a blessing. With hearts as big as a Montana sky, they have helped with bake sales and benefits. But my wife and I still owe over $100,000 in medical bills.

None of this debt would have piled up if I had the option of buying into a public health insurance plan. Private insurance companies need competition. They profit by denying care to people like me.

Senator Baucus, when you take millions of dollars from health and insurance interests that oppose reform -- and oppose giving families like mine the choice of a public option -- I have to ask: whose side are you on?

Let's have a closer look at what he said:

None of this debt would have piled up if I had the option of buying into a public health insurance plan.

Meaning: None of this debt would have piled up if someone else was forced to pay for my medical care whether they wanted to or not.

Then he shows his lack of understanding of the term we learned above: health insurance.

Private insurance companies need competition. They profit by denying care to people like me.

The insurance companies denied care to you?!? Did they really? Do the insurance companies even provide health care? No they don't! Doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc., provide health care. As we saw above, insurance companies provide you with insurance. That's what an insurance company does. This is not a difficult concept to grasp! I'm thinking that you got your education from the public option, and maybe it wasn't so good.

Now let's look at what you may have meant to say, that "health insurance companies profit by denying health insurance to people like me." Darn tootin' they do! How can an insurance company survive, let alone make a profit, if they have to insure against contingencies that are 100% certain to occur? I suppose there's one way they could survive, they'd simply charge a premium that is equal to the cost incurred due to the contingency, but then that would leave you in the same $100k hole.

I'll wrap this up, because I'm done steaming, but besides all the other stuff the government could do to improve the health care / health insurance industry (like tort reform, allowing competition across state lines, etc.), they could require that every American purchase a health insurance plan of some sort. It could be cheap and have a really high deductible, but you'd have to have some minimum insurance.

I know I'm gonna lose my libertarian street cred with that statement, but it's true. It must be done. The reason is the following. If some dumbass without health insurance becomes gravely ill, or suffers an accidental, but serious, injury, s/he will not be turned away from the hospital. That person will be treated and we will all get the bill. Much as things ought not to be this way, the fact remains that things are this way. So everyone must have a minimum amount of health insurance.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch...

2009-09-26T18:13:00.000-07:00

...you must first invent the universe.

I'm in love with this video. Simultaneously one of the weirdest and most moving things I've seen on YouTube. Lyrics below.

[Big thanks to Russell at Solarvoid for sending this my way.]

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has it's own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we've waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting

Good Old Hockey Game

2009-09-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

Come on, new season, hurry up! Hubby and I have been watching endless loops of "used" games from last year's Stanley Cup playoff season on the NHL Network. The upside is watching Malkin make that astounding backhand hat-trick goal in the last period of Game 2 between the Penguins and the Hurricanes yet again.

Will the Pens go the distance again this year? Can't wait to find out!

Movie Review: Gamer

2009-09-11T08:26:00.001-07:00

I'm in danger of treading on liberal movie-reviewer ground here. I want to recommend a movie that I found lacking cinematically, but one that nevertheless carries an approved message. And also carries Gerard Butler, of whom I can't get enough in ultra-masculine roles.

The movie is Gamer. The plot is simple and familiar: A death-row inmate named Kable (Butler) is a pawn in a popular real-life war game that looks awfully similar to ultra-realistic combat video games. He's made it through 27 games. If he makes it through 30, he goes free. Think Gladiator meets Death Race 2000 with a twist of The Matrix.

During the game (called Slayers), Kable is controlled by a bored and spoiled teenage video-game prodigy. Never mind how this is accomplished -- it's explained in the movie in one of those techno-babble scenes reminiscent of Star Trek: The Next Generation and other shows that think they have to include this stuff to seem believable. The same technology is used to create human pawns for another game, called Society, that's apparently very much like Second Life or the Sim Society games, but given how much society has deteriorated in the movie you can guess which human activity this game revolves around.

Kable's wife (Amber Valletta), who is now broke and trying to get their daughter back from protective services, is an "actor" in Society. She is controlled by a sweaty, naked, morbidly obese loser who, from the looks of it, probably lives in his mother's basement.

These games have made their creator, a sadistic young genius named Castle, a multi-billionaire. An underground group called the Humanz wants to stop Castle. They contact the teenager controlling Kable in an effort to convince him to relinquish control in the next game so that Kable can escape, and the action goes from there.

Unfortunately, the first half of the movie is weighed down by extreme over-editing and that single-most irritating cinematic fad-that-just-won't-go-away: the shaky-cam. I spent much of the first half looking at the floor to avoid the dizzying fast-cuts and jittery images. (Movie editors, here is a creed by which to live: Just because you can edit, doesn't mean you should.) The camera work eventually settles down and once you can watch the movie and follow the action, there's a compelling theme, though it's not as developed as it could've been.

The movie seemed to be commenting on the trend of increasing detachment through video games and the Internet, even suggesting that real-life combat and sex games are an inevitable step in the progression towards depravity and dehumanization in our over-indulged, entertainment-obsessed culture. If we're not careful, we will become so weakened, as individuals and as a society, that we are in danger of becoming slaves.

Though the movie ostensibly takes a swipe at sadistic corporate weirdos, I'm certain the intended real-life counterpart is not employed in the private sector. Consider. At one point, after Kable escapes the game (don't accuse me of spoiling the plot; you knew this was inevitable), he meets with the Humanz who explain the situation to him:

It ain't just a game, you know. Everyday there's more people stepping forward, wanna be a part of Castle's world. Throwing away everything it means to be human.

Right now it's the desperate ones. Convicts, addicts, the sick, the poor... the ones that fell through the cracks. They have no choice.

But this is only the beginning.

Think about it: the federal prison system is growing out of control, set to bankrupt the whole damn USA. Castle rides in on a white horse, says he got a plan to bail us out and everyone just falls in line.

So what's next? The health care system is collapsing. Castle comes in to the rescue again.

This time he's pushin' total control of genetic disease. Birth defects a thing of the past. All we gotta do is exchange our cells for the ones he wanna give us.

The promise of a longer life and a fatter wallet -- you think people will refuse?

Hell, no.

They'll be standing in line to hand their babies over to him. Next think you know, we all slaves.

You could argue this dialogue is subtle enough that one can decide how to read it, but I read it as decidedly, and surprisingly, critical of our Dear Leader. Just as surprising is that it was delivered mostly by Chris "Ludacris" Bridges.

Well, God, you win. I asked for a movie -- just one movie, any movie -- with a message that doesn't indict traditional morality, religion, conservatism, soldiers, masculinity, or families. Maybe I should've specified a good movie, but I didn't. I got what I asked for.

I can't recommend Gamer on its cinematic merits, because it doesn't really have any, but it has an interesting theme and one golden moment in which, for once, the criticism is aimed in a new direction.

"A Christian Nation"

2009-08-30T07:49:00.001-07:00

Two excellent commentaries in the last week deserve attention. The first is "A Christian Nation" by Jeremy D. Boreing at Big Hollywood. The second is Bill Whittle's video commentary, "The Great Liberal Narrative" at PJTV.

Boreing's post is in response to readers who took exception to his claim that America is a Christian nation. The argument goes like this: America can't be a Christian nation, since our government is not explicitly Christian; in fact, there's a wall between church and state. Boreing points out the flaw in this argument: the government is not the nation, the people are the nation. The people at the time of the founding were overwhelmingly Christian, and the Founding Fathers, irrespective of their individual beliefs, recognized this. We're still largely Christian, despite a claim to the contrary by our ill-informed President.

Boreing goes on to explain the origin and meaning of the oft-cited "wall between church and state," which I excerpt in full to make a point later:

The original European settlers of what would become the United States of the Revolution were almost exclusively British. They were also immensely religious. That’s why they were here. After a millennia of state-religion mandated by Rome, Henry VIII had rejected the authority of the Pope in Britain and created a state-religion of his own. The Church of England made the king not only the ultimate political power in the land, but the ultimate religious authority as well. A violation of Henry’s religious positions was a violation of the law, and a violation of the law was heresy. The punishment was severe: Beheading, hanging, burning at the stake… Terrible things happen when civil and religious authority are mingled together.

The problem for Henry, and for Rome, was that a Reformation was also taking place. Men like Martin Luther and William Tyndale (who Henry had strangled and burned) had begun translating the Bible into common languages, giving the people the opportunity to explore God for themselves. What they discovered surprised them. In the Book of Exodus, God establishes a civil leader for his people in Moses. He also establishes a religious leader in Aaron. Then he does something really interesting: He commands that they remain separate forever. If the king tries to supersede the religious authority of the priesthood, God will destroy him, as he does in 2 Chronicles, cursing a king named Uzziah for conducting a religious rite in the temple. Of course, God was God of the state, as well as the religion. He gave guidance to Moses just as surely as he did to Aaron. He just precluded the civil leader from also being the religious leader. Undoubtedly, God understood that without that distinction, all kings would be like Henry VIII. Separation of church and state, then, is actually a Biblical principle.

When Jefferson’s own American forefathers, the Pilgrims, took sanctuary from religious persecution in this new world, they sought to be true to the Biblical teachings that their former rulers had violated. In America, as in Israel thousands of years before, government and religious authority would be forever separated, though just as in Israel, God would be God of both. God and religion, after all, are not the same thing. One is the Supreme Being over all, and the other is the institution by which he is taught and worshiped. Jefferson understood this distinction, which is why he could assure the Danbury Baptists that there was a “wall of separation between church and state,” ensuring that the government would never dictate or enforce religious decrees, while at the same time he also recognized God though the government, and based the legitimacy of both on him.

And Boreing issues a warning

Since God no longer exists in government, and his history there is no longer taught, is it any wonder that millions upon millions of Americans believe, in utter opposition to the founding philosophy, that our rights come from the government? Where else would they come from? And should it be any surprise if those same Americans desire that the government give them other things as well? After all, if our rights are not by the grace of God but by the grace of government, then whoever controls the government has the ultimate authority over man. Government by definition can do no wrong. This is precisely the kind of thinking our Founders literally warred against. It is also precisely why Americans of all faiths should be proud to own America’s Christian Heritage, and why without it, America is lost.

Now let's put this in context with Bill Whittle's Afterburner commentary, The Great Liberal Narrative. Watch the video.

It is not well known that secular humanists sought and won recognition as a "godless religion" by the Supreme Court of the United States at least as early as the 1950s, and possibly as early as the 1930s when John Dewey issued The Humanist Manifesto. This has been confirmed in later rulings, most notably the 1961 Supreme Court case Torcaso v. Watkins in which Justice Hugo L. Black observes in his decision, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others."

But humanists are sneaky. They are religious when it suits their purposes, as when they seek the first amendment protection of the Constitution or the benefit of tax-exempt status, but they conveniently forget about this when it doesn't suit their purposes. This has allowed humanism to slip under the radar of church/state separation to establish itself as the de facto state religion. It has infiltrated our government, schools, universities, and media. The humanist religion replaces God as the measure of all things with man, i.e. the state, as the measure of all things. Its Bible is the Narrative. The secular humanist religion has many offshoots -- environmentalism, animal rights, feminism, and so on -- differing only in their interpretation and emphasis on certain aspects of the Narrative. However, to deviate significantly from the teachings of the Narrative is heresy, punishable by demonization, harrassment, excommunication, fines, and even imprisonment. Most disturbing is that there is no wall between the secular humanist religion and the state -- they are one and the same -- and we know from the example of Henry VIII what happens when that wall does not exist.

We ought to have learned by now that there is no such thing as a religious vacuum. If an established religion disappears or is killed off, another moves in to fill the void. In the secular parts of the West where God is no longer recognized as the moral authority, the Earth is revered and worshipped under the auspices of the Green movement, even to the degree that violence is committed in the name of Mother Earth. And in places as bleak and godless as North Korea one observes worship of the leader with as much passion and reverence as in any God-centered religion.

It appears to come down to a choice. One can either choose to reclaim the Christian roots of America with its built-in defense of freedom and individual rights or one can abandon it to the godless religion of humanism and a life centered, not on the lessons of the Bible, but on the lessons of the Narrative. We know from the example of Jefferson that one need not be Christian to accept the Christian foundation of this nation and support it. And support it we must or find ourselves in compulsory worship of the state.

Romance

2009-08-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

There's something strangely sweet and nice about this.

Amen! Quarks...

2009-07-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

Following on my previous post about science versus faith, I wanted to comment on a point raised in The Simpsons episode, "The Monkey Suit," which is a funny play on the Scopes Monkey Trial. After the trial is over, Lisa explains to Reverend Lovejoy that, while she has respect for his faith, she believes it shouldn't be taught in school. "After all," she says, "you wouldn't want science taught in church."

Actually, as a devoted Christian (and astrophysicist), that's precisely what I want. Not creation science, not science twisted to mean something it's not, but modern science as it is. Why? Gerald Schroeder explains in God According to God.

To understand how that dynamic Force manifests Itself in the ever changing world It created, we turn to the only two sources of relevant information: nature, that is, the world around us, and the Bible. Both provide a confirmation that God's essence is as vibrant as the world itself. In this sense the study of nature is as much a study of God as is the study of the Bible. The eighteenth century theologian known as the Scholar, or Gaon, of Vilna taught that when the Torah was given on Sinai, it split into portions. Only one portion was retained as the written words of the Bible. The other portion was hidden in nature. And only when we finally discover that part of the Torah that was sequestered in nature will we be able to fully understand the word of God.

The ancient biblical scholar Maimonides hinted at this almost a millennium ago: If we want to understand the mind of God and his purpose for us, we must study physics and astronomy.

As an undergraduate physics student, before I became a believer, I had a vague sense that there was more to physics than the study of how things work. There also seemed to be a pressing sense of why. It wasn't until later when a fellow graduate student, and devout Catholic, explained to me his view on the matter that I understood the sense of why: We have both nature and the Bible, and must reconcile the two so that we never become complacent in our assessment of God. In other words, as Schroeder points out, nature is the missing half of God's wisdom, there for us to discover. I find this idea incredibly exciting.

Whether I can convince my fellow Christians of this, I don't know. But I hope that, someday, this cartoon won't be depicting something far from reality.

Faith vs. Reason Part XVIII, Revenge of the Uninformed

2009-07-15T09:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, joy. Here we go again. Just in time for the controversy over Francis Collins' appointment as head of NIH, we have word of a biopic about Darwin that claims, wouldn't you know, science and faith are at odds.

Torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.

Despair not. Instead of a dry treatise on the remote, elderly bearded figure we've come to associate with Darwin, we have a young, vibrant, attractive Darwin in the person of actor Paul Bettany (along with Bettany's wife, Jennifer Connelly, as Mrs. Darwin) in a romantic and passionate struggle between opposing beliefs.

Ironically, the film is titled Creation.

I keep tellin' you folks. Religious people didn't decide that science was incompatible with their beliefs, the other side did. The Baylor University Religion Survey confirms this: atheists believe that science and faith are incompatible by a much higher margin than Christians. But the atheists/skeptics keep hammering people with this faith vs. science trope until some Christians finally say, "Okay, okay, we believe you," whereupon we're all slammed for being anti-science. It's enough to make you want to slap the nearest scientist.

The truth is, there is no struggle between faith and science, faith and reason. It's a bogus dichotomy driven by ignorance on both sides. The Baylor survey shows that beliefs about science on both sides tend to be uninformed: die-hard evolutionists in the general public are likely not to know anything about evolutionary theory, while creationists are likely not to have read the Bible (!!). I therefore strongly recommend three books to anyone remotely interested in this debate:

The Science of God
The Hidden Face of God
God According to God

All are written by MIT-trained physicist and applied theologian Gerald Schroeder. Employing a deep understanding of the Old Testament, Genesis in particular, Schroeder shows that modern science and biblical wisdom are fully compatible and mutually reinforcing. As a scientist, myself, I can attest that Schroeder does not compromise the science in the slightest. So compelling is his argument, in fact, that his first book put me on the path to a conversion from atheism to Christianity.

The latest, God According to God, I just started reading. It's difficult, because Schroeder suggests that the traditional view of the biblical God, held by both believers and atheists, is wrong. The God he posits is dynamic, changing, and fully consistent with both the Bible and nature. This idea is far less comforting than that of a perfect, eternally unchanging God, so I suspect the book will not be wildly popular with Christians. Nevertheless, if one goes beyond a superficial understanding of the Bible and reconciles it with what we know of nature, the idea is inescapable. One cannot claim to be a pursuer of truth if uncomfortable ideas are ignored.

I think it especially important for skeptics and atheists to read these books. Not in order to be convinced, but to understand that there is a much deeper, highly intellectual facet to religious belief that I'm sure many would rather believe does not exist. So here's the challenge. If you're an atheist/skeptic, read these books. If you are not compelled in the slightest, if you can find fault with the arguments, if you can knock legitimate holes in Schroeder's reasoning and declare him wrong, then you will have defeated the best my side has to offer and may rest comfortable and assured in your disbelief. You will be in far better company than people like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins, who choose only to assail the weakest and silliest in order to declare victory.

Judging from the first two chapters, I think atheists/skeptics will find this book a much more enjoyable read than I found Dawkins' The God Delusion (see my review here). Schroeder, while not withholding criticism of the opposition's arguments, writes from a place of utter confidence and refrains from the condescension and insults that rendered Delusion almost unreadable.

A review of God According to God will be posted in the next few weeks.

Obamalogical?

2009-06-23T21:15:00.000-07:00

Let's have a look at what Obama said today (I heard it on NPR)

Why would private insurance companies go out of business, if private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Either Obama doesn't know the meaning of the word "logical" or he simply can't form a logical argument. Or possibly he can't think logically beyond a single level of complexity. Either way, let's have a look at what's wrong with his argument, which goes like this:

Claim 1: Private health care companies (and presumably their proponents) are worried that a "public option" will put them out of business.

Claim 2: Private health care companies (and presumably their proponents) say the government can't run anything [competently - I assume he means this - ed].

Claim 3: Private insurers (and presumably their proponents) believe they can run their own companies in a competent manner.

Conclusion: If the government can't run anything competently, but the private insurance companies can run their own businesses competently, then the private insurance companies will not be driven out of business by a government run "public option" health care plan.

So, seems logical right? All of us dopes who are worried about the private insurers being run out of business are either stupid or fear mongering. Our worries are illogical!

See, only a dyed-in-the-wool liberal could think that this argument was "logical." The problem, and it's a very simple and obvious problem, is that the government doesn't have to run its businesses competently in order to drive private companies out of business. Heck, government-run businesses don't even have to make as much money as they spend. The key word here is "subsidized!" No matter how poorly the government entities are run, no matter how bad their service, they won't go out of business!

How does one compete with that? Now, in the UK, they have this sort of split up. The wealthy can afford the good stuff, but the rest of the people can only afford the government run crap. And it is total crap. But they don't have a choice. They pay for it, and they might as well use it, since it's "free."

You know, some people will go a long way for anything that is free. I once saw a line that had to be an hour or more long, went around the corner, for a free ice cream cone at Baskin Robbins. Now think about the new public option "Obama Cone" shop that is opening up next door. They'll have "free" ice cream every day. How's the Baskin Robbins supposed to compete with that? The ice cream might suck, but hey, it's free, and you can bet there'd be a line around the corner.

"Uncle Sam's First Name Isn't 'Daddy'"

2009-06-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Skip Press at Big Hollywood defends America as the light of the world, and warns us not to go down the socialist path. Well worth a read.

More proof that the apocalypse is nigh

2009-06-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

My sixty-something advisor -- a world-renowned Caltech-trained astrophysicist who holds one of the most distinguished professorships in the country -- has started using teeny-bopper "textspeak" in emails to me.

r u going to the seminar?

The end of the world is here.

The Science News Cycle

2009-06-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

Die heretic scum

2009-05-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

An acquaintance of mine who very much enjoys the fiction of Michael Crichton had this to say about his global warming heresy:

...but when he started with that "we're not warming up" stuff, well... he had to go. It was good he went when he did. He was a good writer. I loved his stuff, but that was just sick.

The eco crowd astounds me sometimes with its inhumanity.

There's a saying people used a lot when I was growing up, which I don't hear anymore: Everyone's entitled to an opinion. Is that even true anymore? Ironically, it seems to be one of the few things we don't get in this age of entitlement.

Quote of the Day

2009-05-15T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not even a Christian, but I find it bizarre that people who pooh-pooh the idea that Christ raised the dead or walked on water are totally convinced that a guy who's tossing trillions of dollars into the air is a financial miracle worker.

From "Where Are Liberals Hatched?" by Burt Prelutsky at Big Hollywood

Silhouette

2009-05-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

What's so special about this photo of the Sun?

Look a little closer...

Still don't know what that is? Read this.

[h/t Bad Astronomy blog]

To Blandly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before

2009-05-13T22:11:00.000-07:00

OK, so I am apparently a heretic. Of the approximately twelve-hundred people I know who saw the new Star Trek movie, I am the only one who did not like it at all. I will now expand upon my earlier two-word review and explain why I did not like it.

Star Trek used to be about people. It began on television ostensibly as an action-packed five-year mission to journey to far-off places and encounter new life -- as creator Gene Roddenberry once put it, a sort of Wagon Train to the stars -- but like all enduring fiction, it was really about human relationships. Strip away the alien planets, warp drive, and phasers, and what you had was a story about three men. Deeper than that, what you had was an interplay between three basic aspects of human nature.

Spock, whose alien features and aloofness intrigued audiences, was often seen as the embodiment of rationality. But Spock was much more than that. As half-human and half-Vulcan, he represented the eternal struggle between man's two halves: the animal and the spiritual. Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock with distinction for more than four decades, noted that Spock's popularity took off after an original series episode entitled "Amok Time." In this episode, a virus spreads through the ship causing the crew to lose their inhibitions and behave as though they were drunk. As Spock was forced to contend with his emotions, we realized that his cool and controlled demeanor masked deep sadness and a violent internal struggle. Many who watched the show identified with his pain.

McCoy was perhaps the least complicated of the three. Though he was nominally the curmudgeon, McCoy represented human compassion, warmth, and softness; but he was by no means weak. McCoy possessed competence and intelligence, and when an alien virus threatened to wipe out the crew, he always rose to the occasion. His flaw was a tendency to lose sight of his rationality, and this often placed him at odds with the calm and rational Spock.

Kirk was the glue that bound the three men together. As the alpha of the group he represented essential masculinity: drive, passion, and strength, both physical and emotional. He was the embodiment of command. We admired his ability to weather a crisis. We trusted him to stick it to the villain and save the crew. We admired his loyalty to Starfleet, but much more so his loyalty to his ship, his crew, and especially his friends. So inherent were these qualities to his character, that we could tell instantly, even before the crew, when Kirk had been compromised by an alien being.

For decades, this trifecta served as the basis of the entire Trek universe. What made Trek interesting weren't the plot contrivances that brought these three to any particular place or time, but what they did once faced with their circumstances. Consider the definitive episode, "City on the Edge of Forever." Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are forced into America's past at a time just before the second world war. McCoy arrives first and his presence threatens to set off a chain of events that will ultimately prove to be catastrophic. All three encounter a woman named Edith Keeler who runs a men's shelter. She's compassionate, intelligent, and remarkably insightful. Believing the three men to be homeless, she takes them in and cares for them. As Spock struggles to return them to their own time, Kirk falls in love with Edith. Spock is able to discern future events in the altered timeline and discovers that Edith's pacifism will influence the United States government into delaying entry into the second world war, with a resulting loss of millions of lives. It was not supposed to happen, but McCoy allows it by preventing Edith from being killed in an accident. Spock tells Kirk that Edith must die. Kirk knows, but is tormented by the decision he must make. The defining moment comes at the end when a distraught Kirk prevents McCoy from saving Edith's life, and allows the woman he loves to be killed. Furious, McCoy exclaims, "Do you know what you just did?" Kirk is unable to answer. Spock calmly replies, "He knows, doctor. He knows." Kirk recovers himself, and the three return to the Enterprise and their own time. Spock, despite his emotional reserve, understands the pain of Kirk's sacrifice, and so do we.

This gets to a point that is central to the human experience. Most of us want to know that the pain we experience is endurable. We see the travails of someone like Kirk and that he is able to take this pain and not only endure it, but turn it into strength. The fifth Star Trek movie, though widely considered to be the weakest of the original-cast films, contains one beautiful moment of truth. Spock's long-lost brother, Sybok, who has the ability to pacify people by liberating their pain, tempts Kirk with a life devoid of pain. Kirk refuses. "You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves! I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!" We are comforted that it is endurable, and that it is necessary.

These experiences helped shaped what is arguably Kirk's defining characteristic -- his resilience -- which served as the linchpin of the second and third Star Trek movies. Faced with certain death at the hands of fanatical nemeses, Kirk never concedes defeat. Even after his son is murdered in cold blood, he refuses to yield. He may doubt himself momentarily, as he did after destroying the Enterprise in The Search for Spock: "My God, Bones... what have I done?" But McCoy understands Kirk when he observes: "What you had to do. What you always do: turn death into a fighting chance to live." Something he learned from Spock earlier in The Wrath of Khan.

Few can forget Spock's compelling sacrifice to save the crew of the Enterprise in Khan. The titular villain, insane with rage, had suicidally set the Genesis device to go off, knowing it would also destroy Kirk, who was aboard the crippled Enterprise. The only way the Enterprise could achieve warp was for Spock to enter the propulsion chamber and subject himself to lethal doses of radiation while making repairs. It was a logical choice, but few doubt that it was also a choice born out of love for his fellow crewmen, especially Kirk and McCoy. This was followed by the most poignant scene in all of Trekdom, the final moment between Kirk and Spock, separated physically (and perhaps also symbolically) by the glass shield, bidding farewell to one another. The circle is complete when Kirk observes that how we face death is at least as important as how we face life, an idea presaged earlier in the film when we learn of Kirk's unique approach to the no-win situation of the Kobayashi Maru.

Perhaps ironically, the first and most aloof of the Star Trek films touched on the deepest of human yearnings. In this movie, Starfleet is faced with an enormous and implacable entity that is headed straight for Earth. In desperation, the Enterprise is launched to intercept. We learn that the heart of the entity is comprised of an artificial life-form with ties to the Earth. Spock is drawn to it because of its colossal mind of pure logic. He travels from Vulcan to rejoin the crew in its pursuit of the entity, called V'Ger. V'Ger is entirely mechanical in form, but it has acquired so much knowledge that it has become self-aware, and is asking the inevitable questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Is this all that I am? We learn, to our astonishment, that this monumental intelligence is returning to Earth in search of its creator, desperate for a purpose. It is fitting that of all the crew, Spock -- who represents duality and inner struggle -- is most drawn to V'Ger. In the end, the creator and the created merge to form something far beyond our comprehension; as McCoy observes, perhaps the next step in our own evolution. This story spoke to the deepest of human needs: to feel connected, to know who we are and why we're here.

Star Trek has endured for over four decades, from campy television to sweeping cinema, because of its unique ability to address the human condition, to speak to our fears and weaknesses, to our hopes and strengths, and to our need for connection with one another. Everything we admired about Trek was lovingly packaged with a veneer of science fiction, and rounded out with action, excitement, and humor. We enjoyed the cultural affectations of Scotty and Chekov, the feminine allure of Uhura, and the swashbuckling soul of Sulu. We were entertained by the strange planet surfaces, the scanty female costumes, exotic villains, and especially the patented Captain Kirk flying kick. But that's never what Star Trek was really about. It was always about the human condition, and precious little of that was apparent JJ Abram's reboot of Star Trek.

As a hardcore Trekkie, I was compelled to see the new film for no other reason than it bore the Star Trek name. Yet I am not a purist: I don't care if the phasers are set to the wrong frequency or if the Jefferies tubes are the wrong diameter. I only hoped for the spirit of the old Trek. But I was sorely disappointed. I realize the limitations imposed on reintroducing beloved characters in just two hours, so my expectations were modest: I wanted early incarnations of my favorite characters and a reasonably compelling story. What I got were hollow caricatures with familiar affectations draped over a bare thread of a story. Oh, look, there's young Kirk! What a rebel, that Kirk, for stealing a car and driving it off a cliff. Wow, doesn't that Heroes guy look just like Spock? And Scotty's still got his funny accent!

The most developed character was Spock. We witness the torment of his youth, the struggle with his dual nature, and his love for his mother, which he was regrettably never able to express as a grown Vulcan. There are hints at the Kolinahr, the final purging of all emotion, which he was shown to have eschewed in the first Star Trek movie. It is appropriate that Spock is still not in full control of his emotions as a young Starfleet officer, as when he lashes out physically at a young Kirk, but *** spoiler alert*** his deliberate relationship with Uhura is inexplicable and, in my mind, bordered on character rape. *** end spoiler ***

It's unfortunate that Uhura, who was given scant screen time in the series and movies, was so criminally underdeveloped in the reboot. What I remember most of Uhura from the original series was her femininity and allure. It made her defiance in episodes like "Space Seed" and "Mirror, Mirror" all the more exciting. Like most of the Star Trek characters, you realized that there was much more to her than what you saw. But the new Uhura is as bland as a space-turnip. Not only are her characteristic curves missing (the new Uhura reminded me of an extra-long hot dog in a Starfleet uniform), but her allure and strength seemed absent as well. Yes, she was soft and warm, but irritatingly so, and this was offset by occasional bursts of spunkiness that seemed out of character.

Kirk failed to move me in the least. I was hoping for some hint at his torment at the hands of his academy nemesis, Finnegan, but instead the defining moment of his academy days is the reprimand for his solution to the Kobayashi Maru test. He is not portrayed as having much discipline or ability to follow, which is essential to command. And, as with most male characters these days, he seemed more boy than man.

The portrayal of McCoy (by Eomer!) was probably the most faithful, but I missed his role as Kirk's conscience.

Simon Pegg (whom I love) hammed it up as Scotty in a manic, campy homage, but I prefer the serious and slightly more stolid old Scotty, who was practically wedded to his engines.

The plot -- what there was of it -- was not compelling. I dislike intensely what was done with the timeline, which essentially wiped out decades of history in the first two Star Trek series and the subsequent movies. No more will be said about this, lest I give away too much. Not that there is much to give away, because it hinges on the most boring and ill-motivated Trek villain since Malcom McDowell scampered around in his black pajamas trying to get back into the Nexus. Face tattoos do not a scary villain make. Nor do shaved heads. Nero and his henchmen looked like sulky eastern European skinheads, who as teenagers played vampire LARPs and listened to gloomy music. Nero lacked passion; his motivation was vague and unconvincing, and his spaceship reminded me of giant backwards-flying space calamari.

Technical aspects of the film were unremarkable. The CGI was good, but nothing to distinguish it from any other sci-fi movie. The soundtrack was utterly forgettable, in stark contrast with earlier Trek films*. And the camera work made me feel like I was suffering from mal de debarquement syndrome when I left the theater.

All in all, a disappointing experience, and nothing of the spirit of the old Trek I had hoped for.

This movie has one distinction that the rest of the Trek movies do not: it will be the only one that will not find its way into my DVD collection.

* I cannot, for the life of me, remember a single note from the soundtrack of the new Star Trek movie.

This, my friends, is how it used to be:

[BTW, I changed the "original" title of this post -- in my haste to publish, I wrote it incorrectly.]

Star Trek Movie Review

2009-05-12T14:12:00.000-07:00

Blew chunks.

I may write something more insightful later. Meanwhile, this was probably the most accurate trailer for the movie:

And the Belief-O-Matic says...

2009-05-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

...my personal beliefs most closely match:

1. Eastern Orthodox (100%)
2. Roman Catholic (100%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (97%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (92%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (88%)
6. Orthodox Judaism (84%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (79%)
8. Islam (74%)
9. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (70%)
10. Baha'i Faith (63%)

Officially, I am #3 (Evangelical Lutheran). Before I converted, I briefly considered #6. My parents were both raised #2 (lapsed). My Ukrainian immigrant relatives were either #1 or something like Maronite, my Swedish immigrant relatives #3, and my step-father is #10. Sort of a Heinz-57 of religious belief.

Last on the list:

26. Secular Humanism (12%)
27. Taoism (10%)

Nothing surprising there.

See what the Belief-O-Matic says about you.

Was there an earthquake at Caltech...

2009-04-30T10:12:00.001-07:00

...or is this the design someone chose for the new Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics?

The interior's kind of interesting, if you enjoy the feeling of total confusion.

Somehow, I don't think Howard Roark would approve.

He Is Risen

2009-04-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

God bless and keep you all this Easter.

More Fuzzy Objects

2009-04-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

Student observations of nearby galaxies for my astronomy class' final project followed by images from various big telescopes for comparison (the color images were not taken by my students). Instrument: Meade LX-200 16" reflecting telescope with Schmidt-Cassegrain optics and an SBIG-7 CCD camera. Image data were collected and reduced using the CCDSoft software application for Windows.

NGC 2841
Type: Spiral galaxy
Constellation: Ursa Major
Diameter: 150,000 light-years (cf. Milky Way, ~120,000 light-years)
Distance: 50 million light-years

NGC 4565: The Needle Galaxy
Type: Spiral galaxy (edge-on)
Constellation: Coma Berenices
Diameter: 100,000 light-years
Distance: 30 million light-years

NGC 4656: The Hockey Stick
Type: Irregular galaxy
Constellation: Canes Venatici
Diameter: 35,000 light-years
Distance: 30 million light-years

NGC 2903
Type: Spiral galaxy
Constellation: Leo
Diameter: 80,000 light-years
Distance: 20 million light-years

Setting the record straight

2009-03-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

I got into it over religion at The Smallest Minority again -- even though I keep promising myself I won't, because I just don't have the time or energy -- and the same points end up being repeated ad nauseum. I have to give up on this at least until the semester is over, but I want to take a moment to lay something to rest once and for all.

First, I am a devoted Christian. I used to be an atheist, and I was pretty hostile toward religion. About ten years ago I came to believe in a rational, loving God. Three years ago, I converted to Christianity. I believe that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God whose sacrifice opened the door to our salvation. I am also an astrophysicist with a Ph.D. from a respected institution, and have no difficulty whatsoever reconciling my religious beliefs with my work as a scientist. I believe that the universe is 14 billion years old, give or take a billion. And for the record, I believe that life forms have gradually changed from the less complex to the more complex over the history of the Earth, which is approximately 4.6-billion years old. I believe these things, because the evidence overwhelmingly supports them.

Second, I know a lot of atheists, and a few anti-theists. Most of them are exceptional people: intelligent, moral, decent, and just generally all-around good people. Of course, I would like them to convert, but that's between them and God.

Now, here's the sticking point. I strongly believe, based on the evidence, that there can be no such thing as a moral atheistic society. It has never happened. It isn't happening now. The USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia -- all obscenely horrifying places. There has never been a moral, prosperous, progressive nation that is atheistic. A rational person has to look at this and accept that it means something. Of course, logically, it doesn't rule out the possibility that there could someday in the future be a moral, prosperous, progressive society that's atheistic, but then again, socialism might work and Obama might end up being a terrific president. Are you going to count on it?

Pointing this out in a debate is risky, because someone inevitably makes the leap that because I acknowledge the obvious -- that there are no moral atheistic societies -- I must think all atheists are immoral, and that anyone who doesn't live in a Christian society is immoral and backwards. I've never said that, I've never believed it, and I never will. You can most certainly have atheists who are moral individuals. I know several. But I stand by the conviction that it doesn't work on a societal level.

I am not a bigot. I know that moral, intelligent, talented people are born everywhere, not just in Christian societies -- and, sadly, I have to admit that there are some really nasty, backwards so-called Christians out there. But in non-Christian societies, moral, intelligent, talented people are like seeds dropped on pavement, their goodness doesn't take root and grow. Of all the places in the world, why do huge numbers of people immigrate to the U.S., Canada, England, and Australia? These are all nations with a shared Christian heritage based on the English Protestant faith -- the same faith that ended the worldwide slavetrade, and gave rise to the industrial revolution, science, and individual rights -- and they incorporate the good aspects of many different cultures until the overall culture becomes a beneficial blend. It works, because Christianity is the fertile ground upon which the healthy seeds of humanity can grow and mingle and flourish. That's why Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Shintoists, Buddhists, Confucianists, and atheists can come to these places and prosper.

Spiritually, I am committed to my belief in God. Politically, I am committed to the principle of freedom. I want my freedom, and, more importantly, I want your freedom, and that means the freedom not to be Christian and even to be anti-Christian. But I will persist in pointing out that the latter is counterproductive. I consider any conservative/libertarian atheist to be a valuable political ally, but I will forever argue that the Christian faith should be acknowledged as the source of freedom, because failure to do so only chips away at the foundation of that freedom.

Fuzzy Objects

2009-03-19T19:03:00.001-07:00

Galaxy M66 imaged at 10 PM local time last night with the physics department's 16" ~~refracting~~ reflecting telescope + CCD camera. This is a stacked image of five 80-second exposures:

Not bad for a small telescope in a city. Here's what it looks like with images taken through color filters on a much nicer telescope

M66 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Leo. It's relatively nearby at a distance of 35 million light-years. At this distance, its apparent angular size is 9 minutes of arc -- one third the apparent size of the full Moon -- which makes it about 90,000 light-years in diameter. The bluish hue of the spiral arms is indicative of star formation, where lots of massive, hot stars are being created in high-density regions of molecular hydrogen gas and dust.

My astronomy students will be taking images like the first one for their semester projects, including at least eight other galaxies. Last night was a test run to see how well the instrumentation is working. I'll post the student images in the next few weeks.

Sheesh

2009-03-17T11:44:00.001-07:00

Husband + alcohol + bravado = 17 stitches + major concussion*.

This is one of those rare times when I understand -- I mean really understand -- why some women want to marry other women. Or metrosexuals.

Thank God for hard Finnish heads. Now I need to get some sleep.

[*I know what you're thinking. This has nothing to do with St. Patrick's Day.]

Bison Armory is Almost There!

2009-03-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

We're just about to go live. The The Bison Armory website is ready to go, and we're just waiting for our barrels to arrive. We will post news here regarding barrels and components as soon as we know anything so that you will be updated. Once you can see the web store, that means we're open for business, and you can buy right over the internet.

This Message Brought to You By the Brady Campaign to Make Yourself Helpless

2009-02-15T14:27:00.000-08:00

See, this is what happens when the wife and kids go away for the weekend... endlessly watching failblog videos. Please, someone help me!

Nope, micro black holes still not a threat

2009-01-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

A while back, I attempted to allay your fears by explaining why the Large Hadron Collider is not a threat to humanity, because even if scientists did create micro black holes, they would evaporate before they could grow to devour the Earth.

Now a group of physicists is claiming that black holes may not evaporate as quickly as we thought (via FoxNews.com)

"We conclude that ... the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible. Nonetheless, it remains true that the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly >> 1 second) than is typically predicted by other models," the three state in a brief paper posted at the scientific discussion Web site ArXiv.org.

First, a check on journalistic integrity. Compare the bolded statement with the FoxNews.com headline:

"Scientists Not So Sure 'Doomsday Machine' Won't Destroy World"

I think it's just Reporters who are Not So Sure.

FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn't seem possible once — the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong.

It's happened before, that scientists have been dead wrong about something, and I'll grant that the physicists' article is very difficult reading for a layman (and not exactly light reading for someone with a Ph.D. either), however, unless all of our current understanding about physics is completely wrong, here's why we're still not in trouble.

The rate at which a black hole grows depends on its mass. (Kind of like how a 200-lb man can eat a lot more than a 20-lb kid.) The growth rate is therefore exponential, and I've already done the figurin' for a very simplified model so you'll just have to trust me that the expression is something like:

M = e^{7.06x10^-17t - 10.8} (grams per second)

where M is the mass of the black hole in grams, t is the elapsed time in seconds, and the initial mass is the smallest mass theoretically possible for a black hole, 2 x 10^-5 g (about 10¹⁹ times the mass of a heavy particle like a proton), and assuming accretion at 100% efficiency. Again, this is a very simplified picture of black hole accretion, but it gets the point across.

If scientists are able to create a micro black hole with an initial mass of approximately 2 x 10^-5 g, let's take a look at the micro black hole's mass (up to 10 decimal places) after different increments of time:

t = 1 second
M = 2.0399503411 x 10^-5 g

t = 1 minute
M = 2.0399503411 x 10^-5 g

t = 1 hour
M = 2.0399503411 x 10^-5 g

t = 1 day
M = 2.0399503411 x 10^-5 g

t = 1 year
M = 2.0399503457 x 10^-5 g (starting to change more noticeably)

t = 100 years
M = 2.0399507948 x 10^-5 g

t = 1000 years
M = 2.0399548778 x 10^-5 g

t = 1 million years
M = 2.0444920349 x 10^-5 g

t = 1 billion years
M = 1.8855892509 x 10^-4 g (now, we're cookin')

t = 5 billion years
M = 1.3764393726 g

Assuming no evaporation, by the time the Earth is incinerated by our dying Sun, the micro black hole will have grown to a mass of only 1.38 grams.

The physicists claim in their article that a black hole's mass would have to exceed 10⁸ grams before its growth rate would overcome the evaporation rate, but even if they're completely wrong about black hole lifetimes, the micro black hole would still be less than 2 grams in mass by the time life on Earth is extinguished.

Must be a slow news day.

Sounds familiar, somehow

2009-01-25T15:13:00.000-08:00

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell.

Maybe Saruman was hiding a TelePrompter in Orthanc.

KT-68

2009-01-21T13:46:00.000-08:00

Here's some photos of my new KT-68 based AR. Great rifle, shoots MOA easily. Went to the range with Phil at Random Nuclear Strikes, and had a great time. Brought the .300wsm as well and sucked balls with it. I was flinching all over the place. Lame.

Back to the AR - the rifle is built on a Mega lower with RRA parts, and a YHM upper with mostly YHM accessories. The scope is a cheap Simmons that I pulled off of my Savage hunting rifle package. I wonder how it'd shoot if I had a match trigger and quality optics...

The muzzle device is my own home made thing that I had on my last AR. It has no baffles and is not a sound suppressor. At some point in the future, however, I may get my SOT so that I can start selling YHM suppressors.

Things are looking good, and the upper on this rifle is an example of what you'll be able to get from Bison Armory, in addition to barrels and parts. For now, send me an email at bisonarmory@gmail.com listing the individual parts you want from YHM or Midway USA and whether or not you want me to assemble the parts or do it yourself, and I'll put a quote together for you.

QotD

2009-01-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day from a post by Doug TenNapel at Big Hollywood*:

"It’s not hateful or intolerant to vote that marriage should remain between a man and a woman. Tolerant isn’t a position, it’s how you treat people who hold positions you hate."

[* Entertainment blogger Dirty Harry has closed down his old site and is now the editor of BH. You should add this to your list of daily reads if you're at all interested in popular culture.]

Fisking Brady Got Tiresome A Long Time Ago

2009-01-09T08:43:00.000-08:00

From Uncle we have this from Brady. The Brady memo was translated into English for us here. I'd like to only address one section of the memo, the one that addresses "Assault Weapons." From Brady we have the following:

We agree with President-elect Obama that we can uphold the Second Amendment “while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.”

And how are they going to uphold the second amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals? Why, they're going to keep them out of the hands of everybody.

Assault weapons are semiautomatic versions of fully automatic guns designed for military use.

They just made that up. I guess they can create a term and then define it themselves. I prefer to call them "fluffy bunny guns." Here's my own definition: A fluffy bunny gun is a gun that makes me feel all warm and fluffy, like a fluffy bunny, on the inside because it has many desirable features for sport, hunting, and home and homeland defense.

Semiautomatic assault weapons unleash extraordinary firepower. ATF has concluded that assault weapons “are not generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes” and instead “are attractive to certain criminals.”

This is a lie of omission. The Department of the Treasury study to which they refer was about the usefulness of certain importable firearms for "sporting purposes." The study itself was flawed in that the Treasury Dept. determined that a rifle considered for import was not particularly suited for sporting if it could accept a detachable magazine of unlimited capacity. Where does this determination come from? Well, first they use this test:

...we determined sporting purposes should be given a narrow reading, incorporating only the traditional sports of hunting and organized competitive target shooting (rather than a broader interpretation that could include virtually any lawful activity or competition.)

Stupid as that definition is, they also noted that

Certain matches require U.S. military service rifles, and none of the LCMM rifles fall into this category.

And there lies the lie of omission: That certain traditional (part of the sporting test) target shooting sports in the United States require the use of "assault weapons," which by the Treasury Dept.'s own definition makes them "generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." The Treasury Dept. also makes claims about the suitability of such weapons for hunting, but I don't have time to address that here, except to write that AR-15s are commonly used for hunting. The study in question refers to rifles for import and so there is a gray area here between Brady's insinuations and the work of the Treasury Dept. Blerg.

OK, moving on...

ATF’s analysis of guns traced to crime showed that assault weapons “are preferred by criminals over law abiding citizens eight to one... Access to them shifts the balance of power to the lawless.”

I for one cannot find a copy of the ATF analysis in question. However, I am certain that the "eight to one" statistic is completely bogus. I'd like to see how they got that number. Here are some numbers that I have found. Notice that rifles are used much less often than handguns for murder. And yet the Bradys want us to believe that "Assault Weapons" are being used for mass murder. The problem here is that, at the best, they are associating "Assault Weapons" like the Tec-9 with "Assault Weapons" like the AR-15, which cannot be reasonably compared except that they are both black and military looking.

The last thing I'll mention is this claim by the Brady memo:

Since the federal assault weapon law expired in 2004, police in major cities report a resurgence of assault weapon use in crime, with hundreds of people killed on our streets with these weapons of war since late 2004.

Their source for this information? Why, their own study. Here's what that study says:

In the four years since the federal ban expired, hundreds of people have been killed in this country with military-style assault weapons. This report lists incidents in which at least 163 people have been killed and 185 wounded in with assault weapons, including at least 38 police officers killed or wounded by them.

That's a "resurgence"? How many people were murdered with firearms in the United States in the last four years? Approximately 40,000. So "Assault Weapons" were responsible for less than one half of one percent! OMG! Resurgence! And the number of police killed? Well, more police were killed in traffic accidents alone in 2004 (72) than in four years with "assault weapons" (38, supposedly).

I wish I had the time and resources to do a more thorough debunking, but that's all I've got. No deep pockets Joyce Foundation for me!

Hockey!

2009-01-03T23:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas is over, it's the new year, and it's time for me to lose 10 pounds of blubber. I hate running, I like biking, but not in the cold and rain, and working out at a gym sucks. It's been a while... since my kids were born, but it's time to play hockey! Fun game, pace similar to basketball, but with the ever-so-fun gearing-up phase (us gunnies/hunters know all about the fun of the gearing-up phase, which is why most action movies have them).

Well now I'm geared up and I've hit the ice for one pick up game, and one "stick-and-puck" session. Boy do I suck, but boy is it fun! The guys on the ice were nice to the old idiot, and I figure if I keep at it I'll be ok in a few months.

So there it is. If you need gear at the right price, either go to Canada, or head to Hockey Giant. You can't go wrong either way.

Figures

2008-12-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

My first day off in weeks, and I'm stuck patrolling the house. A police helicopter has been circling our neighborhood for the last 20 minutes -- it gets so close to the house that it makes the floors shake. Nobody's answering the phone at the local police station, so presumably everyone in the neighborhood wants to know what's going on. Meanwhile, I've got the Mossberg 500 loaded and I'm good to go.

Update: Chopper gone, crisis averted. Now I can go finish my Christmas shopping.

Techno Viking

2008-12-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

A techno Viking muscleman spazzing out to the beat in the streets of Berlin at the annual F*ckparade just makes my day. The original video featured a monotonous techno-beat, the kind that is supposed to be irresistible if you're hepped up on goofballs (as this guy apparently is), but the Michael Jackson version is infinitely better

I like the bit of drama at the beginning. Who says chivalry is dead?

Quote of the Day

2008-12-15T20:43:00.001-08:00

From Ebert's review of The Day the U.S. Failed to Elect Al Gore

Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time.

Bison Armory

2008-12-12T09:26:00.000-08:00

Bison Armory is go! As a wholly owned subsidiary of Fudge Enterprises, Bison Armory will be selling AR-15 barrels in 6.8 SPC. This is a little side venture on my part in order to fill the gap left by Tim Hicks at Ko-Tonics/Cardinal Armory since he went out of business.

These barrels are made by E.R. Shaw, the same company that made Tim's barrels, and they will be made to the same specs. We're going to benefit from Tim's effort, and I'm passing the savings on to the customers. This will be more of a hobby business for me, and as such, prices will be substantially lower than if I was doing this full time. Furthermore, we will not be taking credit cards any time soon. Payment will have to be by check or money order.

The good news: we're taking pre-orders for barrels! No payment necessary until E.R. Shaw starts to make them, which won't be until spring 2009.

More info is posted at our new blogger site: Bison Armory.

Me so smart

2008-12-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

There Are 0 Gaps in Your Knowledge

Where you have gaps in your knowledge:

No Gaps!

Where you don't have gaps in your knowledge:

Philosophy
Religion
Economics
Literature
History
Science
Art

Do You Have Gaps in Your Knowledge?

Cheaters

2008-12-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

A couple of my students are about to learn the hard way that cheaters never prosper. Or at least not when they are so unclever as to announce their duplicity to the professor by committing one or more of the following careless blunders on a term paper. (N.B. These are problems for the casual plagiarizer who only wants to borrow select phrases from another source, not for the serious plagiarizer who plans to copy/download/buy entire papers.)

1. Sudden changes in tone. If you are interspersing your prose with text copied directly from another source, massage the wording of the copied text until it blends with your writing style and conforms to an appropriate level of mastery on the subject. This makes it more difficult for your professor to Google suspicious phrases.

Here is an example of what not to do:

There are many huge and awesome applications for astronomy in the real world. It is extremely important that we find out ways to show these amazing ideas to the general public who don't know very much about what kind of stuff is out there. One example is the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which is an analog shift register, that enables the transportation of analog signals (electric charges) through successive stages (capacitors) controlled by a clock signal. Charge-coupled devices can be used as a form of memory or for delaying samples of analog signals. Today, they are most widely used in arrays of photoelectric light sensors, to serialize parallel analog signals.

Unfortunately, in order to properly massage the borrowed passage (copied from the Wikipedia entry on CCDs, by the way), you would have to make an attempt to understand it, and you are either too lazy or too pressed for time because you waited until the last minute to write your paper.

2. Sudden changes in font. Your professor is reading a passage of your paper and notices that the font changes mid-sentence from black size-10 Times New Roman to grey size-12 Arial. This is likely to arouse suspicion, and could lead to Googling of the phrases that stand out.

Example:

There are many huge and awesome applications for astronomy in the real world. It is extremely important that we find out ways to show these amazing ideas to the general public. One example is the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which is an analog shift register, that enables the transportation of analog signals (electric charges) through successive stages (capacitors) controlled by a clock signal. Charge-coupled devices can be used as a form of memory or for delaying samples of analog signals. Today, they are most widely used in arrays of photoelectric light sensors, to serialize parallel analog signals.

Busted.

This is not a problem if you learn to use a markup language like LaTeX. For Word users, here's a tip: Use ctrl-a (or command-a on a Mac) to select all of the text, and change it to one style, one size, one color.

3. Awkward paragraph structure. Sentences that fail to wrap properly onto the next line constitute obvious signs of copy-and-paste. Take the time to proofread your plagiarized work to ensure that the paragraphs look like you typed them yourself.

Example:

There are many huge and awesome applications for astronomy in the real world. It is extremely important that we find out ways to show these amazing ideas to the general public. One example is the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which is an analog shift
register, that enables the transportation of analog signals (electric charges)through successive
stages (capacitors) controlled by a clock signal. Charge-coupled devices can be used as a form of
memory or for delaying samples of analog signals. Today, they are most widely used in arrays
of photoelectric light sensors, to serialize parallel analog signals.

High Google probability, especially if you have been so careless as to commit either (or both) of the first two blunders.

Tip: Leave more than five minutes prior to the deadline to glance over all the pages and make sure nothing stands out.

Of course the simplest way to avoid the pitfalls of cheating is not to cheat. You will feel much better about yourself, too.

Memo to NASA

2008-11-29T11:33:00.001-08:00

I've discovered a malleable material that's virtually impervious to heat -- instant mashed potatoes. I microwaved a frozen dinner for twice the recommended time with the result that the pork chops and corn are searingly hot, the brownie is approximately the temperature of liquid hot magma, but the mashed potatoes are still cool. Forget the foam that protects the space shuttle, NASA should be developing instant mashed potato technology.

Are we not men?

2008-11-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

GenderAnalyzer sez there's an 83% chance that we here at Fudge are men. Since I'm a woman, and post with about the same frequency as Carnaby, maybe it should have been about 50%. Then again, I am a Nerd God(dess).

Here's the breakdown for my favorite blogs:

Michelle Malkin - woman, 73% (accurate)
Dirty Harry's Place - man, 89% (accurate)
Kim du Toit - man, 67% (accurate)
The Smallest Minority - man, 66% (accurate)
Rachel Lucas - man, 63% (inaccurate)

Here's the breakdown for some left-wing blogs, some of which feature a variety of diarists of both sexes:

Huffington Post - woman, 100% (variety, probably inaccurate)
The Daily Kos - man, 67% (variety, ?)
Think Progress - man, 65% (variety, ?)
Wonkette - man, 53% but "quite gender neutral" (inaccurate)
Deltoid - woman, 99% (inaccurate)

[h/t Robb Allen @ Sharp as a Marble, who was correctly identified as a man.]

Hunting Exotic Game in Finland

2008-11-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

My husband hunted a lot in Lapland, but not quite like this. (Warning: not entirely safe for work.)

and Part 2, which explains the dangers of disrespecting the nature of your rare acquisition

Star Trek 90210

2008-11-25T09:19:00.000-08:00

I want to punch the new Spock about a hundred times.

Nerd

2008-11-23T07:55:00.000-08:00

That's Goddess

It surprises me that anyone with a low dork rating could qualify as a Nerd God, but I'll take it.

[h/t Kevin at TSM]

What if he had found God sooner?

2008-11-16T16:46:00.000-08:00

Kevin at TSM echoes Roger Ebert's sentiments about Clint Eastwood's The Changeling in a recent post. In his full review, Ebert draws a comparison between the real-life killer in the movie, Gordon Northcott, and some of our most notorious killers of recent times

Northcott comes over in Harner's portrayal as a man like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer: irretrievably evil, inexplicable, unreachable from the sane world.

There is only one problem with this. Anyone who has ever watched interviews with Dahmer or his father knows that Ebert has mischaracterized him. Someone pointed me to this video a while ago, and it's haunted me ever since. Dahmer was not insane, not inexplicable, and nor, it seems, was he irretrievably evil

Continuing with the theme of petty things that irritate me, because I don't have anything substantial to write about

2008-11-13T08:58:00.001-08:00

This morning on one of my favorite blogs, I read "I just threw up a little in my mouth" for the six-hundredth time. If you're a regular user of this phrase, I implore you to stop. It's not original. It's not funny. It's not a clever way to get your point across. It's a stupid way to announce to readers that you're in possession of a stale wit. Knock it off.

For other tired/cliched/overused and generally annoying words and phrases, see also: issues, awesome, amazing, breathless, impactful, pwned!, douche, douchey, douchebag, douchebaggery, asshattery, (blank)ery, mmkay, my bad, going green, down time, that's all kinds of (blank), I don't care who you are that's funny, stepping up to the plate, get your (blank) on, I could care less.

Update: Carnaby reminded me of a phrase that will never wear out its welcome: "Sit on it, Malph." Timeless. Incidentally, thanks to Uncle and Tam for the extra traffic.

Damn the lights!

2008-11-10T21:12:00.000-08:00

What is with this fad with super-bright lights? First it was the pupil-searing headlights on new cars, and now these excruciatingly bright house lights are popping up everywhere. I'm ready to declare war on my neighbors for installing gazillion-watt lights on every conceivable part of their houses -- front stoops, back stoops, side walkways, garage doors, and wherever else they can flood the night with these supernovas-in-a-socket. Why is this necessary? Can no one can tolerate a little darkness anymore?

Carnaby's New Assault Weapon

2008-11-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

As posted earlier, I sold my AR-15 in 6.8spc to fund the purchase of a new SAKO 85 Hunter in .300 WSM. To celebrate the election of our new president, I bought a new lower receiver as the basis for a new AR-15 build. It's a Mega Gator, which is the same lower I used in my last build:
Notice the sub 3/4" three-shot group I got on Saturday with my new SAKO. That's my best 100 yard group ever. Nice rifle.

I also have a new barrel from Cardinal Armory (formerly Ko-Tonics) which is unfortunately going out of business due to a snafu with barrel chroming. I got one of their last 18" barrels and I count myself lucky.

So just remember folks: If you want an EBR but can't afford the $400-$1200+ price tag, you can always just run out and plunk down $150 on a lower receiver. Then when they inevitably "grandfather" existing EBR's, you're good to go and will be able to build a "pre-ban" when you can afford the rest of the components.

Here's a question: Will 1994-2004 "post-ban" rifles become 2009-2019 "pre-ban" rifles*, or will the new law, if such should pass, stipulate that any rifle created under the old ban is subject to the rules of the new ban? If not, then you can take your 1994-2004 "post-ban" rifle and turn it into a "pre-ban" by adding all sorts of interesting, albeit not particularly lethal features, such as that bayonet lug you've always wanted. :P

*The truth is that when the "ban" expired all EBR's became "pre-ban" rifles. And I use "ban" in scare-quotes because we all know that it didn't ban anything that would change the lethality of the rifle, but only cosmetic features that make the rifles look evil. Case in point: no blood in the streets since the "ban" expired. And yet they want to re-up the old ban. Why?

Sako 85 Range Report!

2008-11-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

Finally got to take the Sako 85 Hunter out for a quality range trip. The rifle lived up to expectations. Here's my targetI started out with the just over an inch group at the top left after two warm up low-power shots. I was trying out some new 180gn Nosler AccuBond loads and shot two light loads just to make sure everything was on the up and up. The scope was also just remounted, so I moved closer to zero with those first two shots.

My next group is that one at the far left. Three rounds inside of about 3/4". Not bad! Then I finished up with the top right group. Afterward, I hauled out my trusty old Savage in 300 win mag and put together those two groups in the black. I have it sighted approx 2" high at 100yds for hunting, so those results are quite good for me.

Last, my buddy at the range had his Springfield M1A National Match handy, so I put three rounds downrange and got that nice ~1" group at far right. All in all, a decent trip to the range!

Halloween

2008-11-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

Ye gods, I hate Halloween during election season. Is it just me, or did every office party have someone dressed as Sarah Palin?

Halloween this year seemed subdued. I think it's the impending election, which is scary enough -- I get the sense people were filled with genuine dread this October, instead of the fun manufactured dread of the holiday. Normally my neighborhood is brimming over with kids in costumes, and at least half the houses on our block are decorated. This year, two houses put up decorations, and there were no kids on our block. Not a single trick-or-treater, according to my husband who stayed home that night.

I wasn't in the Halloween mood, so I went to the opera instead. It was my all-time favorite, Dido and Aeneas, but even that wasn't a respite from the election. This particular show was a reinterpretation of the ancient Carthaginian story in "Goth" style. Whatever, nobody goes to an opera for the story. After the first act I was all settled in and really enjoying myself. Then the second act starts, and we're all waiting for the arrival of the conniving sorceress who deceives Aeneas, but in this interpretation the sorceress is... dressed in a red skirt-suit, with glasses and "the hairdo." The thing is, I wouldn't have been any less disappointed if it had been Hillary. This kind of crap takes an audience out of the experience when it's unexpected. But most of all, I just hoped it wasn't foreshadowing some evil new form of live entertainment: the modern, political opera.

I hope y'all had a more enjoyable Halloween than I did. Can't wait to see what the Christmas season is going to bring.

Movie Review: The Happening

2008-10-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

Just watched M. Night Shyamalama Ding-Dong's hate-letter to humanity, The Happening, and felt compelled to immediately review it. The movie's premise is *** spoilers ahead *** that the plants feel threatened by human activity, and since they're stuck in the ground and can't run away, they have to defend themselves the only way they can. So they release some kind of neurotoxin that causes humans to become confused and kill themselves in gruesome, inexplicable ways. The self-slaughter ramps up for a couple of days, and then suddenly stops.

The kicker is, the happening only happens in one part of the world, Northeastern United States, ostensibly as a warning. A warning, I guess, that rural Pennsylvanians are most to blame for the impending destruction of the Earth. A reasonable person watching this movie might wonder why the trees in Central Park are in a murderous rage, yet aren't up in arms in Beijing, Mexico City, Cairo, or Chernobyl. Lest we think the trees just have it in for Americans, we get a closing shot of the happening starting to happen in Paris. Apparently body odor, public urination, cigarette smoke, and unscooped dog poop are more threatening to the survival of vegetation than massive amounts of smog, lead contamination, and radioactive fallout.

I kept wondering what Shyamalamalamyalan was thinking when he wrote this thing. I can accept that some people are so concerned about the environment that they think the Earth could become angry and strike back at the polluters. But according to Time magazine the ten most polluted cities in the world are in China, Russia, Ukraine, Zambia, India, and Peru. Not a single Western city made the list. So why didn't Shyamalamyamanan have the trees and shrubs and weeds rising up against the people in those places instead of the U.S. and France? Because none of them have large populations of guilt-laden well-off Westerners. Because it's a projection of Shyamamamamyalam's self-loathing and the self-loathing of the movie's intended audience. That's the only explanation I could think of, and it's supported by a subtle message we get late in the movie when the survivors are running through a brand-new housing development and we see a billboard announcing "You DESERVE it!" in big letters.

I wonder if the people involved in the making of this movie realized what a pointless, misguided, hate-filled downer it was. It would explain why Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, both of whom can act, are absolutely lifeless in their roles. But what I really want to know is why no one has pulled the plug on Shmyamamyamalan by now. The Sixth Sense was novel and intriguing, and Signs had its moments, but all of his other movies have been absolute turkeys. Who keeps giving him money to crank out this crap? Whoever it is, I wish they would find a better use for their money, like composting it.

Screw it

2008-10-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm voting for McCain. I hate it. I'm holding my nose. I'm going to do penance afterwards.

While the thought of an Obama presidency is truly unspeakably horrible, that's not what changed my mind. What changed my mind is that the media and others are trying to skew perception to make an Obama victory seem inevitable. So that's it. To hell with them. Just for that, I'm voting for McCain.

UPDATE: Here's an analysis by Zombie that confirms my reasons to vote for McCain, i.e. vote AGAINST media manipulation.

Nuts

2008-10-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

"When people cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." ~ G. K. Chesterton

The last few years I've been wondering if people are getting stupider, crazier, and more desperate or if they were always this way and it just took the Internet to unleash them on the world.

[h/t Dirty Harry's Place]

Reasons to Win, Reasons to Lose

2008-10-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks to me like I'm with my sister, Stickwick, in not voting for McCain this time around. He's not the right guy. The GOP has gotten terribly off track and they need a kick in the pants. Obama, and the Democrat controlled congress are that kick. We'll have four to eight years of their turn at the helm, and I foresee bad things. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it. Sure, Bush sucked, especially when combined with a Republican House and Senate (I saw that coming a mile away), but could the Democrats with even more power and the media behind them all the way do any better?

The only two problems: 1. Obama might get to appoint new judges to the Supreme Court, and 2. it will be very difficult to undo the damage that will be done in the next four to eight.

The only upside to a McCain victory, and it's a large and petty upside, is to look at the faces of Obama supporters the next day. Will the McCain crap-sandwich be worth it? Probably not, but it's tempting now.