Gun Insanity

3 years for possession of a BB gun.
Nowhere else but New Jersey.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

We hear that the last of Saddams 1.2M lbs of yellowcake have been transferred to

Canada, now we hear from an operative who was close enough to know that

Ahamadamnjihadi is even crazier than you hoped he wasn’t, and Obama has 3 positions a day on any issue you choose, which, I suppose is a change from his previous position of not having a position. Additionally the Democrat-controlled congressional approval ratings are in the single digits,

The Republican candidate should be running 30 points ahead right now.

Pity there isn’t one.

Motorcycles

Ride Fast has a post up on motorcycles, which is inspiring this one. Back in the 70s we had a gas crises, with prices spiraling to 50 cents a gallon, and people deciding that their GTO took too much gas. These folks would motor on down to the local MC shop, and say something like “I need something that uses less gas than my GTO. How much is that red one there?” The “red one” frequently turned out to be way more powerful than any novice should be messing with, but the dealerships weren’t going to turn away the sale, so newbies were turned loose on the streets with dangerously overpowered bikes. Sometimes the techs would place side bets on how far the bike would get before being brought back with crash damage. The winner at the Harley shop was 3 blocks.

I’ve been riding motorcycles for (mumble, mumble) years now, and I’ve learned a couple of things. There are 2 time periods when you are most likely to have an accident on a motorcycle: Right after you take possession, and don’t know what you’re doing, and about 2 months later, when you think you do.

Remember the Pontiac commercial for the G8, I think it was, in which the car was driving through a city populated by large chrome balls, about 50 ft in diameter? Remember how the Pontiac rolled down the streets, neatly avoiding being flattened at every intersection by the mindlessly rolling hazards? OK that’s you on a motorcycle, and every single car on the road is a 2-ton ball bearing moving along of its own volition. No, it’s not going to stop for you, or get out of your way. It has no idea you’re even there, so drive accordingly. Defensive driving doesn’t come close to describing it, think barking moonbat paranoia.

Braking: 70% of your braking ability is in your front wheel, so make extensive use of it. NOTE: Situational awareness is important here, you don’t want to be grabbing the front brake on questionable surfaces, so try to avoid them if there’s a chance you’ll be needing to stop. Questionable surfaces include the obvious such as road sand left over from last winter, and slow-drying puddles which can have algae or dust in them. Less obvious are the painted markings in the form of center lines or cross walk markings, which are slippery when wet.

My experience with loud pipes is that they are only audible from behind. Coming at you they're not so loud. Plus, they cover up other noises you might want to hear as you drive.

Running your lights in the daytime is problematic. I recently say an accident in which a kid in a cage turned left in from of not one, but two large bikes with lights on, and bagged them both.

Back when the idea first became popular, the Air Force jumped on the bandwagon, and began requiring us to switch on our lights when we entered the base. This resulted in a big rash of rear end near misses, as the difference between a motorcycle tail light and a brake light was not that significant. The solution was to add a couple of marker lamps to the back fender and wire them to the brake lamp circuit so there would be a notable difference between a tail lamp and a brake. If your bike does not have more brake lights than tail lights, it sure wouldn’t hurt to get this corrected.

Lastly, when you’re riding down the road, position yourself where you’ll have the most room to move, should you need to. On a 2-lane road, this means near the center line. On a 4-lane road, this means near the lane divider, so you can change lanes with only a 3 or 4 foot move, and have the rest of your lane available should the car in the next lane move over into you.

Remember: There is no such thing as a fender-bender on a motorcycle.

Thought For the Day

Adversity is opportunity, wrapped in that plastic packaging that's so hard to get open.

Landmark day

Sometime today I will receive my 1000th visitor. Whoever you are, thank you for your support.
1000 down, 999,000 to go.

Thanks once more to Tam for the Tam-a-Lanche, as well as Ride Fast and Say Uncle for the mentions and support.

Guns-N-Research

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy there’s a lively discussion on the Kellerman study which claimed to prove that simply having a gun in your dwelling increased your odds of being killed by a gun by some astronomical amount, usually quoted by the antis as 43:1 but lately somewhat less.

The comments to this are the best reading on the topic I’ve ever seen with various legal types and a few statisticians chiming in. Volokhs position is that Kellermans study is essentially meaningless because there were so many variables that were simply ignored.

There are several classes of job that entail the use, or at least, possession of a firearm, among which are policeman, drug dealer, robber, security guard, and others that may occur to you. These folks carry guns because they regularly come in contact with people of a socially dubious sort that a reasonable man would not want to do business with without some assurance that all the men present, especially our reasonable man, were, at least arguably, equal. Kellermans study did not take any of this into consideration, so the class of “gun owner” frequently included criminals of various sorts, and police. Since no one was included in the study who did not also make it into the obituary column, there is a disproportionate number of criminals included in the study. Kellerman also included suicides, and actually did differentiate them, blaming the gun for the suicide.

The top 21 countries for suicide rates are:

#1 Lithuania: 81.9 per 100,000 people

#2 Russia: 74.1 per 100,000 people

#3 Latvia: 71.4 per 100,000 people

#4 Estonia: 64.6 per 100,000 people

#5 Belarus: 55.7 per 100,000 people

#6 Hungary: 55.5 per 100,000 people

#7 Sri Lanka: 46.9 per 100,000 people

#8 Slovenia: 45.1 per 100,000 people

#9 Finland: 43.4 per 100,000 people

#10 Kazakhstan: 39.7 per 100,000 people

#11 Ukraine: 38.2 per 100,000 people

#12 Belgium: 37.3 per 100,000 people

#13 Croatia: 34.6 per 100,000 people

#14 Austria: 34.2 per 100,000 people

#15 Luxembourg: 30.8 per 100,000 people

#16 France: 30.4 per 100,000 people

#17 Switzerland: 29.5 per 100,000 people

#18 Moldova: 29.5 per 100,000 people

#19 Czech Republic: 28.1 per 100,000 people

#20 Bulgaria: 25.3 per 100,000 people

#21 Japan: 25 per 100,000 people

The US comes in at #30

Gun control ranges from a lot (Japan) to essentially none (several places. Sure it’s illegal, so what?)

Snowdog99 commented:

Epidemiological studies are 99% horsesh*t for many of the very reasons Eugene cites in his post - that is (in essence), that the chain of causation is difficult if not impossible to accurately characterize empirically.

It reminds me of a "study" done a few years ago, whereupon the researchers found that young teenage women sporting tattoos were more likely to give birth out-of-wedlock. The media dutifully interpreted these results to mean: "tattoos cause unplanned pregnancy."

At this point the light bulb came on over my head. All I need to do is copy all the Brady Bunch propaganda, and do a word substitution of “tattoo” for “gun” and “unplanned pregnancy” for “death” and apply for a boatload of federal money for my foundation; the “Billll Foundation for the Prevention of Unplanned Pregnancy”

I have visions of a large, imposing structure filled with hotties in white lab coats…..

Saturday Humor

Because it's Saturday, of course, I'm swiping this from the comments at Grouchy Old Cripple:

Got in a car accident today. Rear-ended another guy. He got out of his car and came walking back towards me. The guy was a dwarf, you know, one of the little people. Seeing him, I started to chuckle. He started screaming "I AM NOT HAPPY!".

So I said, "Well that leaves just 6 other choices."

Then the fight started...... :o)

Safety Nazis

There is no adversity that cannot be turned into opportunity.

Walter in Denver has a post about government safety Nazis suggesting that drivers and passengers in golf carts be forced to wear helmets. You look dorky enough in a golf cart as it is, never mind images of centenarians tooling around Sun City with their pants unzipped. Pile onto that information that golf now takes second place to shooting as an economic phenomenon, and it’s easy to see a lot of resistance to helmets on the golf course. Especially the ugly white kind the kids on the really short busses have to wear.

The obvious solution to this is to spiff up the equipment so that helmets don’t look so out of place. Sure, there’s a significant investment required by the course operators, but consider the payoff. Simply trade in some of the funky old E-Z-Go carts and replace them with Tesla roadsters. Add a couple of bag racks to the back bumper and you’re off. This is the sort of thing that makes those spiffy custom painted Bell full-face jobs look right at home on the links. Speeds up play, too.

If this seems a bit pricey (think Pebble Beach), consider that all the parts necessary to build an electric motorcycle are already there in a golf cart. Foursomes can now swoop from hole to hole in packs on 2-wheelers styled as scooters, road cruisers, or crotch-rockets, depending on your taste or athletic ability. Pricing on these should be quite modest compared to the Tesla.

Doesn’t that give you visions of Tiger Woods in a NASCAR-style fire suit covered with sponsor patches?

Fighting Robots

In 1984 I was asked if I would like to be in charge of a new event at Milehicon, called the “Critter Crawl”. I was told it would involve windup toys. This was too much like chum in the water for me, so I agreed. Then I asked what it would involve, and was told “anything you like”. So I had been had.

The original Critter Crawl was announced to be a contest for self-propelled toys, similar to a beauty contest, in which the contestants would be set to traveling along a vaguely defined runway to the approval of the audience, most applause wins. I encouraged people to build something as opposed to simply buying a windup Godzilla, and we had 2 constructed, and several off the shelf entries. The next year was similar to the first, and I admit, some of the purchased entries were quite spectacular, still, it was basically a beauty contest.

For the third year, I notified the Con-Com that the rules would be changing and the contest would become more interesting, and definitely more violent. The Denver Mad Scientists Club put together a set of rules for a contest called the Critter Crunch that allowed for a maximum amount of innovation and minimum restrictions, that has defined robot fighting ever since. The book “Gearheads” by Brad Stone, which researched the topic, says that this was the first organized robot fighting event ever, and all others are derivations. Under these rules, it’s possible to build a competitive machine for about $50.

Over time arms, armor, and control systems have evolved to the point that most of the machines can ignore the occasional flamethrower, and could probably operate under water, for a limited time at least. One of our members has developed a simple robot vision system based on the thermion, and makes plans and kits available over the internet. Last year saw the first victory of a fully autonomous machine over a human-controlled one.

Two crunches will be held in the Denver area this year, at Milehicon, and Worldcon.

The Frankenstein rule shown at the Critter Crunch rules link has been modified from its original wording which was: Frankenstein Rule: Should any critter prove to be excessively obnoxious, the audience may, at its discretion, light torches, take up pitchforks, and deposit the offending machine, and its operator in the nearest body of water.

The would-be builder is commended to contact the Denver Mad Scientists club, and Keith Laumers books on the likely end result, “Bolo”.

Chicago Protection Racket

"Nice campaign you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."

Shamelessly ripped from the WSJ online:

Ministry of Truth
"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has scrubbed all negative ads from her campaign Web site and YouTube page, leaving visitors with only the warm and fuzzy moments from her bid for the presidency," the Washington Times reports:

Gone are the attack ads accusing Sen. Barack Obama of insulting Pennsylvanians, ducking debates and making misleading assertions about gas prices. In their place are some of the campaign's best and most positive ads and multiple "Hillary I Know" testimonials that have a shelf life should the former first lady ever run again.

The whitewashing took place quietly in the past few days as Mr. Obama cut his former rival a check to help relieve her campaign debt and as the Clinton family moved to fully embrace Mr. Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

You get the kind of government you pay for, I guess.

Wind Power

As an engineer, I have never thought of most "alternative energy" schemes as much more than curiosities suitable for the better-off to install in their back yards as conversation pieces. Here's some confirmation on the wind power front.

It seems that not only is wind power unreliable, it's unreliable on a nation wide, and sometimes trans-national basis. Also, those gigantic wind turbines require some base of input power to keep the innards in working order whether they're running or not, so when a large high-pressure feature moves across your wind farm, not only is the whole system becalmed, it becomes a net user of power from other sources. On top of that, the mega-watts you thought the wind would provide now need to be provided by some other means, so wind power only makes sense if you have the conventional generating capacity to replace it when it stops producing.

Texas has a large wind farm located in west Texas, and spliced into the state grid. I remember, not long ago, that there were brownouts in Texas when the west Texas wind stopped blowing for a couple of days. When someone proposes putting in a wind farm, be sure and ask if the proposed price includes a coal-fired plant of the same capacity to take over when the wind drops.

There's a fellow with a ranch, located along I-25 south of Castle Rock, who has a windmill on his property. When the wind blows, he probably powers his spread, and even has some power left over to sell to Excell Energy, which they are required to buy at retail rates, which the government has mandated. It works because he's on the grid, and has a 100% backup should his system fail. I have to wonder, though, how long it will take to pay off the investment in the system.

Burglary for Dummies

Here's a cartoon that sums up the situation. In reality it's much worse from the burglars perspective as only one house in three has gun owners inside. Unfortunately, it's not marked.

Bumper Stickers

I have a bumper sticker that reads

Limit Terms:
Declare politicians
a game species.

People come whining to me with "Geeez, Billll, you shouldn't advocate wholesale slaughter of our beloved elected representatives."

To which I answer:
Look, hippie, the phrase "game species" implies the need for a special hunting license, a specific season, and bag and possession limits, say one federal Senator or Representative, and no more than two of the local variety. One might buy a bull tag, for example that requires the hunter to listen carefully for the same old bull before shooting. And a word of warning, we are talking dangerous game here. The Republicans shoot back.

Lawyers, on the other hand, should be declared varmints. See 'em, shoot 'em. It's not like they're in any danger of extinction due to natural causes.

Heller decision

Got an e-mail just now from Colo RKBA noting that careful review of the Heller decision has uncovered an "Easter Egg" in footnote #27. The right to bear arms is enshrined as a

"specific enumerated right" such as free speech,
the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (the
Court's list of examples).

This means that gun laws are subject to the "strict scrutiny" level of question, which means there must be a REALLY good reason for the law, and it must address that reason in the narrowest possible manner.

That should help.

Suicide Prevention

Thanks to Sebastian for pointing me to this proposed study, which expects to find an increase in suicides in D.C. as guns finally become available to the law-abiding.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that the suicide rate in D.C. should drop, post-Heller, assuming that D.C.s newly liberalized gun laws actually result in guns getting into homes legally.

Before, all you had to look forward to was the kick at the door and an ugly death at the hands of some critter. After, there's hope of survival: you can now shoot back.