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I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
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Other blogs you may enjoy:
My civilian gun defense use blog
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Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
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Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
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Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
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Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
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Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
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The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
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Neocon Blues
Conservative Oasis
Other Idaho Bloggers
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An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
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I'm Engaging in a Mildly Death Defying Act Tomorrow
I'm flying to Philadelphia for several days of research at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. I scheduled this flight several days after the 9/11 anniversary (in case al-Qaeda struck again), but as far from the election as possible (in case al-Qaeda tries an attack as a way to discredit Bush). Still, flying is a little scarier than it used to be.
Anyway, don't expect to see much, if any blogging from me until the 19th when I return home. I will be poring through 18th century gun maker ledger books, letters by early government pistol contractors, and early 19th century gunpowder advertising.
Assault Weapon Ban Expires Today
I'm just gloating about it. I've got more than I need, and more high capacity magazines than I will ever need. It's just nice to see a stupid law go away.
Sort Of a "Duh!" Story
It tells us that faculty overwhelmingly support Democrats with their money: More than 90 percent of donations from University employees this election cycle have gone to liberal causes, as Princeton joins peer institutions in reinforcing the image of a left-leaning ivory tower.
But buried deeper in the story is a reminder that it isn't the contributions of professors that are the threat, but of the billionaire liberals to 527s:
After effectively clinching the Democratic nomination on Super Tuesday, Sen. John Kerry secured $40,950 from donors identifying themselves as employees or affiliates of Princeton University. President Bush received a sole donation of $250, according to FEC records through June.Those contributions are not monitored or recorded by the FEC, but a few wealthy political activists are getting attention for the large checks they're writing.
Topping that list is University trustee and billionaire philanthropist Peter Lewis '55. Lewis and close friend George Soros have each pledged $10 million to America Coming Together, a 527 dedicated to defeating Bush through get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states such as Lewis' native Ohio.
Lewis, the former chairman of Progressive, Inc., has already donated more than $11 million to other anti-Bush groups, according to the Center for Public Integrity. His current total is $14.3 million, making him the single largest donor for any election cycle.
Definitive Proof That The Memos Are Forged
See here. This is by far the most impressive piece of work by an expert (one of the inventors of desktop publishing) showing that these memos are clumsy forgeries, and could not have been the result of Col. Killian just happening to have a particular typewriter available to him: I am one of the pioneers of electronic typesetting. I was doing work with computer typesetting technology in 1972 (it actually started in late 1969), and I personally created one of the earliest typesetting programs for what later became laser printers, but in 1970 when this work was first done, lasers were not part of the electronic printer technology (my way of expressing this is “I was working with laser printers before they had lasers”, which is only a mild stretch of the truth). We published a paper about our work (graphics, printer hardware, printer software, and typesetting) in one of the important professional journals of the time (D.R. Reddy, W. Broadley, L.D. Erman, R. Johnsson, J. Newcomer, G. Robertson, and J. Wright, "XCRIBL: A Hardcopy Scan Line Graphics System for Document Generation," Information Processing Letters (1972, pp.246-251)). I have been involved in many aspects of computer typography, including computer music typesetting (1987-1990). I have personally created computer fonts, and helped create programs that created computer fonts. At one time in my life, I was a certified Adobe PostScript developer, and could make laser printers practically stand up and tap dance. I have written about Microsoft Windows font technology in a book I co-authored, and taught courses in it. I therefore assert that I am a qualified expert in computer typography.
The probability that any technology in existence in 1972 would be capable of producing a document that is nearly pixel-compatible with Microsoft’s Times New Roman font and the formatting of Microsoft Word, and that such technology was in casual use at the Texas Air National Guard, is so vanishingly small as to be indistinguishable from zero.
Blogging in Pajamas
"Professional" journalist Jonathan Klein, trying to defend CBS's use of forged documents, made the argument that, "Bloggers have no checks and balances . . . [it's] a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." Others, such as John Fund at the Wall Street Journal, have pointed out that CBS's problem is that they didn't do their jobs right--not that guys (and gals) in pajamas are blowing holes in their claims.
I don't blog in pajamas. Sometimes, I only blog in underwear. But to avoid causing panic and fear, I never blog naked.
News From Boise (Expiration of the Assault Weapon Ban)
It's nice to see a news story datelined Boise, and have it not be about white supremacists (who came from California, originally) or potatoes. (Did you know that Idaho has the highest per capita patent issuance of any state?) BOISE, Idaho — The expiration of the federal assault-weapons ban, which took place Monday, makes gun enthusiasts happy because they will once again be able to legally purchase military-style guns such as AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s.
Of course Idaho State Police hasn't had a problem with them. Idaho does weird things to violent criminals--like send them to prison, and keep them there. Even more importantly, Idahoans seem to be living in a bizarre parallel universe, where they teach their kids antiquated ideas like, "You shall not murder." Can you imagine that?
...
U.S. Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, trumpeted the end of the federal law.
"President Clinton's so-called 'assault weapons' ban was nothing more than a sop to antigun liberals," Otter said Friday in a written statement. "It provided only the illusion of reducing gun violence, but it did real damage to our liberties."
...
Idaho State Police spokesman Rick Ohnsman said troopers have had no significant problems with assault-style weapons and his agency has not taken a position for or against the federal legislation.
"Of course, the legitimate owners of guns register them. Unfortunately, whether there is a ban or not, some individuals will find ways to get weapons that are illegal."
Hey, Liberals! Listen to Oprah
Oprah Winfrey is a liberal, but she at least puts her money where her mouth is--unlike John Kerry, who wants to put your money where his mouth is: CHICAGO — Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car.
Is a new car going to make the lives of these people change overnight? No. But just having a few years without car payments, without any significant repair bills, and being able to get to jobs reliably--that can be what starts someone in poverty on the road to the middle class.
"We're calling this our wildest dream season, because this year on the Oprah show, no dream is too wild, no surprise too impossible to pull off," Winfrey said.
...
Winfrey said the audience members were chosen because their friends or family had written to the show about their need for a new car. One woman's young son said she drove a car that "looks like she got into a gunfight"; another couple had almost 400,000 miles on their two vehicles.
In other segments on the show, Winfrey surprised a 20-year-old girl who had spent years in foster care and homeless shelters with a four-year college scholarship, a makeover and $10,000 in clothes. And a family with eight foster children who were going to be kicked out of the house they were renting were given $130,000 to buy and repair the home.
Sure, some of these people are going to blow it, just like the occasional lottery winner that goes bankrupt within a year. But Oprah has probably done more good for these poor people with this publicity stunt than five years of government "help" would ever do.
One of the reasons that I don't take liberals seriously is that they so few of them spend their tens of millions directly helping the poor, but instead come up with reasons why the government should take money away from middle class people, filter it through the government, and drop a few percent of it actually on poor people. Some would say that this is no coincidence--that liberals aren't interested in helping the poor, that this is just an excuse for impoverishing working people. Alternatively, consider Milton Friedman's explanation that when you ask college-educated middle class people to design a system to help the poor, they come up with a welfare system that hires large numbers of college-educated middle class people. What else would you expect?
If you are one of the small number of liberals who isn't a multimillionaire, please accept my apologies. In my experience, there aren't enough of you to matter, except at faculty meetings.
UPDATE: Oprah really is a liberal: Pontiac donated the cars, and paid the gift tax.
How Can This Law Survive After Lawrence?
This is a macabre and disturbing story. If you are easily offended by what Californians do for pleasure, you may not want to read this, or the rest of the news story which I chose not to quote.
Here's a challenge to you who think the Lawrence decision was rightly decided (not just in results, but in reasoning). What legitimate basis does the government have for making it a criminal offense to have sex with a dead body? SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
What legitimate governmental interest is served by making this unlawful? It isn't a question of the rights of the dead person; a dead person has no rights. "It's wrong" isn't going to fly in the post-Lawrence world; laws imposing a sexual morality of any sort must have an identifiable victim or some sort of public safety or health justification. You can't even make this fly as a property rights issue, both because the owner of the body might give permission, and because many state laws prohibit "abuse" of a corpse, or otherwise limiting what you can do with human remains. (I thought of this property rights angle because of a cross-department faculty meeting I was in last week, in which a physiology professor mentioned that he was about to start cadaver shopping.)
The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia in the state and will help prosecutors who have been stymied by the lack of an official ban on the practice, according to experts.
"Nobody knows the full extent of the problem. ... But a handful of instances over the past decade is frequent enough to have a bill concerning it," said Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who has studied California cases involving allegations of necrophilia.
Will the ACLU be filing suits on behalf of necrophiliacs, alleging that there is a constitutional right to what they do? Or is the Lawrence decision's reasoning just something constructed to strike down sodomy laws on behalf of homosexuals, and you don't really believe that the reasoning used in that decision should be broadly applied?
Converting A C DOS Program To Windows
I have a relatively small C program written for DOS (a few thousand lines). It uses stdin, stdout, stderr. I need to port to some GUI. I have been porting it to Java, but I have reached the frustration point where I find myself wondering if it might be less work to figure out how to turn this C code into a Windows application. There is a thread of execution that gets started, and then asks the user for a series of input lines, prompting the user to answer various questions.
The last time I wrote a Windows application was for Windows 1.0, back in the 1980s. I am finding the task of writing a Windows application daunting using Visual C++. Does anyone have an example lying around of a Windows application that:
1. Uses multiple windows.
2. Is sufficiently well commented that there is some hope of using it as a model?
