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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, June 04, 2005
Thanks To The Contributors I ordinarily thank everyone individually who contributes money, but in one case, I received a PayPal contribution from someone with an attbi.com email address--and attbi.com no longer exists. How did that happen? PayPal uses your email address as the key for your account--but even if you no longer use that email address, that's still the key for your account. So if you just contributed $10 to the cause, and your PayPal account uses attbi.com as part of your sending address--thanks! Big Bertha Okay, I pulled Big Bertha out this evening. The Foucault testing has not gone well, so I decided to try some star testing. It would appear that the problem is a turned edge--meaning that the outer edge of the mirror is a bit flatter than it should be. This would explain why the image is less sharp than it should be, and the problem becomes more severe as the magnification goes up. It would also explain why stopping the mirror down seems to improve the image quality. Finally, an interesting point: if I remove the aperture mask, the focal point changes slightly. This is not surprising; the turned edge has a very slightly longer focal length than it should, and trying to get a crisp focus on the entire image is going to be difficult--and it will be a slightly longer focal length than the stopped down mirror. I guess the next step is to put a mask on the mirror face itself, and see how much of the edge needs to be masked. If this seems to help substantially, it may be worthwhile spending some money getting the mirror tested and refigured. The good news, however, is that at low magnification, it works well. One of the few planetary nebulae that I can consistently find, even under light polluted skies, is M57, the Ring Nebula. It sits between the two stars at the south end of the constellation Lyra. With my 8" reflector, M57 is visible, but faint. At 57x, it is bright but small. At 114x, it is larger, but hard to see, because the faint image is now spread over four times the area. With Big Bertha, I am gathering more than four times the light--and at 78x, it is bright and not particular small. At 111x, it is pretty big, and still quite bright. Very nice. Labels: telescopes For Every Legitimate Use of Deadly Force... There's still someone grieving the loss of a loved one. Regular readers of my other blog know that I maintain clippings of civilian defensive gun uses. (Actually, Pete Drum does most of the legwork, and I just occasionally make contributions.) In a lot of these incidents, just showing a gun is enough to make a criminal remember that he has pressing engagements elsewhere. But sometimes, your choice is to shoot, or risk serious injury or death. Even criminals have next of kin who love them, and who are devastated by the death. I received an email from the widow of a person killed in an incident last year. Without editorializing, my coblogger reproduced a newspaper account of the decision not to prosecute the shooter. The widow was quite upset that we covered this incident, and proceeded to give her side of the story--contradicting herself from sentence to sentence. She knew that the news accounts and official investigation was wrong; she knew that the only witness was the shooter. Newspaper accounts, however, revealed that her husband's daughter from a previous marriage was present in the home, and called 911 to report it--and the 911 tape seems to confirm the shooter's version of what happened. She knew that the shooter had a scandalous past (in spite of being the county medical examiner). She neglected to mention that her husband had a history of violence towards his previous wife--who was also the shooter's current wife. It is hard to see someone that you love dead. It is much easier to conclude that there was a big conspiracy by local officials to exonerate the shooter, and leave her a widow, and her children orphans. I know that one of the biggest problems of small communities is that there are a lot of overly cozy relationships, and I do not immediately assume that every official investigation is on the up and up. I have an acquaintance who lives in some fear because the man who murdered her daughter is going to be released one of these days--and to hear her tell the story, it was just luck that this guy went to prison for murder, since he did contract killings for the sheriff in the rural community where her daughter lived. (This was not in Idaho.) Still, when all the newspapers accounts tell one story, and the widow's version isn't even internally consistent, it is hard to see this as anything but a widow lashing out in anger and grief. There are times that you have no choice but to use deadly force in self-defense. But don't take a life if you don't need to. Even bad guys have people that love them, and sometimes pretty good people are just having a bad day, or had too much to drink. Friday, June 03, 2005
Okay, What Right-Wing, Neo-Nazi Publication Carried This Headline? Researchers Say Intelligence and Diseases May Be Linked in [ethnic group] GenesI mean, Murray and Herrnstein were essentially excommunicated from polite society a few years ago for arguing in The Bell Curve that intelligence is perhaps 60% determined by genetics, and that the measured ethnic differences in IQ test results are primarily determined by genetics, not by environment. I'll keep you in suspense no more. The reactionary, evil, racist publication that carried that headline was the New York Times. Here's a couple of excerpts, without my coy little ellision: Researchers Say Intelligence and Diseases May Be Linked in Ashkenazic GenesThis isn't exactly a startling concept, and it especially shouldn't be to those people on the left who believe in evolution so strongly that they don't want alternative arguments advanced in the classroom. The argument isn't just a matter of correlation suggesting causality: The four diseases, all of which are caused by mutations that affect the cell's management of chemicals known as sphingolipids, are Tay-Sachs, Niemann-Pick, Gaucher, and mucolipidosis type IV. A second cluster of diseases affects repair of DNA.This disproportion at the tails of the bell curve is important. Murray and Herrnstein's The Bell Curve makes the point that while the average IQ of men and women are nearly identical, the shape of the curves is different, with men far more likely to be in the genius and severely retarded categories. This may explain some of the sexual disparities that put Harvard's Lawrence Summers in the doghouse recently. The notion that intelligence is inherited, at least in part, really shouldn't be any surprise--and the left shouldn't be arguing otherwise. The notion of "survival of the fittest" is at the core of Darwinian evolution, and it takes a really doctrinaire Marxist to argue that intelligence doesn't make you more fit to survive. We have lots of evidence that various forms of mental illness are at least partly genetic. Schizophrenia, for example, is clearly genetic, with Mendelian patterns of it running through families. (There is also some evidence that schizophrenia may be several different diseases with similar symptoms--hence the difficulties in trying to reliably isolate the gene responsible in multiple studies.) Bipolar disorder is also at least partly genetic. In both cases, the genes that carry these disorders also carry some advantages--and if you are lucky enough not to get the illness, you may get the genetic advantage that goes with it. There is no reason to think of intelligence as being different. The left's hostility to legitimate scientific research on this is a combination of the Nazi misuse of Social Darwinism, and the Marxian delusion that each of us born as a tabula rasa--a blank slate on which society can write anything that it deems important. The House Project The Well When last I blogged about the house project, the well driller had hit water at 127 feet. It turned out that his initial estimate of five gallons per minute was a little optimistic, so he kept drilling to try and get a better flow rate. At 290 feet, he was still only getting ten gallons a minute. (I'm not sure that the last ninety feet really got us enough of a gain to justify the extra $1700.) Anyway, we have a well, and ten gallons a minute is 600 gallons per hour--this should be more than enough. The next step is to get a pump installed, and to solve the water tank/pressurization tank question. You see, a house needs about forty to fifty PSI water pressure to work correctly. Normally, a house with a well solves this problem with a pressurization tank, which holds tens of gallons to as much as 125 gallons. I had hoped to use a large (1000 gallons) water storage tank to accomplish the same ends, because every 2.3 feet of elevation gives you one PSI. Unfortunately, from the house to the top of my property only turned out to be about 37 feet, so the water storage tank wouldn't be enough to provide enough pressure. It would still be nice to have all that water available in the event that a brush fire came through and we lost electric power, so we are looking into having both a pressurization tank and a large water storage tank as well. We might not go quite as high up the hill for the storage tank, but even being able to run low pressure water down the hillside and across the roof would be comforting if there was a brush fire in the area. The Foundation My wife and I met with the contractor yesterday to put stakes in the ground at the corners of the house, so that he can get started with pouring foundations. First, however, he has decided that we need another ten feet excavated into the mountain so that he doesn't have to dig a lot deeper into the ground for the foundation. Colors, Fixtures, Floor Covering I can see why building a house often causes divorce! We have been spending time picking out flooring, lighting fixtures, and discussing color schemes. Fortunately, my wife and I do not have strongly differing tastes in this area (and where we do, I don't care enough to argue with her about it). Labels: house project Something Sadder and More Perverse Than Homosexuality A slight acquaintance of my wife dropped out of her social circle a while back. He's a nice person, and one of those guys for whom age has made him distinguished looking, not old. He's a police officer here in the Boise area. He's been married forever, with children and grandchildren. So now he has resurfaced. He's wearing tight pants and makeup. He is now divorced--not, not because of "another woman"--he is preparing to become the other woman, by getting a sex change. I'm not identifying him, but he is quite open about his plans. You know, homosexuality disturbs me, but it is practically normal and wholesome compared to a sex change. What's involved for a man to become a woman? Hormones. Electrolysis. Breast implants. Removal and resculpting of the penis and scrotum into a pseudo-vagina. I've never used the argument that homosexuality is "unnatural" because there are lots of behaviors that are "natural" and yet profoundly wrong (such as rape). But while you can find examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, there aren't too many examples of sex change in the higher animals. "Unnatural" is simply not a strong enough word to describe this collection of grotesque and expensive procedures. I recognize that there are people (a very small percentage) who are born with indeterminate sexual organs, and the doctors have to make a decision about what to do--and these procedures are done before the infant is old enough to be aware of it. Similarly, I remember reading an interview with the electronic music composer Walter (now Wendy) Carlos many years ago, and feeling tremendous sympathy for Carlos's situation. Carlos had never felt like a man, never felt sexually attracted to women (and apparently wasn't attracted to men, either), and after reading Carlos's description, I could give him/her the benefit of the doubt, and believe that here was one of that very small percentage of people who have some sort of hormonal problem that caused this sense of being in the wrong body. I have, on a few occasions, met people who were sufficiently androgynous that you could see the possibility that something wasn't working right in the endocrine system. But this guy wasn't in that category. He is a tall, very masculine looking guy. He is going to make a very ugly woman, and no matter how hard he tries, he is going to be obviously a man pretending to be a woman for the rest of his life. Many years ago, my wife and I attended a one-day seminar on recognizing child sexual abuse and legal reporting requirements. Most of the other students were health professionals. Over lunch, we talked with a young woman whose husband had decided to get a sex change. Her husband was the only child of a very macho Marine and a woman who desperately wanted a daughter--and so she had dressed her little boy in girl's clothes until he was ten years old, painting his nails, applying makeup, etc. As you might expect, especially back then, the father's reaction to his son was quite negative. This isn't normally what we think of as child sexual abuse, but in terms of creating a very gender-confused young man, it worked. Okay, adults screw up. They damage kids. The problem was that when this confused guy tried to get help with his problem, both a psychiatrist and his pastor recommended a sex change--rather than admit that perhaps his gender confusion had something to do with Mom's playing dress-up with a living doll, and Dad's extremely negative reaction. What a screwed up world this is. UPDATE: I just remembered that I had linked to an article a couple of years ago about people that keep changing sex--and are never happy with the results. Labels: homosexuality, transgender Thursday, June 02, 2005
How Bad Are Things in Iraq? In some parts, pretty bad. But make sure you visit this web page in which Michael Yon describes his visit to Dohuk, in northern Iraq. In much of Iraq, life is good. Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Stoppping Molestation of Children There is an organization that has records that, by any reasonable standard, strongly suggest that children under 14 are being sexually molested. This organization is refusing to turn over those records. Guess what organization? CHICAGO, May 31 - Planned Parenthood of Indiana has to show state investigators the medical records of some of its youngest patients, a judge ruled on Tuesday. The judge rejected the organization's contention that disclosing such records could have a chilling effect on patients across the state.Now, I understand that there are probably some of these under 14-year-olds who have gone to Planned Parenthood for birth control because they are having sex with their peers, not with adults. But there is nothing even slightly bizarre about the possibility that some of these children (and that is what a 13 year old is) are being sent to Planned Parenthood because their boyfriend is 19 years old, or 24, or 45, or 60. Planned Parenthood has a history of helping to cover up child molestation, telling callers who claimed to be 13 years old that there was no need to tell police that their adult boyfriend got them pregnant. One of the reasons that I have become a conservative these last few years is the increasing willingness of liberals to make excuses for adults having sex with children--and I don't mean 16 and 17 year old girls having sex with their 18 and 19 year old boyfriends. There is simply no reason for a little girl of 12 or 13 to be having sex--at all--and no excuse for adult men to be having sex with children this age. Labels: child sexual abuse Instapundit Is Trying To Get Rid of a Cat And no, the vicious rumor about Instapundit, puppies, and blenders, doesn't have anything to do with this. The wife and daughter are allergic, it seems, and he needs a good home for it (not in a blender). The Ford Boycott The American Family Association is organizing a boycott of Ford Motor Company for its funding of gay organizations. This is not a difficult boycott for me to join, since I haven't see a Ford that I would consider buying, except, perhaps, the new Mustang. Go here to join. One interesting aspect of the news story, however, is this: Sharp said he is upset by Ford's marketing tactics in gay-oriented publications, including offering to donate $1,000 to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (search) for every Jaguar or Land Rover sold.One of the frequent arguments for why homosexuals need the protection of antidiscrimination laws is that they are so desperately poor because all the good jobs are closed to them. So why is Ford trying to use this marketing tactic with Jaguars and Land Rovers, and not Ford Escorts? Somehow, this doesn't sound marketing to poor people. Islam & Anti-Semitism I have a friend who is a French Jew--and is quite insistent that Islam is not anti-Semitic, and that Islam is really no different from other religions in its level of intolerance of other religions. (I have a sneaking suspicion that he would prefer to live in an Islamic society rather than say, one run by Republicans.) So this sermon televised by the Palestinian National Authority--which is actually one of the more secular parts of the Arab Islamic world--is quite interesting. Thanks to Professor Volokh for bringing this to my attention: "With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.As Professor Volokh points out, this isn't a public access cable channel. The Palestinian National Authority doesn't let just any drooling fool on to spout this kind of hatred. I know that there are Muslims who don't subscribe to this nonsense. But the proponents of this nonsense aren't just a tiny fringe, either. Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Retaliation For Al-Qaeda Bombing: Burn a Kentucky Fried Chicken? I read news stories like this, and I look for some explanation of the reasoning that causes enraged Muslims to retaliate for a mosque bombing by an al-Qaeda connected group with an attack on a symbol of American capitalism: KARACHI, Pakistan -- A mob angered by an al-Qaida-linked suicide bombing in a Shiite mosque set a KFC restaurant afire in overnight rioting, killing six employees and bringing the day's overall death toll to 11, police said Tuesday.Al-Qaeda is the enemy of America. Why would you retaliate against al-Qaeda by attacking an American symbol? I scratch my head, and wonder if there's a mental deficiency involved. At Least It Is Now Out in the Open Instapundit is concerned that perhaps the ability to teach might be more important than an aspiring teacher's commitment to "social justice." Brooklyn College's School of Education has begun to base evaluations of aspiring teachers in part on their commitment to social justice, raising fears that the college is screening students for their political views.Empty vessel, indeed. I believe very strongly in social justice. But my notion of what constitutes social justice is likely to be rather substantially different from that of the crowd that runs the education department at Brooklyn College (and just about any other college in America). Critics such as Mr. Johnson say the dangers of the assessment policy became immediately apparent in the fall semester when several students filed complaints against an instructor who they said discriminated against them because of their political beliefs and "denounced white people as the oppressors."Ah, well at least we are getting this out in the open, aren't we? The left's insistence on seeing everything through the narrow prism of "racism, sexism, and classism" (what my wife calls the triumvirate of the left) is part of why my wife and I have abandoned any notion of returning to grad school to work on our doctorates. These clowns at Brooklyn College are just being a bit more open about something which is dominant in the academic profession now: that everything is political, and there is no room for diversity of opinion. I keep wondering when the population is going to wake up, and cut funding to these dangerous lunatics. |
