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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). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, April 15, 2006
Death of a Friend There's a saying among historians that, "Everytime an old person dies, it's like a library burning down." My best friend's mother died very early yesterday morning--a broken hip, dementia, and all the tragedies that go with us. I got to know Virginia pretty well some years ago, while working with her on writing her autobiography. Originally, the goal was to help her learn to use a PC that she had been given, but over time, it developed into a regular part of my Saturday morning. Virginia was a graduate of the University of Texas, with a degree in French, but her writing needed some help--I liked to kid that I was translating it from Texan to English. I have had no luck finding a publisher for it, which is unfortunate. Virginia had some amazing stories! She had a very hard life, growing up in Depression era Texas, and the manuscript is a mix of tragedy, humor, some heart-warming stories of small town life--and some eye-opening accounts of an era that will probably shock anyone who thinks "the good old days" were morally superior to the present. Here's one amusing story of her years working for the Navy on Treasure Island, during World War II, while her husband was serving in the Pacific. The Navy tried to find work for the wives on the base, and civilian employees had lunch on the base in the enlisted men's mess. Part of the pay was a meal coupon book to pay for your lunch; each coupon was valued at twenty cents. The reason for requiring civilian employees to eat in the mess halls was because no one was allowed to bring a package of any kind on the base (for security reasons) and to prevent theft when leaving. Unfortunately, some people, including the servicemen, would try to sneak things out of the base, so there was a device called the inspectoscope you had to walk through on way out every day. The inspectoscope was manned by security, which included the Military Police. Gay Prom Night in Tracy Am I happy about a separate "gay prom"? Not really. But this is far better than filing lawsuits or ugly clashes: TRACY, Calif. -- After months of planning, hundreds of gay and lesbian high school students are expected to attend their own prom Thursday night.I'm not sure exactly how many students attend Merrill F. West High School, but I find the idea that "hundreds of gay and lesbian high school students" will be attending this event implausible, unless they are drawing off a much larger student body than just one high school. Gay men are about 3-4% of the adult male population; lesbians are about 1-2% of the adult female population. For an average of about 2%, if "hundreds" of students are attending from one high school, either the high school has more than 5000 graduating seniors--or there is something spectacularly anomalous about this community. Labels: homosexuality Friday, April 14, 2006
Heresy at Ohio State! At Least They Aren't Burning The Librarian I've pointed out repeatedly that there is something unnervingly totalitarian about the manner in which homosexuals are suppressing debate. Professor Volokh, of all people, points to an example of a librarian at Ohio State named Scott Savage who sat on a committee responsible for selecting books for something called the First Year Reading Experience that all the freshmen go through. This librarian suggested that since all the books that had been proposed took a left-wing perspective, perhaps it would be good to include some books with an alternative point of view: But if we are decided that we want to engage our students in the kind of exchange of ideas on which the "secular" university is founded, then let's choose something that confronts the accepted wisdom of Ohio State University! Like students and young profs did in the '60s, man!Well, one of the books that he suggests is David Kupelian's The Marketing of Evil--and for suggesting that book, professors on the committee filed a complaint that the librarian was engaged in sexual harassment becuse Kupelian's book does not accept homosexuality. The complaint--and the emails that flew back and forth--are here. There is a fierce fear of dissent on many college campuses--especially about homosexuality. Read the emails back and forth--and you can tell that there are a lot of professors engaged in this struggle who clearly don't believe that students should hear more than one perspective about sex. Usually, that's a sign of someone who knows that they won't win the argument on its merits. Thursday, April 13, 2006
House Project: DSL; Water Frontier Telephone made an appointment to install DSL between 1:00 and 5:00 PM today, assuming that it was possible. They said that if something came up that made it impossible, they would give me a call. Just to make sure that the message didn't get lost by my somewhat absent-minded son, I gave them my work number. At least voicemail would get it. So I took the afternoon off work. I figured that there were other tasks that I could be working on up at the new house while I was waiting for them. Well, I removed the lead filters from their fancy stainless steel and very expensive housing. Sure enough, they were clogged with silt, and the water pressure improved quite noticeably afterwards. After filling the tub a couple of times with hot water, the hot water is now coming as clear as the cold water--pretty much indistinguishable from city water. Just to make sure, I took a water sample to be tested for lead and iron. Assuming that everything is within safe levels, this will probably be the last test that I do for several months. About 2:30 PM, I suddenly asked myself, "Maybe I should call, and make sure that they are still supposed to be here today." So I called--and customer service informed that they had discovered that they could not give me DSL, after all, but, "They called the phone number you gave them, but no one answered, and there was no answering machine or voicemail." This is nonsense. My office phone has voicemail. The chance that my employer's voicemail was inoperative when they called is essentially zero. It is time to call BitSmart; SpeedyQuick Networks, the other wireless internet provider that believed that they could provide service, decided that they couldn't. I will say, it is very quiet and beautiful up there. The clouds were drifting back and forth across the Sun. Big cumulus clouds like a Western movie; subtle shadows across the mountains. Very nice. Labels: house project Scientists Arguing Against Kyoto Treaty I mentioned a few days back a letter from 60 prominent scientists to Canadian Prime Minister Harper arguing that the anthropogenic origins of global warming are not proven, and recommending some caution on the Canadian governmental policy in this area. Here's the letter--and it is a pretty impressive list of signatories. Labels: global warming Wednesday, April 12, 2006
You Call It Harrassment; I Call It Free Speech This article from the Los Angeles Times points to a serious problem: when does my free speech become your hostile environment? ATLANTA — Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.If I speak out against racism, am I creating a hostile environment for racists? If I speak out against forcing women to wear burkhas, am I am creating a hostile environment for Muslims who subscribe to Talibanesque interpretations of Islam? Am I creating a hostile environment for all Muslims? There needs to be a clear line here. I completely agree that yelling "faggot" at homosexuals is creating a hostile environment, antithetical to the purpose of a university. But expressing one's disapproval of homosexuality in a polite and reasoned way is hardly the same situation. More About Democrats Injuring The Poor I've made this point repeatedly (you may be saying, ad nauseam), but Rick Lowry is making it at National Review Online: Democrats opposed the ratification of the Central America Free Trade Agreement last year for fear that it would undercut American workers made to compete with cheap Latin American labor. The problem the Democrats must have had with this effect on American workers was that it was too indirect. The party now favors importing lots of that same cheap Latin American labor directly into the United States.He also goes on to point that some Republicans are "getting it," and emphasizing tha they are quite happy to be on the opposite side from Big Corporations, and on the side of the poorest American workers. Attempts To Intimidate Scientists About Global Warming MIT Atmospheric Sciences Professor Richard Lindzen has a piece about efforts to intimidate scientists who are doing research on global warming. As you might expect, the environmentalists are terrified that the dirty little secret will come out: Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.More importantly, Professor Lindzen points out that even the claims that are the basis for the alarm aren't correct: First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming. Labels: global warming I Guess Only Burning American Flags Is Constitutionally Protected Fascinating story of what happened when someone burned a Mexican flag: A Tucson man was arrested Tuesday for his role in the burning of a Mexican flag as part of a counterprotest at a pro-immigration rally.Now, the assault charges are a completely separate issue, and if Warden attacked someone, this is not okay. If he stole someone else's Mexican flag to burn it, that's a crime--but robbery or larceny, not "reckless burning." Somehow, I can't picture the ACLU defending Warden's right to burn the Mexican flag. That was...insensitive. I am inclined to think that while the Framers doubtless did not intend flag-burning to be protected free speech, it does more harm to the firebug's position than good. It should probably be lawful, even if it isn't truly protected by the First Amendment. But there's no reason why burning an American flag should be protected speech, but that of other countries is not. What's The Big Deal? It's Just Their Sexual Orientation Ah yes, the Bible Belt has ruptured, I would say: In Waynesville, a small county seat in the mountains of western North Carolina, people whispered about the three older men who lived together south of town.Gay activists and law professors everywhere can cluck at me all they want for being narrow-minded, but regardless of whether this was consensual or not, this is a form of mental illness. Labels: homosexuality The Underage Sex Tourism Business Has A New Destination And it is a lot closer than Thailand: ATLANTA (Reuters) - In a sleazy hotel room, "Brittany," then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door. Does Sexually Provocative Material Change Adolescent Behavior? It is a matter of faith in some circles that a steady diet of violent entertainment or sexual entertainment has no deleterious effects on minors--because then this crowd would have to confront the difficult and unpleasant cost/benefit question of whether the negligible positive benefits to society of having kids exposed to such material exceeds the damage that it does to kids. There's enough evidence that suggests that violent entertainment is a problem for at least some significant fraction of kids that I don't think anyone but law professors and ACLU attorneys would argue that point anymore. What about materials that are highly sexualized? CHICAGO (Reuters) - Sexually charged music, magazines, TV and movies push youngsters into intercourse at an earlier age, perhaps by acting as kind of virtual peer that tells them everyone else is doing it, a study said Monday.Okay, this is really no surprise. If what kids see on television really doesn't influence them, then the advertising industry is engaged in fraud. Most people can see that there is real hazard in kids this young being sexually active, both from physical risks (pregnancy, STDs) and emotional hazards. Now, in some intellectual circles, this isn't considered a problem--the ACLU, for example, argues that teenagers have a "due process liberty interest" -- a Constitutional right -- to have sex with adults, with severe limits on how the government may restrict that right. What was quite disturbing was why this exposure increased the level of sexual intercourse for whites so much more than for blacks: The effect was not as pronounced for blacks, the study said, perhaps because the black youngsters in the study were already more sexually experienced than the whites were when the research began and thus were less influenced by media exposure over the two-year period.The survey group at the start was aged 12 to 14. This is discouraging and worrisome. Now, this news report did say that one of the problems is that the entertainment media are effectively surrogate parents about sex education: At the same time parents tend not to talk about sex with their children in a timely and comprehensive way, leaving a vacuum in which the media may become a powerful sex educator, providing "frequent and compelling portraits of sex as fun and risk free."Unfortunately, this it the core problem. For many kids, MTV is their parent. They spend more time watching TV than they spend with their parents--and not suprisingly, the immorality that infects the entertainment industry, where men are studs, and girls (not women) are sexual gratification devices, wins the battle. Tuesday, April 11, 2006
A Remarkably Crisp Disposal of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories You are probably aware that there are lots of bizarre conspiracy theories about 9/11 out there: that the Mossad did it; that Bush knew that the attacks were going to happen, and let them happen so that he would have an excuse to set up a police state (I didn't notice that one was set up); that the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by demolition experts, not the airplanes; that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, not an airliner. These arguments are like X Files on speed in their bizarreness, with vast conspiracies involving thousands of people with no consciences--and no screwups. I was reading comments about the upcoming movie United 93, and the ignorance, credulity, and borderline mental illness of the crowd insisting that Bush made everything happen--and that Osama Bin Laden took credit for something that he didn't do because he wanted to be popular. One tremendously thoughtful criticism of these lunatics impressed me: Finally, I don't believe the US government is capable of the conspiracy theorized. While many opponents of the current administration will no doubt argue that Bush is heartless and would willingly sacrifice thousands for a pretext, that's not what I'm referencing. I don't believe the US intelligence services are competent enough to pull off a 9/11. In order to do this, they would have to rig three occupied skyscrapers for demolition (I believe a week in advance is the current theory) and conceal both the operation to rig and the explosives themselves, seize 4 airliners and dispose of the passengers as well as the aircraft themselves (for those theories that the attacks weren't actually the airliners but either missiles or government aircraft), recover all evidence after the fact at locations swarming with volunteers, avoid any random cameras (tourists, journalists, random by-standers) that might catch real discrepancies (like a fighter ramming the pentagon), and have dozens if not hundreds of participating operatives maintain complete operation silence for 5 years afterwards with no one stepping forward with a guilty conscience or looking for a quick buck (this when a president can't even have a consensual affair without having half a dozen people leak to the press). What administration in US history could ever have pulled that off? And what for the love of God makes you think the current one could do it. If the conspiracy theory were true, the Bush administration pulled off the most complicated and seamlessly executed covert operation in history (with less than a year's planning and ground work). These same geniuses then failed to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. They then failed coerce either the Saudis or the Turks to comply with the invasion of Iraq. Not only failed to find WMD in Iraq, but even failed to plant either American or Israeli provided WMD to justify the invasion. Then failed to kill or capture (overtly or covertly) Zarqawi, Al-Sistani, or Sadir while getting utterly played by Chalabi and Al-Sistani. These evil geniuses couldn't even remove the international loathed head of state for Haiti without ending up with egg on their collective faces. Explain to me how the massive and elaborate 9/11 plot unfolded seamlessly while the CIA fell on its face with the covert rendition program and uberspies with the NSA got called to the carpet with the domestic surveillance program. Your stating Bush hit a flawless grand-slam, then proceeded to (spectacularly) strike out for the next 5 years. A New California Textbook Requirement? Michael Williams pointed me to this piece of nonsense: SACRAMENTO - The state Senate will consider a bill that would require California schools to teach students about the contributions gay people have made to society -- an effort that supporters say is an attempt to battle discrimination and opponents say is designed to use the classroom to get children to embrace homosexuality.Oh yeah, this is really important! What's even more outrageous is that homosexuals have been claiming various important figures from history as gay with evidence that to call it "thin" would be generous. Was Shakespeare gay? A lot of people claim it because of his sonnets--but fail to understand the nature of how Elizabethan writers wrote poems in language that today would seem like an experssion romantic love, but was at the time considered a way of expressing strong fraternal love. It is certainly possible that Shakespeare was bisexual. Christopher Marlowe, one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, was certainly interested in sex with other men, and made no secret of it. There were no actresses in those times; boys dressed up to play women's parts, and as much as many proper Englishmen of the time disapproved of women acting, after the Restoration, it appears that concern about the moral hazards of dressing boys up in dresses and having them kissed by grown men took precedence over women playing women. Still, the most that we can say about Shakespeare is that he could have been bisexual. There's no evidence for it. Abraham Lincoln is another historical figure who is now claimed to be bisexual--and again, based on a mixture of plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. The historian Philip Nobile first started working on this gay Lincoln book, and then withdrew as the evidence turned out to be non-existent, has a scathing criticism: The argument is "irrefutable," Gore Vidal blurbs on the book's cover. And, in fact, Tripp's work is as good as the case gets for Lincoln's walk on the Wilde side.More importantly, a rather prominent gay activist tried to blackmail Nobile into not criticizing this dishonest crock: "IF YOU DON'T STOP MAKING A STINK about Tripp's book, I'm going to expose you as an enormous homophobe," Larry Kramer telephoned me to say last October. "For the sake of humanity, please, gays need a role model." I replied that the book was so bad, it would backfire on the homosexual movement when reviewers and readers caught on to the fabrications, contradictions, and general nuttiness of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln.And this is the problem. Homosexual activists are desperate for positive role models to make themselves feel good about themselves. There's a bit of a shortage of prominent homosexuals in history, partly because homosexuality throughout much of history has been reviled so severely--and those that were unquestionably homosexual or bisexual are hardly stunningly positive: Edward II; King James I (yes, the guy who commissioned the King James Version of the Bible); Ernest Roehm, Hitler's leader of the Sturmabteilung. Labels: homosexuality The Effects of Illegal Immigrants on Unskilled Workers There's an article at USA Today about this question that contains some interesting claims and some data: For some Americans, however, illegal immigrants loom as a direct threat to their livelihood. Jobless for three months, construction worker Michael Williams, 49, says the immigrant workers he sees gathered outside Los Angeles area Home Depots will work for half his customary $100 daily wage. "You have a lot of illegal aliens here," says Williams. "It takes food off the table." The Duke Lacrosse Team Rape Case I mentioned this a few days ago, and how disgusted I was with the email that one of the team members sent a few hours after the alleged rape. I'm still disgusted with that email--but the evidence is now in--whoever raped the "exotic dancer," it wasn't any of the 46 white Lacrosse team members that she accused. The DNA tests have come back--none of them matched. It would even appear that there was no evidence of any sexual contact at all: According to court documents, only lacrosse team members were at the party. Authorities ordered 46 of the 47 players on Duke's lacrosse team to submit DNA samples to investigators, who compared them with evidence collected from the woman. Political Correctness Run Amok I just scratch my head on this one--I would think that Indians would want this shameful part of our past kept alive, so that we don't forget what happened to them:
The Sobering Consequences I posted last May about a traffic accident that we happened upon--one that wiped out an entire family named Perfect. A drunk with a history of aggressive driving prevented a young man attending Boise State University from passing on a two lane road--and the aggression built up, until a mother, a father, and their infant daughter were dead--and the lives of the two survivors have been irreparably destroyed: Both Cam Hall and Mark Lazinka broke down in court Monday while addressing relatives of the Eagle family who died last spring in a crash prosecutors say was caused by the two men's aggressive driving.Motor vehicles are dangerous. Alcohol can turn reasonably behaved people into irresponsible monsters. The combination of alcohol and a car (or alcohol and a gun, or alcohol and a chainsaw) is incredibly dangerous. They Grow Up So Fast Our youngest turned 18 today. Last night, my wife and I were up at the new house, sorting through boxes so that stuff we don't need on a daily basis could be put in airtight containers in the attic. My wife was going through a box of keepsakes associated with each of our kids--a first baby blanket, a My Little Ponies lunchbox--and she found this sandal that our son must have worn when he was about two years old, and she started crying. "It was just yesterday." As we were driving back down the hill, she was still teary-eyed about this. "I loved being a Mom. I remember thinking that changing diapers was going to go on forever, but now he's turning 18. I just can't understand mothers who put their kids into daycare. It was so much fun raising my kids." I know that there are mothers who don't have the choice on this, because their husband doesn't make enough to support a family--or worse, has run off--but if there is any way that you can be raising your own kids--instead of farming it out to someone who, much of the time, is doing this because there is no other job available to them--the rewards are spectacular. You also wont find yourself a couple of decades later wondering, "Did I do the right thing? What would it have been like when my daughter took her first steps, read her first word, started talking?" Monday, April 10, 2006
I Wouldn't Write Any 30 Year Mortgages in San Diego, If I Were You The May 2006 Astronomy has an article by Bill Cooke titled "Fatal Attraction," about asteroid Apophis, which is a near Earth object that is going to be making a very close pass in 2029--within 22,000 miles, so close enough to easily see as it passes by. There are particular slots in space called "resonance keyholes" that can strongly influence where an asteroid goes on subsequent passes: As of this writing, additional observations have ruled out a passage through all but one keyhole. Not surprisingly, the remaining keyhole is the one closest to Apophis' projected path. Located about 18,700 miles (30,l100 km) above Earth's surface, this 7/6 resonance keyhole -- the numbers mean the asteroid would make exactly 6 complete orbits around the Sun in 7 years -- is pretty small, only about 600 yards (550m) wide. But if the asteroid passes through thsi zone, it will be on a trajectory to strike Earth in April 2036, possibly off the western coast of northern Mexico.This is a 350 yard diameter object--a collision would be about 870 megatons equivalent. There Are Limits To What A Lion Will Eat I don't think that this is going to work as well as the expectant couple thinks: WINDHOEK (Reuters) - Pregnant Hollywood siren Angelina Jolie and boyfriend Brad Pitt have taken refuge in a remote Namibian game lodge where wild lions will help protect them from the media, a Namibian newspaper said on Monday. Interest Rates & Bond Markets The 30 year Treasury bond yields are still above 5%, but the the yield curve is still rising to the right--meaning that yields on shorter bonds are still lower than on long bonds. This suggests that institutional bond buyers are still reluctant to snap up the long term bonds because they think those yields will rise a bit more. I am inclined to agree. There are Federal Home Loan Bank Board bonds available that are due in 2026 with 6.62% yields--and at par price, so that if (or more accurately when) the FHLBB calls these bonds before maturity, you will still get 6.62% yield per year--perhaps just fewer years than you hoped. These bonds have been on the market since Friday, so I guess that big institutional bond buyers are saying, "There's some more room for yields to rise--we're in no hurry." I also see that Schwab is offering Nationwide Bank 20 year CDs with 6.5% annualized yield. This is a very curious type of CD--it has a 20 year lifetime, and it is FDIC insured--but at the same time, it is described as callable. I suspect that Nationwide has constructed a type of CD that, like the FHLBB bonds, is financing home mortgages, and if those mortages get paid off early (as they usually do), Nationwide will call the CD. It appears to have the insured safety of a CD and the high yield of an agency bond, without the certainty of how long it will you will continue to receive interest payments. What Democrats Want This is about as clear a statement of Democratic Party intent as I can imagine, from one of the recent protests.  I suppose that we should be glad that there's still some sort of line between Texas and the rest of Mexico, and that they haven't included the rest of the Southwest as part of their reconquista. Maybe that isn't what the Democrats meant when they put this together--but that's how I would read it, and that's certainly how many non-Hispanics are going to read it. Michelle Malkin posted some pictures of the signs from the Dallas protest. These give me tremendous confidence about wonderful it will be to be a white, black, or Asian person living in Mexiamerica.   Liberal Washington Post Speaks Truth To The Left I've had a grudging respect for the Washington Post for some time now. Yes, they are a liberal newspaper, but unlike the New York Times, they seem to be making a serious effort on the editorial page to be fair, honest, and accurate. (I would be happy if the New York Times could get even one of those adjectives operational on their editorial page.) Still, it is shocking and wonderful to see one of America's most cited newspapers--and a liberal one, at that--publish this editorial: PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.Forward this to your favorite leftist--just to watch smoke come out of their ears. International Climate Experts Say Kyoto A Mistake; Amusing Advertising Results A letter from sixty international climate experts is asking Canadian Prime Minister Harper to rethink the Liberal Party's support for the Kyoto Treaty: Canada's new Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been urged by more than 60 leading international climate change experts to review the global warming policies he inherited from his centre-Left predecessor.Regular readers of my blog will not be surprised by this. What is amusing is that throughout this article, there were certain phrased highlighted, such as "climate change" and "global climate change." At first, I thought that these were hyperlinks to other articles--but no, when you moused over them, ads from oil company BP emphasizing their concern about global warming appeared. This is rather like the example I pointed to a few days ago of the problems of automated ad placement--sometimes the results aren't quite what you expect. By the way, BP's television ads on this subject really annoy me. The format implies that they picked people at random in public places and asked them how they feel about protecting the environment, and global warming--with the implication that BP shares their environmental concerns. I am astonished at the stupidity of the people that they interview (assuming that these aren't actors)--almost like BP thinks that the general public concerned about the environment are inarticulate dunces like the ones in these commercials. Of course, if you are convinced by these ads that BPs is concerned about Mother Earth, you probably are an inarticulate dunce. Labels: global warming Iraq's Suicide Bombers Over at Captain's Quarters, there's a discussion of an internal Iraqi document recently released that shows that Iraq was recruiting suicide bombers in March of 2001: A few days ago, I posted a translation of a document culled from the captured Iraqi documents that the US found during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This particular memo, dated March 17, 2001, comes from a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and requests a list of volunteers from all units under his command for suicide attackers. The memo explicitly explains the targets for these terrorist attacks, as the original translation from Joseph Shahda shows:Those Arabic translators came up with essentially the same results. Now, if only the Bush Administration would try and defend itself. Investor's Business Daily also covers this document, and reminds everyone: Though little noticed by the press, during a July 2004 visit to Kazakhstan the Russian president said that between 9-11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, "Russian special services and Russian intelligence several times received . . . information that official organs of Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist acts on the territory of the U.S. and beyond its borders, at U.S. military and civilian locations." Global Warming Bob Carter, who is a geologist on the research staff at James Cook University in Australia, has a column in the Telegraph that makes some points that, for some odd reason, aren't getting more attention: For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero). Labels: global warming Gospel of Judas If you saw all the media hype about the Gospel of Judas--Dave Kopel has a very useful discussion over at Volokh Conspiracy about this: Suppose that sometime around the year 3,800 A.D., someone wrote a newspaper that began: "According to a recently-discovered document, which appears to have been written sometime before 1926, Benedict Arnold did not attempt to betray George Washington and the American cause, as is commonly believed. Rather, Benedict Arnold was acting at the request of George Washington, because Washington wanted Arnold to help him create a dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of private property."Worth reading in full. Sunday, April 09, 2006
House Project: The Water Tank Okay, we spent Saturday afternoon fixing the various items that our builder can't seem to get around to fixing, like putting sealant where the exterior door frame casing has opened up a bit, then repainting. He did seem to make some progress on the interior doors that were still closing themselves, but it wasn't perfect. I spent some time bending hinge pins, and while they still aren't perfect, they are certainly good enough--any motion is very limited. We had some interesting and not very useful conversations with various people about our brown water. My theory was that since the iron level was okay, the water is soft, and it tastes fine, that the problem was dirt in the water tank. Our well driller suggested that we talk to an acquaintance, who cleans out water tanks. This unfortunate person also has the first name of Clayton, so it was a more surreal conversation than usual, trying to leave a message from Clayton for Clayton with Clayton's wife (but not my wife). He was of the opinion that it would take a lot of mud in the water tank to cause this, and suggested that while he could clean the tank, that probably wasn't it. So the next step was to talk to the company that sold me the lead filters, and the 5 micron and 1 micron filters that are upstream of the lead filters. They thought it might be iron (or perhaps manganese) in the water--although my iron levels were too low to explain this much brown. But they have a solution, the same one used by a lot of city water departments around here--polyphosphate injection (under pressure) to prevent the iron from coming out of solution. Okay, before I spend another $600 to what is already beginning to look like a Rube Goldberg water system, we'll try and clean the water tank ourselves. So yesterday, we bought a 3.5 horsepower, 9 gallon Ridgid brand wet-dry shopvac. I picked the largest one that wasn't absurdly expensive--and that turned out to be, for reasons you will shortly read (unless you get bored), the largest size we could use. We started a hose draining the water tank on Saturday afternoon. Yes, we could have just let the gravity-fed frost-free spigot empty the tank, but outlet for the tank is several inches above the bottom of the tank--meaning that even with the gravity-fed spigot, there would still be perhaps 50 to 75 gallons in the tank. We put the hose into the end of the shopvac's opening, and in a few seconds, the siphon was running. One of the sources of dirt in the water tank was probably broken up material from when the well was drilled. The builder tells me, "Ordinarily, we run the well for a few thousand gallons before we hook it up to the house. We didn't in this case." Why, I asked? He couldn't figure out why. Another potential source of dirt was rocks and dirt that could fall in through the top access port--which was opened and closed repeatedly during construction and testing of the water system, and which may still require some access occasionally. We needed some way to keep dirt out when this access port was open--but we couldn't clear all the dirt from the top, because the sunlight would promote algae growth (more about that later), and perhaps increase the risk of freezing the water in winter. So we hunted around at Home Depot, and found a 6" high by 24" diameter red brick tree ring--just 2" larger than the access port. We get to the house after church today, and there is just a small amount of water left at the bottom of the tank. The shopvac sucks that up, and a lot of mud, in a big hurry. There is still a lot of stuff sticking to the walls and floors, and the shopvac just isn't pulling it out. To my surprise, even though the port is less than 22" in diameter (and coincidentally, the exact diameter of the shopvac we bought), I can climb down inside. (My wife is claustrophobic, perhaps because of an incident when a neighbor boy locked her inside a chest when she was quite young, and left her there.) Down I go--and pretty quickly I get the rest of the water and bulk mud--which is, curiously enough, the same disgusting brown as the water in the tub. The mud is actually a very fine clay, and sticks to the walls of the water tank far too well. By applying the end of the hose directly to the surface, I can remove most of the mud--as well as two dead insects (fortunately, above the water line), and lots of gravel and small rocks. At the far end of the tank, there is a small amount of algae on the walls--because the far end of the tank was partly exposed to sunlight. (We covered that up to prevent continued growth.) The next step is to use a dropcloth to wipe down the interior. The tank is about four feet high, so I am sitting in the mud as I do this. (Yes, when it was all done, it looked like I had been very, very sick, and had not made it to the men's room in time.) This removes a bunch more silt and algae, but it still isn't quite as antiseptic as I would like. The final step is to wipe down the walls with paper towels. I ran out before I reached the end, but 3/4 of the tank is now gleaming white plastic, with no mud, algae, or stains. The remainder is reasonably clean, although not perfect. After I climbed out, we started up the well pump again. (It is started and stopped by a float sensor in the tank.) To my surprise, within about two hours, the tank has at least 600 gallons of water in it--and my, what a difference in color! Where it was too dark to see the bottom before, now I can see the bottom. The water is still a little yellow, but I'm hoping that the remaining silt will wash out over time. I spent a bit of time figuring out how to get the pressurization pump running again. An air bubble in the line prevents the pump from pulling water, so you have to open a relief valve--and then close it again, real quick, before the air leaves, and water starts spurting out. The water is still not absolutely clear, but it is close enough that I could take a bath in it--and it may take a few days for the old water in the water heater and the lines to completely flush. In addition, I have my suspicion that silt that was trapped in the 5 micron and 1 micron filters may be breaking off small fragments of silt that are still passing through. I will replace both filters shortly. I suspect also that the silt has again clogged the lead filters, which might be why water pressure is again low. But since the last test results show that the water is now lead-free (even before going through the lead filter), perhaps I can just remove the lead filters, and improve flow. The interior of the house is now done--a couple of spots where we are going use clear sealant in the bathrooms, but the house is now done and livable. The outside still needs to some trim painting and grading, but both of those are dependent on warm and dry weather--something that has been in short supply of late. Labels: house project |
