Stones Cry Out

Good morning.

1. So, the Obama campaign thinks Bain Capital is horrible, right?
2. Meditiations on the fall of (western) Rome.
3. The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting and sportsmanship. It really is about having guns to resist the government when they go off the rails. If you want to back of on citizens owning “assault” rifles, then you should amend the Constitution, because having real weapons meant for war is what the Constitution protected.
4. This opinion apparently taxonomically classifies me as a porcupine.
5. Some gun laws to catch the incredibly stupid criminal, which means the not-criminal (that being crimes of passion).
6. The usual effect of the restrict guns rhetoric.
7. Some data for the discussion.
8. For the Microsoft non-lovers.
9. Faint praise for Obama’s attack ads. I finally saw the ad over vacation. My children confirmed, and I attempted not to lead them, that this ad led them to support Romney more than Obama. The ad was sleazy, felt sleazy, and the “approved by Obama” at the front labeled who to blame.
10. Culture, biology and violence.
11. A love like no other.
12. South Africa.
13. Bikes and remembrance.
14. Walruses are cool.
15. Women and combat. Testostrone is a very powerful performance enhancing drug. Really.

OK. I’m back (and as usual, relatively horrible).

1. Need rest?
2. The Norwegian shooter got 20 some years … in the US you (can) get life for somewhat less.
3. Talking about TDKR (I saw it Monday prior to our flight with my daughters). And no, the science doesn’t check out, reactors don’t suddenly become bombs and no realistic battery works 4 months and predictably dies on schedule. More on similar discussions here.
4. ABC defends Mr Obama remarks. Either Mr Obama can’t count (“that” is singular, the two possible antecedents “your business” and “roads and bridges” … only one is singular which gives us “your business” as the only grammatically correct antecedent.).
5. Fact checking religion reporting for ya.
6. A charity question.
7. Flags and national photoshop.
8. How about “because ‘pragmatism’ is more akin to a tactic than an actual strategy”.
9. So, is the hostility expressed by academia toward the business world found here?
10. Here you find religion and academia examined.
11. Speaking of academia … Seems to me, our education system is part of this problem.
12. Flat tire?
13. The thought that came to me seeing this was “cat’s pajamas”.
14. Yes, we “know” there’s no voter fraud, just like we know the sports drug problem is in Pro cycling not in US sports. Odd that the problems are found where there testing is tight and not where it isn’t. As long as we don’t look and have no tools to look, clearly there’s no fraud. And this “no problems” claim comes for a guy who got a degree in the city where the dead voted (and probably still do).
15. Toughest decision? In hindsight maybe. Back then, not so much. Look at the context of Okinawa, Tokyo fire-bombing, and the rest of the garden variety horrors of WWII.
16. 3-d printers step aside. Think small.
17. How to look really really stupid in a discussion. Query for the anti-gun lobby … cite me one instance were anyone was in a discussion with gun supporters and were threatened with a firearm of any sort.
18. Apparently, “likable” is an adjective describing screen presence, for by all accounts both Mr Obama and Mr Romney are very likable face-to-face. In fact, almost all politicians are, it’s a job requirement. However, that’s not really what likable means, but we all knew that, right?
19. Syria.
20. And we’ll finish with a great discussion topic.

In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Aurora, there are the requisite stories on gun control, etc. CNN.com joined the chorus with an article titled, Fear drives opposition to gun control. One interesting tidbit from the article is the cover photograph used. Here is a screen-capture.

Note the caption:

An assault rifle is equipped with a high-capacity drum magazine and grenade launcher at an El Paso, Texas, gun expo.

A grenade launcher available for sale at a gun expo in the United States?

Disabled car turned into motorcycle?
Supposedly done by a Frenchman after his car broke down in the middle of a desert in Africa.

Reminiscent of The Flight of the Phoenix.

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Family Dinners Don’t Work Magic
The magic of helping bond families together. Of course, no one that I know of has said that the whole family simply sitting down for dinner could take the place of genuine parental love and interest in their children.

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Tree rings show that Earth was warmer for the Romans than now?
Has Al Gore been notified?

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How to explain the tax system with beer

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Africans in the U.S. sending their kids to school in…
Africa.

My, how times have changed.

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Geek News of the Week – Cassini sees daytime lightning on Saturn

Well, the plan was to snorkel all day, but the weather forecast was for all day T-storms, which since the morning when we aborted have been suspiciously absent. So, the alternative is museums after lunch.

1. Censorship.
2. Why expect the lull to be temporary? High tech suits are banned for example, banning tech advances may be the norm, in which case the lull would not be temporary.
3. Queue evil laughter, or something like that.
4. Man’s best friend.
5. My guess is that the difference is not about (c) or not (c) … but the extend of those services which should rightly be provided.
6. Our finest.
7. Obama’s kicking taxes down the road, the economy’s current downturn, and misunderestimations.
8. Numismatech?
9. Remember how Mr Obama kept saying he thinks/thought about jobs every day … it’s a lie, you see.
10. A manual to set alongside the oft noted but rarely actually read COIN manual.
11. To big to fail?
12. “If you build it they will come” … the antecedent for “it” shouldn’t be WMD, but seems to be.
13. Dictatorship HOWTO for the modern era.
14. A suggestion for kickbacks.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today, link-wise.

Not to discount the severity of the killings in Aurora, but how long will it take before we hear the media and/or the Left paint the shooter out to be a right-wing fanatic, a tea partier, or someone influenced by hate-filled Republican rhetoric? How long before we hear that stricter gun control laws would have prevented this mass killing?

Good morning,? err, day.

1. Profiling.
2. Just like AGW believers driving 10+ over the speed limit instead of 5 under … Gen-X has been brainwashed about green and energy from K-12 and beyond, but it doesn’t apply normative actions.
3. On vacation, yesterday we visited this, today pictures of construction and assembly. US WWII manufacturing for the war was mind boggling.
4. Out of the Black, a sci-fic book puts forth that “potty mouth” word usage is a sign of poor education and vocabulary. Do y’all concur?
5. So women, stop on-line hacking … date nerds. Come on. Do your part.
6. Hmm. Meta-links and I thought the problem with macro-economics is that in chem/physics equations measure relationships between independently measureable quantities, whereas in macro they are used to define new the variables.
7. A whole lot of links and some remarks in response to Mr Obama’s anti-entrepreneurial remarks.
8. So am I.
9. My wife’s chrismation saint, icon and some background.
10. We have a para-Olympics, how about hypodermic Olympics.
11. How about a modest proposal, a fourth branch along with the courts to balance our out-of-control Executive and Legislative? An actuarial/financial branch with veto powers over unsupportable spending.
12. “Admits” … that he does what every other player does and has done since, well, the beginning of the sport.
13. Philippine nationals and Syria.

Good morning.

1. Do you concur, well, not perhaps with the whole premise, but that changes to the Hobbit of that nature was unnecessary?
2. Honey … I’m home! The rest of us have to get a dog, so someone at least will notice when we come home.
3. A fight on the offing.
4. On Mr Obama’s remarks regarding credit and personal accomlishments, here and here. Take an abstracted example, … school grades. How then do we distinguish the student who gets and A (to which we credit parents, books, schools, and teachers) and the student who gets a C (who also benefited from the same factors). Do the thought experiment suggested at the first link, where does 100% acceptance of the presumptions required as listed get you?
5. What is a hero? (answer: a sandwich from one who has some insight).
6. Healing?
7. How about meta-wonder?
8. And that wonder might be applied to our rational universe?
9. Does this connect to the Penn State debacle.
10. Markets for guar. And now you know what guar might be.

Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, speaking to the NAACP on the racism of voter ID laws.

“Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them,” Holder said in a speech to the NAACP on Tuesday, referring specifically to a law being implemented in Texas. “We call those poll taxes.”

But not just anyone was allowed in to hear Mr. Holder rail against proper identification. The journalists listening to him, in order to get in, had to provide … wait for it … proper identification. So it is racist to require ID, and if so, what if the NAACP requires it? The answer … could get you charged with a hate crime.

Y’know, if you want to rent a movie, buy a beer and cigarettes, or fly on an airplane, you have to have an ID. Are each of them more important than your right to vote? Is that the message Holder and the NAACP are trying to send.

Check out this site for a list of myths about voter ID laws, and why they are indeed myths. And the next time you go to the Will Call window to pick up your tickets to the game or concert, and have to show your ID, consider whether that so-called hassle is worth it to protect your constitutional right to vote.

Mornings are slower in vacation, eh?

1. Altering content to make a point, robs one of credibility. A theme disputed earlier in comment threads in other contexts. It remains true.
2. I think I remember it mostly for music complementing images of running.
3. Amidst complaints of Ms Clinton’s pallid accomplishments in her current role, do you agree with her call or Ang Sang Suu Kyi’s?
4. Oooh, sleazy campaigning and it’s only July.
5. Don’t worry, you’re probably a nice enough person and therefore safe.
6. Mixing popular with academic.
7. I’m not sure I need to hear the expression “grown into his ears” ever again.
8. Lamy? I’ve stuck with Pelikan.
9. In which liberal means “not that, but I’m not bothered to find an alternative”.
10. An occasion and location.
11. Socialist paradise … or not.
12. Education loans and a recent court ruling.
13. A scary girl for Iran?
14. The Russian Patriarch at Katyn.

Good morning.

1. Progressive anthropology/reporter investigates conservative evangelicals.
2. Of risk and market distortions.
3. Speaking of risk.
4. On beauty.
5. And Syria.
6. It’s not about infrastructure silly, it’s about kickbacks for donations. Remember, the “Chicago way” … it’s all about corruption.
7. Our governmental system, defined.
8. And battleships doing their thing with the help of CGI. If you think that interesting, I’d recommend this book too.
9. Have you ever heard of “red sprites” … I hadn’t. Interesting.
10. Upcoming must-watch TV.
11. More feminism/guns overlap.

Well we’re all here. Sunny, salty, and slightly warm.

1. Why move them now?
2. Not … the great escape.
3. Romney talks at the NCAAP, one take.
4. But … gay marriage … that’s all that liberal/progressives want to talk about.
5. Watching the meltdown.
6. Zooooom.
7. Guns and girls in Texas.
8. Ooblick being studied (aka non-Newtonian fluids)
9. Just in time.
10. That’s not post-modern that’s pre-modern.
11. Obama as socialist.
12. A book suggested, Mr Lewis on some somewhat familiar liturgical poems.
13. Spinning your way out of jail.
14. Moving some goalposts.
15. Blood and coming of age and two films.
16. A modest proposal.
17. Will he follow Gov. Walker’s lead?
18. Pro-choice, choosing violence.

Michelle Obama thinks so.

There is no better place than church to talk about political issues because they are ultimately moral issues, First Lady Michelle Obama told a church gathering on Thursday.

“To anyone who says that church is no place to talk about these issues, you tell them there is no place better – no place better,” Obama told the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s 49th general conference, held in in Nashville, Tenn.

“Because ultimately, these are not just political issues – they are moral issues,” she said. “They’re issues that have to do with human dignity and human potential, and the future we want for our kids and our grandkids.”

When the political and the moral intersect, I agree that churches should not be afraid to take a stand on an issue (and shouldn’t lose it’s tax-exempt status when doing so). So I’m glad to hear Mrs. Obama talk about this.

But does anyone want to guess what the "separation of church and state" crowd would have done if Laura Bush had said the same thing? I think we all know what reaction they would have had. So bookmark that page for when they get their voice back. (They’ve been rather quite for, oh, about 4 years now.)

In the little book Star Wars on Trial, in the chapter “Charge #2″ (to whit: While Claiming Mythic Significance, Star Wars Portrays No Admirable Religious or Ethical Beliefs”. The witness for the prosecution (John C. Wright) attacks this in part by pointing out that Star Wars borrows more from boy-fiction Flash Gordon &etc than anything pretending to be religion. Mr Wright suggests:

A real religion addresses metaphysics, spiritual powers, martyrdom, ethics, salvation, miracles, and life after death.

And no, all world religions necessarily evidence all of these. What he argues, point by point, is that Star Wars “Force” as religion is a calisthenic, it is

an atmosphere, a spooky hint of mystic powers and hidden forces meant to lend an air of exotic super-naturalism to the proceedings. The Force is there for the sword fights. The Force is meant to explain why a kendo fencer can perform amazing leaps, parry laser bolts or make a single one-in-a-million bull’s-eye shot into a ray-shielded thermal exhaust port with a proton torpedo and blow up a space station the size of a small moon.

The Force isn’t learned by credoa nd ethics, it’s something you learn by practice, “by doing one handed handstands while levitating crates on Swamp Planet.”

What, for example, are the doctrinal differences between Obi-Wan and Mr Vader?

Good morning.

1. I’d never heard of that film. How about you?
2. The International courts and Syria.
3. What to cut?
4. Guns and grain. This is very much related.
5. Supply and demand.
6. Is this a one-off or a harbinger?
7. Sight and aim.
8. Amazing. Simply amazing.
9. Contra simple materialism.
10. Outsourcing.
11. Why the current attempts to slice the pie in medical reforms such as Obamacare are well described as arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
12. Helping a drunk.
13. Clones and Olympic competition.