Stones Cry Out

Good morning.

1. Media bias … 1k people gather that’s news (if it’s a liberal cause) 500k gather … not news because it’s not a liberal cause.
2. Or maybe it’s not bias.
3. Not Carbon … whoops.
4. Police tech.
5. Deceit and election tactics.
6. What do you have to lose?
7. Government motors … not doing so well strategically speaking.
8. On safety netting.
9. Some notes on the much abused anthropic principle.
10. Newsflash, museums have been doing that for 40 years.
11. An accusation of liberal racism.
12. Apparently I’m ornery. Certainly there are day’s on which my girls would concur.
13. Pretzels in Congressional testimony.

Home School Edition (particulary for a couple of new homeschool moms I know)

Homeschooling and Socialization
Ah, yes. The question that won’t go away. From the post,

And lets face it — the “Lord of the Flies” social scene in most schoolyards never occurs anywhere else in life. I never encountered anything remotely resembling it in college, grad school or the work place. Women in groups may at times verge on being a bit “catty,” but maturity has deadened the sharper edges of the claws they may have had as schoolgirls. And besides, maturity works both ways — women have thicker skin than young girls.

###

Well, homeschooled kids ARE NOT well socialized
Depending on how you define “well socialized.” From the post,

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there’s nothing “normal” about our kids. Your homeschooled child is odd compared to the schooled population because they have not experienced ongoing school-based socialization and standardization.

When you consider that the homeschooled population makes up only 3-6% of the entire school-going population, you may begin to understand just how different your kids are or will be.

###

Does Homeschooling threaten public school systems?
From Glenn Reynolds,

Traditional public schools haven’t changed much for decades (and to the extent they have, they’ve mostly gotten worse). But the rest of the world has changed a lot. The public who eagerly purchased Henry Ford’s Model T (available in any color you want, so long as it’s black!) now lives in a world where almost everything is infinitely customized and customizable. That makes one-size-fits-all education, run on a Fordist model itself, look like a bad deal.

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Homeschooling: resistance is futile
From The Atlantic, even “progressives” have been smitten with the allure of homeschooling.

So we are making a different choice. Sure, we have philo­sophical reasons. Some of the parents in our circle are “unschoolers,” convinced that early education should follow a child’s interests and initiatives rather than shape them. Some of us aspire to offer something like a classical education: logic and rhetoric, mythology, Latin. Most of us are put off by the public schools’ emphasis on standardized tests and their scant attention to the visual arts, music, religion, and foreign languages.

###

Your homeschooled teen will be better prepared for college
Due to their lack of socialization skills, no doubt. From the article,

They’re also better socialized than most high school students, says Joe Kelly, an author and parenting expert who home-schooled his twin daughters.

“I know that sounds counterintuitive because they’re not around dozens or hundreds of other kids every day, but I would argue that’s why they’re better socialized,” Kelly says. “Many home-schoolers play on athletic teams, but they’re also interactive with students of different ages.”

Home-schooled students often spend less time in class, Kelly says, giving them more opportunity to get out into the world and engage with adults and teens alike.

Good morning.

1. Some history.
2. Assault weapons for which the left wants no state controls.
3. Heh.  Oh, and heh.
4. Not noticing that Texas gun violence is lower than Chicago’s, which has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country.
5. Slipping off the White House talking points.
6. The oldest (working) computer.
7. Better than gun control, gun advice.
8. Obama’s shower bully and race.
9. ’cause Mr Biden thinks a double-ought 10 gauge pump action would have done lots lots less damage in Sandy Hook.
10. Apparently all you have to do is change the name of your gun to be legal if you’re a manufacturer.
11. And … an assault weapon ban and Sandy Hook? No effect at all. No such weapon was used. Oops.
12. “He can see the other side” … does anyone have smidge of evidence to back that up? Or is just like the “he’s really smart” … with no evidence claim?
13. Graft is profitable. Always has been.
14. More State stupidity.
15. On a statement made at the inaugural address.
16. Inclusion.

Good morning.

1. Confused about the nature of religion, worship is public and communal.
   
2. Speaking of confused, one school is quite so.
3. Mandates.
4. (not) acting alone.
5. Cultural movement, regress or progress (or even sustainable)?
6. A boy to note.
7. Drunk drivings vs suicides.
8. Noting silliness on the gun control front.
9. Lies of 2012, some of the more notable noted.
10. At this point … does it matter (if we were shown to be inexperienced stupid boobs), well maybe maybe not, but shouting doesn’t prove anything?
11. For those who reject, … uhm, genetics.
12. Der Speigel and climate change.
13. The “assault weapon ban” and Sandy Hook.

Good morning

1. On abortion and ethics.
2. Optimism?
3. A day remembered.
4. Regulatory silliness down under.
5. So, explain why a gun like this needs tighter regulations.
6. And a hammerless single action.
7. I’m not seeing the coming revolution notion.
8. Snerk.
9. Blind spots.
10. Signing up and is the question of “who” is the Executive relevant?
11. Ethics and God.
12. As the US moves to “more corruption” … another state struggles with fighting its own.
13. Is there a crisis?

Lots of silliness has ensued in the weeks following the shooting in Newton, CT. Gun advocates suggest putting TSA-like agents in every school (as if schools aren’t expensive enough), gun control advocates suggest restricting “assault weapons” (a fictional category for semi-automatic rifles) and “high capacity magazines” (as if the 1-2 seconds to swap magazines would really make a difference) and basically making it far harder to obtain guns (against for example, peer reviewed academic studies showing that the elasticity to gun availability is .1 to .3 out of the 50-60 gun related deaths per 10k people per year.  As much posturing as we have on this matter, if the time the President and his Renfieldian co-conspirator Biden have wasted giving speeches on gun control more children have died in auto accidents than did in the incident they pretend is motivating their interest in gun control. But do they go after drivers and car safety? Nope. Read the rest of this entry

Forty years and 50 million lives ago, Roe v Wade was decided, and the Supreme Court federalized all state abortion laws, by somehow finding a right to kill your unborn child in the Constitution. Justice Byron White said as much in his dissent.

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

Fifty million children. If they had died from gunshots, the Left would realize the tragedy. As it it, it’s just "choice".

Woo Hoo! I’m back.

1. Cool … because they are rare, perhaps in a post-WW-II northern Europe?
2. Now the left will get to disavow Mr Silver.
3. Silliness north of the border.
4. Treaties can do that? And … hierarchy and the Constitution.
5. Occasionally we need to actually overcome that temptation, that’s the rub.
6. I wonder if there is a reasoned argument against chivalry and good manners.
7. Mr Morsi forgets evolution puts him in the same bucket.
8. How liberal or moderate?
9. Rhetoric examined. And what the President doesn’t want you to do, he wants it the other way round.
10. Dan Simmons (in his Illium/Olympus books) argued that androids were in Homer’s Iliad. Hephaestus constructed them to assist him.
11. Ethics meets economics … or does it?
12. Perhaps a better start for a discussion about dignity and human life than abortion.
13. Predictions.
14. Drugs in the modern world.

In many of the debates / flat-out-arguments regarding gun control, recently, it’s been interesting to see how some anti-2nd Amendment folk trot out the notion that gun owners who claim self defense as the basis for their right to own firearms must have some gender inferiority complex. What are you compensating for?, is the Dr. Phil-ish question that explains what these misguided gun owners are suffering from. Essentially, advocates of gun control claim that the supposed need for having firearms is inexorably linked to the fabrication of an essence, be it ever so false, of manhood.

Maybe they have a point. If I own firearms for self / family defense then what exactly am I compensating for? Well, I’ll tell you what:

Among other things, I’m compensating for the 6′-4″, 225 pound, 25 year-old thug who, after breaking into my home, would not think twice about shooting me in the head (or stabbing me or clubbing me) regardless of whether I was armed or complied with his demands. I’m compensating for the multiple assailants who, after training in prison*, would not think twice about slitting my throat, raping my family, and then strangling them to death. I’m compensating for the inevitability of civil unrest given a natural or man-made disaster in the metropolitan area I live in. And I’m compensating for the sheep-like mentality you display, insuring that your such departures from reality will not inhibit my right to defend the lives of those I hold dear to my heart.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at some stories which illustrate that there are many women who seem to have taken to “compensation”, regardless of whether they suffer from the gender-complex issues that gun grabber psychoanalysts say they do. And, as a sidenote, notice that not all defensive gun uses (DGUs) involved actually firing the weapon.

15 Million women “pack heat” in the US

And that was in 2011. From the article,

One mother named Elena who lives in Roseburg, Ore., explains how her job as a 911 dispatcher led her to overcome the discomfort she felt about owning a gun.

“Dealing with the calls that we field on a daily basis made me really aware of what people are capable of doing,” Elena writes. “I’m a single mom and I’ve got two kids, so I feel like if I’m ever put in a situation where I need to protect them, I’d prefer to have a gun.

Gun-toting Grandma pulls handgun on two men who tried to rob her

More women using guns for fun and protection

From the article,

Several factors are driving women to the gun range, experts say.

“The first and foremost reason is women no longer want to feel vulnerable,” Parsons says. “They want to feel responsible for their own personal safety and the safety of their families. Just by their physical size, the perpetrator is going to be bigger and stronger. A firearm is the great equalizer.”

More and more women…

From the article,

To those who say guns are masculine, Ellanson says, “It would depend on how you define femininity. I think a capable woman is the most feminine expression of power that there is.”

15 year-old girl scares burglars (note – plural) with dad’s… gun

From the article,

Officials said a teen in Texas City was alone when a pair of intruders broke into her family’s house, but she turned the tables on the suspects by grabbing her father’s handgun.

911 is a joke

In Detroit. From the article,

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

More women…

From the article,

More women throughout the United States are buying guns and learning how to use them. And we’re finding that to be true in South Dakota. In fact, a 2011 Gallup Poll found that 43% of women say there’s a gun in their home. KSFY’s Courtney Zieller is finding out why numbers are at a new high.

21 year-old woman shoots and kills intruder who kicked in her door

Oh, and at least one of the intruders was armed with a gun. From the article,

Tweets sent from the official Dallas Police Department Twitter account said two suspects kicked in the door of the home at about 11:30 a.m. The resident was alone upstairs and heard the noise. She confronted the two burglars as they ascended the stairs and shot at them several times.

The two ran out the front door and one collapsed from a gunshot wound. Police later recovered a gun at the scene, “indicating at least one of the suspects was armed.” Nobody has been identified.

12 year-old girl shoots intruder

Yeah, this one kicked his way in as well. From the article,

A 12-year-old girl took matters into her own hands during a home invasion in southeast Oklahoma.

It happened on Wednesday when the girl was home alone. She told police a stranger rang the doorbell, then went around to the back door and kicked it in. She called her mom, Debra St. Clair, who told her to get the family gun, hide in a closet and call 911.

* Not based on my own knowledge but as related by a retired LA County Sheriff and a current LAPD Police Officer.

Good, well, whatever … day/night what have you.

1. Dignity and value of human life ontological not a constituent property, e.g., you are “human” if you posses particular virtues and not if you don’t.  This is the central basis for anti-abortion ethics. If you resist that notion, read Ms Delsol’s book on those forgotten 20th century lessons.
2. My daughter, now a senior, very much was saddened that “woods 3” was dropped because of lack of interest at her school.
3. Political squabbles.
4. A book.
5. Except that it’s not true. Watch “The Island”, asceticism is a virtue and don’t you forget it.
6. Thick and thin thinking.
7. The criminal set thanks you for identifying the vulnerable for future rapes, home invasions, and other mayhem.
8. The real reason for not-disarmament. And another reason.
9. Ms Biel was quite funny.
10. And I’ll leave y’all in the mud.

And will likely pay with his life.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is dying of cancer in Havana, in a live demonstration of Cuba’s vaunted socialized medical care. He went there instead of Brazil because he wanted to make a political statement. What irony.

As party cronies hover at his bedside, Cuban officials bark orders to the government in Caracas, and red-shirted Chavistas hold vigils, all signs are pointing to an imminent exit for the Venezuelan leader who controls a huge part of the world’s oil.

He’s going out exactly as he wouldn’t have liked — helpless and at the mercy of doctors, a far cry from the blaze of heroic socialist glory he might have preferred.

Most galling for him: It didn’t have to happen this way.

His expected demise will be entirely due to his gullibility to leftist propaganda and bad choices that came of it.

Remember, this is the Michael-Moore-acclaimed Cuban health care system covered in his movie "Sicko".

Well, one day back after two weeks off … prior to heading out for a big big job tomorrow left little time for much of anything.

1. First, what isn’t a surprise, here and here.
2. Disarmament … consequences to follow.
3. Not disarmament, for the gun control debate.
4. Post Newton, remember the noise and nonsense over AR-15s and the Bushmaster rifle? Woops.
5. What gun control buys you. That and a dollar will buy you … well what little a dollar will buy you.
6. Patience and charity.
7. Time porn.
8. Linking two variables.
9. The geniuses at the TSA.
10. Rape.
11. Is this rape? Perhaps not legally … but morally I think it may be.
12. Maths and theology.
13. Well, for myself, that objection is just plain stupid. Those $3-6 day “sweatshops” are often the best jobs in town.
14. Following the money.

And, over the break I saw a complaint about Mr Obama spending very little time this family on vacation. No, I’m not normally one to defend Mr Obama, but … he has two teenage daughters. Two teenage daughters. ’nuff said.

Well, tomorrow we head back to the Midwest by Amtrak and Amtrak (and finally Metra and a car). For those interested that’s mostly the NorthEast Corridor from Trenton to Washington DC, and then the Capitol Limited to Chicago. Our roundtrip was a little over $700 for 4 adults. Not bad.

1. The other parent trap.
2. Pretty woman … gets fired.
3. Insurance and gun ownership.
4. More on guns, bottom line: gun ownership is sharply up over the last few decades and gun violence is trending consistently down. So … why the dialog on guns?
5. Names or not. What does it mean?
6. To read?
7. Unintended does not mean not anticipated.
8. Three new blogs to watch via kbj.
9. Moving on from Afghanistan.
10. Benedict on Epiphany.
11. A blog entry to read to the tune of “all I want for Christmas is …”

After the shooting in Newtown, CT, I noticed on Facebook many people asking that the country have a “conversation” about guns. Now typically, that’s a request for some sort of dialog. However, a few of those asking for that proceeded to immediately disparage anyone who would disagree in the slightest with more restrictive gun laws. That, folks, is a monologue, not a dialog.

To have a dialog, we need to consider all possible options. And to do that, we need to find out what works. Not just in theory; we need to know what has worked well over a long period of time. And for that, I’d like to look at the history of school shooting deaths in Israel.

“Israel?”, you might say. “What can a nation with a population of 8 million tell the US, a nation of 300 million, about gun laws?” What indeed. Let’s look at their history of school shooting deaths. Israel, you will remember, is a nation under siege from all of its neighbors. The entire country is essentially a war zone, which you’d know if you ever tried to fly there. You think we have onerous airport security here? But Israel is fighting for its life, so it has to take many more extraordinary precautions.

In 1974, there was a terrorist attack at an elementary school in Ma’alot. Palestinian terrorists took 115 hostages, of which 25 died. Now, British colonial laws were in effect at the time that were designed to keep Jews from owning guns. After Ma’alot, anyone from the Israeli Defense Force (current or former) was allowed to carry a gun anywhere. This included teachers. Field trips always were with armed guard.

So, just the opposite of what’s being called for here happened there. Instead of gun-free zones, guns were around children all the time, especially when they were out and about. The reason was to prevent terrorist attacks, but presumably if it’s expected that this law was to prevent those, then they’d work against any random shooter. And understand that this law didn’t stop Arab hatred. It didn’t cure mental illness of any kind, and certainly not the kind that the Newtown shooter had. It didn’t eliminate evil.

It’s just that now, guns were in school, held by people who had been trained in their use. And for over 30 years, there was not a single death in a school shooting in Israel. All this in spite of the fact that some teachers carried guns. Or, you might say, because of the fact that some teachers carried guns.

But you write that sentence the way you want. Regardless, draw your own conclusions as to whether it was effective.

Because that’s really what we should be considering when it comes to protecting our children; what is effective. Seeing what happened in Newtown, CT made us feel powerless, and we feel like we must do something to try to prevent this from happening again. But let’s do something effective. Let’s pass laws, not just with our hearts, but with our heads as well.

A city in the metro Atlanta area, Kennesaw, GA, passed a law in 1982 that all heads of households were to own a firearm, except those with mental or physical disabilities. The law is never really enforced, but the fact that it is on the books is enough. The year after the law was passed, Kennesaw’s burglary rate dropped more than 50%. The following year, it dropped another 50%. Oh, and where guns are banned, like Chicago, IL, they had more deaths in 2008 than we had soldiers killed in Iraq that year. Just this past New Years Day, 15 people were shot, and 3 were killed, in a single incident on the west side of Chicago. Again, draw your own conclusion as to which is more effective.

If gun-free zones make people safer, should we make the White House a gun-free zone? Should VP Joe Biden, who is tasked with working out new gun laws in the wake of Newtown, should he lead by example and disarm his Secret Service detail? No, we protect those who are important to us. We should do no less for our kids. President Obama sends his girls to a school that has an armed security detail, so clearly, he has his own opinion on gun-free schools.

Today is January 1st, 2013. Happy New Year! It also happens to be the 240th anniversary of the sermon with which John Newton introduced his newly written poem, Amazing Grace. From Near to the Heart of God: Meditations on 366 Best-Loved Hymns,

On Friday morning, January 1, 1773, John Newton, former slave trader and infidel, preached a New Year’s message from 1 Chronicles 17:16–17 in his church at Olney, England. Newton opened his sermon, saying, “The Lord bestows many blessings upon His people, but unless He likewise gives them a thankful heart, they lose much of the comfort they might have.” He told his church to look back at God’s goodness, look around at God’s promises, and look forward to future usefulness. In concluding, Newton introduced a poem he’d written for the occasion, the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

– Morgan, Robert J., Near to the Heart of God: Meditations on 366 Best-Loved Hymns

The scriptural text that Newton referred to in his sermon, the setting just after the announcement of the Davidic Covenant,

Then King David went in and sat before the LORD and said, “Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? And this was a small thing in your eyes, O God. You have also spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come, and have shown me future generations, O LORD God!

(1 Chronicles 17:16-17 ESV)

And Newton’s original six verses:

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.