Category Archives: PC

Just the Facts

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My friends Jon and Pamela Friar were holding forth over dinner about how much safer we would be if we didn’t have “automatic assault weapons.”

“I don’t know much about guns,” Jon said, “but we need to control automatic weapons better.” Jon is a science guy, pro-choice, and very data driven in the rest of his life, so I wondered why he isn’t fact driven in this discussion.

“Oh, but we are. Everything I’ve ever read shows how dangerous the choices we’ve made are.”

Huh.

And yet, with everything they’ve read, they don’t know any facts.

“I don’t know much about guns,” he said.

AR-15 and AK-47 RiflesThe AR-15 was designed by Armalite to meet the US Army requirement for a new rifle, chambered for a new intermediate cartridge. It was adopted by the US Army as the M16 and became a standard issue infantry weapon. It cycles by “direct gas impingement” that it differs from earlier gas systems and initially fired a .223 Remington/5.56×45mm slug. AR-15 offerings for the civilian market are different. The civilian AR-15 started with Colt’s original semi-automatic “Sporter” rifles, manufactured since 1963. All the current clones are still simply semi-automatic rifles that look like the original AR-15. Semi-automatic rifles are not select fire / burst or full automatic capable.

The legendary AK-47 is also a selective-fire, military rifle. It was developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the last year of World War II. It is gas-operated and fires a 7.62×39mm slug. The Kalashnikov and its variants are the most widely used military rifles in the world. Civilian models are available from China, (East) Germany, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and even Russia in semiauto only. Century International Arms, founded in St. Albans, Vermont, is a major importer and remanufacturer AK-style rifles for the civilian market.

Unless those rifles are illegally altered, they are not full automatics. Full auto weapons have been regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Hughes Amendment in 1986.

Jon and Pam don’t know that a 5.56mm NATO round (or the similar .223 Remington) for the AR-15 has a muzzle velocity around 3,200 fps, and energy of 1,282 ft-lbs at the muzzle but only half that at 200 yards. The AK-47’s 7.62mm is a more powerful slug with a lower muzzle velocity around 2,300 fps, and energy of 1,507 ft-lbs at the muzzle with a drop to half that at 200 yards.

They don’t know the .223 is one of the most common cartridges in use here for varmint rifles as well as semi-automatic rifles such as Ruger Mini-14/5P.

They don’t know the popular 30-30 hunting rifle is very similar to the AK-47 with a muzzle velocity around 2,389 fps, and energy of 1,901 ft-lbs at the muzzle.

They don’t know the .308 tops that with a muzzle velocity of 2,820 fps, and energy of 2,648 ft-lbs. Likewise, the .30-06 hunting rifle has a muzzle velocity around 2,800 fps, and energy of 2,872 ft-lbs at the muzzle. It keeps most of that at 200 yards with muzzle velocity still at 2,403 fps, and energy of 2,115 ft-lbs at that distance, more powerful at that distance than the AK-47 up close.

Every one of those rifles has plenty of killing power. The “assault rifles” just look fiercer. So do modern pickup trucks (which kill more people).

The real question here is this: since the “assault weapon” you abhor is similar (and in many ways less capable than many popular hunting-style rifles, don’t you really just want to ban all American citizens from owning all guns?

Jon and Pam spent most of his working in the middle east where ISIS is now a government. I’m not sure how they feel about taking away the weapons from “rebels” in Syria, Iraq, and other countries there who are fighting that “government” for their freedom and very lives.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
–Thomas Jefferson in a 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith

Jon and Pam believe a few citizens cannot defeat a modern army or secret police force. They didn’t know that the history of rebellions against tyranny has always featured a ragtag bunch of citizens going up against a superior government force. The British host, f’rex, was undefeated until they met the fighting farmers of the Colonies and we know how that turned out. The ragtag rebels may not always win but, if they didn’t try, we surely lose.

I wonder how Jon and Pam figure it’s good for the citizens there with sticks and stones to go up against the well-armed, well trained ISIS fighters but bad to take that right away from citizens here.

Oh. I understand. They know our government will protect us from … oh wait.


Doing #1 and #2
 

Shack Attack

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Another Random Fancy from the “You Just Won’t Believe This” Department:

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) signed 20 new laws in April including a bill that immediately repealed Florida’s 148-year-old ban on cohabitation. The Pillow Police are bereft.

§ 798.02 Lewd and lascivious behavior. — If any man and woman, not being married to each other, lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together, or if any man or woman, married or unmarried, engages in open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior, they shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

Unmarried couples, polyamorists, and RWBs1 shacking up in Florida can now rest easy that their living arrangement is not breaking the law, thanks to the state’s Republican governor and co-sponsor Rep. Rick Stark (D-Weston).

Couple in BedThe law made it a second-degree misdemeanor for an unmarried man and woman to “lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together.” It has been on the books since 1868.

Because of its wording, §798.02 never applied to same-sex couples. Or goats.

The offense could be punished by up to 60 days in jail or a $500 fine.

Rep. Stark reported that police rarely, if ever, enforced the statute but that’s not true. Nearly 700 people were charged under the Florida law between 2005 and 2011 and 104 people faced charges in 2011 alone. (In 2005, Michigan’s cohabitation law was used to restrict visitation rights for a divorced father. The Virginia law was used to revoke a woman’s daycare license because she was cohabitating in the 1990s.)

I’ve always been proud that nearly 10% of Florida’s 46,105 sworn officers and state’s attorney investigators were part of the famed Panther’s Pillow Police.

Five conservative Republicans opposed repeal. Obviously conservative Republicans have a vested interest in continuing the Pillow Police. I haven’t quite figured out why, when eleven of this country’s 100 most dangerous cities are in Florida. Maybe they need the $500 fines to balance the budget.

Ironically “Virginia is for Lovers” waited until 2013 to repeal its cohabitation ban. 25 Virginia legislators — 21 Republicans, three Democrats and one independent — voted against the repeal. They needed the fines, too. Yeah, that’s it.

The unbelievable part of this story is that Florida was still one of three states with laws to prohibit unmarried cohabitation; Michigan and Mississippi remain.

1 Roomie With Benefits

 

Mayday! Mayday!

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The NYTimes reports that, after Rep. Pete Gallego (R-TX) lost the election for his Congressional district in 2014, “researchers from the Baker Institute and the University of Houston’s Hobby Center for Public Policy polled 400 registered voters in the district who sat out the election. All were asked why they did not vote, rating on a scale of 1 to 5 from a list of seven explanations — being ill, having transportation problems, being too busy, being out of town, lacking interest, disliking the candidates and lacking a required photo identification.

“The vast majority of those who claimed not to have voted because they lacked a proper ID actually possessed one, but did not know it.”

“Nearly 26% said the main reason was that they were too busy. At the other end, 5.8% said the main reason was lacking a proper photo ID, with another 7% citing it as one reason. Most surprising, however, was what researchers found when they double-checked that response: The vast majority of those who claimed not to have voted because they lacked a proper ID actually possessed one, but did not know it.”

I’m thinking that if you are so spectacularly uninformed that you don’t know you have ID, you don’t know enough to vote.

 

He Had a Wide Stance

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Bruce Springsteen canceled his North Carolina show to protest the bathroom law.

Mr. Springsteen and the E Street Band were booked in the Greensboro Coliseum yesterday. 15,000 ticket holders will all be eligible for a refund.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) signed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, HB2, last month after the North Carolina General Assembly called a special session to push the law through after the Charlotte City Council passed a non-discrimination ordinance.

“[The abominable Charlotte act] allows grown men to share bathrooms and locker facilities with girls and women,” one North Carolina Repuglican said.

Be very afraid!

The newly enacted law requires individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate.

“To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress,” Mr. Springsteen said in a statement.

Update:
PayPal pulled 400 jobs from North Carolina. Braeburn Pharma is pulling out. The NBA All Star game probably won’t happen in NC. Some 100 national companies have decried the law.

“F**k Springsteen,” my friend Dino Russell said. “Wanna see what sex you identify with? Look in your underwear.”

Dino is a world traveler so I’m pretty sure he has peed and pooped in Europe. I didn’t know he much cared then if the next guy was male, female, both, or anything in between.

“I don’t give a crap for me,” he said. “My daughters and granddaughters presumably do and I do give a crap if the next guy over is, well, a guy with his cellphone on the floor looking up her snatch. Or whatever. Bad enough they have to deal with the weirdos of their own sex.”

Pfui. It’s Victorian. We need to get over the legal idea that there’s something secret or dirty about our bodies.

“You are being stupid,” he said. “This is an issue of increased potential for rape. Pull your head out of your ass.”

In case you missed it, please notice a number of bathroom references here.

I’m being stupid about yet another salvo in Conservative attempts to wrest local control away from the local voters.

Liz Arden gives us a few points that Dino and the other ostriches would do well to understand.

a) Just because someone thinks they’re female or homosexual or asexual or nonsexual does not mean they are pervs who will violate your person or your privacy.

b) There are pervs who will violate your daughters’ and granddaughters’ privacy and threaten their sense of safety and well-being. Period. They could be sitting next to you in church.

c) North Carolina and the other states don’t care a whit about pervs with cellphones in bathrooms. They care about competition in the bathrooms. Oh, yeah. And they care about catering to the emotional idiocy of people and the Sharia belief that they can impose their religious interpretation on everyone within 10 feet of them. Or within 3,000 miles.

How many rapes happen in the famed Parisian unisex public toilets?

How many by transgender folk or even cross dressers?

Weirdos are weirdos. A person who genuinely feels they are female despite having XY chromosomes and penises, well, that weirdness does not in the slightest threaten Dino, his wife, his daughters, his granddaughters, nor any other human being on the planet.

Unless they are carrying an axe like, say, Carrie Nation. Or the lawmakers who passed HB2 or HB 1523. Then be very afraid.

Dino’s daughters and granddaughters would do well to understand that. Dino would do well to understand that. There are already laws banning pervs from being in the bathroom looking up the little girls’ snatches. Or raping them.

Update:
Bryan Adams has canceled his show at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum this Thursday, because that state’s new “Religious Liberty” Act, HB 1523, discriminates against gay couples or members of the LGBT community.

We gotta get over the legal idea that there’s something secret or dirty about our bodies.

It’s tough, though.

He merely had a “wide stance.”

A (now-former) Republican senator pled guilty to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge after his arrest at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Former Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) had been caught flat-footed by a police detective investigating lewd behavior in an airport men’s room. His 28 ultra conservative years in Congress, years spent fighting gay rights at every turn, put him in second place in Idaho history, behind only Sen. William Borah (R-ID).

Former Sen. Craig barred extension of rights to same-sex couples. He voted “yes” on an Idaho constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. He voted against extending the federal definition of hate crimes to cover sexual orientation. And so on.

Who’s making odds on how Former Sen. Craig would have voted on HB2 or HB 1523?

For the record, I’m OK with Balian Buschbaum (formerly Yvonne Buschbaum) or Erik Schinegger (formerly Erika Schinegger), Jaiyah Saelua (formerly Johnny Saelua), Mianne Bagger (formerly Michael Bagger), or Caster Semenya (formerly Caster Semenya) sharing the restroom with me or with my great-granddaughters. Caitlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce), though, I’m not so sure of.

“Buncha pansies who think it strikes too close to home,” Miz Arden said.

And there you have it.

 

Climate Scientists, the Phrenologists of 2016

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Sometimes I suffer from low blood pressure; I often use the Science Friday podcast to bring it back up to normal. [For the record, SWMBO says I use it to see if I can get the sphygmomanometer to pop the bulb at the top of the column.]

The bumps on my head don’t explain that, either.

Two ‘casts from December got my attention: Do Scientists Have the Duty to Speak Out? and Why Science Needs Failure to Succeed. Each focused on a new book:

In the first, Naomi Oreskes spreads more disinformation and name calling in the name of a (carbon) tax and “sensible regulations” than good science. Host Ira Flatow1 asks if the slogan, “If you see something, say something,” applies to scientists. “If they see a risk to the planet, for example, should they say something about it?” he wondered. In her book Merchants of Doubt,2 Ms. Oreskes “says some scientists undersell the conclusions of their work, and this ‘scientific conservatism has led to under-estimation of climate-related changes’.”

Underestimation?

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Al Gore said, underestimating the issue and the wealth to be looted.

The very same day, Mr. Flatow interviewed Stuart Firestein about his new book, Failure: Why Science Is So Successful,3 the neuroscientist “makes a case for science as ‘less of an edifice built on great and imponderable pillars, and more as a quite normal human activity’.” His point “one must try to fail” reminds us that “real science is a revision in progress, always. It proceeds in fits and starts of ignorance.”

The political scientists leading the AGW charge will not admit contrary data.

Phrenologists thought their science was immutable, too.

Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
— Ambrose Bierce
Science is uncertain. Theories are subject to revision; observations are open to a variety of interpretations, and scientists quarrel amongst themselves. This is disillusioning for those untrained in the scientific method, who thus turn to the rigid certainty of the Bible instead. There is something comfortable about a view that allows for no deviation and that spares you the painful necessity of having to think.
— Isaac Asimov
In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
— Carl Sagan

In 2014’s We Only Have 500 Days Left to Avoid Climate Chaos! I discussed the fact that climate “science” today is a Harris poll and the way the Far Green consortium has distorted real science with their religious insistence that their science is right and fixed. Their purpose is to keep the Green flowing. The green research dollars. The green investment dollars. The green tax dollars.

Science requires a comfort with being wrong, a tolerance for failure, Mr. Firestein reminded us. But political Climate Scientists have a bible that cannot fail and is never contradictable.

And that, dear friends, is why our political Climate Scientists are the Phrenologists of the 21st Century.

1 Mr. Flatow is well-known for his statement that “the science is fixed” over all anthropogenic global warming.
2 Ms. Oreskes received her Bachelor of Science in mining geology from the Royal School of Mines of Imperial College, University of London and earned her PhD from the Graduate Special Program in Geological Research and History of Science at Stanford. She is the author of or has contributed to a number of respected essays and technical reports in economic geology.
3 Stuart J. Firestein, PhD, chairs the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University where his lab researches the vertebrate olfactory receptor neuron and where he teaches neuroscience. He does accept AGW but recognizes that “uncertainty is a dirty word” in the argument.