Shaved Off the Beard a Few Weeks Ago

The voice therapist needed a way attach electrodes for electrical stimulation to strengthen my swallowing muscles. Yes, it is helping.

I have lost enough weight since I grew the beard to lose my double chin.

Do Not Show This to My Dogs

Robotic dogs can open doors.

 

Bluetooth Misbehavior

My wife and I have both been struggling with phones not staying Bluetoothed (or should that be Bluebitten?) to our cars.   Solution: turn off Bluetooth 10 seconds then turn on Airplane mode 10 seconds then back off.   Problem solved.

Can I Successfully Blog a PDF?

I used this for a presentation at Illinois Institute of Technology law school in 2013.  (Yes, that combination threw me for a loop, also.)  I( could not find it on my disk, and had given up hunting, until during my wife's periodic decluttering, I found the printed copy which simplified the search.

The answer, only as JPGs.

Two Federal LEOs Were at J6

DEA officer off-duty and his brother, FBI.  The DEA agent is being prosecuted for possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds where by law he is allowed to be armed.  So he is being prosecuted.

That Bread-Brick

I made a loaf of glutentastic (or is that glutenlicious) bread and it was even more of a disaster although it rose more.  This Hitachi is 20 years old.  Time for a new one.

There Was a Warning

3/29/23 Sydney Morning Herald:

"Washington: The shooter who killed three children and three adults at a school in Nashville sent a series of chilling messages to a friend moments before the attack, warning “something bad is about to happen”.

In an apparent suicide message received minutes before the rampage, 28-year-old assailant Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote an Instagram note to a former school basketball teammate that also declared: “I’m planning to die today.”

Not enough time for police to intervene but still a warning.

Making Gluten-Free Bread in a Breadmaker

My wife is gluten intolerant but the smell of fresh baked bread.... So I tried to make it using a suggestion to add a teaspoon of honey and teaspoon of vinegar.   Tastes fine but also makes a fine building material, I am sure.  That is the whole loaf!

Does This Finally Answer the Question About a Solution?

3/28/23 Washington Times:

Nashville Police Chief John Drake said the school shooter Monday decided against attacking another school because it had “too much security.”

The revelation during a press conference Tuesday rekindled the debate about having armed officers at schools across the United States.

Trust her/him; it knows where not to go murdering.  It also suggests its rage was not specific to this school which zhe attended. 

 

Better 30 Years Too Late Than Not At All

 Lawmakers in Ore., Calif. attempt to expand involuntary commitment : NPR

Statistics Question

When you have a very small population (500 people) even a small number of incidents can produce an atypical rate per 100,000 people.  Over a period of several years, these atypical events tend to even out.  I suspect that there is a statistical term for describing this analytical problem.  Do you know the term?

"regression to the mean"

Watch the Spin

3/27/23 New York Post:

The shooter who stormed a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, killing three students and three staffers, was identified as a 28-year-old white transgender woman named Audrey Hale who once attended the school, authorities said.

The left spin besides the obvious: "If they had just accepted her transness back then, this would never have happened."  Perhaps if they had not messed with his identity and hormones he/she/evil might not have taken this revenge. 

The only good news: the police did not pull a Uvalde.  They did what they are paid to do, risk life and limb for public safety.

Unnerving Coincidence

 I get phishing attempts by text every few days claiming to be from FedEx.  Today's was from a Cremation Service.  When I opened two boxes on my doorstep they were ashes boxes for my wife and me.  We signed up with Neptune Society a few days ago.  I knew our ashes would be delivered in these very elegant boxes, but their arrival now caused me to think of Isaac Asimov's famous science paper parody: "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" Astounding Science Fiction (1948)

What if we do not die?  (Yes, my wife considers me a hopeless optimist.)  Where will we store them?  Will our kids know where they are?

This Explains So Much

My speech therapist mentioned this.  6/13/18 Science Alert:

"A defining trend in human intelligence tests that saw people steadily obtaining higher IQ scores through the 20th century has abruptly ended, a new study shows.

The Flynn effect – named after the work of Kiwi intelligence researcher James Flynn – observed rapid rises in intelligence quotient at a rate of about 3 IQ points per decade in the 20th century, but new research suggests these heady boom days are long gone."

IQs are dropping 7 points per generation both in Norway and Britain since the 1970s.

This is even happening within families so it is not the Idiocracy syndrome.

New Primary Source Documents Addition

 Transcripts of the trial of Timothy McVeigh.

I am glad that he confessed before execution.  I found reasonable doubt reading the transcripts.  His defense attorney was spectacular.  The government's case was full of holes.  The leftover leg and the retired Northern Ireland Medical Examiner's description of an IRA bombing that was premature and left eight torsos and nine penises was pretty amazing.

A Doctor in the Family

My daughter was just awarded her doctorate in social work.  She only gets the Dr. Cobb treatment for a little while 

Victory (and My Small Part)

Boland v. Bonta (C.D.Cal. 2023) granted a temporary injunction against California's Unsafe Handgun Act.  I played a small part (see pp. 14-15)..  Cornell portrayed early gun proofing laws and gunpowder storage laws as evidence the government has always the right to intervene in firearms laws for public safety.  My part cited by the judge was testifying that these laws only applied to large quantities (30 pounds and 28 pounds being common amounts).  Demonstrating that Cornell did not even have the right location for the N.Y. law was just icing on the cake.  This was six hours on Zoom hold.  By the time I finished poking holes in Cornell's declaration, California's attorney did not cross-examine me 

A Quote That I Vaguely Remember

Part of it was "The British Empire was created by accident and otherwise..."  it is a very witty aphorism that sounds like Samuel Johnson in my memory.   Why do I need it,  I am reading R.F. Kuang's Babel: an Arcane History.  This is a profoundly entertaining parallel universe which you will have to be enchanted by when I finish it or you read it yourself.  

Kuang is clearly a fascinatingly brilliant scholar (working on her Ph.D. at Yale now) and a spectacularly beautiful young woman.  She is one of those reminders that people in the extreme tails of intelligence have a heck of a time finding mates, because people of dissimilar intelligence lose interest in each other pretty quickly.  How I met my wife is one of those reminders that God works in mysterious ways.

How to Stop Mass Murders

In the middle of a very good Politico article by my friend John Lott about why Biden's proposed gun control measures are already in effect in California without success, is a link to a list of 37 mass murders stopped since 2015 by concealed carriers.

Fascinating Home Mortgage Rate Inversion

Or is it a perversion?  My credit union is offering 30 year fixed at the same interest rate as the 5/1 ARM: 6.625%.

Clearly, interest rates will be dropping in the next several years. I am just too tired to figure out what these differences tell us.

Treasury bond yield-curve inversions signal recession is imminent.  What does a flat mortgage interest curve tell us?

I misread this: 30 year fixed 6.875%.  10/1 ARM 6.625%.  It still tells us something but I do not know what.

Treasury bond yield curve inverted (although not dramaticaly) on March 6th.

That might hint at a coming recession if the slope was more severe 

Today's Phishing

Hello

There is an unclaimed inheritance fund of my foreign late client who has the same last name as you.                               

Regards,                                 

Kelly Adams

My response was to ask for his social number and bank account number.

Biden Executive Orders More Gun Control

Working from the Ammoland description:

One of President Biden’s stated goals is universal background checks. To get closer to his goal, he will order the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to change the definition of someone engaged in the business of selling firearms. Most states allow gun owners to sell their firearms through private transactions without paying a federal firearms licensee (FFL) to transfer the gun.

The courts will never uphold a single sale as requiring an FFL unless done for the purpose of making a profit or to a disqualified person.  Do not sell a gun to anyone unless they have a carry permit.  (This is already common by private sellers in Idaho.)  Make a copy.

The second action the White House is taking is launching a public relations campaign to educate the public on the use of Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO). ERPO, also known as “red flag laws,” strips gun owners of their firearms rights in an ex parte hearing where the gun owner cannot defend their rights. Many believe these laws are a violation of due process. Biden wants to educate people on how to file for ERPOs to increase the number of red flag orders issued.

Only some states have ERPO laws.

The Biden Administration is also asking the Department of Transportation to work with shippers to cut down on stolen firearms and speed up the reports of missing shipments. This request could mean new regulations on firearms shipments or new requirements for shipping firearms. Many gun owners worry about changes since Congress has been putting immense pressure on shipping companies leading some to change policies that have made it more expensive to ship guns. 

Because thefts from common carriers are already a big source for criminally misused guns, this does not seem unreasonable.  When I was an FFL, UPS left a shotgun on my doorstep in an apartment building.  Requiring signatures is not that hard and might simplify catching UPS employees stealing guns as has been a problem in some cities.

Biden vowed to crack down on “rogue” FFLs, and the ATF revocation of FFLs is up 500% since Biden took office. The White House will now require the ATF to release information on FFLs violations publicly. Many see this as a war on the gun industry. 

Go ahead.  Many of the revocations will be exposed as harassment; some will show improper actions.  Shame those people.

Biden will also use the Department of Defense (DOD) acquisition of firearms to attack the gun industry. It isn’t clear what he means, but this could mean putting stipulations in government contracts with firearms companies to prevent the sale of certain firearms to the public. He is also ordering the Federal Trade Commission to investigate “military imagery” used in the advertisement of guns.

How many commercial vendors have military contracts?  Not many.  The advertising issue is not entirely without merit.  Most responsible gun owners know what an AR-15 rifle is for; those who do not are probably not people we should encourage.  It is bad enough that the dying legacy news media are telling unstable sorts what gun to use when they go out in a storm of infamy.

Biden is playing the gun banners; he is going to need a lot of money for 2024.

Good article by John Lott pointing out that Biden wants to impose California's current laws that work SO WELL on the rest of us.

So Glad I Do Not Work in Software Anymore

3/11/23 National Review explains the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and how lots of startups that did not pull their money out now will have no money to pay bills (you know, like salaries).  Their deposits exceeded the FDIC $250,000 insured amount so they may never see most of those millions again.  The left got screwed by bad decisions and rising inflation.  Leftists do themselves in again!

Honesty is Wonderful

Naomi Wolf admits she bought the Jan. 6 lies:

"There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere.

It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways."

Good News For the Big Kitty

Replacing the bottom seat cushion did wonders.  There is now adequate support.  Even more pleasing news is that lumbar support that was missing is no there again.  Having my back a little higher up allows the seats natural lumbar support to do its job.  If I had to drive to Portland I would no longer dread it (until I actually reached Portlandia).

How Did I Miss This?

2/17/23 Fox News:

Police in El Paso, Texas say that a "licensed-to-carry" bystander shot the alleged gunman who is accused of killing one person and injuring another three.

The suspect, a 16-year-old Hispanic male, is accused of shooting the individuals after a "confrontation ensued" between two groups at Cielo Vista Mall on Wednesday evening at 5:05 p.m.

The El Paso Police Department said the confrontation eventually escalated into a "physical fight," and the 16-year-old pulled out a handgun, fatally shooting Angeles Zaragoza, 17, and injuring another 17-year-old and 15-year-old.

Police say that Emanuel Duran, 32, who is a licensed-to-carry holder, shot the suspect as he was pointing his gun toward the direction of more bystanders....

Investigators learned there were "at least" two more people who were legally armed, but weren't involved in the shooting.

You Can Have My Chicken When

You pry it from my greasy fingers.  3/8/23 Guardian:

"Chickens kept in gardens will have to be registered under planned new rules."

Nice Surprise

I think I need a travel monitor for my laptop so I can get more done when traveling.   Of course where are most of these made? You know.

I did some hunting. SideTrack is made in Taiwan and not hideously more expensive than PRC.

Needed: Audiologist Black Powder Shooter

Yes, we need an expert witness with credentials who can measure and testify credibly about hearing loss associated with colonial era firearms. Think: suppressor law.

I Am Using ReadIRIS to OCR Historical Documents to Avoid Retyping Quotes (and Thereby Introduce Typos)

It works pretty well, but for this book, I am glad I bought a fast PC.

Marvelous Parody

 

Balloons

The newest conspiracy theory: hot off the paranoia press.  (My wife heard it from a friend.)  The U.S. sends thousands of those balloons aloft to control us.  It is not the fault of CNN, Fox, ABC, or the general ignorance of most Americans, it is the balloons.

They Are Not Even Our Friends

 From gunpolicy.org:

“Harmless” .22 calibre Rabbit Rifles Kill More People Than Any Other Type of Gun Contrary to their popular image as low-powered “bunny guns,” .22-calibre rimfire rifles are commonly used in multiple shootings. In seven recent mass(1) killings involving .22 rifles in Australia and New Zealand alone, 54 people died by gunfire

Yes, they are setting up to ban rimfires.  But it makes you wonder how many semiautomatic mass murders in the U.S. involve rimfire rifles, which are generally exempted from A/W bans.  Yes, paranoid schizophrenic used a  Ruger 10/22 to murder 3 and wound 7.  There seem to be a lot of Ruger 10/22s used.  Cascade Mall.

Puckle Gun

 

Illinois Assault Weapons Banned Ruled Unconstitutional

3/4/23 Washington Examiner:

"An Illinois judge declared the state's gun ban and registry law unconstitutional on Friday.

The ruling by Macon County Judge Rodney Forbes means the law, signed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in January, cannot be enforced and is now awaiting an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. Initially, Forbes intended to take a couple of days to consider his decision but later signed his order after a couple of hours, according to the Center Square.

"Well-established Illinois authority provides that a law declared unconstitutional pursuant to a facial challenge is void, as if the law never existed, and is unenforceable in its entirety, in all applications," attorney Jerry Stocks, who was representing state Republican Rep. Dan Caulkins in this court decision, said in a statement after the order."

I doubt this is done.  Still good news.

Maximum Gun Purchase Age?

In an otherwise responsible article about the claim that mass murders fell during the assault weapons ban 2/17/22 Newsweek:

"A recent Newsweek poll found a majority of Americans agree that there should be a maximum age for purchasing firearms, although respondents did not agree on the limit.

The poll—conducted between January 28 and 29 among a sample of 1,500 eligible U.S. voters—found 52 percent of respondents supported the imposition of a maximum age requirement for the purchase of firearms.

Among these, 20 percent of respondents thought the age limit should be set at 60, while 16 percent said that it should be set at 70."

So too young to buy a gun and too old?

This Does Not Surprise Me

3/7/11 CNN:

"U.S. has highest bipolar rate in 11-nation study"  4.4% is a lifetime chance.  The point prevalence measure is 2.8%.

People with Bipolar Disorder I are disproportionately represented in prison and jail populations.  People with Bipolar II are frighteningly energetic and effective at what they do.  Because this is an inherited problem I suspect the generally risk-taking Bipolars tend to immigrate to new places.

A little deeper in:

"The topic has been the subject of at least one book, "The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America," by John D. Gartner, Ph.D. Gartner, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, discusses the hypomanic qualities of entrepreneurs and leaders who took risks to come to America. (Hypomania is a milder form of mania in which a person feels exuberant and may be highly creative without losing touch with reality or experiencing psychosis, which can happen in some people with mania.)"

Trying to Find This

 Someone broken into an FBI agent's car and stole seven guns, including two submachines.  Does anyone have a reputable news source on this?

Thanks.  DuckDuckGo seems better at finding these.  I also found local police losing submachine guns to theft and the U.S. military unable to find grenades, M4s and Beretta pistols (some after being used in crimes 600 miles away from where inventory showed them) 

Big Kitty Has a Future

I took it McDowell's in Boise.  They confirmed the seat spring is okay.  The bottom seat cushion needs replacing.  Being a genuine Jaguar part it is $450 but replacing it (which requires removing the seat) is only $199.  Much cheaper than a new Corvette and I otherwise love my Jaguar.   I still would not mind 500 horsepower. 

Auto da Fe Time for Mayor Adams

2/28/23 Politico:

I do not necessarily agree with his implied correlation means causality but it is a pretty severe slap in the face of important Democratic special-interest hate groups.

"At an interfaith breakfast Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams seemed to regret the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that banned school-sponsored prayer in 1962.

“When we took prayers out of schools, guns came into schools,” Adams said to applause from hundreds of religious leaders gathered at an annual event in Manhattan.

Adams was discussing the role that people who attend synagogues, churches, Sikh temples and mosques could play in reducing societal ills from homelessness to domestic violence.

"Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state. State is the body, church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies,” Adams said."

Illegal Immigrants Coming Across the Southern Border

3/2/23 NY Times:

The Canadian southern border.  NYC is shipping them to the border.

Twilight Zone

I thought I saw every episode in syndication.   One of course starring George Takei was too controversial to show.  It involves a samurai sword brought back from WW2 that takes over a Japanese-American and deals with the racial hatred that came out of WW2, but in a surprisingly un-PC way.

I am not allowed to work past noon so I am watching Season 4 right now.  "Printer's Devil" starring Burgess Meredith who is more than just the guy who sets type on a Linotype.  He has made some modifications to it so news stories he sets take place afterwards, just trying to help the failing small-town newspaper.   There is a cost for the editor and it is not hard to guess.

There is another one set in the Appalachians with a woman using witchcraft to get the man she wants from a rival.  The incredibly beautiful face of the woman using witchcraft looked familiar.   It was Anne Francis.

"The Parallel" involves an astronaut who goes up and someone that looks like him comes back who is some subtly different. 

Another new one involves a little girl who falls out of bed into a parallel dimension.  Mom and Dad can hear her calling them but they cannot see her so they call up their friend the physicist who helps them find her.  A really eerie set of special effects for the parallel dimension in which she and her dog have fallen.

If you do not remember the name, she was in Forbidden Planet and a short-lived female and  detective show called Honey West.  It was unique.  It was a half-hour dramatic show.  Not typical for the 1960s.  What I recall vividly is that Honey had a pet ocelot and she was played as a capable if beautiful private detective.  Aside from an opening where she is dressed in a beautiful very attractive dress, the show was serious without using her looks to hold the audience (not Charlie's Angels). I really enjoyed it.

That Bizarre Canadian Shop Teacher

I am sure you have seen the story.  A very manly shop teacher came back from the summer break with what appear to be the largest breasts in human history wearing suggestive outfits and calling herself Kayla.  Some claim they are a prosthetic which she denies.  The very PC school board has placed her on leave after she was photographed without the absurdly enormous breasts.

I have heard it suggested that he was just trolling the school board and Canadian elites.

Pacemaker

My cardiologist says that I am probably goinf to need a pacemaker in a few more years.  Have any of you had that done?  She says that it is done under a local anesthetic which seems unbelievable if they are going to put leads into your heart.

Required Minimum Distribution

IRAs have something called a Required Minimum Distribution.   Starting at 72, you are required to take a substantial fraction of your IRA each year.

Now I know that one of the goals is to make sure you do not leave too much wealth to your kids.  The left does not like having to compete for condos at Aspen or Jackson Hole or Ferraris.  Does anyone know what the stated goal was? More tax revenue from the distributions?

Very Busy

But I need to take a break every once in a while.  I am writing a rebuttal to Prof. Saul Cornell's "expert declaration" in the challenge to Hawaii's assault pistol and LCM ban.  

It is amazing how his declarations just keep getting worse and worse and Hawaii is paying him $750/hour to produce crap that even just looking up citations shows he is misrepresenting.   

But there is some fun as well.  At one point he claims that were few pistols in the Colonial era, and those were mostly dueling pistols in the hands of wealthy and elite sorts.  (Yes, rampant Bellesiles-ism.)  Of course, I have more evidence proving him wrong on this than I can reasonably use.  Thousands of 1720s through 1760s newspaper articles and ads for pistols.  And archeological digs with pistols and pistol bullets.  And I get paid to do this!

Raiders of the Lost Ark

I just watched it again.  I have seen it so many times since my first viewing in a Westwood theater and each time I get something more out of it in pleasure. 

The fight sequence in the Nepalese bar, the "I'm making it up as I go" sequence, the opening of the Ark sequence, the Gestapo man melting, the swordsman vs. revolver sequence, the "Top men" and the collection of Army Intelligence crates.   

Something new this time.  Obviously his revolver was lost during the battles with the Germans on the truck.  When we seem him leave the captain's cabin near the end he has switched to an M1911.

I find myself wondering what Jewish reaction was to the film.  It is certainly reverent in its portrayal of what God's reaction would be to National Socialists playing with the Ark even if some of the early descriptions of its powers are really not Biblical.