“For those who want Utopia today, yesterday is always a villain.
Regardless of how it made tomorrow possible.”
Read today’s Bleat. Lileks outdoes himself.
Author: Kevin
No WMDs, Eh?.
I posted this cartoon back in July of 2004:
It looks like the WMD existed after all, but they were never the ONLY reason for invading Iraq.
SonofaBITCH That Man Can Write!.
That’s precisely what I said when I finished reading Bill Whittle’s latest offering, RAFTS. I am heartened that in this piece, the promised opening chapter of an upcoming second book, he hits on numerous ideas that I have written about myself. The power of belief. The hardwired nature of the human psyche and the fact that we’ve not been at this Civilization thing all that long. The need for constant maintenance of said Civilization. The “forces of ignorance and barbarism.”
Go read. It’s a short one for Bill, who normally prefers “not to get paid by the word, or the page, but by the pound,” but it’s worth every minute of your very valuable time.
“…the relative ease in which someone can attempt to manufacture an automatic weapon in their home…”
As a subject of the Crown, you’ve got to admire Edwin Johnson’s testicular fortitude:
Cache of illegal firearms found at 78-year-old’s home
A CACHE of illegal firearms was discovered by ambulancemen after a 78-year-old retired Royal Navy engineer collapsed at his home.
Edwin Johnson had legitimately bought the deactivated weapons but then used his engineering skills to alter them so they could be fired.
Johnson, who later admitted he had ‘misapplied’ his interest in engineering had also started building his own weapon using a ‘How to make your own sub-machine gun’ manual.
Stuart Lody, prosecuting, told Lincoln Crown Court an Italian-licensed 9mm pistol, a German 9mm pistol dating back to 1896, and an air-powered revolver were all found in the property at Burgh le Marsh.
“Some gentlemen of his age design and make their own steam engines. Unfortunately he developed an interest in weapons,” Mr Lody said.
“A number of components for a sub-machine gun he was making were found. He said he stopped doing that because the drawings in the book were not precise enough.”Mr Lody said Johnson, who worked as an engineer for Rolls Royce after leaving the Royal Navy, was thoroughly investigated to see if he had links with the underworld but none were found.
Johnson, of High Street, Burgh-le-Marsh, admitted three charges of possessing a prohibited firearm on 20 December and possessing ammunition without a firearm certificate.
He was given a two year conditional discharge by Judge John Machin who said there were exceptional circumstances which meant he had no need to impose the minimum five year jail term set down by law.
On Friday Johnson was given an absolute discharge after admitting manufacturing an offensive weapon.
The judge told him: “You find yourself in court because of legislation which was designed to aim at a mischief of which you clearly have not been the perpetrator.
I can imagine few cases where it would be easier to find exceptional circumstances. The inquiries revealed nobody could be less inclined or in any way involved in gun crime.
“This was an activity you took up. You activated the weapons simply for the purpose of your own cultural amusement.”
Steven Gosnell, defending, said Johnson served the Royal Navy with distinction and worked on the development of weapons for the Polaris nuclear submarines.
“He is an intelligent man. He is a gentleman,” said Mr Gosnell.
DC James Manning, who carried out the enquiry, said: “This case was very unusual and disturbingly highlights the relative ease in which someone can attempt to manufacture an automatic weapon in their home, with the aid of the right equipment, skills and information.
“We want today to serve as an example to everyone that this practice is unlawful.
“All firearms require licensing and anyone found with weapons in their home without a licence will be dealt with accordingly.”
All the law did in this case was make a criminal out of an otherwise good guy. Thankfully they didn’t throw the book at him.
You’ll note that the law doesn’t prevent gun manufacturing or reactivation.
That’s Not Risk-Aversion, it’s Risk-PHOBIA.
Back in 2005 I wrote More Moronics from Nerf™land – I Mean England, about a recommendation by a group of doctors who wanted the government to ban kitchen knives because – and I quote:
Doctors claim long kitchen knives serve no purpose except as weapons
I noted that, were it me, I wouldn’t be giving up my 10″ Henckel’s Chef’s knife any time soon. In the same piece I also reported on the effort to get pubs to use plastic pint glasses and plastic beer bottles because – again I quote:
Pub fights ‘cost £4m a year.’
In that piece I advised:
I’ll tell you what: Let’s just raze the British Isles, tote off all of the wood and brick and glass and metal and rebuild with terrycloth, foam rubber, Saran-wrap and soft plastics and then you’ll all be safe! Right?
As soon as everyone is in a straightjacket, that is. You seem to need the spinal support.
I thought I was being facetious. Apparently not:
Now pupils are banned from throwing paper planes
Pupils have been banned from throwing paper planes to one another – in case they get injured.
Staff at a primary school have instead set up special targets in the playground for the children to aim at.
The edict follows claims by teachers that a few of the school’s pupils, aged between three and 11, had been ‘over-zealous’ in launching the missiles.
The headteacher argued the ban was ‘a sensible’ measure – but parents of some of the 230 pupils reacted with disbelief.
Coming in the wake of high-profile bans around the country on traditional playground games such as tag and conkers, they fear aversion to risk is denying their children the learning experience they enjoyed.
One father of a seven-year-old boy said: ‘I’ve heard it all now. We made paper planes and our parents did the same and I never heard of anyone getting hurt.
‘It’s taking the health-and-safety measures to absurd lengths. Heaven knows what they will think to ban next.’
Staff at Bishops Down Primary School in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, introduced the ban earlier this month after two pupils were seen aiming their paper planes at other children.
The youngsters are still allowed to make the darts but are being supervised to ensure they only launch them at the targets.
Headteacher Emma Savage sai staff were particularly concerned about eye injuries.
‘These planes can have sharp edges and have the potential to damage a young person’s eyes,’ she said.
You’ll put your eye out!
‘We have stopped pupils from aiming them at other children’s eyes, which would seem like a reasonable thing to do.
You’ve flown paper airplanes before. They’re not exactly yard-darts. Can anybody accurately hit a moving target with a paper airplane? Especially one with a 15mm bullseye? (Pun intended.)
‘But they can still make and throw planes as much as they want because we have a safe area with targets in the playground.
‘The measure was taken because some of the children were getting a bit over-zealous.’
Mrs Savage claimed no one had complained about the ban.
Paper planes have been a feature of playgrounds since the turn of the last century, although the Chinese were making paper kites 2,000 years ago. And Leonardo da Vinci created parchment planes after sketching early designs for flying machines.
The art of making paper planes is taken seriously enough for an entry to be registered by Guinness World Records.
American enthusiast Ken Blackburn holds the record for achieving flight time of 27.6 seconds in 1998.
A spokeswoman for Kent Council said schools were free to enforce their own safety measures but added.
‘I have never heard of any restrictions being imposed on paper planes before.’
It is the latest in a string of playground safety clampdowns.
Staff at Broomley First School in Stocksfield, Northumberland, ordered children to stop playing tag because it was ‘too rough’. Many schools have banned conkers forcing pupils to wear goggles while playing – because they fear they could be used as ‘offensive weapons’.
And a Gloucestershire village had to remove swings because they faced the sun and there was concern users could be blinded.
Sweet. Bleeding. Jeebus. I guess even they figured out that banning the sun wasn’t going to work.
A survey of 500 youngsters by The Children’s Society charity found the majority believe playgrounds are boring. Forty-five per cent said they had been stopped from playing with water and a third from climbing trees.
It really is Nerf™land!
Some comments from the article:
Has anyone checked that the cotton wool, the kids are wrapped up in these days, is not allergic to them…?
– Pete, Colchester, Essex
There are way too many laws, rules, regulations and prohibitions in this country now in an effort to make life failsafe. Life’s not like that, and any intelligent person will merely ignore this nonsense.
– Nigel Smith, London
But you can’t ignore it, Nigel. The State will come enforce itself on you if you try.
What can anyone say? Words completely fail me – except to say the people who decide on these rules are completely barking mad.
– Carolyn, Isle of Man
But Carolyn, the “completely barking mad” are in charge of the education of your children.
Balls can be thrown so why not ban those… skipping ropes could be used to hang children and god forbid that they should carry sharp pencils or even worse umbrellas.
These sad, sad people who think up such rubbish must have had a sad, sad childhood themselves.
Let the children laugh to remind us of ourselves and let them grow with a strength and determination to succeed. Allow them to have a competitive spirit and the will to go forward. Let them rejoice in the thrill of winning and the fear of chance.Wrap them in cotton wool and we will be breeding a generation of losers and whiners.
– Alan, Weston Super Mare
Err, Alan, which generation is it, do you think, that’s proposing these bans?
I’ve got two quotes to add to this. One is very old:
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. – Aristotle
The other I’ve repeated here often:
The other day our Carpenter’s helper heard me say something along the lines of, “it is difficult to conclude that incompetence is the reason why our public schools have deteriorated. There comes a point where you have to suspect sabotage, or a conspiracy.”
He asked me if I really meant that. I gave him the five minute explanation of John Dewey’s known affiliation with communists, his frequent essays and articles about the wonders of the Soviet education system, and his quote, “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”
I then went on to tell him about how public schools changed at the turn of the last century. That there were others involved in turning Americans from free-thinking individualists to factory drones. I also added that many people probably went along with it because it seemed like a good idea, but there were certainly enough people behind the scenes, who knew that the goal posts had been moved. THAT is a conspiracy.
Yes. There does come that time when you are forced to don the tinfoil hat.
The incompetence excuse only works once. Incompetence this great is impossible to attribute to accident.
That one’s by Connie du Toit.
Yup. I’m convinced this kind of thing is deliberate, and for precisely the reason Aristotle noted.
Intelligent, active, healthy, educated children make poor drones when they grow up.
I Refuse to Believe We’re Stuck Here.
In relation to my previous post about getting off this planet, I’d like to show you this:
It’s the Milky Way as seen from Death Valley.
We can’t be stuck here. We can’t.
A Comment on Podcasts.
Glenn Reynolds links to an interview of Iraq the Model‘s author Omar by Belmont Club‘s author Richard Fernandez. Sounds interesting, so I click on over.
It’s a podcast.
This is the blogosphere. It’s not talk radio. It’s not that I mind that it’s audio, but I want to READ the interview. There might be something in it I’d like to excerpt for a post, or save in my ever-growing “Quotes” file. While I’m at work, I like to listen to talk radio. It’s often just background noise, but sometimes something truly interesting is said. One of the things I most appreciate is Duane Patterson’s Radio Blogger site. Duane is the Senior Producer for Hugh Hewitt’s afternoon radio show, and he posts transcripts of most of Hugh’s interviews. Hugh has his own blog, but Duane does the transcripts. He often also posts audio links to the interviews as well, which I think is an excellent idea, but the written word is the media of the blogosphere, in my opinion. You want to podcast? Fine. I’m quite taken with Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air site myself, but I WANT TRANSCRIPTS.
And We Thought the Kelo Decision Was Bad!.
Homes of the dead to be seized
Bereaved families could have the homes of dead relatives seized under new laws that allow the state to commandeer empty properties.
Local councils will be able to take control of inherited homes if they are left vacant for more than six months.
After that time the beneficiaries of a will risk seeing the house that has been left to them taken over and rented out as social housing.
The new rules, which could affect 250,000 homes in England, will come into force next month, according to details slipped out by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly.
They state that those who leave a house or flat empty for six months risk losing control of it to the local council, which will have power to break in, alter or refurbish it, and let it out to tenants of the authority’s choice. The greatest impact is likely to fall on bereaved families.
Although actual ownership will remain with the family, the new law means that the home of a relative who has died may be taken over by the council just six months after the will has been put into effect.
Many families are likely to be debating how to deal with or share out the value of the home of a loved one for several months after a death. The risk of losing family property comes on top of the growing burden of inheritance tax and the highly controversial ‘means test’ system for long-term care of the elderly.
Tory housing spokesman Michael Gove said yesterday: “Seizing homes of the recently deceased is particularly disturbing. I doubt that state officials will always recognise the delays that can result from complex wills or appreciate the traumatic ordeal that families face with the task of clearing a home of personal possessions.” He added: “I fear this is a stealthy new form of inheritance tax.”
Housing experts called the confiscation of property ‘outrageous’. Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank said: “This runs right against the ancient common law principle of private property, which is as fundamental as habeas corpus.
“The right to private property is the Englishman’s right to his castle. This looks to me like the point where Labour has overstepped the mark into behaving more like a dictatorship than a democratic government.”
Mr Whelan added: “I think anybody whose property is seized under this law should go straight to court to see if a judge thinks it should stand.”
Henry Stuart, head of property at the City law firm Withers, said: “Many families decide to sell inherited property – but they often wait for the right time. For example, you do not sell a country cottage in November, you wait until the spring. But by then the local council could have put a tenant in.”
The right for councils to impose ‘Empty Dwelling Management Orders’ was included in a 2004 Housing Act pushed through by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
Miss Kelly, his successor in charge of housing policy, published guidance on how the orders will work last Friday afternoon, without informing MPs or the media.
When the law was pushed through Parliament, it was said that target homes would be in crime-affected streets in inner cities. However, the details now made public show that the orders will apply to any home. The guidance on the new powers said: “The property does not have to be run down or uninhabitable. The fact it has not been lived in for more than six months may be enough to allow an EDMO to be made.”
Exceptions cover second and holiday homes and homes of those working ‘temporarily’ away. In the case of inherited property, exemption applies for six months after grant of probate. An EDMO can last for seven years, but owners can apply to get their house back earlier. No home can be seized if its owner can show it is ‘genuinely’ on the market.
The seizure of homes must also be approved by a Residential Property Tribunal. These are the panels that have until now been confined to settling disputes between private landlords and tenants.
Those who are the first to lose control of property to a council may also challenge the new law in the courts through the process of judicial review.
A spokesman for Miss Kelly’s department said: “The owner retains ownership rights and can dispose of their dwelling at any time or seek revocation of an order to enable sale or to otherwise secure occupation.”
Yes, England slides further towards bondage.
And the populace increasingly avoids involving itself in fighting crime, since the State has made it plain that they’re not qualified and will be punished for doing the State’s job:
Pensioner brutally attacked at seafront – yet no one came to his aid
When pensioner Derek Gull was targeted by two vicious muggers he was not walking through a tough housing estate or along some dark alley.
The 76-year-old was sitting on a bench in broad daylight on a busy sea front.
But as the thugs smashed a brick into his face and broke both his wrists as they tried to wrench his watch off his arm, not a single person stepped in to help.
The grandfather told yesterday how more than a dozen people carried on walking as he struggled against his attackers with blood streaming down his face.
He fought bravely to stop them taking the watch – which was a present from his wife on their golden wedding anniversary – and they eventually fled after pushing him down an 8ft embankment.
And as he staggered through the town covered in blood, still no-one stopped to help.
“I couldn’t see properly because my eyes were watering,” Mr Gull said yesterday as he recovered from his injuries at home.
“I was covered with blood from my nose. At least a dozen people walked past and did not bother to do anything, they just ignored me.
“It’s disgusting, my whole family is upset about it. I suppose people just don’t want to get involved any more, they don’t seem to care.
“But if I saw someone like that I would see if I could help, I wouldn’t just walk past and ignore it.”
Mr Gull’s ordeal earlier this month came just days after motorists ignored a girl of eight as she dragged herself to the pavement with a broken leg after being mowed down by a hit and run driver.
Cait Atkins was walking near her home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, when she was run over. Up to 12 motorists drove past her without stopping to help.
Mr Gull, a retired electrician from Rainham, Essex, had been visiting Clacton-on-Sea on a day trip with his local working men’s club.
During the day, he separated from the others to visit a friend at the town’s bowling club.
As he walked back to meet the rest of the group in a restaurant he decided to sit on a bench for a while and watch some youngsters playing football on the beach.
“Suddenly I felt an arm come round from behind and grab me and a voice demanded that I hand over my watch,” the father of three said.
‘He would have had to kill me for the watch’
“It was a golden wedding anniversary present from my wife so he would have had to kill me to get it.
“Another arm came round and started tugging at the watch and trying to get it off. I clenched my fist so he couldn’t get it off me.
“Then he pulled my arm through the slats and twisted it until it broke.
“I heard him say to someone else “hit him” and the next thing I knew half a brick hit me in the face breaking my nose.
“There was blood everywhere and my eyes were watering, I couldn’t see a thing.”
Mr Gull, who is registered disabled as he suffers from curvature of the spine, managed to struggle to his feet and his attackers – aged in their late teens – pushed him down an 8ft bank onto a concrete path before fleeing.
“I got my faculties together and tried to make my way back to the restaurant but I was covered in blood and it was pouring out of my nose.
“I couldn’t see a thing because my eyes were watering so much.
“I must have passed about half a dozen people but no one asked me what had happened or offered to help me.
“At the time I was so upset that people just ignored me but looking back I suppose they just didn’t want to get involved or maybe they thought I was a drunk.
“If it was me though, I would have gone out of my way to help someone in that situation.”
Eventually Mr Gull met some members of his group who guided him back to the restaurant where he was cleaned up and the police were called.
After showing them where the incident took place he insisted on taking the hour and a half long journey back to Rainham with the working men’s club on the coach.
It was only when he got home that he agreed to go to hospital where he collapsed in casualty.
Doctors were so concerned about the amount of blood he had swallowed that they gave him a lung scan and he was kept in hospital for more than a week before being allowed back home on Wednesday. He is unable to drive his car or play his regular game of bowls.
Mr Gull, who served in the Army for two and a half years after joining in 1947, suggested bringing back national service to deal with antisocial youths.
“That would sort out all the young thugs of today. Like the old saying goes, you go in as a boy and come out as a man.”
Mr Gull’s 75-year-old wife, Violet, said she was pleased that her husband clung on the the gold Ellesse watch she had bought him.
She added: “He was very brave, but it’s disgusting that no-one helped him.
“I don’t know what the world is coming to.”
Essex Police are appealing for witnesses.
What’s the world coming to? Well, apparently it’s coming to shit.
Damn, it pains me to see what the Mother Country has become.
OK, but Why?.
Titled “4 (Million) Eyes”:
This is a publicity shot for Micreon GmbH of Hannover, Germany. It took a pulsed titanium-sapphire laser to cut the eyeglass frames from an itty-bitty, thin sheet of tungsten, and then a pair of tweezers, a microscope, and two weeks of labor to get them on the (very dead) fly.
It’s supposed to “demonstrate the precision possible with femtosecond lasers.”
Ooookay.
Hey! You Kids! Get Off the Planet!
(Blogging from work again. Left last night at 7:00PM, back again at 6:15AM.)
Physicist Stephen Hawking recently declared that humans must go into space if we want to survive as a species. I’m pretty much with him on that one. I’d hoped (since I grew up on Florida’s Space Coast during the race to the moon) that we’d already have colonies on the moon and a significant presence in space.
Two guys floating around Earth in a Greyhound Bus is not a “significant presence” in my book.
There are two hurdles that have to be overcome for this to happen, though. One: we have to have the will to do it. Two: we have to have the money. To some extent will equals money, but even if the ready cash was on hand, if you’re not willing to spend it on getting out of here, then it might as well not exist. Leaving the planet is expensive – or at least it will be until we develop technologies that reduce the cost.
Right now it costs (officially) about $5-10k to put one pound into low Earth orbit. The real cost, when you add in the expense of the support infrastructure behind a launch and ground support during a mission, is probably more on the order of $40-50k. Assuming your average buck-naked human being weighs 150Lb (obviously we’re not talking about your average American here) and you’re looking at between $1.5 and $75 million dollars just to put someone into a not-too-stable orbit around the Big Blue Marble. Getting to escape velocity costs a lot more. (The $1.5M price tag obviously ignores things like life-support.)
There are other ways to get into space. Glenn Reynolds thinks that a Space Elevator is a good idea, and the idea of a gigantic magnetic-induction catapult has been floating around for decades, but both are multi-billion dollar investments with engineering, safety, environmental, and materials problems of their own.
I’m not sure the United States has the political will to do the job. At this point, I’m not sure we have the political will to defeat the forces of Islamism. I’ve written before that it’s possible that China may be the country that first succeeds in colonizing off-planet. Dictatorships don’t have as much of a problem with “political will” as democratic forms do, and they can wring the money out of the rest of the world, so long as we keep buying from what are largely State-owned industries.
In the same speech, Hawking said,
We are getting closer to answering the age-old questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from?
That’s great, but I’m more interested in “Where are we going, and how will we get there?”