Category: Uncategorized

What, You Thought I was Kidding?

Well, I’m back, finally. We’ll see how long this time. I just spent the last five days on an overhead travelling crane control retrofit that didn’t go as well as I would have liked. We were supposed to be finished Friday afternoon.

There’s an engineering joke – “If it ain’t broke, keep ‘improving’ it until it is.” It seems that one of our vendors made some firmware changes in their product, and now it doesn’t work the same way the (otherwise) identical units made last year do. Not good, since they changed functions I needed and used.

Anyway, I’m home, and barring any catastrophe, perhaps I can get back to posting again. Thanks to all of you who kept my stats up this week, but I did tell you I’d be gone! (I wasn’t about to try posting something from the computer in the lobby of the EconoLodge, even if I could get some seat time in front of it. Besides, 12-hour workdays suck, and I didn’t have the energy anyway.)

Christmas Gifts

Bill Whittle is finally publishing his book, Silent America: Essays from a Democracy at War. I’m glad, because I’ll be giving copies to everyone I have on my Christmas list this year.

This tidbit of information was put up last Thursday (while I was incommunicado) so I just found out about it from Bill’s most recent post. In that post, Bill echoed sentiments I hold and have written about in this blog. As usual, Bill’s artistry with words far exceeds my mere technical skills, so I’ll quote him:

I worry about terrorism. I worry about Transnational Progressivism. I worry about the utter moral decline of large parts of Europe. I worry about China. I worry about all these things.

But the only thing I genuinely fear is the cyclical nature of civilization. I fear the consequences of abandoning personal responsibility. I fear the self-hatred and nihilism that grows among the pampered, the narcissistic and the uninformed. These are things to be feared greatly. They have brought down entire civilizations and led to dark ages that have cost this species very dearly. I think we stand at such a point today, and this election — win or lose — will not determine the outcome…although it might give us some indication of how sick or healthy we are at this pivotal moment in history.

So prepare yourselves. There is a big fight ahead of us, regardless of who is crowing loud in a few weeks time. Other civilizations have fallen; this one may yet. But none have been armed as we are, and our wonder weapon is not the Carrier Battle Group, the Smart Bomb, or the M1 Abrams. This Civilization is armed with information, with real-time communication, with self-organizing expert systems. And for the first time in history, it has in its quiver the chance to hear from great minds otherwise buried in obscurity, to harness the power of billions of opinions and ideas and little, well-made boxes of competence and expertise; brilliant and commanding voices thrown away with the chaff in preceeding generations. This is a force multiplier to cheer even the most pessimistic.

And civilization will rise or fall on the ability to use these weapons under the shield of our shared values of freedom, opportunity, and just plain courage.

Watch this space.

You can bet your ass I will.

Remember the three legs of the tripod of freedom: The ability to reason, the free exchange of ideas, and the capability and the will to defend that which is yours. Never in our history has the second leg of the tripod been stronger. Let’s hope that strength also strengthens the other two, and can help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

Because “the worst thing about living in the declining era of a great civilization – is knowing that you are.” – R.A. Heinlein

Let’s make Silent America a runaway best seller.

Missed Me?

Wait… Don’t answer that! (Oh, OK, if you must…)

I’ve been out of town with no internet access for three days, and I’ll be gone again all next week, starting Monday. So much for my traffic stats for the month of October, I guess.

Oh well, there’s a lot of archived stuff, why don’tchall go nuts! Read the golden oldies!

Right now I’ve got to get caught up on what I’ve missed since Wednesday.

Guns Don’t Cause Suicide, the Internet Does

Or hibachi grills & charcoal. Or booze and sleeping pills. Or vans and plastic sheeting.

Roto-Reuters reports that seven people in Japan who met over the internet have been found dead of apparent suicide:

Seven Die in Japan ‘Internet Suicide’ Pact

Tue Oct 12, 2004 09:26 AM ET



TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese police said on Tuesday they were investigating a suspected group suicide involving seven people who met through the Internet, the latest in a rash of suicides linked to the Web.

The four men and three women, mostly in their 20s, were found dead on Tuesday in a car parked on a mountain road in Minano in Saitama prefecture near Tokyo, officers said.

Police said they found four charcoal stoves in the car, which was wrapped in blue plastic sheets and had its windows sealed from the inside.

“We believe they all died after inhaling carbon monoxide from the charcoal,” a police spokesman said. “We believe they got acquainted through the Internet.”

One of the seven had sent an e-mail to a friend on Monday saying he would commit suicide, the spokesman said.

“We found no traces of violence that could have otherwise led to their deaths,” he said.

Empty cans of liquor were found inside the car and a box of sleeping pills near the silver vehicle, Kyodo news agency said.

No religious prohibitions exist in Japan against suicide and it has long been seen as a way to escape failure or of saving loved ones from embarrassment for financial loss. However, it has also been stigmatized as a shameful, taboo subject.

In Kanagawa prefecture, just west of Tokyo, police said two women in their 20s had killed themselves in a car in what was believed to be another case of Internet suicide.

Cases dubbed by the Japanese media as “Internet suicide” pacts started to come to the fore in 2003. A total of 34 people killed themselves in such pacts last year, according to police data.

Police have asked Internet service providers to disclose information about those who post plans about suicides on the Web.

However, experts say it is pointless to blame the Internet and that a closer look should be taken at the society in which they occur.

Suicide rates have always been high in Japan, where there are about the same number each year as in the United States, which has more than double the population.

Last year, Japan reported a record 34,427 recorded cases of suicide. (Additional reporting by George Nishiyama)

Imagine that! They managed to have 34,427 suicides and gun ownership there is 0.01% (or less) of what it is here. Moreover, I believe that Japan counts as suicides, murder-suicides where a family member kills his entire family and then himself. This isn’t all that rare there, and it tends to skew Japan’s homicide statistics, too.

All black sarcasm aside, if you want to die, you’ll find a way. And if you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger, you want to die.

But according to “health professionals,” guns cause suicide.

As Usual, Lileks Says it Better Than I Can

Surely by now you’ve heard about this weekend’s New York Times Magazine interview with Sen. Kerry, and the comment making the rounds of the talk shows today. I’ve already had a comment exchange with a dedicated lefty on the topic. Here’s the quote that’s gotten the rise out of everyone:

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ”We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said. ”As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”

My. Mouth. Is. Agape.

James Lileks, however, says what I would were I that talented:

Tony Soprano doesn’t take over schools and shoot kids in the back. The doxies of the Bunny Ranch don’t train at flight schools to ram brothels into skyscrapers.

A nuisance?

A nuisance? I don’t want the definition of success of terrorism to be “it isn’t on the rise.” I want the definition of success to be “free democratic states in the Middle East and the cessation of support of those governments and fascist states we haven’t gotten around to kicking in the ass yet.” I want the definition of success to mean a free Lebanon and free Iran and a Saudi Arabia that realizes there’s no point in funding the fundies. An Egypt that stops pouring out the Jew-hatred as a form of political novacaine to keep the citizens from turning their ire on their own government. I want the definition of success to mean that Europe takes a stand against the Islamicist radicals in their midst before the Wahabbi poison is the only acceptable strain on the continent. Mosquito bites are a nuisance. Cable outages are a nuisance. Someone shooting up a school in Montana or California or Maine on behalf of the brave martyrs of Fallujah isn’t a nuisance. It’s war.

But that’s not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.



But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.

We have to get back to the place we were.

No. We have to go the place where they are.

And that’s precisely what we are doing.

But Kerry wants to go back to handling terrorism as a law enforcement problem. Sorry, John. The sound of the collapsing towers? That was the sound of a massive paradigm shift. You must not have been paying attention.

Your supporters weren’t either.

That Dog Don’t Hunt – That’s Excellent



Via Ipse Dixit I found this NRA ad. It should be a poster:

Love the graphic!

Light to No Blogging this Weekend

I’m calling a big two-day International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association match this weekend. I get up at about 5:30AM, get to the range about 7:30AM and get home about 5:30PM. The match is being run by others, but I volunteered to be the range master for it, which means I sit in the observation tower and call out the instructions to the shooters and target setters. It’s not really physically stressful, but I’m still tired and sunburned when I get home. (You’d be surprised how much light reflects off the desert, and how much of it you get even sitting in the shade, over eight hours.)

Anyway, no long drawn-out posts this weekend, no links to stuff that will raise your blood pressure, nada. Just me out at the range with a bunch of old farts reliving our better days when we could actually see (and hit!) those damned steel turkeys 150 yards off, over the iron sights of our single-shot pistols.