"Gun Deaths"

I have found that this is a term mostly used by the "sensible regulations" crowd. It seems an odd term to use, why not gun murders or fire arm homicides? The reason is that; of the usual 30,000/year figure given, 8,600 are homocides and the remaining 21,400 are suicides. (You can get to these figures either from published statistics on suicide rate or from FBI crime statistics--all easily obtainable on the web).

These sites almost never point-out this breakdown, so I can only assume their intent to deceive. But still, a death is a death and tragic whether cis (suicide) or trans (homicide). Surely, guns play some role in both, given that most (8,600 out of 12,700) trans and about half of cis killings use a fire arm.

There is certainly a factor of utility: A murder victim is likely to resist and a gun makes the outcome of the encounter more certain. Similarly, a gun is a logical choice when considering cis killing:

1. It is certain.
2. It is fast.
3 It is painless

Most other choices fall down in one or more of these categories. Take hanging for instance; it might not work, it will be both painful and slow. The only drawback I could see to shooting is that it leaves a mess. I make no claim to mental health insight, but it seems like cis killers do often want to lash out at those they leave behind. So, a mess may be more a feature than a bug.

Guns help if you want to kill yourself and so, logically, the availability of a fire arm would make it more likely that a given person would go through with it.*

To see if there is a correlation between the availability of an easy cis killing method and actual cis killing, we can compare suicide rates with other countries which have much more restrictive gun laws than we do here in the USA:

Japan is often held-up as a great example of how a low murder rate correlates with gun restrictions. Indeed, their rate of 0.4/100,000 is much better than our 4.8/100,000. On the other hand, their suicide rate is 21.9/100,000 to our 12.0/100,000! So clearly, the lack of guns is not sufficient to stop people from cis killing if that is what they want to do.


*I will note here that asphyxiation with an inert gas would be ideal in terms of the above three consideration and have the virtue of being less messy than a gun shot, but it is not a method which is well known. It seems that the feeling of suffocation you get while holding your breath is due to CO2 build-up in the blood causing a drop in pH. Breathing an inert gas allows the CO2 to be driven-off.


Added: Tom Maguire points out that if the problem is 30K "gun deaths" and most of them are suicide--then isn't the problem mostly a mental health issue?

Some, Middle Weight

I've been avoiding a task for some time now because it had required too long of a time commitment. Rather than find a ten-hour window of time, I found a way to do a smaller bit of the work.

I have been doing the tile work for the new bathroom and have completed the floor part, but the tub enclosure remained. The mortar comes in a 50 lb bag and not only does it provide enough material for a whole day of work, it is also a bear to mix in the winter time.

What I decided to do was divide the bag into 6 parts since the whole bag requires 6 quarts of water. One 6th is 8 1/3 lbs. This is too much for the kitchen scale and too low for the bathroom scale. A solution was hinted-at by the recollection that we have a set of 8 lb dumbbells. A four foot board and a triangular piece of wood later, a serviceable balance was formed.

I did two 8 lb batches of tiling and feel like the project is back on track.

Idol worship

I can understand being a supporter, but even if you like the guy, doesn't this make you even a little sick?

Here is how the press shows the President when they are properly skeptical of authority.

Day Off Doings...

After breakfast I assembled all the items which the "scrap metal guy" is willing to pick-up. An old window AC unit, a broken lawn mower, a broken refrigerator, two computer towers and misc. odds and ends. The only things notable were that I removed the two hard drives from the computer towers, more as a security precaution than a need for the files. I pushed the fridge up the basement stairs and at about the half-way mark I came to a realization: If my strength fails, I could very well die. The bottom of the stair is a concrete wall, which would be the anvil to the fridge's sledge hammer.

Next, I went and did a full shopping at the grocery store. Salmon steaks for tonight!

Then, I went for my first barefoot run of the year. I couldn't do my regular route since it is on the bike path and still snowbound. 8.74 miles @ 7:35/mile. So this makes both the first barefoot run of the year and the longest sub-8 run and the fastest single run of the year!

Last (so far) a man-lunch: Homemade guacamole, tortilla chips and a beer. Hey! It is vegetarian, for whatever that is worth.

Let Us Take A Little Philosophical Trip Together.

According to PEW, only a tiny minority of Americans consider themselves to be atheist (1.6%). There is a wide range of how religious the rest are, but around 98.4% are at least open to the idea that there might be a God.

This is why I find it troubling when elected officials are deemed unfit to represent the public due to insufficient "scientific" purity.

The case in point is from ScienceInsider: New Head of NIH Appropriations Panel Known for Conservative Views and Support for Research Spending


The article is actually very fair-minded:

He's also known for being skeptical that humans are contributing to climate change and for rejecting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. But although that record might make many scientists anxious, his reputation as an inside operator who understands the importance of funding research makes many science boosters breathe a little easier.

But the reactions to his appointment demonstrate a rather dim attitude toward democracy. After all, if the democratic process of elected representatives gives unacceptable results, the implication is that there must be some other, better method.

But let's leave all this aside for a moment and think about religion.

The vast majority of our republic either believe in God or are open to the possibility. If there is a God, then the implication is that he created the universe. Most think this was accomplished long, long ago. Fine. But a God who could create the universe billions of years ago, could also have created it five minutes ago too. That is, all our memories, geologic erosion, dinosaur bones--everything that is now, could have just been made! How would we know the difference? Or better, nothing exists except our minds and they are merely little subroutines running in God's mind. Anybody open to the possibility of divine power could agree with this if they thought it through a bit.

All that being said, I would rather have my representatives believe in natural selection than not, though what they claim and what they actually believe may be two distinctly different things. It may be difficult to get elected in rural Georgia as an evolutionist, just as it might have been hard for President Obama to get elected if he admitted to being an atheist.

In any case, I see far more harm from politicians who honestly fear and oppose things such as GMO's, Fracking and Atomic power which have risks which range from nonexistent (GMO's), easily managed (fracking) and manageable with sound engineering (atomic power).

Jokes, Lame and...Also, lame

1. Just before wrapping up to go home after seeing-in New Year's Day there was some small talk about Brandy. It seems she had been a force in the pop-music scene 9 years ago and was just on one of the "Rockin' New Year's Eve shows".

Anyway, one of the guests thought she might have gone by the name Brandi in her earlier career but the TV had her as Brandy now. I suggested that in a few years more she could change it to cognac. I did not expect more than a polite chuckle, but my host just about lost his footing. I suppose one never quite knows what is going to work.

2. I put a lot more into one from last night and it got barely a snigger:

Me: So, you know cats?

Wife: Yes...

Me: Well, sometimes they get run-over. If the car hits the front of the animal, it usually dies on the spot. But if it gets winged in the hindquarters it will often survive.

Wife:

Me: But, what can happen is that the cat will be paralyzed in the rear-legs, much like a human paraplegic.

Wife: Awwe...

Me: So, because of the lack of exercise the cat gets in the rear, the back legs can waste-away.

Me: They call this condition a Cat-Asstrophy!

Wife: Groan!

Memory Conforms With What We Now Believe.

The lake used to be frozen over by New Year's. Sadly, no longer.

The above is a quote from someone I know on Facebook who is a "worrier" when it comes to global warming.

He was refering to Lake Champlain. I was in Vermont for eight years (1992-2001) and I had vaguely remembered that it froze the first winter I was there and the second but then maybe only once after that, so I was curious if my experience was typical.

The records were easy to find.

The records go back to 1816 and there is no year in which the lake was frozen by New Year's. January is the most common month though. Also, while the lake did freeze more often in the past, 1851-1918 without missing a year, this is long before this guy was alive. In his personal memory, it freezes about half the winters. The trend is slight: 19 times in his first 30 years of life and 15 times since then.

Probably the largest influence, besides confirmation bias, is that the lake has gone 5 years in a row of not freezing. By March, we will know if it has made it 6 years in a row.

Update: It did in fact go 6 years without freezing since it didn't freeze in 2013. It has come back with a fury though: Frovze in mid Feb in 2014 and 2015.

Painting The Addition

On the last day of 2012 I spent the bulk of the day painting. I expected that it would go fast and it did--there are no floors in yet, or trim, or even switches, electrical outlets or lights.

I blew-through five gallons of primer in 6 hours of continuous work and then I was done, not with the job, but at least with the day since I was out of paint.

As I was progressing I had a couple of thoughts:

1. I am glad I ignored the advice of the paint clerk at the hardware store. He thought I should need only two gallons of paint, reasoning that each will do 400 square feet and the addition is about 800. I reasoned that the 400 figure was wall area not floor area and that is about the coverage I got.

2. I nearly got one gallon of paint onto the walls per hour of effort and so wondered what kind of benchmark "real" painters achieve? On further reflection, I doubt painters measure their work that way. Most are probably paid by the hour, not by how much paint they use-up. Even if you paid by some measure of how much work was completed, you probably would not want it to be by paint volume since that might just encourage wasteful application of product.

I have never hired a painter since it seems like the quintessential do-it-yourself kind of thing. But I may look into how they quote for jobs. Do they just come in and do everything? Or do you buy the paint and they just apply it?

At the end of the last day of 2012, I was exhausted. I don't know how I managed to find the energy to go out after that and pick-up more paint, but somehow I did. Yet the next day I (with Wife's help) finished the primering and the amount of time on the job was similar to what I had spent on painting on the day before. But I felt fine. I suppose that one's body adapts to whatever kind of work is demanded of it.

His Ethics are...Situational

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. . . . Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Obama 2006

But Obama warned again that he would not negotiate with Republicans over the $16.4 trillion debt limit, which must be raised in the coming weeks. “While I will negotiate over many things,” he said, “I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether they will pay the bills they’ve already racked up.”

Obama from today's Washington Post

2012 running

Running report for the year: 1,502.13 miles at an average pace of 7:57. 861.48 miles with shoes @ 8:03/mile and 640.65 barefoot @ 7:50/mile. I was hoping for 1560, so that the average would be 30/week.

I think that I get about 500 miles on a pair of shoes, so if nothing else, I saved about $50 on shoes this last year. The real reason I do it is the savings in time: 13 seconds/mile on average and what makes it more impressive is that the barefoot runs were mostly medium distance and long distance while the ones with shoes were mostly short runs. The other big savings is on injuries: I get more superficial cuts, blisters and abrasions on my feet; but my joints have never felt better.

Playing Against Type

1. From the picture above and from years of watching the show, it seemed like Jack Klugman was older--not by a lot, but older. In fact, Tony Randall was two years older.

2. Yes, I realize that the characters played are not like the actors. But still, can you imagine the show working if the roles were reversed? In fact, Klugman was a lifetime smoker while Randall did not smoke. Yet the slovenly guy who ate what he wanted and smoked, lived 6 years longer.

3. Divorce: On the show, both were famously divorced--which is how they came to be living together. Yet both actors were never divorced and their initial marriages lasted over 50 years. (Klugman did legally seperate from his wife of 21 years, but they never divorced).

Not a Christmas Song,..but really evokes Christmas

The Pretenders -- 2000 Miles



OK, this is weird.

Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone (Baby It's Cold Outside) .

The Waitresses, "Christmass Wrapping"

Fisking Marcotte is Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel

But here goes anyway:

National Review Writer Doubts the Power of the Bushmaster AR-15
By Amanda Marcotte

If you, like many red-blooded Americans, plan on joining the gun shopping spree that mass shootings usually inspire,

It is not the mass shooting that inspires gun shopping, it is the fear that the predictible hysteria will lead to a ban. So, it is prudent to buy while you still can.

The fact that he successfully killed 27 women and children with only one target escaping with an injury certainly suggests that the gun does what it was designed to do: kill a whole bunch of people in a short period of time.

There is a lot of history behind the development of the .223 Remington. To sum it up, the earlier cartridge types were more powerful than they needed to be. The 30.06 could be fatal at ranges of up to 800 yards while most soldiers lack the skill to make a hit beyond 200 yards. Further, it is better in a battlefield situation to wound (badly) than to kill outright. The logic is that a wounded soldier needs assistance while a dead one can wait for attention, so you remove more of the enemy by wounding them than by killing. Further advantages are that smaller lighter ammunition allows for more rounds to be carried and the lighter recoil helps with accuracy. Many states do not allow big game hunting with .223 Win because it is not deemed powerful enough. We err on the side of overkill for hunting because it is inhumane to inflict a wound which will kill, but only slowly.

But before you rush to give Bushmaster your hard-earned dollars, let me present a second opinion on the gun's manhood-bolstering capabilities from Robert VerBruggen, courtesy of the (sic) National Review Online, who argues that Lanza's weapon is too weak to bother banning:

VerBruggen's logic is not exactly difficult to follow: Gun control people claim that they are not after hunting weapons, but want to ban "powerful" "assault weapons". Hunting rifles are much more powerful than so-called assault weapons. So if you want to make a limit on how powerful civilian weapons can be, you will end up banning all large game rifles.

CHS Symphony Orchestra--Student Led

Barefoot Half Marathon

This is no kind of record for me, I've done this distance barefoot several times this year, although all have been since early fall.

I had originally wanted to run with shoes because I have a goal of doing at least one long run (15 miles or more) before the end of the year and my feet can't take much beyond 13. The problem lately is that if I run with shoes I am too tired to go further than that, so 13 seems to be the limit for now.

It was a nice day, sunny and low 40's and there are only so many days left before we are hit with the kind of cold and snow that will keep even my shoes on. So I will make barefoot runs while I can.

It was just cold enough, or really just warm enough depending on how you look at it, so that in sunny parts it was perfectly comfortable. In shady areas I felt a chill and my feet were cold. One might think that my feet would be numb all the time when running in 40 degree weather. Not so! Even at about 30 degrees, the feet are numb for a little while but then thaw out in a mile or two. A lot depends on if the ground is wet. In any case, numb feet are fine comfort-wise but I worry about damaging myself and not noticing until too late. A small sharp stone or peice of glass can stick to the bottom of your foot and slowly drill its way in with every footfall.

I started the run at about noon and yet the sun was low in the sky. The trees along the bikepath were casting shadows at right angles to the path and even though the pavement is asphault, the lit areas were almost white in the sun so there was a large contrast between the shadows and lit areas. As I ran down the path, I imagined that I was traveling along an endless barcode. The tree trunks cast shadows of various thicknesses and the spacing was random yet homogeneous in that there were few areas of total blackness or of light. I amused myself thinking about what messages could be encoded by the alternating bands of light and dark. We assume that the bands on packages mean something, even if we don't know what it is. We similarly asssume that the natural barcode means nothing, though at the very least it tells us a lot about the population density and age distribution of the trees in the wood.

Things took a poor turn soon into the run. I had been looking forward to getting out of the woods and onto roads since there would be more sunshine out in the open. Indeed there was, but also broken glass. My vision has gotten worse over the years, in the sense that I can't focus up-close anymore, but I can see small pebbles and glass peices well enough to avoid stepping on them. A sharp pain at around mile 3 told me that my senses failed. I stopped for a bit and found a shard of amber glass, not much bigger than a largish grain of sand embedded in the ball of one foot. I easily dug it out with a fingernail and was dismayed to see a bright drop of blood welling out of the wound. Great! Only ten miles to go! By about the half-way mark, sharp pains in both feet indicated further wounds, though there was no more glass to pick-out.

Not every step rewarded me with sharp pain, it was more like a couple of steps per minute of running. Maybe it was from when a small grain of grit got into the wound. In all, not a bad run. I made just under 8:00 per mile.

Pickles

They are not expensive and I don't think we use them on anything other than burgers, but we always seem to be running out of sliced pickles.

Monday, I did a Costco run and saw that I could get a gallon jar of whole dill pickles for $3.49! After a bit of indecision, it will take up a lot of space, I decided to get it.

It took only two pickles to fill the Mt. Olive jar most of the way--a 3rd would not have fit. The economics of it would seem to be sound: The big Vlasic jar would only need to have about 4 pickes to hit break-even. Based on the label, there should be around 18 in the jar: The label says that a serving is 1/4 of a pickle and there are 70 servings. Another way of calculation is that both jars say that a serving is one ounce and there are 10 servings in the pre-sliced jar.

The main benefit is that I can re-fill the sliced jar whenever it is low and so am saved from the Hobbson's choice of either keeping a spare jar of sliced pickes or having a burger with no pickles. Also, if I want pickle spears I can make them--I would never buy a jar of pickle spears since we almost never use them.

The Reason There Should Not Be an Agreement

Yuval Levin summs it up perfectly here.

The Democrats want to raise revenue and the Republicans want to reform entitlements. Those goals would seem to be easily reconciled — just do some of each, or even lots of each. But it only seems that way because we don’t often think about why the parties want these things. Simply (and surely somewhat too simply) put, the Democrats want more money so that the entitlement system doesn’t have to be reformed, while the Republicans want to reform the entitlement system so that the government doesn’t have to take more of the country’s money or take up even more of the economy. That means that doing some of each, let alone lots of each, doesn’t give both parties what they want, it gives both parties what they are desperately trying to avoid.

It is not really in either side's interest to compromise: The left would like to only raise taxes on "the rich" but don't really care if everyone gets hit--especially if they can blame the Republicans for it. The Republicans would rather have the taxes hit everybody since otherwise, there would be no leverage to get the economically harmfull rates on the high incomes brought back down.

The place where the Republicans have real leverage is on the debt limit. If they don't raise it then 31% of all federal spending will have to be cut. This is roughly the amount of spending on the discretionary side of the budget. If no agreement is made, then entitlements will have to be cut.

Getting "Played"

There is a lot of hate aimed at our presidents these days.

To some extent it has always been this way but it seems as if this phenomina has gotten much worse with the last three presidents.

Here is my theory as to why this is the case: It is different for the different sides:

The left hated George W. Bush because he was endlessly vilified in the press. It is only natural when everybody says how awful you are that you get to be disliked. For the right, the hatred of Clinton and Obama is for another reason and it is also less intense IMO. The hate comes from a feeling of injustice: Clinton (to what now seems like a relatively small degree) and Obama (massively) have gotten a total pass when they have failed.

A key to not being manipulated by all of this is to remember: It is not Bush's fault that the press demonized him, and it is not Clinton nor Obama's fault that the press lionizes them.