What's In The Box?

Let's play a game called "What's in the box?" It works like this - imagine a box (duh... why do you think we named it that you big silly), inside is either: 1. A pile of gold coins; or 2. An angry venomous snake.

You play this game by reaching in and grabbing... wait for it... WHAT'S IN THE BOX. Amusing, no?

It's a good game for cutting through pretense and revealing what people are really like.

Some folks won't play no matter how much they stand to gain - the fear of being bitten outweighs any possible benefit.

Some will say, "Gold? I'm going to get me some of that!" shove their arm into the box, and start grabbing around.

Others, will balance the risks against the rewards: How much gold? What kind of snake? What are the odds, what are my chances? They may end up bitten, but at least are making a stab at critical thought.

Note the symmetry - two ends and a middle in a neat package. This represents the world we deal with. Motivations are, if not entirely rational, at least understandable.

But there is a type of person who does not reside on this continuum. They can watch you put a snake in the box, shake it up to get the critter good and irritated, and even write "Warning! Live Angry Poisonous Snake Inside!" and still they will reach in the box. They act as though they believe the snake will be turned to gold by the force of their will; that the world is what they say it is.

Admittedly, it seems to work out that way often enough that people will start believing it is true. Bernie Madoff appeared able to turn snakes into gold... for a time.

For the non-continuum people, I don't think it's a question of gain or loss, but of control. They must prove the universe conforms to them, and not the other way around. It's not about the gold; it's about the winning. All challenges are personal, and none are small. There is no difference between a coin flip for a dinner check and a world war.

They are Kieth Olbermann.

After watching this video, I was puzzled because I've been to a couple of tea parties, and from what I can tell, this is pretty much the identical group of people. There are Ayn Rand fans, Ron Paul Fans, Sarah Palin Fans, and a large contingent of "never protested anything in my life, but there is a trainwreck coming, and I want it stopped" fans. But if there were any racists present, they kept it well hidden. If you were to poll these people, you'd probably find they disagree on more issues than they agree on, but what they agree on outweighs minor quibbles about gay marriage, guns, and Iraq. What they agree on is stopping the trainwreck.

Over there on the continuum, the smart (at least smartish) members of the political class are watching and trying, bless their hearts, to figure out... What's In The Box. The democrats are hoping it's something that won't hurt them; the republicans are hoping it's something that will help them, and they're all hoping they aren't the one who gets pushed into the cellar with the candelabra and shovel to see what the noise is.

But Olbermann has decided the box is full of racists and hate mongers. Has to be - he has said so. By sheer force of will he's turned gold into snakes. He has a cable talk show, and the ear of The Ones Who Matter, and fans, and so on and on. The protesters are racists. Q.E.D.

Should you fall into one or the other of our broad political groups, you should be used to name calling (you commie, nazi, dimmocrat, republithug knuckle dragger). However, for those who are politically active for the first time, being reviled and, not always figuratively, spat upon, is probably a new experience. "Hi, I'm Kieth, and I'll be spitting on you this evening, we have a lovely little vitriol - a '72 I believe - goes with everything, and also some bile if you are in the mood. For dessert the chef his whipped up a little sneering condescension ."

Olbermann is not alone in turning gold into snakes. Similarly blessed are: the Washington Post, New York Times, the Speaker of the House, and the president along with his advisers.

In a democracy, a politician's future depends on finding and winning a constituency. And when one presents itself, giftwrapped in a box, a wise politician will at least make a pretense of listening to them. Hell, even an angry crowd is a crowd, and every politician needs crowd. Winning the crowd is how you stay in office - It's kind of expected.

Maybe, "win the crowd" means something different to non-continuum people. Maybe to them, it means, "In the next appropriations bill, we'll write an earmark for some bike path improvements, and a library." It is a time tested tactic for winning over even the crankiest voters. I'll bet Mr. and Mrs. Teaparty will go right home and shut up once they see the nifty new bike path they have been gifted. It really isn't a bad bet if you are the one doing the handing out. And has the added plus of letting you avoid mingling with, well frankly, the commoners.

The current crew in charge must figure, having once turned gold into snakes, the reverse is just as easy, and come next election, they are going to reach into that box and pull out handfuls of gold.

They think it's guaranteed.

Jumping For Joy

Hey! The economy grew at a blistering 3.5% last quarter. Pop the corks kids 'cuz were in high cotton. What ... are you just sitting there? Get up offyerbutt and go out and spend your windfall.

But, before you do, let's try a little thought experiment.

Suppose you had two thousand dollars in the bank. "Yay," you say, "I've got two large to cover my expenses until next payday."

Now suppose some scoundrel broke in and swiped a thousand of your dollars. "Boo-hoo-hoo," you say, "half my savings have just disappeared."

Further suppose your spouse went out and charged a hundred dollars worth of clothes on the old MasterCard, went directly to the pawn shop, resold them for fifty, and deposited that money in the bank giving you now a thousand and fifty smackers.

Would you...

A. Dance about yelling, "Woot, woot, my personal economy grew at a rate of five percent, I'll make up for that stolen dough in no time!"

or...

B. Be very sad because, not only are you out a thousand dollars, you are also an additional hundred dollars (at 20% interest) in the hole and don't even have any new clothes to wear to bankruptcy court.

I do not know which terrifies me more, the thought that our overlords think we are stupid enough to believe a single quarter of borrowed-money-fueled GDP increase is good news, or that they might believe it themselves.

Mr. Beck writes that the new U.N. proposals for controlling small arms make for some interesting reading.

I like this sort of thing because it lends it self easily to the game of "Internet Compare And Contrast".

From the report, comes a glowing review of the wonderful work they are doing in South Africa:

The Firearms Control Act (FCA) of 2000 replaced earlier apartheid-era regulations covering civilians and state arms holders. The parliamentary committee was directed to ‘produce progressive policy proposals which will contribute to a drastic reduction in the number of legal firearms in circulation in South Africa.’ Under the new law, civilian owners must be, among other things:
• a South African citizen or a permanent resident;
• be 21 years or older (previously the minimum age had been 16);
• a ‘fit and proper person’;
• of a stable mental condition and not inclined towards violence;
• not addicted to drugs or alcohol;
• not convicted of a violent crime within the past five years;
• in possession of an appropriate firearm safe; and
• in possession of a competency certificate.
To obtain the competency certificate, applicants must demonstrate knowledge of the gun laws
and demonstrate safe handling. The process also includes a background check and may include
interviews with intimate partners and/or neighbours. An individual may possess a maximum of
four licenses, with only one designed for self-defence. Licenses must be renewed on a regular
basis (every five years for self-defence guns, ten years for sports shooting, ten years for a private collection, two years for a business license and ten years for hunting licenses). The law also prohibits owners from lending his or her firearm to another person unless the borrower is ‘under his/her immediate supervision where it is safe to use the firearm and for a lawful purpose’. All of these regulations apply to civilians, private security officers, police and security force users.

So how is it working out? The magic Google eight ball finds a Sept. 2008 article from the Economist containing this nugget:

Police figures put the murder rate in 2007-08 at more than 38 per 100,000 and rape at more than 75 per 100,000. This marks a big fall over the past several years, but is still astronomical by international standards (the murder rate was 5.6 per 100,000 in the United States last year).

Gun free paradise to be sure.

It may be a stretch. But what the heck, I'll go out on a limb here: I don't think all the caring, sharing, morally progressive types who write this stuff for the United Nations give a rat's patoot about diminishing suffering; I think they are more interested in shoving their agenda down the world's throat so they can sit around telling each other how caring, sharing, morally progressive they are.

I wonder what the people who do the real work of helping those in need could do with the money that went into writing, researching, and distributing this report.

Doctor, it hurts when I...

You read a lot of these types of stories, and you can almost fill in the blanks after the first sentence. The basic template of the piece is... After repeatedly hitting himself on the head with a hammer, Mr. Johnson couldn't understand the reason for his headache.

Here is a clue for Michigan, Ohio, California, New York, New Jersey, and every other state in need of, as French and Wilkinson write...

young, well-educated high-income earners -- ... the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.

... if you desperately need someone, don't treat them like a cash cow to be milked to pay for political goodies given out to buy the votes of the old, ignorant, low-wage earners who make up your political base. It's not that complicated; it's just hard for politicians to accept.

If it weren't so sad, I would laugh at the sheer pig-ignorant lunkheadedness of this...

Michigan's exodus is one of the state's best known but least understood problems. Long ignored or downplayed, outmigration has been shrugged off partly because it was assumed that those who were leaving were unemployed blue-collar workers and retirees, groups that, in economic terms, don't cripple the state with their departure.

Least understood by whom? Retarded wombats? Dead roadside animals? Walleye? Because by the time any human reaches the age of seven, they understand a few basic principles: People go where they are more likely to be rewarded rather than punished; if mom takes your hard-earned paper route money and shares it out with your lazy sibling, you're going to hide the fruits of your labor; the feckless and sluggardly have no incentive to get up and look for a better deal - the intelligent and ambitious do; and finally, people will go out of their way to get back at those who hurt them - if taking a net loss in a move to South Carolina lets them thumb their noses at Michigan... they'll do it in a heartbeat.

That's not so difficult is it?

Burn The Witches!

The wonderful thing about Lucianne is it only takes a few minutes of scrolling to find something that makes me want to punch the monitor. Easy-peasy inspiration for a post.

Now comes one Robert Smith Jr. writing in the Detroit News Political Blog, and offering a no nonsense approach to the violence plaguing the communities of America - Burn The Witches!... I mean ban the guns... whatever.

Combining historical illiteracy with an utter disregard for logic, and wrapping the whole in a thick sheath of hysteria, Mr. Smith concentrates more dimwittery in four short paragraphs than most pro-crime hacks do in forty.

I encourage you to read the entire post, but a few excerpts are in order...

The right to bear arms is killing all of us. In 2005 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 3,006 children and teens killed by gunfire, most of them young, black men in inner-city neighborhoods.

Uh... that's not all of us, and I do not think it's the second amendment that's down in the hood bustin' caps. Some of us even use that pesky right to bear arms as a means of not being killed.

Then there's this head scratcher...

We need to ensure that those we elect to public office are not so stuck on protecting us from another British invasion that they cannot enact legislation that will limit the number of guns in our country.

Yeah, those perfidious Brits, still hanging around waiting for their chance to come in and take over. A limey peril is what it is, and if we're not armed to the teeth it's tea and crumpets for us buddy.

The country's urban centers are loaded with stupid, violent people, doing stupid, violent things, and the decent people who live there are the ones to suffer. Human brutality does not have a cause - it is a default position. It is decency and civilization which have causes, and when those enabling causes are suppressed, the result is a Hobbesean dystopia.

For decades, our politicians, public intellectuals, and community leaders have been actively undermining the causes of prosperity and decency for their own short term gain (bailouts anybody?), so it should come as no surprise that the rising tide of barbarism thus enabled is swamping the vulnerable first.

Mr. Smith, those who encourage false solutions, obscure truth behind rhetoric, and appeal to magic instead of reason are helping kill people more surely than lack of worthless gun laws.

Econ 101

Today's question comes to us from one Jacob Leibenluft via Slate via Lucianne: "Are carbon offsets worth it?"

Well Jacob, the simple answer is no. The less simple answer is ... what are you, some kind of idiot !?! Of course they're not worth it. Any nine year old could tell you that.

No that's not quite right, carbon offsets are worth it to a certain species of sharp operator of the type common to street corners offering Rolexes for cheap, and also often seen in the private offices of legislators offering to brighten re-election prospects for not so cheap.

But for the rest of us?

Jacob, try this test: Go up to the above mentioned nine year old and tell him that his farts are fouling the atmosphere and causing much distress among the gentry. After he finishes high-fiving his buds, offer to offset his crude humor for the small cost of one dollar... "Say kid, yeah you, come over here a second. That was some rancid fart you just made, but I'll tell you what... for just one thin dollar, I'll see to it that a professional comedian in the controlled setting of a real comedy club does an entire routine that mentions deadly methane not once, and that will offset your fart. One dollar kid, how can you go wrong?"

Bets on whether you get the dollar or a GPS enabled ankle bracelet?

Jacob, if you can't get a nine year old to fall for some magic bean scheme, what adult is addled enough to fork over their hard earned dough on a cheesy con like carbon offsets?

Wait a minute let's see what you wrote...

Above all, use common sense. The whole rationale behind carbon offsets is that worthy efforts to stop global warming cost money, so if you find a provider selling at a cut-rate price, be careful. The Lantern would be very cautious about spending his own green on a provider who sells offsets at much less than $10 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent. You may be able to buy atonement for your carbon sins, but it won't come cheap.

Oh dear...

Since you won't by carbon offsets for less than ten bucks a ton- (no... no.. Mr. Used Car Salesman, no way will I give you fifteen hundred bucks on this Yugo you're selling, you'll take five thousand and not a penny less! Alright, six thousand but only if you flatten the tires... heh, that'll teach you to mess with me.)... tell ya what I'm gonna do Jake - I'll offset tons and tons of the frightful greenhouse gas, and not for ten dollars a ton, not for twenty, nope.. I'll do it for one million dollars a ton - cash, small bills, non-sequential serial numbers, sent to P.O. Box...

Who Could Have Forseen?

Six Meat Buffet is just plain funny, particularly when gems such as this piece of unintended consequences come to light. The innovative business plan of letting the customers set their own price at your restaurant may have something to recommend it, but not in a staying in business kind of way.

According to the paper, "Inexperience seems to be the main problem" in causing the collapse of the trendy eatery. Uh... not so much.

Hint for all - experienced as well as inexperienced business owners must consistently take in more money than they spend, or they go out of business. I know many want that to be no longer true, but there's life in the old Adam Smith yet.

On the bright side, watch these people; they have a future in the Obama administration.

No Amount of Money Is Too Much...

...to spend to give people the illusion of safety. From War On Guns comes this bit of official legerdemain. Seems one of the more tech-savvy burgs in Massachusetts spent a dumptruck load of dough (actually the last time I priced construction equipment, I think it's two dumptrucks worth) on the vaunted Shot Spotter anti crime system.

The first thing I noted was the disconnect between the headline and the body of the story:

Headline: "Police use ShotSpotter technology to combat gun violence"

Actual story: "Police used the ShotSpotter system to locate a shooting victim Oct. 14th near this intersection of Pine St. and Cedar St. in Springfield."

Lets review-- a $450,000 doodad that lets you quickly locate a perforated corpse, is not the same thing as one which prevents said corpse from becoming perforated in the first place.

Next is the admirable restraint shown by the reporter in refraining from editorializing when the police spokesflack said that in the four months of operation the system has netted an impressive zero arrests but it was only a matter of time till it did so.

Were I in in the reporter's place, the sentence after would read approximately ,"The department spokesman let it be know that the data from the new system would be sent directly to the bat cave, and soon, evil doers all over the city would be left neatly tied up and labelled with pithy notes describing the particulars of their crimes, so this whole crime thing was licked like a stamp."

Citizens, you can rest easy; your bullet-riddled corpses will no longer go unfound - Shot Spotter is on duty.

Thoughts

I am a bad gunnie. I admit it… lived in Ohio all these years and yesterday was the first time to Camp Perry. We had a blast, and will definitely be back.

On the trip out, I saw one of those things that sends the wheels spinning.

We were driving west through the farms and fields of Erie and Ottawa Counties, when a car passed us – not surprising, I drive by setting the cruise control at the speed limit and staying in the right hand lane. On the back was a sticker with the word “CO-EXIST” formed out of letters shaped from the symbols of the world’s religions.

My first reaction was irritation, but I stopped to think about why it was irritating – and a few things came to mind:

First of course was the incredible shallowness of it. Humans have been struggling with the existence of evil for as long as we have been on the planet. Plato, Augustine, and Hannah Ardent all confronted it. Their answers differed on the source of evil – conflict among the gods mirrored on earth, or original sin, but they all agree people are often vicious animals, and that will never change. I don’t think they are sitting in philosopher heaven slapping their foreheads and saying, “Coexist, why didn’t we think of that!”

Next, the sheer, stumbling, childishness it shows– there are places in the world where simply having that bumper sticker on your car is cause to be dragged down the street by your heels and stoned to death – legally. Those are the people who need to hear your message, not me, but I don’t see that you have any plan for getting the message to them.

Finally, the arrogant presumption of it. Friend, you’re preaching to the choir; you live in a place where coexistence is a way of life. In fact it’s enshrined in our founding documents. But here’s the ugly little secret… do you know how we got to this place? We got here by killing the ones who didn’t want to coexist with us. The freedom you enjoy to drive on down the highway with your opinion displayed on your bumper was paid for in blood – the blood of soldiers who surely would have rather been anywhere else than Yorktown, Fredericksburg, or Baghdad, but also the blood of innocents in places like Dresden, and Hiroshima – where children who died screaming as fire rained down from the sky.

There is nothing you can do to alter the fact that your liberty is a bloodstained thing. And there is nothing you can do to alter the fact keeping it will require more blood be spilled.

What you can do is live in such a way as to redeem that blood. Think long and deep about your life and freedom, learn what it really costs, and realize though that may be high, the cost of regaining it once lost would be astronomical.

Finally accept that the freedom you pass on to your children, though it won’t be pure, can be less bloody, but a bumper sticker slogan won’t help.

Things That Work Right Up Until They Don't

From a thread at OFCC, we find this. Yes indeed, Virginia Tech was a completely safe, gun-free place... right up until it wasn't.

Naturally, the editorialist gives us the police view on the matter:

Gene Ferrara, chief of police at the University of Cincinnati, had this to say to CNN not long ago: "I don't think the answer to bullets flying is to send more bullets flying. My belief is we ought to be focusing on what we do to prevent the shooting from starting."

My question to Mr. Ferrara is: If sending more bullets flying isn't the answer, when you arrive at the scene of an active shooting (assuming you are in time to do anything other than identify the bodies) what are you going to do to stop it, use harsh language?

Nomination via Sympathetic Magic

I note Ahab is still asking for your vote.
I voted for him and so should you - lots.

See, I was thinking, I was. Met Ahab at the Indy Blogger Bash, and found him to be good-looking, intelligent, and articulate, and with the exception of good-looking, articulate, and intelligent, just like me, but younger and handsomer and more well-spoken and smarter.

And it hit me... President! POTUS, C in C, the big cheese, that's what Ahab should be. Think of it, a president we wouldn't have to watch like a hawk, and who carries - we could retire most of the secret squirrels and congress would darn well better behave or else - well just look at the pins in the above link ifyouknowwhatmeahandIthinkyoudo.

It'll work like this: Ahab has not reached the constitutionally mandated age to assume office, so there is time to get the universe used to the idea, but we the lazy, the unambitious, and slightly drunk must act to make it so.

Vote for Ahab, not just for the Blackwater thing, but for everything - waitress asks what you'll have? Tell her, "I'll have the Ahab." Precinct committee chairman - Ahab. Dogcatcher, congressman, all-star ballot: Ahab, Ahab, AHAB!

Soon the universe will begin to notice, the stars will begin to align, and with any luck, on at the first opportunity after his thirty-fifth birthday, it will be Hail To The Ahab time.

You may call me crazy, but think about this: every gun grabber group in the world relies on magical thinking no different than this, and look how close they came.

We have more people, a better cause, and a better candidate. Thank you for your support.

Lets Discuss This Like Adults

Now we are in the Post-Heller United States (feels kind of nice to say that) the “reasonable gun control folk” are offering compromises. Funny thing is, their compromises now are pretty much the same as their compromises then, and take roughly the form of, “We will graciously allow you red-necked, knuckle dragging, anatomically compensating, hillbillies to keep a single shot bb gun and one round of ammunition in return for turning in all your other guns.”

Now what could be fairer than that?

This article has been making its way around the gunbloggers, and I picked it up at Alphecca. After reading it, I can’t help but envision Charles VI looking up from the mud of Agincourt and saying to Henry, “We’ll call it a draw then?”

Help Me Out Here

I’ve been thinking about the thirteen year old kid who got himself suspended from school for drawing a picture of a ray gun. There’s been a lot of commentary on this from people who are smarter than me, and all I’ve got is the choice between stomping around the house sputtering like an old lawnmower engine and frightening T.W. or trying to get some thoughts down on paper.

First, the teacher: seems to me “Johnny, you should be paying attention to what is going on here and not doodling, so please put that back in your notebook and focus on the blackboard” seems to be the appropriate response to the situation. Did this teacher develop a dislike for the kid (don’t tell me it doesn’t happen), and see a chance to stick it to him? Was little Johnny a discipline problem who needed straightening out - content of his doodles notwithstanding? Or does the teacher suffer from what can be described as primitive screwhead-ism – you know, the belief that the picture of a thing somehow invokes the power of the thing itself? Doesn’t seem like this is a desirable quality for someone whose job it is to guide young minds on their intellectual journey.

The principal of the school, at least, should show a little more restraint. A lecture about paying attention, maybe a note home, even a stint of after school time (and a little chat with the boy’s teacher to maybe display a little more fortitude when confronted with icky pictures) seem appropriate here. We all know what actually happened – claiming that the rules are the rules, and she had no choice but to obey, the principal ordered a five day suspension, later magnanimously lowered to three days, and the school's not discussing the matter citing, wait for it… the student’s right to privacy.

How did we get to this place? How is it that cascading idiocy cannot be stopped, that people with authority are so desperate to bow to the altar of expediency that they become incapable of exercising the judgment without which their authority becomes a farce?

Does the school administration really believe they have prevented a tragedy, that they have made their school safer? Do they think they have taught the kid a lesson? They have, but not the one they were intending: their ounce-of-image equals pounds-of-performance posturing has simply exposed them as hysterical frauds, and learning that about them is an education of sorts.