The Fake Internet

Apparently news isn’t the only thing that’s fake—much of the Internet is too!

The Mouse

At the end of last year, a lady named Wendy Byers posted on Nextdoor that she used to own The Mouse at Miracle Mile for 16 years.  According to an old post by a Post-Bulletin staff member, the store closed in December 2015.  Apparently Ms. Byers is now a realtor.

Chris Kyle

Recently I came across a blog post regarding Chris Kyle and his mythology.  It's quite the convincing piece.  My feeling was that Jesse Ventura was in the right, simply based on the way that part of Kyle's book was written: it smacked of self-aggrandizing.

In any case, he still wasn't the deadliest sniper in the world: that honor still belongs to Simo Häyhä, who had 505 kills in the Russo-Finnish Winter War, and with a bolt-action rifle and no optics!  Sounds like he didn't have a spotter, either.

Nazi Anatomists and Modern Medicine

This article has been lingering in my browser because it's a heavy read.  The subject matter is important, but the impetus for the article--that the "legitimate rape" meme of 2012 had its basis in a Nazi study--figures in a minor fashion.

What really interested me is how much Nazi experiments have influenced modern medicine.  The answer is: more than scientists would care to admit.

Augh! Link Dump

Weapons

• Arms imports in China from 1960 to 2011 (I was probably looking for from China)
• Embargoed countries from the State Department website
• Lahti ammunition from Anzio Ironworks—would be neat to have!
• What are suppressors made of? (Shotgun News)

Other

• Making a dehydrator from the Ready Store
• Time perspective therapy on WSJ

MWCA Show in January

P-B article regarding turnout at the January MWCA gun show.  I forgot to post it here.

Melissa Harris-Perry

The Interwebz are afire with the fallout from an ill-advised MSNBC ad featuring one Melissa Harris-Perry.

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we've always had kind of a private notion of children. "Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility." We haven't had a very collective notion of "These are our children." So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's, then we start making better investments.

Personally, I find the big-government ideology behind that drivel to be offensive.

Anti-Gun Madness

A WSJ article on the President's gun control remarks, a transcript of the speech, and the White House's press release via WaPo.

Reagan was for the AWB.  A deceptive poll claiming that most NRA members are for universal background checks (who was polled? how many were polled? what's the margin of error?).  Salon published a shitty article, as expected, last year on "gun owners vs. the NRA".

Medications have been linked to these crazy shootings.

Link Dump, 2013.01.09

These have been sitting in my reader for a bit....

Roberts's Real Long Game?
The Permanent Militarization of America
The Power of Negative Thinking

And more recently:
Ten gun bills on Congress's first day

Post Sandy Hook

Some comments regarding the aftermath of Sandy Hook made on FB:

Now that more details are out.... Unlike the Aurora shooting, this wasn't a case of a looney being able to buy firearms legally--he killed his mother and stole her guns. As such, there's no way additional purchase checks would've helped, because his mother was a legal owner. The shooter was not of legal age to purchase any of those weapons. (One post I saw claimed that the shooter broke 40-some laws in the commission of the massacre. What he did was already illegal.) Well, in my case, if someone were to break into my home and kill me, all my guns are locked up--except for the one I carry. I'm curious as to whether the shooter's mother had her stuff locked, but after her son shot her, he could get access via key (or perhaps he knew the combination if that sort of lock).

I wasn't talking about suppressing discourse. I was talking about 1) not using the terrible incident to push a political agenda before the victims were buried, and 2) we didn't know all the details. What's up with all the inaccuracies in the media? The shooter was the younger brother, not the older one; the mother was killed at home, not at the school; and reports said the kid used handguns as the primary weapon, when it was really an AR-15. How the hell are people supposed to have meaningful discussion if they don't even have the facts right?

Note also that hating on "military-grade assault weapons" is pure spin. First of all, Mexico has a ban on civilian ownership of "military" calibers, and how's that working out for them so far? (Hint: It's not. It doesn't help when they've got so many crooked cops and soldiers, though.) Almost all of my guns are of military calibers: 9mm, .45ACP, 12ga, 5.56 NATO, 7.62 NATO, .30-06, etc. How about the "police caliber", .40S&W? Several non-semi-automatic ("assault weapon" is a bullshit term made up by hoplophobes) firearms I have are of former Eastern bloc military calibers: 7.62x38R, 7.62x54R, etc. The only non-military cartridges I use are .22LR and 20ga. So that's what you'd be comfortable leaving gun owners with?

Note also that .223 (5.56 NATO) is a fairly weak cartridge, despite its use by our military. Most hunting calibers have more power than this: .243, .22-250, etc. Many hunting calibers can pierce soft body armor (up to Level IIIA). So the end game of the hoplophobes is that all guns have to go, no exceptions. And the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting or sporting uses: it's about giving the government pause when thinking about subjugating the governed, and in order to do that, citizens must be able to own "military-grade" weapons. Some scoff at that, but consider that the hoplophobes are still reluctant to push through the kind of anti-gun legislation that you're suggesting--they know that it would result in a lot of bloodshed (the CCRKBA popularized the slogan that Charlton Heston later repeated, ending in "from my cold, dead hands"). And even if they do wipe us all out, we'll make them feel it, and the poor sons of bitches who didn't stand up for themselves will finally get the government that they deserve.

That's not to say that I don't think anything should be done in light of the shooting, or that the discussions regarding gun ownership shouldn't be had. I think it's just too easy for some people to take the easy way out intellectually and go for tried and failed policies.

There were two responses, one linking to an article pointing out that the NRA always says in response to a shooting that now is not the time for discussions of gun legislation, and another linking to a comment on an article that makes a proposal regarding dealing with gun ownership. But holy crap, all the AR-15 lower receivers online are sold out, everywhere....

Saudi girls packing heat

Yeah, that's one way to stick it to the powers that be.

Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions

More nasty shit from our buddy Barack.  Did they stop numbering these executive orders so you don't know how many of them there are?

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters"

Since Warren Buffet has demonstrated that he is a senile statist and financial mooch, I need a new hero.  Charles Koch is certainly the wealthy libertarian, but both the lack of ideological drive and the falling out with Cato soured me on him too.  Then I read an article on Peter Thiel, the gay, libertarian venture capitalist.  Although the writer of the New Yorker article injects unnecessary bias and opinions into the text, Thiel sounds like someone who has the right kind of ideas and the initiative to make things happen.

Suppressors in MN

Apparently there's been some movement recently on the legality of suppressors in Minnesota: FFL holders (though not collectors) are allowed to possess suppressors for soliciting sales to law enforcement or military.  Hmm...I may need to get my Type 01....

Blog post from GEMTECH (a suppressor manufacturer)
Discussion on Arfcom

Googlefu turned up a 2011 thread on SilencerTalk as well.  Suppressor freedom in MN now!!

Spring Link Dump!!

Some of these have been in my reader for a while.

Email from the Koch Institute regarding the Kochs' dispute with Cato: At first I was highly disappointed at the notice of the "takeover bid", but to be honest, I wasn't even aware of the history that Cato was originally the Charles Koch Foundation.  Now I'm not sure what to think.  It seems to be a trend that some of these advocacy organizations turn out to be driven primarily by the egos of their executives, e.g. Wayne LaPierre at the NRA.

So it turns out that extreme liberals don't really understand their opponents positions on the issues.  Surprise, surprise.  I've found empirically that they tend to not spend the time to educate themselves, preferring to wallow in their own poorly-formed, ill-considered ideology.  The study referred to is interesting.

From WSJ:

• Gardening tips for beginners.  I have dirt and seeds.  Now what?
• The end of the sophisticated playboy era.  The nouveau rich don't know how to live.
• How to tell when it's just another fight, and when it's over.  One can always make it work—it just depends on how much one is willing to sacrifice.  If both people are willing to sacrifice, that's a relationship that will survive.

Regarding the Trayvon Martin case:

• Thomas Sowell's Race and Rhetoric and some more commentary on "race hustlers".  Headline from the early '90s: "White-Black Disparity in Income Narrowed in 80’s, Census Shows"—what happened since the Reagan Era?
• John Lott's opinion on the relevance of Stand Your Ground to the case, and follow-up piece on Fox.

An opinion on the use of the term "gun culture": I disagree, because the extreme left has made this a culture war.  Nonetheless, it's an interesting point.

In a Christian Science Monitor article about America's "gun culture", reference is made to an essay that suggests that with the 2A, the notion of civic engagement implies that people ought to "participate in . . . law enforcement and defense of liberty":

The pro-gun movement has been expanding ever since, aided in part by favorable legal rulings and writings. In 1989, Mr. Levinson, the Texas law professor, wrote a notable essay in the Yale Law Review in which he suggested that citizen participation in government might extend to the Second Amendment.

Levinson looked specifically at whether "ordinary citizens [should] participate in the process of law enforcement and defense of liberty rather than rely on professionalized peacekeepers, whether we call them standing armies or police." Gun rights activists consider it a hinge moment in the gun debate, since it marked one of the first such dissections of the Second Amendment by a liberal legal scholar.

That's quite a notion, especially for a liberal scholar (as the article notes).  Sounds right to me—there haven't always been so many professional LEOs running around.  The essay, entitled The Embarrassing Second Amendment, is available online.

Self-Defense

An old friend (who happens to have become a Democrat) messaged me the following link on Facebook: What Everyone Should Know About Trayvon Martin (1995-2012)

From those details, it doesn't sound like the shooting was justified.  Permit-to-carry holders, in MN anyway, are required to retreat (unless in one's home).  Chasing down a suspect isn't acceptable, also because it doesn't demonstrate a reluctance to participate in a confrontation.  Neither is shooting someone who doesn't exhibit immediate intent to inflict great bodily harm or death.

It's hard to tell from the news who the victim is.  The novel Bonfire of the Vanities comes to mind.  (Where the outraged community and leaders twist the facts to make one of the perps out to be a victim.)

I also came across a forum thread on Minnesota Carry where a permit-holder shot a guy who'd robbed another woman, and according to some accounts was pistol-whipping her, after he was fired upon.  Again, it's hard to tell from the news, but it sounds like the bad guy was really a baddie, as he was a felon who had been freed on a catch-and-release program.  (A felon possessing a firearm is also illegal.)  The guy's mother and sister claimed injustice, but they too have criminal records: the mother for drug possession and the sister for receiving stolen property.

The really fucked up thing is that the judge, Toddrick Barnette, who released the dead perp, is the same asshole who stuck the late MN gun-rights icon Joel Rosenberg with $100k bail after Joel was arrested on a technicality (apparently there was an unused courtroom in the building that allowed them to claim he carried in a prohibited place).  Hmm.  I'm guessing the judge is a Democrat.

HDD Industry Consolidation

• Rumors from The Register circa 2012.02.08 regarding Toshiba as the buyer of Desktop drive assets from WD/HGST.
• Verification of the rumors via WD's press release dated 2012.02.28, with additional information that WD will have to acquire Toshiba's Thailand plant in exchange.
• Article on China approving the WD acquisition with conditions on 2012.03.02, similar to the EU's objections.  (A translation of the article was made internal to HGST; the linked article has a rougher translation.)
• The FTC issued a proposed order to accept the WD acquisition with divestiture of 3.5" assets on 2012.03.05, apparently in response to China's approval.  However, it appears that there's an open period for comments for 30 days, implying the approval hasn't been given yet.

Drones over the U.S.

The AP has an article about the use of drones over U.S. soil.  Sounds like a good impetus for the technically savvy to start building anti-drone drones for a hobby.

Link Dump

Some links that have been sitting in my tabs since last November....

• An opinion piece regarding the decision to bomb Japan in WWII.
• Detail on presidential candidate spending.
• How to browse securely on public WiFi.
• An opinion piece on why Ron Paul can't win; I don't agree, but the perceptions about his foreign policy seem to be a real issue with people who would otherwise support him.
• Harvey Golub's response to Obama's and Buffet's tax the "rich" stupidity.
• The "Jews in the Attic" Test for public policy.  (This one is actually very important, even though it sounds silly or perhaps even racist.  It's not either of those.)
• Supposed Libertarian Bob Barr is a dickhead, I mean, is anti-gun.
• The Secret Panel that can put Americans on a kill list.
• Democrats introduce a bill to seal up Obama's presidential records?!  No shame at all.
• Are we losing the grassroots vote to anti-gunners?
• "Learned Hand" is a screwed up name for anyone, must less a judge.  He should've had a son and named him "Hired".  He was mentioned in an intro to law book I was reading.  Sounds like he has some innovative ideas, but from his Wikipedia bio, he sounds like a statist.