Well, That Didn't Take Long...

Less than 60 days in office, and already the BHO henchmen are coming after our guns:

Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009 - Amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to prohibit a person from possessing a firearm unless that person has been issued a firearm license under this Act or a state system certified under this Act and such license has not been invalidated or revoked. Prescribes license application, issuance, and renewal requirements.

Prohibits transferring or receiving a qualifying firearm unless the recipient presents a valid firearms license, the license is verified, and the dealer records a tracking authorization number. Prescribes firearms transfer reporting and record keeping requirements. Directs the Attorney General to establish and maintain a federal record of sale system.

Prohibits: (1) transferring a firearm to any person other than a licensee, unless the transfer is processed through a licensed dealer in accordance with national instant criminal background check system requirements, with exceptions; (2) a licensed manufacturer or dealer from failing to comply with reporting and record keeping requirements of this Act; (3) failing to report the loss or theft of the firearm to the Attorney General within 72 hours; (4) failing to report to the Attorney General an address change within 60 days; or (5) keeping a loaded firearm, or an unloaded firearm and ammunition for the firearm, knowingly or recklessly disregarding the risk that a child is capable of gaining access, if a child uses the firearm and causes death or serious bodily injury.

Prescribes criminal penalties for violations of firearms provisions covered by this Act.

Directs the Attorney General to: (1) establish and maintain a firearm injury information clearinghouse; (2) conduct continuing studies and investigations of firearm-related deaths and injuries; and (3) collect and maintain current production and sales figures of each licensed manufacturer.

Authorizes the Attorney General to certify state firearm licensing or record of sale systems.

There's no doubt in my mind that should this bill make it into law, within a few years it will be well-nigh impossible for ordinary citizens to own guns – despite the clarity of our Constitution on that point. There won't be a ban, and hence no Constitutional issue. Instead, the bureaucracy will simply make it incredibly difficult and expensive to get (and stay) qualified to own a gun. Most citizens will either give up, or will own their guns illegally at great risk to themselves and their families.

For my part, any Senator or Congressman who votes for this bill will never get my support. Not that they care much about that...

Sound off to your congresscritters, even if you have to hold your nose and avert your eyes while writing their name on the envelope or email. I wrote to Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein – if I can do that, you can write yours...

Orlosky Acquitted...

I don't know any more than what this article says – but this much is plain: “Bob” Orlosky is now cleared of all charges. He claimed that he killed Charles Crow justifiably, in defense of himself and his property – and a jury of his peers agreed with him.

This case is very troubling for residents out here, from both the perspective of those who champion the right of self-defense, and from those who believe that Orlosky either deliberately murdered Crow or grossly over-reacted to an imagined threat. The former have very clearly won the day...

The Marines: GWB vs. BHO...

I can't help but wonder how these Marines would react to BHO were they unconstrained by their decorum and military obligations...

Accountability...

Last December, a Marine fighter jet crash-landed in a San Diego neighborhood. The pilot ejected safely, but his jet plowed into a home where it killed four members of a single family. The surviving member of that family (the father, who was at work at the time) humbled all of us here with his immediate and very public forgiving of the pilot.

The Marines launched an investigation. Yesterday they made the results public, and those results surprised just about everybody – they called the crash “avoidable” and held those responsible fully accountable. Some careers are over, and a very clear message has been sent to other Marines. Peggy Noonan (WSJ) has the best writeup I've seen, including this summary:

This wasn't damage control, it was taking honest responsibility. And as such, in any modern American institution, it was stunning.

Stunning, indeed. And so refreshing, coming during the massive finger-pointing exercise accompanying the financial crisis.

I wish the Marines were in charge of that!

Credit Crisis, Explained...

Reader Peter M. (in Estonia!) sends along this excellent visualization about the causes of the current credit crisis:


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Quote of the Day...

From the insightful and funny Mark Steyn:

Last week, the president redefined the relationship between the citizen and the state, in ways that make America closer to Europe. If you’ve still got the Webster’s to hand, “closer to Europe” is a sociopolitical colloquialism meaning “much worse.”

Read the whole thing.

The Golden State? Not So Much, Anymore...

Many long-time residents of California (over 35 years for me) consider themselves very fortunate to live in this “Golden State”. But these days, many of us – for the very first time – are entertaining the possibility that we might leave. Why? For me, outrageously high taxes, intrusive regulation, and an increasingly succesful socialist takeover top the list. Others may have different lists. But the chart at right (from this study by Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore) contains the sobering numbers...

The chart shows net internal immigration (positive) or emigration (negative). In other words, those states with larger positive numbers have U.S. residents moving into them from other states, and those states with larger negative numbers have residents moving out of them into other states.

And look where California is...

Remote Wireless Links...

Recently our little Lawson Valley was connected to the terrestrial Internet through some clever wireless technology, from a little company called SDWISP. This morning I read about some truly remote wireless linkups, in the small villages of Nepal (a map of these connected villages is at right). The web site for that Internet provider is here, and a related story here...

Ancient Greek Humor...

Interesting stuff. I'd never have guessed that humor would have such durability. An excerpt:

Pride of place in the Philogelos goes to the “egg-heads”, who are the subject of almost half the jokes for their literal-minded scholasticism (“An egg-head doctor was seeing a patient. ‘Doctor’, he said, ‘when I get up in the morning I feel dizzy for 20 minutes.’ ‘Get up 20 minutes later, then’”). After the “egg-heads”, various ethnic jokes come a close second. In a series of gags reminiscent of modern Irish or Polish jokes, the residents of three Greek towns – Abdera, Kyme and Sidon – are ridiculed for their “how many Abderites does it take to change a light bulb?” style of stupidity. Why these three places in particular, we have no idea. But their inhabitants are portrayed as being as literal-minded as the egg-heads, and even more obtuse. “An Abderite saw a eunuch talking to a woman and asked if she was his wife. When he replied that eunuchs can’t have wives, the Abderite asked, ‘So is she your daughter then?’” And there are many others on predictably similar lines.

Geek Humor...

Via Brian Dunbar:

A SQL query walks into a bar. He sees 2 tables, walks over and asks “May I join you?”

Taxes...

The cartoonists are catching on quickly to popular sentiment:

This Bud's for You...

From my mom:

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks a t the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, Why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows ... this is a herd of sheep.'

Now give me back my dog.

Heh!

Now when you're done laughing, just think what this Congressman is about to do with the $12,000 they just stole from us (each and every taxpayer) in the “stimulus bill”.

Feeling stimulated? Full of hopeyness and changitude?

I am. I'm feeling stimulated to vote for absolutely anyone who has never held elective office and who doesn't want it now. I'm full of hope that more than a few voters will feel the same way next election – at which point maybe we'll see some real change. 'Cause the only change I'm seeing right now is the boldness of the thieves in Washington, who seem to be convinced that they can steal the food right off our plates and we'll still vote for them.

We won't, will we?

Lyons Peak Lookout...

Lyons Peak is a small but locally prominent peak just southeast of the town of Jamul (and just south of Lawson Valley, where I live). You can drive all the way around the peak: start at the intersection of State 94 and Lyons Valley Road. Drive south on 94 to the intersection with Honey Springs Road, where you take a left. Drive northeast on Honey Springs Road to the intersection with Lyons Valley Roade, where you take another left. Drive to the intersection with State 94 and you've done it.

On Lyons Peak is a fire lookout tower, easily seen from Honey Springs Road. This tower is no longer used, though the Forest Fire Lookout Association would like to change that. From their page on the Lyons Peak lookout:

Lyons Peak has hosted a fire lookout tower since 1913. The original tower was a 5x5 foot telephone booth-like structure.

The tower is located on a Cleveland National Forest 'Island' that surrounds the peak.

Access to the peak is currently limited to helicopter or law enforcement escort only due to a road access dispute with a private land owner.

We wish them good luck with this, both because we'd love to be able to visit the lookout and because this would allow access for UCSD researchers to maintain the cameras on the peak that give us such valuable information during a fire.

The Forest Fire Lookout Association folks were recently able to make an inspection of the Lyons Peak lookout. There's an interesting report, with photos, at the link.

Storm Total: 2.4 Inches...

Well, I'm pretty sure the storm is now actually over. We got an additional 0.3 inches of rain yesterday that we didn't expect, as the storm left the area.

On my drive home yesterday afternoon, Lawson Valley Road showed all the signs of heavy rain earlier in the day: gravel washes across the road, rock and mud falls along road cuts, and muddy rivulets down the sides of the road wherever there is a slope. The streams are running strongly, and the waters are starting to turn clear. All around Lawson Valley, there are many rocks covered with sheets of water: small springs running out over exposed rock faces, which we see every time we get enough rain to percolate down through the soil and cracked rock of our mountains. And all the mosses and lichens are handsomely green.

The wet chaparral can be quite beautiful...

Rain Update...

By special request from Bob C. We've had about 1.35 inches today, and it's still raining now. The graph at right tells the story (remember it's on GMT).

Debbie and I drove up into our local mountains today, along Boulder Creek Road and then back along Sunrise Highway. It's wet up there – I'll be they've had close to 3 inches...

Moon...

Reader Larry E., who's having a great deal of fun learning the elements of photography with his digital camera, sent in this photo of the moon yesterday.

We only caught glimpses of the moon yesterday ourselves; out where we live it was mostly socked in.

This morning it's completely clear, though...

$5.29

That's what a dozen eggs cost in the early '50s, in inflation-adjusted dollars. This is from an interesting comparison of where our money has gone over the years.

This is something that people tend to consistently miss. We see that a gallon of gas costs $2.15 (here in Jamul, anyhow), and we say to ourselves: Sheesh! I remember when it was just 25 cents a gallon! What's happened?

And we tell ourselves that everything costs more these days. What we forget is that we made much less money back then, and we spent a larger fraction of our income on necessities (food, medicine, etc.) than we do now. This is actually quite indisputable – there's overwhelming evidence that anyone can verify, and doing so is a very interesting exercise in economic reality.

The exercise I went through once upon a time involved music: how many minutes of my work did it take to buy a record album in 1970 vs. a CD album in 2000? Answer: about 70 minutes in 1970, vs. 10 minutes in 2000. Try this yourself! Virtually everything you can think of – including gas! – takes less of your working time to earn today than it did 30 or 40 years ago. Usually much less.

And yet it “feels” like it costs more now.

Strange are the ways of humans...

Storm Total: 2.86 Inches...

The graph tells the story. As I write this, the sky is completely clear and a nearly-full moon is brightly lighting the nightscape.

The wet nightscape.

Driving home yesterday afternoon, I passed through patches of driving rain, lots of gentle rain, and a few clear spots. At several places along the road, I spotted overflowing streams – most notably along State 94 just east of Steele Canyon.

Better Programming...

A couple of interesting articles on the art of programming, here and here...

Rain Report...

Last Thursday afternoon the first edges of our current storm hit us, and ever since then it's been intermittently raining. So far our storm total is just over 2 inches, and it's still raining as I write this.

The times on the chart at right are GMT; subtract 7 hours to get our local time.