Fortress Fortitude

Back in November, I posted a few times about the “fortress” I am attempting to have built (just search for “fortress” at right if you’re interested in the history). Since then, I’ve been suffering from a contractor who just wouldn’t live up to his side of the bargain (e.g., building my fortress), though he was happy to take my money. Things have been slowly escalating, most recently to the point where lawyers have been consulted and threats made. Last night, I met with my contractor — and maybe, just maybe, got things back on track. As it stands right now, we’re scheduled to pour 14 cubic yards of concrete next Saturday.

If that actually happens, there will be some celebrating here on that evening!

Since those first few posts, several people have posted comments or written me privately, wondering why I felt so threatened that I felt compelled to build a fortress. So let me explain to anyone who may be wondering…

The “fortress” is not a defense against burglars, nuclear weapons, or any other act of man.

The “fortress” is a defense against fire — the kind of wild, crazy, fast-moving wildfires we get out here in the chaparral. What makes this compelling is two things: (1) The knowledge that a wildfire in our area, within my lifetime, is almost inevitable. It has already been almost thirty years since the last fire burned what is now our property — and that means thirty years of chaparral growth, and thirty years of fuel accumulation. (2) The unexpected discovery, after the last fire that burned close to us, that steel buildings are vulnerable to wildfire. As we drove around through the burned areas off Montiel Road after the fire, I was stunned to see that virtually every steel building had either completely collapsed or had partially collapsed.

That latter discovery prompted a lot of research on my part into exactly what kinds of buildings can survive a fire — as I had purchased the components of a steel building, and was planning to erect it. And as usual, it turns out there are lots of ways to skin that particular cat. However, one particular building design combined several things that I really liked: low cost, completely reliable even with no power or water, and simplicity. That design: a concrete building with a double-walled, thick steel door.

After completing my research, I engaged a contractor and a structural engineer, and we came to a firm design. It’s only called “the fortress” because the solid concrete building evokes the image of a military bunker. It starts with a 6” thick reinforced concrete slab, 20' by 20'. Centered in that slab is a 16” deep, 24” wide footing for a 16' by 16' building. The walls of the building will start with hollow cement blocks, with the inner ceiling being 8' high. Every second run of blocks will have horizontal steel reinforcement. Once the walls are built, vertical steel reinforcement will be inserted, and concrete poured to fill the walls. Then a steel reinforcement mesh will be wired into place for the roof, and a 10” thick concrete roof poured around it. Sounds like a bunker, doesn’t it? But all that strength is what’s required to make a solid concrete building meet our building codes, including for earthquake safety.

It has nothing to do with withstanding mortar bombardment, and everything to do with withstanding a magnitude 6.0 temblor.

And a fire.

The fires we have out here in the chaparral pass very quickly. It’s unlikely that the fuel in the immediate area will take more than 30 minutes to burn. Inside the fortress, if we or our animals need to escape to there, we won’t even get warm.

And that’s the whole point of the exercise!

Facts and Claims

Local folks will remember well that on the evening of this past December 1, a local man — Charles Crow — was shot dead on Wisecarver Truck Trail, just off Skyline Truck Trail. This happens to be just over a mile from where I live, so this particular incident struck close to home in both the figurative sense and in the literal sense. Ever since that day, we’ve been trying to figure out exactly what happened, as the meager information we received clearly didn’t tell the whole story.

Yesterday a hearing was held in El Cajon Superior Court, Judge Laura Palmer Hammes presiding, to determine if there was enough evidence to bind the suspect in the case (Jamul electrical contractor Bob Orlosky) over for trial on one charge of murder (of Charles Crow) and two charges of attempted murder (Hector Monget and David Hurley, Jr.), all local residents. The judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence, and has scheduled a hearing for Februrary 22nd to set a trial date. For those of you who do not understand how these proceedings work — this does not mean that the judge believes Orlosky is (or is probably) guilty. It simply means that she has determined that the prosecutor has a sufficient evidence to warrant allowing a jury to hear the case. This is a very low bar…
From the three articles I’ve found on the hearing (here, here, and here), I’ve gleaned these facts:

The three men in the Jeep that day were Charles Crow, David Hurley Jr., and Hector Monget.
The maximum sentence Orlosky faces, if convicted, is life in prison.
A week before the shooting, Orlosky and Grant Nunmaker caught copper thieves on Orlosky’s property and held them at gunpoint until sheriff’s deputies arrived to arrest them.
Crow and Hurley were suspected (by the sheriffs) of stealing copper in the past, but not from Orlosky’s property.
There was no copper in Hurley’s Jeep (the vehicle involved that evening), nor were there any tools that could be used to remove copper from electrical machinery.
Orlosky remains free on $2 million bail.
The defense attorney is Paul Pfingst (former San Diego District Attorney).
The prosecutor is Jeff Dusek, who used to work for Paul Pfingst.

The story alleged by the prosecution:

Hurley says that he and Crow were driving Monget to his home (in Rancho San Diego) on that night. He said that they saw a “For Sale” (real estate) sign as they drove past Wisecarver Road, and decided to check it out. He said they drove up Wisecarver Truck Trail, past a white pickup driving the other way, until they ran into a locked gate. At that point, he said, they turned around, and retraced their route toward Skyline Truck Trail. At some point he said they saw the white pickup parked by the side of the road, slowed down to see if the driver needed help, and at that point Orlosky stepped out from behind the white pickup and started shooting with his rifle held at his waist.

And some other unverifiable information:

Pfingst said that Hurley’s initial testimony to police was that he did not get a good look at the shooter’s face. Hurley said that his memory started coming back to him after the fact.
NBC News is reporting that the defense argument will be that the three men in the jeep were drunk, on drugs, and stealing.

This hearing was all about the prosecutor’s case, so we didn’t get to find out much about the defense’s side of things. From what was presented in the hearing, it sounds like the prosecutor is going to paint a picture of Orlosky as the outraged and out-of-control property owner, wronged in the past, and leaping to unwarranted conclusions in this instance. The fact that there was neither copper nor copper removal tools in the Jeep sounds damaging to Orlosky’s case to me; you’re not going to remove wire from motors or transformers with your bare hands. You might be able to make an argument that Orlosky believed they were on a scouting expedition, or something along those lines, but that would not be a reasonable justification for shooting.
One piece of Hurley’s testimony jumped out at me: that Orlosky held the rifle at his waist while shooting. Why would anyone shoot a rifle like that? If you know anything about guns, you know shooting “from the hip” is guaranteed to be wild, inaccurate fire. I don’t know why, as I wasn’t there, but that sounds to me like desperate, panicked shooting — not deliberate, calculated shooting. Of course, we don’t even know that’s really what happened; this is the just the testimony of one person.
It’s also interesting that Crow and Hurley were suspected in other copper thefts. I wonder if Orlosky knew that? Numerous commenters on previous posts have painted a glowing picture of Crow — they’ve called him a fine, upstanding young man who would never consider doing such a thing. The sheriffs obviously believed otherwise. I wonder what their suspicions were based on?
But to hear the other side, most likely we’re going to have to wait for the trial. We’ll know when that is on February 22nd.
If you’d like some history on this case, and a fair amount of commentary (much of it from local folks), check out my previous posts on the subject (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

One Life = One Year

Jonny Dallo was sentenced today to one year in jail for killing Jodi Burnett through his reckless actions. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A 19-year-old Jamul man was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail because he killed a mother of five in a high-speed crash last June.

He also was placed on probation for three years, and will lose his license for three years.

This kind of slap-of-the-wrist sentence is exactly what I was afraid of when we got news of Jonny’s sudden guilty plea. It smelled like a plea bargain had been struck (though none was made public), and this sentence certainly seems to confirm that. In the absence of any public information, we’re left to stew with our worst suspicions — that the high-powered legal team defending Jonny somehow raised enough doubt to scare the prosecutors into bargaining for a light sentence. Or even worse, that the prosecutors had somehow been bought. One commenter (on another post relating to this case) speculates that the Dallo family paid the Burnett family to get their support for a lighter sentence for Jonny — possible, I suppose, but again there is no public information to support that.

In the end, with what has been made public, here’s what we know: a hard-working mother and wife is dead from a horrible car wreck that happened only because of Jonny Dallo’s incredibly reckless driving. Dead.

And Jonny gets one year in jail.

Do you think that justice has been served here?

I do not.

Universal Bumper Sticker

Brought to you by the folks in New York:

Run, Hillary, Run!

Democrats put this on the rear bumper.

Republicans put this on the front bumper.

Libertarians put it on both bumpers.

An Animal Moment

A few minutes ago, I walked into our kitchen to finish making the cup of tea I’d left brewing there. This is, of course, something that I’ve done hundreds of times before.

But this time was different, on two counts:

First count: Mo’i (our older male field spaniel) was sitting on the floor, happily munching away — on a plastic food bowl. We’ve had that dog food bowl for a long time, and nobody had ever molested it before. This morning, for whatever reason, Mo’i went after it. Thoroughly. It’s dead; just barely recognizable. It’s a good thing the rest of our bowls are solid steel. At least, I think it’s a good thing!

Second count: Tippy (an adult shorthair cat) was up on the kitchen counter with a look of kitty ecstasy on his face. His eyes were half-closed with happiness, and I thought I heard a little moan of pleasure. He was lapping away at my tea just as fast as he could! And no, there was no milk or sugar in it.

There was a slightly odd flavor to the tea, but that may have been my imagination…

Title

A friend’s email brought a smile this morning, as I read through these examples of the wit and wisdom of Will Rogers. Here are some of his most famous one-liners, often used in the context of his trademark razor-sharp political commentary:

Never slap a man who’s chewing tobacco.

Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

There are 2 theories to arguing with a woman…neither works.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Always drink upstream from the herd.

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back in your pocket.

There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

If you’re riding' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.

Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier’n puttin' it back.

After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him. The moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut.

And here’s Will on the subject of aging:

Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know “why” I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.

When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of algebra.

You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

I don’t know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.

One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.

One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.

Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft. Today it’s called golf.

If you don’t learn to laugh at trouble, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you are old.

Thanks, Will. The world still needs someone like you…

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

From a story in the San Diego Union-Buffoon, which, per their normal practice, doesn’t involve any actual investigation — just 'reporting' in the most literal sense:

Walter Rosales and Karen Toggery, who have lifelong blood ties to the village but are not officially enrolled, argued that the Jamul tribe has been hijacked by officers and members wrongly recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. The two contend they are the tribe’s rightful leaders, one of several claims they have pursued in a series of unsuccessful suits dating back to the mid-1990s.

Southern California Intertribal Court Judge Anthony Brandenburg, sitting as a circuit judge in the first hearing of the Jamul Indian Village Tribal Court, rejected the plaintiffs' argument that the court lacked jurisdiction to serve as a legal forum for the eviction proceedings.

This is both the bad news and the ugly news. It’s bad (from my perspective, and that of many of my fellow Jamulians) because it means that the casino we don’t want to see built has one less obstacle to overcome. It’s ugly because this intra-tribal fight has turned into a full-blown, very public battle pitting two members of this tiny tribe against the other 30 or so members who support building the casino. It’s difficult for an outsider to imagine what this must feel like, on either side. But it can’t be pleasant for anyone…

Rosales and Toggery contend that land grading and casino construction would desecrate the tiny Jamul reservation, where funerary objects of their family members have been burned and buried near their homes as part of Kumeyaay Indian rituals.

The two cite such objections in an injunction lawsuit against the California Native American Heritage Commission that was filed last month in county Superior Court. They succeeded yesterday in getting a Superior Court order halting crews from dismantling the reservation’s meeting hall until a hearing on their injunction motion takes place March 19.

There’s the good news: one obstacle to the casino has at least gained the standing to be heard before the court, and the building work is, at the very least, delayed until the hearing date in March.

For You, Arkin

Many people have ably commented on the awful slurs written yesterday by William Arkin, the mindlessly liberal columnist at the Washington Post (whose words I will not repeat here). He’s been verbally whupped to the point that he’s now issued a (slimy, qualified) apology that falls far short of what’s needed. Personally, I think the Post should fire him, pronto, but of course that isn’t going to happen. The single best response to Arkin I’ve seen yet comes from a warrior poet, Russ Vaughn. Here’s the beginning:

WaPo Weasels II

Contributed by Russ Vaughn

...

Want to slam our soldiers, Arkin?

Well here is one to slam.

I got used to Lefty slamming

When I came back from Vietnam.

So you want to put a muzzle

On our brave fighting men?

Well try muzzling me you jerk,

Just tell me where and when.

...

Your profession needs a lesson

In basic free speech rights,

For those you worms all hide behind,

For those who fight your fights.

Like all your soft and smarmy kind,

You really have no clue,

Who American warriors truly are,

What our warriors truly do.

Now go read the rest. That’s an order!

And while you’re there, don’t miss WaPo Weasels I…

The Debate Is Over

Yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer — one of California’s dysfunctional U.S. Senators — said this:

"The scientific debate is over. We will have legislation this year."

This is but the latest in what looks like an orchestrated campaign by the left to shut down all debate and discussion on global warming. In recent weeks, we’ve seen efforts to ban global-warming skeptics from radio and TV, to refuse funding to skeptics, and even to criminalize public speech by skeptics (by claiming that any skeptical talk is criminally misleading and damaging to the public).

This is un-American.

This is madness.

This is anti-science.

This is getting dangerously close to Fahrenheit 451 (how long until we’re told to burn our copies of The Skeptical Environmentalist?), and Orwellian thought control (shutting down legitimate debate is just one step from telling you you’re not allowed to have skeptical thoughts).

This is (as others have observed) very much like a kind of secular religion — our leftie “betters” want us to take global warming on faith.

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to combat this?

Hugo

Am I the only person worried about what’s happening in Venezuela? Hugo Chavez just got his legislature to grant him almost unlimited personal power — including the power to remove his Constitutional term limits, which of course he’s already talking about.

Hugo is following a well-trod path to dictatorship — precisely the same path followed by a fellow named Adolf Hitler, and very similar to the path followed a few years later by Fidel Castro.

But this time, the newly-minted dictator has been the darling of the American left (which is conspicuously quiet about recent developments in Venezuela) for the past several years. They didn’t stop toasting Hugo until last week, when he started talking about how he was about to nationalize the over $34B in American investments in Venezuela.

Oops. Looks like the left hitched themselves up to another bad boy…I wonder how they’ll wriggle out of this one?

But forget the petty politics for a moment. We’ve suddenly got a rather bad actor not far south of our borders, and he’s no longer got any internal restraints on his behavior. He’s got a lot of oil-generated wealth at his disposal. He has a substantial and modernly-armed military. He has a close and open relationship with Cuba, Iran, and Libya. He openly proclaims his objective of ridding the world of “American tyranny”.

What the hell are we going to do about this wacko on the Caribbean?

A prediction: Iran will build nuclear-capable missile sites in Venezuela.

What will we do about that?

And why aren’t we hearing much about this in the media? Hugo is a clear and present danger to the U.S. homeland — but you’d sure never get that from the news! What gives here?

Ban the Bulb?

Do I still want to live in California?

I actually asked myself that question after reading about the latest lizard-brained idea from Sacremento. One of our liberal, Democrat, environmentalist-wacko, Gore-infected legislators introduced a bill to ban the incandescent light bulb in California. The bill would phase in the ban, which would take complete effect in 5 years.

And the pundits say it’s likely to pass, and almost certain to get the Governator’s signature.

This is completely plausible to me. The sheeple of California (meaning the majority of adults of voting age: left-leaning, uninformed, and apathetic) will likely listen to the bleating about how incandescent bulbs are guilty of wasting an enormous amount of energy, about how compact fluorescent bulbs put out the same amount of light but use much less energy, last longer, and cost less. They’ll hear all that, and then like the unthinking, uninformed, and unobservant sheep that they are, they’ll say “Yeah, that sounds good!” and re-elect those same legislators again — those legislators that are, brick-by-brick, building a nanny state that is removing one freedom after another from us.

"What on earth is Tom ranting about now?", some of you may say. Well, for background, read this. But here’s the bottom line: incandescent bulbs are superior to compact fluorescent bulbs with respect to the quality of the light they emit. To use simpler words: our artificially illuminated world looks better with incandescent bulbs. But if the legislators prevail (as it appears they will), I will be forced to use inferior lamps, or risk criminal prosecution after the “light bulb police” catch me using bulbs I bought from another state.

The right way to handle this would be to allow the market to control the “problem”. Many people already choose to use compact fluorescent lamps — either as a replacement for all their incandescent bulbs, or only for those where the aesthetics don’t matter much. They do it, I’m sure, to save money. I do this myself in my home. The higher the price of electricity (and therefore the greater savings from compact fluorescent lamps), the more people will do this. That’s the right way — let each individual make up their own mind, based on the value of high quality light to them.

For example, when I’m working on my hobbies, the quality of the light is vital to me. Sacremento is going to tell me that I can’t have my halogen desk lamp. That means that I will either have to work on my hobbies only in daylight (doesn’t work well in the winter!), or I will have to become a light bulb criminal.

Or leave.

Enough of this sort of crap, and I am outta here. I wonder which state is the least likely to engage in this sort of nanny-statism?

Anti-Icky-Poo

We just ordered some of this, on the recommendation of an animal trainer who says it works great. If I’d ever stumbled across it before, I’d have ordered it just because of the name!

From their web site:

Whether you spell it with a hyphen or without, its still the absolute best odor eliminator on the market. There are probably more animal behaviorists and veterinarians recommending Anti-Icky-Poo than any other odor eliminator available today.

Whether you have a cat urine odor, a dog urine odor, a human urine odor or any other organic odor, AIP can come to your rescue.

Why wait another day for a solution to your odor problems. Even skunk odor, musk or how about lady bug odors. We had a client call with a problem of thousands of lady bugs that died underneath her deck. With Anti-Icky-Poo the problem was solved in days.

Once we get it and try it out, we’ll let you know if it worked for us…

Quote of the Day

From C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I suspect Mr. Lewis would have made a fine libertarian…

Silly, Silly, Silly...

Today is garbage day — time to load up all the week’s trash into the back of my pickup, and drive it down the hill to where the garbage truck can pick it up. During this chore, I flipped on the radio and listened to the news…and I heard this story, which struck me as a crystalline example of all the silliness and unseriousness of current American politics. The story:

Senator Barack Obama used to be known to his friends and employers as “Barry” Obama. His birth certificate says Barack, but that name was apparently a little too alien to be easily accepted. So Barack turned himself into “Barry", and so he was known for years, as a law professor and as a Senator. Recently, however, “Barack” is apparently striking the public as exotic and kind of cool, so the Senator is transforming himself back into Barack — asking the press, his friends, and his co-workers to refer to him by that name.

There are two “sillies” here.

The first one is that a candidate should think that his name would make any difference at all to his political success. It’s a very loud statement that he believes form matters more than substance. That’s silly. That’s unserious politics. And that is, unfortunately, quite typical for a national-level American politician today.

The second silly is that the candidate is probably right. The American electorate probably does react to someone’s name; there probably is some measurable level of impact to his appeal to voters based on his “new” name. That’s silly. That’s unserious. And that is, unfortunately, all too typical of the American electorate’s participation in the political process.

Decades of dumbed-down schools and lower average achievement, a half-century of television sucking the IQ from our population’s brains, thirty five years of rapid drift towards socialism — we’re reaping our reward now.

If this foreshadows the kind of political discourse we can expect in the 2008 Presidential campaign, I may just tune out all together, and dedicate this site to slide rules!

Update: Just a few minutes after I posted this, I read a news story with this little tidbit: the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has deliberated on a profound problem facing America, and they have come up with an answer. The problem? Representatives coming in for their first term of office were traditionally called “freshmen” Representatives. This sexist, biased, and obviously offensive term. The solution, arrived at after appropriate hearings and debate: newly-elected Representatives are heretofore to be known as “new Representatives.

This is the kind of issue that our legislators think belongs at the top of their agenda. They don’t want to waste their time on issues like immigration, crime, health care, social security, or the war in Iraq. No sirree, our lawmakers are gonna spend their time on important things!

Sheesh. You just can’t make up something worse than the reality…

Six Years

On March 8th last year, Marcos Olguin was driving a van carrying 20 illegal immigrants. The van wasn’t being chased by law enforcement or border control; he was just driving from the mountains to the east toward Oceanside, where he was to deliver the smuggled illegal immigrants.

After driving down Honey Springs Road (familiar to anyone from Jamul), he turned onto State 94 — at 55 MPH, an outrageously and recklessly high speed for that right-angle turn. The predictable result: the van flipped, spewing its human occupants. In the over-stuffed van, the immigrants were mostly sitting on the floor, not wearing seat belts.

One woman — pregnant — was killed at the scene, pinned under the van while badly injured. Another woman died later at the hospital. Everybody in the van was injured; some have permanent brain damage, some are physically disabled, some are blind. “The human toll of the crime is staggering,” the prosecutor (Christopher Ott) said. Indeed.

Yesterday federal judge William Q. Hayes rejected the five year sentence requested jointly by the prosecutor and the defense. Instead, he sentenced Olguin to six years.

Two people killed, over a dozen injured, during the commission of a crime — and the sentence is just six years. Whether the objective of the sentence is to act as a deterrent, or to punish the perpetrator, this is an appallingly lenient (and therefore ineffective) outcome. Listen to the perpetrator himself:

“Sometimes we make wrong choices, not because we don’t know the difference between right and wrong, but because we don’t pay attention to the consequences,” Olguin told a San Diego federal judge.

Will Olguin pay attention to these consequences? Will anyone else?

This is yet another example of a peculiar (to me, anyway) view of accountability we have in our system of justice. We hold criminals less accountable when they cause death and injury as a consequence of intentional recklessness rather than intentional violence. I’ve never been able to understand that distinction myself. We also hold drivers less responsible for the consequences of their recklessness with automobiles than we do with their recklessness with other potentially dangerous behavior. You can bet that if those people had been killed and injured because of any other reckless behavior by Olguin, the outcome would have been different. Again, this is a distinction I’ve never understood. And of course one can’t help but suspect that if the victims had been wealthy, white American citizens that the outcome would also have been different.

As if all the preceding wasn’t bad enough, another twisted bit emerged from this story: Olguin was a meth addict at the time of this crime. He asked the judge to allow him to serve his sentence in a Wisconsin penitentiary — so that he could be with his father, who is serving a 30-year sentence in a methamphetamine conspiracy.

Libertarians (like myself) argue that the restrictions the U.S. has placed on immigration and drugs are (a) contrary to the intent and spirit of our country’s founders, and (b) are the biggest engines of crime in our society. This story amply illustrates those points… If immigration was unrestricted, those people would never have been in the van in the first place. There wouldn’t have been any criminal “underground railroad” to bring them here — they’d have arrived via normal (and safe) transportation systems. If drugs were unrestricted, Olguin wouldn’t be motivated — driven — to high-paying, high-risk criminal behavior to pay for his drug habit. Instead, he’d be in the same boat as alcohol addicts are today — his drug of choice would be inexpensive and legally available, but there would be support mechanisms, help available, as needed, for addicts and abusers. Our society has made an arbitrary and capricious choice to make one drug legal (e.g., alcohol) and another illegal (e.g., meth) — with awful results for our society. And, along the way, restricting an individual freedom…

Unarius Revisited

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the Unarius organization — our local “space cadets”. The photo at right is of Ruth Norman, aka “Uriel", who led the Unarians for many years. That post prompted quite a few emailed questions, the majority of which asked me if this was a spoof (it is not). At the time I wrote it, there was little information available on the web. Since then, much more information has become available. And in my never-ending quest to satisfy my reader’s curiousity, I give you:

A new Wikipedia article about Unarius, written from a credulous perspective.

Three YouTube videos, here, here, and here. You know you want to hear the Unarian choir singing “Spaceship Earth” — not to mention Uriel, er, explaining, um, stuff.

And these two blog posts (here and here) are chock-a-block full of photos that are well worth perusing…

One of the most frightening things about living in Lawson Valley is that these folks own land here. For their spaceport. I’m not kidding.

Friedman Speaks On

Milton Friedman died late last year (November 16th), at age 94. He was an economist extraordinaire and the “intellectual father” of present-day Estonia’s economic miracle. He was active in his profession right to the very end. In today’s Wall Street Journal, an email interview ($) with Mr. Friedman appears. The entire thing is quite interesting, but this particular question and answer leapt off the page:

WSJ: What is the biggest risk to the world economy: America’s deficits? Energy insecurity? Environment? Terrorism? None of the above?

Friedman: Islamofascism, with terrorism as its weapon.

Somehow in all the thinking I’ve done about the “Islamofascist” threat, the economic threat never jumped out at me. But it does make sense — look at the incredible economic impact that 9/11 had. And consider the impact of, say, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz, or the closing of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, or, for that matter, a dirty bomb in (say) Washington D.C.

There are days when that last thought seems almost attractive, though…

Political Weather

Via Melanie Morgan, an interesting revelation about recent goings-on at the Weather Channel. Here’s an excerpt, but do read the whole thing:

Emotional weather forecasting?

The Weather Channel is launching a new website and broadband channel dedicated solely to global warming called “One Degree” and has a weekly program called “The Climate Code,” devoted almost entirely to liberal advocacy on climate matters.

The network is running advertisements showcasing scared and confused Americans, including children and senior citizens, wondering about the coming apocalypse caused by global warming. (You can view the ad for yourself here.)

The chief martyr for the new “emotional” approach to broadcasting at The Weather Channel is Dr. Heidi Cullen, who serves as the network’s cheerleader for global warming hysteria. Cullen’s supposed expertise on climatology includes, among other things, earning a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College. One must indeed have to believe in the mystical to accept anything Ms. Cullen has to say about climatology.

Writing for the One Degree blog, Ms. Cullen recently threw a hissy fit that some meteorologists are openly questioning the conclusions drawn by the Greenpeace crowd about the nature, extent, causes and even existence of global warming.

Cullen’s diatribe, titled “Junk Controversy Not Junk Science,” called on the American Meteorological Society to start requiring all meteorologists to toe the line on liberal interpretation of global warming, or else lose the organization’s certification.

George Orwell’s 1984 couldn’t have concocted a better form of thought control.

This situation at the Weather Channel is a lovely example of the challenges that face ordinary people who would like to get objective information about a controversial topic.

It’s perfectly reasonable, I think, for people to have a default expectation that a television channel called “The Weather Channel” would supply objective information about weather. Reasonable, but (as Melanie’s story shows) completely erroneous. So a credulous viewer of the Weather Channel can be forgiven for making the assumption that what’s being presented there is either factual, or is the current consensus of meteorology.

But that assumption is wrong.

Like any other commercial broadcaster whose revenues are derived from advertising, the Weather Channel chooses its programming in the manner it believes will maximize the number of viewers (because advertising rates, and therefore revenue, are determined by audience size). What view of global warming would attract the most viewers: (a) global warming is caused by mankind’s activities and disasters are imminent, or (b) we’re not sure if there even is global warming, much less what caused it or what the consequences might be. I’m pretty sure that the answer is (a) — even though that is not the consensus of meteorologists.

The Weather Channel’s best interests are not served by accurately portraying the science of meteorology. Understand that, and it’s easy to be skeptical of anything they tell you.

But it gets worse, as I’ve blogged about before. Meteorology is in a curious state at the moment; a state that is guaranteed to warp the scientific results. The problem is that the majority of funding for meteorologists is going to those who are studying global warming. Especially large amounts are going to those who are building models that can help predict future climate trends and weather events. The scientists who receive these funds are human, and they have a vested interest in having those funds continue to pour into their efforts. Any hint that global warming is a less dramatic process, or that it is caused more by Mother Nature than mankind, is a direct threat to their funding. How do you think they react to that? Of course they are defensive, and of course they will loudly proclaim the value of what they do.

So the science gets warped; always in such situations there is a bias towards that science result that generates the most funding. Right now, in meteorology, that’s global warming caused by (and fixable by) mankind.

You won’t hear that on the Weather Channel, because that doesn’t help them get more viewers.

What’s an average Joe to do? How can any observer hope to sort all this stuff out, and figure out what to believe and how to assess the relative risks? To even more specific, how’s an American citizen supposed to figure out whether it’s more important to spend tax dollars on (say) fixing the Social Security structural problems, or on addressing global warming?

I’ve only found one answer to this: to actively practice skepticism. This implies all sorts of things, but perhaps more than anything it implies a lack of credulity (i.e., don’t just believe what you’re told), an active search for opposing views, and a reliance on evidence and successful prediction.

With respect to global warming, a skeptic will find that the evidence is beyond skimpy. When you read the global warming proponents, you’ll find lots and lots of future projections and darned little solid evidence — and there are plenty of different opinions amongst scientists on the interpretation of what little evidence there is. A little searching on the web will also yield (as I have blogged about before) well-credentialed and respected meteorologists who are skeptical of the validity of the models that support global warming.

In fact, those models suffered a rather spectacular failure this year — and of course this failure was not widely reported in the mainstream media (that’s not the sort of thing that attracts new viewers). Those models predicted a terrible hurricane season this year; as bad or even worse than last year’s. Instead we had a very mild hurricane season. So, in plain English, the models that global warming advocates are relying on to support their case for the disasters that will be visited on us in the coming decades — those models failed miserably to predict something happening six months in the future. Why should we believe those models are correct?

From a skeptic’s perspective, the notion that global warming is caused by mankind’s activities is simply not a proven case. We can’t say with certainty that it’s wrong, mind you — but we for darned sure can’t say that it’s right, either. And I, for one, would like to know that the vast sums of money and resources our government proposes to spend on mitigating global warming would actually have some positive effect before we start spending it. And I’d also like to have a rational public discourse on the relative priorities of the various things the government could spend money on.

There I go, fantasizing again…

Ellison and the Quran

Here’s an interesting look at some history most Americans have forgotten. We’ve been facing a threat from some Muslims for a very long time:

Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.

Capitol Hill staff said Ellison’s swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.

The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America’s founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson’s Quran because it showed that “a visionary like Jefferson” believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be “gleaned” from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic “Barbary” states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.

Ellison’s use of Jefferson’s Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but, which today, is mostly forgotten - the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans and Americans in the Islamic “Barbary” states.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as many of the “non-Muslim” older men and women as possible so the preferred “booty” of only young women and children could be collected.

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created “eunuch stations” along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the “Dey of Algiers” — an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled “through the medium of war.” He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the “Dey of Algiers” ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey’s ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.

Declaring that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast.

The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.

In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.

Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea."

It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

Jefferson had been right. The “medium of war” was the only way to put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a “visionary” wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.

Tip o’the hat to Dick F…

Saying Goodbye

How a Marine says goodbye.

What could I possibly add to this?