The "Open Carry" Question

Yesterday I went to the local grocery store. Nothing unusual about that. But as I'm standing in the checkout line, I notice that the man in front of me is openly wearing a large revolver (looked like a Colt, but I didn't ask) on his side. Which is perfectly legal here in Arizona. But is it sensible? I mean, this is Flagstaff, the epitome of "safe". And the guy with the sidearm appeared to be young, solid, and healthy (and very white, not that it matters); not a likely victim of violence.

"Open Carry" laws have been getting a little more notice lately, with NRA members wearing their guns into Starbucks, and 'Tea Party Patriots' taking their sidearms to political rallies. There are many 2nd amendment advocates circulating the (baseless) paranoia that Obama wants to 'take their guns away', leading to a boom in gun sales.

I find that I have mixed feelings about "Open Carry" in action. I'm a gun owner myself, but I have no inclination to carry my pistol around in public. I don't feel threatened in my life, but I could see how that could change if it became common that almost everyone around me were openly armed. Put simply, for self-defense I'm used to relying on my physical size and ugliness, and the fact that I live in a low crime city. I become more nervous about the uncertainty of the mental stability of someone if I see that they are armed, especially when there's no logical reason for them to be. Heinlien's old adage that "an armed society is a polite society" neglects to point out that it is also a very nervous society. The more armed people around, the more likely that one of those armed people is unstable. That is what I'm uncomfortable with.

I grew up with guns around, and was taught strict gun safety. Only carry a gun if you're planning on using it, and only point it at something you intend to shoot. Those rules work fine for hunting and target practice. I'm assuming that the people who carry guns in public feel that they "might need it" for self defense, no matter how incredibly unlikely that is. Hell, the gun is the most likely thing to be stolen from them.

I realize that there could be individual situations that leave a person feeling threatened, such as domestic violence issues. For all I know, the shopper in front of me might be worried that his lover's husband was after him. But I'm not convinced that this is the common motivation. Fear is frequently an irrational emotion. There's a very real difference between a specific threat and a vague unspecific (and usually unreal) threat. It would be nice to be able to ask each person carrying a gun what exactly they are defending themselves against, because I doubt that it's a 'specific' for most of them.

Again, I find that my feeling are mixed: I do believe in the right to keep and bear arms, but I have doubts about the sensibility of guns in mainstream public life. I may be wrong, but it strikes me that more weapons make violence more likely, not less.

And totally aside: the gentleman at the grocery store was buying about a dozen boxes of "pop tarts" and a head of celery. I shouldn't question another person's dietary choices, but really?

I Am (as usual) Confused

There's something strange about republican imagery and fundraising tactics that I don't quite understand. Some Republican goofball left a copy of an RNC fundraising presentation in a Florida hotel room, and now everyone can see it. The power point slide above seems to be getting the most attention, and it is rather amusing in a very weird sort of way. But I'm not sure that I 'get' the author's intention.
Okay, I can understand the "Obama as the Joker" image has some propaganda value. Rather childish, but I can see how the caricature implies "evil". The same for the "Pelosi as Cruella" image; silly, but I get the point.
Now to the parts I don't understand: Pelosi and Reid as "American Gothic"? This is supposed to imply...what? That they're like a classic portrayal of "Americana"? That they're "old"? (Not exactly a campaign tactic that helps republicans, in my opinion). That Harry Reid carries a pitchfork? This hurts them how?
And the caricature of Harry Reid as "Scooby-Doo" leaves me really confused. I'm certainly no expert on "Scooby-Doo", but I did see the cartoon in my youth. A large, goofy dog with a "snack dependency" (I always thought it was a thinly veiled drug reference) who bumbles around, but is always the "hero" by the end of the show. Correct me if I'm right, but Scooby always solves the mystery and stops the villain in the end. So is the point that Harry Reid is a clumsy hero? That he's a snack addict? My understanding of the parody is unclear. Making an analogy that Harry Reid is a "good guy" doesn't strike me as all that damning. If anything, comparing Harry to Scooby is more complimentary to him than a lot of things I might say about him; I have my doubts that he'll 'save the day' at the end of the episode.
I do understand the use of caricature in political attacks; it's a very old technique (Thomas Nast springs to mind). But this amateurish attempt is beyond feeble. Pelosi and Reid are both rather easy targets for parody in reality, but this attempt seems to completely miss the shot.
Am I missing something?

Marching Boobies

It's Friday, it's March. Therefore, March-ing Boobies.

Nearly America's Most Powerful Atheist

With Charley Rangel stepping down, I was so hoping that Pete Stark would become chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. Alas, he chose to avoid the controversy:

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) won't take the helm of the House Ways and Means Committee after top Dems expressed worry he would become a lightening rod for controversy and GOP criticism.

Stark was in line to take the post from Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), who stepped down yesterday amid ethics controversies. In his place, Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), the third-ranking Dem on the panel, will take over.

Stark has a history of making controversial statements. Last year, during a town hall meeting, he told a constituent who opposed health care reform that he wouldn't "dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn't be worth wasting the urine."

In private meetings yesterday, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen and other Dems expressed their concern to Stark and openly wondered whether he would be able to win a vote of the full Dem caucus. Stark agreed to step aside after those meetings, sources told Hotline OnCall.

Levin, by the way, will have some help as he figures out how to wield his first gavel over a full committee. His brother, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairs the upper chamber's Armed Services Committee.

http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/03/stark_wont_take.php

Too bad; I've always had a special liking for the irascible Stark. He's the only self-avowed atheist in congress, and a very outspoken "no bullshit" liberal. It would have been quite entertaining to watch him chair the heavily lobbied 'Ways and Means' committee, which is among the most significant posts in congress.
(Disclosure: I've had many contacts with congressman Stark over the years; he represents the district where my mother lived, and defeated my father for a state assembly seat many, many years ago. I've always admired his integrity and liked him personally.)

A Loss to the Blogging Community

The blogger known as Jon Swift has left us.
I can't say I had much of a connection with Jon/Al, but I did enjoy reading his biting satire. I feel slightly bad that I dropped him from the blogroll as part of my most recent update, based on there being no new posts in almost a year. It's a sad loss for the community of bloggers, and my heart goes out to his family and friends.

The Lady And The Knuckleball

It's March, and time for baseball. Here's a baseball story that I found heartwarming:

The fraternity of knuckleball pitchers is small, and Tim Wakefield of the Boston Red Sox is its active godfather.

Eri Yoshida hopes to expand that roster and break the gender barrier at the same time.

Yoshida, the petite 18-year-old who became the first female drafted by a Japanese professional team, Kobe 9 Cruise of the Kansai Independent Baseball League, made her pro debut on March 26, 2009, at the Osaka Dome. She learned how to throw a knuckleball as a young girl by watching video of Wakefield.

On Tuesday, at the Red Sox player development complex, Yoshida, wearing a gray Boston T-shirt with Wakefield's name and number on the back, met her idol and pitched with him.

"I'm impressed," Wakefield said. "She spun a couple, but for the most part it was very good. She was able to take the spin out of a lot of them and they had quite a lot of movement on them."

Yoshida, who stands 5-foot-1 and throws her knuckleball with a sidearm motion, is in the United States to pitch in the independent Arizona Winter League. She got her first win on Feb. 12, tossing four shutout innings for the Yuma Scorpions. But she admitted she was nervous working with the 43-year-old Wakefield.

http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/news/story?id=4961259&campaign=rss&source=MLBHeadlines

(cool video at the link, BTW)

At age 18 and 5'1", Eri Yoshida has already progressed further than any female before her in professional baseball. The knuckleball is notoriously difficult to pitch, and almost impossible to hit. I know that when I faced a knuckler in college ball (many years ago, and I only faced one), I realized that there was absolutely no way that I could hit the pitch. So I basically took every pitch and hoped that I could draw a walk (knuckleball's are hard to throw for strikes).

So here's wishing Eri the very best of success in her career. Even if she doesn't become a star, maybe she'll inspire more young women into baseball.

Kirkpatrick Proposes Pay Cut

Color me slightly surprised: My congresswoman, Ann Kirkpatrick is proposing a congressional pay cut:

Representative Ann Kirkpatrick is today launching a push to make Members of Congress show a personal commitment to cutting federal spending. She is introducing the Taking Responsibility for Congressional Pay Act, which will cut pay for all Senators and Representatives by five percent starting January 1, 2011. If the bill is passed into law, Member salaries will be reduced for the first time since April 1, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression.

“Families across the country are getting by on lower wages and finding ways to cut back during the downturn, and these are the folks that pay our salaries. The federal government’s budget is in much worse shape, so why shouldn’t senators and representatives have to feel the same pinch?” asked Rep. Kirkpatrick.

http://kirkpatrick.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=855:rep-kirkpatrick-introduces-bill-to-cut-pay-for-members-of-congress-by-five-percent-fighting-against-business-as-usual-in-washington&catid=37:press-releases&Itemid=92

The proposal itself is fine, but I'm surprised that it's Ann making it. In her time in congress, she's been mostly a milquetoast moderate, and has made very few legislative proposals. She's been the epitome of the "nice, polite democrat" and avoided any controversy.

So, does this proposal mean anything? Not really. A 5% congressional pay cut would be a purely symbolic gesture in terms of deficit reduction. It would look good for a campaign photo-op, though. I seriously doubt that it will pass, or even get out of committee, unless a number of more powerful congress critters decide that it could help their re-election bids.

But what the heck, it's actually kinda nice to see Ann taking some action. Even a symbolic gesture is a bolder move than what I'm used to from her.

Olympics Final

(nope; not even in curling.)

I saw this over at Outside the Interzone, and had to pass it on. Lockwood is a genius.

Talking To A Texan

Those who know me know that my youngest sister lives in Texas, and is my exact opposite on almost every issue political, religious, or philosophical. She's a 'fundamentalist christian' right wing proud 'tea party patriot', so when we happened to be on the phone last evening, I wanted her take on the Texas Governor's primary. Most all of us have crazy family, but I find myself seeking to find out which flavor of crazy I'm related to. It's a bad habit.

She didn't disappoint me. "I'll never vote for Perry. He's a LIBERAL!" she said. And she thinks Kay Bailey Hutchinson will take her guns away (not a bad idea, really...except she doesn't actually have any guns...and nobody is trying to take them away today.) Really, when Perry is too "liberal" for you, what choice do you have?

So I asked her about Debra Medina. She had never heard of her.

Then I asked her who'd she vote for: she sort of "forgot" to register to vote, so she wont be voting. Which made me laugh. She sends me around a dozen "tea party" type emails every week. But didn't bother to register to vote.

In a way, I find that reassuring.

The Quiet Zone

Yesterday, I didn't quite notice what I wasn't hearing: train horns. Beginning yesterday, downtown Flagstaff became a "quiet zone" where trains don't blow their horns at each intersection. I live two blocks from the train tracks, and I've lived around downtown for so many years that I barely notice the noise, but with an average around 70 trains a day, the constant blaring can get annoying. Still, it's somewhat odd to not hear something I was so used to. And at least one conductor didn't get the memo, or couldn't quite break the habit.

March

Thank you calendar gods for putting an end to February, the most dismal month of the year. March brings the promise of Spring, and, of course, the return of baseball. I feel better already.

Never Too Old To Rock n' Roll

Went out to see moe. last night. Wonderful show. But bouncing back from dancing 'til 1:00 am seems to get a little tougher with each passing year. Aging ain't for sissies, I tell ya'.

Things Which Shouldn't Exist

Trust me: Tofu Wrestling should not exist.

Morning in Hawaii

Residents of Hawaii are waking up to tsunami warning in the wake of an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. People in the coastal regions are evacuating to higher ground. Wow. I'm an early riser myself, but it's hard to imagine starting a Saturday morning by running for the hills. At least the early warning system appears to be working effectively (those damn taxes) so far.
Too early to tell the extent of the damage and the loss of life in Chile, but it's certainly going to be huge. At least, in comparison to Haiti, Chile has a working infrastructure and a disaster response system in place.

Fun Friday Statistics

OK, everyone's seen the E-trade commercial with the talking baby who chastizes his friend Frank for playing the lottery for his financial security and gives him the "shocked face" when he doesn't win. But the baby also poses the question about his odds as: "You realize the odds of winning are the same as being mauled by a polar bear and a regular bear in the same day?"

For some reason, this probability statement strikes me as particularly hilarious, but also one that could possibly be calculated, so I decided to give it a try, although estimates are hard to come by in this arena.

From what I could claw up on the web, there have been 3 polar bear attacks in Alaska in the last 115 years. Given the current (rough) tourist rate of 2.5 million visitors a year and extrapolating backwards, your odds of a polar bear attack (in Alaska) is roughly 0.000000012, which is small. Note that I didn't try to accurately map the tourism increase in AK over the past 115 years; I'm just roughing the calculations here.

According to some web-based Yellowstone statistic, your odds of being mauled by a grizzly (the regular bear, which leaves out blacks and browns, I know) is 1 in 1.9 million (or 0.00000053).

Thus the odds of being mauled by both - not on the same day, just in your lifetime - is the product of those two, which leads to an extremely low probability of 6.36 x 10^-15 (or 0.00000000000000636). I skipped trying to extrapolate to mauling on the same day, because I'm assuming the first mauling results in fatality, so you'd never have to face that second mauling within 24 hours.

How low is that? Well, according to several sites on the web, the total number of humans (homo sapiens) that have ever lived/been born is roughly 106 billion (106,456,367,669 if you want accuracy). You can look at these sites if you're more interested in human population history:

http://www.prb.org/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx

http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~ramsey/People.html

But the reality of it is that the total population is 1.06 x 10^11, so being mauled by a polar bear and a regular bear probably hasn't yet happened to a human being.

I nominate Dick Cheney or Henry Kissinger to be the first.

The Coffee Party

You knew that there had to be an alternative to the Tea Party insanity; now, behold the "Coffee Party":

Our message to Congress: You work for us, not for corporations. We hired you and we get to fire you. We pay you and give you great health insurance. Now get to work serving the interests of the American people, or get out.

Anyone who wants our government to function in the interest of ordinary Americans, not corporations, is welcome to join this movement.

It's not about coffee or tea. It's about this simple question: are we as Americans getting the leadership and representation we need from our elected officials? If we can all agree we have, increasingly, not been well represented, how do we change this?
Many Americans reject the idea of working with the federal government or participating responsibly in the democratic process. For whatever reason, they have declared war on our government, and on our President. This is a destructive path.

Our focus is on the democratic process. We want to encourage everyone--no matter their positions on issues--to participate in the process in a civil and responsible way.

We want the political process broken down into three steps:
1) open and respectful dialogue
2) thoughtful and informed deliberation
3) competent and decisive execution.

http://coffeepartyusa.com/blog/11

While I somehow doubt that logic can have an impact on our current political circus, I do wish that this could work. We'll see if this has any legs, but I'll keep taking a look at them. After all, I much prefer coffee to tea.

Curling Medal Rounds

Today we get the women's medal rounds, with Switzerland facing China for the bronze this morning. Sweden will battle Canada for the gold this afternoon (guess who the bird will be cheering for).

And the men's medal round tomorrow pairs Sweden and Switzerland for the bronze, while Canada and Norway will compete for the gold.

Were I a betting man (oh wait, I am) I'd be betting on a Canadian sweep. And after that, I'll have to wait four long years for the next episode of the excitement that is curling on my TV.

Added: Sweaterman just sent me another "Savage Chickens" curling cartoon. We could get away with doing this at the pub:

Update: China takes bronze, 12-6, with 4 in the eighth end. The Swiss concede.

A Guide to Boobies

It's Friday, so here's a guide to Boobies. It's important to know what you're looking at.

My Summit Analysis

While it doesn't count for much, I formed some opinions while watching the "health care summit" (yes, I have too much time on my hands) and they may not be in line with others. But that's why I have a blog.
Obama was who he is: smart, professorial, and coldly logical. He tried to have a fact based debate, assuming 'good faith', on where the plans were at. He offered concessions, again based on facts and logic. He was politely confrontational, which is a bit of a verbal art in its own right.
And he lost.
One of our largest problems is between 'government' and 'politics', where it becomes a game of "win/lose", rather than addressing problems. But that is the current situation. Talking points do now trump policy.
Obama lost because he's playing the wrong game. He's leading the debate club into a rugby scrum. He's assuming that an intelligent argument will actually persuade politicians who have bet their careers on not being persuaded. Intellectually he won, but emotionally he lost. Yeah, he had "facts" on his side, but reality doesn't matter to the right. He did try to use logic versus rhetoric; didn't work.
I do really wish that I lived in a world where logic and intelligence would lead policy. I also want a unicorn. And free dope for life.
The media will focus on the "Obama vs. McCain" confrontation, but I believe that was a sideshow. What I found exceptionally telling was at the end: Obama offered the repubs McConnell and Boehner a chance to make "closing statements" and both declined. Yes, Obama had already eviscerated there previous lies. But they mostly meant "we're against anything you're trying to do", but they don't intend to come right out and say it. I'm almost reminded of the line "you can't negotiate with...". Fill in the blank yourself, and you've probably named the current republican party.

Health Care Summit Theater

Will it accomplish anything? That's the real question. Can Obama make the debate move forward, or will it be theater and political grandstanding?

I will be watching, if for no other reason than that the summit is such an unusual political move. Given that health care reform has been up and down like a Kangaroo in the mating season, I have no prediction as to the outcome. I will be interested to see which rhetorical points each side chooses to focus on. Sadly, the whole process of health care reform has gotten stuck on "framing" rather than actually addressing the very real need to change our system.

We're a very strange country; we have no problem funding wars, but when it comes to taking care of our own people we talk about our deficit. It's a sick system.