We recently heard about a local 4H shooting class for kids 6 and up. Yes, I do mean real ammunition and guns. we feel it is advantageous to have the kids know about guns, how to handle them and more importantly how to be safe with them. Perhaps if they have used guns a lot there will not be a tempting allure and then less accidents. My 6yr old son knows of a little boy that accidently shot himself when he found his dad's gun. This 4-H class will help them be safer.

So they got to use a 20-guage shotgun last night and try to hit some clay pigeons. I really thought they would be too scared to try. they were timid but wanted to try. Both of my older kids did exceptionally well. They were safe and got to fire. I am proud of them.

How apropo this speech from October 27, 1964 is for today:

I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.

It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."

This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that,it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function,government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.

We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments....

We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism,all over the world.

We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.... But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure....

Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of -very dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware,and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation.When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits-not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail,at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

I was again asked today to help Team and Crew 422 in their preparations for Philmont this summer. They hiked down the blue dot trail from the overlook down to the Rio Grande, along the river to the Red Dot trail and back up the cliff side. they had several stations along the way in which they did various things like team skis and woofle ball.

I think one of them ot lost along the way and they spent about 45 minutes looking for him. He is ok and they did the right thing.

I had a station for them in which they were to build a fire. I asked them to do it with one match and they did. Kudoos to Rob who led the effort. They then roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for lunch. They were headed to a cave to do some spelunking when I left.

In a previous post I stated my clear objections to participating in the cyber world that is Facebook. I did not want to sign up because of all the time involved and the fact that people post so much useless information about games they play.

However, I recant part of that position. I still object to the game information being so fully shared. However, I have changed my stance on this in part due to my wife and Duke Sandefur among others. You can look me up.

The way news and information get presented to us is interesting. No matter who presents the news, they have a point of view they are trying to push or perhaps even an agenda. I like to ponder a bit over what is being sold and how.

The former Soviet Union did this all the time. They were in complete control of the flow of information, as all communist, social and totalitarian regimes want to be. When it came to Berlin, after WWII, they had some problems. In the 1950's they had control of part of the city while the U.S., French and British portions of the city had been merged. The part under Soviet control was in a deep depression while the other part of the city was beginning to thrive.

For a time many workers would work in the west and live in the east. There was no wall then. People started to notice that the Soviet so-called "worker's utopia" was not that at all. Many people simply walked across town and never returned. That was a problem... What happens when you have no workers? So they started a campaign of building a wall. It popped up almost over night. They then told the west (us) that it was to protect themselves. They were protecting themselves from the invasion of workers from the west trying to get into the workers paradise they had created. Which way did all the guns and guard towers face? Who actually believed there story? How many people died trying to get into East Berlin? Apparently many nieve politicians in our country did.

Don't believe what you see, heard or read. Ask questions. For example, if you hear that 4 out of 5 dentist's approve of some toothbrush there are some questions to ask. What was the actual number of dentists surveyed (if it is a low number, it can not be trusted)? Why did the 5th dentist not approve? Why did the 4 approve? What did they like about it? and the questions could go on.

We have been told "Butter is bad", "Butter is good" and many other scientific flip flops in history. We need to ask more questions.

Duke suggested that I watch the movie Primer. It was a low budget movie that came out a few years ago. I read that they spent about $11k making the movie.I was intrigued by his suggestion.

I found the movie online somewhere and watched it. That is the first time I have done that and I don't think I will do that again. I will check the library first.

The movie begins with a scene in a kitchen. There are four guys sitting at the dinning table discussing business and stuffing envelopes with electronic boards. The scene is meant to be dreary and have a dull sense about it. The discussion leads to there being more than just stuffing boards. The four of them not being happy with their day jobs nor with the tedium of their side business.

Two of them want to improve a device that some big company has built. They stumble onto something entirely different.

At one point they have several old oscilloscopes in the background. They have a discussion about palladium versus platinum and then saw off a catalytic converter from a car to get the necessary platinum. The science jargon is sufficient for most nerds but not so deep that others might be overwhelmed by it.

The effects of timeline in the movie are nicely done. The science is used to move the story and not just to have it cause you can do it. The story draws you in and develops the characters. There are some excellen twists that I will not reveal.

This is not the typical blockbuster, computer animated, sci-fi movie with miniature blue people running around screaming about gargamel. If you only like that sort of thing, Primer is not for you. If you like science, fiction and an honest movie, this is for you. I would recommend it to everyone from mid teens and up.

I rented a car to get home from the airport tonight. The car I was given was a Kia Optima. I thought Nissan has the Optima? Whoever really made it, it looked and felt a lot like the Toyota Camry I drove last week.

 For some reason I was under the impression that Kia's are the Hyundai's of the 1980's... cheap. I was wrong. The doors on this car were solid and well made. The interior had nice touches like the usb connection adjacent to the auxilary input.

The trunk was huge and I had sufficient room for my long legs and big head. It appeared to also have enough room in the back for a small person despite my seat being all the way back. 

I liked the radio controls on the steering wheel as well as the cruise control. 

Driving home there are a number of large hills I have to drive up. This car did not have the power to hold speed going up the steepest of hills. It lagged and even after getting it to down shift I did not have control enough to maintain more than 55 mph. 

It has the same radio and heater/air controls as the Toyota Camry. I do not like those controls nor the radio. The controls, while large enough to handle, are in some way lacking in "real life" design. The clock is in a much more visible location than in the Camry. 

This would not be my choice of cars.

I grew up with DOS and in college learned the unix command line on an old VAX system. Consequently, I am a Huge fan of the command line. Anything that can be done at all in GNU/Linux can be done from the command line. It is also usually faster than using some application's graphical interface. More of my thoughts on GNU/Linux

Go Bash! Quick Help

Scripts

Karma, as defined by the "ultimate source of all knowledge", is a way to encourage good behavior in people. It is the belief that if you do something that, eventually, you will get rewarded for that action. Good for good and bad for bad. This is vaguely similar to the christian point of view of eternal reward or damnation. I am not attempting to confuse karma with Christian point of view, they are not the same thing. 

I take a much more simplistic view of how this works. It depends on two things. First, our own conscience. We know, sense innately when we have done something wrong. By repeatedly doing something wrong we loose that sense, if we are honest within ourselves that is never truly lost completely. This sense creates in us a kind of memory. We know and typically remember very well those things we have done wrong. In the same manner, we know and remember when we have done something good. Second, this is not a perfect world and stuff happens. We have the ability to choose and we do not always make good choices. Our choices, however much we like to think otherwise, do not affect only ourselves but also those around us. Thus when someone makes a choice that effects us in a negative way we recall all of our bad choices and think, "What goes around comes around. I deserved that." With similar thoughts regarding things that happen to other people. It is not a self fulfilling prophecy but rather our own minds which make the connections.