UN Gun Control Efforts

Alphecca and Geek with a .45 both have excellent overviews of the recent gun goings-on at the UN. Long story short, yes many elements in the UN want to heavily regulate civilian firearms ownership both nationally and internationally. Fortunately, the US representative to the conference told them where to stick that idea. Good for him.

Economic Growth

Here's a factoid you won't hear on the evening news: economic growth in the first quarter of this year was 5.6 percent. That's really good for an economy still struggling with high commodity prices. We're still only talking a quarter not a year so I suppose we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves.

Death in the Sci-fi Family

Jim Baen has died after a major stroke. David Drake has an obituary.

One thing I didn't realize was that Baen, a former Army private, donated a lot of books to servicemen every year. Soldiers can really use a good book to pass the time while they're hurrying up and waiting.

Lawsuits in the Church

Bringing the courts in to take sides in church governance is a shame and this thread at the Volokh Conspiracy inquiring about precedent law on the subject is just dispiriting to me. Haven't these people read 1 Corinthians 6?

If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another—and this in front of unbelievers!

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

The cases cited just scream "unhealthy church" to me. Struggles over leadership. Absolute unwillingness to compromise. I've been through some rough church splits in my time, but to get the courts involved? Never has it been that bad.

PC Posture

This article on PC posture is worth the read. I occassionally suffer wrist pain and eye strain from working in front of a computer all day. I first thought it was because of something I did, maybe I pulled a muscle playing ultimate or working out. Nope. My arm rests, keyboard, and mouse pad were in the wrong place. It puts strain on my mousing wrist because I had to constantly bend it at odd angles. So I reorganized my desk and bought some better ergonomic stuff. No more pain.

I also have found that if I keep any desktop setup for too long it will create problems. I try to make slight changes on a regular basis just to keep everything fresh and prevent any sort of repetitive motion problems.

HT: Instapundit

The First Amendment

Mainstream Baptist has been on several big rants in the last week. (Well in truth some of them have been other people's rants that he quoted in their entirety.) Most of his arguments are pretty flawed, but today's really caught my eye:

If religious conservatives succeed in repealing the First Amendment, sooner or later, they will find that their faith becomes discredited by association with scores of the failed policies of their political bedfellows that had nothing to do with their religion.

Repeal the First Amendment? Why in God's name would we ever want to do that? For those don't have it memorized, the relevant part of the First Amendment to the US Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

The right has never argued for the establishment a state church. We would never argue for it. Creating a state church is creating a monster and we know it just as the founding fathers did.

What the political right argues for is not state run religion. What we argue for is a broader definition of "free exercise" in order to practice our religion in all aspects of our lives. That is something completely different. To state otherwise is just attacking a straw man.

Judging from his commentaries on the growth of American "theocracy," attacking strawmen is about all Dr. Prescott is capable of doing.

The Flag Burning Amendment

I heard commentary similar to this one on the news this morning. An anchor referred the Flag Burning Amendment as "a controversial and possibly unconstitutional amendment." How an amendment to the constitution can be unconstitutional I'll never know...

Oh and just to clarify things, the FBA gives me the willies. I can see some merit in establishing federal regulatory rights over national symbols like the flag, but I can't see any way to reconcile it with free political speech as a whole.

Dang Tootin' I Am!

Turns out I'm a one hunnert percent US citizen, although I did guess on the naturalization question. Take that Michael.

Tales from Foriegn Lands

One of the great things about talking to missionaries and, more importantly, missionaries' kids is that they have great stories. I don't know whether LawDog was an MK or not. I'm thinking not for some reason. But he grew up in Nigeria none the less.

It just seems like you can have more and different fun out there than you can around here. Like building a tiger trap in your back yard under your father's supervision. I can't imagine doing that in my backyard and catching anything.

Happy Monthiversary to Me!

One month since the wedding and one lifetime still to go.

Working Out

Hube highlights the reason I stopped running on local streets: too hot, too humid, and too many cars coming out of nowhere. I need to start working out more regularly though, I haven't really been doing that since the wedding planning hit high gear a couple months ago.

Bringing Military School to You

Joanne Jacobs mentioned a recent AP story about the Troops to Teachers program. The program allows soldiers with college degrees to achieve teacher certifications and gives them additional incentives to teach in difficult areas.

The program has shown itself to be fairly successful. 9000 soldiers have become teachers and their retention rate is far superior to the general teaching population, helping to alleviate the serious shortfall we have in teachers right now. The soldiers are also more ethnically and gender diverse (more men and minorities). Their emphasis on military leadership skills and discipline is a welcome addition as well.

Looking for Distractions?

I highly recommend Jay is Games for free flash-based distractions. Hopefully you will use this revelation wisely instead of spending way too much time playing Dice Wars like I have.

Stupid Stupid Senators

Right, so the US auto industry is in big big trouble. The only domestic brand that might be making money state-side is Chrysler, but they're owned by the Germans now.

With this in mind, why the hell are senator's getting in Detroit's face about fuel economy? Their proposed changes to CAFE will require a total paradigm shift in automobile design and manufacture. They want a 20% increase in passenger vehicle fuel economy. Ending the truck exemptions would require close to a 100% increase in fuel economy across that segment. That means massive investments in R&D. US auto companies don't have money for that sort of thing because they're barely breaking even as it is. Actually they're generally not breaking even at all. Their money is tied up just in (1) building cars people might actually want to buy for a change (2) playing quality catch-up with the japanese (3) trying to keep their union pension plans solvent.

Do you want to destroy the American-owned auto industry? Now is not the damn time.

Purpose Driven Driving: On Ramps

Surprisingly the purpose of on ramps seems to elude some people, Tamara fills them in:

That little strip of concrete or asphalt that connects the surface street to the freeway? That's called the "On Ramp". The purpose of the onramp is to allow your wheezy family bus to chug up to something approaching combat speed so that you can merge safely into the traffic on the freeway, instead of just standing there like a duck in thunder, watching the cars whiz past you.

My mother initially taught me to merge onto a highway by using the on-ramp to find an appropriate space and then accelerating into position with it. Once I began to drive myself I realized that this was not the way to go about things. You get up to roughly traffic speed at the top of the ramp (if possible), then you fit yourself in at the bottom. If you do it this way, then you only need a carlength or two to make the merge. If you go slow then speed up, you need much more space because of the higher speed differential with traffic.

The real pain in the butt is when the guy in front of you doesn't know how to merge. A commenter over at Tamara's place has this to say:

When I can, and I'm not ruining someone else's day, the solution to these goobers is to identify them well before it's critical and SLOW DOWN.

Yes, counterintuitive. But what happens is, you open space between yourself and them and let them booger their way into the traffic flow, and then floor it and merge somewhat normally because they've invariably slowed things down.

Yup this works. Leave space, they merge in and get traffic all tied up. You accelerate into the space you created, merge relatively normally, and you're on your merry way.

Workplace Prayer Requests

The past couple of weeks have been pretty dark for my coworkers. One lost her sister to cancer. It wasn't unexpected but it was sudden. Another was planning her sister's baby shower for Saturday, but the child was stillborn on Thursday night. That was both sudden and unexpected.

Death may be a part of life, but it is rarely a welcome part, especially for our loved ones. Any prayers made on their behalf would certainly be welcome.

Video Blogging

First there was blogging. Then there was podcasting. Now some bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Kim du Toit are putting together video segments. Kim's latest has him going to cowboy action shoot. You'll note how much better he is with a rifle than a pistol.

WMDs

The no-WMDs cornerstone of the Iraq War debate took a hit yesterday when NGIC (National Ground Intelligence Center) released a very abbreviated unclassified report on the subject. The report mentions 500 munitions containing sarin and mustard gas.

It also explains why they didn't release this information sooner. It seems they were competing with members of the Iraqi insurgency to find and secure these weapons. The insurgents have only used chemical weapons once to my knowledge (a sarin artillery shell used in a roadside bomb) and thankfully they did it poorly.

I wonder how much of this had to do with Zarqawi's death had on these events. Not only did killing Zarqawi take out Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, but it enabled the military to take out many other upper echelon figures they have been mining for intelligence on his whereabouts.

So this is good news, but of course the fight isn't over.

Flash Multiplayer Fun

Do you remember Scorched Earth or that game with the banana throwing gorillas? Essentially they are artillery duel games. Well Zwok is flash game that is like them, but with 3-on-3 online multiplayer. You can make your own "character" or just press the lazy player button and enjoy. I advise the UK version, because it's in English.

Archeoloblogging

If you missed it, Joe Cathey is blogging from an archeological dig in Israel near the Jordanian border. With pictures!

The pictures are great but his choice of headgear is definitely lacking. He seems to be following the Daniel Jackson school of archeology instead of a more obvious, classic, and cool methodology.

Of course if he went with a fedora he'd inevitably run into Nazis. But I'd rather fight Nazis than space aliens, especially since the local Israelis have a much bigger score to settle with the National Socialists.