Of guns and psychos

I’m wondering what to do with my new NRA membership card that arrived in the mail a couple of days ago. Mind you, I didn’t ask for it. I’ve never had anything to do with the NRA before, and I don’t subscribe to any magazines or do business with any entities that might have any sort of connection. But here it is in my mailbox…

… just a couple of days after the shootings in Tucson.

As reported in the NYTimes, the Tucson gun show was held as scheduled, but with a moment of silence for the victims. The NRA gave their condolences as well. But nobody thought to ask whether this might be a good opportunity to assess what went wrong — other than blaming this all on a mental health issue. Instead, the usual mantra was repeated over and over: Guns don’t kill people; people do.

Such a clever slogan. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?

But let’s think about it: people can kill other people an awful lot more efficiently when they have a gun in their hand. Guns make killers more efficient.

Without a gun, someone intent on killing, whether mentally competent or not, would probably have relied on a knife or a stick.  They wouldn’t have been able to harm more than a person or two before they were brought down by a bystander. But the Tucson shooter was able to kill six people and wound a dozen or so more in just a minute or so. He had a Glock with a 30-round clip. That’s 30 shots that he can get off before having to stop to reload. Of all the reasons that gun fans cite to justify their owning weapons — personal protection, sport, etc — not one justifies a weapon with the capability to get off so many shots in a short amount of time.

Further, if everyone was armed, as the NRA would like to see, then, the theory goes, someone in the crowd would have shot the shooter. Assumedly, this being Arizona where gun laws are pretty lax, someone in the crowd should have been armed. But what brought the gunman down? Somebody wielding a folding chair.

It wasn’t long after the shootings, just minutes, in fact, before fingers began pointing. The first blog post I read after the shooting included the now infamous Sarah Palin crosshairs graphic, with a reminder of her “reload” rhetoric. Others pointed to Glen Beck’s “take back our country” talk that stops just (barely) short of calling for armed revolt. The conservatives counterattacked quickly, preemptively accusing the left wing of using the shootings for political purposes. Then the President made a plea for more civil discourse in political discussion — which I’m sure that everyone will agree with, at least for a few weeks.

Within a couple of days, as more was learned about the shooter fingers were pointed at the college from which he was expelled for not having recognized and treated his mental health issues. Questions were and continue to be asked about how someone, obviously (in hindsight) deranged, had slipped through the cracks, was left untreated, and was allowed to purchase a handgun.

So, was it lax gun control, extreme political rhetoric, or a poor system of mental health identification and care? It’s all of the above, in my opinion. All need fixing. Fingers usually tend to point away from oneself; it’s time for certain parties to start accepting some of the blame and stepping back to see what needs to change.

The long ride

I mentioned previously my strange interest in long-distance motorcycle riding and my plans to eventually complete a 1500 mile ride in less than 24 hours. Well, the day has come. I just got home yesterday from riding from Philly to Chattanooga and back, just a bit over 1500 miles, in 22.5 hours.

Needless to say, I didn’t stay up ’til midnight on New Year’s Eve to watch the ball drop.

I earned my first Iron Butt Association certificate, 1000 miles in 24 hours, about five years ago. I’ve since ridden a few other rides of that length, but have never managed the next one up, the dreaded 1500 miles in 24 hours.

I’ve made lots of plans over the years to do this but obviously things always fell through — life gets in the way, you know. This year I promised myself that I’d do it, but throughout the year life kept getting in the way, again and again. Finally a month ago, with the continued warm weather here in the Philadelphia area I realized that the winter holiday break would be an ideal time to do the ride; I’ve got a week and a half off from work (my company has a “use it or lose it” vacation hours policy), so I’d have the time and be well rested. But would the weather hold up?

Obviously a southern route would be appropriate for this time of year. I initially planned a circular route starting in the west Philly suburbs where I live across the Penn Pike to Harrisburg, then south on I-81 to Chattanooga, then to Atlanta before turning north and back home via I-85 and I-95. That would give me 1600+ miles — an adequate margin of error that I could complete in just over 24 hours. But after driving the 95/85 route during the Turkey Day holiday to visit family in North Carolina I decided that wouldn’t be a great idea; just too much traffic though the DC area. But if I did out-and-back to Chattanooga, or more specifically a point just south of there across the Georgia border, I’d have 1514 miles. Close enough to the 1500 mile requirement, but no room for error. I checked on three different online maps just to make sure I got the mileage right; they all said the same thing.

I didn’t make the final decision to go until a couple days ago. The east coast Christmas blizzard, which the press was calling “Snowmageddon”, initially canceled my plans, but after the storm pulled out I saw that the snow had hit mostly along the coast, while my route would be inland, and as long as the roads were clear and the temperatures okay then I was set. The forecast looked good.

So on the day before New Year’s Eve I hit the road right after an early lunch. I had just barely started when I hit a problem: the gas station receipt used to certify the start of the ride had the wrong time; their clock was a half hour early. That meant that I would absolutely have to return to this same station on my return so I could compare start and end times. (But what if they fixed their clock in the meantime?) This shouldn’t be a problem, really, but just another restriction, and I had wanted to keep things as simple as possible.

Next problem: I hate I-81. Oh, the road itself is fine, it’s just the traffic on this mostly two-lane highway. Specifically the trucks. Way too many. And the huge number of cars with Florida plates slowly driven by, well, older people. In the left lane. And the trucks in the left lane. Taking forever to pass. And the numerous other members of the Left Lane Owners Club (LLOC). In the left lane. Refusing to budge. So, as the saying goes: “adopt, adapt, and improve” and start aggressively passing in the right lane where there are fewer vehicles.

I lost probably an hour to the traffic. Despite my keeping my every-200-miles gas stops short and quick, and with only one short meal stop, I didn’t arrive at my turnaround point just across the Georgia border until an hour after originally planned. There wasn’t any time to celebrate, and I look pretty stupid doing the happy dance anyway, so I just climbed on the bike and headed back north.

It had gotten dark at about 5:00pm, only halfway down Virginia, and it was now past eleven. And getting cold. In Tennessee the temperature wasn’t too bad; the overnight high in the mid 30′s was the same as the daily high elsewhere, and with wearing multiple layers including an electrically heated Gerbing jacket, and my R1150RT’s heated grips I was quite comfortable — so far. But once I started heading north I started to get cold. Lesson learned: next time get electric socks. My toes were starting to complain badly.

The ride was going smoothly. Past midnight the traffic started dying down, so I was able to increase speed to make up for some lost time. But the further north I went the colder I got. While the Gerbing jacket was previously capable of keeping me warm it was now starting to lag. Was something wrong with it? But when lifting my visor to push my glasses up I realized: It’s pretty damn cold out there! And it was getting worse. The temperature was in the high 20′s, but the wind chill was at a brisk highway speed. I was far from thinking about quitting, but I needed to keep an eye (or toes) on the situation; without enough heat I could be in trouble. I’ve experienced hypothermia before and know the signs, so promised myself that once I started shivering I was going to quit. It never got that bad, but was quite uncomfortable.

Late in the night, or rather early in the morning, the Mountain Dew from the previous gas stop was wearing off, and I needed the sunlight to keep me awake. I was thinking that the sun would come up by 6:30 or so, but it didn’t happen until almost 7:30 when I hit the northern border of Virginia. But here’s an alternative to caffeine to consider: adrenaline. Specifically, the adrenaline that results from a trucker very nearing running you off the road by swerving into your lane without signaling to pass another vehicle. You can bet that he got the finger — and I was now fully awake.

The last few hours were just endurance. The ride was pretty uneventful; just a lot of miles. Throughout the night with the traffic thinned out I could make good time. I just needed to survive the cold, the boredom, and the aching shoulders, neck, elbows, and the cramped right hand.

But I made it home, safe and sound. I finished the ride of over 1500 miles in 22.5 hours including stopping for gas, food, and restrooms. I can check it off my list and have something to brag about when I go back to work on Monday. I’ve earned a certificate from the Iron Butt Association, the everlasting admiration of all of my fans, and questions about my sanity from my detractors — you know who you are.

Happy Holidays…

… or is that Merry Christmas? It seems that a lot of people are getting worked up lately over which is correct, the greeting related to the “original” meaning of the holiday or the more inclusive one.

Christmas itself as a celebrated, public, and Christian holiday doesn’t really go back very far — just to Victorian times, really. Of course Christians have observed the anniversary of their god’s birth in human form before then, but as a public celebration and holiday it’s not very old. And of all of the aspects of the pubic celebration that we have today — the tree, holly, yule log, egg nog, Santa Claus with elves and reindeer — only the nativity scene, really, is Christian. Everything else was co-opted by the Christian missionaries from the northern European pagans they were trying to convert. The winter solstice celebration is common to nearly all cultures, worldwide, but with different names. However it came about, people celebrate this time of year for different reasons and in different ways.

However you prefer to celebrate I send to you my appropriate best wishes. Whether you are the “keep Christ in Christmas” type or prefer “keep the Druids in the winter solstice celebration”, whether you go with the more modern pop culture Festivus (… for the rest of us) or prefer to just blow the whole thing off all together, I wish you the best of whatever it is that you want to celebrate. Remember your families and loved ones, remember to be decent towards your fellow humans (and animals), and strive to make the world a little bit better for everyone.

Riding all winter

The motorcycle is put away for the winter… or is it? The first couple of years that I rode I faithfully went through the steps to bundle up the bike for the cold weather: changing the oil, filling the tank with gas and adding a fuel stabilizer, plugging all the holes such as the exhaust to prevent moisture entering, putting the battery on a trickle charger. This isn’t just to protect the bike from cold weather, but more so to prepare for long-term storage. Moisture builds in bad places, gas goes bad, batteries discharge, and used oil act corrosively on the inside of the engine. To prevent all this you have to prep the bike.

But then there are inevitably a few warm days in the middle of the winter that would be perfect for riding, but I don’t want to get the bike out because I’d have to re-do all of the winterizing again. So a few winters ago I decided that instead of winterizing the bike I would treat it as if I were riding regularly. A regularly ridden bike doesn’t need to be prepped for storage, as a warm engine burns off any accumulated moisture, the battery is charged, and aging gas is used up. Admittedly those sunny riding days are few and far between during the winter, so when I can’t ride I go out to the garage and run the engine for twenty minutes every week or so. That’s probably not a perfect solution, but certainly better than letting the bike sit.

The better solution, of course, is to ride the bike. Admittedly this is a bit foolish when there’s snow or ice on the road, but for how many days during the winter is this actually the case?

An issue, of course, is the salt and sand that are spread on the roads for every storm. These can be incredibly dangerous in corners, so in addition to waiting for snow and ice to melt I also have to wait a few days longer for the salt and sand to clear. And just like with a car the salt is bad for the bike, so after a longish ride where salt has accumulated on the bike a trip to the car wash is in order.

The biggest obstacle, for some people at least, is the cold.

Here’s where a little preparation solves the problem. My bike, a BMW R1150RT, has good wind protection and heated grips. I know of some riders who have added a heated seat as well. I have an electrically heated jacket liner that does a great job, but some cold-blooded people might also want the electric pants, gloves, and socks that are available. A couple layers of clothing under my riding pants, some thick socks under my boots, and some layers (including the electric) under my jacket and I’m good to go. My head never gets cold – have you noticed that the Styrofoam liner in a helmet makes it insulated just like an ice chest? – but a scarf is a good idea when it gets below freezing. I’m pretty warm blooded, though, so don’t need to bundle up much in the cold.

I’ve ridden in temperatures as low as 20 degrees F, and was perfectly comfortable other than feeling a bit immobilized by the Michelin Man worthy layers. I suppose that I could go colder than that; perhaps I’ll give it a try this winter just to say so.

Update [2 January 2011]: I forgot to mention some amusing incidents from previous years:

I went out to the garage to run the motorcycle like I do every week or so. After running them for a few minutes I noticed a bunch of acorns on the floor that I hadn’t noticed before, so swept them outside. Then a couple minutes there were a few more. WTF!? Am I senile already? So I kicked those out the door too. Then I happened to be looking back as I revved up the BMW, and saw a shower of acorns flying through the air. Mice had filled the muffler with acorns!

Something similar had happened the year before when I had a bunch of dried corn stored in the garage to supplement the wood pellets in the pellet stove. When I took the bike in for service in the spring the mechanic told me that the airbox was filled with corn. Mice hoard winter food by hiding it in crevices and other tiny dark places, and the motorcycle had a bunch of places perfect for hiding winter supplies.

And finally, later in the spring when firing up the bike a mama mouse, with three or four babies hanging from her teats, dropped out of the bike and scurried off. The bike is just full of hiding places!

So Many Books; So Little Time

It’s nearing the end of the year, and while there’s still a lot of reading time left to go, especially over the holiday break, I thought it would be interesting to list the books that I’ve read during the year. I’ve tried this in years past, but I’ve usually not hung on to the list longer than it took to compile, glance at, and say “Wow!”. While I’m pretty much constantly reading, it’s only when I go back at the end of some period of time and make a list that I realize how much I’ve read.

I should refer, of course, to Art Gunfunkel of “Simon and…” fame who has been doing this for over 40 years, and has published his list on the web. His list is impressive mostly because he’s been keeping his list for so long, but the breadth of his reading is pretty impressive as well.

If I had kept every book that I’d ever read (I don’t borrow from libraries; I buy them) they’d be stacked everywhere. Instead, every few years I thin them down. When I moved to Ithaca a few years ago I immediately dropped off a couple hundred at the local book sale, which led to my volunteering at the sale for the five years I lived there. Every time I move I dread boxing up the books, carrying the heavy boxes, and reshelving later, but it seems that more often than not shortly after I get rid of a book I’m looking for it again; there’s more than a few books that I’ve bought multiple copies of because of this. I haven’t counted lately, but I think that I have somewhere over a thousand books on my shelves.

Some years I read more than others, but generally when I’ve made these lists there’s been around 40 to 50 books for the year. This has been going on for a very long time; I remember that in sixth grade I won a reading contest sponsored by the school librarian by reading something like 350 books during the school year. Of course those books were a bit thinner than the ones I read now, but reading two books a day for the entire school year is pretty good.

Every once in a while I get into reading fiction for a while, but most of the books in my library are non fiction. I read a lot of history, some literature, science, travel, essays and biographies. It’s fun to see, on these annual lists, what topics were interesting to me during the year. This year, I think, I’ve overdosed on humanism/skepticism. Next year it will turn into something else. We’ll just have to see how it develops.

So, roughly in the order of reading, here’s my list for 2010:

• Death from the Skies: The Science Behind the End of the World — Plait
• Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed — Plait
• Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare — Shapiro
• Moon Fire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 — Mailer
• Labels — Waugh
• Fad and Fallacies in the Name of Science — Gardner
• Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World — Fraunfelder
• On Writing — Borges
• On Mysticism — Borges
• On Argentina — Borges
• Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe — Epstein
• Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World — Cahill
• Complete Sherlock Holmes (2 Vol) — Doyle
• The Demon-Haunted World — Sagan
• The Varieties of Scientific Experience — Sagan
• Remote People — Waugh
• The Odyssey — Homer, trans. Fagles (Note: As my favourite book I tend to read this every year in one or another translation)
• The Imperfectionists — Rachman
• Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory — Macintyre
• Bluebeard — Vonnegut
• Hocus Pocus — Vonnegut
• The Lost Books of the Odyssey — Mason
• God is Not Great — Hitchens
• Breaking the Spell — Dennett
• Ninety-Two Days — Waugh
• Hitch 22 — Hitchens
• Love, Poverty, and War — Hitchens
• When You Were Engulfed in Flames — Sedaris
• Thomas Jefferson — Hitchens
• God: The Failed Hypothesis — Stenger
• Galapagos — Vonnegut
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater — Vonnegut
• The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas — Harvie, Meyers
• The Greatest Show on Earth — Dawkins
• The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non Believer — Hitchens

Then, of course, I also read Time magazine and the New Yorker every week, and a couple of motorcycle magazines every month. The New York Times whenever C. buys a copy. Magazines on airplanes. Papers and journal articles for my job. Plus of course the books I started but got bored with  and set aside, or will have to take a bit more time to complete. That’s a lot of reading for the year.

What’s wrong here?

The WikiLeaks thing is boiling over. Assange is in jail awaiting extradition to Sweden on rape charges, and his supporters are attacking anyone who won’t support him. Anonymous hackers are trying to shut down the web sites of any and all companies (MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Amazon) who have made the decision that they will not support WikiLeak’s activities.

But why shouldn’t a company choose whether or not to do business with a another company? If the company decides that they don’t want to participate in or cooperate with a particular activity, for whatever reason, they have a right to end the relationship. That’s their right. Some of these companies have quoted various company policies related to illegal activities or unauthorized use of content, etc. but in the end it’s a simple business decision: they don’t want to support a particular activity by providing it with business services.

And for this the hackers are upset. “How dare they not support an activity that I feel strongly about. I’m going to retaliate.” Taking down a company’s web site is pretty much the equivalent, as one person quoted in an CNN article suggests, of protesting in front of a business building not allowing employees to enter.

It’s a bit arrogant to suggest that every business must do things *my way* and support *my* favorite activity. But to do it anonymously while all the while proclaiming that you want “freedom of any and all information” is the height of hypocrisy. As quoted in CNN:

Anonymous Operations members told CNN Thursday their goal was “freedom of information. Any and all information.”

This should win the prize for quote of the year. Can you see what’s wrong here?

[Update: Apparently xkcd agrees with me.]

 

Where Can I Take a Leak?

In the news lately has been a lot of discussion about WikiLeaks and publication of top secret US government documents. Surprisingly a lot of the media coverage has been somewhat positive, probably because the media companies consider WikiLeaks to be an extension of their activities — and a major source of juicy content for their discussion.

I have mixed feelings. While I certainly believe in openness and transparency in government, and applaud President Obama’s executive order early in his administration to make government more transparent, that isn’t the same thing as divulging secrets. While not everything marked as secret or top secret probably needs to be, as the recent Time magazine article points out, there is still need for secrets. Governments and corporations, even individuals, have the need to keep some aspects of their operations private — or secret, if you prefer — only announcing the results when there are results to be announced. In a totally open society not even individuals would have any privacy; the conversations between spouses would be shouted from the housetops, as it were. Do we really want that?

I was pleased, however, to see the summary of the State Department cables revealing the workings of our diplomats with other countries. Yes, there were a few things that may be personally embarrassing to a few people, such as a certain diplomat’s personal opinion of a certain prince, but by-and-large there were no surprises. This is how diplomacy is conducted, and the U.S. seems to be conducting itself well and trying to do the right thing. But mixed in with personal observations are instructions for highly delicate negotiations, secrets revealed that could damage fragile relationships years in the making, all things that could lead to war if taken the wrong way. The State Department is now forced into damage control mode, taking them away from much more useful things.

So, Mr. Assange: where are the cables from other countries such North Korea, China, Russia, or Iran? Or do you only seek to embarrass the U.S.?

The goal of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is to make all organizations, governments, etc. perfectly transparent by revealing their secrets. But that philosophy apparently doesn’t apply to himself or to his own organization; he has refused to reveal how WikiLeaks is funded and operates, who is employed or otherwise involved, and cloaks himself in a great deal of personal secrecy. He is a hypocrite.

He also seems to feel that he is above the law, releasing documents that do not belong to him or to the people who have given him the documents. And if the Swedish allegations of sexual coercion and rape are found to be true he would be shown even more as someone who feels that the laws of society do not apply to him. (But, c’mon: Interpol putting him on their Most Wanted list for rape allegations? Really?)

He shown a great deal of irresponsible behaviour, releasing documents that contain names of people who could now face retributive actions — “Death to the Iraqis who support the U.S.!” His reply to this is that it is essentially none of his concern, or that those people may be collateral damage. (But he is now in hiding, apparently not willing to become collateral damage himself.)

While this irresponsible, glory-hogging hypocrite may be beyond legal action by the U.S. because of his foreign citizenship, the same does not apply to Pvt. Manning who gave him the documents. I suspect, and hope, that he will be charged with espionage and treason. And the U.S. security apparatus that allowed an Army private to have access to all of these documents needs to be fixed.

While there has been some criticism from blogging community of Amazon, Yahoo, and PayPal for not wanting to support WikiLeaks’ activities through the provision of commercial internet infrastructure services, I think that they’re doing the right thing.

Openness and transparency is one thing, but irresponsible, illegal activities are another.