idiots. in the news. this monkey house.

yes, but how is his therapy going?

On court-sanctioned liberty from prison, a convicted rapist in Switzerland killed the therapist who was accompanying him to reintegration therapy, fled the country, and was eventually captured by German police just across the Polish border a few days later.

Let’s see where the Swiss court system could have possibly gone wrong, and play “spot the error”:

  1. A 39-year-old man close to his physical prime, with a history of several violent rape offenses, gets to leave the prison for court-approved therapy.
  2. The therapist they assign to him is a young, attractive female.
  3. The rehabilitation therapy sessions take place at an equestrian center, to which the young, pretty therapist drives the offender without any police escort or other chaperone.
  4. On the way to the equestrian center, they stop at a knife store, where the convicted rapist has been cleared to purchase a hoof scraper knife, to be used for care of his therapy horse.
  5. Instead of a knife suitable for hoof-scraping, the violent rapist purchases a knife better suited for cutting and stabbing.
  6. They never arrive at the equestrian center, and the body of the therapist is found a short time later near Geneva, her throat cut.

Sending a known violent rapist out for reintegration therapy with only a pretty female therapist and then allowing him to purchase knives? Holy shit, Switzerland. I grew up in Germany, so I know a lot of “judicial offender mollycoddling” stories, but this one takes the cake.

How do they treat alcoholics there? Letting them drive to their therapy sessions in a car where “Rehab” plays on repeat, then allowing them to stop at the liquor store (“…but remember, only buy a bottle opener!”), and having them escorted by a giant anthropomorphic martini glass?

in the news. technology. this monkey house. travel.

at least we didn’t fit naugahyde upholstery to the thing.

So Voyager 1 is the first man-made object to officially leave the solar system and travel into interstellar space.

Anyone else bothered by the fact that we sent a thing into space that contains a map to its origin planet and an open invitation?

“Hi, we’re a barely space-faring civilization that you could probably conquer and subjugate with your equivalent of a Boy Scout troop! Here’s a map to our home planet. Stop by anytime!”

Of course, the biggest issue is that we sent out Voyager 1 with an LP on board. We are intergalactic hipster scum.

“These are humpback whale sounds. You’ve probably never heard of them.” <derisive snort by Kurt Waldheim>

idiots. in the news.

i’m all out of weiner jokes, and so is new york city.

This just in: Carlos Danger will not be the mayor of New York City.

I doubt it’s going to keep him from trying to shoulder his way back to the public trough in the future. People like Weiner or Eliot Spitzer don’t really have any other qualifications or employment prospects. I mean, would you hire a guy whose judgment gland is so obviously defective or missing?

things that go boom.

the most noble use for cowhide.

Here are the two main carry rigs I use to comfortably schlep around the Beretta M9 (42oz. loaded weight) and two spare magazines (7.5oz. each):

022

Bianchi #3S “Pistol Pocket”

023

Gould & Goodrich “Gold Line” horizontal shoulder holster

Two holsters, both alike in dign…you know what? No. The belt holster is fine as far as reputation goes, but the shoulder rig has no dignity. Let your gun-savvy friends spot you with a shoulder holster, and you’ll have to endure a lot of “Miami Vice” or “Die Hard” jokes.

Let’s go through the advantages and disadvantages of each holster:

Inside-the-waistband belt holster

Pros:

–Comfortable

–Requires only a light cover garment to conceal

–Can be removed from the belt without having to take the cover garment off

–Fast draw

–Easy one-handed reholstering

Cons:

–Clunks into chairs when seated

–Difficult to access in a sitting position

–Slow draw when wearing multiple layers of cold-weather clothes

–May print when bending over or when the cover garment rides up

 

Shoulder holster

Pros:

–Easy access while seated

–Comfortable; distributes gun weight across both shoulders

–Keeps gun and spare ammo together in a grab & go package

–Doesn’t require a sturdy belt

–Doesn’t print to the rear when bending over

Cons:

–Requires substantial cover garment (an untucked t-shirt won’t cut it)

–Slow draw

–Muzzle safety on the draw (muzzle line crosses own arm if it’s not kept out of the way; gun points at stuff behind the wearer)

–Almost impossible to reholster with one hand

–Presents the firearm butt-forward; potential vulnerability to a gun grab by an assailant (see also: slow draw)

–Cannot be taken off without removing the covering garment first

 

So which one is the better holster of the two? The answer is a resounding “it depends”.

Today here in Upper Cryogenica, it’s 92 degrees outside. I would not be able to carry that shoulder rig very well. I could put on an untucked short-sleeved shirt over the t-shirt and shoulder rig, but that a.) looks goofy and b.) feels uncomfortable. The Bianchi IWB holster, on the other hand, tucks that Beretta away under an untucked t-shirt, and you won’t be able to tell it’s there unless you have super observation skills or give me a pat-down. In warm to moderate weather, doing regular everyday stuff just walking around, the IWB holster is the better holster of the two.

In January, it will be anywhere from twenty to minus twenty degrees outside, and I’ll be wearing an undershirt, a button-down shirt, a fleece shirt or vest on top, and possibly even a heavy jacket. Getting to that Beretta in the IWB holster will require unzipping the outer garment and digging through two more layers of clothing, or trying to yank everything up over the holster, full pockets and all. The shoulder rig, on the other hand, makes the gun quickly accessible merely by unzipping the jacket zipper halfway (or leaving it that way to begin with.) In cold to severe weather that requires heavier clothing, or doing stuff that requires sitting down or driving a lot, the shoulder holster is the better of the two.

The gun’s a tool, but so is the holster, and that’s why it’s smart to have a toolbox of various holsters for various circumstances. The tactical crowd will tell you that you should always wear your gun at your hip because it conceals best that way and puts it in the same position all the time, but life isn’t a shoothouse, and only the most hardcore dedicated operator types can tailor their clothing and lifestyle around just one carry method. I’m not one of those, so I tailor the carry method to my lifestyle on the fly.

(One thing I will not compromise on, however, is the color-matching. Black holster, black belt, black shoes. Brown holster, brown leather on the rest of the body as well. There’s just no excuse for being unfashionable.)

in the news. this monkey house.

say it! say “under god”!

Okay, friends and neighbors. Let’s talk a bit about the Pledge of Allegiance.

There’s another court challenge regarding the Pledge in the state of Massachusetts right now. Some atheist parents are suing the state over the recital of the Pledge in public school every morning because it contains the words “under God”, which they consider an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. Naturally, as happens every time when a court case regarding the religious component of the Pledge comes up, the comments of the “Under God” supporters take two very predictable thrusts:

“If those atheists don’t like saying ‘under God’, maybe they should just move somewhere else, because something something CHRISTIAN NATION.”

“The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion! It also says ‘…nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof!’”

Every single time, the comments are a variation of those two arguments. And every time, it makes me profoundly sad and upset that so many people who otherwise proclaim their love of freedom and constitutional limits on government are not only clueless about the implications of the Establishment clause, but actively in favor of government requiring the recitation of religious affirmations (as long as it’s the majority religion, of course.)

The problem with the Pledge as it is challenged isn’t that it contains the words “under God”. The problem is that the recitation is part of the public school curriculum—in all practicality a mandatory recitation—and that public school teachers, paid employees of the government, are required to lead it. They are the agents of the same state whose scope of delegated powers is limited by the Constitution. The State is not allowed to prevent students from exercising their own religion as long as it does not interfere with school business. (And don’t start the “ZOMG they kicked God out of school” tripe unless you want me to challenge you to provide a single documented incident where public school students aren’t allowed to carry Bibles in their backpack to read in their own time, or to form prayer clubs with other like-minded students.) The flip side of that coin is that the State also cannot compel the students to perform religious observances of any kind. And when you make the recitation of an oath with a religious component mandatory, you violate the religious rights of the students who do not share that faith.

(The objection that “nobody HAS to recite the Pledge” is irrelevant because it disregards that the State doesn’t even have the right to ask the student to choose when it comes to religious observances. And religious exercise must always be an opt-in rather than an opt-out.)

“But wait!” you say. “If the vast majority of students believes in God, shouldn’t the majority get to choose whether the class professes that we’re one nation under Him? Why should the irreligious minority hold the majority hostage when it comes to faith?”

The First Amendment doesn’t protect popular speech because popular speech doesn’t need a Bill of Rights to protect it. And it doesn’t protect the religious rights of just the religious majority. It protects the rights of the outliers, the oddballs, the religious minorities that would otherwise get overridden by the bigger religious factions on the block. When it comes to the Bill of Rights, majority preference is not only irrelevant, but the opposition of majority weight is the very reason for its existence. Our Founding Fathers knew from history that without strong minority protections of basic rights, fifty-one percent of the population would be able to vote the rights of the other forty-nine percent away. That’s why in our system of constitutionally limited government, we get to decide all kinds of things by majority vote, but not any of the basic rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In other words, you and your street can’t gang up on that weird dude at the end of the block and decide whether he has the right to attend the church he goes to, or whether he has the right to not go to church at all.

This is quite simply not an infringement on your right to practice your own religion, which ends when it touches on someone else’s religious rights. Your religious rights do not give you the ability to use the state to make my children acknowledge the existence and supremacy of your god. You cannot use the state for that purpose even if nobody in the room objects because they all share your faith.

This is not a matter of majority will. It’s not a matter of degree. It’s a matter of principle—the principle that it’s none of the government’s stinkin’ business if you pray, how you pray, to whom you pray, or what the content of your prayer is.

Would it be OK for the local Muslim community to require the school to make the kids recite “Allah is Greatest” every morning? What if they allow you to opt out? No? (I can just imagine the heads exploding all over the country if anyone seriously suggested such a thing—the Muslims asking for the right that the Christian majority has claimed for itself.) Well, if they don’t have that right—and the Bill of Rights says they do not—then you don’t have the right to have the teachers ask my kids to profess that there is a God, and that this nation is subject to Him.

And yes, freedom of religion automatically means freedom from religion, no matter what those bumper stickers say. If you have the right to be a Christian, it follows that you have the right to not be a Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, pagan, and so on. And whether the religious majority likes it or not, it means that you have the right to not be religious at all.

in the news. masters and servants.

well, I’m glad it won’t be war-war.

Secretary of State Lurch says that the administration isn’t asking Congress for permission to go to war in Syria because bombing Syria wouldn’t be “war in the classic sense”. You know, more of a Diet War. War Light. New War. Less filling than the old kind.

Trying to move goalposts by changing definitions—that’s pretty much the only thing both parties excel at when they get their hands on the Purple Robes of Power. That’s why everything is terrorism now, even stuff like raising concerns about water quality. (And before you Conservatives go all, “Well, that’s Liberals for you, nyuk nyuk,” remember that you guys put all those nifty tools in the shed at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. after 9/11, ready for the next guy to use.)

War in the classic sense. It boggles the mind that anyone would think this class of people fit to run anything more complex and important than a porta-potty at the county fair.

aminals. castle frostbite. new hampshah.

summer’s end.

We’ve had a rainy, buggy summer here in Upper Cryogenica, and I am greatly looking forward to the fall, which is my favorite season.

How buggy has it been up here, you ask? Buggy enough to support the breeding of this truly monstrous orb weaver, who is in residence next to the Castle’s main portcullis (behind the split to spare you arachnophobes):

Read More “summer’s end.”

books. shameless self-promotion. writing.

terms of enlistment, the paperback.

My publisher, 47North, is going to release a new edition of Terms of Enlistment at the same time they publish the sequel, Lines of Departure. It will get a new shiny cover to match the second book, and it will be available in dead tree format as well. The paperback version is available for pre-order now, for those of you who have been looking to get your hands on it:

http://www.amazon.com/Terms-of-Enlistment-ebook/dp/B00CIXX144/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377186149&sr=8-1&keywords=terms+of+enlistment

I know it’s a bit of a wait, but at least it will be out on cellulose, and for much less than I would have had to charge for a self-published print run via Lulu.com or what have you.

aminals. castle frostbite. writing.

and they wear tiny sunglasses and earpieces.

Lawn maintenance and landscaping: not my favorite tasks in the whole world. They do, however, provide a handy excuse for unsheathing a machete.

Funny thing about the chickens: as skittish as they are when it comes to unfamiliar sights and noises, they don’t mind the lawnmower at all. They’ll graze right in front of it and will only grudgingly move out of the way when the mower is close enough to almost bump them. Moreover, they’ve learned that the mower chases off bugs (and shreds the ones that don’t get out of the way in time), so they actually follow me around when I mow to catch the refugees and broken bugs. It’s like having my own little phalanx of poultry Secret Service agents around me when I mow the front yard.

Someone requested an update on the state of the novella, so here it is: it ain’t done yet. I had to spend most of my writing time the last few weeks on edits for Book #2, and then the kids were home from camp and we went off and did some family things together. I still intend to finish and release the novella in August, but depending on how much (or little) editing it needs, it may be September before it’s in sellable shape. I’m not going to finish something and then upload it to the Kindle store ten minutes later because OMG THE MONIEZ—there are way too many first drafts masquerading as finished product out there as it is. But rest assured that a.) it will be out soon, and b.) it will not suck.

family. new hampshah. parenting.

the considerable awesomeness of rainbows.

Two weeks until school starts again. My weirdo offspring are EXCITED about the start of school. I am planning to have their DNA tested next week.

We went to Canobie Lake last week. It's an amusement park in southern NH–not quite Six Flags, but pretty decent, and manageable in one day unlike, say, the Rat Kingdom in Orlando. I dropped $120 on admission for two adults and two kids. Then I took out another $100 in cash for food and such (“just in case”), and ended up spending every last dime of it. EAT YOUR TEN-DOLLAR NACHOS AND CHEESE FRIES, KIDS.

But hey, it was fun. The kids went on rides with their friends for five hours straight, and at the end of the day they were so amped they practically hummed like overwound springs.

Rainbows are Kind Of A Big Deal when you're six.