Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Senator Joe Biden’s DNC Speach:

PART 1: [Summary: McCain rocks!]

You know, John McCain is my friend. And I know you hear that phrase used all the time in politics. I mean it. John McCain is my friend. We’ve traveled the world together. It’s a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism demonstrated by John still amazes me.

PART 2: [Summary: McCain sucks!]

America cannot afford four more years of this failure. And now, now, despite being complicit in this catastrophic foreign policy, John McCain says Barack Obama — Barack Obama is not ready to protect our national security.Now, let me ask you this: Whose judgment do you trust?

Should you trust the judgment of John McCain, …

John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right.

Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he rejected — when he rejected talking with Iran and then asked, “What is there to talk about?” Or Barack Obama, who said, “We must talk and make clear to Iran that it must change”? …

Again and again, John McCain has been wrong, and Barack Obama is right.

Should we trust John McCain’s judgment when he says — when he says we can’t have no timelines to draw down our troops from Iraq, that we must stay indefinitely? Or should we listen to Barack Obama, who says shift the responsibility to the Iraqis and set a time to bring our combat troops home?

Now, after six long years, the administration and the Iraqi government are on the verge of setting a date to bring our troops home. John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right.

Again — again and again, on the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama has been proven right.

If you’re not from Utah you’re probably not aware of the cat fight that is occurring here between overzealous NASMs, that is, Nearly-Affluent, Stay-at-home Moms (and a few Dads, too.) I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain the American educational system. You see, for a long time there were two types of kids, the regular kids and the rich kids. Regular kids go to public schools where they get beaten up, experiment with drugs and, if they’re lucky, learn stuff. Rich kids (or, rather the children of rich parents), go to stuffy-sounding “prep” schools with names like The Waterford or the Milton Academy. Everybody at these schools is good looking, wears plaid uniforms and gets to go to Ivy League colleges. That’s how it’s always been.

That is, until now. Now there emerges the almost-rich kid. These are children of nearly-affluent, upper-middle class families who drive SUVs, own timeshares on houseboats and over-decorate their houses with detritus found at Thanksgiving Point shops. These families, attempting to keep up with the rich Joneses, are also in a lot of debt. Consequently, these families are becoming increasingly raving-mad they can’t enjoy all the privileges rich families enjoy. Topping the list of coveted items is private school education. There is something about the prospect of kids learning science from someone who graduated in a science-related field that fills the hearts of NASMs with hopeful rage. Enough rage that swarms of them have gathered with their proposal of vouchers.

Basically a voucher is a coupon good toward 3k off a private school education if you pull your kid from public education. Now you can get the expensive education without paying as much for it!!! Television ads are currently running which feature an annoyingly happy couple explaining the economics of vouchers with stacks of Oreo cookies. That’s all rather ironic, given the credit-card induced economic depression these NASMs are in. (You don’t see rich moms picketing for vouchers…) NASMs have even begun quoting scripture from the Book of Mormon to support their cause (esp. 3 nephi 6:12.) Seriously people.

Considerations:

1- Depending on teachers for better education is short-sighted. In college many classes are taught by grad students anyway. It’s better if you learn to learn on your own (in spite of bad teachers.)

2- Pulling students from public schools and subsidizing their entry into private schools is bad because it hurts public schools. We need to improve public schools, and that doesn’t happen by pulling the smart students or the parents who care from the schools.

3- Quoting scripture to support your cause-de-jour is dumb and offensive. Knock it off. Shakespeare, in the Merchant of Venice, reminds us that “The devil can quote scripture for his purpose.”

4- Trying to save money while sending your kids to private school is misguided. If you’re already stretched thin, the cost of the requisite Porsche and cocaine alone will bankrupt you!

I don’t hate a lot of people. Still, there are a few vocal, dishonest people who are highly repulsive. Two such people are Hillary Clinton and Rocky Anderson. I think Rocky Anderson is a wild moron, and find him extremely irritating. Tonight he argued with Sean Hannity at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall.

• 1- He is a city mayor. By definition, his jurisdiction ends at city limits. It is neither his job nor his mandate to tour the country (on our dime) and demand the president’s impeachment or babble about global warming. Rocky– return to Salt Lake and do your job. Like Hannity said, Rocky is a “part-time mayor and full-time protester.”
• 2- He is far more concerned with the rights of enemy combatants than the security of citizens of the US.
• 3- It was Abraham Lincoln who suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus. I suppose Rocky would have impeached ‘ol Abe as well.
• 4- He drones on spewing complaints without offering any productive solutions.
• 5- He forgets that the United States was attacked first, and so he calls the Iraq War “a war of aggression.”
• 6- He forgets that Saddam Hussein (a tyrant and oppressive, murderous dictator) tortured and killed tens of thousands of his citizens (using chemical weapons.) Should the US have done nothing?!?
• 7- He forgets that the US was not alone in the belief that Iraq possessed WMD.
• 8- He argues with retrospective information as if that knowledge were available at the time.
• 9- He conveniently forgets that the American Congress (republicans AND democrats) approved the “illegal” war.
• 10- He supports abortion and advocates marrying homosexuals. He marches and colludes with illegal aliens who blatantly flaunt our immigration laws. On which basis does Rocky have to declare anything the president does immoral or illegal?

[Applause]
Thank you very much, President Hinckley, university trustees, President Samuleson, Congress Cannon,BYU faculty and staff, distinguished quests, families and friends, members of the class of 2007.
[Applause]
Thank for the warm welcome here to Provo Utah, home to one of the finest universities in the United States of America.
[Applause]
I’ve enjoyed my time here today. I was pleased to meet with the First Presidency. I’ve been told it’s an honor to be in the company of this university’s chairman, a distinguished American, a recipient of the Presidential Metal of Freedom, Gordon Hinckley.
[Applause]

Continued…

My cellphone videos of the speech:

• 04-26-07_1707.3g2
• 04-26-07_1710.3g2
• 04-26-07_1711.3g2
• 04-26-07_1712.3g2

The time has come to stop supporting tribal warfare, genocide, and acts of terror. The time has come to end the manipulation and brainwashing that the corrupt diamond cartels have enacted these last eighty years. The time has come to stop buying diamonds. Completely. No diamond rings. No diamond earrings. No diamond necklaces or bracelets or watches. When we wanted to stop elephants from being poached, the world had to stop buying ivory. If we want to end the wholesale slaughter of Africans, we must stop buying diamonds. And, we must do it now. Diamonds are used by rebel forces to finance arms. Al Qaeda amassed millions of dollars by selling diamonds mined by Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone.

Please don’t tell me the lies about only some diamonds being conflict diamonds. Everyone knows that’s untrue. Blood diamonds are increasingly laundered through other countries. It’s no coincidence that countries formerly classified as mineral-poor have “discovered” growing numbers of diamonds since the world became aware of conflict diamonds. The horror must stop. And Americans, as consumers of 75% of the world’s diamonds annually, can stop it. Utah, in particular, owing to it’s high marriage rate, purchases more than its fair share of diamonds.

We should shut down the diamond stores by refusing to buy diamonds. Those who work for jewelry stores should find other employment. No longer can Americans claim ignorance of the African plight. We can do something and it’s clear that we must act. Let’s not be derailed by attempts to enact “partial boycotts”, since diamond origins are unknowable; we must ban them all.

In a 2002 report, Liz Stanton, Center for Popular Economics Staff Economist, lists Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone. Among those ten are these few, highlighting the reality of the horrors that is the diamond industry:

• Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
  • There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.
• Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
  • Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.
• Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
  • Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 million small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.
• Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
  • More than one-half of the world’s diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

There is ongoing warfare in the Darfur province of Sudan, in Ethiopia, in Zaire and elsewhere. Fighting takes weapons and bullets and those cost money. Shutting down the world diamond market will eliminate much of their financial backing.

CLICK to SIGN THE ANTI-DIAMOND PETITION TODAY!

This boycott calls for the immediate and unconditional ban on all diamonds and diamond containing products (rings, necklaces, earrings, etc.)

We’ve all suffered through Al Gore’s mind-numbing monotone rambling as he warns us of the impending horror that awaits the CO₂ polluters in his “Inconvenient Truth.” Al’s Hollywood groupies even gave him an Oscar for his stellar performance. Who didn’t enjoy the evocative, emotional montages of stiff Al, brow furrowed, feverishly typing on his Mac laptop? Who doesn’t appreciate wild, pop science without scientific rigor?

I’ve watched the moving documentary. Al claims to have 150 years of temperature data to back his assertions. Really? 150 years? How accurate/precise were the mercury thermometers back then? Science was pretty primitive 150 years ago. That was before radio, before antibiotics, before calculators, before Einstein, before cars, before scientists declared tobacco hazardous, and WAY before the digital computer. People still believed in blood-letting, Coke had cocaine in it and the national science periodicals had an exposes on finding water with dowsing/divining rods. I contend that we have maybe 50 years of reliable (+/- 1 degree) temperature data.I know, I know, Al talks about highly reliable ice core samples with dissolved CO₂ that allow us to go back 720,000 years. Maybe. But let’s take a closer look at some of that data: noaa.gov From the abstract: “High-resolution records from Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 +/- 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations.” Let me emphasize: CO₂ increased 400-600 years AFTER the glaciers receded. I’m not saying that the absorption spectra of CO₂ doesn’t trap infrared radiation, I’m only saying that his global warming trend data might not be as straight forward and conclusive as he claims.

Has the Earth has also been getting warmer in recent years? Sure. It is part of a natural cycle? Maybe. Are humans the primary cause of the increase in temperature? Maybe not. Check this out:

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes might have a natural ‘€? and not a human-induced ‘€? cause. Mars, it appears, has also been experiencing milder temperatures in recent years. In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide ‘ice caps’ near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

Let me summarize: climatology is clearly a VERY difficult science. The national weather bureau, with their hoards of supercomputers, still cant tell me this weekend’s weather with great certainty^*. (Those pesky butterflies flapping their wings in China keep causing storms over here.) To think that Al Gore can reliably forecast the weather in TEN or TWENTY years is close to absurd. You decide. Let’s discuss.

In only slightly related news

“NASA has created two virtual flyovers of the Mars rover landing sites using 3D imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (New Scientist story here). The images were made using the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). The three-dimensional information is obtained by taking pairs of images from slightly different vantage points as the spacecraft orbits the Red Planet.

Oh and happy Ides of March

Yes, Dan, the reluctant engineer and I have spoken about global warming recently.

* I know that Climatology and meteorology aren’t the same thing. They are, however, closely related.

A dozen or so of you have already completed my Gun Control survey. Several more of you have written to complain that the survey is too long. We all know, however, that survey results aren’t very useful unless a number of the surveys are completed, so that requires your participation. We don’t want sampling size error, do we? Go ahead and fill it out, won’t you? Also, did you notice I actually listened to the feedback from the last survey we had? Instead of check yes or no, I added a range of options. I’m a good listener.

So let’s talk about bear arms and our rights. During the Anglo-Saxon period, carrying a seax (a single bladed knife) was a mark of a free man, as slaves were forbidden to possess weapons. Times have changed since then, but as free Americans, we have the right to own and carry weapons. It’s in the Bill of Rights:
The second amendment:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

You might notice that the 2nd amendment is strangely worded. It poses more questions than it answers. Q. Who does the Amendment mean by “the People”? Q. Why does the Amendment protect the right to ‘keep and bear arms’, and not protect just the right to ‘bear arms’? Q. Who or what does the Amendment mean by the “militia”? Is the militia the same thing as today’s National Guard? Q. What does “shall not be infringed” mean? Q. what does “well-regulated” mean? Q. Is the ban from infringement speaking to the federal government or the state government or both? Q. What kind of arms are citizens allowed to have? pistols? hunting rifles? shotguns? military (assault) rifles? automatic weapons?

And then there is me. Where do I stand? Though I’ve never admitted on this blog to actually owning any weapons, I have blogged about firearms a few times. Ownership aside however, as a man of science, I’m heavily swayed by appeals to logic and common sense. Studies and surveys, carefully administered, are therefore very important to me.

Enter statistics. In particular, let’s compare two countries England and Switzerland. The two represent polar ends of the gun control spectrum. England has the some of the most severe gun control laws in the world. Handguns are banned for civilians, even for sporting purposes. You must get a certificate from the police to own a shotgun or a rifle for hunting, and the certificates are difficult to obtain. In Switzerland, on the other hand, every male between the ages of 20 and 42 can be called into the military should need require. After completing a short period of active duty, they are enrolled in the national guard until age or an inability to serve ends their service obligation. During that enrollment the men are required to keep their government-issued automatic rifles and semi-automatic pistols in their homes, alongside boxes of ammunition. As well, Swiss citizens are allowed to purchase surplus combat rifles.

Here is a PDF showing crime statistics in the UK in 2004/2005. Some points of interest:

• Only 1% of violent crimes involved a firearm.
• A low percentage of homicides (11% of male victims and 5% of female victims) involved firearms. Most homicides were committed with “sharp instruments.”
• “Less than three per cent of firearm crimes resulted in a serious or fatal injury”
• “a big increase in imitation weapon offenses… “
• 40% of the violent crimes involving firearms were with pistols, even though pistols are illegal to possess.

And then there is Switzerland. Between 1998 and 2000, the entire country had only 69 Murders, which equates to a Murders (per capita) rate of 0.00921351 per 1,000 people, that despite the aforementioned 600,000 issued M-57 assault rifles. Anti-Gun Control advocates have claimed that widespread access to firearms acts as a deterrent to criminals and dramatically decreases crime. A recent study comparing serious crime in eight developed countries might help buttress that claim. Switzerland had the lowest crime of the eight in nearly every category. Check, for instance, the graph below on burglary rates.

On to another aspect: you should know that I’m concerned about a matter of delegation. If you don’t carry a weapon yourself, you’re delegating the task of protection to someone else. The police. What about in times of civil unrest or martial law or invasion? And then there is a question of who is policing the police.

Let’s not forget the University of Utah. That university believed it could institute anti-gun laws in direct contravention to state laws. ‘Cause they’re liberal and gutsy like that. The Utah Supreme court, on the other hand, predictably reminded the Utes that, as a state funded organization, they were in no position to legislate against state mandates. So, now people can carry their concealed weapons on that Salt Lake campus without fear of harassment by the unarmed mobs. On a related note, recently, while browsing at Cabelas, I might have seen Utah’s attorney General (Mark Shurtleff) in front of me in line, purchasing a pistol. Mark, of course, was the defendant named in the above referenced case concerning the University of Utah.

Further reading:

Gun Politics
Brady Act
State-by-State Overview of Gun Laws

Visit my funny gun control picture album:

Gun control is a controversial, divisive subject. Here you can let your thoughts be known. I’ve listed 22 statements. Rank each one based on how much you agree or disagree.

“So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.”

– Lawrence H. Summers, Remarks at NBER Conference (as reported on Slashdot)

That is a paragraph from a speech by the President of Harvard University. Summers tried to explain why there aren’t as many woman as men in the Science and Engineering disciplines. In order to avoid offending anyone, (who wants to be called out as a misogynist?), but in an effort at preserving intellectual honesty, he disguised his thoughts by using big words and complex sentence constructions (“unquoteables”, if you will.) I’ll translate

“the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity” translation: Women often prefer to spend more time at home with their families. Men work longer hours.

“there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude” translation: Men are simply better at math and science than women, particular in the extreme cases.

“that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination” translation: There are also lesser/supportive reasons for this, like society telling women to become nurses and society mistreating female engineers.

“I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them” translation: Please don’t stone me. I am a French, cheese-eating, surrender monkey.

So, you tell me: why aren’t there as many woman as men in Science and Engineering?

Here’s a quick political views survey I just made. Let’s see how you do. If you provide your education level, gender, city, state and zip I can plot you’all on a Google Map and segregate responses by demographics. It will be wicked fun!

Instructions: check each statement with which you agree. As soon as I get 30 or 40 responses I’ll throw up the responses.

Take the Ryan Byrd dot net Political Views Survey

If you’d like to take a stab at creating a rubric for grading the surveys that would be cool too. I’m thinking of identifying core liberal values and ancillary liberal values and assigning them corresponding weights. Then we could get a percentage of liberal for each submitter. I’d love to hear from you’all on a better way to do this, however.