February 26, 2008 on 2:45 pm | In Rifle Scopes | No Comments

Rilfe Bi-Pod

Features all precision machined parts for extra strength and density.
Fully adjustable with fold-up legs.
Tilts and pans.
Lockable legs to prevent tipping for additional stability.
Includes all the features shooters want at a great price.

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WSAZ - Bernard Smith, DL, 6-2, 220, Atlanta, Ga./Benjamin E. Mays HS Coached by Jessie Soloman at Benjamin E. Mays High School Shaw, DL, 6-1, 290, Bude, Miss./Copiah-Lincoln CC Coached by Glenn Davis at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Wesson, Miss More Shooting Supplies

Cincinnati Enquirer - For $25, I can rent a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and get 200 rounds - cheaper than cartridges alone. There’s a 20-something couple in the back, but most of my classmates are 40s and 50s, I’d guess. A man in bib overalls wants to legally carry the More Shooting Supplies

State Journal-Register - Items stolen include jewelry, ammunition and several firearms, including two Smith & Wesson 9mm semi-automatic handguns, a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver and a Smith & Wesson .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun. “We have to be each other’s neighbors More Shooting Supplies

Knoxville News Sentinel - It sounds like he was probably shooting some kind of cheap 25 ACP capgun. He needs to save up and buy himself a nice looking Colt Python, a high end 1911 or a nice Smith & Wesson N Frame. Even a single action Ruger would do a better job, from a More Shooting Supplies

Nashville Tennessean - According to police reports, witnesses claim James Pettis, of Springfield, drove up to Danny “Big Moosey” Lunsford, 31, in a gold Ford F-150 on Pepper Street in Springfield and fired four to six shots with a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver More Shooting Supplies

February 19, 2008 on 8:38 pm | In Rifle Scopes | No Comments

Harris Bipods

Versatile, sturdy, light and fast Harris Bipods. Made from high strength anodized aluminum alloy. Stressed parts are tempered spring steel. Bipods clamp to most Q.D. stud-equipped bolt action rifles and have sling attachment provision and adjustment foroff-center stud. Spring loaded folding legs are quickly adjustable for height. Black anodized finish.

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Universal Pander
The Universal Pander: There’s nothing like a presidential election to bring out the healthcare crisis. And, since the presidential primary process is stretching into a two year long spectacle, there’s been no shortage of proposals on how to fix our current system. Recently, Dennis Kucinich pointed out that his ideas are the closest thing to what the American people want:

In a CNN poll this spring, 64 percent of respondents said the government should “provide a national insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes,” and 73 percent approve of higher taxes to insure children under 18. Those results track New York Times and Gallup polls last year, in which about two-thirds of respondents said it is the federal government’s responsibility to guarantee health coverage to all Americans.

Such polls allow Kucinich to joke that, far from being in the loony left, “I’m in the center. Everyone else is to the right of me.”

Ask the American public a different question about the healthcare system, and you’ll get a different answer:

For the fifth time in six years, Harris Interactive has asked the insured public to rate their own insurance plans. Two thirds of them continue to give their plans an A or a B, with only 10% giving them a D or an F. Substantial but not overwhelming majorities continue to say that they would recommend their own health plans to family members who are basically healthy (76%) or who have a serious or chronic illness (68%).

Health insurance companies are like politicians. We dislike all but our own. We should be careful what we wish for, however, for it won’t just be our own politicians designing a nationalized health insurance plan; it will be all the others that we dislike, including politicians who believe hospital pork is a public service, that healthcare and personal autonomy are mutually exclusive, and that the right to earn a living takes second place to health insurance.

What are people really wishing for when they say they wish for a single nationalized health insurance program? Security. Our current employer-provided system means that most of us are just a pink slip away from losing our insurance coverage. It also means that, deprived of the bargaining power of large corporations and unions, the self-employed are left with fewer choices and higher premiums. Handing over the whole kit and kaboodle to the government is a seductively simple solution. But it would also be a very expensive solution.

The British are often held up as the standard to which we should aspire. But we don’t live under a British style of government. We live under a government that’s truly government of the people, by the people, for the people. And what the people want, the people get. Witness the influence of disease activism even now on disease specific government funding and treatment mandates. In England, the government only pays for colonoscopies to check for colon cancer if there are symptoms suggestive of cancer or a family history of colon cancer. In the United States, the Medicare pays for a colonoscopy every ten years for everyone over 50, regardless of symptoms or risk. So do many insurance companies., sometimes if not by choice, by mandate. In England, mammograms are only covered for women between the ages of 50 and 70, and then only every three years. In the United States, we pay for mammograms beginning at age 40, yearly, and with no upper age limit. We just don’t have the heart for rationing that they have in other countries.

A common theme in politician crafted health care schemes is that by paying for prevention we will save money, and thus be able to offer limitless healthcare services without bankrupting the country. Both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have explicitly emphasized the importance of preventive healthcare in their plans- even to the point of patient-directed mandates in the case of Edwards. But if preventive services save money and lives, then why is the United Kingdom, which offers less expansive preventive services than the United States, both healthier and cheaper? (Hint: Dead people neither spend health insurance dollars nor complain about their health.)

Don’t be fooled by the promises of health and wealth to be found in government-provided, or even mandated, health insurance coverage. It may bring you health, but it will be at a very steep price - both in money and liberty.

(Note: Next installment, a look at the Republican candidates approach to “universal coverage.”)

Genetic Prejudice
Any Excuse Will Do: Any excuse to justifying prejudice, or to stir up fear mongering of what may come:

At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The heart-disease drug BiDil is marketed exclusively to African-Americans, who seem genetically predisposed to respond to it. Jews are offered prenatal tests for genetic disorders rarely found in other ethnic groups.

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

“We are living through an era of the ascendance of biology, and we have to be very careful,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. “We will all be walking a fine line between using biology and allowing it to be abused.”

We have been living in an era of ascendant biology since Darwin. Remember eugenics? Jews have been offered prenatal testing long before the mapping of the human genome, as have African-Americans. But prenatal screening is not quite the same as the eugenics movement heyday.

So why the hyperventilating? It turns out that the Times is taking its cue from blogs commenting on studies studies like this. Well, if the blogs say that genetics justifies prejudice, it must be true! I never thought I would see the day that the New York Times took that attitude on its front pages. It must be part of their plan to join the internet age. Here’s the part that’s gotten the Times convinced that genetics is going to bring back the days of institutionalized prejudice:

There exists a publicly available gene database, The HapMap Project, that contains random samples of genetic sequences from people in China, Japan, Nigeria, and people in the United States with European ancestry. It’s now possible to search the HapMap database for genes that have been linked with intelligence in published scientific studies. In this manner, we can determine if high intelligence genes occur with greater or lesser frequency in the various races.

Now, here’s an interesting point. If even a single gene correlated with intelligence occurs with different frequencies in the different races, this alone proves that there are racial differences in intelligence. How is that? Well, the egalitarian theory holds that every race has identical intelligence. Therefore, whatever genes there are that affect intelligence, they must be distributed exactly equally in all human races. Once even a small race difference is proven, the egalitarian theory is proven false. At that point, it’s only a matter of determining which race has the higher average intelligence based on the genetic evidence.

Oh, please. Here’s a take home lesson for everyone on the science of genetics, and one that should never be forgotten - these studies are about associations of genes with traits, not the concrete coding of a trait by a given gene. Just because a locus on a chromosome can be found more often in people with schizophrenia than in the general population doesn’t mean that everyone with that genetic code in that spot will have schizophrenia, anymore than it means that every sibling of a schizophrenic will have the disease. Ditto with intelligence. Ditto, too, with cancer risks and most other traits and diseases human genome mapping is linking to genes. The essence of a man is not written into his DNA.

Here’s another important point to remember - our science is still young and uncertain:

These genomewide association studies have been able to examine interpatient differences in inherited genetic variability at an unprecedented level of resolution, thanks to the development of microarrays, or chips, capable of assessing more than 500,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a single sample. This “SNP-chip” technology capitalizes on a catalogue of common human genetic variations that is provided by the HapMap Project, which was made possible by the completion of the consensus human-genome sequence…

….The main problem with this strategy is that, because of the high cost of SNP chips, most studies are somewhat constrained in terms of the number of samples and thus have limited power to generate P values as small as 10–7. In addition, most variants identified recently have been associated with modest relative risks (e.g., 1.3 for heterozygotes and 1.6 for homozygotes), and many true associations are not likely to exceed P values as extreme as 10–7 in an initial study. On the other hand, a “statistically significant” finding in an underpowered study is more likely to be a false positive result due to chance than is such a finding in an adequately powered study, and “statistically significant” associations could be attributable to systematic bias (e.g., from confounding due to ethnic ancestry, also known as population stratification). Thus, the sine qua non for belief in any specific result from a genomewide association study is not the strength of the P value in the initial study, but the consistency and strength of the association across one or more large-scale replication studies. Robust replication should permit the identification of true positive results and the weeding out of false positive results.

In other words, take these genome studies that link intelligence and race just as about as seriously as you would take studies linking intelligence to sex, or that predict elections with brain scans.

UPDATE: Best of the Web draws an important distinction:

Note that “the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal” is quite different from the notion “that all races are equal.” The former is a moral principle, a premise about the basic dignity of every individual; the latter is an empirical presumption about group averages in measurable traits. Someone with an IQ of 80 is as human as someone with an IQ of 120; and this is so regardless of whether the average IQ of one race is different from that of another.

What worries people like those in the Times story is that racial differences in IQ or other traits seem to lend empirical support to racist theories. But those theories are qualitatively wrong, so that no empirical evidence could make them right. If all individuals are of equal dignity and worth regardless of IQ, then a group is not fundamentally superior or inferior to another group by virtue of differences in average IQ.

It seems that some very smart people mistakenly think that intelligence is a measure of fundamental worth. Maybe they’re a little too impressed with their own brilliance.

Talladega Germs
Talladega Germs: This was some overly cautious and politically foolish advice:

NASCAR fans might seem rabid, but are they actually contagious?

Getting a hepatitis shot is standard procedure for travelers to parts of Africa and Asia, but some congressional aides were instructed to get immunized before going to Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord and the racetrack in Talladega, Ala.

….Staff who organized the trips advised the NASCAR-bound aides to get a range of vaccines before attending — hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza.

Some thoughts: 1) It isn’t influenza season, so getting a flu shot now to protect you in Alabama for the weekend is useless. (But not a bad idea if you’re thinking forward to January or February 2008.) 2) The hepatitis B vaccine is a series of three shots given over six months. They won’t be getting much protection from one shot given just before the trip. Unless the staff is travelling to Alabama with the expectation of one night stands and IV drug needle sharing, the hepatitis B vaccine seems a bit superfluous. (Even for international travel, it’s only recommended if a person is expected to have contact with blood or the sex industry.) 3) If there’s been an outbreak of hepatitis A among food vendors at the race track, then that makes sense, but evidently that isn’t the case. 4) Tetanus is everywhere. Always keep your tetanus booster (which comes included with diphtheria) up to date.

In defense of Congress, the organizers say that their staffers were going to be visiting hospitals and police stations where they had the potential to be exposed to hepatitis. Maybe. But unless they were planning to subdue the criminal elements and nurse the ill themselves, they didn’t really need the shots. As it turns out, what they really needed was carpal tunnel splints:

Walker said he hadn’t recommended the immunizations, nor were they necessary. He suggested a possible health risk to them was the voluminous notes they took.

“I’m sure they needed to soak their wrists, they wrote so much,” he said.

UPDATE: More on the thinking behind the advice:

Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said he never meant to offend or scare anyone about health risks at the races. The measure was advised to provide congressional staff with the same disease protection first responders get, especially as they head out on a series of fact-finding missions around the country.

“It’s not about whether the people have shots. … Our staffs as they go forward will be going into sterile areas, they will be working in public health facilities, they will be talking to many holding facilities where criminals are being held….

“The NASCAR event is just one date, but after that they will be doing a number of things,” said Thompson, adding that the World Series and Super Bowl are two other mass gatherings that are going to be researched for readiness.

During the trip to North Carolina, staffers were to visit a medical facility with patients at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway. They were also set to inspect an empty mobile hospital. After the House physician told Republican staffers that shots were not necessary to go to North Carolina, they didn’t get them. Democratic staffers reportedly did.

That explains the influenza shots, anyway.

Crossing a Purple Cow with a Belgian Blue Bull
Q. What do you get when you cross a Purple Cow with a Belgian Blue? A. More bull?

Q. What do you get when you cross a Purple Cow with a Belgian Blue?

A. More bull?

February 14, 2008 on 4:56 pm | In Rifle Scopes | No Comments

AK-47 Magazine

The MAG CINCH� System(patent pending) allows anyone with a need for high ammo capacity to carry two magazines with their rifle. You won’t waste time searching for the second one, just switch the magazines already attached to your rifle and save crucial seconds! The MAG CINCH units hold two magazines together with rock solid strength to ensure that they both operate as one unit, as if they were made from one solid piece of steel. The MAG CINCH� units will not mar, scratch or deform your magazines. They are designed specifically to grasp magazines without damaging them in any way. And should your magazines be exposed to excessive stress, the MAG CINCH� units will give before your rifle or your magazines are damaged! The MAG CINCH� units are extremely versatile and can be used in both parallel and staggered dual-magazine configurations.

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Medical Sci-Fi Contest: Please Meet the Winner! - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com
Medical Science Fiction: Late to the party, but here are the winners of Medgadget’s Medical Sci-Fi Contest. Enjoy.

Screening for Autism
I Screen, You Screen: The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that all children be screened for autism. They’ve only press-released their recommendations, however, so it’s difficult to assess them. Wouldn’t it be nice if professional organizations actually released their recommendations to their members before they did so to the public? It would make it so much easier for doctors to discuss the news stories with their patients. They’re releasing them today at their annual conference, and later in the November issue of their journal, which is not yet available online. (Though it may be in AAP member’s mailboxes.)

Part of any well child visit is screening for developmental delays, so one has to wonder what’s different about these recommendations. Are they setting lower limits for what’s abnormal so that those mild cases of autism (which some argue aren’t really autism or even disease) can be treated? If that’s the case, then don’t be surprised when a couple of years from now there’s a upward spike in the number of cases of autism. And don’t blame it on vaccines.

Talladega Germs
Talladega Germs: This was some overly cautious and politically foolish advice:

NASCAR fans might seem rabid, but are they actually contagious?

Getting a hepatitis shot is standard procedure for travelers to parts of Africa and Asia, but some congressional aides were instructed to get immunized before going to Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord and the racetrack in Talladega, Ala.

….Staff who organized the trips advised the NASCAR-bound aides to get a range of vaccines before attending — hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza.

Some thoughts: 1) It isn’t influenza season, so getting a flu shot now to protect you in Alabama for the weekend is useless. (But not a bad idea if you’re thinking forward to January or February 2008.) 2) The hepatitis B vaccine is a series of three shots given over six months. They won’t be getting much protection from one shot given just before the trip. Unless the staff is travelling to Alabama with the expectation of one night stands and IV drug needle sharing, the hepatitis B vaccine seems a bit superfluous. (Even for international travel, it’s only recommended if a person is expected to have contact with blood or the sex industry.) 3) If there’s been an outbreak of hepatitis A among food vendors at the race track, then that makes sense, but evidently that isn’t the case. 4) Tetanus is everywhere. Always keep your tetanus booster (which comes included with diphtheria) up to date.

In defense of Congress, the organizers say that their staffers were going to be visiting hospitals and police stations where they had the potential to be exposed to hepatitis. Maybe. But unless they were planning to subdue the criminal elements and nurse the ill themselves, they didn’t really need the shots. As it turns out, what they really needed was carpal tunnel splints:

Walker said he hadn’t recommended the immunizations, nor were they necessary. He suggested a possible health risk to them was the voluminous notes they took.

“I’m sure they needed to soak their wrists, they wrote so much,” he said.

UPDATE: More on the thinking behind the advice:

Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said he never meant to offend or scare anyone about health risks at the races. The measure was advised to provide congressional staff with the same disease protection first responders get, especially as they head out on a series of fact-finding missions around the country.

“It’s not about whether the people have shots. … Our staffs as they go forward will be going into sterile areas, they will be working in public health facilities, they will be talking to many holding facilities where criminals are being held….

“The NASCAR event is just one date, but after that they will be doing a number of things,” said Thompson, adding that the World Series and Super Bowl are two other mass gatherings that are going to be researched for readiness.

During the trip to North Carolina, staffers were to visit a medical facility with patients at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway. They were also set to inspect an empty mobile hospital. After the House physician told Republican staffers that shots were not necessary to go to North Carolina, they didn’t get them. Democratic staffers reportedly did.

That explains the influenza shots, anyway.

FWC offers Outdoors-Woman workshops in 2008
[2/11/08]

Federal Gun Microstamping Law

�Kennedy is at it again having introduced S.2605, “A bill to require certain semiautomatic pistols manufactured, imported, or sold by Federal firearms licensees to be capable of microstamping ammunition” yesterday.

It now sits in the Senate Judiciary committee.�

Representative Xavier Becerra has introduced the same bill into the House as H.R.5266. It predictably sits in the House Judiciary committee.�

Being so new, the text is not up yet.

Spooky Skulls
Spooky Skulls:Spooky brain pictures. Background here.

Magnet-Free Europe
Magnet-Free Europe: For some reason, the EU was proposing severe restrictions on the use of MRI scans, a proposal which has been halted- for now. Here’s the reasoning behind the original restrictions:

The Directive was drafted by DG Employment, with the aim of minimising workers’ exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF). Currently eight million MRI patient examinations per year are carried out in Europe, said Professor Dag Rune Olsen, who works in experimental radiation therapy at the Norwegian Radiation Hospital, Oslo, Norway, and is chairman of the physics committee of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO). “But these are likely to have to stop, since the Directive sets limits to occupational radiation exposure which will mean that anyone working or moving near MRI equipment will breach them, thus making it possible for them to sue their employers. Even those maintaining or servicing the equipment may be affected,” he said.

Radiation exposure? MRI’s don’t emit radiation, they detect the magnetic spin of atoms. The EU is worried that workers will be mesmerized by the MRI’s. Sally Szwarc has more.

Zing the Body Electric: Treating high blood pressure, circa 1907 (click images to enlarge and read the text):

A close-up view of the blood pressure machine:

- from Scientific American, August 24, 1907.

The report sounds so confident:

The important feature is that the cure - the reduction of arterial pressure to the normal value - is permanent, and that the progress of the arteriosclerosis is arrested by the removal of the excess of blood pressure.

Seems kind of silly today, but look - one hundred years on and we’re still flirting with the idea.

Here’s what else was going on in 1907, and here’s an early twentieth century text on treating diseases with electricity.

Lipo-Etching
Forever Young, Forever Firm: Lipo-etching- maybe not all it’s cracked up to be.