Update on the "married twins" story

Which I previously mentioned with What are the odds? I quoted the entire article because stories like this have a habit of disappearing and I didn't want to lose any of it.

Now it appears to have been fiction. Perhaps an urban legend, or perhaps a deliberate hoax to to create support for a British Lord's agenda. From Cabinet of Wonders:

The Guardian article seems largely based on the digging done by Heresy Corner who have been looking into this and tracking the story. They were initially sceptical, due to the lack complete lack of hard facts and Lord Alton's gullibility. Further monitoring of the story left them even more disillusioned with the story but intrigued by the "mythic quality" of the story (as seen in the story of Siegmund and Sieglinde and if you check the GSA Wikipedia page the bulk of it is examples of this theme in popular culture). They then watched how the various tabloids managed to flesh out the very few facts in the case into a full-fledged story with plenty of believable "details" none of which have any basis in fact (or reality). So, in the end this may be the importance of this story: seeing an urban myth condense out of word-of-mouth and hearsay, bulked up with plausible sounding background until like some abomination stitched together by Doctor Moreau it staggers out blinking into the world where it takes on a life of it's own raising it's ugly head from time-to-time when this issue crops up in idle conversation (as well as appearing in pieces written by idle journos who don't do any digging).

Responses to the Dayton Daily News editorial

This being the anti-gun editorial I blogged about last week.

Larry S. Moore says:

Re "Gun control must be packaged well," Jan. 12: The Dayton Daily News played loose and liberal with the selective quotes taken from an article on the Buckeye Firearms Web site by Jeff Riley. In fact, by selecting and editing the right combination of quotes, the DDN was able to take a pro-gun piece and make it appear very anti-gun.

From Jeff Riley:

The basic premise in the Jan. 12 editorial "Gun control needs to be packaged well" is wrong. The problem with the anti-gun side isn't packaging; the problem is the product. You can put lipstick and a dress on a pig and, at the end of the day, you still have, well, just a pig.

Gun control is a political loser, and those opposed to individual rights know it is a losing battle if framed that way. Using horrific events like the Virginia Tech massacre to promote that agenda is morally repugnant. It truly is "dancing in the blood of innocents."

Both Moore and Riley are members of the Buckeye Firearms Association. And if you don't have BFA on your blogroll, add it now. They really stay on top of things when it comes to RKBA.

via The War On Guns

Saturday Vintage Gun Ad (1960s): Ithaca X-15 Rifle

click to enlarge

One of the things I enjoy most about collection these old ads is that I learn things that I never would have thought to ask about. It used to be that if someone said Ithaca, I thought: shotguns. But as this ad shows, they used to make some rifles as well.

Friday night ramdom 10

I'm in the mood for something deep and spacey tonight, so I restricted my playlist to the folder I've named "New Age, Ambient, Meditative." Next up:

1. Wavestar -- Moonwind
2. Cybertribe -- Mystic Peaks
3. Andreas Vollenweider -- Water Moon
4. Shadowfax -- Shadowdance
5. Eagle Dance Song (Hmmm...this one didn't tag right. I didn't get the artist. But it's "native American" flute music).
6. Prefade Listening -- Jazzy Jim
7. Enigma -- Principles of Lust
8. deep-dive-corp. -- Bassic
9. Janis Mattox -- Song from the Center of the Earth
10. Trio Mediaeval -- Stella Maris

National Delurking Week 2008

UPDATE: Thanks to all who said hello, and thanks for making this blog on of your more-or-less-regular hangouts. I'll unstick this post now.

--

I haven't been able to discover the origin of this, and the dates seem to be somewhat in dispute, but this is either the first or last day of Delurking Week. As far as I can tell, in the past two years this has fallen on the second full week of January, which means it would begin today. Some blogs were celebrating it last week, which was only the first full week.

Anyway, this post is an invitation for all those who read this blog regularly (or semi-regularly) but who never comment to leave a comment. No topic necessary, just a simple how-do-you-do will suffice.

This post will remain sticky all week. Scroll down for new posts.

Another search hit that bears mentioning

The search was: "walther p-22 for concealed carry."

I suppose you could. It's small, light, thin, and should be very easy to conceal. But it's a .22.

The only reason I would carry a .22 for self defense is if all my other guns were stolen and I was on my way to the gun store to buy a new .357 magnum.

Also, I have a question. Is there a good reason to remove a magazine disconnect? Because I got a search hit for that too, regarding the Ruger SR9. This seems to me to be something that shouldn't be done, but maybe I'm wrong.

"Nuts"

First, politicians and bureaucrats both believe you can tell average voters anything you please and they’ll forget it before you come back up for reelection.

Second, gun owners are not “average voters.” Gun owners have memories like an elephant’s and carry great big chips on their shoulders from the other “fibs” you’ve told them in the past.

Third, and maybe most importantly, you can say you are whatever you want, but what you do will eventually show you for what you really are.

This wasn’t a sellout by the Bush administration.

The Bush administration is already history.

So says Jim Shepherd, and I agree with him. Read the whole thing today, because the articles aren't archived.

As cold as a witch's thorax

That's what a school friend of mine used to say many years ago. It wasn't so bad as long as I was out of the wind, but man, some of those streets were like wind tunnels. Until about 9:00 this morning I was down-right uncomfortable.

So I'm not going to stay up reading blogs today, and forget about me trying to post something worth-while. I'm going to bed and read for a while, or possibly watch a movie.

Last night I noticed a book on the shelves that I hadn't read in a long time. It was Raymond Chandler: Four Complete Philip Marlowe Novels. The first time I read this book, I read only the first three novels. I was reluctant to read the last one, because I knew that once I read it, it wouldn't be new to me anymore. After several more months passed, I finally read it. This will now be my third trip through this book.

I'm going to have to hunt down more stuff by Chandler, and probably branch off into some other writers of the "hard-boiled detective fiction" genre like Dashiell Hammett. Oh yeah, this is also why I recently added Hardboiled Cthulhu to my Amazon wish list. I like the wish list idea. It makes it easy for me to remember what I want to buy. I know this collection will not be up to the same quality as Chandler, but it should be fun.

Chandler was a master of the descriptive phrase. Maybe I'll post some Chandlerisms now and then just for fun.

Hear the wanderlust calls of the whispering hills...

I get CDs from yourmusic.com. I have a pretty big queue. Every now and then I'll add another CD or two to it, but mostly I forget about it so every time my monthly disc comes it's always a surprise as to what it is, because I don't remember everything I've added or what the order is.

Today brought The Sons of the Pioneers: The Ultimate Collection. I had a cassette called The Best of the Sons of the Pioneers when I was a kid, and kept it for many years until I finally wore it out. Ultimate is a pretty good collection. It has most of my favorites of theirs, but it is not really "ultimate."

There's no "Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma." How it could be "ultimate" and be missing that song?

Essential (in my opinion) songs that it does include are "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," "Cool Water," "Riders in the Sky" and "Chant of the Wanderer." It has twenty-one songs in all.

Oh well. I'll be cranking this one up on the drive home from work tomorrow.

Everyone else is quoting it...

(Religious mini-rant ahead. You were warned).

This just makes my skin crawl:

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

In case anyone was wondering, I am against any amendment that would prohibit gay marriage. I am firmly convinced that the Constitution should never be used to restrict any freedoms, and that's what this amendment would do. I was once asked about this, and my answer was, "I don't see any way that gays getting married would infringe on any of my fundamental rights, so I don't care." Anyone who disagrees, please feel free to convince me that I'm wrong.

Huckabee has fallen into the same trap that many have. It doesn't matter that he calls himself a Christian. It doesn't matter that he's referred to as a "pastor" (he isn't)*. He has fallen into the trap of seeing the government as savior, and it isn't. There's only one Savior, and the government has nothing to do with Him.

As a Christian, it is not my job, nor is it Huckabee's job--even if he were President (God forbid), to brute-force "morality" by the bludgeon of legislation. It is only my job to live by example and to try and "let the glory of Jesus be seen in me." I fail at this, a lot. But then of course I'm not perfect.

I'm sure I've failed to adequately state my position with perfect clarity, so please feel free to misconstrue something I've said. I know someone out there will.

I've said it before: The more I hear about Huckabee, the more I dislike him.

*"Pastor" means "shepherd." The church has only one Shepherd: Jesus Christ. Any human who uses that term to refer to him- or herself is misusing the term.

P.S. Anyone who reads this and uses comments to make bigoted anti-Christian slurs: your comments will be deleted. It's my blog and I'm not in the mood.

The Waco Rules

More from Mike Vanderboegh at The War On Guns. Who Shall Guard the Guards?

What you should be certain of is this: We are now going back, if we ever left it, to the time of Waco Rules. You remember what they are, surely? "We are the avenging angels of the ATF, representing the god-on-earth Imperial Federal Government. If you resist us, we will crush you. If you shoot back at us, we and our big brothers of the FBI will kill you -- we will burn down your house, your church, your family and all you hold dear, AND WE WILL NOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE." Those my friends, are Waco Rules. They can do anything you can't stop them from doing.

Read about another case of the ATF persecuting an innocent man because his rifle malfunctioned.

Food stuff

Last Saturday I smoked a turkey. This was only my second time. I am one of those purists who believes that "sauce" is just something you use to cover poorly-smoked meat. I put nothing on the turkey. I told some people at work about this. They kept asking me, "But wasn't it dry?" Nope. "You didn't baste it at all?" Nope. "And it wasn't dry?" Nope.

I gave it a pure diet of mesquite wood, holding the temperature steady between 230-250 for five hours. It was succulent.

The guy who I whipped up some venison jerky for really liked it, so he gave me a deer ham to make some traditional jerky with. So I sliced it up and I've got it marinating right now. I haven't made "real" jerky like this in a long time, but I think it will be okay. As a result of a stroke, this man has lost most of his sense of taste (so I was told--I didn't know a stroke could affect your taste). So he requested habanero, and "make it as hot as possible." I don't know if I got it "as hot as possible," but it's going to be pretty hot. I was mixing up some new sauce and got a little more "spike" in the sauce that I usually do. I sampled a little straight and it made my scalp sweat, so it's just about right.

As payment, he's going to give me some venison to keep for myself instead of paying me money. That was actually my suggestion.

Since the weather is supposed to turn a little colder and nastier than usual this coming weekend, I plan on Saturday being homemade chili day! I haven't made chili in a while, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Thompson beats Paul to the punch...

In regards to the infamous amicus brief.

Actually he beat everyone. The Paul campaign should have been all over this, but no. Good for Fred Thompson.

News here.

via Fred File and Free Constitution

I'm not making these up, honest...

Got a search hit for "pit bulls AND poetry AND Texas."

Texan pit bull poetry. I never would have thought of that.

The case of Ezra Levant

I spent some time this weekend reading all the entries at Ezra Levant's eponymous blog.

In February of 2006, the Western Standard magazine, of which I was publisher, reprinted the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. We were immediately hit with two "human rights complaints". These are a strange species of lawsuit, inimicable to Western liberal traditions of rule of law and freedom of speech. A real court would have thrown these complaints out as baseless, but Alberta's human rights commission has proceeded. Friday was the day of my interrogation. I videotaped it.

I recommend Levant's site. His battle for freedom of expression is an example for us all.

It is obvious that Alberta's "human rights commission" is another of those governmental agencies that makes up the rules as it goes along.

His site is also video-heavy, and since I'm on dial-up I haven't been able to view the videos. But from what I've read, it looks like he is amassing a damning body of evidence about this "commission" whose behavior (it seems to me) is in violation of the Canadian constitution. I'm surprised he's been allowed to videotape the proceedings.

Check it out.

German "grave wax"

Bodies buried in German graveyards are not rotting properly:

A high moisture content in the subsoil combined with low temperatures and a lack of oxygen are the main culprits. These conditions transform the soft tissue of many bodies not into humus, but rather "a gray-white, paste-like, soft mass," says soil expert Rainer Horn from the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany.

As time passes, the remains of the departed coagulate to form "a hard, durable substance." When knocked with a spade, the wax-like bodies sound hollow.

This "grave wax" buildup has disturbed the natural cycle of decay -- and created a horror scenario for burial authorities. When bodies don't decompose, their graves can't be reused -- a common practice in Germany. Contrary to many other countries, where final resting places are traditionally maintained in perpetuity, Germany recycles cemetery plots after a period of 15 to 25 years. Experience has shown that the earthly remains of the deceased rot away almost entirely in this amount of time, but only under favorable soil conditions.

Many German cemeteries today have far from ideal conditions. To make matters worse, the problem appears to be a homemade one: "Huge blunders committed over the past few decades" are to blame, says engineer Heinrich Kettler, who specializes in reconditioning soils that have become unsuitable for decomposition.

The bathtub test

(My sister emailed me this).

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director how do you determine whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.

"Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub."

"Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."

"No." said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"

One possible explanation...

At TheSpoof.com. Global Warming Blamed for Huckabee Surge:

Dr. Ray Cathode, professor of biology and expert on vote-greenhousetheria at USC explains: "When one drives around in an SUV and uses gasoline, they unwittingly ingest an agent we've called 'idiocene', a mix between coal and carbon dioxide that forces one to support fake sentimentality and big government. The effects of which go unnoticed by anyone until primary season."

Precautions have been put in place in Michigan and South Carolina. At each voting station, there will be volunteers stationed to say this statement to each and every voter: "Mike comes from a place called Hope, Arkansas. He hopes that you will give them another chance." If the intending voter laughs, they are immediately escorted to the hospital.

What are the odds?

Totally strange. British twins separated at birth married without knowing of kinship.

London - A pair of twins in Britain who were separated at birth and adopted by different families married each other without realizing they were brother and sister and have now had their union annulled by a court, it was revealed Friday. The extraordinary case, brought to public attention by David Alton, a liberal member of Britain's House of Lords, prompted calls Friday for legislation enshrining a child's right to know who her or his biological parents are.

The twins, whose marriage was recently annulled by a High Court judge because "it never validly existed," had felt an "inevitable attraction" to each other, Lord Alton said Friday.

Details of the identities of the twins involved have been kept secret, but Lord Alton said the pair did not realize they were related until after their marriage.

"They were never told that they were twins," Alton told the House of Lords. "They met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."

According to Alton, the case raises the wider issue of the importance of strengthening the rights of children to know the identities of their biological parents.

"If you start trying to conceal someone's identity, sooner or later the truth will out," he said.

"The right for children to know the identity of their parents is a human right," said Alton.

Pam Hodgkins, of the charity Adults Affected by Adoption, said there had been previous cases of separated siblings being attracted to each other.

"We have a resistance, a very strong incest taboo where we are aware that someone is a biological relative," she said. "But when we are unaware of that relationship, we are naturally drawn to people who are quite similar to ourselves."

An utterly sickening, disgusting editorial

Thanks to the Dayton Daily News. Gun control must be packaged well:

At a minimum, it seems these conditions must be in place:

• Pitiful as it is to say, horrifically violent events that can be directly attributed to lax gun laws can force change. Those opportunities have to be used — to protect other innocent people.

• Proposed reforms can't be called "gun control" — even though that plainly is what they are. Better to spin them as "law enforcement."

• It helps when pro-gun advocates say dumb things that make even the moderates roll their eyes, such as when geriatric rocker Ted Nugent told CNN: "Spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when, in fact, it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people."

• Some gun-safety advocates need to oppose the proposed reforms, such as in this case when a few groups said the legislation had been "hijacked" by the gun lobby. In fact, the bill does throw some crumbs to the NRA — such as requiring a process be established that allows convicts and mentally disabled people to at least argue that they should have their gun rights restored.

A member of Buckeye Firearms Association, an Ohio-based gun rights group, has caught on to this strategy. He recently posted on the group's Web site:

What "anti-gun groups, legislators and prosecutors can't accomplish by passing more anti-gun laws (realizing it's virtual political suicide), they are quietly pursuing ... through the back door by increasing the pool of prohibited persons. After all, who could be against keeping guns away from criminals?"

Exactly.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that they are so open about it.

I have never believed that gun-grabbers are simply trying to reduce crime, and are mistaken or misled in their methods. I have always believed it to be about domination and oppression, and nothing else. If you can read this article and still believe that the gun banners are simply good-hearted but mistaken, check with your doctor. Your brain isn't getting enough oxygen.

UPDATE: David Codrea writes an open letter.

UPDATE 2: And gets a typical cover-my-*ss non-answer.