The material I saw purported to be an offer from Blackwater (I'm pretty sure it was but I didn't follow up) to hire - qualified, no training required - at $200 per day and all found for Wackencop equivalent positions - I took it to be for assignments such as guarding the Wal-Marts rather than for civil policing.
Given that we know the top cover helicopter and airplanes are doing Forest Service style fire watch and vectoring responses because the fires can't be reported by a community that isn't there and doesn't have communication I'd say private security guards for high value assets makes a lot of sense.
Actually I asserted that Michael A. Bellesiles for one side and John R. Lott Jr for the other side combined with their assorted attackers and defenders totals to a great deal of academic research at least one side of which is biased - which is I suggest likely correct and logically valid. On the off chance both sides are biased the dead tree total is a great deal indeed.
Feel free to believe false the assertion that a great deal of academic research is biased. Based on many years of inside observation I'd say research is often biased and academic politics is so dirty because it matters so little. YMMV
I'll grant you that for instance after the Atlanta World Con bid folks who were once great friends were at each other's throats - Phoenix Society and Middle Earth Rocket Club might bristle likes Jets and Sharks if they met at the premiere of a new movie. Doesn't even take a Weapons Con to create ugly incidents - cons do tend toward a critical mass.
I've worked Con Security with a team that except for me would have stacked up against the Mission Impossible crew - combat trackers to rank just behind Tom Brown and unarmed combat experts and computer hackers - we mostly agreed that worrying about weapons was a joke.
Myself I've got a nice red oak staff with a 14" blade in it (forged 1095 it's a real blade) but it's an elaborate joke - the staff is as much a weapon as the blade. Possession of a sword cane is a mandatory 1 year sentence in California - where do you draw the line between a sword cane, a Penang Lawyer and a true cane? a rattan staff actually chosen to be light and responsive in the hands of a skilled user - fencer or SCA makes no difference; my specific example is an athletic rapier artist college dean not a reenactor but it could be anybody.
Weapons free zones and peace bonds may well make some people feel safer. When ignorance is bliss tis folly to look at the blender blades in the con suite as tiger claws and the Everclear/Nuclear Waste/.... as fire starter.
Then too not within sight of the flag pole can help an awful lot.
Define independent, I'm afraid I fail at finding it in this area - see generally (not really on this topic I'm sorry to say) Shooters: Myths and Realities of America’s Gun Cultures, by Abigail A. Kohn, New York: Oxford University Press, 224 pages, $29.95 where to quote one reviewer:'After reading Shooters, you’ll wonder why no one has done such a study before.
The omission may stem from the typical attitude toward guns among academics, which Kohn addresses in her preface. From “public health” articles proposing gun control as a cure for the “epidemic” of gun violence to highly regarded sociologists who argue that gun research should be informed by “moral principles” rather than hard facts, she confesses her surprise at the ill-informed and often tendentious research conducted by academics. Kohn’s own research for Shooters, some of which appeared in this magazine (“Their Aim Is True,” May 2001), elicited predictable responses. One colleague said she was performing a “social service by researching ‘such disgusting people.’” Another said that unless Kohn acknowledged the “inherent pathology” of gun enthusiasm, she was disrespecting victims of gun violence.
Recall the controversy over the Bancroft Prize winning and losing Michael A. Bellesiles (most recently defended by Ward Churchill last month for the quality of Bellesiles's research - that tells me more about Churchill's standards than it does about Bellesiles but you may differ) which for me demonstrates that a great deal of academic research is biased - and I'll grant you that Dave Kopel, Stephen Halbrook and especially John R. Lott Jr with More Guns Less Crime and all his opponents each have their (each their is approved by the all the best copy editors - ask me who) own interests.
For a book you might accept as likely to be honest at least in some of the articles I'd suggest Restricting Handguns. The Liberal Sceptics Speak Out with its forward by Frank Church - but as you might well know since Frank Church is long dead the book is dated. And to repeat myself - Jim Cerillo on selecting and training trained killers (only hunters need apply) - biased to beat the band but his perspective is unmatched by the unbiased.
For anecdotes keepandbeararms.com has daily posts on Police failures - again for obs SF I'd say ask Joel Rosenberg but of course he's biased and the folks who think all cons should be weapon free are only showing proper sense. Mn data on CCW at http://www.dps.state.mn.us/bca/CJIS/Documents/Page-19.html
There's a firearms instructor/accomplished writer in Georgia whose name escapes me and some other people in the SF community who have the credentials to express an opinion. I can introduce you to training officers who will confirm the statement as true in their experience but the sample won't be random and nowhere near a census so again anecdotal.
Again anecdotal about the dangers of NYC: An off-duty police officer ended up on the wrong side of the law Friday night, shooting a man who had purposely knocked over the cop's beer in a lower Manhattan bar, police said Saturday....Marti was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. He was immediately suspended without pay.
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-cop0724,0,4334664.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left
This is admittedly biased and mostly-outdated file but includes pointers check the appendix
http://www.equalccw.com/inca.pdf - it includes a good letter from a Florida department. Again admittedly biased: http://www.rkba.org/ccw/stat; http://www.kc3.org/CCWSTATS.html
It is certainly true and demonstrated by match results that good gun handlers among the police are vastly outnumbered by civilian shooters but that tells us nothing about the civilians who don't shoot matches - I'd argue that both police who don't shoot matches and civilians who don't shoot matches may be assumed inferior gun handlers to those who do shoot matches. IDPA is perhaps more practical than the International Practical or the US Practical. Same thing for the better training academies where civilians as a class outnumber and outperform law enforcement as a class - true amateurs can spend more time and effort. Again tells us nothing quantifiable about the population who don't train but I'd assume that population to be inferior.
Nothing above should be construed as an argument that any civilian who ever lived was better than Bill Jordan but he's dead too and so is the man in the next room.
Nuf said I suspect
Which components of the New York Times have interests in common and which opposed?
What is the appropriate granularity when speaking of the New York Times Company?
With or without the Boston Globe? Where to stop zooming in or out? the reporter, the rewrite desk, the newsroom so to speak?
The pulps described a working class reporter,(obs SF Our Fair City) or a reporter with working class ties and sympathies does that sound like Jayson Blair's apprenticeship?
Security sources have told Sky News that a high explosive was found on the bus, similar to that used in the July 7 attacks.[TATP]
They said the strong smell of acetone would have sparked fears of a chemical attack.
And the smell indicated that the explosives had been made up incorrectly, with too much acetone and not enough peroxide. emphasis added - Sky News may be more inclined than some to commit Dr. Doyle's great mistake of premature theorizing.
peroxyacetone is easy to make from readily available chemicals. Acetone, hydrogen peroxide and a strong acid such as sulfuric acid (battery acid) or hydrochloric acid ("muriatic acid" for cleaning concrete) to catalyze the reaction. But anyone who makes this stuff in any quantity is just plain nuts. Hence the suggestion that a first rate chemist supervised and help stabilize (stabilization omitted as an exercise for the reader)
To forecast the impact of Kelo I'd look first to Jane Jacobs writings and some other sources on past takings as justified by blight rather than by public use or necessity.
That is taking blight as the inferior use to be replaced by a superior use, I'd be curious what the people in New York think of the West 41st Street Realty case, a New York appellate court held that the Times Square area of downtown Manhattan was sufficiently “blighted” to justify the use of eminent domain to condemn land needed to build a new headquarters for the New York Times! .... If Times Square and downtown Las Vegas are “blighted,” it is difficult to think of any place that isn’t Somin, Ilya, "Overcoming Poletown: County of Wayne v. Hathcock, Economic Development Takings, and the Future of Public Use" . Michigan State Law Review, p. 1005, 2004 http://ssrn.com/abstract=677763
In re W. 41st St. Realty, L.L.C. v. N.Y. State Urban Dev. Corp., 744 N.Y.S.2d 121
(N.Y. App. Div. 2002), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 1191 (2003).
There is an argument that redevelopment hurts renters, e.g.:
A 1994 summary of the evidence on redevelopment takings concludes that: In essence, the powers and internal pressures [of the blight condemnation process]create a mandate to gentrify selected areas, resulting in a de facto concentration of poverty elsewhere, preferably outside the decision makers' jurisdiction. Numerous past experiences indicate that the process has been driven by racial animosity as well as by bias against the poor. The net result is that a neighborhood of poor people is replaced by office towers, luxury hotels, or retail centers. The former low-income residents, displaced by the bulldozer or an equally effective increase in rents, must relocate into another area they can–perhaps–afford. The entire process can be viewed as a strategy of poverty concentration and geographical containment to protect the property values–and entertainment choices–of downtown elites.
Benjamin B. Quinones, Redevelopment Redefined: Revitalizing the Central City with Resident Control, 27 U. MICH. J.L. REFORM, 689, 740-41 (1994)
Looks to me as though when blight is the inferior use the results are dubious - today when any use can be declared inferior by fiat I don't look for nicer more sensitive results. City councils seem to lack the government in the sunshine of town meetings
Public good of course trumps all restraints - see the current Spectator for a nice discussion of taking children from their parents in secret courts for another kind of taking for the public good in another jurisdiction.
John Dalmas has lots of material on science fiction's debt to librarians - MJ Engh may give a nod to librarians without hitting Mary Sue territory.
Jerry Pournelle's King David's Spaceship/A Spaceship for the King is book and library technology driven.
pie in Wisconsin has cheese for a sidekick, according to law (1955? The Complete Book of Cheese - Brown, Robert Carlton (1886-1959).
Faust (Max Brand) used sidekick in a western setting early 20's. Karl May (died 1912) has things translated as sidekick but I have no idea what the original German is and no ready access to May in German - likely a translator's usage rather than a coinage.
Mr. Heinlein and Ginny did not encourage their friends to talk about their private lives.
The Heinlein Journal did a piece about Leslyn with Ginny's cooperation. Some there is a connection to Farnham's Freehold and there may be.
For obvious reasons I remember the last name of the best man at the first wedding - Mr. Heinlein's room mate retired Rear Admiral RN Clark - but there is little said about that marriage.
The Chips FAQ is at:
http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?page_code=6
I read the errors as denial of service on the DNS because the effect was very much intermittent though I might have better interpreted the shortage of new comments.
Did he write Flandry as a hero without being aware of his flaws?
I suggest the answer is no.
Bearing in mind the influence of Heinlein on the fashion for connected future history with background material for the fans and the influence of Foundation on optimism Anderson's first future history efforts were optimistic in terms of eventual outcome after passing through dark ages e.g. U.N. Man 1953 in The Psychotechnic League - clone your Prince and you're home free.
It's said that like some others there was a disillusionment with faith in the planned state - see especially some of the stand alone shorts I'd suggest Sam Hall 1953 or The Pugilist - I think Dr. Pournelle reprinted a couple in 2020 but I may not remember correctly.
Or is it that Poul knew his history, and that empires and imperial officers aren't always nice? Yes of course see the story Marius 1957 from the somewhat loosely connected series mentioned above in which the good guys do know what they are doing because Hari Seldon crossed universes but are also aware of the costs.
time to go back and reread some of those stories
Sure why not.
Isn't the worst book by a great writer worth being in the same lists as the best book by a poor writer?
No.
That way lies a surfeit of anthologies filled with trunk stories.
Any poll that includes For Us the Living as recommended needn't be taken too seriously.
News from the wilds of Texas
..........
Mariel Polter, 12, an all-A student in seventh grade at Kealing Middle School, dragged out her purple plastic knitting needles in class to do some knitting.
Mariel had just finished up her TAKS test early. So she figured she'd busy herself and kill some time creatively.
.................
Robbin says the teacher kept the knitting needles until after school, which apparently left Mariel a bit confused.
"She said she didn't understand why they didn't just let her put them back in her backpack, but that would make them a concealed weapon, and that would have been even worse," said David Polter, Mariel's dad.
http://www.statesman.com/search/content/metro/stories/04/24kelso.html
Can I take it as a given that TOR books on the April 20 list are covered?
Reminds me of a long ago story on the relative market value of paperbacks in the California prison system (Shell Scott was worth 3 of almost anything else IIRC). Some interesting parallels for marketing I suspect.
Also reminds me that it was ever thus - I can see Willie and Joe meet the dark knight as drawn by/inked by/ colored by in the graphic descriptions of REMF
By me anybody who has read all the Goldsboro (? spelling) Nero Wolfe stories more than once has too much time - for my money an existence proof for all the elements and none of the mix.
I can remember when Powell's wasn't even the best bookstore on the block - wonder what ever happened to O'Gara's - granted there are family permutations in Powell's and I don't know anyplace with better prices and better service than Amazon but not Amazon. On the other hand I know Little Bookshop of Horrors in Arvada and Science Fiction and Mystery in Atlanta deserve more support than they may sometimes have.
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