Do you believe in Evil?

I do.  I believe there is evil in the world, and evil people out there doing evil.  Many people do not believe in the existence of evil..  Scratch a multi cultural liberal, and you will find someone who believes that all people are good, and evil doers are simply misinformed.  Or misunderstood. 
   Me, I believe that evil exists, and that it is good to oppose evil.  The most effective opposition comes from the use of firearms.  Certainly in the United States, the availability of firearms deters a lot of crime.  The would be robber has to worry about the storekeeper with a handgun in the cash drawer.  The would be house breaker has to worry about the homeowner with a shotgun.  The would be carjacker has to worry about a piece in the glove compartment.  And even the American police are usually quite polite, partly because they know the citizen they offend might be armed, and might do something about it. 
   And so, I believe in the private ownership of firearms.  And I want my firearms to be as deadly as possible, within certain limits. Once firearms are displayed, I want to win the ensuing gunfight.   The biggest limit is the prohibition on private ownership of machine guns.  This was made law back in Al Capone's time.  It seems reasonable, and the law is still on the books and still enforced. 
  The AR-15 (and lookalikes from SIG Saur and others) has been Army issue since the Viet Nam war.  Most  guys were trained on this rifle in the service.  After they leave the service and go out to buy a deer rifle, they often choose the AR-15 'cause they are familiar with it.  It's enough gun for deer, it doesn't kick much. Ammunition is cheap and widely available.  There are a LOT of them out there, and taking them away from that many owners would be VERY difficult indeed. 
   The current Democratic push for more gun control (more ways to take citizen's guns away) leaves me cold.  Ordinary citizens ought to have a gun around the house, just in case ISIS come calling, or the house breakers turn up. 

What did the founding fathers mean by the word "militia"?

Something different from what we moderns think it means.  In the eighteenth century there were two kinds of armed force.  Regulars,  well drilled, uniformed, paid, and used by the king to suppress his political enemies.  And militia, amateur, not uniformed, little training.  In a standup fight, regulars could beat militia every single time. But, in colonial America, it was the militia that stood to arms in the event of Indian raids, pirate attacks,  French attacks, Spanish attacks, and plain old banditry and cattle rustling.  The militia may not have been as effective as regulars, but in roadless heavily wooded America, the militia were there when they were needed.  Where as it might take a month for a regular force to march up from barracks and engage the enemy.  And, the militia were politically reliable.  You didn't have militia out enforcing the king's taxes, the king's press gangs, arresting smugglers and political enemies.  Being members of the community, the militia wasn't going to oppress their own community like the way regulars were happy to do.
   And so, the founding fathers, setting up a democratic government over a vast territory, decided the militia were the obvious solution to the defense problem.  Militia would not become a Praetorian Guard, making and unmaking presidents and Congresses.  Militia didn't get paid, a great savings on the public purse. And you could have a really big militia, essentially every able bodied man in the country.   Hence the second amendment, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state...."
  The militia principle was effective as late as 1940 when Japanese admiral Yamamoto said " To invade the United States is impossible.  There would be a rifleman behind every blade of grass."

Finding Neverland 2004

It has a great cast, Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Dustin Hoffman.  It's set in Edwardian London, sets and costumes are superb. Charming London horse drawn cabs, equally charming turn of the century automobiles. The story is that of J.M. Barrie creating Peter Pan as a stage play on the London stage.  Barrie is married, but for the duration of the movie, he neglects his wife, and hangs out with a charming widow and her four boys.  All that said, the movie doesn't click.
   First off, it suffers from the curse of the soundman, probably as bad as it gets.  I could not hear the dialog.  The actors whispered, spoke in thick dialect, and mumbled.  No names were ever mentioned.  I had to check IMDB this morning to learn the widow's stage name.
   And it is slow moving.  Takes forever to get to the point.  Plot is weak.  For instance, we never see how Barrie manages to bring such an unconventional play as Peter Pan to the stage.  Is he independently wealthy and financed it himself?  Is Barrie enormously effective in selling the concept to dubious theater owners and backers, kind of like Peter Jackson in our own time?  something else? We never know.  The nameless widow, comes down with something, and dies in the last reel.  For no good reason I could see.
Too bad.  It could have been cool. 

Do you want to let the FBI cancel your 2nd Amendment rights?

The Democrats are pushing for it.  They are making a fuss in the Senate right now about a bill to prevent gun sales to anyone on the FBI's no-fly list.  Scary.  The FBI runs the no-fly list.  They can put anyone on it, no evidence required.  There is no way to get off it.  Once on, you are stuck on. 
  Right now, only conviction by a judge in a real court, with a jury, a defense lawyer, and an appeal process gets you on the cannot-buy-firearms list.  The Democrats want to hand that authority down to rank and file FBI agents.  I think that's a bad idea.  We ought to leave citizen's rights with the courts, not the cops. 
Democrats love the idea. 

More thoughts about Orlando

This horrible event has completely dominated the TV news since Sunday.  They don't talk about anything else. Here are some things that are true but the TV newsies don't talk about it much.
1.  Two senior American Muslim clerics denounced the killings, in strong terms.  That's the first time I have ever heard of that.  It is a good thing.
2.  The dead all bear Hispanic names, yet the newsies talk about the killer bearing a grudge against gays.  From the evidence, the killer might as well have born a grudge against Hispanics. 
3.  There are no objective differences between "assault rifles" and deer rifles.  Objective differences are things you can measure with a ruler.  The anti gun people are calling for an "assault rife" ban  hoping that  all rifles will be declared to be "assault rifles" and thus banned. 
4.  The FBI interviewed the shooter TWICE and decided that they didn't have enough evidence to charge him with a crime.  What should have happened, and did not.  The FBI agents should have evaluated the shooter as a violent nutcase, a homicidal maniac.  They should have been able to initiate proceedings to confine the shooter to a mental hospital, before he flipped completely out and killed 50 people. 
5.  The United States has 5000 miles of land border, much of it running thru roadless wildness. Anyone with a pair of decent hiking boots can just walk across the border.  Plus we have 4000 miles of seacoast, studded with marinas, boat launches, yacht clubs and docks.  Any small boat coming in from the sea is just another yachting or fishing party coming back to port at the end of the day. You can't keep 'em out, you have to find 'em and catch 'em after they get here. 

Pulse nightclub massacre, Orlando. Nobody shot back.

My deepest sympathies to the victims and their families.  Newsies are still not fully up to speed on this one.  Question nobody is asking:  Howcum in a crowded club, several hundred patrons, nobody was carrying?  Just one little pocket pistol might have stopped the bastard before he killed so many. 

Teacher Training

Cover story in the Economist.  Their shtick is teacher training this week.  We can solve all our education problems with radically more effective teacher  training, so says the Economist.  Good teachers are not born, they are trained.  No discussion of phonics vs whole word method of teaching reading.  No discussion of Common Core.  No numbers anywhere.
  Me, I'm not so sure.  To teach public school in the US, you have to suffer thru the education major in college.  Four years of meaningless blather.  Those who survive and go on to teach, either were highly motivated, or totally dull, to put up with the total boredom of the ed major.
   I went thru nine years of public school, three years of a very good prep school and four years of a good college.  In this sixteen year educational odyssey I encountered quite a few teachers, most decent, some extra ordinary, and some worthless.  Then I went into the Air Force, and took a few classes from the Field Training Detachment (FTD in USAF speak).  The instructors in FTD were uniformly excellent, as good as any teacher I'd ever had.  These instructors were just ordinary enlisted men, pulled right off the flight line, no college, on their second hitch in the Air Force.  And they were good.  Their students were all teenage guys, of prime trouble causing age, but they never had any trouble.  And the students learned the stuff.  They paid attention, did the homework, passed the tests.
   What made the FTD instructors so good?  First of all, they knew their subject matter, backwards and forwards, standing on their heads and underwater.  Then the subject matter was interesting, jet engines, machine shop work, hydraulics, aircraft instruments, guided missiles, radar, autopilot, sheet metal work, avionics and more.  For young guys with a day job doing aircraft maintenance, all this stuff was interesting.  It really helps the instructor to be teaching something his students care about.
   And the instructors were motivated.  They knew that the teenagers they were instructing were the future of the Air Force, and they were all career Air Force men, who deeply cared about the Air Force.  They gave their best, and it worked.
  Bottom line, I don't think good teachers are born or trained.  Good teaching happens when the teacher knows his subject thoroughly, and cares about his students.  And it really helps to teach subjects that the students care about. .