Edward Ashton's Blog, page 17

Fun Science Fact #27: The Tenth Mountain Division is not concerned about your pistol.

kineticpenguin:

cyrodiil-burns:

conorthebarbarian:

smart-as-a-bee:

conorthebarbarian:

elpatron56:

smart-as-a-bee:

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are good for:

- Shooting varmints

- Frightening teenagers who are trying to steal beer from your garage

- Providing foreshadowing in Act 1

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are not good for:

- Resisting tyranny

This last point may seem counter-intuitive. It was firearms that freed us from King George, right? Gun-rights activists have long maintained that the real purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that if the government ever again tries to tax our tea excessively, we the people will have the power to resist. Gun control, as Ben Carson so eloquently said, is the first item on the agenda of those dictatorial people. What are a few dozen massacres in the face of a threat like that?

Question, though:  does an armed citizenry actually have anything at all to do with a society’s freedom? This point generally goes unquestioned, but in truth, there is little evidence to support the idea that it does. If guns were necessary to secure liberty, we would expect to see a correlation between firearm ownership and free societies.  Do we?

Well, here in the United States we’re swimming in guns, and I think we can agree that we still enjoy a fair number of civil liberties. In North Korea, on the other hand, private gun ownership is not tolerated, and we see how that’s worked out for them. Case closed?

Not exactly. We are, after all, not the only free nation on the planet, or even by most objective measures the most free. Most of the nations of western Europe have tight restrictions on gun ownership, as do Japan, Australia, Great Britain, and nearly every other fully developed nation on Earth. Moreover, there are a number of nations in the Middle East and elsewhere where there are more (and more powerful) guns in private hands than there are in America. It is very hard to argue that their weapons have done much to keep these societies free.

The unfortunate fact is that in the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was written, the weapons that a private citizen might own did not differ in any meaningful way from those that a soldier would use. In fact, when soldiers were mustered into the Continental Army, they often brought their own guns. An armed citizenry could at least hope to stand up against the forces of a tyrannical government.

For better or worse, however, this is simply no longer the case. As conflicts from Bosnia to Syria have demonstrated over the past twenty years, light infantry weapons—much less the shotguns and pistols that most citizens own—are of very limited use against a modern military. A gun may protect you against a bear, or even a mugger if things break exactly your way. Against a helicopter gunship, or an armored vehicle, or a hellfire missile, on the other hand, it won’t do you any more good than a paper umbrella and a wish.

Red Dawn notwithstanding, the idea that plucky citizens with hunting rifles are a bulwark of our nation’s defense is a misguided fantasy. Does this mean that we have to be gun-free? No. This is a question that we need to address both as individuals and as a society. It does mean, though, that if we are going to continue to insist on arming ourselves to the teeth, we should at least be a bit more honest about what our reasons are.

Guns can’t be used to resist tyranny. Which is why the US did not provide guns to Afghans, why the USSR did not provide guns to communist rebels so they could kick out colonists and put communism in place, why Libya didn’t send guns to the IRA. Because guns clearly don’t work.

Look at the Afghan and Iraqi insurgents! They resisted the might of the US Armed Forces for a decade and they were all unarmed. Guns would not work at all!

There wasn’t even a plan of air dropping millions of Liberator pistols across Europe during WWII. They never thought of it, because providing cheap throwaway guns to resistance movements so they could assassinate occupiers and steal their military equipment would only make things worse!

It’s interesting that OP mentions the 10th Mountain. OP, remind me what happened to the better armed yet heavily outnumbered Rangers and Delta Force in Mogadishu in 1993?

Mogadishu? US forces killed between 3,000 and 10,000 Somalis, at the cost of 18 US casualties. This is actually a really good example of what happens when lightly armed irregulars try to take on an actual military force. America pulled out shortly thereafter because Americans realized that they could not possibly give less of a shit what was happening in Somalia, not because they’d been defeated.

You just raised a very important point and it went right over your head. The U.S. pulled out because the cost outweighed the reward. A civilian populace resisting tyranny doesn’t have to kill every single state enforcer to achieve victory.

Literally proved your point for you. Thanks!!

In the face of armed resistance, this government can’t even enforce the law against an asshole who won’t keep his cows on his own property.

How the hell are they gonna crush jack and/or shit?

I said light arms are not useful for resisting tyranny. I never said they aren’t useful for helping you to become an antisocial dickhole. On the contrary - they’re awesome for that.

Fun Science Fact #27: The Tenth Mountain Division is not concerned about your pistol.

conorthebarbarian:

smart-as-a-bee:

conorthebarbarian:

elpatron56:

smart-as-a-bee:

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are good for:

- Shooting varmints

- Frightening teenagers who are trying to steal beer from your garage

- Providing foreshadowing in Act 1

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are not good for:

- Resisting tyranny

This last point may seem counter-intuitive. It was firearms that freed us from King George, right? Gun-rights activists have long maintained that the real purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that if the government ever again tries to tax our tea excessively, we the people will have the power to resist. Gun control, as Ben Carson so eloquently said, is the first item on the agenda of those dictatorial people. What are a few dozen massacres in the face of a threat like that?

Question, though:  does an armed citizenry actually have anything at all to do with a society’s freedom? This point generally goes unquestioned, but in truth, there is little evidence to support the idea that it does. If guns were necessary to secure liberty, we would expect to see a correlation between firearm ownership and free societies.  Do we?

Well, here in the United States we’re swimming in guns, and I think we can agree that we still enjoy a fair number of civil liberties. In North Korea, on the other hand, private gun ownership is not tolerated, and we see how that’s worked out for them. Case closed?

Not exactly. We are, after all, not the only free nation on the planet, or even by most objective measures the most free. Most of the nations of western Europe have tight restrictions on gun ownership, as do Japan, Australia, Great Britain, and nearly every other fully developed nation on Earth. Moreover, there are a number of nations in the Middle East and elsewhere where there are more (and more powerful) guns in private hands than there are in America. It is very hard to argue that their weapons have done much to keep these societies free.

The unfortunate fact is that in the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was written, the weapons that a private citizen might own did not differ in any meaningful way from those that a soldier would use. In fact, when soldiers were mustered into the Continental Army, they often brought their own guns. An armed citizenry could at least hope to stand up against the forces of a tyrannical government.

For better or worse, however, this is simply no longer the case. As conflicts from Bosnia to Syria have demonstrated over the past twenty years, light infantry weapons—much less the shotguns and pistols that most citizens own—are of very limited use against a modern military. A gun may protect you against a bear, or even a mugger if things break exactly your way. Against a helicopter gunship, or an armored vehicle, or a hellfire missile, on the other hand, it won’t do you any more good than a paper umbrella and a wish.

Red Dawn notwithstanding, the idea that plucky citizens with hunting rifles are a bulwark of our nation’s defense is a misguided fantasy. Does this mean that we have to be gun-free? No. This is a question that we need to address both as individuals and as a society. It does mean, though, that if we are going to continue to insist on arming ourselves to the teeth, we should at least be a bit more honest about what our reasons are.

Guns can’t be used to resist tyranny. Which is why the US did not provide guns to Afghans, why the USSR did not provide guns to communist rebels so they could kick out colonists and put communism in place, why Libya didn’t send guns to the IRA. Because guns clearly don’t work.

Look at the Afghan and Iraqi insurgents! They resisted the might of the US Armed Forces for a decade and they were all unarmed. Guns would not work at all!

There wasn’t even a plan of air dropping millions of Liberator pistols across Europe during WWII. They never thought of it, because providing cheap throwaway guns to resistance movements so they could assassinate occupiers and steal their military equipment would only make things worse!

It’s interesting that OP mentions the 10th Mountain. OP, remind me what happened to the better armed yet heavily outnumbered Rangers and Delta Force in Mogadishu in 1993?

Mogadishu? US forces killed between 3,000 and 10,000 Somalis, at the cost of 18 US casualties. This is actually a really good example of what happens when lightly armed irregulars try to take on an actual military force. America pulled out shortly thereafter because Americans realized that they could not possibly give less of a shit what was happening in Somalia, not because they’d been defeated.

You just raised a very important point and it went right over your head. The U.S. pulled out because the cost outweighed the reward. A civilian populace resisting tyranny doesn’t have to kill every single state enforcer to achieve victory.

Well, I never said a local population could not, at horrific cost, irritate a fundamentally disinterested foreign occupier into walking away. You can accomplish that with rocks and bottles. Americans will never face a foreign occupier. If you’re talking about using your AK against a tyrant, you’re talking about using it against other Americans, and nobody gives up and walks away from a civil war.

Fun Science Fact #27: The Tenth Mountain Division is not concerned about your pistol.

conorthebarbarian:

elpatron56:

smart-as-a-bee:

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are good for:

- Shooting varmints

- Frightening teenagers who are trying to steal beer from your garage

- Providing foreshadowing in Act 1

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are not good for:

- Resisting tyranny

This last point may seem counter-intuitive. It was firearms that freed us from King George, right? Gun-rights activists have long maintained that the real purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that if the government ever again tries to tax our tea excessively, we the people will have the power to resist. Gun control, as Ben Carson so eloquently said, is the first item on the agenda of those dictatorial people. What are a few dozen massacres in the face of a threat like that?

Question, though:  does an armed citizenry actually have anything at all to do with a society’s freedom? This point generally goes unquestioned, but in truth, there is little evidence to support the idea that it does. If guns were necessary to secure liberty, we would expect to see a correlation between firearm ownership and free societies.  Do we?

Well, here in the United States we’re swimming in guns, and I think we can agree that we still enjoy a fair number of civil liberties. In North Korea, on the other hand, private gun ownership is not tolerated, and we see how that’s worked out for them. Case closed?

Not exactly. We are, after all, not the only free nation on the planet, or even by most objective measures the most free. Most of the nations of western Europe have tight restrictions on gun ownership, as do Japan, Australia, Great Britain, and nearly every other fully developed nation on Earth. Moreover, there are a number of nations in the Middle East and elsewhere where there are more (and more powerful) guns in private hands than there are in America. It is very hard to argue that their weapons have done much to keep these societies free.

The unfortunate fact is that in the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was written, the weapons that a private citizen might own did not differ in any meaningful way from those that a soldier would use. In fact, when soldiers were mustered into the Continental Army, they often brought their own guns. An armed citizenry could at least hope to stand up against the forces of a tyrannical government.

For better or worse, however, this is simply no longer the case. As conflicts from Bosnia to Syria have demonstrated over the past twenty years, light infantry weapons—much less the shotguns and pistols that most citizens own—are of very limited use against a modern military. A gun may protect you against a bear, or even a mugger if things break exactly your way. Against a helicopter gunship, or an armored vehicle, or a hellfire missile, on the other hand, it won’t do you any more good than a paper umbrella and a wish.

Red Dawn notwithstanding, the idea that plucky citizens with hunting rifles are a bulwark of our nation’s defense is a misguided fantasy. Does this mean that we have to be gun-free? No. This is a question that we need to address both as individuals and as a society. It does mean, though, that if we are going to continue to insist on arming ourselves to the teeth, we should at least be a bit more honest about what our reasons are.

Guns can’t be used to resist tyranny. Which is why the US did not provide guns to Afghans, why the USSR did not provide guns to communist rebels so they could kick out colonists and put communism in place, why Libya didn’t send guns to the IRA. Because guns clearly don’t work.

Look at the Afghan and Iraqi insurgents! They resisted the might of the US Armed Forces for a decade and they were all unarmed. Guns would not work at all!

There wasn’t even a plan of air dropping millions of Liberator pistols across Europe during WWII. They never thought of it, because providing cheap throwaway guns to resistance movements so they could assassinate occupiers and steal their military equipment would only make things worse!

It’s interesting that OP mentions the 10th Mountain. OP, remind me what happened to the better armed yet heavily outnumbered Rangers and Delta Force in Mogadishu in 1993?

Mogadishu? US forces killed between 3,000 and 10,000 Somalis, at the cost of 18 US casualties. This is actually a really good example of what happens when lightly armed irregulars try to take on an actual military force. America pulled out shortly thereafter because Americans realized that they could not possibly give less of a shit what was happening in Somalia, not because they’d been defeated.

Fun Science Fact #27: The Tenth Mountain Division is not concerned about your pistol.

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are good for:

- Shooting varmints

- Frightening teenagers who are trying to steal beer from your garage

- Providing foreshadowing in Act 1

Here is a list of things that personal firearms are not good for:

- Resisting tyranny

This last point may seem counter-intuitive. It was firearms that freed us from King George, right? Gun-rights activists have long maintained that the real purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that if the government ever again tries to tax our tea excessively, we the people will have the power to resist. Gun control, as Ben Carson so eloquently said, is the first item on the agenda of those dictatorial people. What are a few dozen massacres in the face of a threat like that?

Question, though:  does an armed citizenry actually have anything at all to do with a society’s freedom? This point generally goes unquestioned, but in truth, there is little evidence to support the idea that it does. If guns were necessary to secure liberty, we would expect to see a correlation between firearm ownership and free societies.  Do we?

Well, here in the United States we’re swimming in guns, and I think we can agree that we still enjoy a fair number of civil liberties. In North Korea, on the other hand, private gun ownership is not tolerated, and we see how that’s worked out for them. Case closed?

Not exactly. We are, after all, not the only free nation on the planet, or even by most objective measures the most free. Most of the nations of western Europe have tight restrictions on gun ownership, as do Japan, Australia, Great Britain, and nearly every other fully developed nation on Earth. Moreover, there are a number of nations in the Middle East and elsewhere where there are more (and more powerful) guns in private hands than there are in America. It is very hard to argue that their weapons have done much to keep these societies free.

The unfortunate fact is that in the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was written, the weapons that a private citizen might own did not differ in any meaningful way from those that a soldier would use. In fact, when soldiers were mustered into the Continental Army, they often brought their own guns. An armed citizenry could at least hope to stand up against the forces of a tyrannical government.

For better or worse, however, this is simply no longer the case. As conflicts from Bosnia to Syria have demonstrated over the past twenty years, light infantry weapons—much less the shotguns and pistols that most citizens own—are of very limited use against a modern military. A gun may protect you against a bear, or even a mugger if things break exactly your way. Against a helicopter gunship, or an armored vehicle, or a hellfire missile, on the other hand, it won’t do you any more good than a paper umbrella and a wish.

Red Dawn notwithstanding, the idea that plucky citizens with hunting rifles are a bulwark of our nation’s defense is a misguided fantasy. Does this mean that we have to be gun-free? No. This is a question that we need to address both as individuals and as a society. It does mean, though, that if we are going to continue to insist on arming ourselves to the teeth, we should at least be a bit more honest about what our reasons are.

Daily Science Fiction :: Listen by Edward Ashton

Daily Science Fiction :: Listen by Edward Ashton:

I’ve got a new piece up in today’s Daily Science Fiction.  Give it a peek if you have a few minutes to kill.

Fun Science Fact #26: Cancer is Random

When we hear that someone has been diagnosed with cancer, the first thing that comes into most of our minds is this: why? I don’t think it matters if the person in question is a friend, or a family member, or a celebrity, or a random stranger. Was he a smoker? Did she spend too much time in tanning beds? Did he fail to follow a strict vegan diet, or not drink enough fresh juice, or cook with teflon, or forget to take his vitamin D? Sympathy and empathy kick in later, but our first psychological impulse is to protect ourselves–because if we can identify the thing that this person did wrong, especially if it’s something we think we’re doing right, then we can tell ourselves that it will never happen to us.

Here’s the thing, though:  when it comes to cancer, there is no why. Cancer is random.

To understand why this is, we need to understand what really causes cancer. Cancerous cells are essentially normal human cells–breast or liver or brain or bone–in all ways but two: they learn how to evade the immune system, and they forget how to die.

The proximate cause of these changes is a series of genetic mutations. A typical malignant cell has between five and ten distinct genetic errors, each of which is unrelated to the others. Errors in a cell’s genetic code crop up on a fairly regular basis during cell division and reproduction. During this process, the cell’s DNA gets split down the middle, and then reconstructed into what are supposed to be two exact copies of itself–one for each daughter cell. Sometimes, however, the reconstruction includes errors. A C goes in where a G should have gone, and a mutation is introduced. Most of the time, these errors are harmless.  Other times, they’re immediately fatal to the daughter cell. Sometimes, though, if they occur in just the right place, they can wind up changing the cell’s functions in a way that contributes to the development of a malignancy.

The important thing to understand about this process is that every time one of your cells divides, you’re rolling the dice. The probability that you will develop the right set of mutations to produce a malignancy is therefore related primarily to the rate at which cells divide, and the probability that one of those divisions will include a mutation. That’s why you see tumors develop most frequently in tissue types that divide rapidly, like breast, lung, and colon, and less frequently in tissues that divide slowly, like bone and brain.

This is not to say, of course, that nothing you do or don’t do affects the chances that you’ll develop cancer. Anything that causes cells to divide more rapidly gives you more throws of the dice. That’s why chronic inflammation is associated with a higher rate of tumor development. You can also weight the dice to a certain extent. Cells that divide in the presence of ionizing radiation (x-rays, for example) are more likely to have transcription errors. The same is true for cells that divide in the presence of certain organic solvents and other noxious chemicals. Still, none of those things actually causes cancer. They just shift the odds a bit.

Here, on the other hand, is a partial list of things that do not affect the odds that a particular cell division will result in a malignant transcription error:

kale
yoga
positive thinking
karma
refined sugar
the power of prayer
juice cleanses
one weird trick, as seen on the internet

Cancer is not the result of a moral failure. It is not caused by the evils of modern society. It is not something that you can make yourself safe against. Cancer has been with us for as long as we have been human, and probably for as long as we have been multi-cellular. It will almost certainly be with us in one form or another for as long as we persist.

So then, what can we do? Well, try this for starters: the next time you hear about someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer, don’t spend any time or energy trying to figure out what exactly he did to bring it on, and for the love of God don’t give him any suggestions about what he could have done to prevent it.  Instead, try to focus on the fact that he’s got a hard road ahead of him. Spend that time trying to think of what you can do to help.

Me: “I have seen the blood moon. The cycle is complete.”Claire: (stares intently at phone)Me:...

Me:  “I have seen the blood moon.  The cycle is complete.”

Claire:  (stares intently at phone)

Me:  (clears throat)

Claire:  (rolls eyes, sighs) “Hail Satan.”

Me: “You know this means I’m gonna have to sacrifice you now, right?”

Claire: (shrugs, launches kitten cage-fighting video) “Oh well. I’ve had a good run.”

Me: …

Me: “I feel like we barely even communicate anymore.”

Claire: “Ha! Stupid kittens!”

Daily Science Fiction :: Grass Girl by Caroline M. Yoachim

Daily Science Fiction :: Grass Girl by Caroline M. Yoachim:

This is an odd one, but you can’t go wrong with Caroline Yoachim.

Here’s a story for you. The summer she turned two, we took Hannah to the beach. It was a perfect...

Here’s a story for you.  The summer she turned two, we took Hannah to the beach.  It was a perfect day, hot and clear, with an offshore breeze kicking up sharp little whitecaps on three-foot swells.  Kara and I took her in shifts, one of us in the water, the other watching her dig in the sand.  After an hour or so, Hannah started getting cranky, and Kara told me to take her into the ocean.  I took her out twenty or thirty feet, to where the water was up to my thighs.  I knelt down and dipped her into the water, let her kick her feet a bit and cool off.  Then Kara waved to me, held up her phone, and motioned for me to stand for a picture.  I picked Hannah up, held her face by mine and waved.  Kara raised the phone, then dropped it, pointed and screamed as something hit me from behind, lifted me off my feet and flipped me forward. My arms flailed, and I hit the sand hard on the back of my neck. There was a moment of fuzzy numbness. I reached out. Hannah was gone.

I struggled to my feet as the wave rolled back out, my heart pounding like a jackhammer in my chest.  Hannah was gone.  Kara was running toward me and I spun once around, searching…

And there, drifting past me on the tide, was a fan of blonde hair.  I dove for her, snatched her up out of the water and held her face to mine.  Her eyes were wide open, and she was laughing.  

Even now, when she’s a grown-ass woman and I’m the one someone needs to look out for, I dream of losing her.  Sometimes it’s in the forest.  We’re backpacking, and suddenly she’s gone.  I crash through the trees calling for her, knowing that something has taken her, and if I don’t find her soon it’ll be too late.  Sometimes it’s in the city, in the subway or one of the abandoned neighborhoods.  I always wake up soaked in sweat and panting.  I never find her.

Lenni Reviews: Three Days in April by Edward Ashton

Lenni Reviews: Three Days in April by Edward Ashton