Tag Archives: logical libertarian

Guns & The 2nd Amendment

The Likely Outcome of Banning Guns

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Any time a mass shooting occurs, the immediate aftermath always includes those who are opposed to gun ownership as a right making their arguments, and those who support such a right launch their counter attack. Since I believe in the principles of the 2nd amendment myself, I’m forced to point out the flaws in these arguments.
First, let’s discuss the selective nature of such anti-gun arguments. In 2013, 10,076 people were killed by drunk drivers. In the same year, 8,454 people were killed by firearms.
drunk-driving2[1]
So why don’t we ban alcohol, since “No one needs to drink alcohol,” (remember, most people argue “no one needs an ‘assault’ rifle”)? Oh wait, we tried that, didn’t we?
During the dreaded Volstead act years, (aka Prohibition), crime went up, not down. While alcohol was banned, it was still quite rampant. Except all the people using it were now criminals. And the people selling it became murderers lest they be locked up.
Al Capone
Al Capone
On December 5th, 1933, then president Roosevelt announced the 21st Amendment had been ratified, a repeal of the 18th Amendment that was prohibition, and the worst violation of the U.S. Constitution’s principle of liberty was finally undone.
Decades later, in June of 1971, Richard Nixon, seemingly fully ignorant of the lessons of prohibition, announced the War on Drugs, and much like prohibition, it has also led to more violence while drugs are still readily available to nearly anyone who can afford them.
So what evidence do we have to believe that banning or restricting guns will lead to a different outcome? The aforementioned drug and alcohol bans have simply created black markets that aren’t nearly as selective about who they sell to, and increase crime doing so.
Many point out that other countries don’t allow guns, and they’re doing fine, but it’s important to point out that they didn’t start out with that right, as America did. So that’s one reason why it might work there when it wouldn’t work here. They don’t already have many guns in the marketplace, and there’s also a cultural issue that resides within the majority of American’s that owning a weapon of self defense is a right, that you would have to overcome.
I will continue to argue we have a mental illness problem, as much or more so than we have a gun problem. In principle alone, I do not believe in restricting the rights of millions of good people (legal gun owners like myself who have never, nor likely will ever kill someone) because of the actions of bad a few.
Armalite AR-15
Armalite AR-15 – Contrary to popular belief, AR represents Armalite Rifle, not Assault Rifle.
Instead, I’d concede that all firearm sales be subject to background checks, even private sales, such as the ones at gun shows. Many gun-rights advocates may part with me on that point, but the fact remains that someone who would fail a background check currently, could go to such an event, and buy from a private attendee (vendors at gun shows still do background checks, just now private owners who are looking to swap).
That person—leaving with a gun, was in violation of the law if they knew they wouldn’t have passed the background check, but the seller and the show itself were fully within the law, and our current background-check system, in that moment, has failed.
But if we look deeper, most of these mass shootings are from violent psychopaths, many of whom had a history of psychiatric care prior to committing their heinous acts.
If only their respective doctors were to convene, as doctors are sometimes known to do, and collaborate on a system to order further evaluation of someone they have diagnosed with a disorder that the doctor determines makes the patient a danger to others, then submit a suggestion of a firearms restrictions to the FBI so that person would fail a background check, maybe some of these mass shooting could be prevented.
But the fact is that bad people are always going to exist so long as we don’t find some magical way to genetically modify humans to a eliminate the qualities that lead one to be a violent psychopath. That of course assumes it’s a genetic defect versus a product of the person’s environment in the first place; a subject for another post.
So the real issue is that when one of these people does go on a killing spree, there can be no mistake that there are only three things that can stop them.
  1.  A change of heart. (I don’t recall an incident where this has ever happened)
  2.  Running out of ammo (Happens, but usually after a lot of people are dead)
  3.  Or a good person with a gun takes action to stop them.Utah-DPS-SWAT[1]

In my opinion, the best way to end gun deaths of innocent people, is to promote gun ownership to good people, so that more good people are armed and prepared to deal with the bad ones when they go off on a rampage. Terrorists and spree killers aren’t going to snuff themselves out, after all.

Memebuster

Memebuster – Are Chemicals in Foods Really Bad For You?

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Vani Hari aka The Food Babe
Vani Hari aka The Food Babe

I understand it’s fashionable to complain about all the “Chemicals” in food these days. The scientific names for chemical compounds are quite foreign to anyone who didn’t study chemistry.

But let’s put on our skeptical hat for a minute. I’d like to point out that foods, in and of themselves, are entirely composed of chemicals, including the ones labeled “organic.”2997facda28f3381345d2a7223fa48e0927cd647173bee49fddde44bfd47c1b8[1]

Water, for instance, in the scientific community, is known as the much scarier sounding dihydrogen monoxide (Two hydrogens, one oxygen). A fact that Penn & Teller decided to exploit in their rather entertaining yet educational program called “Bullshit!”

Just because something is a chemical, cannot and should NEVER be assumed to be bad for you. Some just don’t have pretty names like water or table salt (aka: sodium chloride)

When companies make food products that turn out to be toxic, barring foods that are just unhealthy, or low on nutrition, which you usually know and eat anyway, those companies usually get skewered in the news, it costs them millions or even billions, and many go out of business as a result.12b3eb1c33a8043971f61d184fb3a763[1]

Or in the case of Stuart Parnell, even go to prison. A peanut farmer found criminally negligent, but allowing the spread of salmonella poisoning.

Businesses are in business to make money. They make money by providing a superior product for a superior price. It has never been, nor will ever be, in their best financial interests to make a product that could cause you or your loved ones to die. Capitalists, despite the myth of them all being evil, are generally not murderers.

I know it’s sexy to believe in the “evil corporations,” but any of you who are employed, either work for a corporation, or started one yourself. Do you think you’re evil, or that your boss is out to kill their consumers? I’ve been in the job marketplace for decades now, and I’ve never gotten even a whiff of my employer encouraging us employees to endanger the lives of our consumers.

The people putting forth these chemicals-are-bad mantras are spreading fear based food-science ignorance. Buying into this will not enrich your life in any way.

Memebuster

Memebuster – Sharia Law Is Identical To The Republican Platform

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I ‘ve decided to start a new segment at Logical Libertarian called Memebuster. I will attempt to debunk memes largely based on ideology, and rarely containing any factual information. Let’s start with this one from a friend on Twitter. I’ll answer them one at a time:

Government based on religion

While Republicans are definitely quite commonly supporting laws based on their own religious ideology, none have ever promoted the idea of abolishing the 1st amendment and legislating the Bible, or any other religion.

There’s a difference between promoting a law based on religious beliefs, and adopting a government based solely on religion.

Women have fewer rights than men

Under Sharia law, women can’t even show their face, can be murdered if they get raped—being deemed as adulterers, aren’t allowed to drive a car, etc.

No one in the GOP is promoting such a notion.

This is entirely about positions on abortion. We’re all against murder, but in the eyes of many on the right, abortion is seen as the murder of an innocent child. There is no scientific evidence that can deem them wrong.

While I’m personally pro-choice prior to fetal-viability, it’s merely my opinion, and positions on abortion always will be. But it is NEVER about taking away women’s rights for the GOP, they’re trying to protect the rights of the unborn as they see it.

Disagree if you must, as I do, but don’t lie by saying they’re against women’s rights.

Homosexuality is outlawed

No GOP legislator is promoting making homosexuality a crime. They are against it being called marriage, since many are religious and consider marriage a religious institution. But many GOPs support civil unions, and some have even evolved on gay marriage.

This is a wildly hyperbolic overstatement by this meme.

Rejecting Science In Favor of Religious Doctrine

Many lawmakers on the left and right are religious. Many are not scientists. When you don’t understand a particular field of science, you will largely default to your beliefs. This is not unique to Republicans.

Politicians on both sides promote religion and/or science when it serves their interests.

For instance, Democrats promote the idea of giving, often quoting the Bible, when they promote socialist policies that take from people with money, and give to people who don’t have money. Despite the science of economics that shows that socialism has never lifted an economy out of ruin.Alms for the poor box

Republicans are usually accused of being anti-science on global warming, but there isn’t a religious reason for doing that, they just believe that the predictive models aren’t settled science.

I cannot think of any issue where they ignore science because of religious dogma. Most accept that the Earth isn’t 6,000 years old, most call a doctor before a priest when they’re sick, and most consider scientific evidence when offered it, as related to proposed legislation.

The 1st Amendment
The 1st Amendment

No separation between church and state

Again, no Republican is promoting a repeal of the 1st amendment, or amending it.  I would also like to point out that “separation of church and state” is not even in the Constitution, which instead points out that no law should be passed prohibiting or mandating religion. That’s a pretty big distinction.

There are no proposed laws from Republicans trying to force someone to be religious, but instead to enforce they’re opinion of morality based on their religion.

In other words, no Republican is forcing you to be religious, but they don’t want you smoking marijuana, for instance, because they think it’s just wrong—largely based on their own religious conditioning.

Religion is taught in schools

This is half-true. Many Republicans want religion allowed to be taught in school, but none are promoting the idea that it must be taught in school under penalty of law, such as Sharia law would dictate.

Abortion is illegal

This is probably the only fair similarity in this meme. Many Republicans are anti-choice on the issue of abortion because again, they believe it’s murder.

You can disagree with them if you like, but their decision isn’t an oppressive one, it’s about saving what they believe to be a human life, a principle we all agree on in theory, we just disagree on when a life becomes a life.

Science & Skepticism

Interesting Science Fact You May or May Not Know: Archimedes’ Bad-Ass Lever

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Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC) is quoted as having once said, “Give me a big enough lever, and a place to put the fulcrum, and I will move the world.” (English translation)cigar_label_600dpi[1]

It was of course, a theoretical statement, but based on the scientific principle of leverage Archimedes was so eloquent at explaining.

But this then begs the question, what’s the math on his theoretical question? So let’s take a look!

We don’t know what Archimedes weighed, but let’s assume he was an even 200 lbs., an average weight for an adult male, and a nice round number to do our math with.

First, let’s understand leverage.If you have a fulcrum (pivot point) in the middle of a lever supporting two bodies of mass, and those masses are the same distance from the lever, assuming the lever is a uniform weight its entire length, the two bodies will balance.

If however, one mass is twice as heavy as the other, then the lighter item needs to be twice as far from the fulcrum to balance with the heavier one…and so on.snap2[1]

If he was indeed 200 lbs., and wanted to lift Earth (which is believed to be approx 5.9 sextillion tons) one foot, he would place the fulcrum 1 foot away from the end of his lever under the Earth, and the other side of the lever would have to be approximately 5,587,121,210,000,000 miles away.

Archimedes Lever
Archimedes Lever

This then also means he would have to move vertically 5,587,121,210,000,000 miles as well, in order to lift the other side just one foot.

This is of course theoretical, for fun, let’s think about some of the other things that would have to be true.

  • It assumes the lever is some miracle material that is unbreakable, it is being asked to lift 5.9 sextillion tons, after all.
  • Yet somehow, this unbreakable lever must have no mass of its own. Otherwise, it changes your equation, and you’d have to account for that.
  • It requires that Earth would be laying on top of another body that has the same mass as Earth, because something needs to be not only providing a gravity force to pull earth down, but also, he needs some place to put his fulcrum.

Any physicists out there want to add any critique or additional insights, please feel free to do so in the comments section below. Always an honor to have my work reviewed.

Science & Skepticism, Social Issues

Interesting Science Fact You May or May Not Know: Insanity

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The Definition of Insanity

Have you ever heard the expression that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result? Rest assured, you probably didn’t hear it from a psychiatrist, because it’s utter nonsense.

Psychiatrists use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as the standard listing of all the recognized disorders that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) agrees upon.americanpsychoass[1]

Know what condition is not in there? Insanity.

As it turns out, insanity is a rather generic term used in the legal realm for many disorders that would in fact be listed in the DSM, that would render a suspect unable to distinguish right from wrong, and therefore unable to assist in their defense.Diagnostic Statistical Manual DSM

Any numbers of diseases could be cause for finding someone legally insane, but the APA calling you insane, would be akin to the American Medical Association (AMA) giving you an official diagnosis of “Having a cold.” It’s simply a very broad and generic term that isn’t really used in the clinical world in any official capacity.

This quote has been attributed to Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, and others. None of whom seem to pan out as the actual origin of the quote.

However, all that being said, there are many conditions and behaviors insanity could be attributed to. Certainly one of them might be someone who bangs their head up against a wall and thinks, “Ouch, that hurt.” Then, does it again nonetheless. Bang Head Against Wall

So while someone who does the same thing and expects a different result might in fact have a condition that would qualify them for an insanity defense in a court of law, it is in no way the definition of insanity.

So I’d like to quash this silly anecdote by not using it, and explaining to those who do, that it’s incorrect. Why, you might ask?

Because, as P.C. Hodgell once eloquently wrote in Seeker’s Mask, “That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.”

Science & Skepticism

Interesting Science Facts You May Or May Not Know – June 19th, 2015

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Why do space ships and comets get so hot returning to Earth?

Most people know that comets turn into a big ball of flames that burn up as they hurdle through the sky, and that space vehicles get extremely hot during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but why?

There is a misconception that this is because of the friction of the air passing around the object, but that’s not the case.

If you’ve ever put your hand out the window of your moving car with your palm pacing forwards, you know what wind resistance feels like—that pressure pushing your hand backwards. Chances are, unless you or the driver had a death wish, you haven’t been doing much greater that 60-70 mph doing it.

All pressure generates heat because it compresses the atoms closer together than they would be if they weren’t under pressure. At 60-70 mph, not much heat is generated. At 18,000 mph, the speed that spacefraft are doing when they are in orbit however, a massive amount of heat will be generated as the spacecraft falls towards Earth through our atmosphere. Comets and other celestial bodies may even be going much faster than that depending on what forces sent them careening through space in the first place.

So the heat is from the pressure of the object pushing on the air in front of it which can’t get out of the way fast enough.

Another great example of this same phenomena are the rail guns the U.S. military is testing. These guns use magnets to fire an entirely inert projectile at thousands of miles per hour. They don’t use any explosives, gun powders, etc., whatsoever. Instead, they use magnets to repel the projectile away like when you put a magnet near another magnet with the same pole.

Yet, when the projectile is fired, it is launched at thousands of miles per hour; much faster than a traditional projectile. In the video below, you can see the flames all around it. Again, with no explosives used whatsoever, this is entirely due to the heating up of the air in front of it—just like a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere.

Do planets really orbit stars?

Technically, planets like Earth don’t orbit around their stars like our sun, they orbit around the center of the mass between the two objects.

Imagine a planet and a star had the exact same mass, they would both orbit round the point in space exactly between the two. If the sun for instance, was twice as big as Earth, the sun’s orbit would be half the size of Earth’s, and so on.

Think of a bola (See image below); a weapon that’s two balls tied to either end of a string. When you throw it, the two balls spin around a point at the very center of the string.

Scale it up to make those two balls a planet and a star, the string is gravity.

Since our sun has so much more mass than Earth (or any other orbiting body in our solar system), the sun’s orbit is mass-proportionate to the orbital motion of Earth (and the other planets, dwarf planets, and asteroids). For instance, an object that is 1/100th the mass of the sun would have an orbit 100 times larger than the sun.

All the planets, dwarf planets, etc. are many in numbers, so their orbits aren’t perfect circles, as they all affect each other dependent upon how close they are in relation to each other, and the proportionate mass of each of them. But the sun as well as the planets are all orbiting around a central imaginary point to all of them.

bola

Warp-Drive – Not so awesome after all

In many Sci-Fi movies, you see space travelers go from a standard space cruising speed, to some “warp-drive” feature that sends them to light speed within about one second.

There’s a problem with this though. That acceleration puts G-Forces on the body.

Gravity is measured in m/s/s (meters per second per second), and gravity’s standard value for this on Earth is 9.8m/s/s.

I know that’s a tad confusing, so let me explain.

Since this is theoretical, to be literal, you would have to remove all the air from Earth so there would be no wind resistance first. But once that is done, if you dropped any object above Earth, the first second, it would fall at 9.8 meters per second. The 2nd second would be 19.6 meters per second. The 3rd, 29.4 meters per second, and so on…each second increasing in speed 9.8 meters per second.

This is the acceleration of gravity, or often referred to as 1 g.

Knowing this, just to give you some examples of G-Forces people experience, many top fuel dragsters accelerate so fast, the drivers are exposed to 5 g’s of gravity, fighter pilots can get over 15 g’s of gravity, but risk black-outs doing so.

How many g’s can a person withstand?

Over a period of time, 15 g’s is about the most we can endure, and even then, only if you’re in peak physical condition. Because at 15 g’s, your effective weight is 15 times greater than normal, making your average 200 lbs. male a whopping 3,000 lbs.

But for a brief moment, like slamming into a wall (which are negative G’s, or deceleration vs. acceleration), humans have been known to survive as much as 46 g’s.

See link below, and poor John Stapps face, while achieving those negative g’s. He voluntarily strapped himself into a contraption that exposed himself to those high g’s for scientific research. If there was ever a hero who took one for the team of science, it’s that guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force

john-stapp-during-a-high-g-force-test-on-a-sled-nasa[1]

Now, here’s where the problem comes in for warp-drive.

In space, the fastest mankind has ever went is about 25,000 mph, when we went to the moon. So let’s assume that’s the approximate “cruising” speed that our Sci-Fi characters are bumbling about at.

25,000 mph is approximately 11,176 meters per second (m/s).
The speed of light is “slightly” faster, at a whopping 299,792,458 m/s.

So that means, that the acceleration is 299,781,282 meters per second per second (m/s/s) if they went from 25,000 mph to the speed of light in one second. If my calculations are right, and of course 1 g is 9.8 m/s/s, then that means that our Sci-Fi characters would be exposed to 30,589,927 g’s of force, roughly. Or 30,589,881 g’s more than any human has ever survived.

In order for them to accelerate to light speed from 25,000mph, and achieve no more than 10 g’s, a force that is still virtually unbearable, it would take approximately 3,058,992 seconds, 50,983 hrs, 2,124 days, or 5.8 years, then doubling of course to allow for the the equally powerful negative G-forces you’d achieve slowing back down.

So the moral of the story, is that they’d be human pancakes in a fraction of a second—which is not so cool after all. Not to mention, their space ship would be torn to shreds as well. While the writers at Star Trek deserve a little credit for identifying this problem and coming up with the idea of “inertial dampers” to overcome the effect, such inertial dampers fall under a category I like to call literary bullshit.

Capitalism, Libertarianism, Social Issues, The United States Constitution

Religious Liberty? Sexual-Orientation Liberty? How about just “Liberty”

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In January of 2013, an Oregonian bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, refused to bake a cake for a lesbian couple who were soon to wed. Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakery’s owners, are Christian, and felt that baking such a cake would violate their religious beliefs. As such, they refused the lesbian couple’s business.sweet_cakes_by_Melissa

As reported here by Fox, the couple faced a $150,000 fine, based on a January 29th, 2015 ruling, for discrimination as a result of such action.

Being an atheist and a libertarian, I find Aaron and Missy’s actions egregious and disgusting. I suspect many people who champion gay rights are happy to see them in trouble. But, as much as libertarians are indeed for gay rights, we are supposed to champion rights for all people, qualifiers be damned.

While the courts are doing a good job protecting the rights of the lesbian couple, they are taking away rights from the Kleins in doing so, and this is no better.

If the Constitution’s 1st amendment guarantees free speech under the law so people can say hateful things, shouldn’t the 1st amendment’s freedom of religion clause protect those who practice religion-based hate just the same?

U.S. Constitution: 1st Amendment
U.S. Constitution: 1st Amendment

If I were the gay couple looking to get the aforementioned cake, I’d be rather insulted by the Klein’s actions, but if I believe in liberty, I’d fight vehemently for them to engage in such hate, so long as their hate isn’t harming me in some way. Let the free market deal with the Kleins in the court of public opinion.

I could do so by taking my story to local media, which happened as a result of this case, but I could also go on social media like Facebook and Twitter and spread the fact that the Kleins are not gay-friendly, hoping reasonable people opt not to frequent their store, harming their business accordingly.

The free market appears to have done exactly that since the aforementioned article by Fox indicates they have since moved to doing business out of their home, because the loss of business cost them the ability to continue leasing their store. They opted to start a GoFundMe campaign to help them with their cause, but that later was shut down, again due to the free market flexing its muscle as gay rights groups got GoFundMe to pull the Klein’s campaign.

Religious groups on the right are calling for religious liberty, but in my opinion, they are equally bad in all of this, since I doubt many of them support the lesbian couple’s right to marry. If they do, good on them for not being hypocrites.gay-marriage1[1]

If America is indeed a free-market capitalist system, government has no right to impose its will on private enterprise in this way. Yet we Americans tolerate it because we ignore the fundamental basis of the Constitution—that we all have equal rights under the law, including business owners like the Kleins.

Equal rights under the law has to mean that any business should have the right to engage in, or refuse, business with anyone else for any reason imaginable, no matter how hateful and disgusting those reasons may be.

Why? Because it’s their business. Despite Obama’s claims to the contrary, they built it, and they own it. They should have the right to build it up or burn it down however they see fit.

But we so often call for such laws, because there seems to be this knee-jerk reaction that every time someone is wronged, instead of trusting in the free market to sort it out, we feel we must ask government to pass a law to prevent this from happening in the future instead. But that is not, nor ever should be, the purpose of government.

Government’s duty is only to protect your rights, not your feelings. In a free country, you are going to be exposed to people who offend you, but that also means you are free to walk away and not listen to them or deal with them.

The lesbian couple certainly could have found another bakery, or simply baked their own cake. Why would they want to do business with people they know don’t like them in the first place?lesbian_wedding_cake[1]

It’s certainly their right to ask the Kleins to bake them a cake, but how could anyone say they have a right to demand the Kleins bake them one? Don’t the Kleins have rights?

So as much as gay rights groups were up in arms until the January 29th decision was handed down, and now religious groups are up in arms instead, I’d call for both of them to stop being hypocrites. If you say you’re for freedom and rights, then you have to champion the rights for those who hate you too.