Arizona Should Go For Gold

Of Arms and Law points out that Arizona now scores only two points on the Brady Campaigns report card. That’s two points! The only thing they need to do is pass a law forcing universities to allow carry on campus and they’ll be at the oft desired gold of zero points. If I were you citizens of Arizona I’d work hard on making this dream a reality.

Boy Scouts of Video Gaming

I admit I don’t know much about the Boy Scouts of America. I never had a desire to be in it and hence wasn’t. Besides pushing religious agendas I understand the Boy Scouts spend most of their time teaching children practical skills including survival. Well apparently they’ve now developed a belt loop and academics pin for video games. Here are the requirements for the belt loop:

1. Explain why it is important to have a rating system for video games. Check your video games to be sure they are right for your age.

2. With an adult, create a schedule for you to do things that includes your chores, homework, and video gaming. Do your best to follow this schedule.

3. Learn to play a new video game that is approved by your parent, guardian, or teacher.

So you have to explain why the rating system is important (which it isn’t). And then check your games to ensure they’re appropriate for your age? I’m sorry but from where I’m sitting that’s a parents job. I was playing games that would be rated 17+ when I was in the seventh grade. My parents allowed me to do this because the felt I was mentally mature enough to handle games like Doom. The game rating board is a guideline much like the MPAA movie rating system. I don’t see why the Boy Scouts would want to push this kind of thing.

And then there is the academics pin which has the following requirements:

1. With your parents, create a plan to buy a video game that is right for your age group.

2. Compare two game systems (for example, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and so on). Explain some of the differences between the two. List good reasons to purchase or use a game system.

3. Play a video game with family members in a family tournament.

4. Teach an adult or a friend how to play a video game.

5. List at least five tips that would help someone who was learning how to play your favorite video game.

6. Play an appropriate video game with a friend for one hour.

7. Play a video game that will help you practice your math, spelling, or another skill that helps you in your schoolwork.

8. Choose a game you might like to purchase. Compare the price for this game at three different stores. Decide which store has the best deal. In your decision, be sure to consider things like the store return policy and manufacturer’s warranty.

9. With an adult’s supervision, install a gaming system.

So this pin has nothing to do with video games really and more to do with learning how to shop smart. Why not just call it the shop smart pin? Seriously if this is what the Boy Scouts are becoming what’s the point of entering your children into it beyond social interaction?

This Should Stop Those Pirates

I present for your review the Club-K shipping container cruise missile. Yes that is a cruise missile that fits inside of and launches out of a standard shipping container box. Oh and it should be powerful enough to sink those pirate boats near Somalia:

.”This Club-K is game changing with the ability to wipe out an aircraft carrier 200 miles away. The threat is immense in that no one can tell how far deployed your missiles could be,” said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, who first reported on the Club-K developments.

They also produced a commercial:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwMzQiXlK0&feature=related]

Of course a weapon this brutally simple but insanely awesome could only be produced in Russia.

So Much for Peer Review

The climatgate won’t close. The IPCC has claimed that their 2007 study, which is under severe scrutiny, was peer-reviewed. Peer-reviewed, I don’t think that word means what you think it means:

The first report centred directly on the IPCC itself. When several of the more alarmist claims in its most recent 2007 report were revealed to be wrong and without any scientific foundation, the official response, not least from the IPCC’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was to claim that everything in its report was “peer-reviewed”, having been confirmed by independent experts.

But a new study put this claim to the test. A team of 40 researchers from 12 countries, led by a Canadian analyst Donna Laframboise, checked out every one of the 18,531 scientific sources cited in the mammoth 2007 report. Astonishingly, they found that nearly a third of them – 5,587 – were not peer-reviewed at all, but came from newspaper articles, student theses, even propaganda leaflets and press releases put out by green activists and lobby groups.

So much for the scientific process.

Can You Say Owned

Dvorak Uncensored let us know that if you buy property that you reasonably expect is stolen law enforcement is going to investigate. For the last couple of weeks there has been a saga going on at Gizmodo. They obtained what is believed to be the next version of the iPhone and they trickled out data for the better part of two weeks.

The saga involved how they obtained the iPhone prototype. After inquiry the story given by the Gizmodo people was they purchased it from a man who found it in a bar. Obviously the story sounds a little fishy and is dripping with potential criminal activity. Well that’s what the Feds thought so they raided the home of the Gizmodo editor who had the phone.

This story has intrigued me from the start. Not because I wanted to see the new iPhone, I really could care less about that. What I found intriguing was the potential legal ramifications involved here. It was very reasonable to believe the property Gizmodo purchased was stolen. To top that off this happened in California where buying merchandise you reasonably believe to be lost or stolen is a crime. Of course this case isn’t so black and white since journalists are able to get away with a lot more than you and me. Oh but we have yet another detail in that Gizmodo pretty much stated they knew the property was lost or stolen because the dragged poor Gary Powell through the mud. Mr. Powell is the Apple employee who lost the new iPhone prototype.

Still this case wouldn’t be a huge deal in my opinion if Gizmodo contacted Apple in an effort to return the device and in the mean time took some pictures and/or video of the new iPhone. But they also dissected the phone so they could show of the internals of the new device.

This should be an interesting case since it will further outline the rights of journalists in regards to buying reasonably believed to be stolen merchandise in order to do a story.

The Salvation Army

I’ve been involved in a discussion with a fellow from Denmark over on Facebook. The discussion itself is really irrelevant to this topic at hand except for providing an explanation to find what I found. I was looking for details between the United States and Denmark and came across the following information [warning it’s a PDF] published by the United States Census Bureau (see they produce something for all those millions of dollars the squander on sending out post cards reminding us of the census we’ll be receiving soon enough).

While digging through it I found some rather interesting information I didn’t know. The Salvation Army is a religion its own separate denomination of Christianity. Now I knew they were a religious organization but I never new they were an actual religion separate denomination. So I did a little more searching and found this article on the BBC:

The Salvation Army is a Protestant denomination of the Christian Church with over 1.6 million members in 109 countries.

In the UK there are over 800 Salvation Army parishes (known as corps), over 1,500 ordained ministers (known as officers) and 54,000 members (including senior soldiers, adherents and junior soldiers).

Salvation Army officers wear a military-style uniform, though some officers may wear a more informal uniform when undertaking certain duties. Members of the church often choose to wear a uniform, but are not required to do so.

Salvation Army halls are registered as places of worship. Salvation Army officers are ordained ministers of religion, and can conduct weddings and funerals.

So they are a Christian based religion denomination, their positions in the church reflect that of a military army, they wear military style uniforms, their facilities are registered places of worship, and their officers are ordained ministers. Hm… does that make them a Christian militia group?

Update 2010-04-27 13:29: Change the wording. Technically the Salvation Army is a denomination (such as Catholicism, Mormon, Lutheran, etc.) of Christianity which is the technical religion.