Fox News is reporting that Apple Computers has filed for a patent for a system that would automatically disable the camera portion of their devices at public events.  Basically, if someone doesn’t want you taking a photo or a video of something, they put up special infrared sensors.  The system notices the Apple device, and instructs it to shut down its camera.  The proposed use of the system would be for concerts and such where photography isn’t supposed to be happening. 

My guess is that if this is shown to be effective, you’ll see similar systems in other mobile devices.  And then you’ll see these things mounted on a lot of things that people don’t want you to take pictures or video of:

• A police cruiser
• A policeman’s equipment belt
• TSA checkpoints
• Political speeches
• And basically anywhere that non-controlled media have taken pictures and video of government officials that are embarrassing

Sorry, Apple, but I refuse to buy a device that has a remote kill switch in its functionality.  Yes, I know, it already has one, and Apple can brick my iPhone anytime it wants to.  But to give that ability to any jackboot who wants to make sure there is less evidence of wrongdoing is out of bounds.

Thanks, but no thanks. If this functionality is in any of the future Apple mobile devices, I’ll go with someone else.  Closed systems and liberal politics I can take. Giving anyone else control over what my device can and can’t do?  Not so much.

Cracked has a good round up on the horrors of moving yourself, and I have to say that I not only laughed at what they wrote, but also at the memories of every family move we made when I was growing up.

My step-dad worked for the Air Force as a civilian until he got fired for chronic stupidity.  After he and my mother got married when I was 13, we moved 7 times by my 17th  birthday.  Since there was money to be made in moving yourself at the .gov’s expense, all of these except one were done by putting everything we owned into his RV, his Jeep CJ-5 on a hitch, and the back of my mother’s station wagon, securing it all with strapping tape, then wedging the cats, dogs, and kids into the back of the RV and driving like a madman to get wherever we were headed.

Of course, the sentence in the article that really caught my eye in the Cracked article was this:

Buy a folding chair, a packet of no-doze and a gun. Camp out in front of your moving van; shoot everybody that looks like they need a shower.

You see, my introduction to handguns was my stepfather parking the family caravan behind the seedy hotel we were staying the night at, taking me to the construction area in the next lot over, letting me fire a few rounds from his .41 Magnum revolver, then putting me on guard duty next to the RV for the night.  What he expected to tell the cops if my 16 year old self had put a couple of rounds into the interesting characters who stopped by during the night is beyond me.  I did this for the 3 nights it took to drive from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Pittsburgh, California.  By the last night in Lake Tahoe, I was ready to do anything that got me arrested, because at least I could sleep in jail.


Needless to say, as an adult, I have been resistant to any idea that included me using a U-Haul.  Every move I’ve ever done was done with a moving service, and I’ve never regretted it or fussed about the expense.  

Scientists are now predicting that solar activity may be low for the next decade or so.  They believe that this will cause lower global temperatures, with all of the consequences such a thing can bring.

Forgive me if I don’t panic.

When I was a child, the ice age was on its way back.  As a teenager, we were all going to die in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter.  As an adult, I was told that the planet would grow so warm that millions would starve from the drought and coastal flooding.

Now we’re back to lower than normal temps.

I’ll wait until I start to see blizzards in May again, and the Ohio freezes solid enough to walk on before I start to give credence to this new theory.

We got this in the mail the other day:

One of the local Ford dealerships wants to pay me up to half my purchase price for the Caravan.  As much as I’d love to be rid of that piece of crap, I’m not going to bite.  First, I like not having a car payment, even if I’m about to dump a lot of cash into the POS.  Next, they wouldn’t give me anything even close to that once they actually see the DadMobile, so it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort. And finally, I wouldn’t inflict that pile of junk on my worst enemy unless I knew they were going to set it on fire.  I won’t even donate it to the GoodWill because I’m pretty sure they’ll spend more getting it to an auction house than they will make from it.

No, my plans for the minivan include Knob Creek, a Ma-Deuce, and as much tannerite as I can afford. Sorry, Mr. Ford Dealer, but I’ll have to do you a favor and pass.

Saw this tonight when I stopped off to pick up a couple of things Irish Woman needed to make dinner:

That’s take-home pizza and cold beer within spitting distance of the front door and the registers.  Everything a guy needs, all in one convenient location.  OK, it’s Budweiser in several forms, but if you’re going to sit in front of the TV and watch the game while eating pizza and drinking beer, this is perfect.

On this date in 1775, the Congress of the 13 colonies created the United States Army.  The U.S. is in a minority of countries, in that it’s armed forces, including it’s army, can trace their lineage to before the actual creation of the country itself.  While the Army was formed in 1775, the country itself wasn’t officially created until the Constitution was ratified in 1789.

The United States Army has had its glory, it’s shame, it’s elation, and its heartbreak.  Our soldiers have fought in the mud of trenches, the dust of deserts, the spray of the surf, and the snow of mountains.  They fly through the sky, parachute from the heights, drive war machines such as have never been seen before, and of course, they march to the sound of the guns.  Today we have soldiers in one form or another in hundreds of places around the world.  Sometimes their exploits are on the evening news, sometimes we will never know what they do for us.

“I, Daddy J. Bear, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

Our armed forces do not swear allegiance to the government, or even to the country.  They swear to protect and defend our Constitution, from which our country flows, and follow orders that are in accordance with regulations.  Never in our history have our soldiers pledged allegiance to a general, or a president, or a party.  That alone goes a long way in explaining why our democracy has never gone down to military dictatorship, as have so many since 1775.  While she has never been truly apolitical, our Army has always followed the example of Washington and refrained from interfering in the conduct of the government.

236 years is a long time for any organization to exist, even one that evolves and adapts as much as our Army does.  I have to admit that I am awed by the thought of the generations of warriors who have come before me, and I envy the generations that will follow me.  So long as the Army remembers its proper role in a healthy republic, the country will be safe.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the protests that popped up in the Bay Area after the fatal shooting of a man by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police.  Basically, a man of African heritage was arrested for being part of a fight in a BART station.  The victim was on his belly with his hands behind his back when a BART policeman, Johannes Mehserle, reached to his belt, pulled out his sidearm, and shot him.  The policeman claimed at trial that he thought he was pulling out his Taser, and pulled his pistol instead.

Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 years in prison last year.

You read that right, two years in prison for shooting a proned-out prisoner in the back with a .40 calibre handgun.  If Mehserle is telling the truth, he got two years for not knowing the difference in how the grip on a Taser and a pistol feels, not looking at the weapon in his hand while aiming it, and then shooting another human being that was on his stomach with his hands behind his back. 

This past weekend, Mehserle was released from jail in Los Angeles after serving 11 months of his sentence.  He was given time off for good behavior and time served.  That’s right, folks.  Shoot a man in the back while he’s lying face down on a train station platform, and you’ll only be in jail for 11 months. 

Needless to say, there’s trouble brewing in the Bay Area.  Peaceful protests have already happened in Oakland and Los Angeles, and I can honestly say that I hope there are more.  Being given such a light sentence and then getting time off because he kept his nose clean is insulting.  Apparently the sentence for Contempt of Cop is death in Oakland, but the sentence for causing the death of a prisoner through negligence is only 11 months.

While taking a short nap this afternoon, I had the strangest dream.

I was driving cross-country in my mother’s old Ford Grenada.  The AM radio in that 1970’s POS would only pick up one station, and all it played was zombie versions of popular songs.  For example:

Hooked on a Brainstem – Blue Swede
NoBrains – Eric Clapton
Stairway to Barricades – Led Zeppelin
If you like burning zombies (The Molotov Cocktail song) – Rupert Holmes
Shamblin Man – The Allman Brothers
Enter Zombie – Metallica
Bite me Baby, One more Time – Britney Spears
Can’t Bite This – MC Hammer
Shambler’s Paradise – Coolio
Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo, although this one was unchanged.
The Biological Mystery Tour – The Beatles

Luckily, I only took a 30 minute nap, so I was spared the drive across Nebraska listening to this stuff.  I wonder what brought this on?

Watching a zombie movie on your laptop while having your blood pressure monitored will yield some interesting results.

Florida recently passed a law that prevents doctors from gathering information about firearms in the homes of their patients, unless the doctor believes that the presence of said firearms has a direct relationship to the condition that is being treated.  To no-one’s surprise, the doctors have gotten a lawyer.

Now, our family doctor has been seeing us for so long that she knows a lot about our lifestyles just by osmosis. We’ve even talked about guns, hunting, and computers during a few visits, so she’s pretty familiar with my hobbies.  Where I become a little more reserved is with doctors in the emergency department and urgent care clinics.  These doctors, for whom I have a healthy respect and am lucky to have available for emergencies and when I can’t get in to see my PCP, don’t know me from Adam, and vice versa.  So they get the bare minimum on anything that’s not part of the problem I’m seeing them for.

If a doctor asks if there are firearms in my home, unless their presence is a factor in my malady, I won’t answer.  Which I guess is pretty much a yes, but I’m not going to give them any further information than that.   I have had only one pediatrician ask Junior Bear if there were guns in his house, and I cut that off.  I also don’t let my kids see a doctor without either me or Irish Woman in the room, for this and other reasons.

I guess my point is that while we shouldn’t be ashamed of our hobby, we don’t need to share details like what guns we have, how and where we store them, and do the children know where they are, unless of course we deem it necessary.

Now to the bigger point.  Does the government have the power to tell a medical professional which diagnostic questions may or may not be asked of a patient, assuming that a patient may refuse to answer any question?  The answer is, of course, no.  It is none of the government’s business what I discuss with my doctor, or what she wants to ask me.   If the American Medical Association wants to come out with its own regulations to compel some questions and forbid others, that’s a matter between the doctor, a private citizen, and the AMA, a private organization.  The Florida legislature needs to find something better to do with its time.