Intel patents face recognition algorithm for phones.

Speaking of ubiquitous surveillance:

Face recognition for your phone or Google Glasses. Or drone, or random camera stuck to a wall, or whatever.

Intel recently filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a new technology method of real-time facial detection using an image or video of the subject taken by a mobile device.

Intel Korea research engineer Wooju Ryu describes the face detection method in the U.S. Patent Application No. 20140341430, titled "Method and Device for Detecting Face, and Non-Transitory Computer-Readable Recording Medium for Executing the Method".

That's not all they're doing.

Intel continues to make a strong push into the biometric and wearable technology market through a series of developments and partnerships, such creating a new developer's platform for the Internet of Things, a sector that is closely related to wearable technology.

One gets the feeling that these keeners who toil in the bowels of Intel haven't given even a second's thought to what can happen if the Internet Of Things is being run by somebody mean. Smart people can be the dumbest bastards sometimes, it just kills me.

The Phantom

This is what permits are -really- for: Predation Policing.

The police in the state of Maryland seem to be pulling over people with out-of-state gun permits, looking for any excuse to bust them.

A year ago this New Year's Eve, John Filippidis of Florida was driving south with his family on Interstate 95 when the Maryland Transportation Authority Police pulled over his black Ford Expedition and proceeded to raid it while his twins, wife and daughter looked on — separated in the back seats of different police cruisers.

The officers were searching for Mr. Filippidis' Florida-licensed, palm-size Kel-Tec .38 semi-automatic handgun, which he left at home locked in his safe. (Maryland does not recognize handgun permits issued by other states.)

Mr. Filippidis' case earned the support of Second Amendment advocates and subsequent apologies from the MDTA. But an internal police review concluded his stop and search were lawful and did not violate police protocols.

Those findings, however, have not satisfied other out-of-state gun owners, who worry that they, too, have been targeted for minor traffic stops in Maryland because they have concealed weapons permits. Their stories are accumulating.

John Tonnesen IV of Lake Worth, Florida, was pulled over and arrested after a search of his work truck — by the same officer who stopped Mr. Filippidis — turned up his .45-caliber Ruger, licensed in the state of Florida. He doesn't believe the stop was coincidental.

"It was unloaded and stuffed into a bag far from me," Mr. Tonnesen told The Times. "There's scanners in Maryland that scan every tag, and Florida is one of their target vehicles. They'll find whatever reason they can to pull you over."

MDTA denies it targets out-of-state gun owners and noted the review of Mr. Fillipides earlier traffic stop concluded the officers did nothing wrong.

Its like this. There's a license plate scanner on every cop car, bridge, toll booth etc. in Maryland on the interstate highways. These scanners note the passing of every car. The system notes things like route, state of origin, and what time the car was read. Given that info the system can establish things like average speed, if the guy is a lane hopper, if he's passing through or local, all kinds of things.

Lets assume the system is set up to red flag certain behaviors. Like speeding, or being out-of-state. So a guy is averaging 60mph instead of 55mph, he gets a red flag. If its an out-of-state plate, he gets two red flags.  Now if I'm a gun control freak, I can ask "does 2 Red Flag car owner have a gun permit or warrants/charges against him?"  Automated query goes out to the state of origin, in this case Florida. Maybe Florida's system has yes/no data on gun permits. So now the system has that data.

The system also knows where all the cop cars are. It can preferentially assign cop cars to go intercept any car it wants to. The more red flags on a car, the more likely the system will assign a cop car to go get that guy. Or the cop can ask the system to identify likely candidates for a traffic stop at his location, because he's trolling for tickets to make his quota. Either way, if he writes a gun charge he gets more brownie points than a plain vanilla speeding ticket.

Important tip, Mr. Policeman does not care about you. As far as he is concerned, you are a source of Brownie Points. That makes you food and he's a wolf. Its a predation model, not a service model. Got it?

All you "I've got nothing to fear, I've done nothing wrong" people out there, you should start being very goddamn afraid. Because maybe you've never done anything wrong in Ontario, or New York, or Florida, or East Moose Antler Alaska. But the mere possession of seemingly innocuous objects in one place is a felony in another. Oh, you have a gun permit in Florida? I'm going to search your shit right down to the paint because I can bust your redneck ass here in Maryland and get 16 Brownie Points. If I get 20,000 Brownie Points they make me a sergeant!

I hasten to add, this phenomenon is not restricted to guns. Did you change the emission controls on your car? Is it legal in whatever place you are in? They can TAKE YOUR CAR if it isn't, you know. Just take it. Bang. And if you registered that modification legally back home in East Moose Antler, there is a California license plate reader looking for you right now. And a New York one, and a Connecticut one, and a Nebraska one.... you get the picture.

Did you buy medical marijuana in Colorado? Did you buy cheese in North Dakota? Did you get married in Las Vegas? Do you own a particular kind of dog? Oh yeah, if you own a properly licensed "pit bull" and you're driving through Colorado, you could easily have the cops pull you over looking for that dog. If they find it they will TAKE THE DOG. Right now. Take it, impound it and put it down the same day.

The purpose of licenses and permits is not to protect the public, not to reduce crime, not even to create revenue. In the new predation policing model, the purpose of licenses and permits is to identify targets. Ubiquitous surveillance systems find you, vector enforcement onto your location and then the State takes your stuff and maybe your freedom. Not because you've ever done anything in your life to deserve it, but because they can. Pure and simple.

The Phantom

And now, the annual "whinging about the younger generation" articles begin.

I'm sorry, I don't usually care at all about this type of thing, but this one is so egregiously wrong I have to make an example of it.

Young people in Britain have become a lost generation who can no longer mend gadgets and appliances because they have grown up in a disposable world, the professor giving this year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures has warned.

Oh. My ghod. Its the viewing with alarm of the Younger Generation again. The Younger Generation is the Disposable Generation. I'm 58, I've been hearing this exact same bollocks since I was the "younger generation" myself.

Danielle George, Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering, at the University of Manchester, claims that the under 40s expect everything to 'just work' and have no idea what to do when things go wrong. Unlike previous generations who would 'make do and mend' now young people will just chuck out their faulty appliances and buy new ones. But Prof George claims that many broken or outdated gadgets could be fixed or repurposed with only a brief knowledge of engineering and electronics.

You mean like Boomers used to fix and re-purpose their own tube driven televisions and radios, washers/dryers/refrigerators/telephones? That's what the house had in it when I was a kid. Washer, dryer, fridge, TV, radio, telephone. When I was really little we just had a radio and a fridge, the washer was Mum in the laundry tubs and the dryer was some clothes pins. When the TV or the radio broke it was so high tech you couldn't fix it, you called The Man. He fixed it.

You mean like GenXers used to fix their own tape decks and Walkmans?

You mean like GenYers used to fix their own computers? Oh wait, they DO fix their own computers. And everything else that isn't a monolithic IC.

Somebody type "hackerspace" or "arduino" into google, mail it to f-ing Dr. Danielle George Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering, and tell her to go pound it up her no-doubt ample fundament.

AAAAARRRRRGHHHH!

The Phantom.

Never mind, its Christmas!

Merry Christmas all!

Here's where it starts to get interesting, America.

Ratbags looking for something to do appear to be thinking about shooting uniforms. And if they're all thinking it, one of them will have poor enough impulse control to actually do it.

A Jacksonville firefighter was wounded Tuesday evening during an apparent drive-by shooting when someone opened fire at a fire truck refueling outside a firehouse on the city's Southside, sources tell First Coast News.

At some point, firefighters were pumping gas outside Station 28 near Southside Boulevard and Hogan Road when someone driving by apparently opened fire, Randy Wyse, president of the Jacksonville Association of Firefighters, told FCN in a phone interview.

About five or six shots were fired, police said. In the wake of the shooting, authorities have placed fire stations across the city on high alert.

This is exactly what y'all were warned about waaaay back in 2008 when community organizer Barack Obama won the DemocRat Presidential nomination. All his community organizer constituency was emboldened by his nomination. They've been feeling their oats and getting frisky ever since. What they really want is to consolidate their power base by recreating the Rodney King riots in LA, except nation wide.

The reaction when White Hispanic George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin to death wasn't all they had hoped for, because:

1. George Zimmerman wasn't technically a honkey and
2. Little Trayyyyvon was shot while trying to fracture Zimmerman's skull on the sidewalk.

So they had to wait for a better opportunity. Michael Brown getting shot in Ferguson Missouri was that opportunity. Black kid shot by Real White Cop, perfect. Open the propaganda floodgates and let 'er rip. Result, riots. Yay! But not enough riots. Only on TV, not in every city. Have to try harder!

Now, having sown the wind, they get to reap the whirlwind. Al "The Mouth That Roared" Sharpton is backpedaling like Lance Armstrong on crack this week, trying to get away from the execution of the two police officers in New York City. He's going to have this firefighter's wounding to deal with as well.

But Obama and the community organizer constituency in the Federal bureaucracy are doubling down. They are full speed ahead with all their programs and propaganda. This is the result they wanted, and they want more. They are obviously going to throw Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to the media hounds while their steamroller insurrection moves inexorably forward.

Now do we all finally understand why podunk towns in Iowa need MRAP mine resistant trucks and why the Department of Education needs military weapons, body armor and vehicles? They're doing it deliberately, and planning ahead for when the shit really hits the fan.

I will now prophesy that the final straw will come when the National Food Stamp system has a "failure" and all those EBT cards stop working the same day. Some fool will declare open season on Whitey, probably on Twitter, and then the fun will really and truly start.

What the Official Plan is for after the big riots I have no clue. Most likely they haven't thought that far ahead, they're depending on Karl Marx to create the Worker's Paradise by magic.

Plan accordingly.

The Phantom

FBI is investigating Gamergate.

"Oh, that's so SEXIST! Somebody call the FBI!!!"

The tempest in a teapot which was GamerGate is now getting official attention from the FBI.

Rejecting a request for the FBI's files on #Gamergate and its affiliates, the bureau stated that, while they have responsive documents related to the loose coalition, those files are part of an ongoing investigation, and release "would interfere with law enforcement proceedings." Who or what is being investigated remains an open question.
A number of individuals, including Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu, have reported death threats after being targeted by Gamergate.
The response letter is a standard form letter from the FBI, generally used anytime there is a related open investigation on the subject in question.

This is an interesting development from a political perspective. For the FBI to get involved in something as stupid as GamerGate, aka name calling on Twitter, somebody important must have decided they want to make an example of the politically non-correct segment of the game industry.

The wiki article here.

An interestingly non-congruent to wiki article here. Seems like wiki has picked a side. FBI has picked the same side, most likely.

There is nothing the New Fascism will not try to bring under the Iron Thumb of Control.

The Phantom

We know they listen, this is how.

Big Brother's Big Ear.

German researchers reveal major "flaws" aka eavesdropping tools in cell phone security.

The flaws, to be reported at a hacker conference in Hamburg this month, are the latest evidence of widespread insecurity on SS7, the global network that allows the world's cellular carriers to route calls, texts and other services to each other. Experts say it's increasingly clear that SS7, first designed in the 1980s, is riddled with serious vulnerabilities that undermine the privacy of the world's billions of cellular customers.
The flaws discovered by the German researchers are actually functions built into SS7 for other purposes – such as keeping calls connected as users speed down highways, switching from cell tower to cell tower – that hackers can repurpose for surveillance because of the lax security on the network.

 So it isn't a bug, its a feature.

The researchers did not find evidence that their latest discoveries, which allow for the interception of calls and texts, have been marketed to governments on a widespread basis. But vulnerabilities publicly reported by security researchers often turn out to be tools long used by secretive intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency or Britain's GCHQ, but not revealed to the public.
"Many of the big intelligence agencies probably have teams that do nothing but SS7 research and exploitation," said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the ACLU and an expert on surveillance technology. "They've likely sat on these things and quietly exploited them."

I'd go further and speculate that the big intelligence agencies ARRANGED this as far back as the 1970's, forward to today.

Just my tinfoil hat speculation.

The Phantom

IRS: "Stick 'em up, America!"

When Congress tells the IRS they get a budget cut this year, what does the IRS do?

In the recent budget deal, Congress cut the IRS budget by $346 million to $10.9 billion — $1.5 billion less than the administration asked for. The IRS' budget has been reduced about $1 billion since 2010.

To elucidate, the Congress has reduced the IRS budget from ~$12.2 billion in 2010 to $10.9 billion in 2015. That's $1.2 billion reduction over five years. In other words, they got cut 10% in total at a rate of 2% per year.

2% per year. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Didn't your taxes go up two percent this year?

IRS response is to stage a stick up.

"People call it furloughs; I view it as: Are we going to have to shut the place down? And at this point, that will be the last thing we do, … but there is no way we can say right now that that wont happen," Koskinen told reporters at a Thursday press conference on the upcoming tax season. ...
Koskinen says there is no more fat to cut at the IRS.

In other words: "No tax refunds for you, America. We've got your damn money, if you want it back you better bring these Republicans to heel. Back to work, slaves."

And people wonder why there's a Tea Party.

The Phantom

Sydney: The known, the unknown, and that which shall not be mentioned.

Well, it seems that Australia joins Canada in having Islamic nuts killing people for no reason. The Sidney Australia nut took 17 people hostage yesterday at around 10AM local time, the cops raided the place at just after 2am local time this morning in response to gunfire from inside the location.

40 sexual and indecent assault charges, conviction for sending offensive letters to families of deceased Australian soldiers, on bail with a murder charge pending, now he's a dead guy.

Details here.

There's a long list of things that the paper says are known and a shorter one of things that aren't. I won't reproduce that here, just go visit the link.

There are a few things conspicuously absent from the lists, however.

First, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot's behavior is interesting. From the paper:

• Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in a statement the gunman was "claiming political motivation", but did not declare it an act of terrorism.

This despite the fact that:

• A black flag with an Islamic creed written on it in Arabic was displayed in the windows.

So the Lone Gunman obviously considered it an act of Islamic terrorism, but the Prime Minister... doesn't.  Interesting, yes? Stephen Harper decided the Ottawa Cenotaph shooting was terrorism and said so before they even got all of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's blood off the tile at the House of Commons.

Second, how does one lone nut take 17 people hostage? Answer, GUN CONTROL. Unmentioned in the paper anywhere, this is Australian gun control working as it was intended to do. 17 people can't be held against their will for almost 24 hours by just one guy unless their government has made them helpless first.

Third, not to be a Monday Morning quarterback or anything, but how many times do you have to shoot a guy before he's no longer a threat? Apparently a lot, given the number of muzzle flashes in the video from Sidney. Indeed, in Ottawa the Sergeant at Arms and his men shot Bibeau 12 times before he fell down, and new info indicates the guard on the front door managed to nail Bibeau one time as he ran through. Got him square, didn't seem to slow him at all. Pistols suck. Maybe consider switching to .308 hollow points for home defense.

Fourth and finally, just like Michael Zehaf-Bibeau in Canada, this gink Man Heron Monis was -extremely- well know to Australian police. They knew every damn thing about this guy down to how he likes his eggs in the morning. They couldn't possibly have had more intel on him. And yet, well known, under surveillance semi-coherent nutcase and out-on-bail criminal Monis was able to get himself a gun and a "machete", and then pull this suicide-by-cop standoff. In Canada the shooter Bibeau was part of a fricking RCMP outreach program that exists to try and talk these freak Mooselimb radicals out of doing anything crazy. Major fail, outreach dudes.

Plus the cherry on top, both of these situations happened in the capital cities of both countries where there's cops and frigging cameras all over town. A squirrel can't take a dump on the sidewalk without being photographed from at least three angles.

This proves two things I've been saying for years. Gun control doesn't control guns, much less crime. Ubiquitous surveillance by police doesn't deter criminals, much less terrorists.

Gun control and ubiquitous surveillance are there to control the populace, not to reduce threats against the populace. That's because as far as the police and the government generally are concerned, the populace IS the threat.

You are STUPID. You must be CONTROLLED. Now get back to work paying those taxes, serfs.

The Phantom

What Thomas Sowell is too polite to say.

I spotted this on Drudge today.

Thomas Sowell, author of "Basic Economics," argued that increasing the number of foreign workers in the US "will keep down the wages of American workers" and that "you would have to get a psychiatrist" to explain the GOP's support for increased foreign labor on Thursday's "Laura Ingraham Show."
"The competition will keep down the wages of American workers, I mean, this is not a new principle. I mean this has been known for hundreds of years," he stated.
When asked why the GOP would support such a policy, he responded "you would have to get a psychiatrist or someone like that to explain that. There are cleaning women who say 'I don't do windows. I don't explain Republicans.'"

Well, Thomas Sowell is being polite in implying the Republicans are crazy. They're not crazy. They're selling America for a bowl of potage.

I think a decent accountant could explain exactly why the Republican leadership is supporting Obama's idiot immigration policies. Just let him alone in a small room with their tax returns and their donor lists for a couple hours, and he'd be able to lay it out for you.

Its the same reason Obama has the policy in the first place. Huge, gigantic, stupefying amounts of money are being made on the backs of illegal immigrants, and some of that titanic wad of cash rubs off on the politicians who let more illegals come in.

See, big industry doesn't want more legal workers. Because legal workers are expensive. There's regulations that make it prohibitive to hire any legal worker even at minimum wage.

They want to hire "contractors". The "contractor" then hires illegal workers, who do whatever the job is and save the big industry from having to follow the regulations.

That's why Obama's "amnesty" is such bullshit. Nobody is going to go for it. they'll stay illegal unless or until they get pinched by La Migra, THEN they'll take the amnesty.

The Phantom

What goes around, comes around.

Coming home to roost. Its a biiiig one!

In a shocking, simply shocking twist of fate, the journalist who published Ferguson ex-policeman Darren Wilson's home address has been calling the Chicago PD non-stop. Because some dastardly terrorist published HER address.

The New York Times journalist who published Darren Wilson's home address wants police protection and has been calling the police nonstop, Gotnews.com has learned.
Julie Bosman "keeps calling the 020th District station complaining about people harassing and threatening her," our source told us. She's also "complaining about numerous food deliveries being sent to her residence."
Chicago police department sources alerted Gotnews.com about the glaring double standard on Friday.

300lb chicken coming home to roost, huh Julie?

Wouldn't it be simply AWFUL if poor little innocent Julie Bosman had to quit her job and leave town because nassssty people kept threatening her? Like what's happening to Darren Wilson, for example? Oh the Humanity!

The Phantom

Oh look, Culture DOES matter.

Turns out, two tier justice and single parent families are worse for you than living in Nigeria.

Led by Dr. Kristen Mmari, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, the survey assessed health challenges faced by 2,400 15- to 19-year-olds from impoverished areas in Baltimore, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Ibadan and New Delhi, as well as their perceptions of their environments.

The researchers found many similarities—in all five cities, adolescents were exposed to unsanitary conditions, substance abuse and violence—but the differences between each area were especially compelling. Overall, teenagers in Baltimore and Johannesburg, despite being located in comparably wealthy countries, had far worse health outcomes and tended to perceive their communities more negatively.

Really? How terrible! Who did that to these poor children?

According to Mmari, one could point to a combination of environmental and social factors, including the exposure to violence and a lack of social support, which were found to be less prevalent in the three other cities.

Wait, Baltimore has less "social support" than Nigeria? How is that possible?

Adolescents in Baltimore and Johannesburg also had relatively lower levels of "social cohesion," a phrase used to describe the emotional support provided by one's family and neighbors. In Baltimore, many poor teens grow up in single-parent homes and have a father in prison, while those in Johannesburg tend to lose their parents to AIDS.

"In those cities, kids were much more likely to live in a one-parent household," Mmari says. (Or, as a youth in Baltimore described it, "The kids are being raised by themselves.") "Whereas in Delhi, most of these kids are still living in two-parent homes, so they are getting much more support."

Free welfare money and a general "if it feels right do it" culture is -worse- than living in the crappiest part of Nigeria or India where just getting food is a major challenge.

In other words, Liberals did it to them.

Like I've been saying, all cultures are not created equal.

The Phantom

The LP record makes a comeback.

Remember these? They're baaaaaack!

Here's an interesting datum. The long assumed dead vinyl record from the Ancient Times when TV was in black and white and dinosaurs roamed the Earth sold one million albums in England this year.

In 2014 you'd be forgiven for thinking the music industry is all about online charts and digital downloads, but the latest figures released by the Official Charts Company reveal a corresponding boom in vinyl record sales which have reached an 18-year high.
More than one million records have been sold in the UK so far this year – a number which is expected to rise even further by the end of Christmas. We haven't bought that many since 1996, back when cassette tapes were still considered technologically advanced...
Sales have been driven primarily by the Arctic Monkeys (whose LP AM is the biggest selling vinyl of 2014), Jack White and Pink Floyd, with Oasis, Status Quo and David Bowie also contributing to the impressive figures.

The Ancient Vinyl  is still only 2% of the total UK music biz, but this is an unexpected major increase in the sales of a presumed dead technology. Vinyl is (slowly) gaining sales as regular popular music is losing sales.

Once upon a time I used to work with high fidelity speakers, and I learned then that CDs and other digital recording mediums can't come even close to the sound fidelity available on vinyl. Only two channels, but the frequency response and more importantly the dynamic range and signal to noise ratio possible with top end record players and diamond stylus phonograph cartridges is much higher than you get with even BluRay audio. MP3s sound like crap next to a vinly record played through a decent stereo, there's no comparison at all.

Add to this the habit of sound engineers to record things "loud", and you get sound like singers yelling into a pillow on your iPod. Its all kind of mushy and fuzzy, like it was being played through a sock.

Positive signs that people may be starting to give a rip how their music sounds.

The Phantom

#Shirtstorm continues: Malcolm Winter "explains" why Dr. Matt Taylor had to grovel.

As posted yesterday, the nice lady who made That Shirt defended herself and Dr. Matt Talor of Comet Landing fame on her blog.  Most of the comments on that blog were positive, but there were a few from the troll I smashed yesterday, assorted other SJW apologists and other random idiots.  Consensus of opinion seems to be we'd all like to buy one of Those Shirts please, so we can get on with annoying the SJWs. If Elly gets busy, she can make a tidy sum of money off this Shirtstorm farce.

But then there was this one, by Mr. "Malcolm Winter", hopefully not his real name but one never knows. Quote:

Pavel Bansky - I'm honestly curious. Would you protect a KKK member's right to don KKK regalia?

OBVIOUSLY in a free country we do protect the right of the KKK to play dress-up. The United States has always done this. Canada's record is a bit more checkered, but the general rule is yes, we protect people and groups we find disgusting in the name of Free Speech."Mr. Winter" made several comments which I will cherry pick some snippets of to reproduce his "argument", such as it is.

Surely I can't make judgements on Matt based solely on his wearing of a shirt that many found offensive (myself included) or on Elly for making it. It seems obvious that Matt and Elly (like most people who make mistakes) are good people with good intentions. However, my issue is not with those actions but with how they and others have responded to how others have *experienced* those actions, regardless of intention.

This is EXACTLY why there aren't more women in STEM. Because when women raise legitimate concerns about the way they're being treated, instead of taking some time to think about how one's actions affect others who have very different histories and life experiences, one instead attempts to justify those actions by saying that any other perception of the action is illegitimate.

"STEM" is Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine careers. The stalking horse here is that women are fewer than men in these careers.

Mr. Winter says that's because White Men that run everything in STEM are mean, and they just won't LISTEN, and the women just don't get an even break. And that's why Dr. MAtt Taylor was asking for a full court international internet pillory for wearing Elly Prizeman's shirt. He didn't think about how his actions would "affect others who have very different histories and life experiences".

Other commenters were having none of that, and pointed out the obvious holes:

Pavel Bansky16 November 2014 00:28

Winter, there are men being offended because women are not covering their faces in public. Does it make it alright, then?

If you are prescribing Dr. Taylor's dress code you are inevitably agreeing with men prescribing dress codes for women. Is that your intent?

Winter replies:

Pavel Bansky, I think that prescribing dress codes based on double standards that reinforce the oppression of (and violence toward) women is very different (and actually the opposite) of prescribing dress codes that send the message that reinforcing the oppression of women is NOT acceptable.

Yes, he really did say that HIS dress codes are proper and correct because they reduce oppression, where as Mooselimb dress codes are bad and wrong because they increase oppression. Zero awareness, zero thought that maybe -any- prescribed dress code is an oppression and an abridgement of basic freedom.

Also this:

I think maybe you are all making the same assumptions about my argument. However, my argument is about structural oppression, not individual oppression, although the two are certainly related.
I left [STEM] because of the lack of critical thought in STEM. I found that the rigid definition of critical thought as only whether something has scientific validity, accuracy, and/or precision as a deficient one.

Wait, what?

I've spent nearly three years of my life travelling and working in over 30 countries, most of which are "developing." I have seen a fair share of "real oppression" (whatever that means) and I find covert oppression just as insidious to society as overt oppression, perhaps even more so since it is so much harder to fix something most people can't see.

Dude must have been really hauling ass to live and work in over 30 countries in just three years. And he can see things that are invisible! Wow.

By "critical thought," I think perhaps Tracy Ore defines it best by including the identification and challenging of cultural assumptions, awareness of our place and time in our culture, searching for alternative ways of thinking, and developing a reflective analysis. All of this is something I never found in STEM and I know now that that's one of the many reasons I left.

Yes, engineers and programmers are not known for "including the identification and challenging of cultural assumptions" when trying to determine if the bridge will fall down or not. They're much more about validity, accuracy and precision. Because bridge falling down = bad.

I believe that gauging others' responses to my behavior as a result of my privilege and adjusting that behavior when I can is an important part of being a contributing member to society.

Yes, you are clearly a saint in your own mind. Except you and your little friends made super genius Matt Taylor grovel on international TV. So I'm thinking maybe you don't look so saintly from where I'm standing. You look more like the guys who throw acid on girls in Afghanistan.

See Malcolm, the point of a Free Country is that people are free to do what they want. Most particularly, people are free to do stuff that you don't like. Unless you can prove that their actions and expressions have harmed you personally. Which means they physically injured you or they cost you money.

Lucky for you, hurt feelings don't count. Because if they did, you and a lot of other Social Justice Warriors would owe Matt Taylor and Elly Prizeman a shitlocker full of money.

You, Mr. Malcolm Winter, are an enemy of freedom. Consider your sins, and repent.

The Phantom

The woman who made Mankind's first comet landing all about her.

Rose Eveleth, professional Offended Person.

Her name is Rose Eveleth, she works for The Atlantic magazine, apparently. This is her Twitter feed. She was offended, simply Offended I tell you, over The Shirt.

Dear Rose, fuck off.

Ladies shield your eyes!

This is the scientist wearing The Shirt. With video of him apologizing in tears. Which is just heart wrenching, to me anyway. On his biggest day of his career, he's saying sorry on international TV about a friggin' shirt.

Not what I would have worn to a press conference, but then I didn't land a space-robot on a freaking comet either. If I was that big a boss, I'd wear whatever the hell I liked.

This is the woman who made the shirt. Custom shirt for the scientist who's team got that robot down on that comet, because she's a friend of his. She's sticking up for herself and her friend in no uncertain terms. That makes her a Class Act in my book, and honorable.

Also she doesn't look like the kind of woman skinny ass Rose Eveleth should be pissing off. We're talking really short cat fight here.

This was suggested as the appropriate shirt to wear for Feminists to be happy.

Uhm, do they have legs? Or hair? And where's the ray guns?

'Nuff said.

The Phantom

Update: Welcome According To Hoyt readers and other Monster Hunters! 

Big Brother really is spying on your cellphone.

I keep posting these things because it seems hard to believe, but really, if you have a cell phone the cops know where you are down to TEN FEET if they want to. It doesn't have to be turned on, either.

The Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations.

The U.S. Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.

Here's how it works.

Cellphones are programmed to connect automatically to the strongest cell tower signal. The device being used by the U.S. Marshals Service identifies itself as having the closest, strongest signal, even though it doesn't, and forces all the phones that can detect its signal to send in their unique registration information.

Even having encryption on a phone, such as the kind included on Apple Inc. 's iPhone 6, doesn't prevent this process.

The technology is aimed at locating cellphones linked to individuals under investigation by the government, including fugitives and drug dealers, but it collects information on cellphones belonging to people who aren't criminal suspects, these people said. They said the device determines which phones belong to suspects and "lets go" of the non-suspect phones.

They basically ping every phone in range as they fly over the city, and use triangulation to find the location of each phone. They say they "let go" of the info except on the phones they are actively searching for, but that's BS. The machine HAS TO KEEP A RECORD of every ping, because that's how it works. They may in fact flush the memory after every flight, but I have very little confidence that's what's being done. We'd have to be crazy to believe that, given the NSA and the license plate reading programs etc.

See, if all they do is fly this thing over the city every day for a few weeks, they build up a database that can track the movement of pretty much every phone. Where you work, where you live, which way you drive to and from, and all the other trips you make. And what other phones are at those locations. And so forth. So if they want to know where you were last Tuesday at 2pm, or where you will most likely be NEXT Tuesday at 2pm, they will.

Here's the killer part: so can anybody else. It isn't hard to build a box that acts like a cell tower. Here's some guys who built one and stuck it in a model airplane. That was three years ago. How many of these things are wafting about lately? We don't know. There's no way to tell. They can be made -small-, like a shoebox or less, including a big-ass battery to run it for six months. They can be in cars or sitting still on a light pole, bridge, mailbox, etc.

How to defend yourself? Use unidentified burner phones. Or stick your phone in a metal box for when you want your privacy, or take the battery out. Notice that you can't take the battery out of an iPhone. Convenient design for somebody, hmm?

Long term, I'm sure there's a way to detect if a "cell tower" is moving, and to have software that will not reply to a ping from a moving source. That leaves the surveillance performed by legit cell towers, but there's no way to avoid that. Its how they work.

Plan accordingly, my friends.

The Phantom

Let's compare art, shall we?

America: A "celebrated" Hollywood artist attempts to challenge to societal notions of gender.

No, this is not a chick. At all.

Consider me challenged, dude.

 Job done. But... ew. And... why? (I suspect mental illness.)

Asia: Artists attempt to make Art.

Yes, this is a foxy chick. Absolutely.

Hugely successful Korean TV show "monster". Definitely a foxy chick.

Fan art of foxy chick.

The foxy Fox in fox ears. Ok not Asian art, but still Fox-y.

You're feeling better now, aren't you? Job done! Because foxy chicks are always a good thing.

Asia is starting to look like the last holdout of Western Civilization in "art". That's what hipsters call "irony".

I have this urge to take some pictures of maggots clustering on roadkill and post that as "art". I'd probably be famous in five minutes, but only if I was a transgendered somethingorother with a low surface albedo and a snappy patter about White Male Imperialism. So not worth it.

The Phantom

Positive signs: Conservatives showing up to riot.

Town's tobacco ban hearing too rowdy, ends early.

WESTMINSTER, Mass. (AP) - Only a handful of people were able to speak on a proposal that could make the tiny Massachusetts town of Westminster the first in the nation to ban all sales of tobacco products when boos and shouts from the crowd shut down the public hearing Wednesday night.

Sixty or more residents in the packed Westminster Elementary school gymnasium were registered to share their opinions. Some among the audience of several hundred toted signs opposing the ban; some had participated in a rally earlier.

But amid shouts of "America!" and "Freedom Now," Board of Health chairwoman Andrea Crete gaveled the hearing to a close just 25 minutes into it instead of taking comments.

"The crowd's getting out of control and the room's filled to capacity," she said. "We don't want any riots."

Well Andrea, if you don't want any riots maybe you should consider not behaving like a mini-Hitler all the time. Because why?

The decision [on the sales ban] rests solely with the board, which says it is fed up with bubblegum-flavored cigars, electronic cigarettes and other new products that appeal to young people. Board members say the easiest course of action is to enact a total ban on all sales within town lines.

Way to go Massachusetts for showing up and making the sonsabitches afraid. They should be afraid, given what they're doing. I bet they're all sweating the next election right now.

Nanny monitors and other government paid lurkers please note, there was no violence or property damage involved here. Just shouting and possibly harsh language. Compare and contrast with what the Organized Left is doing in Ferguson Missouri today.

 

The Phantom

Media and CDC finally catch up to The Phantom.

Took the sonsabenches long enough.

The deadly EV-D68 enterovirus epidemic, which struck thousands of kids this fall, was likely propelled through America by President Barack Obama's decision to allow tens of thousands of Central Americans across the Texas border, according to a growing body of genetic and statistical evidence.

The evidence includes admissions from top health officials that the epidemic included multiple strains of the virus, and that it appeared simultaneously in multiple independent locations.

Wow, amazing what happens when the government completely disregards every single public health law on the books and ships a hundred thousand illegal border jumpers all over the country without any screening for disease.

So far, that virus has been found in nine American kids who died from illness, has apparently inflicted unprecedented polio-like paralysis in roughly 50 kids, and has put hundreds of young American kids into hospital emergency wards and intensive care units throughout more than 40 states.

And if you think this is unforgivable, wait until you see how many people they kill with Ebola. They're bound and determined not to quarantine anybody over that.

But Canada is doing something different.

Canada is following in Australia's footsteps and has closed its doors, effectively immediately, to people from the West African countries battling Ebola.

In a move that puts Canada at odds with the World Health Organization, the federal government said Friday it is suspending the issuance of visas for residents and nationals of countries with "widespread and persistent-intense transmission" of Ebola virus disease. As well, work on permanent residence applications for people from the affected countries is also being suspended.

The Canadian and Australian governments just told the World Health Organization to go pound salt. That's what you do when a bunch of Eurotrash wankers want to inflict Hell on your country out of some insane political correctness.

What's Obama doing? The opposite. He's in fact bent on IMPORTING Ebola patients to the USA, not to mention moving some potentially infected soldiers to Italy for quarantine before bringing them back to the USA. Also TB and enterovirus and the Black Plague, for all of that.

What a guy, eh?

The Phantom

Ebola Election: backfield in motion, baby!

Well, today we are treated to Nurse Ebola, Ms. Kaci Hickox, going for a nice, loooong outdoor bike ride with her honeybunny, Ted Wilbur. According to the Guiness Book of Records, Mr. Wilbur is either the bravest or the stupidest man in the USA. Also, HE is not on quarantine  despite living in the same house with Nurse Ebola.

The Governor of Maine has threatened to arrest Nurse Kaci Hickox after she broke the state's mandatory Ebola quarantine by saying: 'I don't want her within three feet of anyone.'

The 33-year-old, who tested negative for the deadly disease earlier this week, defied the guidelines by going on a bike ride with partner Ted Wilbur.

Later in the day, the pair also had pizza delivered to their home in Fort Kent, Maine, smiling and waving to the waiting media as they opened the door.

Her actions enraged Governor Paul LePage with lawyers from the state going to court to demand the nurse give a blood test. 

'This could be resolved today. She has been exposed and she's not cooperative, so force her to take a test. It's so simple' he told ABC.

He also condemned the nurse for worrying her community by venturing out, breaking the 21-day quarantine period and announced he would 'exercise the full extent of his authority' to rein her in.

The spectacle of a trained medical nurse breaking a legal quarantine on international TV seems wasted on the White House, who have remained adamantly opposed to any sort of involuntary quarantine on medical martyrs returning from Africa. Or on potentially infected regular, non-medical types from Africa. If this bitch turns out to have the disease, there is going to be a lot of egg on a lot of faces.

However.

From InfoWars, the gadfly site that loves to hate Obama, we have this interesting piece of news. The Feds have placed orders for ONE MILLION Class A Hazmat suits, these are the blue rubber Alien Invasion-style suits we see in the movies. 250,000 suits are to be delivered to Dallas.

Government agencies across the world are rushing to snap up protective gear as concerns about the spread of the Ebola virus continue to dominate, with Lakeland Industries announcing that it has received 1 million orders for Hazmat suits alone.

Lakeland hit the headlines last month when it was revealed that the U.S. State Department had ordered 160,000 Hazmat suits from the Ronkonkoma, NY company.

Lakeland, which already enjoyed a 40% stock surge in the aftermath of the first Ebola case being confirmed in the United States, is currently selling class A Hazmat suits for $1300 dollars.

So it seems that -somebody- in the Federal government is willing to spend $1.3 BILLION dollars on the off-chance that this political theater/game of chicken with the Grim Reaper that Obama seems dead set on pursuing might turn ugly.

I remind the Gentle Reader that there are 300 million people in the USA. I also remind you that there is to my knowledge no company that makes these suits in Canada. What we've got now is all we're going to get for the next year or so, I would guess.

Happy election, America!

The Phantom

Ebola America: its not just stupidity anymore.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

This can no longer be explained by stupidity.

The White House pushed back against the governors of New York, New Jersey, Illinois and other states that instituted procedures to forcibly quarantine medical workers returning from West Africa, deepening an emotional debate brought on by recent Ebola cases in the U.S.

A senior administration official said Sunday that new federal guidelines under development would protect Americans from imported cases of the disease but not interfere with the flow of U.S. health workers to and from West Africa to fight the epidemic there.

"We have let the governors of New York, New Jersey and other states know that we have concerns with the unintended consequences... [that quarantine] policies not grounded in science may have on efforts to combat Ebola at its source," the official said.

Now, for any of my readers out there who don't know, a quarantine of 21 days duration is the only sure way to prevent the Ebola virus from being transmitted by people returning to the USA from West Africa. Health care volunteers who go to Africa and work in the outbreak region should be VOLUNTARILY quarantining themselves, knowing as they do the risks involved in letting this bug get out.

What are they doing instead? Taking taxis, flying on domestic aircraft (with a fever!), going on the New York City subway system, going bowling, going shopping for a wedding dress, hugging the President of the United States... and THEN discovering they are Ebola-positive.

Ladies and gentlemen of America, you have two problems. First, you have a bunch of self appointed martyrs going to do Holy Work in Africa by Healing the Sick... but then they refuse to take even the most basic common sense measures to avoid killing their friends, relatives and neighbors back home. Which is flatly insane at best.

Second, you have a President who has decided that his political needs are more important than containing the possible spread of a disease which is contagious and 70% fatal. The White House is deliberately forcing state governments to -stop- doing the only known thing that can stop an Ebola outbreak for certain. Quarantine.

Those are some serious problems, next to which anything being talked about in the press or by the politicians is as nothing. Vote accordingly, while you still can.

The Phantom

For Cpl. Cirillo.

Why we will get robot cars and more gun control.

This is something I wrote as a comment on this post here in response to some cogent thoughts from two readers. I think it deserves its own post.

Consider the following: How useful would it have been to Ottawa police yesterday if they could have entered a code at headquarters yesterday and immobilized every car in Ottawa? You can see them totally going for that, right? It wouldn't change the outcome at all, but it would make things so much easier during the Official After Action Clearing and the Official Checking Everything Out To Make Sure Its All Good.

You can see them today loving the idea of an invisible fence that won't let any car drive up onto the Parliament Hill grounds. Even better, a system that won't let you drive up there, but if you try anyway it locks the car doors and drives you to the armored police station instead.

You can see them salivating over the idea of a system that identifies every individual driving a car by biometrics, then reports their position constantly. Then locks the car doors and drives to the cop shop if a particular code gets entered, allowing all the shooter's family and associates to be effortlessly gathered in.

These are the kind of things that give government officials a major woodie. So easy! Just press a button and the guy you want to pick up gets delivered to you. Using HIS car and burning HIS gas to boot.

And Cpl. Cirillo would still be just as dead.

What would have CHANGED the outcome yesterday?

 There's a picture of Cpl. Cirillo after he got shot, with two middle aged ladies and the ambulance crew working on him. Those ladies, given half a chance, would have killed the shooter in a heartbeat. If they had guns on them, and they knew it was their responsibility as Canadians to protect that kid when he couldn't protect himself, they'd have waxed that shooter prick before he got five steps from the shooting site. Or somebody else would have. For sure.

For that matter, since Cpl. Cirillo was in a militia regiment, he would have been carrying his own gun with his own ammunition in it, and he'd have stood a fighting chance. And so would his fellow militiamen, all standing right there next to him. You'd have to be utterly mental to start anything with that bunch.

And ShooterBoy would KNOW that. He would chose some other form of self expression than an attempted mass shooting, because it would be suicide.

That's how concealed carry works.

In places where concealed carry is tried, the number of shootings -decreases- along with the crime rate. It decreases a lot. Between 10% to 20% in most American states that implemented "Shall Issue" CCW.

That means the criminals don't get shot by CCW gun toting rednecks, and they don't get shot by cops either. They just stop doing crimes because its TOO FRACKING DANGEROUS. Its too dangerous to do crimes when -anybody- could be the guy that kills you for robbing them.

But!

That's the kind of thing gives government officials cold sweats and nightmares. People they can't control wandering around loose? "Aieeee! What if somebody snapped?" You can hear them thinking it, can't you?

This is why we will get robot cars, more surveillance, more regulation, more gun control, more taxes, more corruption, more, More, MORE! unless we defund and disempower the government.

This cannot be accomplished by some bullshit revolution either, it has to be a cultural shift where every Canadian stops buying the hype and starts demanding their freedom back. Loudly. Politicians need to know that if they run on robot cars and gun control they'll be out of their sinecure jobs immediately.

The Phantom

My Canada.

Two pictures for today.

First, the fallen soldier at the Ottawa Cenotaph getting CPR from the ambulance crew and two apparently random ladies who happened to be walking by, DURING an active shooting.

Second, the scene at the James Street Armories in Hamilton, putting out a cross of flowers for their comrade who fell today.

That's my Canada.

"Let's Fix It: Lets End Human Driving!"

Behold, the real push behind robot cars. Liberals with a tech fetish. Sam Shank is the CEO and Co-Founder of HotelTonight, and obviously an uber tech geek and liberal.

I've long been fascinated by the idea of technology replacing human drivers.

Let's be honest: people aren't always great drivers. They get distracted, tired and make mistakes. Technology can simply do a better job. This is a subject I've thought about deeply for the past 20 years. I believe it will have as much impact on the world as the switch from horse transport to automobiles.

The consensus opinion is that safe and reliable driverless cars will be available within a few years. Tesla just announced "Autopilot," which will be available soon via a software update, and will allow for autonomous driving on freeways – an amazing first step.

Here's what I think will happen next: the initial use of drive-anywhere autonomous cars (I call them AutoCars) will be with companies like Uber or Lyft rather than individually owned. They will rapidly gain acceptance because they'll save people time (imagine all you could do with that time currently spent behind the wheel), will lower the costs of getting from one place to another, and will be way faster while also being safer than human driving.

Here's what I think will happen. A bunch of big tech companies like Google and Apple etc. will get their buddies in the various legislatures to get them a Special Deal indemnifying them against fault when robot cars inevitably crash and kill people.

Which the robot cars will then do, a lot. Because, among other things, every cabbie, truck driver, delivery guy and union thug alive will be out to kill those things like you won't believe.

Also because the technology these things run on is extremely complicated and not particularly well understood. Similar to the situation at the beginning of the last century, when automobiles were cranky, unpredictable and dangerous machines no one understood. Just for comparison, by the year 1900 automobile technology had been around almost a hundred years. It does give one pause to think of it.

 It's 1896 and Mr. Shank would like to replace all the horses out there with Benz Motorwagens. Surely nothing bad could happen, right?

But Mr. Phantom sir, what about the consensus opinion?!!!!  Who are you, a mere schlub, to question the consensus opinion? Hmmm?

Well, lets talk about the consensus opinion. When faced with a consensus opinion, where experts tell you "Trust us, we know what we're talking about, we're the experts", it is always useful to do what I like to call the External Reality Check.

In External Reality, as in the big wide world, you know what I don't see these days? I don't see robot wheelchairs. I do not see commonly available, reasonably affordable self-guided machines being used to scoot sick people around hospitals, nursing homes, or on their own errands out in the outdoors. I see very expensive Human nurses pushing those people around in manual chairs, at who knows how many billions a year in lost productivity.

You know what else I don't see? Robot forklifts. I do not see self-guided, driverless forklifts whipping around in lumber yards, factories and warehouses. I see normal forklifts driven by very expensive union thugs, at a cost of who knows how many billions a year.

If there was an affordable technology available to drive a 2000lb car with four people in it down a road at 50 mph with zero failures, don't you think there'd be technology to drive a 200lb wheelchair with one person in it at 5 mph down the straight, flat, smooth hallway of an office building or a hospital?

Thus do I question consensus.

The Questioning Phantom

Your Mac is still Phoning Home. So is your PC.

Big Data still hasn't learned that people generally don't like eavesdroppers. Max OSX Yosemite is phoning home lots of data back to Apple, and it doesn't matter how you configure your Mac, apparently.

DuckDuckGo for Privacy

Having read DuckDuckGo's privacy statements, you might decide to switch Safari's default search to DuckDuckGo. If we enter a new search in Safari, we can then search the logged data to see who the search terms are actually sent to.

The logs show that a copy of your Safari searches are still sent to Apple, even when selecting DuckDuckGo as your search provider, and 'Spotlight Suggestions' are disabled in System Preferences > Spotlight.

Non-Cloud Mail Account

When setting up a new Mail.app account for the address admin@fix-macosx.com, which is hosted locally, searching the logs for "fix-macosx.com" shows that Mail quietly sends the domain entered by the user to Apple, too.

Tres uncool, Apple droids.

However if you think you're going to escape by using a PC, Slashdot says y'ain't.

From WinBeta: "One of the more interesting bits of data the company is collecting is text entered. Some are calling this a keylogger within the Windows 10 Technical Preview, which isn't good news. Taking a closer look at the Privacy Policy for the Windows Insider Program, it looks like Microsoft may be collecting a lot more feedback from you behind the scenes. Microsoft collects information about you, your devices, applications and networks, and your use of those devices, applications and networks. Examples of data we collect include your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage." This isn't the only thing Microsoft is collecting from Insider Program participants. According to the Privacy Policy, the company is collecting things like text inputted into the operating system, the details of any/all files on your system, voice input and program information.

This means they are collecting what you type into your own PC. Like, your passwords. Which I really don't think is a "service" I want to pay for, right?

Definitely worth looking at Linux if Apple and Microsoft keep doing this crap. Or just re-installing that old copy of XP we all have kicking around in the closet. It still works. According to my experience, using XP on this exact box I'm running Win 8 on right now doesn't slow down what I do every day. I'm sure some things are faster with Win 8, but I don't -notice- them being faster and so I don't really care. If I need FAST I can stick an off-line compute server in a corner and feed it by sneakernet with thumb drives.
Dear Apple and Microsoft, my files, my keystrokes, my stuff generally is none of your business. If I have to finally bite the bullet and learn Linux to keep your sticky fingers out of my PC, I will. And if I will, millions of other will too. Anything you corporate wankers can make, we users collectively will jailbreak, hack, pervert, fold, spindle and mutilate.

And if you piss me off I'll switch my phone back to a Blackberry. If for no other reason than RIM is Canadian.

The Phantom

Here's something you don't see every day.

White kids rioting.

Students who participated in riots near the Keene State College campus Saturday night could face serious consequences, including expulsion for the worst offenders, according to a statement from the college president.

We see kids rioting all the time lately. Not a new thing. What you don't see every day is the words "expulsion" and "offenders" used in the same sentence by a university official. Hell, she even threw in the word "consequences". We never see that. Normally we see something like "working with the community to reduce violence" or "more sensitivity training for staff".

I speculate that this case is different because these are WHITE kids, and are therefore supposed to know better. Otherwise known as the "soft racism of low expectations". Except this is the flip-side, where the book gets thrown at them because they's White and there's no political reason not to kick their asses like they deserve.

Dear Commie Pinko educators: maybe if you stopped giving certain groups a Special Deal and throw the book at -everybody- who riots, they'd all do better, hmmm? Just a thought.

The Phantom

NY Safe Act: 34,000 New Yorkers dangerously insane.

What happens when you set bureaucrats to decide who is sane in a society? They err on the side of caution, obviously. Because  they're bureaucrats. Ass covering isn't second nature to them, it DEFINES their nature.

The NY SAFE Act, part of it banned "Assault Murder/Death/Kill Weapons!!!", but the other part created a board who decides who's too crazy to own a gun in NY state.

So far, 34,000 people are too crazy.

A newly created database of New Yorkers deemed too mentally unstable to carry firearms has grown to roughly 34,500 names, a previously undisclosed figure that has raised concerns among some mental health advocates that too many people have been categorized as dangerous.

The database, established in the aftermath of the mass shooting in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and maintained by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, is the result of the Safe Act. It is an expansive package of gun control measures pushed through by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The law, better known for its ban on assault weapons, compels licensed mental health professionals in New York to report to the authorities any patient "likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others."

But the number of entries in the database highlights the difficulty of America's complicated balancing act between public safety and the right to bear arms when it comes to people with mental health issues. "That seems extraordinarily high to me," said Sam Tsemberis, a former director of New York City's involuntary hospitalization program for homeless and dangerous people, now the chief executive of Pathways to Housing, which provides housing to the mentally ill. "Assumed dangerousness is a far cry from actual dangerousness."

Take home quote is "That seems extraordinarily high to me" from a mental health expert and government guy.

But that's because the point was not to make New York safer. The point was to get the mental health camel with his nose in the tent. Now the nose is in there, and as we can see the rest of the camel is coming in behind it. What they really want is a regulation that brands you insane if you apply for a gun license, and as we can see from this 34,000 number they are well on their way. By next year they'll be up over 200,000. Anyone who has so much as said the words "I feel kinda depressed" to a physician will eventually be on this list.

See, the people who campaigned for this law consider ALL gun owners to be dangerously insane. Just wanting to own a gun makes you a potential killer in their book. These people are liberals. One of their most fundamental beliefs about people is that everyone in the world is only one bad day away from becoming the Long Island Train Killer. Or the Son of Sam, or Ted Bundy. Liberals think human beings are dangerous, murderous animals one thinning synapse away from snapping and killing everybody they can reach.

Those are the honest liberals. The dishonest ones who MADE the law just want to make sure you can't shoot back when they finally come for you at 3AM. Because they're not liberals, really. They're fascists.

The Phantom