excgarated

Well I found a reason to update my blog. That reason.... excgarated. Let's see how many hits this word will get me. 

S&W M&P15OR with Magpul and Troy Industries Equipment

This is a S&W M&P15OR that also has Troy Industries iron sights, a Magpul carbine handguard, Magpul vertical foregrip, and a Magpul rail mounted on the handguard.  I will also throw in a Gen2 Pmag with dust cover and 30 rounds of factory brass cased ammo.

S&W M&P15OR on impactguns.com

Magpul rail on handguard

Troy Industries HK style fixed front sight

Troy Industries fixed rear sight

Magpul Carbine Handguard

Magpul Vertical Grip

Why Science is Great, but not Truth

The Bohr Model of the Atom

Chemistry is as hard of a science as it gets (When I say hard, I don’t mean difficult ) but almost everything that is taught in a basic chemistry class is not true, and the professor knows it.  A great example of something that is not true but is taught anyways is the Bohr model of the atom.  The Bohr model of the atom is where you draw electrons in circles around the nucleus of an atom.  It’s a completely fallacious way of looking at an atom, but it still works for what the teacher may want to get across.  An even better example is drawing Lewis structures of molecules to determine what a molecule might look like.  There are many cases where Lewis structures don’t show what is actually happening, but they work great most of the time.  Lewis structures although not universally true, are still an integral part of understanding organic chemistry.   

The Lewis Structure of Water

Physics is an even better example.  When a professor teaches Newton’s laws he knows that they are not universally true. Einstein himself famously proclaimed that Newton was wrong.  But then why do we still teach Newton’s laws?  Because they still work pretty well most of the time, even if we know they are not factual.  Interestingly our two best current physical theories are Einstein’s relativity theory and quantum mechanics, but they contradict each other and hence cannot both be true.  The main problem is that relativity views space as flat, lazy, and predictable while quantum mechanics views the world as chaotic and unpredictable.  Mostly, scientists ignore the differences and use relativity on large scales (planets, solar system, galaxies) and use quantum mechanics on small scales (electrons, protons, quarks, etc.). They also still use Newton’s laws in many midscale cases even though we know they are not universally true.  This is also why many modern physicists are searching for a grand new theory that is most commonly referred as ‘string theory’ which could harmonize these contradicting theories.

So even though we know that all these theories cannot be universally true, they are still great theories that help us do amazing things like develop cell phones, laptops, and cars.  We even know how to safely travel to the moon and back because of these theories (and that was 40 years ago).  That does not mean that our theories are true, it just means they work really well.  For example, we used to think the sun revolved around the earth and we could even make great predictions about when the sun would rise and the path it would take across the sky.  We had good evidence to support our theories and our theory helped us make good predictions.  But just because their evidence supported the idea that the sun revolved around the earth, it did not make that theory true.  (Copernicus even made a similar mistake by assuming that the sun was the center of the universe rather than just center of the solar system). The beauty of science is that as we get more data we construct better theories that fit the data better; to be clear though, this does not make our current theories true.

This gets me to biology. Unlike chemists or physicists who realize the boundaries of their theories, biologists demand that everyone say their theory is 100% fact. Biologists do have a great theory that explains the observed evidence very well.  The main theory of biology is evolution and there is good evidence that supports it.  That does not mean that evolution is true.  The evidence of evolution is good but our explanation for that evidence is human and flawed.  One day we will look back at our current understanding of evolution and biology and marvel at our ignorance.

When I took a philosophy of science class at the University of Wyoming my professor told me that every scientific theory we have ever had has been proven false.  He was implying that every scientific theory we currently have will also be proven false.  That does not mean we are going to decide that gravity does not exist or that evolution did not occur but it does imply that our current understanding of evolution is flawed, along with physics and chemistry.  We should celebrate when old theories are replaced by new and better ones, and most people do.  The problem is that many people think that criticizing evolution is tantamount to criticizing all knowledge. To illustrate, I have a friend that has said the phrase “evolution is false” should be banned and is not worthy of first amendment protection. We should all recognize the marvels that science has brought to us but also realize that as a species we are still quite ignorant of how the universe really works.  

The Newspeak Dictionary: Revenues and Investments

As our politicians strive to hide their motives from the American people there have been old words that have been replaced with newer, more deceptive words.  The two foremost words used by the left to hide their agenda are the words, “revenues” and “investing.”  These two words are newspeak for “higher taxes” and “more spending.”

The real beauty of these words is how good they sound.  Doesn’t everyone want higher revenues? Revenues are a good thing right?  All that politicians mean when they say revenues is higher taxes; they just switch the phrasing from, “we’re going to tax your income” into, “the government is going to bring in more revenue.”  It’s the same thing.  But it is much more positive to look on the side of the government getting “higher revenues” than the government taking your money.

Now let’s talk about “investing.”  What politicians want you to think we are investing in are roads, bridges, police, and education.  This is all that the left ever talks about when they argue for more “investing.”  In general this is not controversial spending; we have come to expect that roads, bridges, police, and education should be largely funded by tax dollars (for better or for worse).  These are the most uncontroversial things government “invests” in. The fact is that liberals just talk about “investing” in roads, bridges, police, and education as a blanket excuse for spending money on whatever they want to. The problem is that we are “investing” so much money in entitlements that there is literally almost nothing left over for roads, bridges, police, and education.  That means everything we spend on top of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is put on the national credit card. But since we as a nation will not vote for anyone that is actually willing to make any hard choices, we just charge our grandchildren for our extravagance.  It’s ok though, we can just tell them our “investments” didn’t turn out and all we were left with was massive debt, I’m sure they’ll understand.

The fact is that all democrats are tax and spend big government liberals.  They really do think that they can spend your money better than you can.  They are control freaks. They just will never say they are in favor of big government, higher taxes, or increased spending; instead they will say they are in favor of smart government, more revenues, and more investments.  It’s all the same thing, but doesn’t the second line sound nice?

The Benefits of a Democrat President

Barack Obama is a terrible president but that does not mean he never does anything right.  In fact, there is one area where he has actually done quite well: killing bad guys.  Not only did Obama get Bin Laden (although I don’t give him too much credit for that one) he has used drones to bomb the crap out of Al Qaeda.  The real benefit here is that Obama is a Democrat and not a Republican.  If Obama was a Republican then the media would have been openly calling for the impeachment of Obama for some time.  Can you imagine the reaction if George Bush had authorized drone strikes on American citizens? Even if the citizen was fighting for Al Qaeda it would be an unpardonable offense.  The media would constantly be declaring, "This is beyond the role of the President.” But because Obama is a Democrat and thus beyond serious media criticism he basically has a free hand in protecting our country against our enemies.  Not only have democrats and the media stopped complaining about warrant-less wiretapping on American citizens, now they are actually in favor of killing American’s without a trial. (And warrant-less wiretapping gets thrown in there too.)

The fact of the matter is that aspects of the Patriot act sound very shady, but are not that serious.  Killing American citizens with smart bombs sounds ludicrous, but when you realize that these are open enemies of the United States that have joined a foreign enemy with a goal of destroying the United States you understand that what Obama has authorized is not as unreasonable as it looks on its face.  And the media is willing to see this aspect, but only when the president has a big (D) next to their name.  Kudos to the President for fighting for our country; shame on the media for their double standard.

For these reasons it is preferable in at least one way that we have a Democrat president, they are actually allowed to kill our enemies.  

Affirmative Action, Does it Really Help?

Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It

This book shatters the notion that affirmative action is helpful even for the students that are the so called beneficiaries. The premise of the book is actually quite simple and nonracial.  The premise of mismatch theory is that people who enter a school with an academic index (some composite of GPA and standardized test scores such as ACT, SAT, MCAT, LSAT) considerably lower than their peers will do worse in school than their peers; whereas people who enter a school with an academic index comparable to the average will do much better.  A second principle of mismatch theory is that how well one does compared to their peers largely predicts how successful their future schooling will be; even graduation rates.  These two theories say that if one has a significantly lower academic index than their peers, then they will be ill-served by attending a more prestigious/elite/challenging university where they will likely struggle academically.

The data the authors use shows that affirmative action hurts those it is intended to help.  A couple important facts about modern affirmative action are laid out early on in the book.  One important point is that modern affirmative action in higher education is primarily about racial preferences.  This means that, in practice, affirmative action is largely just giving preference in admissions to one race over another and not ensuring that everyone receives a fair chance at admission.  The second important fact about affirmative action is that the racial preferences are far more than mere “tie-breakers.” Most schools are very secretive about how much of a preference is given to blacks and hispanics, but it has shown to be substantial.  At the University of Michigan, black applicants were getting a boost relative of a full GPA point (considering a GPA of 2.9 to as a 3.9). That means that a black student with a 3.0 GPA would be considered well ahead of a white or Asian student with a 3.8 if both had the same SAT score.  This leads to huge disparities in the chance of acceptance for different races.  For example, in 1999 if you were black or Hispanic and applied to the University of Michigan with an SAT score in the range of 700-749 you had an 89% chance of acceptance; if you were white or asian with the same score you only had a 7% chance of acceptance (see chart in picture).  The authors claim that the racial preferences used at the University of Michigan were in the standard range of preferences used by such universities.

The rest of the book is dedicated to explaining the data on how these racial preferences hurt the students that receive them.  The University of California school system was forced to stop using racial preferences in 1998 after Proposition 209 was passed in 1996 which barred state schools from discriminating or giving preferences based on race.  The data that developed comparing before and after prop 209 was very interesting: the total number of blacks receiving bachelor’s degrees rose after racial preferences were outlawed. Despite fewer blacks entering the school there was a 55% increase in black students who received degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math.  The only problem was that the school administrators hated prop 209 and were determined to find ways around it, which they did using a ‘holistic’ application process and thus mismatch eventually reentered.

The authors of this book are liberals, true blue bleeding heart liberals.  They even use the pronoun “her” generically instead of “his” sometimes because they are liberals and think that kind of stuff is important.  The authors of this book were not trying to find data to support their worldview, they both previously supported affirmative action but have changed their worldview because of the data. This should give confidence to liberals who might otherwise be prejudiced against the argument if it was made by a conservative, although ‘mismatch’ was a term coined by black conservative Thomas Sowell, who makes the same argument.

The wording of the aforementioned proposition 209 bill was as follows, “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” If equality before the law and the state are not good enough reasons for opposing affirmative action, then hopefully the data in this book will help convince people that affirmative action really is harmful towards the very people it intends to help.  

Lincoln

Well I finally got around to seeing Lincoln, and I was very impressed.  The movie only catches the last four months of Lincoln’s presidency but does a superb job of bringing other major events of the President’s life to the audience’s attention.  Lincoln is shown in a way that gives you a brief biography of his life and particularly his Presidency; much more information is shared in this movie than the four months the movie covers.

The movie begins in January 1865 and ends on April 15^th of the same year, the day Lincoln died after being shot the night before. Most of the movie is dedicated to the political work of passing the 13^th amendment, which sounds uninteresting but proved to be anything but.  The story is made interesting by exploring and dramatizing some of the events associated with the passing and necessity of the 13^th amendment. 

I have read the book the movie is partially based on and one other Lincoln biography, and almost everything I saw in the movie was true to the Lincoln that was developed in the books.  There were many events that were not in the books but after a little bit of googling it appears the script was quite true to history. (For example, Team of Rivals hardly discusses Thaddeus Stevens and the actual debates in the House or the process taken to buy votes for the amendment but the interpretation shown in the movie appears to be quite accurate according to what I found) The cabinet sessions are a little too dramatic in my opinion, but not much.  I think that Lincoln may have had a black butler/servant but I think his and Elizabeth Keckley’s (Mary Todd Lincoln’s black friend) role may have been exaggerated in the movie; but it fits with the theme of the movie and it shows Lincoln’s personal friendliness and sympathy to the blacks of the time. The only unfortunate part is that Lincoln’s personal friendliness toward blacks could have been shown through a completely true story involving Frederick Douglass at Lincoln’s second inaugural party.  But I am not a filmmaker and the audience understands sufficiently who Lincoln was through the black characters in the film, it just took a little exaggeration of minor characters. 

The best part in the movie is Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln.  He brought to life the person that many have tried to put together in their head.  Lincoln was melancholy yet jovial; a beacon of joy and happiness, yet prone to depression.  It has always been hard to rationalize these aspects of Lincoln’s character but Mr. Lewis played such a real person while yet displaying all these attributes that the movie made Lincoln come alive.  I was glad that the movie showed Lincoln telling some of his moralistic and fun stories (I know his tale of the portrait of George Washington in the restroom was one Lincoln would share, and thus I assume the rest were Lincoln’s as well).  Lincoln loved to be ‘with the boys’ as it showed in the movie and many attribute this to his love of male fellowship (Although some people do believe that Lincoln was gay I am not implying that he was nor do most serious historians believe Lincoln was gay) and partially to his possibly bipolar wife who made home life difficult at times.  Either way he loved to sit around, tell stories, and laugh with friends.  He would often laugh raucously at his own jokes.  I felt as if it showed this aspect of Lincoln in the movie very well and made me feel as if we could actually see Lincoln having a night at the office with the boys.

The cabinet meetings in the movie were used largely to illustrate the situation that the President was in and also to show Lincoln’s ability to lead.  Lincoln invited many different viewpoints into his cabinet and many times they disagreed with his tactics or even his goals.  His ability to consider these viewpoints and formulate a policy is one way Lincoln’s genius was apparent.  His most trusted aid in his cabinet was his Secretary of State, William Seward.  Team of Rivals (the book on which the movie is partially based) is largely a book about Lincoln’s relationship with Seward, a relationship that just could not be fully expressed in this two and a half hour movie.  The movie does a fair job of showing how their professional relationship worked but what is not shown is their personal friendship that developed throughout Lincoln’s presidency.  The most interesting part of their relationship is that Seward was largely seen as a shoe-in for the Republican nomination but was upset by a country lawyer from Illinois whom many people caricatured as a western backwoodsman.  Seward felt that Lincoln was beneath him in capabilities, stature, and worthiness of the Presidency.  Seward was one of Lincoln’s first and most important converts of his genius and they became incredible allies and friends and that this could not be fully expressed in the movie is unfortunate.

The movie is based on such a complex and incredible person, who is portrayed so well and so deeply that any criticism I have is merely a criticism of a constraint of time and format that is inherent in film.  I could not have imagined a film of our sixteenth president to be so well researched, planned, and presented.  I thought this film would be great and it exceeded all my expectations.