Propane heater preventive maintenance, lesson learned.

Last winter was a cold one here at the secret lair, Mk I. I was (still am, lazy ass) in rather improvised quarters and got my heat where I could. For part of the winter I heated the barn's scriptorium with a small Mr. Heater, scavenging a hose from my campstove and connecting it to a 20-lb propane bottle. At the time I didn't give any thought to the advisability of doing this; it could be done, so I just went ahead and did it without reflecting that I get into the biggest problems when I do that.

This fall, just prior to the first good cold snap, I dragged out the Mr. Heater and found that it didn't work at all. Didn't even try; didn't behave as if propane or heat were in any way connected with its function of being a large, clumsy paperweight. Oh, dear.

A (very) little belated research pointed out the reason for this. In fact, it's right in the instructions which I didn't have but could have easily downloaded. It seems that the oil to be found in any propane bottle other than the little 1-lb "You won't get through the night with this" camping bottles chingers up the works of a Mr. Heater in fairly short order. Once it's had time to congeal nicely over the warm season, you're done.

So in connecting one of these handy space heaters to a remote propane bottle, you need more than the dedicated hose. You also need one of these filters. Learn from my expensive mistake.

Now HERE'S a surprise...

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

Well, we all knew that was going to end well, didn't we?

Magnus' Headstone Arrived

M got back from his trip to the city, and the landlady sent up Magnus headstone. Not a very good likeness, but I like the epitaph she settled on. It's very him.

Yes, believe it or not I am working on the secret lair. Though I admit that for some time I just sort of patted it on the head in passing, I'm finally getting back to work on the interior. As soon as I've got the wire run, I'll be packing the walls with insulation. Got lots of plastic for vapor barrier, and I'll put up the siding as needed to hold it in place.

There are, of course, a number of impediments: I have everything I need for the roof and to install the wood stove except two things: the services of Clark Kent to move the stove and its pedestal into place, and some dreaming clue what I'm supposed to do then. But that'll work itself out...I'm sure. Eventually. Before the next ice age, for sure. There's also the matter of the interior wall for the bathroom, which I should probably at least frame in before doing all that other interior stuff. But I'm out of framing lumber, and besides I find logical procedure such a bore. Don't you?

Just a chunk of bad concrete

It used to have pride of place in my study, in a little glass case that showed it off like some expensive crystal figure. I remember thinking often what a lousy job of mixing it represented; it was soft, porous as hell. Rotten as the purpose that had caused it to be poured.

It was a piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift from a friend who had received it, along with several others, from that East German branch of her family that the West German branch hadn't seen in several decades. After the wall came down, twenty years ago today, all the family got together in Berlin and my friend came back with a suitcase full of these broken chunks. I imagine they were a dime a dozen in Berlin for a while: It was a pretty big wall.

Good riddance. Most of the tyrants of the corrupt communist regimes of eastern Europe survived; some even flourished in different guises. Only a few went to a different kind of wall, that that's a damned shame. But whatever our species' failings in the matter of maintaining the freedoms of its individuals, at least we have this to our credit. That damned wall is no more.

Welcome to our guests!

So yesterday the visits to this little backwater blog suddenly went, by my modest standards, through the roof. It seems my comments concerning a certain pro-military song were not appreciated by another blogger, one who apparently enjoys a lot more traffic than I get. Well, disagreements happen: The thing with being politically, er, unaffiliated is that you get chances to piss off conservatives and liberals alike. It's part of the fun.

So yeah - Hi, guys! I'm the milquetoast. Welcome!

Then this morning somebody linked the "modern policing" post to reddit.com, and that's already doing alarming things to the normally somnolent stats. Whom have I offended this time, he wondered, rubbing his hands together with glee.

Anyway, if any of my visitors has clicked to the homepage and read this, Welcome! Stick around for a while. Take your shoes off. Whatever impressions you may have gained from the post that led you here, I guarantee it's worse than that. :-)

Comment on the subject of sheepdogs...

Several months ago I posted a rant on the subject of that "wolves, sheepdogs and sheep" analogy police apologists love to fantasize about. It's a subject I bloviate about from time to time, and having done so last July I didn't give it any more thought.

Well, I've had some email trouble which W just cleared up for me, and going through the cascade of old emails I came upon this one, which was posted just three days ago:

So what you're saying is that you're ignorant? It's a shame since all these sheepdogs have fought for your freedom and protected your little fuzzy white ass while you've been asleep. Danger does not present itself momentarily and then disappear, it is a constant state. Stop assuming your ass is safe as long the wolves and sheepdogs are harassing you. The minute the sheepdogs give up on you sheep, then all sheep, including yourself, are going to get skinned and killed. Stop being so ignorant and start appreciating the men and women who have provided you with the comfort and food in which you survive with. You are no mutt, there is no such thing. You are a sheep and the least you could do is be a good sheep and keep your mouth shut.

Just wanted to make sure it got the attention it deserved. I sure wish people who write things like this would have the courage to use their names. I was going to fisk it, but what's the point? I'll just be a good sheep and keep my mouth shut.

Except to say..."He don't know me too good, do he?" :-P

Benevolence at Work: Pay Up or Go To Jail

H.R. 3962 would require health insurers to sell coverage on a guaranteed issue, mostly community-rated basis and attempt to improve the quality of the risk pool by requiring most people to have health coverage. Individuals who failed either to meet the proposed coverage ownership requirements or pay penalties could go to prison for up to 5 years. MORE

"No man's life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session."

M's Dome, Belated Update

The front wall took M a while to finish, but he did a beautiful job - especially considering he'd never stuck two blocks together before building it. S came over and helped lay the foundation row, but M was on his own for the rest. I helped only a little to speed things up while he filled the bond beam layers and doorframe with concrete. Lately he's been spending his time laying out the electrical and other things that need to penetrate the dome. The shotcrete people are due today to look over the job, and with any luck (IE, if they don't flake out and if the weather holds) the dome will be covered with concrete before the end of next week.

Modern Policing and the "Peelian Principles"

Ever heard of Robert Peel? He's not a household name in America. The Right Honorable Sir Robert Peel was a big thing in British politics of the mid-19^th century, which would logically make him completely irrelevant to anything in 21^st century America. And he would be, except for one thing he did in 1829 while holding the post of Home Secretary. He formed the Metropolitan Police Force in London, employing 1000 constables who, in his honor, came to be known as "Bobbies." It was the first modern police force in history; the prototype of all its successors. For those who know my opinion of police officers and police departments in general, indeed of the whole idea of police, it is true that in my opinion he did the world no great favor thereby. But sometimes you have to give points for good intentions. And it is clear that it was never Robert Peel's intention to unleash yet another oppressive force on the world.

He made this clear when, in organizing his police force, he published his nine "Peelian Principles:

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.
2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon the public approval of police actions.
3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observation of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public.
4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force.
5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law.
6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice, and warning is found to be insufficient.
7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions, and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary.
9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it.

I've known about these "Principles" for many years: I often take them out, dust them off, and reflect upon the irony of their existence before shoving them back into the mental box in the dark places where I keep all those other failed bits of idealistic chest-thumping, like the U.S. Constitution. I was reminded of it yesterday, while reading this Pro Libertate essay titled "Why The Innocent Flee From Police:"

"Why did he run?" This question thrusts itself upon us every time an unarmed or otherwise harmless person is gunned down while fleeing from police.

Often that inquiry takes the form that assumes the guilt of the victim: "If he did nothing wrong, why did he run?" It's also common for that second version to contort itself into a nicely circular argument: "Well, he ran, and resisting arrest is a crime, so obviously he got what was coming to him."

For reasons unclear to a mind not enthralled by statist assumptions, most people simply assume that both reason and morality dictate an unqualified duty to surrender without cavil or complaint whenever armed, violence-prone strangers in peculiar government-issued garb seek to restrain one of us.

"Police brutality" in this country used to be a largely race or class thing. Cracker cops in Valdosta or Birmingham or wherever could get away with thumping all the uppity swarthy individuals they wanted, and the middle-class folks would take that as an opportunity to feel safer in their beds, snug in their delusion that the cops actually worked for them. But thanks largely to the "War on Drugs" and the horribly perverse incentives of civil asset forfeiture, not to mention the need to enhance department and local government revenues in these dark economic times when simply raising taxes isn't the simple option it used to be, this is no longer the case. Robbers go where the money is, and where it may be obtained most safely and easily. More and more that doesn't mean rousting Jamal from the south side for "driving while black;" it means rousting Mr. White Suburban Guy for "driving while affluent."

That would just be grounds for a moment of Schadenfreude except for other, more ominous trends in modern policing. For example, I just typed "Officer Safety is Paramount" into Google News. I only got two hits, which surprised me a bit. What didn't surprise me was that they were both from police- oriented publications. The same phrase occurs 33,700 times in a search of the web at large. A related search - Puppycide - got no hits in the news, but 13,400 on the web including this horrifying video which has been around for quite some time. My personal favorite, which I believe I've mentioned here before, involves an Ohio family who came home to find that police had tazed, then shot and killed their five-pound Chihuahua after it escaped from their back yard. I know I feel safer. And of course the whole country knows the case of the Calvo family, whose two Labrador Retrievers were shot during a botched drug raid. This would have been just another day in the life of botched paramilitary raids, except that Cheye Calvo happened to be the mayor of the town in which the raid occurred. That, at last, got the common practice of shooting dogs in the name of "officer safety" into the public eye.

Then there's the question of "respect for police authority." (167,000 hits, not that I'm counting or anything.) A perusal of these articles indicates that police sure as hell think there's a breakdown in respect for their authority, and they're going about trying to restore that respect all wrong. You know that old saying, "when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail?" Well, outside the law - that is, when dealing with "subjects" who don't happen to be breaking the law at the moment, but who aren't showing the officer the proper deference - police officers only have one tool: The threat of violence. That threat, and its reality, have become more immediate since the wide-spread advent of the Taser. Police have always had access to "less-than-lethal" weapons, IE nightsticks or bigass flashlights, but those have the disadvantage of leaving cracked heads and inconvenient pools of blood, which makes them sub-optimal for use against disrespectful little old ladies during traffic stops. Hey, there used to be some limits. But the Taser has provided law enforcement officers with a Pain Compliance Tool that normally leaves the chastened subject with hardly any damage at all. Physical damage, anyway. That using it for just that purpose would become a very common police procedure, was a no-brainer prediction. I was one of those who predicted it, and the cops didn't let me down.

But the point is, this "lack of respect" problem is circular, it's self-fulfilling. There's a reason average, every-day ghetto dwellers dislike cops on principle. It's not a big secret, and it's not because - as some cops would say - because the residents are all criminals. It's because they really hate being pushed around - and they get pushed around regularly. Any toppled dictator could tell you, you do not want to bring that sensibility home among the people - the middle class, the whitebread citizens, the majority - who should be your greatest supporters. But that's just what too many cops are doing.

And then when there's money to be made at it, well - civil asset forfeiture (1,010,000 hits) - well, then you just put the cherry on top.

"A conflict of interest between effective crime control and creative fiscal management will persist so long as law enforcement agencies remain dependent on civil asset forfeiture."
—John L. Worrall, Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, San Bernardino, Addicted to the drug war: The role of civil asset forfeiture as a budgetary necessity in contemporary law enforcement, Journal of Criminal Justice Volume 29, Issue 3, May-June 2001, Pages 171-187.

Okay, enough with the long words. Point is, not much separates a corrupted police department from just another gang of thugs. Yes, I know that's not the way law enforcement officers see it, but it's not their perceptions that are of concern here. It should come as no surprise at all to police officers that they perceive a general "lack of respect for police authority," and they should also expect it to get worse. It has nothing to do with the "subjects'" poor parenting or access to video games or anti-cop agitprop on the intertubz. What wrong-side-of-the-tracks-type people have known all along, the police are now teaching to whitebread suburbia: The Policeman Is Not Your Friend.

People concerned with any energy crisis in England could behave quite profitably toward their nation: Just connect a generator input shaft to the axis of Robert Peel's corpse, then sit outside his tomb reading excerpts from Radley Balko's The Agitator or David Codrea's Only Ones Files. Help him deplore the way the descendants of what he created, thinking he'd made a good thing, have forgotten every one of his principles, especially the seventh:

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen.

Return of the Clown Collar

Yeah, the clown collar's back. Fritz's ear is fine, but he's got a new sore on his front leg.
He's done this before: He gets this nervous thing where he just licks and licks one place on his leg until it's a bleeding mess. This one hasn't gone that far, and I'm hoping to prevent it. I tried a couple of days of shaming him out of it, which oddly enough has worked before. Fritz is almost unique among the dogs in that he actually cares what I want. But this morning it was worse, and since we've worked out a way to keep the clown collar on him it was sadly time for the evil contrivance to come out of retirement. I really enjoyed taking it off him the last time; he's cumbersome enough without it. But his history is too clear: Right now it's just raw skin, but he'll lick it to the bone if I don't stop him. Once it's healed, he'll eventually leave it alone.

Volk does it again

A couple of evenings ago, M told me I should check out Oleg Volk's live journal site because he had decorated a couple of already-very-decorative photos with captions I'd identify with.

I've spent some time on his regular site - in fact it's got an advert on my sidebar - but only go there when there's an entire afternoon that needs killing. These were a little easier to find on the live journal page.