6 July 2013 When it comes to slaughter

Cassi Creek:

          Yesterday I had the privilege – well, the experience - of watching an associate medical examiner demonstrate his apparent lack of any real ability to answer questions from attorneys without looking both incompetent and indecisive.. 

          The question was raised about how much separation existed between the muzzle of G. Zimmeran’s hand gun and the body of T. Martin when the single fatal shot was fired.  The ballistics tech had described the injury as a contact shot due to wound shape, stippling, and other factors.  The ME who performed the post-mortem exam apparently has developed a classification system of his own that varies from the ballistics determination and the accepted forensic pathology  definitions .  Combined with his less than stellar English, his insistence upon talking over questions, and his non-adherence to standard forensic practices and procedures, he turned in a performance that would cause me, if I were a juror, to question his competence.  Normally, I don’t watch televised trials.  However, the forensics in this case will win or lose it and I have always had an interest in forensic pathology and other forensic studies..

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1975428-overview#aw2aab6b5

“Forensic Pathology of Firearm Wounds 

·         Author: Randall E Frost, MD; Chief Editor: Stephen J Cina, MD   more...

Aspects of Firearm Wounds

The expert medicolegal examination of firearm wounds may allow determination of several aspects of these injuries, including the following^[2] :

·         Range of fire

·         Type of weapon used to inflict the injury

·         Trajectory of the missile or projectile

·         Type and extent of the injuries inflicted by the projectile(s)

Range of fire

Range of fire, or muzzle to target distance, may be divided into contact, near contact, intermediate, and distant categories, with various subtypes also demonstrable. Contact and intermediate range wounds are often collectively referred to as close-range wounds.

Determination of range of fire is based on the characteristics of a firearm wound, features of the wound that have been imparted by material issuing from the muzzle of the firearm other than the bullet, or from features due to direct interactions between the target and the firearm itself. Material from the firearm muzzle may take the form of soot, hot gas, gunpowder particles, or other material, and the effects of this material are discussed in more detail below.^[5] The range of fire has obvious relevance to such issues as whether a wound is self-inflicted or inflicted by another person, the truth of proffered explanations of shooting events, and the validity of self-defense arguments.”

Enough said. 

          

5 July 2013 Too much of everything might be enough

Cassi Creek:  If you aren’t fed up with the GOP/teavangelist agenda yet, you should be.

Currently it is practicing voter suppression, more or less approved by the SCOTUS

         

It has engaged in both direct and indirect assaults on women’s privacy, political rights, and access to family planning, reproductive and other medical concerns.

It has acted to deny the existence of climate change and to forestall any efforts to prevent further causation.  It has attempted to defeat and repeal all conservation and ecological laws that do not result in some sort of kickback from energy companies or ways to sell off public lands to corporate interests.  Then, there is the mindless endless effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act so that American’s access to health care is entirely controlled by health insurance corporations and pharmacology houses.

How, you ask, does the reactionary right get by with these obstructive and damaging actions?

Call, write, e-mail your elected representatives today, tomorrow, every day.  We can’t outspend the GOP’s propagandists and financiers.  We have to outshout them, out march them, and outlaw them/

4 July 2013 Fire in the mountain

Cassi Creek:  We are close enough to fault lines to undergo an occasional earthquake of low magnitude.  So far, we’ve managed to not hear or feel the ones that have occurred since we moved here.  Still, as with any mountainous region of the planet, earthquakes are possible. 

          There are no active volcanoes in the region that I know of.  There are several areas where hot springs or warm springs reach the surface, indicating some remnant or small pocket of geothermal activity.

Today, this caught my eye. 

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=128471&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

“Discovery
Studying Mini Earthquakes Provides Clues to Volcanic Behavior

Researchers explore causes and pathways of volcanic eruptions to better predict major eruptions”

          On this Independence Day, I am greatly concerned about the degree of polarization present among the populace.  The GOP and the allied teavangelists and assorted “Christian” demagogues and ideologues have convinced ca. half the populace that the only acceptable resolution for the nation’ s economic and socio-cultural problems is to eschew education, remove all taxation from the super rich, and to abrogate the social safety nets from supposed freeloaders who are viewed as unwanted outlanders and parasites. 

          This same populace claims to be desirous of “defending and restoring the Constitution.”  However, they are revising history as taught in public schools to reflect their own right wing, racist, and anti-female bias.  The masses are content to be pacified with televised athletics and cheap beer and will almost invariably allow the GOP propagandists to convince them to vote against their own self-interests while placing the blame for the current economic dislocation upon the former middle class and the formerly employed poor. 

          Concurrently, the Democrats exhibit little ability to govern.  Congress is inept, out of touch with the needs and desires of the populace not sedated by the GOP’s propaganda machine.  They are doing next to nothing to block the GOP’s attempts at voter suppression or to block the GOP’s war on women and on the social safety nets.  There is no organized effort to roll back the attempted religious takeover that the GOP encourages.  It is time for an active women’s party and an active atheist party.

3 July 2013 Come Mr. Taliban

Cassi Creek:  As we make ready for the annual celebration of the American Revolution, we find that one segment of our populace is waging an ongoing war to deprive women of their right to control their own bodies. 

          According to the  American Taliban, comprised of Christian fundamentalists allied with anti-everything facets of the various “tea party” pseudo-patriots, American women should be relegated to non-voting, non-legislating breeding stock being kept and used by men in as close an approximation of a bronze age culture as can be enacted by a purchased Congress. 

          This iteration of theocrats has enjoyed some degree of public dominance despite the efforts of the Framers to eliminate religion from the political nature of the U.S. Currently; the demographics of the nation are evolving away from membership in these various religious cults.  The loss of membership has resulted in some loss of prominence in civic and social structures. 

          To combat the decrease in numbers and the associated ability to claim that this is a “Christian nation,” – read that as fundamentalist repressive theocracy – these non-elected, self-proclaimed cult leaders are blanketing the airways with propaganda and talk shows in an effort to generate a widespread belief that “Christians “ are being persecuted by atheists and others who do not accept the cult of Christianity as valid. 

          Part of the problem is the affiliation of fundamentalists with other anti-abortion groups.  While opposing abortion, these groups and cults also oppose the most reliable manner of reducing abortions, teaching teens and young people about reliable birth control methods and making these tools, along with family planning help, available to the population most in need of them.

          Instead, the American Taliban wishes to use pregnancy to punish women who engage in sexual activity without a slip of paper signed by a cult leader allowing them to reproduce.

          The American Taliban is working frantically to remove women’s access to abortion, birth control, and family planning.  They are attaching riders and amendments to obscure bills and ramming them through committees before late night votes.  They are prohibiting spectators and observers in some instances in some states.  They are taking these regressive actions without the input of women at any level of the process because they currently have eliminated as much of American women’s access to political office as they can without risking the voting public actually becoming aware of this process.

          There is little difference in the American Taliban and that of Afghanistan other than the language of the book each uses to enforce Bronze Age treatment of women and non-members.  In point of fact, the Afghani Taliban is somewhat less responsible for their 7^th century attitudes and behaviors.  They have not been as widely exposed to modern public education, as have their American analogues; who have been exposed to the 21^st century and rejected much of it in favor of continuing to use women as breeding stock.

          It’s time to eliminate these cultists from public life by every legal means.  If we don’t, they will bring this nation into a theocracy less forgiving than those of the current Islamic nations.

1 July 2013 Gettysburg and other horrors

Cassi Creek:  Today is the 150^th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg.  I saw the battlefield during a relatively cool and damp period in May.  The battle took place in far less enjoyable weather.  The uniforms of the day were made of wool, hot and heavy in the best of conditions in July.  Factor in the summer heat and humidity, the heavy exertions consistent with troop movements, building barricades, laying artillery, and the actual fighting.  One can begin to understand the misery that settled in upon the combatants before shots were traded.  Fighting a Civil War battle was a study in endurance and tenacity.  The weak and sick all too often fell out before or just as the battles were engaged. 

          There will be thousands of re-enactors at Gettysburg this week.  Among other things, they are determined to keep the memory of the men who fought there alive and accurately recalled by younger generations. 

          They will wear the hot wool uniforms, live in the canvas tents, and eat the monotonous and unhealthy food that mirrors what the troops ate those long years previous to today.  They celebrated the men of both sides of the conflict.  They consider their contribution of time and effort to be a privilege. 

          They are not there alone.  Battlefields are haunted, haunting places.  If ghosts exist, those are the first places to find them.  It is difficult to walk battlefields and not see what took place as units moved against each other into the face of rifle and cannon fire.  There are places where the smell of gunpowder will never entirely fade away.  Even damage ears can hear the deafening thunder of cannon, the sharp crack of shells exploding, the rattling hail of rifle fire, and the sounds of suffering those weapons inflict. 

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/01/us/arizona-firefighter-deaths/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

19 firefighters killed in Arizona blaze; 'Our entire crew was lost'

By Holly Yan, CNN

July 1, 2013 -- Updated 1434 GMT (2234 HKT)

“(CNN) -- They were part of an elite squad who confronted wildfires up close, setting up barriers to stop the spreading destruction.

But the inferno blazing across central Arizona proved too much, even for the shelters the 19 firefighters carried as a last-ditch survival tool.

The firefighters were killed Sunday while fighting the Yarnell Hill fire, northwest of Phoenix. It was the deadliest day for firefighters since the 9/11 attacks. And it is the deadliest wildland fire since 1933, according to a list from the U.S. National Wildfire Coordinating Group…”

          This is a horrible tragedy that will affect the entire fire-fighting community, nationwide.  These teams and other firefighters routinely deploy from state to state as the demands of active fire season call for shared manpower.  Wild fires are things of horror on a scale equal to the worst of other weather phenomena.  They occur naturally, destroy everything in their path, and are all too often deadly.  The best of protective equipment is sometimes of little or no benefit.  Last-ditch protection is just that, a gamble that technology can alter reality.  This time, in this place, the technology wasn’t up to the task.  Heroes died trying to save the lives and property of others.

30 June 2013 Anonymous bear

Cassi Creek: On this last day of June 2013, we had an unexpected visitation.  About 0930 A black bear rambled through the front yard and into the upper wooded portion of our property.  Had Gloria not seen it before I did, we might have thought it was a neighbor’s Newfie.  She, however, had a couple seconds longer than I to identify the animal as it went past the window.

          We did a quick check to make certain it was not gobbling birdseed or humming bird food.  It vanished into the undergrowth as quickly as it had appeared.

          Spent a good deal of the morning looking for a painting of Hidatsa dog dancers as painted by Karl Bodmer.  Quite an elaborate costume as ordained for one of the dog societies that existed in the 1830’s in the lands of the upper Missouri River. 

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/112047/Dancer-of-the-Hidatsa-Dog-Society-aquatint-by-Karl-Bodmer

29 June 2013 Bits and pieces

Cassi Creek:   Pathfinder follow-up –The only way to repair the climate control system is to remove the AC/GPS/Radio , send it in to Nissan, and hope that they can replace the five little buttons that control the AC/heater.  This will leave a hole the size of a 12 volt battery in the dashboard for however long it takes to rebuild and return the unit. 

          There is also the matter of a catalytic converter that is no longer functioning correctly. 

          These two repairs will cost about 1/4^th of the current purchase price of the 12 year old vehicle.  However, the Pathfinder has been well maintained and has slightly less than 98,000 miles on the odometer.  I’ll make a few phone calls next week to see about prices for repairs.