Guns laws: from bad to worse

Back in the 90's when Dubya (George W Bush) was running for governor of Texas he promised to pass a law stating that people can carry guns as long as they were hidden inside their jacket or trousers or skirts. It was the so-called concealed weapons law. Soon after he became governor, the law was passed and everybody rejoiced. Now you could have a pistol or two as long as you kept it out of sight.

My ex-colleague Gary Wise, for instance, had a dozen or more guns so well-concealed that the police failed to find them when we reported that he was threatening to shoot us (faculty members at the University of Texas, Austin). Perhaps they did not want to find them because he was a man of faith: he was conducting Bible study classes and, according to the Texas mentality, this automatically meant that everything he said was true. When he used his guns against University administrators he was arrested and put to prison.

And then there was the following debate: Should guns be allowed in churches or not? It was soon decided that, yes, guns should be allowed in churches, as long as the church is ok with it, because, guns protect against the Satan.

And recently, a new law was proposed and is about to be signed: anyone can now carry guns openly and in full view. In fact, the ex-governor of Texas (successor of Dubya), Rick Perry, has been exhibiting guns for long time now:

The current law will prohibit police for stopping anyone carrying guns openly. Now Texas will be added to the list of the worst and most intimidating gun states. Congratulations Texas!

Over the last 30 years or so, guns have been spreading fast in the US. It looks like the US is going back to that it was 200 years ago, when  Lucky Luke was roaming...  The following animated gif map shows the spread of the epidemic.

And let's see an incident of guns use by the police: yesterday, police raided a teens party and stopped the loud teens by the use of guns. Sweet, isn't it?

US executioners' attitudes

I write and talk about executions because I lived in Texas and was truly astonished at the barbarism of the laws about death penalty. In fact, prior to my going to Texas, I had never thought about this. Texas taught me that even the most "civilized" states can have have laws that indicate that they are stuck back in time, hundreds of years ago. "How is that possible?", I kept asking and asking myself. Nobody wanted to actually discuss this. This is the worst of all: people do not want to speak about something so obvious, so irrational, so barbaric.What is worse, the executions are done, implicitly, in the name of religion, and, in fact, a very particular kind of religion: the kind of fundamentalism Christianity which permeates US, the one that is based on the evil part of the Old Testament.

Recently, the following article caught my attention. Dr Allen Ault, who was personally giving the final go ahead  for executions in the  State of Georgia, is now talking of the murders he committed.

I knew I killed another human being. Although an execution is state sanctioned it is, by any definition, probably the most premeditated of any murders. In most states, every execution in the coroner's report is listed as a homicide.

I understand him. I would feel the same. Dr Allan Ault's speeches about the barbaric State-sanctioned murders, are all over the Internet now.

Compare him with another death warden, Charles Thomas O'Reilly, of whom I've written before. He is the champion executioner, having given the go ahead in 140 State-sanctioned murdered (in the infamous Huntsville, in Texas. Texas has executed more than 500 people in "modern" times, i.e., since 1982. O'Reilly did 140 of them!)

 I have no reservations, no nightmares. I don't have any intentions of changing my mind, reflecting on how could I have ever done this stuf. If you think it's a terrible thing, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. You don't do 140 executions and then all of a sudden think this was a bad thing.

Here is an article from an interview he gave when he retired.

Hanging in Texas

The 10 commandments in front of the Texas Capitol

The death bed in Huntsville, Texas

Guns in churches "protect against Satan" [PH Series posting 1]

I'm starting a new series of postings which I will label "PH Series", that is, Personal History Series, where I will collect several anecdotes from my personal history, events and incidents which, to me, are quite memorable for certain reasons. I start by reposting the following story.

In the 90s I lived in Austin, Texas. One of the things that impressed me tremendously was the relation of people with guns. The following describes an incident which took place in a church. I think it's quite revealing of the mentality of (many) people, and this is why I kept a copy of the newspaper which reported the story.

In September 1999, a crazy guy entered a Baptist church in Fort Worth, and opened fire. He managed to kill several people before shooting himself. (A common phenomenon in the US. Mass shootings take place frequently.)

Back then I remembered how I was impressed, not by the shooting itself, but by the reaction of victims' relatives. Not a single one of them thought that guns was the problem. Rather, they thought it was Satan who did it and responded by saying "we need more guns!"

This was the first time I heard such an irrational statement. It impressed me so, that I made a copy of the New York Times article (click on the photo for detailed image):

 

The story impressed me a lot. I underlined some statements which I found incredibly disturbing, and here they are (emphasis is mine):

• Blame is placed on society and the apocalypse, but not on guns.
• No one blamed guns. 
• Some say they see the massacre at Wedgwood Baptist Church as the making of martyrs and a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. They point to the reports that the shooter, Larry Gene Ashbrook, shouted anti-religious obscenities as he attacked.  
• Ms. Bernall is spoken of by many evangelicals as a modern Christian martyr because she was asked by one of the gunmen whether she believed in God, to which she defiantly answered, "Yes I do," and was instantly shot. Her story is being passed among many churches and youth groups, her parents have written a book, , and there is a campaign to have students wear T-shirts to school saying "Yes, I believe in God." 
• [T]he victims at Wedgwood Baptist were killed for their faith.
• "It is the enemy conducting spiritual warfare. It's an attack on Christianity in general, on Christians, and it's Satan trying to stop God's work in the earth. He'll use whoever he wants, whoever he can. The guy who did this was obviously angry. Satan uses anger."  
• "I don't believe this is necessarily the end [of the world]," Ms. Turner added, "but it's definitely getting closer."
• Inside the blood donation center, the soundtrack from the movie "Top Gun" carried over a partition to the padded reclining chairs where two men were having their arms swabbed with yellow sterilizer.  

Here, then, my friends, is what many Americans (and some others) believe: If someone shoots and kills people in a church (or elsewhere) using a gun, the last thing we should blame is the gun. We can blame Satan, the absence of more guns, attack on Christianity, that people are losing their faith, anything but guns.

Executions in the US--some statistics

As the end of the calendar year is (by convention) approaching, let us take a look at some numbers on the number of executions by death penalty in the US, the only western world country in the top 5 hit list for executions. Those countries are: China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.

I collected some data from a prosecuting attorney's site, from the Texas Executions Information Center, and from the Death Penalty Information Center, and made a few plots. Here they are:

Executions were quite low before the 80s. At some point, they started picking up, and, in the 90s, they sky-rocketed. In the 00s they went down a bit.

Texas remains the champion, thanks, in part, the the Texas ex-governor (and then president of the US) George W Bush.

Some times, the wrong person is executed, as, for example, last year in Texas. In fact, the largest number of provably wrongful executions have taken place in Texas. (Not surprisingly, given the zeal they show in the subject of executions.) For a comparison, in the UK, a person called Timothy Evans was wrongfully executed in 1950. This played a major role in the abolishion of capital punishment in the UK in 1965. In the US, by comparison, wrongful executions have not caused any change in the law.

"Bush Candidacy Puts Focus on Executions" gives an account of what I mentioned above: the concern of people about Bush's zeal for executions. 


"A Role Model for Executions" talks about the executioner-to-be, G Scott of New Mexico who went to Texas to find out how to do his job. Scott said he came to Texas because he wanted to learn from the very best. Florida State Representative Chris Smith, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat,claimed "They're [Texans] our role model for killing people,''

"A Closer Look at Five Cases That Resulted in Executions of Texas Inmates" describes five extroardinary execution cases. One wonders how many such cases actually exist.

I remember how impressed I was, about 10 years ago, when I learned that a single man, Charles Thomas O'Reilly, the Texas Executioner for 33 years, did not express any regret or remorse for leading 140 prisoners to their death. Here is an article from Huffington Post on this person.

Giovanni Battista Bugatti, the official executioner for the Pope from 1796 to 1865.

When the world was created

I was looking for a picture of the following but couldn't find it on the Internet. Last week however, I was in Austin, Texas, and took one myself. It is a plaque sitting in front of the Texas State History Museum giving the date of inauguration of the museum:

You see, the date is given in two ways, the first one being the conventional date (2001), but the  second one being something strange: A.L. 6001. What is this? Well, there is a group of people who believe that the world was created at the year 4000 BCE. In this respect, they are similar to young earth creationists who believe that the world was created between 5700 and 10000 years ago. They are both making a huge error, and their belief is 5 orders of magnitude different from the actual date of the creation of the world (defined as the age of the universe) which is about 13,000,000,000 (13 billion) years ago. The guys who put the plaque in front of the museum are the so-called freemasons and "AL 6001" means "Anno Lucis 6001", i.e. 6001 years after the light was created.

Arbitrary nonsense, of course. But when that nonsense is used in a history museum one wonders about the accuracy of the contents and information inside the museum.

By the way, the museum is not a bad looking building, but someone had the strange idea to stick an immense star in front of it which covers the view almost entirely.

University of Texas shootings, II

About a year ago, someone went in the University of Texas campus and started shooting at random. Finally he shot himself to death. Fortunately, nobody (else) was killed.

I commented on this in a previous posting. I mentioned, inter alia, a personal experience, and also linked a news video

showing a policeman apparently stating that  students should be mentally prepared that, now and then, a gunman may show up on campus and advises them to be alert.

I concluded my posting by the following observation:

I wouldn't be surprised if further advice was given that people should carry guns in order to protect themselves. This is not uncommon in the US. Instead of trying to put a restriction on guns when fatalities happen, it is peculiar that they want exactly the opposite: they are convinced that gun fatalities can only be prevented by more guns.

For it is often the case that Americans respond to gun fatalities by acquiring more guns.

And here is a response I received, recently, by an angry commenter who doesn't dare reveal his identity:

Absurd, huh? Except for the fact that whenever guns are taken away, crime goes up. Criminals don't worry about getting guns, they get them, they always get them. It's the law abiding people that turn them in. Get your data straight. Idiot. You typical bleeding heart liberal.

There is a link between gun supporters and religious freaks. In my opinion, it is self-righteousness. They think that they are better than others (because, say, their god(s) speak(s) directly to them) and impose their will by "rolling up their sleeves and beat the others up". Just as Lao Tze described in Tao Te Ching, Ch. 38. Obama was right when, in 2008, remarked:

"They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Of course, back then, this was seen as a blunder. Obama (who I don't believe is really religious) had to play his cards right and be seen to go to church; otherwise, he would have decreased his chances of being elected.

Back to my point then: The angry commenter above really expresses the average gun owner in the US: Guns save life. Yes, in a society where guns are so much accepted, several people grow up by wanting more of them. One can't get rid of deeply rooted evils. It's just like religion: in a society where religion is the norm, you are an outcast if you don't go to church. I really feel sorry for friends in Midwest where they have to struggle to keep up with their neighbours' rejection just because they don't care to go to (any) church. They have no guns either.

Oh, incidentally, the typical bleeding heart liberal comment about me above makes me crack up.

Texas solves problems by ... prayer!

Look at this man:

He is Rick Perry, the governor of Texas. He recently announced that America is going through hard times, facing political and financial problems. He decided that the solution is to establish the 6th of August as "Day of Prayer and Fasting for Our Nation". Read more and watch his proclamation video here. He claims:

We believe that America is in a state of crisis. Not just politically, financially or morally, but because we are a nation that has not honored God in our successes or humbly called on Him in our struggles. 

The response, he continues, will be a gathering in Reliant Stadium (which will be air-conditioned)  in Houston on 6 August where Texans (and others) will be praying in order to solve America's problems:

I sincerely hope you’ll join me in Houston on August 6th and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our state and nation. There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.

Such pretentious events are happening all the time in Texas. Religion and state are intricately intertwined. I lived several  years in Texas and witnessed many such idiocies. One can really feel sick if one has to live in such a state. I couldn't stand it watching people declare that guns are necessarary to protect themselves from the devil. The more religious someone is in Texas the more likely is that he/she has all sorts of guns. They love religion and guns. The more they love one, the more they have of the other.

George W. Bush proclaimed 10 June 2000 to be Jesus day.  Rick Perry, his successor, decided that 6 August will be a prayer and fasting day. On this page, you can sign up for participating in the Houston event, and you can decide how many days in advance you are going to start the prayer and fasting. All that, sponsored not by a freaky religious organization but by a political unit: the State of Texas.

Intelligent designers: move to Texas!

Texas on the news again: They are considering a bill to protect creationists from discrimination. I heard about it last Friday from a postdoctoral student of our department and checked it out. There is an article about it in Mother Jones. Using the language and rationale of political correctness, the author of the bill, Republican state representative Bill Zedler proposes:

HB 2454, Section A51.979.A:
A PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RESEARCH RELATED TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

Texas is the state where the major proponent of creationism/intelligent design, William Dembski, teaches: He is professor at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, he conducts research in theology by means of creationism/intelligent design, and desperately tries to use pseudo-mathematics in support of his theological claims. Dembski did a PhD in mathematics but he immediately switched to theology. He is not alone in Texas. There are many creationist pseudoscientists there who can find lots of money by religious fundamentalists; the latter will happily fund the former in order that they use pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics to "prove" theological claims, ranging from denial of evolution to belief that the Earth is a few thousand years old.

Now the state of Texas is trying to pass the aforementioned bill. In my opinion, this will have at least two effects:

1.  If a faculty member in a Texas university cannot do serious mathematics or science then he or she can turn to creationism and publish papers in pseudo-scientific creationistic journals.  He or she then will ask to be tenured and, based on the above law, he or she should not be discriminated against.
2.  Funding for creationism will have to be considered as academic funding. The law justifies creationism as an academic field of study.
3. Academics with creationistic tendencies will seek jobs in Texas universities.

I have served in Texas as a faculty member and know the mentality. Although there are many academics who will be angry at such a bill, there are several others, academics or not, religious fundamentalists, who will espouse this bill and use it for theological purposes.

The monetary value of a professor

According to this Wall Street Journal article, Texas wants to assign a monetary value to each of its university faculty members. For example, Carol Johnson (Biology) is worth minus $279,617,  a colleague of hers, Charles Criscione is worth minus $45,305, history professors are worth minus a lot more, and so on.

Students are customers, and as such, they have every right to receive royal treatmement that goes all the way to assigning a value to each of their lecturers.

The logic is simple: If a professor is worth plus something, then keep them. If a professor is worth minus something, then fire them. And the savings can be used for increasing the other professors' salary.

So what's gonna happen? There will be a university with no languages, no history, no biology, no mathematcs, none of these subjects which generate negative profit. The university will comprise of Business, Marketing, Media--whatever it generates immediate profit.

Performance metrics they say, and they mean it in Texas. Texas wants it BIG. No small potatoes, but big bucks.

The article above mentions, in particular, Chester Dunning, a history professor, has won several teaching awards. According to a report by the chancellor, he also loses money for the university, though his department is in the black overall.

What is the solution? I propose one, Texas-style: Get in his office and shoot him!

University of Texas shootings

A couple of days ago, someone  in the University of Texas at Austin started shooting with an AK-47 assault rifle. He finally shot himself to death. The story is here and here.

As you can see in the pretty image above, the campus was searched by police. Nobody was hurt except the gunman who happened to be an actuarial maths student.

It's not the first, nor the last, time that things like that happen in US campuses. I have first-hand experience, having worked at UT Austin for many years. Back in the 90's, I had a colleague, the infamous Gary Wise,

who used to threaten me and others ("I'll shoot you with my gun"). Wise was a probabilist of sorts, a peculiar guy whose goal in life was to destroy other people's work. He even wrote a book, a bad book, which was published by Oxford University Press.

The university of Texas didn't care about Wise's threats and didn't take our reports seriously. For many years, despite our complaints that Wise used to harass students and faculty alike, Wise was allowed to teach and harass. He was mentally disturbed. I had complained to the university that this person may actually have guns and that he was able to come and start shooting. But police had told me that he had no guns registered in his name. This lasted until the day when he insulted the Dean of Engineering. They then made sure to fire him. Later, he was caught shooting the dean's car.

He was sent to jail. In his apartment, police found numerous assault weapons, undeclared, of course. it is relatively trivial, in Texas, to buy a gun, even without a license. All you have to do is go to the so-called "gun and knife shows". I remember those being advertised outside the university campus.

Recently, he has been charged for murder plots: he was planning to hire a gang member to use an AK-47 to kill the dean.

Gary Wise used to conduct Bible Studies and was therefore liked by the university. And he was favorite among students because he would give an exam and leave students alone to copy from one another.

I remember that once a university administrator (I think he was a vice-provost) told me that if I was afraid that my neighbor has a gun, then I should get a gun too. (Never mind that guns are not allowed on campus or, for that matter, that I never wanted to have a gun!)

Look at this video clip appearing on the ABC newsarticle about the gunman of 2 days ago:






Around the 1'50'', a police officer appears saying that students should be mentally prepared that, now and then, a gunman may show up on campus and advises them to be alert.

I wouldn't be surprised if further advice was given that people should carry guns in order to protect themselves. This is not uncommon in the US. Instead of trying to put a restriction on guns when fatalities happen, it is peculiar that they want exactly the opposite: they are convinced that gun fatalities can only be prevented by more guns.

Absurd. Very absurd.

Only in Texas

A picture is worth a thousand words (courtesy Yuval Peres).

What's wrong with the word HELLO?

Have you said hello today? Chances are you have.

Have you realized this is not a proper way to speak? Chances are you haven't.

Why is that? If you haven't thought about it yet, think again. Perhaps, you won't guess it, no matter how hard you try, but the truth is...

The word hello is offensive!

Indeed, it is: it contains the word hell. Whenever you say hello, you are essentially sending someone to burn in hell. Not a nice thing to do, isn't it?

This is what was discovered, after years of intensive research--to be sure, in the State of Texas! And, being progressive, they passed a resolution in Kleberg County, Texas, where the offensive word is going to be replaced by the more progressive, ethical, morally correct, godly-like word heaven-o.

A professor of English, David Sabrio, dared to note that hello has nothing to do with hell. But what does he know? In Texas, they think otherwise. Some groups of atheists also think it's stupid. But what do they know? They're probably based in Communist countries, not in Texas. It is now official: Wikipedia has modified its article on "hello" to include the new word, first founded in Texas.

Heaven-o to all!

Texas School Board votes on the age of the Universe

Texas has decided: We should ignore scientific theory and observations and leave question of the age of the Universe open to debate in the classroom. After all, the Universe could be a few thousand years old because the Judeo-Christian Bible says so. This is what the Texas School Board member Barbara Cargill thinks and this is what the Texas School Board voted for (11:3).

The amazingly eloquent speech by Cargill can be watched here.

Interesting discussions on this appear on the Pharyngula blog.

Also, in a New Scientist article.

Not for creationists

It has just being discovered that the earliest accepted date for animal life on Earth is tens of millions of years than what was thought to be. Traces of ancient sponges were found in Oman dating some 635 million years ago.

Not very good news for (young Earth) creationists. who believe that the Earth was created within the last ten thousand years, literally as described in an ancient book called Genesis. Creationists are typically not very intelligent people who feel the need (due to their religious belief) to attack science, distort reality and propagate myths. More recently, some creationists, in response to not being intelligent, relabelled themselves as intelligent designers. Assuming this label, they decided to embrace science and use it in order to prove that what creationists believe is true. Unfortunately, every single attempt of intelligent designers to use scientific methods has been discredited. One of their most major proponents of the intelligent design version of creationism is a mathematician called William Dembski. Having failed to produce anything significant in mathematics, he started a career as creationist.

There are many versions of creationism, some more hilarious than others, such as those who think the Earth is flat, the young-Earthe creationists-those who think that the answers are in Genesis, and those who think that...

EARWAX SHOWS GOD'S INTELLIGENT DESIGN!

I read this in the blog of Jason Rosenberg and had a good laugh!

For more fun of the earwax kind, please visit the homepage of the Institute for Creation Research, in Dallas, Texas, specializing in young Earth creationism, rejecting the science of evolutionary biology, abusing the word "research" and "science" and constantly trying to get approval to teach their idiocies in schools.

Closer to home, the Edinburgh creation group, seems to be active in propagating lies such as that Darwin was wrong, that intelligent designers are producing science, and that the (christian) Bible is to be seen as a scientific document! Fortunately, in the UK not many give a damn about such liars, but people like John Lennox are trying to propagate religion through science from a more "sophisticated" point of view, in subtler ways.

"Living in Texas feels like being in a big prison"

This is what I used to say when I lived in Austin, Texas. And here is a proof:


Do you see the blue spec in the middle called Austin? It's sunk in a sea of reactionary red. (Just as a few other places.) You venture outside it and you're in the land of intolerance, the land of people whose law is based on guns and the Bible, the land of those who voted for McCain (and Dubya and his father in the past). Try to speak and you fear for your life. Despite appearances, this land is one of the most fundamentalist places in the world. There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of expression. Waco and Huntsville (were people get executed all the time) are typical of Texas. If you are different you can't stay. You may be killed. So you end up spending all the time in Austin, feeling, exactly, like being in a huge prison. This is why I used to use this phrase.