California lawmakers, having solved all the other issues facing their state, are attempting to declare a specific week to be “officially cuss-free.”
Naturally, I suspect this to be about as effective as laws prohibiting violent crimes, speeding, and not talking on the phone while driving.
Month: February 2010
On FIRE
No, I’m not on fire.
Rather, I’d like to direct your attention to The FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group dedicated to:
[D]efend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, legal equality, due process, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience ? the essential qualities of individual liberty and dignity. FIRE’s core mission is to protect the unprotected and to educate the public and communities of concerned Americans about the threats to these rights on our campuses and about the means to preserve them.
They’re good people.
While neutral on various hot-button issues (including firearms on campus), FIRE is willing to bat for various individuals and groups whose speech is being repressed on campuses. Take, for example, their work on behalf of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus — an individual was denied the right to form a local chapter of SCCC when the administrators told the student that “such a group would never be allowed on campus and threatened her with disciplinary action for her attempts to inform her fellow students about the cause.” She went to FIRE, who lawyered up, and the college caved.
If you’re not familiar with them, I urge you to check them out.
Brady Scorecard
Arizona ranks #6, according to the Brady Campaign. We scored a 2 out of 100. Not bad, but we can be number one!
Downtime
Sorry for the recent downtime.
My host says the explanation for “Saturday morning’s downtime was caused by the hardware failure of a not-as-redundant-as-claimed power supply. Monday morning’s downtime was caused by a software error triggered by the rebuild process that occurred after the system came back online. On Saturday morning, we fixed the hardware problem, and now we are addressing the software problem.”
Things are stable now, and they’ll be moving the disk cluster from the existing hardware onto new hardware in the near future, hopefully increasing reliability.
Whee.
On Prohibitions
As many readers may know, Costco prohibits the carriage of firearms within its stores. As a private entity, they are perfectly within their rights to do so, and while I may disagree with their decision, I respect it.
Naturally, there are those who do not agree with their decision and will carry anyway. This is prohibited by Costco’s policy, and Costco can ask them to leave (and failing to do so is trespassing). Even so, I’m sure there’s not a few people who think “concealed means concealed” and don’t worry about it. I may disagree, but I understand.
Then, there’s the guy who walked in to the local Costco tonight: baseball hat on backwards, tag still attached to it, oversized t-shirt, with a Ruger semi-auto pistol (exact model unknown) openly carried in a cheap, nylon holster with no retention other than a small velcro strap. Oh, and he’s there with his wife and four kids. He totally took “classy” to a whole new level.
It’s one thing to carry discretely where it’s not permitted, but it’s another thing entirely to do so brazenly and openly.
Don’t be “that guy”.
AD’s Truck Fall Down, Go Boom
The Ambulance Driver recently crunched his truck.
Fortunately, he and KatyBeth are uninjured, but the truck is a total loss.
If you’ve got a little extra money lying around (and I know there’s not much to be had in these times), it’d be fantastic to send a little his way so he could get back on his feet with a replacement vehicle.
On Nukes
Someone in a thread on Fark asked why, if the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, he can’t have a nuke.
Another commenter replied with a rather snarky answer: “Two reasons, you don’t have the money to buy one and you’re not smart enough to build one.”
I was amused.
ASUA Feb. 10 2010 Meeting and Vote Video
Here’s the video from yesterday’s meeting and vote from the ASUA Senate. Many thanks to Richard for being there with his video camera and for allowing me to reproduce and distribute his video.
ASUA Vote
The ASUA voted 9-0-0 to approve the measure opposing SB1011, according to Richard, who attended the meeting. I was unable to attend due to prior commitments.
According to Richard, it was clear that they had made up their minds prior to voting. When I was at the public forum the night before, I also observed similar behavior: they rolled their eyes, didn’t pay much attention, and generally looked aloof and uninterested. None of this surprises me.
Richard sent me video of the vote, and it’s of higher quality than my previous video, and I’ll get it up here soon. I’m on campus right now and don’t have any audio, so I can’t figure out a good place to split it for YouTube.
How To Get Shot
Police pose as burglars by trying to open people’s windows and doors in the middle of the night, occasionally dragging residents out of bed to scold them. Why? They want to remind people to secure their property and cut down on burglaries.
If this happened in the US rather than Britain, it sounds like a sure-fire way to get shot.