Myself and two friends went out to a local cheap chinese buffet (( We’re cheap college students. What can I say? )) this evening and for some reason the conversation turned to vacation cruises.
I mentioned that I’ve been on a cruise before, and you tend to get a few older, retired people, a few younger couples with kids, and a whole lot of grotesquely fat people (( The food is unlimited and included with the flat-rate cost of the cruise in most cases. )).
At the very moment that I said “grotesquely fat people”, a leviathan of a woman carrying two heaping plates of food happened to walk by. It turns out she was sitting at the table directly behind me.
Awkward.
Of course, I wasn’t referring to this particular woman, nor meant any offense to fat people ((I could stand to lose a few pounds myself.)). I was simply stating an observation about cruises, but I can see how a small snippet of said conversation would be easily misinterpreted as being offense. Hooray.
Author: azrifleman
Rocket Fail
According to the BBC, the recent rocket launched by the North Koreans failed to achive orbit. The BBC quotes the US military thusly:
In a statement on its website, the US Northern Command said North Korea launched a three-stage Taepodong-2 missile at 0230 GMT.
“Stage one of the missile fell into the Sea of Japan/East Sea. The remaining stages along with the payload itself landed in the Pacific Ocean.
“No object entered orbit and no debris fell on Japan.”
Heavens Above, a orbital object tracking database, confirms the failure.
Perhaps someone should inform the North Koreans?
Rocket science is some pretty demanding stuff. New rockets require a lot of careful design and testing, and failures are commonplace. That’s why you actually do the testing prior to launching valuable payloads. Even so, failures still occur, which is why launch insurance is a good idea.
It seems incredibly unlikely that the North Koreans would be able to independently develop a rocket and successfully put a satellite into orbit on their very first attempt. Not even the US or the former Soviet Union were able to do that without extensive testing, large numbers of rocket scientists, a lot of ICBMs, and huge amounts of funding.
Of course, the Korean state-run media would never admit such a failure. That’s one of the things I love about living in a free country: our failures, in addition to our successes, are widely reported and known (who doesn’t know about the Challenger or Columbia accidents?). We never claim to be perfect, and such failures are experiences that we learn from.
Maybe the North Koreans should prioritize their people’s basic needs (food, water, etc.) rather than wasting resources on space and nuclear programs, not to mention their massive military? It seems like they’ve got their priorities all wrong.
Internal Conflict
It must be that time of year: three police have been shot in Pittsburgh by a gunman. I offer my sincerest condolences to the friends and family of the fallen officers.
As expected, the Brady Campaign is dancing in the blood of the slain police officers with yet another press release.
According to the Bradys, the police were murdered by a…
“…man shooting ?hundreds of shots? who apparently believed the gun lobby propaganda that an ?Obama gun ban? would lead to his ?rights being infringed upon.'”
They go on to say,
“It is time for the gun lobby to stop stoking fear among gun owners with false claims about the government [proposing some sort of gun ban].”
Further down on the page, they close with,
At the very least, require Brady background checks for all gun sales; restrict military-style assault weapons to the military and law enforcement and help law enforcement crack down on corrupt gun sellers.
I’m sorry, I don’t see how they can say that the “gun lobby” is making “false claims” about proposed gun bans when they then go on to advocate such bans in the form of “restrict[ing] military-style assault weapons.” Wouldn’t such a restriction be, by definition, a ban? I’m not sure how the Bradys can hold such conflicting viewpoints.
Thanks to Sebastian, it looks like the alleged (( Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, of course.)) killer, Richard Poplawski, was a prohibited person due to having been dishonorably discharged from the marines:
Perkovic [a friend of the alleged killer-AZR] also said that Richard Poplawski had received a dishonorable discharge from the Marines and that he has a history of domestic disputes.
If this is the case, Poplawski would have been legally prohibited from possessing firearms. The “history of domestic disputes” might also have been sufficient to make him a prohibited person. Since the killer seems to have had no problems with violating existing laws (( Such as those against murder, in addition to less serious crimes like possession of firearms by a prohibited person, discharge of firearms within city limits, etc. )), I’m not sure what the Bradys hope to accomplish with the addition of more laws.
Update: Turns out it wasn’t a dishonorable discharge. My mistake.
More Brady Stupid
About 30,000 people a year in this country die from gun violence, about 80 a day, 32 by homicide – the same number who died at Virginia Tech two years ago this month.? In the space of four months, up to nine Americans died as a result of bacteria-laden peanut butter crackers, and the government quickly took action. Some of the top government officials in our country say we don’t need to do anything different – that we should just ‘enforce the laws on the books.’? The laws on the books aren’t getting the job done. Now is the time to take effective steps to prevent gun violence.
– Paul Helmke, Brady Campaign Press Release (Emphasis in original.)
Leaving out the absurdity of the gun-cracker comparison, I fail to see how more laws would have made any difference.
First off, it’s already illegal to murder people, regardless of the methods used. It’s an additional penalty to murder someone with a gun. There’s plenty of laws already against violent crime, and violent criminals are some of the most zealously pursued and prosecuted criminals in US society.
New York also has some rather strict gun laws (( http://www.bradycampaign.org/legislation/state/viewstate.php?st=ny )) (( http://www.nraila.org/GunLaws/ )). What more does the Brady Campaign want?
More bans or restrictions won’t prevent pe0ple bent on a murderous rampage from committing such heinous crimes — they already need to violate numerous laws and societal norms to do so. The mere presence of such laws, however, cannot prevent one from doing something illegal — it simply provides a means of punishment afterwards. With sufficient motivation, one can acquire weapons (or drugs, or other restricted items) regardless of laws prohibiting them from doing so. Clearly, the murderer had little qualms about acquiring weapons and then going on to commit mass murder.
Honestly, I’m not sure what more “effective steps” can be taken against such behavior. If anyone has any reasonable suggestions, I (and the rest of the world, I suspect) am willing to listen with an open mind. As this incident in New York and the recent mass shooting in Germany have shown, however, is that strict gun control does not prevent murderers from committing their terrible crimes.
Low-Key Shooting Invite
I’ve had a long, busy week and would like to do some low-key shooting at the range on Saturday. No huge groups, just some relaxing, low-pressure shooting at targets.
I need to practice a bit more, and figured tomorrow would be a good day to do it.
Anyone else want to go?
Update: It’s rather windy tonight, and I’m really pooped. I don’t think I’m going to make it tomorrow. Maybe Sunday, if the winds die down.
Uh-Oh
Various news organizations are reporting that a gunman shot some people and took hostages in Binghamton, New York.
Details differ depending on which source I read. More info as I get it.
My best wishes are with the victims of this crime and the emergency responders who have to deal with it.
Update: Various sources say that a “man reportedly entered the building with a high-powered rifle” and started shooting. No citations on who actually said he had a rifle. The AP cites the city mayor as saying that the gunman had a “high-powered rifle” (( Quoting the AP article, not the mayor directly. )), but no mention of where he got that information.
Update: Now that the dust has settles, the AP and other sources report that the shooter didn’t, in fact, have a rifle, but rather had two handguns (a 9mm and a .45).
April Fools!
I had a 50% surge in visitors yesterday, mostly coming from search engines looking for stuff related to “tgscom lawsuit” and whatnot.
I did a bit of digging, and it seems that TGScom sent out an email to subscribers claiming that a lawsuit they filed resulted in the NFA ’34 being overturned due to violating the Second Amendment. Evidently a bunch of people were gleeful and started searching for more information, finding two posts I made about TGScom a while back.
Folks, be sure to check your calendar before celebrating: it was an April Fools joke. A bunch of the excerpts of the email message I saw posted to forums did not include the date, which may cause confusion in the future when people read such posts.
I know, I wish they repealed the NFA as well.
Stupid Thieves
I received an email this afternoon from Bank of America letting me know that I owed about $300 on my Visa card.
This is surprising, as the last purchase I made with it was in December (and that was an annual recurring billing thing which I failed to cancel a while back — it’s now moved to my primary card) and was completely zeroed out two days after that charge went through. The card is physically in my safe, so it would not be possible for it to have been physically stolen without my knowledge.
I checked my online statement to see what charges were made. Hmm, let’s see: five different charges for paid, premium Yahoo Mail accounts, three charges for Yahoo Personals, and three charges for a reunion website. The hell? I didn’t make any of those charges.
[several minutes pass as I call the bank]
All right, my credit card account has been closed and the charges have all been reversed. A new account has been created and a new card should be here in a few days. I don’t really care that much, as I rarely use the account (it’s strictly a backup/legacy account) for anything, preferring my USAA Rewards MasterCard.
The criminals must have somehow acquired my card information or generated it, as the card has been in my possession this entire time. Go figure.
Why can’t criminals be smart? The last time someone stole my credit card info (but not the card itself) it was my CapitalOne card, and they used it to buy $200 worth of gasoline. This one buys subscriptions to an email service some personals/reunion sites. If I were a thief (and I’m not, but I’m just speaking hypothetically)? I’d buy some good durable goods, maybe a new washer/dryer set, dishwasher, or maybe some gold. Definitely not something ethereal like a service (which can be cancelled at a moments notice) or consumable like gasoline.
See, if a thief manages to pull something off like a major diamond heist, I’m impressed. That takes some serious skill, planning, and effort to pull off. They’re still doing something illegal, but they’re good at it and I can respect that, even if I am strongly opposed to thievery. But simple credit card thieves? Stupid and annoying.
Folks, be sure to double-check your credit card statements and ensure that everything’s good.
Crazy Week
Wednesday marks the beginning of Stress Week for me: three physics exams in as many days.
A life? Seeing the sun? A healthy stress level? A physicist needs not these things.
I’ve been studying for the last week, and still feel grossly unprepared.
Posting will be delayed until later in the week when I recover.
Impossible?
The Arizona Wildcat, the university’s newspaper, ran an AP story yesterday about a measure in Texas that would legalize concealed carry on college campuses by permit holders.
Evidently due to space limitiations, the Wildcat cut off the article after the 8th paragraph, which ended in “Texas campuses are gun-free zones.” Of course, the part of the article that was snipped had nearly all the quotes and text explaining why one would want to carry on campus, or that people with permits can carry just about everywhere else and that the campus border is just an imaginary line. (( Bias? What bias? ))
One quote from Woods, a student whose girlfriend was killed in the Virginia Tech shooting, stood out to me:
“Then I learned pretty fast that wouldn’t solve anything,” said Woods, who is now a graduate student at UT. “The idea that somebody could stop a school shooting with a gun is impossible. It’s reactive, not preventative.”
Impossible? Impossible? To quote Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Last time I checked, cops carry guns, and they’re able to put an end to murderous violence pretty effectively with those guns. There’s a lot of private citizens who carry guns, and numerous stories about how those people use their guns to stop violent crime.
One might not be able to prevent a school shooting, but one certainly would have the potential to stop it.
I know that if a person bent on murder came barging into my classroom, I’d prefer a means of resisting them that’s more effective than a thrown textbook.