I have been told that if a man owns a gun and he does not secure it, and his child gets the gun and blows away his other child, that the man has suffered enough, there need be no regulation or law or investigation or charges related to his carelessness. Just let it be. He has suffered enough. His lack of regard for safety should not be punished just because it led to a death, because it makes him feel really really bad. So just drop it.
Continue reading He’s Suffered Enough!!!
Daily Archives: October 13, 2011
I used to think National Geographic was a reputable institution
But then, they came up with this, which simply CAN NOT BE TRUE:
Continue reading I used to think National Geographic was a reputable institution
Groups Drop Lawsuit After Shelter Agrees to Change Operations and D.C. Government Abandons Plan to Pay Shelter Public Funds
A religiously based homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., will no longer require the homeless to attend religious services as a condition of getting food and shelter, and the D.C. government no longer plans to pay tax dollars to the shelter, as a result of a lawsuit filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital.
Because of these changes to the terms of the deal, the groups today dismissed the lawsuit, which had challenged the District’s planned support of the shelter.
Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, “Organizations that want to promote religion should rely on private donations, not taxpayer support. I’m glad that taxpayer dollars will no longer be handed to a religious rescue mission.â€
Face facts: People are too stupid to be allowed guns
Chaz Ursamanno shot himself in the head demonstrating to his girlfriend that his gun was empty. And he did it twice. Barber Kurt Voelkel was shot in the ass when a customer’s pistol fell out of his pants and went up. The bullet went clear through the barber’s chair, wallet, and butt. Well, actually, it stayed in his butt. In Oklahoma, two slack jawed yokels decided to “target practice” with no idea what was beyond the trees lining the field they were shooting in. What was there was a farmer and his little nephew. The nephew got to watch as David Reed’s chest was pierced fatally with a stray bullet. Six year old Zykria Hackett of Greenwood, South Carolina, which is the stoopedest state in the US, was shot and killed by her grand-daddy’s gun while waiting to go to a pre-church breakfast. The granddaddy had stashed little Zykria and two other young children in the van and while they were waiting for him, the kids found his gun and decided to play with it. There will be no charges.
Stop The Pipeline
NYC to evict wall street occupiers
The small Manhattan square occupied by anti-Wall Street protestors for almost four weeks will be temporarily cleared for cleaning on Friday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg went to the protest site, where several hundred people are camped out, to explain the move, which would be the first time the demonstrators are asked to leave, the mayor’s office said.
Bloomberg said the owners of the plaza wanted to exercise their duty in cleaning it — and that this was their right, although protestors would be allowed back immediately.
That’s from the Raw Story.
What do you think? Plausible? A trick? Should we trust Bloomberg?
It was promised that ….
Continue reading NYC to evict wall street occupiers
Fallacy: Something Else is Worse, so Don’t Worry
Which is worse, being in the basement of a low-lying Nuclear Power Plant during a Tsunami, pulling the trigger on a gun you thought was empty and accidentally killing your 4 year old little sister, being hit by a German Satellite, or being eaten by a shark?
Before answering that question, I’d like to remind you that you need to go here and donate ten or twenty bucks to the Donors Choose program. Then, when you come back, you can read the rest of this post.
Continue reading Fallacy: Something Else is Worse, so Don’t Worry
Thinking about Global Warming (Denialism)
…I’d like to talk about an observation I made while writing for a now defunct monthly rag about global warming back in the early 1990s, and have always wanted to pursue formally, as a research project. Since I’ve not gotten to it yet, I thought it might be fun to outline the idea more informally, to give you, literally, a sketch or two that makes the point….
Please visit my guest post
Over at Culture of Science: Sketchy Thinking About Global Warming (Part I)
Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 38: Decontamination Edition
The latest update on the crisis in Fukushima. The hot spots are everywhere. Be careful where you step!
But first, we’d like to introduce the handy-dandy Fukushima Post and Ana’s Feed search engine. This search engine will return results from this series of posts we’ve done. This is a good place to start if you are researching anything about fukushima:
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Later, we may produce a search engine that includes everything we’ve pointed to as well. That, of course, is roughly the same as searching the entire internet. We’ve not yet decided if we should pursue that strategy or something intermediate (such as our posts plus selected other sites).
Continue reading Japan Nuclear Disaster Update # 38: Decontamination Edition
Is this true?
It is said that this happened:
“When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big. The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top. “Those are air bubbles,” he snapped. “That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.”
Dennis Ritchie has died;
You may not know Dennis Ritichie but you are using his work right now. He was instrumental in developing Unix (which is ultimately related to developing Linux, which you are using right now because this web site is delivered via a Linux server) but he’s more well known, probably, for his work developing the C language.
Every time an old computer language is mentioned for some historical reason, we learn that even thought we thought the language was dead, or obscure, or irrelevant, it turns out to be used in some wide range of functions and life itself would be impossible as we know it without it. I think with C it is the opposite. If you know anything about anything, you know that C or some variant of C is basic to everything. C is arguably one of the hardest languages to program in, but it is also the language that most stuff that needs to be efficient gets programmed in. It will probably turn out that it is not used anywhere for anything. (But I doubt that.)
(Code Trolls will tell you in the comments below the many ways in which what I just said is unconscionably wrong. I’m sure they’re right. I’m sure they’ll be polite, though.)
If you learned C you probably read K&R. R is Ritchie.