A Quick Look

I'd like to talk to you for a minute about that sign in your yard.

Let's pretend I'm a burglar.  And let's say I'm not stupid - after all, I'm reading that sign out front of your house, and I'm not in jail.

What might I be able to surmise from your very clever public pronouncements?

I think first (and in no particular order), maybe you don't really have guns, and you're just trying to sucker me into going next door.  So I'm inclined to pick our house.

Second - if you do have guns, and you post that information on a sign in your front yard, then I'm thinking you might have a pretty good collection of higher-quality firearms - maybe some rare or antique weapons to boot; and you being Mr Personal Responsibility and all, you'll have most of them conveniently stored in a central location in your house.  And since guns are really valuable and really easy to move on the black market (and very hard to trace, partly because you keep voting against anything that might make it easier for the cops to recover them for you), I'm inclined to pick your house - again - 2 for 2.  And try to remember that I have some time here - I'm not coming into your house for a gunfight - I'm gonna wait until you're out somewhere.

Third - those rotten "Librul" neighbors; the ones you seriously don't give a fuck about? The ones you want the crooks to rob - apparently so it'll teach 'em a good lesson or some such wingnut bullshit?  What exactly do you expect from them in return - when it's your place that just got trashed by the bad guys?  You get what you give, sunshine.

Last:  in my admittedly limited experience, the guy walkin' around goin', "Hey everybody - I've got a big dick" - that's usually a guy who actually has a big dick.  But the guy braggin' about his gun usually has some kinda trouble with his penis.  Just sayin'.

Today's Pix

(click on a pic to start, then → or ←)

Today's Eternal Sadness

From Tampa Bay Times:

TAMPA — A 3-year-old boy who found a gun in a backpack and shot himself died Tuesday night, authorities said, a local addition to this month's spate of child shootings nationwide.

The kid found the gun in a backpack - in his bedroom.  Would this be a different story if he'd not had access to the gun?  Would it be a story at all?

We have to start making that cognitive connection - having a gun around the house increases the likelihood of something really shitty happening just because you have a gun around the house.  And we have to make that connection beyond the obvious bit about "well, it's the uncle's fault" or "the parents shoulda taught their kid better".

Warning labels are required on 5-gallon buckets for fuck sake.  We can't figure out something to do about guns?

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Today's Vocab Word

(Courtesy Penn & Teller's Bullshit series)

Pareidolia (pron.: parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.

Learn something.

That Can't Be Good (updated)

I took a shower and just hung out on YouTube for a while, and this is what I got when I went back to FB.

What kinda high school fuck-around has Mr Zuckerberg been up to now?

Uh-oh, Andy.

(update)
OK, so maybe I wasn't being sufficiently paranoid.  Maybe I shoulda thunk they was spyin' on me fer the gubmint.  Sorry - I'll try to remember to freak out a little more next time.

Steely Dan Unearthed

A kind of paean to Owsley Stanley (aka Bear), without whom "the 60s" might never have happened - or at the very least, without whom "the 60s" may well have been very very different indeed.

Here's to those noble few Legacy Pukes who figure out how to turn normal.

Access Is An Important Thing

I'm always going on about infrastructure.  I'm a Keynesian after all, and I know the thing that gets us pulled out of the big dumper is when we spend a lot of money on some big fuckin' thing or another - dams or highways or parks or whatever.  Because we have to have access - to capital and to markets and to raw materials and all the stuff that makes it possible for the stuff we wanna sell to get to everybody else who's busy trying to sell stuff.

When I'm thinking about these things, it starts to make some sense to me that an inability to come to terms with our idolization of firearms means that Guns now comprise the basic infrastructure for Crime and War and Suicide and way too many other self-destructive behaviors.

At about the 3:40 mark, Hayes tells us about a guy who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, saying, "I still see my hands coming off the railing...I instantly realized that everything in my life that I thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped."

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We put up all kinds of nets and cables and plexiglass thingies on bridges and other Suicide Infrastructure trying to make it a little harder to gain access to the means of our self-ushered departure - why can't we figure out something to do about the guns that make for 20,000 Dead Americans every year?

Everything is totally fixable except for having just pulled that fucking trigger.

Today's Eternal Sadness

And I guess I'm wondering where the 2nd Amendment Meatsitcks are.  Why aren't they jumping up and down screaming about protecting that woman's rights?  If she can be charged with all that criminal stuff just because some stupid little kid was messin' where he didn't belong, then what hope do the rest of us have to protect ourselves from an intrusive gubmint?  What about the personal responsibility of that kid!?!

But wait - I almost forgot - the response is always tailored.  So this one will be spoken in soft reverential tones.  Something like, "That woman's a sinner and God has punished her for straying from the path of the righteous - but that precious little boy is another fallen hero; a martyr to the cause of Freedom, and we mustn't use this tragic and isolated incident for political purposes - we must keep silent during this time of prayer and reflection blah blah fucking maudlin blah."

hat tip = Addicting Info

Today's Gun Nuts - With A Side Of Stoopid

A quick look at some of the real-America law-abiding responsible gun owners who generally don't show up in the commercials or the NRA's brochures.

And an all-time favorite:



One last thing - these people vote.

The KrugMan Speaks

If you read just one post today, let it be this one by Paul Krugman at NYT:

So the story isn’t “irresponsible politicians will always squander the good years”; it is “conservative Republican politicians run up debt even in good years, because they want to force cuts in social programs.” Kind of a different story, isn’t it?

The point, then, is that the seemingly worldly-wise cynicism that seems to be the last defense against the economically obvious is in fact based on an imaginary history that looks nothing like what actually happened.