Friday, May 03, 2013
Today's Eternal Sadness
Charlie Pierce gets it.
If you think it's OK for little kids to have guns; if your ideology or your party loyalty requires you to close yourself off and "stand firm with your 2nd Amendment Rights" in spite of knowing that tens of thousands of American families are forever broken every year because you're just too fucking stoopid to learn anything new about the US Constitution in particular or the world in general - then please raise your hand and I'll be happy to come over and slap Wayne LaPierre's dick outa your mouth for you.
So, tout le monde — as we say around the still in the holler — is talking about the very tragic events down in old Kaintuck', where you can kilt you a b'ar when you is only three.
A five-year-old boy in the southern US state of Kentucky has accidentally shot dead his two-year-old sister at the family home. He had received the rifle, specially made for children, as a gift last year.
A rifle, specially made for children. Think about it. Some sales rep at a gun manufacturer pipes up at a sales meeting, "Hey, maybe there's a market for kiddie guns! No, I mean real guns. With bullets!" Everybody cheers and the guy gets a raise, and nobody stops for a second and says, "You know, we don't trust our five-year olds with matches. Maybe guns should wait until, I dunno, middle school." Anyway, roll that one around in your head for a second as we continue into our regular feature, This Week In Responsible Gun Ownership:
Reports say the weapon had been kept in a corner and the family had not realised it still contained a bullet.And from a commenter:
Yeah, well, we don’t know the whole story, do we? Maybe his sister was threatening him with her gun. In that case, then the gun may well have saved his life. You know what they say, the only thing that stops a bad three year old with a gun is a good three year old with a gun.And BTW - when is it not a good time to talk about what we can do together about trying some small thing to make things just the tiniest bit better for ourselves? I can't be the only one who sees "let's not politicize this tragedy; it's too soon to talk about gun control; we should respect the family's grief" as the perfect dodge. Cuz guess what - we can absolutely count on the simple fact that another kid will be killed with a gun before somebody decides it's OK to start talking about gun control, and so the clock is constantly being reset to zero, and nothing will ever get done.
If you think it's OK for little kids to have guns; if your ideology or your party loyalty requires you to close yourself off and "stand firm with your 2nd Amendment Rights" in spite of knowing that tens of thousands of American families are forever broken every year because you're just too fucking stoopid to learn anything new about the US Constitution in particular or the world in general - then please raise your hand and I'll be happy to come over and slap Wayne LaPierre's dick outa your mouth for you.
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Music
From way out there. 1972 - Emerson Lake & Palmer's From The Beginning.
I'll let it slide this time as far as the acid's concerned, but headphones are still mandatory for this one.
I'll let it slide this time as far as the acid's concerned, but headphones are still mandatory for this one.
Believe What You Wanna Believe
(extracted from a video I posted this past Sunday)
What if a friend told you they're totally into Zalmoxis; an ancient demigod who is of course invisible, but he's really really there; and they'll never die because Zalmoxis has cleansed their soul with his sacred magical blood, which grants them the privilege of immortality, living forever in a place that nobody can see.
The cult of Zalmoxis
I always come back to a really great point that Dawkins makes: We're all atheists in one way or another, because we all refuse to believe in one god or another.
Gods come and go. They're born of whatever fervor (or fever) you care to document or imagine; they grow (if a group ofsuckers followers can be mustered in sufficient numbers); they flourish - sometimes dominate for a while; and then in time, when people stop worshipping them, and stop making sacrifices to them - they die. As it should be. As god intended.
What if a friend told you they're totally into Zalmoxis; an ancient demigod who is of course invisible, but he's really really there; and they'll never die because Zalmoxis has cleansed their soul with his sacred magical blood, which grants them the privilege of immortality, living forever in a place that nobody can see.
The cult of Zalmoxis
I always come back to a really great point that Dawkins makes: We're all atheists in one way or another, because we all refuse to believe in one god or another.
Gods come and go. They're born of whatever fervor (or fever) you care to document or imagine; they grow (if a group of
Bullshit
I love Penn's explanation of their use of the language and the "terminology" on the show.
If you call them scamsters liars and frauds, they can sue your ass - so ya just call 'em assholes and bullshit artists instead, and that's OK. America and Americans never fail to amaze me.
"Skits for money cannot replace loving memory. How low do you have to be to exploit someone's true grief to sell some bullshit book?"
If you call them scamsters liars and frauds, they can sue your ass - so ya just call 'em assholes and bullshit artists instead, and that's OK. America and Americans never fail to amaze me.
"Skits for money cannot replace loving memory. How low do you have to be to exploit someone's true grief to sell some bullshit book?"
Some Good News
...for a change. I'm always a little leery of these fluffy feel-good stories when they run on network news. It just seems like somebody's trying to "buck me up"; telling me "it's not all as bad as we make it look every goddamned day".
hat tip = Democratic Underground
So it occurs to me that maybe the Press Poodles could try a little harder to make more of these connections; taking a story of something really shitty that happened, and connecting it with something that somebody across town - or even half a world away - is trying to do that might help solve whatever problem is causing these shitty things to happen in the first fuckin' place.
(Gee - if only we had some kind of really cool technology that helps us find out what's going on in the world; so you could just sit at your desk and browse the entire planet if you wanted...silly me; dreamin' again. Just a tho't.)
Anyway, did you hear it? It pops up at about the 1:10 mark, and then again near the end of the clip: "...futures made a lot brighter by a crazy idea...". And what was the new principal's "crazy idea"? To make the school feel more like a school and less like a fucking prison.
Treating people like people - that's what passes for a "bold new idea" now.
And Jesus wept.
hat tip = Democratic Underground
So it occurs to me that maybe the Press Poodles could try a little harder to make more of these connections; taking a story of something really shitty that happened, and connecting it with something that somebody across town - or even half a world away - is trying to do that might help solve whatever problem is causing these shitty things to happen in the first fuckin' place.
(Gee - if only we had some kind of really cool technology that helps us find out what's going on in the world; so you could just sit at your desk and browse the entire planet if you wanted...silly me; dreamin' again. Just a tho't.)
Anyway, did you hear it? It pops up at about the 1:10 mark, and then again near the end of the clip: "...futures made a lot brighter by a crazy idea...". And what was the new principal's "crazy idea"? To make the school feel more like a school and less like a fucking prison.
Treating people like people - that's what passes for a "bold new idea" now.
And Jesus wept.
The Krugman Speaks
Captured in its entirety at NYT:
My heart goes out to Brad DeLong, who debated Alan Reynolds and discovered that his opponent really doesn’t understand at all how either fiscal or monetary policy work.
But here’s what I find remarkable about Reynolds and people like him: they have a track record. Here’s Reynolds in 2009 ridiculing my claims that we were in a liquidity trap, so that even large increases in the monetary base would not be inflationary. Here he is in 2010 declaring that Ireland’s embrace of harsh spending cuts will produce an economic boom.
And here we are in 2013, with the Fed’s balance sheet up by more than 200 percent and no inflation, with Ireland still mired in a deep slump with at best slight hints of an upturn. And Reynolds remains quite sure that he knows The Truth about macroeconomics and that Keynesians are fools.
It’s quite impressive, really.
If you're gonna have a debate that actually means something, then both sides hafta know what they're talking about.
In way too many instances, the "conservatives" keep trying to tell us they know something when it's obvious they don't.
I imagine we'll eventually hear somebody come right out and say, "Austerity didn't fail - we failed austerity".
Speaking of Getting It Wrong
But here’s what I find remarkable about Reynolds and people like him: they have a track record. Here’s Reynolds in 2009 ridiculing my claims that we were in a liquidity trap, so that even large increases in the monetary base would not be inflationary. Here he is in 2010 declaring that Ireland’s embrace of harsh spending cuts will produce an economic boom.
And here we are in 2013, with the Fed’s balance sheet up by more than 200 percent and no inflation, with Ireland still mired in a deep slump with at best slight hints of an upturn. And Reynolds remains quite sure that he knows The Truth about macroeconomics and that Keynesians are fools.
It’s quite impressive, really.
If you're gonna have a debate that actually means something, then both sides hafta know what they're talking about.
In way too many instances, the "conservatives" keep trying to tell us they know something when it's obvious they don't.
I imagine we'll eventually hear somebody come right out and say, "Austerity didn't fail - we failed austerity".
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Today's Dead Americans
I haven't posted much lately on how stoopid we are about guns, so I'm playing a little catch-up here:
Per CDC, in 2011 there were 14,675 reported accidental shootings in the USA.
Lexington KY:
Police in Cumberland County are investigating after a five-year-old boy playing with a rifle accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister.
The incident happened at about 1 p.m. CST at a home on Lawson's Bottom Road. Police say the five-year-old was playing with a .22 caliber rifle when it went off an hit his sister. The child was transported to the Cumberland County Hospital where she was later pronounced dead by the Cumberland County coroner.--and--
Nashville TN:
A 4-year-old boy grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot and killed the wife of a sheriff's deputy, authorities said on Monday.
The shooting Saturday evening was inside the Lebanon home of Wilson County Deputy Daniel Fanning.
Fanning was showing his weapons to a relative in a bedroom when the toddler came in and picked up a loaded gun on the bed, officials said. The weapon discharged as soon as the child picked it up, hitting 48-year-old Josephine Fanning, said Wilson County Sheriff Robert Bryan.
Josephine Fanning was pronounced dead at the scene. The child was not related to her or her husband.--and--
Oregon City OR:
A 9-year-old girl who was shot in the head around 5 p.m. Sunday afternoon in Oregon City died shortly after, according to Oregon City Police.
Police say the initial report was that the mother's boyfriend was cleaning a handgun inside the house when it accidentally discharged. The bullet shot through the wall of the house, located near 12th and Division streets.
Police found the girl in the backyard upon their arrival where she had been playing, reports said.Fun With Numbers:
A LifeFlight helicopter transported the child to Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, where she was pronounced dead shortly after her arrival.
Per CDC, in 2011 there were 14,675 reported accidental shootings in the USA.
40 every day - and that's just the shit that happens by accident, and that's just the ones that require a visit to the hospital, and it's just the accidents that get reported as accidents.
Total Non-Fatal gunshot wounds of all kinds per year = 200,000 (more than 500 every day)
The Univ of Penn study from a few years back found that while the cost of Medical Care was around $17,000 per gunshot injury, the total lifetime cost beyond the medical expense (business productivity, personal income and earnings, etc) jumps up into the Billions - over $100 Billion every year, with about half of the tab being picked by taxpayers.
So here's the thing for you "conservatives": if you just can't get with any kind of Gun Control because Freedom!!! - you get to shut the fuck up about what a clear-eyed-capitalist, taxation-is-theft, libertarian-super-genius you are. You ain't shit.
Yeesh
Say it with me, America!
We're number 30, we're number 30, we're number 30!!!
On the list of the best airports in the world, there are no American airports in the top 25. Zero. Zip. Zilch. We got bupkis.
The best we could do is Covington (just over the river from Cincinnati) - the 30th best airport in the world - where you get to climb up and down nice big flights of stairs and ride a bus to get from one concourse to another. Woohoo.
The airport in Lima Peru ranks 5 places ahead of our best airport. Lima. I didn't know airplanes could even fly that high. Lima-fucking-Peru!?!
There are, however a few "bright spots". When they break it down by traffic volume (passengers), we show a little better.
Still - just another example of how smart it is to invest in your infrastructure. Every business plan of every company worth half a shit includes a hard cold look at transportation issues. If your town can't offer a decent level of easy access - including modes of transport as well as travel routes - then your town isn't a good place for that company to be, and the same goes for the rest of your country too. It's almost that simple.
Fuck austerity - make the right investments now.
hat tip = Addicting Info
We're number 30, we're number 30, we're number 30!!!
On the list of the best airports in the world, there are no American airports in the top 25. Zero. Zip. Zilch. We got bupkis.
The best we could do is Covington (just over the river from Cincinnati) - the 30th best airport in the world - where you get to climb up and down nice big flights of stairs and ride a bus to get from one concourse to another. Woohoo.
The airport in Lima Peru ranks 5 places ahead of our best airport. Lima. I didn't know airplanes could even fly that high. Lima-fucking-Peru!?!
There are, however a few "bright spots". When they break it down by traffic volume (passengers), we show a little better.
Still - just another example of how smart it is to invest in your infrastructure. Every business plan of every company worth half a shit includes a hard cold look at transportation issues. If your town can't offer a decent level of easy access - including modes of transport as well as travel routes - then your town isn't a good place for that company to be, and the same goes for the rest of your country too. It's almost that simple.
Fuck austerity - make the right investments now.
hat tip = Addicting Info
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