The numbers keep going up. Right now, the Las Vegas shooter has a death toll of 58 and there are over 500 wounded. There is absolutely no reason to think those numbers are final.
But again, I'm absolutely sure that the NRA and their political puppets are going to claim that "now is not the time" to reexamine our gun laws. Like they said after Sandy Hook, or (_______ insert a dozen names here).
Sure, there is a Second Amendment. Most of our country doesn't know there is an introduction to the sentence talking about a standing militia as the reason for bearing arms, since we were breaking away from a powerful country overseas who sent their military over to stop that process. They don't care to know enough history to realize the framers of the constitution lived in a frontier situation where muskets were loaded one bullet, then gunpowder, for one shot at a time. They forget we were the invaders and the folks whom we were displacing might just have had a legitimate reason to protest losing their land, their livelihoods, their very lives. They forget four-footed predators were abundant in the woods all these immigrants were busy clearing. They just hear it as carte blanche to own all the firepower they can get their hands on, including arms appropriate only for soldiers in war. And as others stock up, that means they have to stock up more.
And don't give me the crapfest about a "good guy with a gun" being able
to stop the bad guy. Ask a cop. That alleged "good guy" is
indistinguishable from a bad guy and only adds to the chaos. And is
your "good guy" weapon going to be any help against automatic weapons
fired from the 32nd floor? You think if you pulled your good-guy weapon during that shooting you were going to do anything but get identified as the threat, get yourself killed, and delay locating the real threat? Remember, there were off-duty cops at that
Las Vegas concert. All they could do was identify the direction of the
threat and help concertgoers clear the area. Hooray for them, but....
Look, I get hunting. I was raised in a family that hunted deer, grouse, pheasant, geese. Delicious! There are all sorts of other animals which can be shot for the dinner table. I get skeet and other kinds of target shooting as a sport. You don't do any of it with automatic weapons, however.
I get having, or feeling like you need to have, a pistol or two for self protection if somebody breaks into your home. I do, however, lament the accessibility of those weapons to children. We'd know how many are killed and injured from unsafely stored guns in the home if there weren't laws prohibiting the study and collection of such statistics. So we just get the headlines. And these days, those injuries and deaths are so common they often don't even make the news.
Las Vegas, of course, is the only news right now. Nothing about the Russia investigation, the dire need for help for Puerto Ricans and the ignoring of them, or worse, blaming the citizens for needing assistance beyond the dedicating of a golfing trophy, on the part of our... resident of the White House. Just Las Vegas.
I'm not saying that coverage isn't appropriate or necessary. It is. But somewhere out there, some other bumfuck idiots, hearing the numbers rise, are thinking to themselves, this guy has really raised the bar. But I can do it better. I can be even more famous. I can be more important.
And they start planning the next tragedy.
Monday, October 2, 2017
Sunday, October 1, 2017
"Friendly" Planet?
I was introduced to, and immersed myself in, science fiction books back in the late '60s through, oh, somewhere in the '90s, I guess. That of course included the old masters, writing from back in the '40s and on up. I relished having my assumptions challenged by new worlds, new species, new problems and their solutions. My mind expanded. Boggled, too, but that was a good thing.
There was one theme that ran through a huge number of books I read in those days. (Perhaps it still does, but I'm into a lot of other things these days and wouldn't know.) Space travel was the big thing. We would explore and colonize other planets, grow interstellar cultures. We'd find all these other friendly planets, maybe solve an adjustment problem or two, and settle in. Or maybe a previous exploratory colony ship would hit that one insurmountable problem that nobody expected and get wiped out, leaving the next colony ship to land and figure it all out.
What fun!
These books would explore faster than light travel, or the consequences of not having it and what could go wrong with a multi-generations ship. We'd meet other cultures, figure out why they were intelligent though very different from us, make friends or enemies, and sometimes get invaded ourselves.
Underlying all these different adventures was one basic assumption, both stupid and erroneous. We'd be looking for a friendly planet, just like the one we'd left behind.
What friendly planet? I don't mean that old mathematical theory about how many billion of the right kind of stars with how many billion of the right kind of planet kind of idea. Hey, it's got appeal. I get it. But just where is this so-called friendly planet we're living on now?
Yes, I know that we've been successful at spreading our species, 7 billion plus, into nearly every nook and cranny on the globe. That means we're an adaptable species, not that we're living on a so-called friendly planet. Sure, there are a couple of things going for us. The atmosphere has a pretty decent amount of oxygen and not too many toxins in it, though we're working on that. It's got temperature ranges we can comfortably adapt to, or even not so comfortably. There's plenty of water. The other flora and fauna, for a big part, are edible enough to sustain our bodily needs.
All that is the stuff of a desirable colony planet, and way too many authors have stopped there in developing the ecosystems, weather, geography, and what have you in our supposed new homes.
But how on earth did we survive on this planet? Pretty much everything here is trying to kill us. And often does.
First, we're not stable. Our surface challenges us with earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, quicksand, too much or too little water, fires, blizzards, heat waves, extreme winds, lightning, rock slides, mudslides, avalanches... and that's just the surface.
Our food supply can be deadly, whether a poisonous berry, a nut that needs cooking before eating, a predator that wants to eat us first, or some small little snake or bug that just wants to stay alive by sacrificing a few to teach us to avoid the many. Heck! Have you noticed we haven't even figured out the mosquito yet?
That doesn't begin to cover the microscopic threats, all the fungi, bacteria, viruses, prions, and parasites whose only goal is to destroy us. Not all of us, mind you, leaving just enough behind that we can multiply again before they launch their next attack.
Let us not forget what a splendid job we are doing of killing off each other, as if all these other challenges weren't enough.
We all know all this. Yet we think of this as a friendly planet to our species. And try to imagine there are other planets out there in space that can be "friendly" homes for us?
Who are we kidding?
There was one theme that ran through a huge number of books I read in those days. (Perhaps it still does, but I'm into a lot of other things these days and wouldn't know.) Space travel was the big thing. We would explore and colonize other planets, grow interstellar cultures. We'd find all these other friendly planets, maybe solve an adjustment problem or two, and settle in. Or maybe a previous exploratory colony ship would hit that one insurmountable problem that nobody expected and get wiped out, leaving the next colony ship to land and figure it all out.
What fun!
These books would explore faster than light travel, or the consequences of not having it and what could go wrong with a multi-generations ship. We'd meet other cultures, figure out why they were intelligent though very different from us, make friends or enemies, and sometimes get invaded ourselves.
Underlying all these different adventures was one basic assumption, both stupid and erroneous. We'd be looking for a friendly planet, just like the one we'd left behind.
What friendly planet? I don't mean that old mathematical theory about how many billion of the right kind of stars with how many billion of the right kind of planet kind of idea. Hey, it's got appeal. I get it. But just where is this so-called friendly planet we're living on now?
Yes, I know that we've been successful at spreading our species, 7 billion plus, into nearly every nook and cranny on the globe. That means we're an adaptable species, not that we're living on a so-called friendly planet. Sure, there are a couple of things going for us. The atmosphere has a pretty decent amount of oxygen and not too many toxins in it, though we're working on that. It's got temperature ranges we can comfortably adapt to, or even not so comfortably. There's plenty of water. The other flora and fauna, for a big part, are edible enough to sustain our bodily needs.
All that is the stuff of a desirable colony planet, and way too many authors have stopped there in developing the ecosystems, weather, geography, and what have you in our supposed new homes.
But how on earth did we survive on this planet? Pretty much everything here is trying to kill us. And often does.
First, we're not stable. Our surface challenges us with earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, quicksand, too much or too little water, fires, blizzards, heat waves, extreme winds, lightning, rock slides, mudslides, avalanches... and that's just the surface.
Our food supply can be deadly, whether a poisonous berry, a nut that needs cooking before eating, a predator that wants to eat us first, or some small little snake or bug that just wants to stay alive by sacrificing a few to teach us to avoid the many. Heck! Have you noticed we haven't even figured out the mosquito yet?
That doesn't begin to cover the microscopic threats, all the fungi, bacteria, viruses, prions, and parasites whose only goal is to destroy us. Not all of us, mind you, leaving just enough behind that we can multiply again before they launch their next attack.
Let us not forget what a splendid job we are doing of killing off each other, as if all these other challenges weren't enough.
We all know all this. Yet we think of this as a friendly planet to our species. And try to imagine there are other planets out there in space that can be "friendly" homes for us?
Who are we kidding?
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Dear CBS National News,
In this part of the country, your network is doing the most complete and honest job in covering what's going on in the country. (Yeah, it took you guys long enough to get off the Trump-HaHa mindset, but that's a whole 'nother story. So did almost everybody else, finally. A bit late, eh? I trust you got the cause/effect message there.)
Right now I want to address you on your Puerto Rico post-Maria coverage. We get "both sides". First Trump is patting himself on the back, bragging about his ratings, informing us that Puerto Rico is actually an island in a huge, HUGE ocean. Really BIG.
Then you have a news team, boots on the ground, sometimes in the water, showing us what conditions are really like, talking to the people who are really affected and those trying to help them.
Thank you for that.
But that's not really what I'm writing about. I would appreciate it if, once this is back to as normal as it can be, where our fellow Americans aren't struggling (and failing) to find clean water, food, medicines, fuel, transportation, communication, once your crew has returned from telling the complete story, if you would pass along a message to them.
I understand how difficult a job this must be for them. Any human with half an ounce of empathy, any understanding of humanity, must find it excruciating to go on telling this story, when you know that you actually have food and clean water, transportation, fuel, communications, medications if needed ... and you can't share them with the hundreds or thousands of people you are reporting on every day! You have to want to. You have to feel like shit when you need to save these things for yourselves. While those around you suffer because they have not, you suffer because you have.
And that's a story that ought to be worth telling.
Right now I want to address you on your Puerto Rico post-Maria coverage. We get "both sides". First Trump is patting himself on the back, bragging about his ratings, informing us that Puerto Rico is actually an island in a huge, HUGE ocean. Really BIG.
Then you have a news team, boots on the ground, sometimes in the water, showing us what conditions are really like, talking to the people who are really affected and those trying to help them.
Thank you for that.
But that's not really what I'm writing about. I would appreciate it if, once this is back to as normal as it can be, where our fellow Americans aren't struggling (and failing) to find clean water, food, medicines, fuel, transportation, communication, once your crew has returned from telling the complete story, if you would pass along a message to them.
I understand how difficult a job this must be for them. Any human with half an ounce of empathy, any understanding of humanity, must find it excruciating to go on telling this story, when you know that you actually have food and clean water, transportation, fuel, communications, medications if needed ... and you can't share them with the hundreds or thousands of people you are reporting on every day! You have to want to. You have to feel like shit when you need to save these things for yourselves. While those around you suffer because they have not, you suffer because you have.
And that's a story that ought to be worth telling.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Doggone ... Mostly
Those of you who've been following regularly are aware that we found new homes for our dogs while we were on vacation this summer.
Yes, we miss them sometimes. We fall in love with other people's dogs, dogs on TV, in pictures, online, but only over the short term. It's kinda like being a grandparent, loving the heck out of the grandkids and happy to return them to their parents. I even found a new breed to covet, until sanity returned again. For the record, look up the Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dog. Go through about 50 different pictures for all the coat variations and see if something doesn't hit just that note. And hey, short haired. BUT, it's a herding dog, large and active, not for geezers like us. And there would still be the feeding, training, pooper scooping, shots, barking, traveling issues....
Sigh....
Those of you who follow this also know we've just gotten a new vacuum cleaner. It's finally assembled and working, even though we still have no clue where "Tab A" is. Most of the house has been attacked by it. We're reveling in colors in our rugs that we haven't seen in years. It's taking a while because it's bagless, the canister fills up in a big hurry from all the Fred Fur, and you have to use a long skinny stick to reach up around the edges to pry out the wads of fur that cling to each other as if their very life depends on it.
Come to think of it, it probably does.
And the emptying takes twice as long or longer than the vacuuming did.
By about the fourth time across the rug, you're mostly pulling up dust, and crumbs dropped since the last vacuuming, and they drop out of the canister for emptying pretty easily. And the colors still deepen. Whew!
Now with all this attention, including moving furniture, shaking out the little rugs, hitting the hallways, and all the other stuff that might actually qualify as a Spring Cleaning, you might think that the floors stay pretty clean now. That the Fred-bunnies are gone. That it's just new stuff to pick up. That the house cleaning has gotten simple now.
Uh huh. Sure.
I think what we have here is proof positive that all those little Fred-bunnies have been taking after their namesakes and multiplying and multiplying and multiplying and....
I think I understand now why my parents put their collective feet down and said no more pets in the house. No cats, no dogs, no guinea pigs, no nothing!
None!
Never!
No! No! No!
Yes, we miss them sometimes. We fall in love with other people's dogs, dogs on TV, in pictures, online, but only over the short term. It's kinda like being a grandparent, loving the heck out of the grandkids and happy to return them to their parents. I even found a new breed to covet, until sanity returned again. For the record, look up the Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dog. Go through about 50 different pictures for all the coat variations and see if something doesn't hit just that note. And hey, short haired. BUT, it's a herding dog, large and active, not for geezers like us. And there would still be the feeding, training, pooper scooping, shots, barking, traveling issues....
Sigh....
Those of you who follow this also know we've just gotten a new vacuum cleaner. It's finally assembled and working, even though we still have no clue where "Tab A" is. Most of the house has been attacked by it. We're reveling in colors in our rugs that we haven't seen in years. It's taking a while because it's bagless, the canister fills up in a big hurry from all the Fred Fur, and you have to use a long skinny stick to reach up around the edges to pry out the wads of fur that cling to each other as if their very life depends on it.
Come to think of it, it probably does.
And the emptying takes twice as long or longer than the vacuuming did.
By about the fourth time across the rug, you're mostly pulling up dust, and crumbs dropped since the last vacuuming, and they drop out of the canister for emptying pretty easily. And the colors still deepen. Whew!
Now with all this attention, including moving furniture, shaking out the little rugs, hitting the hallways, and all the other stuff that might actually qualify as a Spring Cleaning, you might think that the floors stay pretty clean now. That the Fred-bunnies are gone. That it's just new stuff to pick up. That the house cleaning has gotten simple now.
Uh huh. Sure.
I think what we have here is proof positive that all those little Fred-bunnies have been taking after their namesakes and multiplying and multiplying and multiplying and....
I think I understand now why my parents put their collective feet down and said no more pets in the house. No cats, no dogs, no guinea pigs, no nothing!
None!
Never!
No! No! No!
Monday, September 25, 2017
Losing Puerto Rico
What is it? Nobody cares about "those brown people"? If it's an island, it's not part of America? (Like, you know, Hawaii, where a president born there wasn't American?)
Are we all just too worn out from Harvey and Irma? And heaven help anybody who might raise taxes on our billionaires to send assistance to Americans who have no food, water, electricity, homes, and are additionally suffering through a record heat wave? Or is it just more important to our so-called president whether athletes take a knee to protest racial injustice at the beginning of a game because he thinks it is about him?
Oh, so the airport control tower is down. How about we send in the navy with supplies and/or transportation off-island rather than put on a show to provoke Kim Jung Un? They don't need radar to land on Puerto Rican shores, and they could be doing a part of our country way more good than trying to start a nuclear war.
Every so often Puerto Rico takes a vote to decide if they want to become a state of ours rather than a territory. Or do they want independence? With this kind of treatment - or lack of recognition - why on earth would they do anything to tighten their ties to us? Heck, maybe they'll chose to join up with Cuba. At least there they would get healthcare!
And while I'm on a rant, let's turn our eyes to Flint, Michigan. Yep, they're still there. Just fewer of them. No, not from moving away, but from drinking their own water. It's been scientifically determined that not only have the lead levels highly decreased pregnancy rates, but highly increased miscarriage rates. What? Hadn't heard that? Can't be bothered with news? REAL news?
Surely you've heard for decades now about the evils of abortion. Your belief or not, you've heard that point of view. But where are all those folks who care about fetuses now, when an plan to save tax dollars is killing them off left and right, just because it costs about $100 a day to add the right chemical to the drinking water so the pipes don't corrode and leach lead into the water? More than that is spent to pay abortion protestors to carry signs outside women's clinics. Can anybody spell "hipocricy"?
Say, this wouldn't have anything to do with all those urban brown people, would it? Why bother shooting them when they run away from you if you can just prevent their existence in the first place?
Yeah, much as it hurts, I'd take a knee too.
Are we all just too worn out from Harvey and Irma? And heaven help anybody who might raise taxes on our billionaires to send assistance to Americans who have no food, water, electricity, homes, and are additionally suffering through a record heat wave? Or is it just more important to our so-called president whether athletes take a knee to protest racial injustice at the beginning of a game because he thinks it is about him?
Oh, so the airport control tower is down. How about we send in the navy with supplies and/or transportation off-island rather than put on a show to provoke Kim Jung Un? They don't need radar to land on Puerto Rican shores, and they could be doing a part of our country way more good than trying to start a nuclear war.
Every so often Puerto Rico takes a vote to decide if they want to become a state of ours rather than a territory. Or do they want independence? With this kind of treatment - or lack of recognition - why on earth would they do anything to tighten their ties to us? Heck, maybe they'll chose to join up with Cuba. At least there they would get healthcare!
And while I'm on a rant, let's turn our eyes to Flint, Michigan. Yep, they're still there. Just fewer of them. No, not from moving away, but from drinking their own water. It's been scientifically determined that not only have the lead levels highly decreased pregnancy rates, but highly increased miscarriage rates. What? Hadn't heard that? Can't be bothered with news? REAL news?
Surely you've heard for decades now about the evils of abortion. Your belief or not, you've heard that point of view. But where are all those folks who care about fetuses now, when an plan to save tax dollars is killing them off left and right, just because it costs about $100 a day to add the right chemical to the drinking water so the pipes don't corrode and leach lead into the water? More than that is spent to pay abortion protestors to carry signs outside women's clinics. Can anybody spell "hipocricy"?
Say, this wouldn't have anything to do with all those urban brown people, would it? Why bother shooting them when they run away from you if you can just prevent their existence in the first place?
Yeah, much as it hurts, I'd take a knee too.
Sunday, September 24, 2017
A Birthday Cause
I just sent an undisclosed amount to my daughter's Go Fund Me page.
There are a lot of reasons I'm proud of her, besides the simple fact of being her mother. She fights for women's rights in a lot of ways, just one of which is on her blog. There's more stuff on it than that, of course, just like mine is pretty eclectic. But in her case, there have been consequences.
She goes to a lot of conferences. One relatively famous attendee/ presenter is what some folks refer to as a hound dog. Apparently believing himself to be the ultimate gift to women, he pushes himself on them in whatever circumstances he believes he can get away with it.
Not all women appreciate his advances, of course. They protest, they bear witness, they talk amongst each other. Steph, in her blog, on numerous occasions, has related - aka warned - about what has been going on. It hasn't mattered to those in charge of organizing and presenting those conferences. Big Name Guy carries on ... all puns intended.
Ever heard of a Slapp suit? It's where one person/group sues another for the express purpose of silencing them. If that term doesn't ring any bells, think about terms like libel and slander. The thing is, if you're telling the truth about the bad things the other person is doing, and can prove it, the lawsuit goes away.
Mr. Big Guy has sued all those he can find who are telling others about his behavior. He's got a big pot of money. The people he's suing don't. Some days that wins the game. It's expensive to fight. Together, the suit recipients have hired a lawyer, who says them he has no case against them. But I repeat, it costs to fight.
Steph has set up a Go Fund Me page. She is asking for anybody who wished to send her a birthday present ('cause today's her birthday) or for any other reason support her cause, to send money to it. Since she posted it on Facebook,and I don't "do" Facebook, and Steve has a heck of a time excerpting something out of Facebook and sending it to me, I had him read off the URL and I wrote it down for me and whomever of you cares:
https;//www.gofundme.com/defense-vs-carrier-slapp
This is not a link. You'll have to copy-paste. We thank you in advance for your support.
There are a lot of reasons I'm proud of her, besides the simple fact of being her mother. She fights for women's rights in a lot of ways, just one of which is on her blog. There's more stuff on it than that, of course, just like mine is pretty eclectic. But in her case, there have been consequences.
She goes to a lot of conferences. One relatively famous attendee/ presenter is what some folks refer to as a hound dog. Apparently believing himself to be the ultimate gift to women, he pushes himself on them in whatever circumstances he believes he can get away with it.
Not all women appreciate his advances, of course. They protest, they bear witness, they talk amongst each other. Steph, in her blog, on numerous occasions, has related - aka warned - about what has been going on. It hasn't mattered to those in charge of organizing and presenting those conferences. Big Name Guy carries on ... all puns intended.
Ever heard of a Slapp suit? It's where one person/group sues another for the express purpose of silencing them. If that term doesn't ring any bells, think about terms like libel and slander. The thing is, if you're telling the truth about the bad things the other person is doing, and can prove it, the lawsuit goes away.
Mr. Big Guy has sued all those he can find who are telling others about his behavior. He's got a big pot of money. The people he's suing don't. Some days that wins the game. It's expensive to fight. Together, the suit recipients have hired a lawyer, who says them he has no case against them. But I repeat, it costs to fight.
Steph has set up a Go Fund Me page. She is asking for anybody who wished to send her a birthday present ('cause today's her birthday) or for any other reason support her cause, to send money to it. Since she posted it on Facebook,and I don't "do" Facebook, and Steve has a heck of a time excerpting something out of Facebook and sending it to me, I had him read off the URL and I wrote it down for me and whomever of you cares:
https;//www.gofundme.com/defense-vs-carrier-slapp
This is not a link. You'll have to copy-paste. We thank you in advance for your support.
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Comeback
They're trying to kill all the benefits we've gotten used to from Obamacare ... again. Just because they told their constituents they would. Not because they have any kind of a plan that's an improvement.
To further the confusion, they manage to get ignoramuses who don't understand the principles of any variety of insurance being the reliance of those who need it being supported by all the folks who don't... at that particular moment. Your car insurance rates start at a lower payment so if you have an accident you don't have to carry the full load of replacing your car, hospital costs, liability, and what not. Of course, if you persist in driving stupidly, your premiums can rise or you get booted. But the whole supports the individual, and good driving can drive your rates back down again.
Homeowners insurance gets paid for by everyone even if your own house never burns down or crumbles in an earthquake or blows away in a tornado, hurricane, etc.
Health insurance should work the same way. It's there when you need it because who knows what kind of illness or accident can come your way. If we knew, who'd buy insurance? It's the unforseen that's the issue. That tree that knocks over your house may hit you too. Got the principle down?
Now, you get the ignoramuses who think health insurance should be parsed out by what they think is likely to happen to them. Like, they'll never need mental health insurance. Uh huh, sure. Not that they'd recognize it if it bit them in the ass. But the ones who really annoy me are the ones - males, of course - who chafe at having to chip into the pot for maternity care. (Like sperm wasn't half of it.)
This is when you just look them slowly up and down, and ask, "What? You were hatched?"
To further the confusion, they manage to get ignoramuses who don't understand the principles of any variety of insurance being the reliance of those who need it being supported by all the folks who don't... at that particular moment. Your car insurance rates start at a lower payment so if you have an accident you don't have to carry the full load of replacing your car, hospital costs, liability, and what not. Of course, if you persist in driving stupidly, your premiums can rise or you get booted. But the whole supports the individual, and good driving can drive your rates back down again.
Homeowners insurance gets paid for by everyone even if your own house never burns down or crumbles in an earthquake or blows away in a tornado, hurricane, etc.
Health insurance should work the same way. It's there when you need it because who knows what kind of illness or accident can come your way. If we knew, who'd buy insurance? It's the unforseen that's the issue. That tree that knocks over your house may hit you too. Got the principle down?
Now, you get the ignoramuses who think health insurance should be parsed out by what they think is likely to happen to them. Like, they'll never need mental health insurance. Uh huh, sure. Not that they'd recognize it if it bit them in the ass. But the ones who really annoy me are the ones - males, of course - who chafe at having to chip into the pot for maternity care. (Like sperm wasn't half of it.)
This is when you just look them slowly up and down, and ask, "What? You were hatched?"
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