Eight years ago today the grooms cake at our wedding was attacked by ants. Or maybe they were just joining the celebration. I love you Caryn, and can't wait to see where the next eight takes us. [photo by Meeno]
This list by Kerrang! of the Top 50 punk albums ever is quite possibly the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. I could take the records I have within arms reach and scatter them around on my floor then let my cat walk over them and make a list of only the ones the cat actually touched and it would be more accurate that this hunk of crap. First off Bad Brains Rock For Light, are you kidding me? Rior and I Against I both should have been on there. No Germs? No X? And as much as I love Green Day their first major label album does not deserve to be #2 - I could see 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours making the list but not above Black Flag, Minor Threat, Misfits, SLF, etc. And in what world is Napalm Death a punk band? And I say that fully admitting that I'm a big Napalm Death fan! That some of the things that made this list were even suggested makes me want to puke. Sublime? Blink 182?? Get Up Kids??? WHAT??!!! And almost across the board they picked the shitty major label albums put out long after the awesome punk albums by many of these bands. Let's Face It by the Bosstones? I'd take Devil's Night Out but holy crap. Ok, I have to stop looking at this before I actually throw up.
[Preface: Everything after this preface was written by my friend John Grigsby over e-mail in a conversation started by this thread discussing this article about Democrats who are against Gun Control which is a follow up to this open letter by Michael Moore. In an earlier e-mail John said "The gun control lobby is to the left what the anti-stem-cell-research mob is to the right. They're all anti-fact radicals who drive more people away from their party than they bring in" and he's right. If you have comments, updates or corrections from reliable sources feel free to post them below or e-mail John directly at 'grigsby AT evil-genius DOT com.]
Since I was suspicious of the Handgun Control Inc. statistics that everyone quotes, I decided to do my own research. Here's what I found. I welcome corrections and reliable sources of more recent statistics.
"Out of 30,708 Americans who died by gunfire in 1998, only 316 were shot in justifiable homicides by private citizens with firearms." -Handgun Control, Inc.
Let's break that number down.
17,424 (57%) of those were suicides, so you're down to 12,968 people actually shooting other people. (I'll talk about suicide in a moment.) Most of this is gang or drug-related. When we talk about the danger of shootings in the home, we're talking about people shooting intimates: family members, children, boyfriends or girlfriends.
In 1998, about 1000 people killed one of their intimates with guns. Add the 134 children age 0-14 killed in gun accidents, and you have...
1150. That's a lot less than 30,708. (Source: DOJ statistics.)
Now let's compare these numbers to crimes prevented by guns. The HCI report cheats by only counting cases where a criminal was shot _and killed_ as successful defensive gun usage. In the vast majority of cases, displaying a firearm is sufficient to prevent a crime.
Here's a US DOJ (i.e. government) report which includes a survey of defensive gun usage in America. According to the surveys, guns were used to prevent a crime 1.5 million times in 1994. (*) (Source: DOJ statistics.)
That's 1300 crimes prevented by guns per gun homicide of a family member, intimate, or ex-intimate -- and 115 crimes prevented by guns per gun death of anyone, anywhere in the USA.
How about that!
These are all numbers from official government studies which I found myself, not just a parroting of someone else's propaganda.
Now we tackle suicide.
From 1972 to 1995, the per capita gun stock in the U. S. increased by more than 50%. In 1972, the suicide rate was 11.9 per 100,000. In 1995, the suicide rate was -- 11.9 per 100,000. (It remained remarkably constant during this time, with a high of 13.0 and a low of 11.8.)
This clearly demonstrates that owning a gun does not cause people to commit suicide: the number of guns per American increased by 50%, yet we did not kill ourselves any more often than before. So even if you believe the government should try to keep people from killing themselves, banning guns won't do it.
The numbers are out there, and it's easy to see the results. I used to be anti-gun until I realized that "gun control" was totally failing at its stated goal of keeping Americans safer.
Here's a last little tidbit: In what city do husbands kill their wives the most? (Per capita -- I'm not a statistical cheat.)
New York, which has some of the toughest anti-gun laws around.
Here's another classic: the "save the children" canard.
How many children are killed each year by gun accidents? Take a guess. Now let's look at some numbers: the way that anti-gun groups get big numbers is by stretching the definition of "children".
"The annual review of mortality data, published by the Department of Health and Human Services, said gun-related deaths dropped from 4,223 in 1997 to 3,792 among children under age 20 in 1998." -Handgun Control, Inc.
"Children under age 20?" What? Some of these "children" are fighting a war in Iraq right now.
"In 1997 gun accidents killed 142 children from birth to age 14."
Oh.
I don't want to imply that these deaths are somehow acceptable -- but 142 is a lot less than 4,223. Most of the 4,223 are 16-19 year olds shooting each other in gang-related violence, not accidental shootings in the home.
To give some perspective to this number, in an average year, roughly 550 children 0-14 are run over by cars, 800 are drowned, 660 are burned to death in fires, and 1,850 die inside cars. Most of these drownings are unattended children in backyard swimming pools -- meaning that swimming pools are many times more dangerous than guns! Where's the "Mothers Against Swimming Pools" lobby?
(*) The government report spends a lot of time being skeptical of its own 1.5 million number and tries to find ways to discredit it -- but they can't find any evidence, because their own procedure was very specific: "Each respondent who answered yes to either of these DGU [defensive gun use] questions was asked a sequence of 30 additional questions concerning the most recent defensive gun use in which the respondent was involved, including the respondent's actions with the gun, the location and other circumstances of the incident, and the respondent's relationship to the perpetrator. [...] Respondents were excluded on the basis of the most recent DGU description for any of the following reasons: the respondent did not see a perpetrator; the respondent could not state a specific crime that was involved in the incident; or the respondent did not actually display the gun or mention it to the perpetrator."
(cross posted from seanbonner.com)
Just got back from the polls and I feel pretty good about my choices. By my final punch I'd voted for 4 libertarians, 2 democrats, 2 republicans, and 2 green party members as well as for/against tons of judicial candidates and state/local measures. I'm fairly certain I'm the kind of voter that freaks the parties out because I never vote on party lines and always look at each candidate on their own merit. If I can't decide, I won't vote. I feel pretty strongly that you should fully support the people you are voting for and if that means I have to spend a few hours before the election doing my research it's well worth it. I got into a discussion the other day about this so I thought I'd detail the process a little more here.
For State/Local Measures I mostly rely on mailed out Official Voter Information Guide - These things are huge but worth the time to look through. Sometimes the quick reference in the front tells you everything you need to know, if not the detailed arguments usually answer my questions. The arguments against are usually the most valuable piece of info in my decision, and I've frequently voted for something because the arguments against were outright idiocy. Very occasionally the arguments for both side will be so persuasive that I can't decide and will abstain.
When it comes to people there is a lot more to consider. I use a whole collection of things to narrow it down:
Smartvoter.org - I love this site. This site include answers to questionnaires sent to the candidates and can be very helpful in quickly grasping what is important to a person. These short answers can make or break a candidate in my opinion, and the candidates that don't bother to respond instantly lose value in my book. This year there was a candidate who said in his three main points "I will apply Godly principles in the decision-making process." Guess who would need hell to freeze over before getting my vote?
Conversely smartvoter.org is mostly useless with judicial candidates because they all say exactly the same thing. That they are "committed to justice" and "fair and honest" and "follow the law" etc. I think a better judge (pardon the pun) of character would be to have them pick a case or two that they agreed with the ruling and a case or two that they didn't. That would be far more telling IMHO.
I also check out the candidates websites and see what is going on there. Are they taking stands on issues I'm interested in? That earns points. Does the site look like it was designed in 1992? That loses points. Do they have a blog? Earns points. Is it written by some staffer rather than by themselves? Loses points. Do they have endorsements listed? Are the endorsements by people/organizations that I trust or at the very least respect?
As vocal as I am against people using party/organization voting guides (those things you get telling you exactly who to vote for) I actually do skim them just to see what kind of endorsements they are getting elsewhere. I look at lists from a wide range of sources and support from some of them can definitely work against a candidate.
I also consider a good deal of minor issues that can help break a tie. Did the candidate send me or my wife any kind of direct mail? Thats a strike against them. Did they call my house? Even worse. If I e-mail them did I get a reply, was it actually from the candidate or from one of their staffers? Did they answer my question or totally skirt it with political double speak? A candidate who responds directly and honestly wins a lot in my book even if they don't agree with me on the issue at hand. I'd rather have someone who honestly disagreed with me than someone who just told me what they thought I wanted to hear in office any day.
That's not to say issues don't matter. They certainly do, but some more than others. I realized long ago that I'm never going to find a candidate for anything that agrees with me 100% on everything, so I look for a few major points and see where the rest falls in place. Of course there are deal breakers in that - I'll never vote for a candidate who is against abortion or in favor of stricter gun control no matter how many other issues I might agree with them on.
Anyway, I voted and I'm satisfied with my choices. That's pretty much all I can ask for.
Once again I have a YouTube video I want to post here but I can't get VOX to find it so instead I'm sending you to my own blog to watch it.
Finally got a chance to see X3 and holy crap did that suck. Did someone completely forget to put the story into that movie? And did anyone else think they were just throwing characters in there to get a headcount? Jeez. To counter that we saw The Departed today, and that's easily one of the best movies I've seen in a very very very long tome. Wow. I'm going to have to go watch it again it was so good. Damn.
OK, this might be the coolest thing to ever happen in the state of Texas.
Can anyone tell me how to include a YouTube video in a vox post. My problem is that I have the link to the videos I want to include, like these two. But when I go to Compose > Videos > YouTube - my only option is to search YouTube by tag or keyword. Searching the exact tags, keywords, or any smaller combo on either of these gets me a lot of options but not these two videos. Since there is no HTML access to the posts I can't even just post the embed code from YouTube. Am I missing something painfully simple?
UPDATE: Wasn't including the username of the person who submitted it. Thanks Yewon! See the next post.
