Luke.stirling

During his visit to Washington last month, China's President Xi Jinping vowed to stop the commercial trade in ivory in his nation, but didn't say much about when or how.

(more…)

Okay, this is completely ridiculous, obviously, but I also thought it was pretty funny. Although I think yelling is funny.

Warning: he’s at full volume, so you might need to reduce yours.

Brian Wilson: the Texas Law Hawk.

Transcript available at http://wp.me/p5WxZG-8R4

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is the latest entry in Ubisoft’s long-running open-world franchise, and although the gameplay is exactly what you’d expect from an Assassin’s Creed game, Syndicate distinguishes itself from its predecessors. It stands apart not because of improved mechanics or visual design but because its developers have made noticeable attempts to portray a more inclusive cast of characters.

SUPPORT: Help us continue producing educational feminist media criticism by donating: www.FeministFrequency.com/donate

This teacher thinks his/her correct solutions are better than his/her student's equally correct solutions.

(via VectorBelly Webcomics)

For several years politicians have debated on how Europe should approach net neutrality.

The results of these negotiations are included in the Telecoms Single Market (TSM) regulation, which will be voted on early next week.

If the European Parliament adopts the new rules they will become law, replacing existing network neutrality laws in member states of the EU.

This is a positive development for net neutrality supporters in countries where legislation is lacking, but not necessarily in the Netherlands, Slovenia and Norway, which already have strong rules in place.

Various activist groups and experts warn that there won’t be any real network neutrality if some crucial amendments fail to pass. These amendments will ensure that specific types of traffic aren’t throttled around the clock, for example.

The current language would allow ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic permanently if that would optimize overall “transmission quality.” This is not a far-fetched argument, since torrent traffic can be quite demanding on a network.

Barbara van Schewick, Professor of Law and Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, tells us that in its current form the net neutrality regulations pose a significant threat to file-sharing protocols and services.

“This is a real problem for P2P applications. ISPs regularly throttle or otherwise interfere with peer-to-peer file-sharing applications to manage congestion if they are not prevented from doing so by network neutrality rules,” van Schewick says.

“The provisions would allow ISPs to throttle or de-prioritize P2P file-sharing around the clock based on the ‘objective technical requirement’ that P2P file-sharing is not sensitive to delay,” she adds.

This would lead to lower download speeds for average downloaders, for example. In addition, it would be troubling for P2P and BitTorrent-based real-time streaming services which are particularly sensitive to delays.

Besides file-sharing traffic the proposed legislation also allows Internet providers to interfere with encrypted traffic, including VPN connections.

Since encrypted traffic can’t be classified though deep packet inspection, ISPs may choose to de-prioritize it altogether.

“Encryption makes it impossible to identify the type of application, so ISPs who implement that kind of traffic management have generally put encrypted traffic in the slow lane,” van Schewick explains.

“Even if an ISP wasn’t specifically targeting P2P file-sharing applications, this would hurt all P2P applications that encrypt their traffic,” she adds.

The concerns outlined above are shared by several Members of Parliament who have introduced amendments to fix the issues. However. in order to get them accepted they require support from the majority of Parliament.

To push them in the right direction, a coalition of digital rights groups have created the SaveTheInternet website where European citizens can share their concerns, encouraging their representatives to vote in favor of the amendments.

More information and comments on the European net neutrality rules are available on Medium. Next week we’ll know if the campaign helped, or if BitTorrent and VPN traffic are still at risk.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Posted in the Hamilton Spectator:

You're probably about 15 years old, so I don't expect you to be very mature or for you to want a little girl on your skate ramp for that matter. 

What you don't know is that my daughter has been wanting to skateboard for months. I actually had to convince her that skateboarding wasn't for just for boys. So when we walked up to the skate park and saw that it was full of teenaged boys who were smoking and swearing, she immediately wanted to turn around and go home.

I secretly wanted to go too because I didn't want to have to put on my mom voice and exchange words with you. I also didn't want my daughter to feel like she had to be scared of anyone, or that she wasn't entitled to that skate park just as much as you were.

So when she said, "Mom it's full of older boys," I calmly said, "So what, they don't own the skate park." She proceeded to go down the ramp in spite of you and your friends flying past her and grinding rails beside her.

She only had two or three runs in before you approached her and said "Hey, excuse me ..."

I immediately prepared to deliver my "She's allowed to use this park just as much as you guys" speech when I heard you say, "Your feet are wrong. Can I help you?"

You proceeded to spend almost an hour with my daughter showing her how to balance and steer, and she listened to you a feat not attained by most adults.

You held her hand and helped her get up when she fell down and I even heard you tell her to stay away from the rails so that she wouldn't get hurt.

I want you to know that I am proud that you are part of my community, and I want to thank you for being kind to my daughter, even though your friends made fun of you for it.

She left the skate park with a sense of pride and with the confidence that she can do anything, because of you.

Jeanean Thomas, Cambridge

The creators of a crowdfunded food-scanning gadget have threatened to sue Pando Daily after the website reported its failure to deliver the device.

Depicted in a crowdfunding pitch as a keychain-sized scanner that tells the operator the true composition of processed food, Tellspec raised $386,392 in a 2013 indiegogo campaign.

"Our team has created the world’s first consumer handled device able to scan food at a molecular level," the blurb goes, promising to identify calories, macronutrients, allergens, fiber, sugars, and the glycemic index, "with one simple scan."

Its portability and claimed capabilities raised eyebrows, and the creators later admitted that the "model" depicted in the demonstration was not something that would end up in buyer's pockets.

“The device shown in this video is a 3D model representing the future industrial design of the TellSpec scanner,” the company said in a press release, confirming that it was “not a working device.”

But with the original delivery date now blown, even the bulkier version shown in a later video failed to end up in pledgers' kitchen drawers, drawing fire from backers.

In response, Tellspec's CEO, Isabel Hoffman, sent Pando a rambling, typo-strewn letter claiming that legal action would be forthcoming if the site's criticisms were not retracted.

We have sent requests to the editor as well as the past writer to retract the defamation done both on Tellsepc [sic] and my person. … I would appreciate a call or an email so this can be resolved amicable [sic] and without further delay. Tellspec has suffered financial losses due to these articles that claim we are a scam. Please advice [sic] if we can talk before my lawyer contacts you and the editor.

When asked by editor Paul Carr, though, Hoffman apparently would not identify anything specific in the articles that Tellspec found libelous or otherwise in need of correction — a common sign, according to Popehat writer and first amendment lawyer Ken White, that a legal threat is baseless.

You may remember Pando for leading a similar charge against Healbe's GoBe health tracker, another high-tech device whose dubious medical claims were credulously reported upon and which was permitted by Indiegogo to raise huge sums of money. Upon release, Healbe's flagship calorie-counting feature was found to not work as promised.

After the 14 year old maker/tinkerer was arrested on bullshit terrorism charges in his family's adoptive home in the small Texas town of Inving, many Americans spoke up in support of him, including President Obama and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. (more…)

Next season of Mythbusters is the last one. The fantastic television series starring our friend Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, and a wonderful cast of makers and explosives, will end after the 14th season, totaling 248 episodes and nearly 3,000 experiments. Congratulations, you guys. It was a fantastic run. You inspired, and will continue to inspire, huge numbers of people of all ages with your curiosity, wonder, and ingenuity.

"I’ve been going through genuine grief,” Adam told Entertainment Weekly. “Even food doesn’t taste as good.”

What will they do next?

Adam: I’m definitely going to do more television, behind and in front of the camera. I love producing this show and figuring out how to structure the episodes. I’m going to jump into the website Tested.com. I’m looking forward to visiting Comic-Con.

Jamie: There’s a scripted show we’re executive producing at CBS that was announced, and that’s exciting. I can’t talk about it yet, but when it comes out it’s going to knock some people’s socks off. As far as me personally, there’s some outside projects I’m starting to ramp up. There’s an Office of Naval Research project. I’m developing some new kinds of robotic firefighting vehicles to help with the massive forest forests we’re dealing with in the West. I’m keeping the M5 [special effects company]. I’m a builder, first and foremost. There are people I have to work with filming [Mythbusters] that are interested in how to build things for the sake of the story rather than what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t want to sound sour grapes about it, but for a show, you have to tell a story. You present it in a way that’s interesting and easy to follow. But I want to circle back to actually doing build projects where I don’t have a bunch of film people getting in my way and manipulating what’s going on.

1. It is multi-purpose.
2. It is brown.
3. It is tough.
4. It is packaging tape.

Give that copywriter a raise!

[via]

(Thanks, Andreas!)

No one's exactly sure how fraudsters stole over $680,000 from hijacked chip-and-PIN credit cards in Belgium, because the cards are still evidence and can't be subjected to a full tear-down but based on the X-rays of the tampered cards, it's a good bet that the thieves glued a 0.3mm hobbyist FUN chip over the card's own chip, and programmed it to bypass all PIN entries. (more…)

An anonymous reader writes: As we consolidate on just a few major email services, it becomes more and more difficult to launch your own mail server. From the article: "Email perfectly embodies the spirit of the internet: independent mail hosts exchanging messages, no host more or less important than any other. Joining the network is as easy as installing Sendmail and slapping on an MX record. At least, that used to be the case. If you were to launch a new mail server right now, many networks would simply refuse to speak to you. The problem: reputation. ... Earlier this year I moved my personal email from Google Apps to a self-hosted server, with hopes of launching a paid mail service à la Fastmail on the same infrastructure. ... I had no issues sending to other servers running Postfix or Exim; SpamAssassin happily gave me a 0.0 score, but most big services and corporate mail servers were rejecting my mail, or flagging it as spam: Outlook.com accepted my email, but discarded it. GMail flagged me as spam. MimeCast put my mail into a perpetual greylist. Corporate networks using Microsoft's Online Exchange Protection bounced my mail."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Someone has put high-quality signs on park benches in a fancy British town to mock its contemptuous treatment of locals, especially the poor. The signs have been removed, on the grounds that they might be "offensive."

Rebellious plaques have been situated on benches in Chester with the intention of highlighting Cheshire West and Chester Council’s 'draconian plans' to introduce a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO).

Two street artists have placed the plaques on benches across Chester city centre 'in good grace' to raise awareness of the plight of homelessness in the city… One of the plaques put up by the artists say: “If you shut your eyes for more than ten seconds whilst on this bench, you may be deemed asleep, and risk facing an ASBO. By Order of Public Space Protection Orders under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.” A more humorous plaque says: “This bench is dedicated to the men who lost the will to live whilst following their partners around the shoe shops of Chester.”

The key quote is from a local official, Maria Byrne, who said: “We have removed the plaques from five benches and although they may appear humorous, some people may find them offensive."

But without, of course, specifying who.

Rebellious plaques situated on benches in Chester [The Chester Chronicle via JWZ]

I’ve heard a lot about Dubai, but honestly, it’s one of the few places on the planet I never want to visit. Zero interest. Actively repelled. And I’d like to visit Antarctica someday!

Building giant skyscrapers and “entertainment complexes” has no appeal — it doesn’t make for an interestingly human place. Here’s a wonderfully brutal rant about Dubai.

Dubai, on the other hand, markets itself as fun in the sun, a kind of Las Vegas on the Persian Gulf. Yet it has far more in common with Saudi Arabia than you’d imagine. Before you say, “But Alex, Dubai is the forward looking part of the Middle East that wants to engage with the world,” I invite you to consider the case of Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Dalelv is a Norwegian fashion designer who was on a business trip in Dubai in 2013. During an evening out, she was raped. She later reported her attack to the police. The authorities’ reaction? Ms Dalelv was charged with perjury, having extramarital sex and drinking alcohol. She received a 16-month jail sentence.

It’s full of entertaining bon mots, too.

Bigger, better, higher, glitzier, nastier: it’s like an entire city designed by Donald Trump.

Aaaah! Run away, run away!

Hovertext: A can also pass the Turing test by making people less human.

New comic!
Today's News:

Today's comic reveals David Shiffman's SECRET PLOT.

The zombie lie that George W. Bush “kept us safe” keeps coming back around, because the GOP wants everyone to believe that the Bush presidency began on September 12, 2001.

Remember:

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has made a big point of the fact that Tenet briefed the president nearly every day. Yet at the peak moment of threat, the two didn’t talk at all. At a time when action was needed, and orders for action had to come from the top, the man at the top was resting undisturbed.

Throughout that summer, we now well know, Tenet, Richard Clarke, and several other officials were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al-Qaida was about to unleash a monumental attack. On Aug. 6, Bush was given the now-famousPresident’s Daily Brief (by one of Tenet’s underlings), warning that this attack might take place “inside the United States.” For the previous few years—as Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director, revealed this morning—the CIA had issued several warnings that terrorists might fly commercial airplanes into buildings or cities.

And now, we learn today, at this peak moment, Tenet hears about Moussaoui. Someone might have added 2 + 2 + 2 and possibly busted up the conspiracy. But the president was down on the ranch, taking it easy. Tenet wasn’t with him. Tenet never talked with him. Rice—as she has testified—wasn’t with Bush, either. He was on his own and, willfully, out of touch.

A USA Today story, written right before Bush took off, reported that the vacation—scheduled to last from Aug. 3 to Sept. 3—would tie one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest that any president had ever taken. A week before he left, Bush made a videotaped message for the Boy Scouts of America. On the tape, he said, “I’ll be going to my ranch in Crawford, where I’ll work and take a little time off. I think it is so important for the president to spend some time away from Washington, in the heartland of America.”

More of ancient philosophy dudebro Colin McGinn’s emails have emerged as his harassment victim brings suit against him. The former student’s responses are consistent: he makes advances, she says no.

On May 18, he texted I feel like kissing you. She responded, “You can’t do that.”

But at the same time, you can tell she’s conflicted: this guy is part of her pathway to a career in philosophy, and she can’t afford to just tell him to fuck off. So she gets more and more email like this one:

Need to avoid the scenario I sketched: you meet someone else, I broken hearted, our relationship over (except formally). This follows pretty obviously from current policy. To avoid my heart break I need to prepare myself mentally, which means withdrawing from you emotionally–not good for either of us. Also no good to just have full-blown relationship–too risky and difficult in the circumstances. So need compromise. Many are possible. Here’s one (I’m not necessarily advocating it): we have sex 3 times over the summer when no one is around, but stop before next semester begins. This has many advantages, which I won’t spell out, but also disadvantages, ditto. I am NOT asking you to do this–it is merely one possible compromise solution to a difficult problem, which might suggest others. It has the FORM of a possible solution. Try to take this in the spirit in which it is intended. yours, Colin

Jebus. She finally had enough, and resigned. And then, finally, the university administration leapt into action…and did their very best to keep everything on the down low. Of course.

She resigned her position as his research assistant on Sept. 11, 2012. Two days later, McGinn emailed her, stating “you are much better off with my support than without it. So please think carefully about your actions.” On Sept. 14, Morrison made what she believed to be a formal sexual harassment complaint and provided some of McGinn’s messages to university administrators, hoping to be protected from retaliation. However, UM routed her complaint through an “informal process” pressing the professor to resign, according to reports, because it was quicker. (McGinn denies on his blog that he was forced out.)

UM lawyers have said they chose to pursue this informal route to achieve an immediate resolution. Isicoff echoed the comments in conversations with HuffPost. Morrison said she had a right to choose between a formal or informal complaint process.

Keeping it informal, quiet, and private allows the university to hush up the misbehavior, but notice — it does not provide the victim the support and protection she needed and wanted.

Just once in my lifetime I’d like to see university bureaucrats come down on harassers like a swarm of vengeful angels in nice conservative suits and dresses. I know, it’s strange to see a call for more wrath on university professors from a university professor, but these people are not my kind. They are exploiters who damage the reputation of my profession, and if only these administrators would see it, the reputation of the universities they nest in.

New comic!

This week I am very happy to present a collaboration comic with my friend Chrissie, who has been generous in sharing with me her experiences of gender dynamics in a technical field, and then helping me craft them into a comic narrative.

Whenever I see Chrissie’s work I’m always impressed at the cool, creative things she does. When we were discussing this comic, she told me: “I find men persistently try to direct me lots now too, which is probably the biggest problem I consistently run into”, and my feelings around that fact are a terrible and familiar blend of frustration, sadness, and lack of surprise.

When we talk about the differences in how men and women are treated professionally, especially in technical fields, we are often dismissed with ‘everyone has to deal with that’, or ‘women need to demonstrate more confidence with their skills’, or ‘they’re just trying to be helpful’, or ‘it’s all in your head’.

It’s frustrating when we know something like this is happening, but we spend so much of our time actually trying to get people to believe that it’s a real phenomenon. I find narratives like Chrissie’s validating in that she has a comparative set of experiences and is like ‘oh yeah, people totally think I’m less competent at my job now. it’s totally a thing’.  So, can guys just believe us already and get on helping it not happen?

Share

(more…)

When the food riots come and the ocean waves are pounding against the Chrysler and TransAmerica buildings, where will the rich people be? Inside their spacious disaster bunker, eating gourmet meals and playing board games with other 0.01 percenters.

From Core 77:

[Vivos Indiana] is an "impervious underground complex" built in a Cold-War-era nuclear shelter and kitted out with luxury amenities. The idea is that you sign up in advance and plunk down $35,000 per person ($25,000 for kids) to secure one of the 80 spots available within the shelter. In the event of disaster, travel to the publicly-undisclosed location in Indiana and make it inside before they lock it down, and then you can survive for a year amidst leather couches, 600-thread-count sheets and gourmet chow.

Jupiter is more beautiful than ever in this footage from NASA, as used by Adrienne Lafrance to illustrate her splendid article about the gas giant.

rom far away, the planet looks vaguely beige. But its clouds are a kaleidoscope of warm colors—alternately red, orange, pink, and tan, with some blue. That may be the effect of sunlight breaking down chemicals like ammonia, but scientists aren’t sure. “We still don't know what makes the clouds the colors they are,” Simon said. “Another thing we don’t know is: Why the storms last so long.”

In the future, the people who live around Jupiter are going to be really smug, aren't they?

Its reputation was once not so grand, Lafrance adds in a follow-up that astronomers used to find the painterly, swirling surface quite unpleasant.

It was generally hoped that, in couse [sic] of time, this much respected orb would see the error of his ways, and cease to assume the appearance of an inebriated planet.

Sad to relate, however, he has gone from bad to worse, and is just now showing, side by side with the red spot complained of, a number of white ones, which give his countenance an appearance truly sad to behold. No wonder that quiet, staid astronomers, who, from joking, stand aghast at such an exhibition.

There have long been rumors, leaks, and statements about the NSA "breaking" crypto that is widely believed to be unbreakable, and over the years, there's been mounting evidence that in many cases, they can do just that. Now, Alex Halderman and Nadia Heninger, along with a dozen eminent cryptographers have presented a paper at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (a paper that won the ACM's prize for best paper at the conference) that advances a plausible theory as to what's going on. In some ways, it's very simple -- but it's also very, very dangerous, for all of us. (more…)

This year in America, people are being shot by toddlers on a weekly basis. Check out this infographic on 2015 U.S. shooting stats, from the Washington Post's grim data-crunchers.

From The Washington Post's Wonkblog:

This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: a little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead.

But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. After spending a few hours sifting through news reports, I've found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself.

Gun law reform now.

[HT: Kashana Cauley]

[caption id="attachment_428019" align="alignnone" width="1200"] A young NRA member, gets her photo with a non-toy rifle at an NRA convention [REUTERS][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_428022" align="alignnone" width="1200"] A man shows a boy how to sight down an electronic rifle at an NRA meeting. [Reuters][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_428020" align="alignnone" width="1200"] A young girl with a working handgun at an NRA convention. [REUTERS][/caption]

Dave E. over on the Brickset forums has compiled a fascinating summary of the evolution of the LEGO palette over the past 40 years. Dave wrote an program to analyze the Brickset database, pulling part inventories for the last 40 years’ worth of sets. He says he ignored a few special themes known for their rampant use of unusual colors, such as Duplo and Fabuland.

This chart compiles the colors as a percentage of the total parts produced each year, so while a color’s percentage may decrease from one year to the next, its actual quantity produced may increase if LEGO manufactures more total pieces the next year. This chart also only accounts for a set’s release year, and not the subsequent years in which that set may have been produced, nor the quantities LEGO produces, so it only approximates what a collector would have if they were able to buy one copy of each set in its release year.

Dave’s primary finding is that the two shades of grey — originally light and dark grey, now known as light and dark bluish grey thanks to a 2004 hue switch by LEGO (see below) — have gradually eclipsed more and more of the spectrum, today comprising around 25 percent of the total parts produced. In the 1970’s, red, yellow, and blue dominated the rainbow, but as the company’s outlook has gotten brighter, so its rainbow has turned darker. My totally scientific and not-at-all-biased research suggests this is indeed the case:

1975:

2014:

Black has held steady through the years with between 20 and 30 percent, while white increased, peaking in the 1980’s at around 15 to 20 percent, then gradually diminishing again to its current position around 9 percent. Dave also points out the rise of Dark Tan, which just 5 years ago wasn’t visible on the chart, and now occupies a narrow but steadily growing slice of the pie.

LEGO colors can be a complicated matter, not least because there are a lot of them, but also because the fan community and LEGO can’t agree on what to call them. Then compound that with the fact that some dominant colors shifted hue over time as LEGO cleaned up their palette. Brickset lists 141 colors in its database, while Bricklink records 157, though 27 of those are Modulex colors (Modulex was an offshoot of LEGO for use in Architectural models, featuring smaller scale bricks, and no doubt warrants a whole other post some day).

[Photo courtesy of Ryan Howerter]

For example, the community has Light Grey and Dark Grey. LEGO called them Grey and Dark Grey. Around 2004 LEGO used feedback from focus groups and a company-wide restructuring to tighten up its color chart and fine-tune a few prominent colors. Most widely known (and much wailed about) were Light and Dark Grey, as well as Brown (what LEGO called Earth Orange) and a few other less common colors. Dark Red also shifted hue at the same time, but it was such a subtle shift that it went largely unnoticed by fans, and even Bricklink decided not to differentiate between the old and new hues. The new Light and Dark Grey became known as Light and Dark Bluish Grey (often shortened to Light and Dark Bley), while LEGO calls the new colors Medium and Dark Stone Grey. Brown became Reddish Brown, a name upon which, somewhat shockingly, both LEGO and fans agree.

Some fans delight in digging into the intricacies of LEGO color theory. One such is our friend Ryan Howerter, who has written up a fascinating article for New Elementary on LEGO colors, which would provide some great further reading.

An old one from Jan 2008. This is what the boys are watching.

Here is a photo essay of the inside of the MSF hospital in Kunduz that was attacked by US air power. The destruction is chilling.

It’s horrible that this devastation and death was wrought on a hospital, but we need to keep in mind that this is what follows every time our military decides that a point on the map needs to be obliterated. This is the wreckage we leave behind with every mad venture we engage.

We just don’t see the detailed images of the ruined lives and buildings afterwards.

One of my probably most annoying insistences in the 15 years that I didn’t eat meat was that I suspected people didn’t really like it as much as they thought they did. Take bacon, no doubt the first thing that comes to mind when some leaf-horfing former vegetarian has the audacity to suggest that you could live without flesh. You love the way it’s smoky and salty and crispy and fatty, right? But how much of that has to do with the actual taste of pork belly, versus the way we’ve treated it to make it even more amazing? How much of Korean short ribs are about the unseemly delicious marinade, how much of Southern fried chicken is about that shattering crust, comprise mostly buttermilk, flour and grandma love? How much of barbecued ribs is about the gloriousness of the meat on the bone versus the long tenderizing, smoking and the sweet-salty-spicy stuff we mop or crust on top? [Sorry, I have to stop this paragraph right here so I can eat it.]

... Read the rest of the broccoli roast on smittenkitchen.com

---

© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to the broccoli roast | 123 comments to date | see more: Broccoli, Budget, Fall, Photo, Quick, Vegetarian

In South Carolina, a two-year-old found a gun in his car and shot his grandmother.

Bollinger noted that investigators had already determined that the child was not in a car seat at the time of the shooting, enabling him to reach the .357 that was hanging in a pouch on the back of the passenger seat.

“We’re still trying to figure out how the child pulled the trigger,” he said. “We’re encouraging folks as always, keep your weapons secured, especially around small children.”

I have to ask…why did this person need or want a deadly weapon hanging off of their car seat while they were running routine errands? Did it make them feel more safe than putting their child in a car seat, because that also seems irresponsible and dangerous?

In Tennessee, an 11-year-old got a shotgun and killed another child, because she wouldn’t let him play with her puppy.

His parents had a shotgun and ammo easily available in a closet. Why? Did they think a flock of partridges might suddenly take wing in their living room? What was wrong with that kid that he thought using a shotgun was a reasonable response to having his feelings hurt?

We’re swimming in guns. We have so many guns that children are stumbling over them, and shooting people by accident or intent.

The United States has only 4.5% of the world’s population but has 41.5% of its civilian-owned guns. The U.S. has by far the highest gun ownership rate on Earth — nearly 90 firearms for every 100 people.

And no other developed nation comes close to us in firearms fatalities. We’re at 10-plus per 100,000 people. One third are homicides, two thirds are suicides.

These guns are everywhere. This interactive map gives a different meaning to the red/blue divide.

To some degree the split is urban vs. rural. But it is also northern California vs. southern. Northern Utah versus southern. Border counties in Texas had few gun deaths; other parts of the state had a lot.

New England and the Midwest were relatively low on the scale of gun deaths. Vast, vast sections of the South experience very high rates of death by gun. Rural Oregon and other major swaths of the non-urbanized West were disproportionately hit by firearm fatalities.

We’re talking pure unadulterated madness. We don’t need to be awash in guns, they are not making people safer, and coupled to the irrational entitlement of obsessed gun fondlers, they are creating all kinds of new dangerous situations. It’s also getting personal, when a raft of idiots think the solution to campus gun violence is to hand guns to more students.

An emeritus professor, Daniel Hamermesh, has resigned because of the open carry laws on the University of Texas at Austin campus. He’s the smart one.

“With a huge group of students my perception is that the risk that a disgruntled student might bring a gun into the classroom and start shooting at me has been substantially enhanced by the concealed-carry law,” Hamermesh, 72, wrote. He announced his resignation in a letter sent to university president Gregory Fenves on October 4, explaining that he would not be fulfilling his contract to teach fall economics classes through 2017 “out of self-protection.”

…

“Having a gun in his or her pocket, not with any plan in mind, just as an impulse, to pull it out and shoot at me,” Hamermesh explained to Daily Intelligencer, “that’s the real worry.”

Hamermesh says it’s not uncommon for some students to act irrationally about grades and schoolwork. “I’ve taught some 20,000 students over the years, and I’ve had enough students come to the office complaining, and some of them get pretty riled up.”

Remember, one of the dead in the Umpqua shooting was a professor, Lawrence Levine, and his previous interaction with his killer was to correct him on a vocabulary word. These are not situations where anyone needs to be armed, and having a mob of armed students respond to a threat with a hail of gunfire does not ever improve a situation.

It’s a good thing I don’t own or carry a weapon. I’d be tempted to blast away at the next person who mentioned the second amendment to me, because they’re all fucking morons, and they apparently consider shooting a reasonable reaction. Can we please change that thing? The founding fathers done screwed up big time with that one (and with their timidity and greed in dealing with slavery), and it’s long past time that we recognized their failure and FIXED IT.